Whiplash: Best Picture - Oscars 2015 - Andrew Miles Teller, Terrence Fletcher - J.K. Simmons

Haha, no, sorry. I'm at a state school in upstate New York because it's about all I can afford. But they have a good video production program, especially for the money. Hoping to end up somewhere someday, even though I'm not going to the world's greatest film school (whatever that may be - NYU or a UC school or whatever).
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Oh, a *State* school. No, you're not. I was referring to the Park School of Communications at Ithaca College. Fine video production program and a truly excellent conservatory. Apologies.

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Yeah, the school I go to has the #1 rated music program in the country, so I have lots of friends who are music majors that I need to get to see this with me.

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Screamin' J.K. Simmons needs to be a meme, I feel there are endless possibilities for photoshopping that image of him into other images.

It would be easy for a character actor with a role that juicy—one that feels like an Oscar turn for a man who’s long overdue for such accolades—to go crazily over the top, to play him with expectorating, scenery-devouring excess. But Simmons brings an appropriately musical sense of precision to everything the character does, from the careful way he hangs up his hat and jacket upon entering a practice space to the staccato rhythms of his verbal tirades, which are so extreme and intricately worded that they’re liable to have audiences squirming in their seats as well. When Fletcher goes off, he doesn’t just seem mad at whatever hapless student happens to be disappointing him at the time. He seems enraged at the world in a way that threatens to shatter the fourth wall.

Simmons completely dominates Whiplash, but he isn’t its protagonist. That distinction belongs to Miles Teller as Andrew Neyman, a quiet young man of modest origins who has channeled all his energy and ambition into becoming one of the greatest drummers alive. Fletcher takes an interest in Andrew, but from the beginning, his mentorship has a harsh, even abusive edge. It’s unclear whether the rigor of practice sessions, rich in psychological torture and sweaty breakdowns, will push Andrew and his cohorts to greatness, or destroy them on a spiritual level.

Whiplash derives much of its thrilling unpredictability from its principled unwillingness to reveal what kind of movie it will ultimately be. Is it an unusually tense, dark, and profane example of the subgenre where a passionate but unconventional mentor leads his charges to greatness through exhausting but ultimately productive means? Or is it a grim dual character study about how the pursuit of greatness, when removed from any other considerations, including empathy and concern for other people, can transform people into monsters? At times, Whiplash suggests a dark riff on an early Tom Cruise movie, with Teller in the Cruise role of the obsessed hotshot committed to being the best in the world, and Simmons as the hardass mentor (think Robert Duvall in Days Of Thunder, Paul Newman in The Color Of Money, or Tom Skerritt in Top Gun) who pushes his protégés to heights they never imagined possible.