Happy New Year Fassinators (listen to a new 2 minute Podcast
message)! It's that time for the annual review of Michael's activities of the past 12 months. In my seventh year of supporting the career of Michael Fassbender, we witnessed the ultimate high for any actor's career, and some eyebrow raising moments as well. In the end, the year 2014 was a good year for Michael, and here is a recap of the highlights covered at Fassinating Fassbender!
JanuarySpilling over from 2013 was the phenomenal success of Steve McQueen's '12 Years a Slave' in which Michael was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in the overwhelming majority of critics associations and award bodies, including SAG, Golden Globes, BAFTA, and the almighty one, The Oscars! Michael did win some awards like the Australian Academy Cinema Television Arts, but the really big ones alluded him in what I feel was the most stressful, polarizing, bullshit filled awards campaign season, in all four decades that I have lived on this planet! I'm just a mere fan and a cinephile, and I was stressed out over it, so one can only imagine how Michael, Steve, and everyone associated with 12YAS felt. Although Michael was nominated left and right in the Best Supporting categories, the American voting bodies felt that his nomination was his reward because they just could not go the extra step and actually vote for his performance of Edwin Epps, a vile racist slave owner. Of course not, especially when there is a Maybelline pretty doe-eyed sassy talking but sweet transsexual AIDS victim going up against him. It feels good voting for the latter.
Red faced drunk rapist slaver - 0; pretty-ladyboy AIDS activist - 80.
Meanwhile, Frank premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to a lot of rave reviews!
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| The Cast and Director of 12 Years a Slave |
FebruaryThe Counselor (grossly misunderstood and under appreciated) is released on Blu-ray/DVD. Michael starts filming MacBeth in England, but makes time to attend awards ceremonies where he and three of his fellow nominees continue to watch the same guy win over and over again. At this point, it's clear that it's a group effort of the cast and director to support the film itself on its way to historic Oscar gold.
March![]() |
| Oscar Best Picture celebration on stage! |
'Twelve Years a Slave' won 3 Oscars including the top prize, Best Picture! Michael took his mother to the Oscars with him. However crazy and stressful the entire award season/Oscar season was, Michael did not break a sweat in public, he was professional, civilized, and a good sport throughout the process. We're not only proud of his accomplishments in the film which garnered him so much attention, but he also clearly demonstrated why we adore him so much in the first place. He's a perfect gentleman. The writing was on the wall for many months that he would not go home with his Oscar, but one day he will!
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| Academy Award Nominated Actor, Michael Fassbender and his mum Adele. |
As Michael resumed filming for MacBeth, Fassinating Fassbender was hard at work for the 2nd annual FF fundraiser in support of Michael's birthday. Throughout the month of March, donations slowly came in and eventually we surpassed our goal, mostly due to final day donations with a few key large donations to total £1305 (which is approximately $2,166)! It's so much harder to raise a relevant amount in GBP because of the foreign currency exchange rate that trivializes hard earned donated US dollars. So it's all the more impressive that FF readers came together to donate whatever they could to this cause to support Michael's birthday and The Bike Experience! Michael's reps at Troika were impressed with the monies raised and informed Michael.
April![]() |
| Best Supporting Actor win at IFTA |
Michael won Best Supporting Actor for 12YAS at the Irish Film and Television Awards. And the next day, Michael was spotted in Dublin with his parents eating breakfast at the Canal Bank Cafe.
After six years, Fassinating Fassbender got a significant website makeover, thanks to the wonderful work of FF graphic artist, Hupsakeek! And with April being a month of renewal and change, FF finally decided to take the plunge into Facebook with Fassinating Fassbender Facebook. It was a necessary step to take to reach out to Fassinators who prefer a Facebook interface with FF and it has been coming along very nicely with the admin help of Vera and Stephanie.
'Frank' premiered in Dublin to much fan fare, and he appeared on the Late, Late Show before continuing his promotion for Frank in London.
May![]() |
| The coolest threesome on the planet! |
The next film that demanded Michael's promotional duties was 'X-Men: Days of Future Past'. Due to director Bryan Singer's legal saga, all cast members of this film was everywhere promoting this film. The media was reporting a doomsday prediction that Singer's legal woes would hurt 'Days', but 20th Century Fox was not going to let this mess up the box office for the film. Michael was everywhere, he even went to Moscow! One promotional highlight was when Michael, James MacAvoy, and Hugh Jackman all appeared on the Graham Norton Show! Along with the big London premiere, Michael attended the New York City premiere, where he was also a guest on the Tonight Show. Basically, May was Michael Month!
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| Eleven Fassinators received their own exclusive Frank mask! |
Meanwhile, as the UK promotion of Frank winds down, the printing company of the Frank masks reached out to Fassinating Fassbender to see if I wanted the last dozen of masks to share with Fassinators. This was such a cool treat and it was further proof that although we're not the biggest Michael Fassbender fan website, but we're the coolest to be noticed in this way. Later this month, I announced that during a long planned vacation to LA, I was going to attend the LA Film Festival premiere of Frank. Unbelievable perfect timing! I'm so lucky to have Fassinator friends in key cities! My lovely friend Miapatagonia helped make this happen.
June & JulyMichael was
Details magazine's double issue cover boy for June/July, a nice accomplishment! I wrote a review of Frank and in this month, it was announced that Michael would star in 'The Light Between Oceans'. The fandom starts to experience an upheaval by non-fans with ill intentions and I felt the need to write an essay to help clarify my stance on a persistent and annoying old rumor. Meanwhile, AMPAS extends an invitation to Michael Fassbender to join the organization. It is unknown if he accepted the invite to join.
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| The cool kids at Glastonbury |
The light news that we do hear about Michael mid-summer was a few reports about him having fun at the Glastonbury Music Festival. Being a hard working actor has a lot of perks. It could be quite tiresome being on the film set for 14 hours a day, so when he's free to party, it's good to know that Michael can attend big events and only be seen when he wants to. Later in July, it's tweeted that Michael was spotted surfing in Biarritz.
AugustFrank is to be released in the US on a limited roll-out starting August 16th. The summer dry spell for Fassy has broken with him going all out for a NYC promotion for Frank! Michael and his Frank co-stars performed as
Soronprfs on the Colbert Report!
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| Michael as Frank entertaining a New York City audience. |
September & OctoberNo Fassy at TIFF this year, but he has been spotted in New Zealand getting prepared to film Oceans for the remainder of the year. In the second half of 2014, Michael has been promoting films, and enjoying private time, so information about him has been selective and sparse. Fassinating Fassbender relies on the TGiFassy theme for weekly updates. This year was a bit front loaded with big time coverage and news/information about him for the first 6 months, and then the latter part had very light news. During times like these, it's all the more important for readers to monitor updates at @FassFass twitter, Pinterest, and the Facebook page.
NovemberIt is announced that Michael Fassbender replaced Christian Bale for the role in Sony's Steve Jobs biopic. And Michael received a Best Supporting Actor nomination from BIFA for Frank. For the next installment of X-Men: Apocalypse, Fox is going to milk the star power of Jennifer Lawrence and Michael Fassbender by creating a love story arc between Mystique and Magneto. This plot twist doesn't inspire much warmth from fans and X-Men fanatics. But with Singer still in the Director's chair, and with Michael and Jennifer bringing such charisma to their characters, I'm sure they'll make the most of this and it'll be interesting to watch at the least. Fassinating Fassbender mails off its annual Christmas greeting to Michael.
December![]() |
| Michael and Alicia in Sydney. |
This month starts off with much, much needed pictures and updates on Michael Fassbender post-production of 'Oceans' in Australia. He is enjoying surfing time at Bondi beach and we are inundated with awesome images of our favorite guy on holiday with friends. Then the next day, we see images of Michael and his Oceans co-star, Alicia, arm in arm while walking about in Sydney. Meanwhile, it has been announced that 'Slow West' will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January. And a two month long project at FF@Facebook has been completed with an impressive life and career timeline for Michael at the page. Our intentions was to fully utilize a key tool at Facebook to help make FF@Facebook a great and accurate source of information related to the successes of Michael's career maintained by fans of his.
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| Michael Fassbender to star in bio-pic on Steve Jobs. |
But the big and crazy news of December was related to the Steve Jobs biopic. With still no 'official' word that Michael signed on the dotted line to star in this movie, the film got a new studio, Universal, after Sony messed up big time in not recognizing the brilliance of Michael Fassbender. So what his name isn't as big as Tom Cruise's...
yet, but from the disturbing cyber attack hacking of Sony Pictures, we learned from the release of private email conversations that the addition of Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs, under the demand of newly appointed director, Danny Boyle, was not warmly embraced by Sony co-chairwoman, Amy Pascal and producer Scott Rudin. They didn't hate on him, but they completely failed to have immediate knowledge or appreciation of his potential in this role. And now with Kate Winslet announced as being a part of this film, this film already have the cred and hallmarks of a must-see for late 2015. Filming is to take place in San Francisco (extras casting calls are occurring there) in January and be completed in time for Michael to head to Canada in April for the next X-Men film. The screenwriter of the film, Aaron Sorkin, who initially dissed Michael as a nobody, is now on board with Michael and earlier made this comment about the project:
Whoever ends up playing Jobs will inherit what Sorkin has called "an extremely difficult role," with "more words to say in this movie than most people have in three movies combined."
It looks to me that they did indeed hire the right actor for this role.
These are the main highlights of another Fassinating year in the career of Michael Fassbender! I have high hopes for 2015 and I know that Michael is going to reach even higher heights in his career this year. I have often said this before during times when the media was heavily focused on Michael, but it really is a pleasure to be the fan of such a good human being who is not only very talented, but professional, sweet, kind, and grateful for all his fans, and what we do for him here at Fassinating Fassbender.
Happy New Year to everyone and Michael, and may this year be even more exciting!
