La La Land

It stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as a struggling jazz pianist and an aspiring actress who meet and fall in love while pursuing their dreams in Los Angeles.[14] While stuck in Los Angeles traffic, Sebastian "Seb" Wilder has a moment of road rage directed at aspiring actress Mia Dolan.Seb receives a phone call from a prominent casting director who attended Mia's play, inviting her to audition for an upcoming film.Knowing that this could be her big break, he drives in a hurry to Boulder City and finds her house since he remembered that she lived across the street from the library, where she fell in love with acting.[16] His idea was "to take the old musical but ground it in real life where things don't always exactly work out,"[15] and to salute creative people who move to Los Angeles to chase their dreams.The two explored the concept in their senior thesis through a low-budget musical about a Boston jazz musician, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench.[20] The style and tone of the film were inspired by Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort, especially the latter, which was more dance and jazz-oriented.[21] The film also makes visual allusions to Hollywood classics such as Broadway Melody of 1940, Singin' in the Rain, The Band Wagon, and An American in Paris.[17] Lionsgate's Patrick Wachsberger, who previously had worked on the Step Up franchise, pushed Chazelle to increase the film's budget since he felt high-quality musicals could not be made cheaply.Watson dropped out to honor her commitments to Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast remake (2017), while Teller exited via long contract negotiations.[33] In preparation for her role, Stone watched some of the musical movies that inspired Chazelle, including The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers collaborations.Gosling was performing a crying scene in an audition and the casting director took a phone call during it, talking about her lunch plans while he was emoting.[17] He stated that the duo "feel like the closest thing that we have right now to an old Hollywood couple" as akin to Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and Myrna Loy and William Powell.[18] The rest of the cast – J. K. Simmons, Sonoya Mizuno, Jessica Rothe, Callie Hernandez, Finn Wittrock, Rosemarie DeWitt, John Legend, Jason Fuchs, Meagen Fay – were announced between July and August 2015.Gosling practiced piano in one room, Stone worked with Moore in another, and costume designer Mary Zophres had her own corner of the complex.[42] Moore emphasized working on emotion rather than technique, which Stone said was key when they filmed the "A Lovely Night" scene (searching for the parked car)."[15] Principal photography on the film officially began in the city on August 10, 2015,[47] and filming took place in more than 60 locations both in and near Los Angeles, including the Angels Flight trolley in downtown, houses in the Hollywood Hills, the Colorado Street Bridge, the Rialto Theatre in South Pasadena, the Warner Bros. studio lot, the Grand Central Market, Hermosa Beach's Lighthouse Café, Griffith Observatory, Griffith Park, Chateau Marmont, the Watts Towers, and Long Beach,[48] with many scenes shot in one take.[20] The scene was originally planned for a stretch of ground-level highway, until Chazelle decided to shoot it in the 105–110 interchange, which arcs 100 feet (30 m) in the air.Chazelle occasionally created names for them, deciding to use the title of his first feature, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (2009) for one poster, which reimagines it as a 1930s musical.[20] The now-iconic[52] six-minute-long "A Lovely Night" scene (searching for the parked car) had to be completed during the brief "magic hour" moment at sunset.Scott of The New York Times praised the film, stating that it "succeeds both as a fizzy fantasy and a hard-headed fable, a romantic comedy and a showbiz melodrama, a work of sublime artifice and touching authenticity"."[94] Tom Charity of Sight & Sound stated, "Chazelle has crafted that rare thing, a genuinely romantic comedy, and as well, a rhapsody in blue, red, yellow and green.Kelly Lawler of USA Today noted that Gosling's character has been referred to as a "white savior" by some critics, for "his quest (and eventual success) to save the traditionally black musical genre from extinction, seemingly the only person who can accomplish such a goal.[102] Rex Reed of the New York Observer also took aim at the film's intention to emulate the MGM musical classics, writing that "the old-fashioned screenplay, by the ambitious writer-director Damien Chazelle, reeks of mothballs", and that "the movie sags badly in the middle, like a worn-out mattress that needs new springs".[103] The South China Morning Post remarked that aside from its racial treatment of jazz, much of the public criticism was towards the film being "a little dull", the two leads' singing and dancing being considered unexceptional, and the lack of nuance in Stone's character, with Gosling's occasionally seen as insufferable.It is regarded as a modern classic and one of the best films of all time due to its captivating performances, attention to detail, and its assent to previous movie musicals such as Singin' in the Rain.It also ranked number 8 on Parade's list of the "67 Best Movie Musicals of All Time," with Samuel R. Murrian writing that the film is "many things, thusly its own creation: deftly blending a modern showbiz melodrama, a giddy throwback, a striking love story.""[b] In 2024, Looper ranked it number 11 on its list of the "51 Best PG-13 Movies of All Time," calling the film "a deeply affecting feature thanks to a pair of great performances from Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling."[109] Many elements of the film, including the visual style, use of colors, staging of the musical numbers and costume designs have been referenced numerous times in popular culture since its release.These include the entire opening segment of the 74th Golden Globe Awards, featuring parodies of "Another Day of Sun," "City of Stars" and the planetarium sequence with host Jimmy Fallon, Nicole Kidman, Amy Adams, Sarah Paulson, Courtney B. Vance, Sterling K. Brown, Evan Rachel Wood, Rami Malek, and Kit Harington participating, an independently produced short film parody set in New York City titled NY NY Land, a skit on season 42 of Saturday Night Live where host Aziz Ansari plays a character who is interrogated over calling the film "overrated" because of its Oscar nominations, and a television commercial for the prescription Jardiance.