Box Office: "Infinity Wars" tops "The Force Awakens" for Most Opening Weekend Loot

by Nathaniel R

Weekend Box Office (April 27th-29th)
W I D E 800+ screens	L I M I T E D excluding prev. wide
Infinity War	Disobedience
1. 🔺 Avengers: Infinity War $250 NEW	1. Beirut $257k on 237 screens (cum. $4.5)
2. A Quiet Place $10.6 (cum. $148.1) REVIEW, SECOND OPINION, SCREENPLAY	2.  🔺 Disobedience $241k on 5 screens NEW REVIEW
3. I Feel Pretty  $8.1 (cum. $29.5)	3.  🔺 Lean on Pete  $240k on 167 screens (cum. $665k) REVIEW
4. Rampage  $7.1 (cum. $77.9)	4.  Death of Stalin $210k on 150 screens (cum. $347k) REVIEW
5. Black Panther $4.3 (cum. $688) PODCAST	5. 🔺 The Rider $188k on 37 screens (cum. $357k) REVIEW

Avengers Infinity War  is gigantic in just about every way and the audience responded in kind gifting it the biggest opening weekend of all time. Yes, even the super long awaited return of the Star Wars franchise The Force Awakens fell to Marvel Studio's magical gloved might... The studio is currently saying that Avengers beat the record by about $2 million dollars but Marvel tends to underestimate their opening weekends in a bit of a humble brag way so expect the margin to increase a bit. 

Elsewhere at the multiplex...

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Happy Birthday to the One and Only Michelle Pfeiffer

by Nathaniel R

Pfeiffer last week at the Scarface reunion screening in NYCHappy 60th birthday to Michelle Pfeiffer! Looking as perfect as ever.

It's been so thrilling to witness the RePfeiffal this past year beginning with her stealing the gonzo show in mother!, to pulling some focus in the box office hit Murder on the Orient Express, receiving an Emmy nod for Wizard of Lies, and then winning rave reviews for the very bleak Where is Kyra? in which she plays a destitute woman suddenly in a very dark place when the only thing keeping her going (caring for her ill mother) is gone. Next up is something lighter for the masses with the role of Janet van Dyne (the original Wasp) in Ant Man and the Wasp. This will be her first superhero outing since her indelible Oscar worthy star turn in Batman Returns (1992) and will surely be added to her pile of $100 million plus domestic hits...

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Michael Anderson (1920-2018)

by Nathaniel R

We lost one of our oldest Oscar nominees this weekend. 98 year old film director Michael Anderson passed away of heart disease. The quadrilingual reportedly very amiable director had a long career stretching from a couple of acting gigs in the 1930s through directing The New Adventures of Pinnocchio in 1999. His two biggest claims to fame were the Best Picture winning blockbuster Around the World in 80 Days (1956, one of the biggest hits of its decade) and the sci-fi hit Logan's Run (1976). People keep referring to Logan's Run as a cult hit online but it was actually just a regular sized success ("cult" is a really strange term in the modern vernacular which doesn't seem to mean what people think it means when referring to the fanbases of films. I've even heard Mean Girls described as a cult-classic. Child, that is mainstream!)

His two most famous pictures were both naturally eyed for remakes...

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Infinity Tweet

LOL 

A timely reminder for all print-publishing folk errywhere: Beware the Gutter™ pic.twitter.com/ANVMmGKFb3

— Adolfo Aranjuez (@adolfo_ae) April 26, 2018

That's definitely a print lesson lost in the age of online media. After the jump warrior unicorns, a Clouds of Sils Maria / superhero fantasy that made me laugh out loud, Janelle Monae and Tessa Thompson, and various bon mots from twitter in general and film fanaticism in particular... 

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"Drag Con Panel Extravaganza"

RuPaul's Drag Race S10E6

Didn't u just die at that "facts are facts" /  "all right, brown cow" / "your back is ashy" / "your talent is bottom two" banter with Monique-Asia-Monet early in the episode? The season 10 queens have such sharp friendly-but-competitive chemistry. And there's so much bonafide talent that there's already no filler remaining! We revert to the often anticlimactic "Snatch Game" next week but we've been pleased to see the show coming up with new angles and challenges lately. This episode began with the hilarious "sitting on a secret" game. Asia O'Hara proved the most sensitive bottom, accurately guessing the most things she was sitting on whilst blindfolded -- even a fax machine! It ended with a hat challenge where most of them had great looks though Asia's dandelion look was tops.

Inbetween those delights the maxi-challenge was even better as the nine queens had to hold three mock Drag Con panels to shill for RuPaul's latest entrepeneurial success...

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