August. It's Nearly a Wrap

The eighth month of the year is -- we've reached the final third of 2016 already? That was quick. Fall film season here we come. Summer was dreadful for movies unless you were smart and caught platform releases like Little Men, The Fits, Captain Fantastic, Morris From America, Disorder instead of the big budget spectacles. In fact, 2016 is shaping up to be a very rough year for mainstream cinema which could make the Oscars disastrous if they don't get creative and look further afield than they're usually prone to. We shall see.

This past month we've been celebrating 1984 for the Smackdown (coming your way Wednesday) but here are some other highlights in case you missed any.

8 Favorites
• The Art of Disavowing Your Film No, Jared Leto, no. 
• The Lobster's Phony Flowers another great episode of The Furniture
• Beauty vs Beast Bridesmaids Wiig or Byrne. Tough choice, right?
• That time Oscar loved Tarzan Revisiting the grand Greystoke
• Judy by the Numbers Judgement at Nuremberg -a different kind of singing
• Florence Foster Jenkins off-tune fuss & fun 
• Q&A Gender and the Oscars Plus Streep
• Sausage Party buns, dogs, filth, and stereotypes

8 That Spurred the Most Conversation
• Cast This: Clue Yes, they're making another movie from the game
• 1984, Year of the Heroic Farm Wives Sissy & Jessica & Sally
• Posterized: Woody Allen How many have you seen?
• Posterized: Natalie Portman How many of her films have you seen?
• Best Films of the 21st Century? That BBC List
• Monty (RIP) The Film Experience's beloved cat pundit has passed away
• 198 Oscar Performaces Ranking the Nominees (2000-2009) 
• 120 Oscar Performances Ranking the Nominees (2010-2015)

Coming in September
• Festival Season! Nathaniel leaves for Toronto real soon
• Emmy Awards
• 1963 is Our "Year of the Month": Tom Jones, The Sword in the Stone, Lilies of the Field, I Could Go On Singing, and more...
• BluRay: A Bigger Splash, The Conjuring 2, and Civil War revisits coming your way
• New Releases: Bridget Jones's Baby, Sully, Miss Peregrine, The Queen of Katwe, The Dressmaker, Magnificent Seven, and many more

ANY REQUESTS?

The Furniture: Wiener-Dog's Sickly Green Cages

by Daniel Walber

Wiener-Dog is a deceptive movie. It is technically a sequel to Todd Solondz’s cult classic Welcome to the Dollhouse, but only for about a quarter of its running time. It’s actually an anthology, built around the often tragic life of an adorable, stoic dachshund. Each stop is totally separate from the last, each new character a slightly different riff on solitude and bitterness.

Yet even this structural diversity is deceptive. For while the film contains a variety of stories and locations, it is essentially one long expansion of a single set. The opening credits play over an anonymous animal shelter, where Wiener-Dog patiently waits to be adopted. One side has bars, the other a clear panel. The bright light highlights the sickly green walls, like the antiseptic glow of a dystopian hospital.

Wiener-Dog makes it out, but the cage lingers...

Click to read more ...

Wild Oats Poster & Trailer

by Manuel Betancourt

Shirley MacLaine and Jessica Lange are in a movie together. It's called Wild Oats and it was directed by Andy Tennant of Fools Rush In and Sweet Home Alabama fame. You can see why this news is vexing. We should be thrilled about seeing MacLaine and Lange together (in a comedy no less!) but it might not be a great addition to this growing "Old dames having a ball!" genre that's become a staple of late. 

The film, which follows the two Oscar winning actresses "newly rich" (given a banking error in one's husband's insurance policy), "newly single" (see above), and "forever young" (they're timeless, these glittering movie stars) looks to be a tad more Hello My Name is Doris than I'll See You In My Dreams, with a whiff of The Exotic Marigold Hotel. Oh, and did I mention it co-stars Demi Moore? 

You can check out the trailer for Wild Oats, which I'm still processing, below. Does it look like a film you'd change the channel for? Perhaps. But I admit that the "Have you ever seen The Graduate?" line had me smirking to myself, and few things are as entertaining as seeing actresses you love having a good time on screen.

Why Aquarius's Trouble in Brazil Could Bolster Its Oscar Chances (and other foreign film Oscar buzz)

It's that exciting time of the year again when we start hearing the names of the films selected to compete in this year's Oscar race for Foreign Language Film. It's our signature category at TFE (outside of Lead and Supporting Actressing of course and arguably the eye candy tech categories). All four of the foreign charts are now up and will be frequently updated when news comes in. We currently have 9 official submissions but dozens more will be named in the next three weeks. 

Current Predictions
100% likely to change since only about 10% of the field is known at this point.
Chart 1 (Afgahnistan - Finland)
Submissions from Australia, Croatia, and Cuba. Finalists from Brazil and Denmark
Chart 2 (France through Morocco)  
Submissions from Georgia & Germany. Finalists from Israel.
Chart 3 (Nepal through Vietnam)
Submissions from Romania, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, and Venezuela. Finalists from The Netherlands and Spain.

Last year Jose and I interviewed representatives from 17 films and the team reviewed another dozen still and we hope to provide similarly extensive coverage again this year. Check out the charts above and do share with your friends and countrymen! 

the great Sonia Braga at Cannes in May

Germany's Toni Erdmann is currently leading the Oscar buzz but the other topic on everyone's lips in this category is what will happen with Brazil's Aquarius. More on that and a couple of other speculative bits after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Box Office Special: 1984 Hits

Rather than talk about this weekend's boring box office results (nothing new to see here beyond a big weekend for that new kill-the-trespassing-teenagers flick Don't Breathe) let's travel back to 1984 which was a hugely influential year for franchises of many kinds. What can the biggest hits tell us about the then and the now? 

TOP TWENTY OF 1984
numbers adjusted for today's dollars via box office mojo

01 Ghostbusters $589.6  
Two Oscar nods. Spawned 1 terrible sequel, two animated TV shows, and this year's reboot

02 Beverly Hills Cop $581.5
Led to two sequels, a TV remake, and a TV pilot that wasn't picked up. Beverly Hills Cop 4 has been in some stage of development for 20+ years and is still supposedly being made. We'll believe it when we see it.

Click to read more ...