The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
Every other year the BSFC chooses the future Oscar winner as their Best Picture. Look at the evidence: 2009 The Hurt Locker; 2010: The Social Network; 2011: The Artist; 2012: Zero Dark Thirty; 2014: 12 Years a Slave; 2015: Boyhood. Before that it's a little bumpier statistically since 2008 saw a tie between Slumdog Millionaire (the eventual Oscar winner and WALL•E, a much more deserving (and braver) choice. But it was only in 2006 with The Departed that they started lining up regularlyt. Before then Boston could often be counted on for more iconoclastic choices like Mulholland Drive, Out of Sight, Three Kings, Trainspotting, Bull Durham, Ran, etcetera. They've been handing out awards since 1980 when Raging Bull won their inaugural Best Picture award.
With only Krampus as a new wide release this weekend was a repeat of Thanksgiving weekend with The Hunger Games, The Good Dinosaur and Creed leading the way at the multiplex and Oscar hopefuls likeCarol doing good business on a miniscule amount of screens. Spotlight and Brooklyn -- which are both looking lockish for Best Picture nominations -- continue to reap the benefits of great word-of-mouth audience response.
"Um, why am I in Krampus?" -Toni Collette to her agent, probably.
BOX OFFICE (Dec 4th-6th) 01 Hunger Games 4$18.6 (cum. $227)Hunger Games & Oscar 02 Krampus$16 *new* 03 Creed$15.5 (cum. $65.1) Review & Oscar Possibilities 04 Good Dinosaur $15.5(cum $75.9) Review 05 Spectre $5.4(cum. $184.5) Review 06 The Night Before$4.9 (cum. $31.9) 07 The Peanuts Movie $3.5 (cum. $121.4) 08 Spotlight $2.9 (cum. $16.6) First Impression & SAG Ensemble Predix 09 Brooklyn$2.4 (cum. $11.2) Review, Saoirse & Best Actress 10 Secret in Their Eyes$1.9 (cum. $17.2)
With BFCA's "Critic's Choice" ballots going out tomorrow and a handful of critics organizations voting this weekend, I've been struggling to catch up / wrap up but in truth I am always quite behind at this point. And I get distracted by my pets... like seeing Carol twice this weekend. Oops. By my count there are 27 titles that I had hoped to see that I still have to squeeze in during the busiest month of the year and of course the rewatches I'd hoped to do before drawing up the top ten list. If I get to half of this by Christmas it'll have to be considered an enormous success. The Glut! The Glut!
What did you see this weekend? Are you struggling to keep up?
Murtada here. Are you ready for some sexy stuff at the movies? Now playing in limited release is the latest big screen version of Macbeth from director Justin Kurzel. Reviews have been mixed but there’s no denying the heat created by the performances of Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard in the titular parts. The screen almost combusts whenever they are together; they make Shakespeare sexy. And not just because of their considerable beauty, but rather because of what they bring out in each other. Fassbender raises Cotillard’s intensity and she is so tenderly natural that he can’t help but match her.
Sometimes one wonders how actors arrive at on-screen chemistry? Maybe it’s about surprising each other. That’s what Fassbender told the National Board of review about one of their scenes together:
I don’t like to talk too much, with either director or actor, before doing the scene. [ ] She just picks up the ball and she runs with it, like that scene—the scorpion scene. I put my hand underneath her dress; I didn’t tell her I was going to do that, and she took it and she went with it and then she kisses me and then pulls away. She’s got this sort of repulsion, and then she reengages, and she’s like, “I love this man, I feel him, he’s sick.” All these things are happening on her face. That’s when you realize you’re in the presence of somebody great.
Here’s part of that scene, however for the exact part Fassbender is talking about you'll have to go to the movies.
It looks like Cotillard, Fassbender and Kurzel had a good time creatively; they are reuniting for Assassin’s Creed which is currently shooting.
Two recent trade editorials have driven us crazy enough to write long hair-pulling screeds in response. We're bald now! The first was a 'dishonorable' defense of our #1 gripe Category Fraud and we'll be quicker about this one which is about our second biggest pet peeve of Oscar season: 'the holiday glut' aka the ghettoization of adult movies into the final quarter of each year.
The Hollywood Reporter's "Everybody Cannibalized Each Other" - Harvey Weinstein Weinstein begins his guest editorial by calling the final quarter glut of awards-hopefuls a "pet peeve" which is fine if we say it... but him?!? He championed it for 20 years with his own actions!
Vulture every lightsaber in the Star Wars franchise ranked. Solid rankings actually and I rarely say that about other people's lists ;) NPR talks to Harvey Keitel about his role in Youth Coming SoonTrainspotting 2 is officially a go. The entire principal cast returns to reprise their roles. Ready for round two of Ewan McGregor as Renton? i09 Ryan Coogler may follow up Creed behind the cameras of Marvel's Black Panther (2018)
LA Times Directors of Room, Love and Mercy, Brooklyn, Sicario and more discuss nailing crucial scenes PeopleSisters "The Farce Awakens". Tina Fey & Amy Poehler are going head to head with Star Wars on December 18th Interview Magazine talks to Jake Lacy (Carol), our favorite "square" boyfriend at the movies In Contention Laverne Cox helps with the Tangerine Oscar campaign Awards Daily the current BFCA scores for several movies. It's always amusing to see how this lines up with their actualy nominations (which arrive on December 14th) BroadwayCon it's pricey but theater fans are getting their own convention this January. A big list of theater favorites (Alice Ripley, Jonathan Groff, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Kerry Butler, etcetera...) already confirmed as guests The Tracking Board has a ton of information and downloadable PDFs of 2015's Hit List, the best as yet unproduced specs
Old Queens We Love Hey we were as surprised as you that they all showed up in the news feed on the same day THR Kathleen Turner speaks about equal pay in Hollywood and reveals new plans -- a King Lear adaptation starring her. I just died reading that. She is so amazing on stage. THR two time Oscar winner Glenda Jackson sticks toe back in the acting waters after years of retirement... from acting at least /Film Barbra Streisand is supposedly going to direct a Catherine the Great movie. I'll believe it when I'm in the theater. She's as bad as Warren Beatty about kicking back at home and occassionally promising to work. It rarely happens! Vulture Sir Ian McKellen improvised a song for Beauty & The Beast but Bill Condon didn't put it in the movie! The Stake discovers how funny Carrie Fisher is with an old bit from SNL. That's a good thing about the Star Wars revival since she's a national treasure. Read her books! Wall Street Journal talks to Carrie Fisher who gives good quote as usual.
Was there ever a point when you thought, ‘I don’t want to do this new movie’?
Never. I’ve been this character for 40 years, why would I not? Because I’m going to be associated with Princess Leia more? There is no “more.” And I’m a female working in show business, where, if you’re famous, you have a career until you’re 45, maybe. Maybe. And that’s about 15 people.
List Mania ! Guardian is doing a top 50 countdown daily... they're almost to the top ten and for US readers they've already covered lots of films you loved from 2014 (Mommy, Birdman, etcetera) some from 2016 (The Lobster) and 2015 goodies like Steve Jobs, Sicario and Tangerine (way way too low at #48) BOFCA released their awards and they yelled "what a day. what a lovely day" giving Mad Max Fury Road five prizes. As we stated last season, we're no longer going to follow / write about all the regional critics awards - just the one's that are long running with history. Why? There are nearly 40 of them now and most debuted in the past 10 years. It's too much and only important in the cumulative. But we'll probably link up like this. Time Magazine recently hired Stephanie Zacharek (good choice, Time) and her top ten list is here: It's topped by Spotlight as so many top ten lists will be and includes both Hollywood triumphs (Creed) and indie sensations (Tangerine). Love what she writes about I'll See You In My Dreams:
How do you know when there are no surprises left in life? The surprise is that…you don’t. In Brett Haley’s gentle but potent comedy, veteran actress Blythe Danner plays a seventy-ish retired schoolteacher, long widowed, whose staid life takes a sharp left when two men appear on the scene almost simultaneously: Pool cleaner Martin Starr is the kind of platonic friend you meet only once in a lifetime; silver fox Sam Elliott is the love interest you never could have planned for.
Must Watch I shudder when I see mashups like this to think of the man hours in making them. Adele's "Hello" cobbled together from a huge variety of movies...
Sunday, December 6, 2015 at 1:15PM 
