Podcast: Sicario & Stonewall

Katey, Joe, Nathaniel and Nick, all returned from TIFF (where the four of us were actually in the same place at the same time for the very first time ever!), return to "Now Playing" cinema to catch shrapnel coming off of Sicario & throw bricks at Stonewall. 

43 minutes 
00:01 TIFF postscript & Room
03:30 Sicario dark, haunting, superbly crafted, POV politics
21:00 Stonewall (2015) what were they thinking?
33:00 Stonewall (1995), Stonewall Uprising (2010), and other final thoughts 

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Related reading: Katey on Room, Nathaniel on Stonewall, Nick on Sicario, Noah Tsika's negative reaction to Sicario, Jeffrey Wells's super-weird war on fans of Room.

And in case you missed it, here's the photo of the podcast team at TIFF.

Sicario and Stonewall

7 Bullet Points: Fall Festival Fallout & Oscar Chart Updates

Before we begin, please to note: the four Oscar category acting charts are not yet updated. Everything else is for the purposes of this discussion.  

• That was exciting. Now... breathe!
With the fall film festival trifecta (Telluride, Venice, TIFF) behind us, the fourth and noisiest early rung in the climb to Oscar (the first being Sundance, the second being Cannes, the third being anything else that happened from January through August (i.e. summer box office, media &  audience response to early offerings), we are well on the way towards Oscar nominations. It's important to note that while many over-eager pundits begin to declare winners in all sorts of categories at this stage, that's silliness. We should be focusing on the battle for nominations (still days away) until they're announced. Many things can still happen and do regularly happen in October through January which alter that who might win landscape each year. And, a crucial reminder: you can't win if you aren't nominated!

six more topics to discuss after the jump

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Box Office: Vampire Hospitality, Unique Internships, and Drug Wars

Though Hotel Transylvania 2 and the Anne Hathaway/Robert DeNiro pairing in The Intern surprised no one by taking the top two spots at the weekend box office, the big story was at the tail end of the top ten chart where Denis Villeneuve's possibly Oscar nomination bound cartel-drama Sicario landed despite still being in very limited release still, with less than 60 locations. That's what's called playing to sold out crowds. I split the charts below into limited and wide release though so Sicario takes the #1 spot on the limited half of the cinema equation. We just talked about that stunning drama on the podcast. 

There don't seem to be estimates on SPC's German Oscar contender Labyrinth of Lies which is a pity since we're curious.

BOX OFFICE WIDE
800+ screens (Sept 25th-27th)
01 Hotel Transylvania 2 $48 NEW Tim on the director Genny Tartakovsky
02 The Intern $17 NEW 
03 Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials $13.8 (cum. $51.4)
04 Everest $12.1 (cum. $22.1) 
05 Black Mass $11 (cum. $42)
06 The Visit $6.5 (cum. $52)
07 The Perfect Guy $4.6 (cum. $48.7)
08 War Room $4.2 (cum. $55.9)
09 The Green Inferno $3.5 NEW
10 A Walk in the Woods $1 (cum. $27.2)
11 Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation $.9 (cum. $193.4)
12 Grandma $.8 (cum. $5.1) Review, Poster

BOX OFFICE LIMITED
Under 800 Screens - Excluding Previously Wide (Sept 25th-27th)
01 Sicario (59 screens) $1.7 (cum. $2.2) Podcast, Emily on a roll
02 Pawn Sacrifice (781 screens) $1 (cum. $1.3)  
03 Lost in Hong Kong (28 screens) $.5 NEW
04 Un Gallo con Muchos Huevos (364 screens) $.2 (cum. $8.8) 
05 Meet the Patels (63 screens) $.2 (cum. $.4)
06 Unbranded (58 screens) $.1 NEW
07 Sleeping With Other People (102 screens) $.1 (cum. $.3) Review
08 Stonewall (129 screens) $.1 NEW Interview, Review, Podcast
09 Goodnight Mommy (28 screens) $.1 (cum. $.2) Interview, Oscar Submission
10 Phoenix (85 screens) $.08 (cum. $2.8) Interview
11 Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (10 screens) $.04 (cum. $.2)
12 The New Girlfriend (45 screens) $.04 (cum. $.09) Review

Sicario's success excepted, it was a bloodbath at the arthouse. Stonewall met vitriolic reviews (my "D" grade review is somehow comparatively nice!) and a disastrous less than $1000 per screen average despite a fairly well publicized opening weekend. In other weak openings, 99 Holmes, the housing crisis drama with Michael Shannon and Andrew Garfield debuted on only 2 screens and Mississippi Grind, a pool shark drama with Ben Mendelsohn and Ryan Reynolds, on only one (what the hell, movies !?) and with those extremely nervous toes in movie theater waters, neither made even the top 12 at the arthouse despite well liked indie directors pairing famous stars with reliable well loved character actors to the tune of positive reviews.

Finally, we neglected to mention the opening of the French trans drama The New Girlfriend (starring Romain Duris, left) last week and though the François Ozon drama hasn't made much of a stir at the arthouse (an entire year's wait for a release after its festival debut can't have helped) but it adds to 2015's strong impression that the floodgates are now open for the T to be amply represented in LGBT cinema.

What did you see this weekend?

The Oscar Foreign Film Submission List - We're Almost There!

With the "official" statement still to come from the Academy (expect it in just under a week) we know the titles of 71 contenders for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar thus far. Last year 83 countries, a record, submitted. The latest titles to be named from countries still waiting on their first nomination include Jalal's Story (Bangladesh), Men Who Save the World (Malaysia), You Carry Me (Montenegro), and Heavenly Nomadic (Kyrgyzstan). Infrequently nominated countries like India (Court) and Iran (Muhammad, Messenger of God) have announced controversial chocies.

As for traditionally bigger Oscar players, we're still waiting on Italy and Spain (Spain has narrowed it down to three films) but now we have the titles from Canada (Felix & Meira) and Denmark (A War). 

• Current Predictions plus all time stats/trivia
• Afghanistan through Estonia  18 official 
• Ethiopia through The Netherlands 30 official
• Norway through Vietnam 23 official 

NYFF: Mia Madre & No Home Movie

Manuel on an unlikely double feature he’d like to dub “How I Mourned Your Mother.”

In his TIFF coverage, Nathaniel mentioned that film festivals sometimes offer you random thematic threads born out of unlikely juxtapositions. This was the case when I caught Nanni Moretti’s Mia Madre and Chantal Akerman’s No Home Movie almost back to back. Both films are concerned and inspired by the death of the respective filmmakers’ mothers. The results are as widely different as you’d imagine and fascinating for wildly different reasons.

Moretti’s Mia Madre opens with a scene of laborers rioting against their factory’s owners. Workers chant and fight against armored policemen in riot gear. And then Margherita (an effectively understated Margherita Buy) yells “Stop!” She’s shooting a film, as it turns out and she’s not too happy with the framing she was getting. We slowly learn her personal life is taking a toll; she’s broken up with her boyfriend and her mother is slowly dying at the hospital. You can almost imagine the press about that shoot (“Director’s Personal Issues All But Ruined the Production”). [More...]

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