Gangster Squad: Bullets and Boredom

Michael C here to kick off the movie year with my first review of 2013 for a movie I noticed had slipped through the cracks here at the Film Experience in the rush of Oscar Nomination Fever. But surely 2013 will get better than this! 

Gangster Squad is a film haunted by the ghosts of its superior cinematic ancestors. Some films do gain resonance from evoking earlier titles in their genre but Ruben Fleischer’s crime saga is such a creative void that it can’t wrestle the audience’s attention away from the specters of film noir past. So much more rewarding to occupy one’s mind with fond memories of Chinatown, than to watch characters we don’t care about exchange gunfire in action scenes we can’t follow for reasons not worth understanding. 

Penn vs. Brolin in "Gangster Squad"

The most obvious film intruding on Gangster Squad (2013) is The Untouchables (1987) - at times the new film borders on a beat-for-beat retelling of the earlier story with Al Copen switched out for Mickey Cohen... [more]

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The Linkmaker

Vanity Fair looks at the Lincoln costumes of first time Oscar nominee Joanna Johnston from sketch to still
LetterBoxd are any of you trying this new cinephile site out? I am. 
A Blog Next Door film scores to write to? (Joe Reid was just talking about this habit in that Hours piece). I used to write to the score to Talk to Her but lately I've found music distracting.
MNPP "Who died worse: Fantine or Talia Al Ghul?"
Gold Derby's Tariq Khan thinks Emmanuelle Riva is going to win Best Actress. I wish I believed him!

Empire Lance Armstrong: The Movie?
Coming Soon Here's most uncharted territory for the movies: elderly gay romantic drama. Ira Sachs will follow up his critical hit Keep the Lights On with Love is Strange starring Alfred Molina and Michael Gambon as long time companions who decided to tie the knot. 
Tom Shone interviews Spielberg for The Sunday Times (subscription required for full article)

With every movie, some more than others, you have to make the audience your accomplice." 

Towleroad Ryan Gosling on his abs and pecs. LOL. Gosling does always give good quote. Speaking of...
Frisky ...remember this classic "Meet Ryan's Abs" infographic? (I can't find the full thing anymore)
i09 sci-fi authors have a sense of humor about the gender politics of genre book covers 
Hollywood Elsewhere Marilyn at the 1950 Oscars? This photo looks fake to me but I love it still. 

Finally... did you hear that those Django Unchained action figures are being pulled by the Weinstein Co over debates that they have commercialized and trivialized slavery. Oh god. People are so frustrating. If you accept that the movie is historical fantasy fiction, aren't the dolls also exempt from this kind of moral outrage? Or do the $35+ dolls somehow shamelessly commercialize it whilst the $150+ million grossing movies doesn't? At any rate, pulling the dolls is no biggie for the Weinstein Co since the first series is already sold out (and given how many characters were in that series, was there ever going to be a second series?) and selling for $760 to $7,000 online (asking prices). I get that purchasing a slave doll has more uncomfortable connotations than buying a ticket to a movie in which Quentin Tarantino plays with his live action dolls playing slaves but isn't it basically the same thing in the end: a commercial product which makes money off a communal desire to create fantasy corrective narratives about atrocities of the past?

10 Years Ago, This Weekend, "The Hours" Won Best Picture at the Globes

Nicole Kidman was having a pretty great night. 

Meryl won for "Adaptation" and Nicole won for "The Hours"

Hanging' out on all sorts of red carpets with Meryl Streep usually helps in that regard. If you can't share scenes with her at least have her on your team by way of a shared movie.

Our 10th Anniversary Celebration of The Hours

• Nicole Kidman remembers her Oscar win (Exclusive Interview!)
• Breakfast with... Clarissa, Virginia and Laura Brown
• Epic Discussion Part 1: Ravenous Kisses, Fidgety Hands
• Epic Discussion Part 2: Score, Performance, Re-Casting

We hope you enjoyed this look back. I imagine The Film Experience would be more popular if it stuck to current movie news all the time like every other site but I cannot live without my retro celebrations. I'm greedy. I need films from all eras in my movie diet. 

This next part is for Hours and Film Experience Obsessives only...

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Podcast Nom Reactions Pt 1: Snubs, Squeals, Questions

A couple of days after the Oscar Nominations, I rang up Joe Reid, Katey Rich and Nick Davis to discuss the Academy's big reveal. In pt 1 of this hour long conversation we discuss:

1) The snubs that hurt us most.
2) The moments that made us squeal with delight.
3) Reader Questions. Thank you to the handful of people who were brave enough to ask them. 

Pt 1 is mostly focused on the "big eight": Picture (Amour & Beasts of the Southern Wild !), Director (Benh Zeitlin  - yes!, Ben Affleck -???), Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress (Amy Adams & Jacki Weaver mostly), Supporting Actor, and the Screenplays.

But high profile categories aside the masterful but snubbed Animated Short The Eagleman Stag gets a shout-out. And I promised I'd link up to it in this post, so here ya go. Watch it!

The Eagleman Stag. Absolutely brilliant. Unfortunately snubbed.

You can download the podcast on iTunes or listen right here at the bottom of the post. 

Squeals, Snubs, and Sass from Oscar Nomination Morning

Box Office Playbook: Jessica vs. Jennifer

As if doing battle like Best Actress Gladiators both Jessica Chastain and Jennifer Lawrence are all over the nation's theaters. They'll be horns locked for the next 5 weeks in the media, I'll bet. JLaw was joking about beating JChas to the Oscar on SNL -- too gently? -- but it was Jessica who won the box office. And twice over. The last time I remember that happening was Leonardo DiCaprio at Christmas 2002 I think (Gangs of New York and Catch Me If You Can?)  [UPDATE: Sharp-eyed TFE Reader Brian Z actually reminds us that it happened in 2011 too... also with Jessica Chastain for The Help and The Debt]

On a related side note: I just know I'm going to start calling them Jessica Lawrence and Jennifer Chastain before long; name slippage is coming!

Box Office Top Ten
01 MAMA $28.1 *NEW* Jose likes the wig
02 ZERO DARK THIRTY  $17.6 (cum. $55.9) Top Ten List  
03 SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK  $11.3 (cum. $55.3)  Beau's Review
04 GANGSTER SQUAD  $9.1 (cum $32.2) 
05 BROKEN CITY $9 *NEW* 
06 A HAUNTED HOUSE  $8.3  (cum. $29.9)
07 DJANGO UNCHAINED $8.2 (cum. $138.3) More on Django
08 LES MISERABLES $7.8 (cum $130.3) Top Ten List
09 THE HOBBIT $6.4  (cum $287.3)
10 THE LAST STAND $6.3 *NEW* 

In other movie/money news: Skyfall became only the 10th movie to break the $300 million barrier in the US box office this decade (Alice in Wonderland and The Hunger Games are the only non-sequels in that list... though both are franchisey in that remake or kick-off kind of way); Two very expensive movie gambles Life of Pi and Rise of the Guardians will inch over the $100 million mark in the next few days which must be a relief even if it doesn't quite spell "big profit!"; Chasing Ice, a nominee for Best Original Song, crossed the $1 million mark which is a big deal for documentaries; Sony Pictures Classics are still being really conservative with Amour -- it's only in 36 theaters despite 5 Oscar nominations last week though they grossed nearly ½ a million this weekend; And despite nobody caring about it or talking about it whatsoever Tom Cruise's latest actioner Jack Reacher crossed the $75 million mark this weekend... Oscar season always makes it easy to forget that a huge portion of the moviegoing public never even thinks about "Oscar Season".

WEIRD, RIGHT? 

Speaking of the public -- though the specific and not the general --  what did you see this weekend?

the three most popular movie musicals since Cabaret. Les Misérables is nearing their lofty box office heights

P.S. Les Misérables only needs a few more weeks of heat -- which Oscar season will surely provide -- to pass Mamma Mia! and become the third most popular movie musical of the modern era stateside (after Grease & Chicago). Of course the atrocious Mamma Mia! has the absurd distinction of being so popular around the globe (over ½ a billion) that it's actually the most successful modern musical if you include the entire world in your overview. Usually we prefer to be international but Mamma Mia!? Blargh!