Superlink
Wednesday, May 7, 2014 at 12:15PM Rambling Film, riffing on our "best movie titles" post, does an alphabet of great movie titles
Inside Movies omg The Lovely Laura Linney is finally returning to screens in a promising vehicle. She's joining Bill Condon's upcoming Sherlock Holmes movie A Slight Trick of the Mind starring Sir Ian McKellen
i09 Jaws with Godzilla trailer's audio. It's a pretty impressive mashup
Film Stage Adèle Exarchopoulus next film Insecure gets a poster
Defamer in the race to make the movies more like tv series with big budgets (sie) Disney/Marvel is surely leading. In addition to dozens of new Marvel movies, they are planning multiple new Star Wars universe episodes - not just three.
Towleroad Andrew Garfield in drag. Stay tuned for a music video
THR the Interstellar teaser poster debuted but honestly it's so boring I don't want to waste valuable visual space on the blog sharing it
Thinking About Bankability
Awards Daily thinks Maleficent will test Angelina Jolie's box office pull. Sasha's right in that people will perceive that it's to Angelina's credit if it's a smash but I think that's silly. As with most would be blockbusters I think people are overestimating the importance of the headliner. Everyone knows "Maleficent". You could put an unknown in it, save lots of money on production costs, and still have a box office winner. Maybe not as big (and certainly with less pre-release hype) but still... The only franchise that seems to believe you don't need a star is the Superman franchise (People don't really even like Superman Returns or Man of Steel but, fact, they both opened huge). Batman is a franchise that regularly uses stars. It's always wasting its money because Batman is huge no matter who is under the mask. For me the only test of box office clout is when the actor is selling something people are only seeing because it's them. So successes like Angelina's Salt or virtually every Leonardo DiCaprio film, or American Hustle last year are directly attributable to the actors in them. But most of these big budget big awareness movies? I don't think it's the case and I wonder sometimes why Hollywood does.
Subtracting some zeroes now...
Movie City News David Poland weighs in on the frustrating argument over the dwindling returns for subtitled movies in the US marketplace. Glad he addressed that because I hated the IndieWire piece.
Today's Must Read
Matt Zoller Seitz is always a great read but this week he says what I'm sure so many of us are feeling about the superhero movie genre in this beautifully titled piece "Things Crashing Into Other Things: Or, My Superhero Movie Problem"
Reader Comments (7)
re Maleificnt - Nat you are so right on that topic,notice J ennifer L did not score big with her solo horror wehicle from 2 yrs ago,many actors and actresses appeared in many successful films but were more about the brand name than them.
I hope Condon is giving Linney a better part than he face her in The Fifth Estate. They clearly like working together.
The most fascinating thing about the Interstellar poster is that Bill Irwin gets credited FOURTH (go Bill!) and the majority of it's very starry cast doesn't even get mentioned. No mention of Casey Affleck, Topher Grace, Wes Bentley, David Oyelowo, not even Matt Damon. Makes me think maybe there could be room for a few surprises if the marketing team wants to pretend these gentlemen aren't in the film.
That piece on superhero movies is so on the money, Nathan. Love that term--ritualized amnesia. Perfectly describes the reason I feel this genre is grinding cinema into the dust.
Off-topic, but have you seen the new Tammy trailer? I've watched it about six times and it's hilarious. I think Susan's obvious youth is played for laughs, her wig is pretty terrible and there doesn't seem to be any attempt to put her in old-age make-up.
Thank the freaking Lord for Matt Zoller Seitz and that brilliant piece on superhero movies. I just kept saying "Yes!" out loud at least once per paragraph while reading it. Brilliant. And true.
Thank you for the link! (and the idea in the first place)
I actually liked the Interstellar poster, but I'm also a shameless Nolan fangirl, so I was probably going to like it regardless.
I do think a lot of Maleficent's success will be credited to Jolie. When it inevitably wins the box office that weekend, there will be tons of posts that will say "Jolie proves she's still a box office draw!"