Box Office: Hobbs & Shaw

What did you see? We took a beach weekend in Fire Island so the movies weren't viewed though they were still very much on our mind. Particular due to a showtunes night at the Pavilion where ample clips from Chicago , Burlesque, Dreamgirls and more were shown. FYI: Catherine Zeta Jones' Velma Kelly is still magic. 

Weekend Box Office Actuals August 2nd-4th 🔺 = New or Expanding / ★ = Highly Recommended
W I D E	PLATFORM / SPECIALTY TITLES
Hobbs & Shaw	The Farewell
1 🔺 Hobbs & Shaw  $60 *new* REVIEW	1 🔺 The Farewell $2.4 (cum. $6.8) REVIEW, INTERVIEW ★
2 The Lion King $38.5 (cum. $431.1) REVIEW	2 🔺 Maiden $223k (cum. $1.5) REVIEW ★
3 Once Upon a Time in Hollywood $20 (cum. $78.8)  REVIEW, PODCAST ★	3 🔺 Luce $132k *new* ★

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De Laurentiis pt 1: "Bitter Rice" and the Fellini Years

This week at TFE we're celebrating the centennial of one of cinema’s most prolific and legendary producers, Dino De Laurentiis.  We’ll start with three of his key influential early films. Here's Eric Blume...

Bitter Rice was De Laurentiis breakthrough international hit. He married its star

De Laurentiis, born outside of Naples, set up his own company in 1946 when he was just 27 years old. He produced four smaller films before making a huge splash onto the international scene with 1949’s Bitter Rice, a film currently available through the Criterion Collection.  Bitter Rice serves up an arresting and hypnotic blend of melodrama, sexuality, and social commentary. The film is set in northern Italy during a typical spring where hundreds of poor women travel to the rice fields to work to the bone for forty days.  There are workers with a legal contract and then the “illegals” who come in hopes of getting an opportunity. Within this sociopolitical context, our story finds two thieves (Doris Dowling and Victoria Gassman) hiding amongst the farm, intertwined in love stories with an impulsive young peasant girl (Silvana Mangano) and a soldier from the nearby station (Raf Vallone)... 

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Great Moments in Horror Actressing

by Jason Adams

It's hard not to walk out of Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood without Sharon Tate on your mind. Whether it's because you thought the film needed more of what Margot Robbie was serving or if like me it's because you thought what Robbie did serve was A+ First Class stuff, the specter of that real woman, rightfully, lords over the entire experience. Sharon Tate only got to make six films before she was murdered, and two of them were horror films -- not an unlikely statistic for any young beautiful actress, but one that's linked itself arm in arm with Tate's fate nonetheless. 

I've never seen her 1967 British occult flick Eye of the Devil, which had her playing a witch opposite David Niven and Deborah Kerr. But I've seen her other horror flick of that same year, Roman Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers, more times than I can count, and it's Tate's under-valued performance that I always think of when I think of the film. She's barely in it but she walks away with it -- a pale fire piled in soap bubbles and snow...

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Podcast: Once Upon a Time ... in Listener Questions

with Murtada Elfadl & Nathaniel R

 

Index (59 minutes)
00:01 Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: stars, tension, pacing, violence
27:00 Skin starring Jamie Bell: Murtada hates it
Listener Questions...
30:00 Feelings about Renee Zellweger playing Judy
35:00 Our favourite Brad Pitt roles
37:00 Alternative history movies
39:00 Best cats in movies?
41:45 Who is the next Nicole Kidman? 
49:00 Smackdown scheduling
50:20 Sharon Tate's legacy 
51:30 What happened with Mask (1985) at the Oscars? 
55:00 Is 2019 a weak film year? 

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Articles referenced in this recording
• Jason's review of Once Upon a Time...
• Murtada on the Judy trailer
• Nathaniel on Mask 

Once Upon a Time in Listener Questions

D.A. Pennebaker

by Glenn Dunks

D.A. Pennebaker, aka Donn Alan, the legend of documentary who famously captured the growing counter culture music scene, American presidents and a particularly memorable Original Cast Recording, died this weekend at age 94.

Like many of his contemporaries who are today regarded as among the most influential of the form like Albert Maysles and Frederick Wiseman, Pennebaker was never really embraced by the Academy. He was nominated alongside his wife and frequent collaborator Chris Hegedus in 1994 for The War Room about the 1992 presidential campaign for Bill Clinton, but was eventually awarded an honorary statue in 2013 for his undeniably immense contribution to film...

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