Beauty vs Beast: Only a Mother's Love

Jason from MNPP here -- it's safe to say that there isn't a week (a day, an hour) where something having to do with John Waters doesn't drift through my happily polluted brain, but this week's really turning it out. (It's good to gear ourselves up for John's new book out in May, I suppose!) For one this upcoming Saturday the 25th anniversary of his last truly great film Serial Mom, starring a deliciously unhinged Kathleen Turner as the sunny recycling-prone Jekyll & Hyde of suburbia. And for another MoMA, as part of their "What Price Hollywood" series on cinema's transgressive sexual politics, is screening Female Trouble twice this month. So with Mother's Day already in the air (and by "in the air" I mean "on the seasonal shelves of my local CVS") I ask us for this week's "Beauty vs Beast" to turn our eyes upon these two of John's most loving mothers...

web survey

PREVIOUSLY Last week's Tully poll was relatively tight, which is as it should be with two characters so inextricable, but it was momma Margo who pulled it out at the end with 56% of the vote. Said JF:

"Charlize is straight-up one of the greatest screen actors of all time. Male, female, living, dead, any era, any genre, *tongue pop*. I have never been ready for how great she is an I hope I never am."

What did you see this weekend?

What did you see this weekend?

Weekend Box Office (Estimates) April 5th-7th  🔺 = new or expanded theater counts
W I D E	PLATFORM / LIMITED
1 🔺 Shazam!  $53.4 on 4217 screens *NEW*	1 🔺  The Mustang $771k (cum. $2) on 350 screens

2 🔺 Pet Sematary  $25 on 3585 screens *NEW*	2  No Manches Frida 2 $415k (cum. $8.7) on 275 screens

3 Dumbo  $18.2 on 4259 screens (cum. $76.2) BEST OF TIM BURTON	3 🔺  The Aftermath $375k (cum. $1.1) on 344 screens   REVIEW

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Farewell, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

by Dancin' Dan

When the history of Peak TV is written, there better be a whole chapter devoted to Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. That Aline Brosh McKenna and Rachel Bloom's musical comedy managed to last four seasons on The CW is amazing enough. But doing so with a diverse cast, while constantly pushing the boundaries of what network television would allow to be broadcast in prime time, taking anti-feminist tropes and twisting them around until they become feminist, and spotlighting mental health issues in a sensitive, impactful way is a miracle.

On Friday night, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend aired its series finale. Magically, the show was able to end on its own terms, giving us the full four-season arc its creators had always envisioned. And what an arc it's been [SPOILERS AHEAD]...

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April Foolish Predictions #4: Best Supporting Actor

Previously: Animated Features, Foreign Films, Sound & Music, Prediction Index

What will the Supporting Actor race look like this year? Will it be awash in "comebacks" (Al Pacino, John Lithgow, Tim Robbins, David Straithairn)? Perhaps it'll lean into fresh cinematic faces (Aldis Hodge, Jonathan Majors, Kristoffer Hivju, Taika Waititi)? Maybe it'll be a year of long-awaited first nominations for thespians who've had rich careers (Ben Mendelsohn, Bruce Willis, Jonathan Pryce, Antonio Banderas, Tracy Letts)? Most likely, as with each Oscar year before it, it'll be some random combo of all three but determining who the five men will be this early is nigh impossible. Why is that? Well, there are a few reasons...

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April Foolish Predictions #3: Foreign Language Film

And now we move to (nearly) the silliest category to try to predict a year in advance, Best Foreign Film. Individual countries don't begin announcing which films they're submitting until the summer (and usually wait until the end-of-September deadline) so it's a bit like blindfolding yourself and pointing at a spinning globe. Nevertheless we just like to have predicted the five countries so we have stats later on about how well we did while blindfolded (it's a sickness, this punditry calling).

Previous famous nominees or winners of the Foreign Film Oscar

But mostly we threw up this early chart because we wanted to freshen up the foreign stats & Oscar history portion of that traditional annual page. Take a look won't you? Tell us if you learned anything new! We've been brainstorming behind the scenes at TFE at a way to deep dive into this category's history but we keep hitting the roadblock of films being unavailable (a far worse roadblock in this category than in others) due to... well, you know, the films being from other countries and distribution sometimes not extending much beyond their initial theatrical runs decades ago.