10 Appropriate Ways to Celebrate "A Star is Born"'s $200 Million Triumph

We're skipping the box office charts this weekend since Christmas falls on a Tuesday. The last two weeks of the year are always heavy moviegoing times as families look for entertainment breaks in between their visits and feasts and shopping. New pictures Aquaman, Mary Poppins Returns, Bumblebee,  last week's champ Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse and costume pics The Favourite and Mary Queen of Scots (which both added hundreds of theaters) are all going to have big weeks. But the only news we care about right this very second is that, on this very day, 12 weeks into its run, A Star is Born crossed the $200 million mark on its leggy run into America's hearts.

❤️ 10 ways to celebrate A Star is Born's $200 million dollar milestone weekend

1. Stroke the outline of your boyfriend or girlfriend's nose
2. Sing along with your favorite song from the soundtrack again that isn't "Shallow"
3. Admit that A Star is Born has other great songs.
4. Watch Willam on "The Beatdown"
5. Decide who your favorite supporting character besides Sam Elliott is in the movie, even if they were shafted in the "Outstanding Cast" nomination.
6. Watch one of the other versions of A Star is Born because you probably haven't seen them all. 
7. Introduce each of your friends who enter the room with "Ladies and gentleman... Ally!" until someone makes you stop (someone surely will)
8. Wonder anew how Lady Gaga will ever top her world premiere in Venice look at the Oscars.
9. Go to a drag show.
10. Steal Sam Elliott's voice.

Oscar Charts!

A tip of the hat to you. Just letting you know that most of the Oscar charts have all been updated. 

This week sees gains for Stan & Ollie (especially all things John C Reilly and that wonderful makeup job to make him more Laurel-like), Ready Player One and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (given their multiple finalist list bids), A Quiet Place (given that it's still campaigning and got that absurd "supporting" actress nomination at SAG), and Bohemian Rhapsody all over the place (because, 'Facts are Facts America,' sometimes massive popularity makes quality a complete non-issue!)

Check 'em out, won't you? They're updated
INDEX |  PICTURE  
DIRECTOR |  ACTRESS | ACTOR  | 
SUPPORTING ACTOR | SUPPORTING ACTRESS |
 SCREENPLAYS | FOREIGN  FILM 
VISUAL | SOUND | ANIMATION / DOC

The 2018 Animation Contenders: MFKZ

Every Saturday this month, Tim will be taking a look at one of the films submitted for the Best Animated Feature Oscar.

For lack of a better place to start, it must surely be the case that MFKZ is the most globally-minded animated film released in the United States in 2018. The screenplay was adapted by French writer Guillaume "Run" Renaud, from his own 2015 comic book. The animation was done by Japanese company Studio 4°C, under the co-direction of Renaud and Shojiro Nishimi. The setting is saturated in a pop culture vision of Los Angeles that feels influenced more by the Grand Theft Auto video game series, the Fast & Furious movie series, and rap videos than the actual life of the city's black and Latino communities, and the story is a criticism of systemic racism in the U.S. and the worldwide corporate greed that has led to the impending climate crisis. Plus it's a crypto-remake of John Carpenter's They Live.

All of which is to say that the movie sure is… something. Something that is, frankly, quite a bit messy and confusing, possibly racist, and also exciting and startling in its originality.

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Tweetweek: "Poor Unfortunate Souls" and Seasonal Hijinx

Relatable content!

Nicholas Britell: 🎺

Me: 😭

— kathryn hahn & paul giamatti @ applebee’s (@bkkirby) December 19, 2018

 AFTER THE JUMP, awards season nuttiness, Mary Poppins Returns, Aquaman, and Harvey Fierstein doing Ursula the Sea Witch which was always clearly meant to be...

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Florida Film Critics Circle (and more)

Given our most recent podcast conversation in which Florida film critic Alfred Soto was a guest star, we wanted to inform you of the end results of The Florida Film Critics Circle's year end "best" discussions. The Favourite took their top prize but the big story is how fully they embraced Asian cinema with two acting prizes for Asian actors and additional prizes for Shoplifters (foreign film), Shirkers (documentary), and Mirai (animated film).

The 26 member wide organization is spread out all around Florida and has been in existence since 1996, just before the boom (2002-2012) when every city and/or state decided they needed an organization, sometimes two of them!) Their full list of winners (along with a handful of other groups that announced earlier that we neglected to mention) are after the jump...

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