Two New Films Coming from Steven Soderbergh

by Nathaniel R

Steven Soderbergh is a liar. He "retired" around the time of Side Effects / Behind the Candelabra (2013) and has since made two feature films and two TV series. Ha ha. That kind of lie we like. Good filmmakers should never retire. They should hold cameras in their hands until they drop. At any rate, add two more films to Soderbergh's huge resume. That's four films since retiring 5 years ago. Teehee...

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Everyone needs to calm down about "A Star is Born" winning all the Oscars

You guys. Everywhere I look there are articles or tweets positing that A Star is Born is going to sweep the Oscars, or win 3/4th of the acting categories or whatnot.  This is unlikely. It's only because it's the biggest contender currently playing that people are losing their minds. Well, that and because the movie is a terrific piece of big studio entertainment aimed at adults that's also a hit at the box office. You know, the exact kind of movie that people pretend doesn't exist (it does almost annually) and also pretend that Oscar doesn't like (they do almost annually) whenever they write those dumb articles proclaiming "the Oscars are irrelevant!" 

A Star is Born is just about at $100 million domestic at this writing but people are acting as if its earned one billion; I definitely wasn't expecting to hear it compared to Titanic today. So, let's all relax for a bit and talk about what is probable/possible since we've just barely finished UPDATING ALL THE OSCAR CHARTS. 

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I think it's too soon to call A Star is Born the frontrunner. It's just the first big Best Picture possibility to open since February (!) so that's a lot of time since Black Panther to bottle up armchair punditry feeling... bring on awards season! I dont currently believe Star will win (the remake stigma will catch up to it eventually) but let's say for the sake of argument that it does. That's one Oscar. Let's look at the other categories...

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Links: Annapurna Chaos, Flash Delay, Franchise Resurrections

• Pajiba wonders what the hell is going on at Annapurna pictures (they've dropped that upcoming all-star Roger Ailes movie just two weeks before production)
• Forbes good piece on why Warner Bros doesn't need the troubled DC superhero films any more
• YouTube Jon Hamm and James Corden asking each other humiliating questions about people they dont want to work with, penis size, Batman, and more...

More after the jump including more icky Bryan Singer drama, The Flash's delay, TV spinoffs and franchise relaunches (sigh) and Broadway's Beetlejuice...

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What did you see over the weekend?

by Nathaniel R

Venom and A Star is Born remained strong for a second weekend leaving much less to go around for First Man, Goosebumps 2,  and Bad Times at the El Royale though it's still a stronger October at the box office than the past two years have been...

Weekend Box Office (October 12-14)
W I D E 800+ screens	PLATFORM / LIMITED excluding prev. wide
1. 🔺 Venom $35 (cum. $142.1)	1. 🔺 The Hate U Give $1.7 on 248 screens (cum. $2.4)

2. A Star is Born $28.4 (cum. $94.6) Review, Posterized	2. 🔺Gosnell: The Trial of... $1.1  *NEW * on 673 screens

3. 🔺 First Man  $16 NEW  Capsule Review	3. 🔺 Colette $999k on 593 screens  (cum. $2.5) Capsule

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99¢ rentals to fill in the Oscar gaps

UPDATE 10/23 Sadly these deals have all expired and they're back up to $3.99 per film.

While we wait (impatiently) for the major Oscar contenders to show themselves to general audiences, why not check out an older Oscar nominees for kicks and to fill any gaps in your Oscar knowledge. Here are a few that iTunes is offering to rent for just 99¢... naturally I have to share the posters for the ones with exclamatory taglines.

• Sunrise (1927)/ Street Angel (1928) for Janet Gaynor, the very first Best Actress winner and the only Best Actress winner to win for multiple roles simultaneously (they changed the rule thereafter)
• In Old Chicago (1938) Tyrone Powers in a six-time nominated film which won Alice Brady supporting actress
• The Rains Came (1939) starring Myrna Loy and up for six Oscars
• Blood and Sand (1941) this torreador drama starring Tyrone Power won Best Cinematography
• This Above All (1942) a romantic drama starring Joan Fontaine and Tyrone Power received 4 nominations and a win for Art Direction
• The Snake Pit (1948) Olivia de Havilland in an asylum (!) in one of the original 'deglam' roles. Six nominations including Best Picture
• Pinky (1949), a racial drama about a woman who can "pass" as white received 3 acting nominations

• Come to the Stable (1949) a comedy about nuns which was up for an inexplicable 7 Oscars losing all of them -- we recently wrote about it
• The Young Lions (1958) three nominations including cinematography for this Marlon Brando / Montgomery Clift World War II picture.
• The Best of Everything (1959) three nominations including costume design for this Joan Crawford picture that January Jones hated so very much in that one episode of Mad Men