Podcast: BlacKkKlansman plus (sigh) a New Oscar Category

This week Nathaniel R, Murtada Elfadl, and Chris Feil talk Oscar changes and Spike Lee's new joint.

Index (1 Hour and 2 minutes)
00:01 Spike Lee's new joint BlacKkKlansman. He's still got it. Also we talk about how he uses Gone With the Wind, and Birth of a Nation.
15:30 Oscar's recent announcement about the "popular achievement category" and all the problems we imagine it will cause. We are not pleased but we do offer our own fixes to issues of audience's being more into the Oscars.
40:00 Film Festival excitement TIFF and NYFF plus The Favourite, and Peterloo rumors.
47:00 We return to Spike Lee and list our three favorite scenes in BlacKkKlansman.
54:00 Fall film chatter: On the Basis of Sex, Mary Queen of Scots, and The Miseducation of Cameron Post versus Boy Erased
60:00 Goodbyes!

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

BlacKkKlansman and Oscar's Rule Changes

Scarlett's Black Widow Dough and 2018's Highest Paid Actresses

I always find Forbes annual list of highest paid actresses suspect because when you dig into it you realize the huge sums aren't necessarily for acting but for being spokespersons for various products or fashion houses. Of course that requires the celebrity that comes from acting hence the fusion of commerce and art. With some mainstays of the list, like Jennifer Aniston who is on it every year, the money is largely for commercials with the films being commercials for her celebrity to keep the commercial endorsement business going. With others the money is largely the frequent hit films (Melissa McCarthy). Franchises definitely help: Cate Blanchett and Scarlett Johansson both made Marvel money this past year, Angelina Jolie's big number is her upfront pay for Maleficent 2, and Gal Gadot's is her sudden cash-in on her new celebrity from helping to make Wonder Woman such a massive global hit in 2017. 

The 2018 list goes like so...

1. Scarlett Johansson $40.5 million
2. Angelina Jolie $28 million
3. Jennifer Aniston $19.5 million
4. Jennifer Lawrence $18 million
5. Reese Witherspoon $16.5 million
6. Mila Kunis $16 million
7. Julia Roberts $13 million
8. Cate Blanchett $12.5 million
9. Melissa McCarthy $12 million
10. Gal Gadot $10 million (first time on the list)

On the list last year but didn't manage it this time: Emma Watson, Emma Stone, Amy Adams, and Charlize Theron.

If you controlled the world which 10 actresses would be showered with money for 2018?

You better link (link), link about what you're trying to do to me...

• NYT Aretha Franklin RIP. Wesley Morris on her power but did we "Respect" it?
• Variety Estonia has selected the single parent drama Take It Or Leave It for the Oscars
• TFE Our updated Oscar Foreign Submission charts 
• Boy Culture because Madonna is awesome she has released her 2018 Met Gala performance to her fans as a charity fundraiser for her orphans in Malawi. Each $25 will givea child food, schooling, and healthcare for a month

 

• Uproxx A little info on Mike Moh, who has been cast as Bruce Lee in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (for those of you wondering why Bruce Lee is a character in the movie -- he worked with Sharon Tate prior to her murder)
• Playbill two time Oscar nominee Janet McTeer talks about playing legendary pre-cinema stage actress Sarah Bernhardt in a new play on Broadway called Bernhardt/Hamlet
• Vanity Fair Ruth Wilson requested to leave The Affair but she's not at liberty to say why for some reason
• Variety The Alienist has been renewed for a second season, meaning it's no longer a limited series but it gets to keep its limited series Emmy nomination
• Gr8er Days we forgot to note last week here at TFE that Charlotte Rae of The Facts of Life fame passed away

And did you see that the cast of Grease (1978) reunited at an Academy event to talk about the movie for its 40th anniversary? (Is this where we mention that the film only got one Oscar nomination, which it lost, for Best Original Song "Hopelessly Devoted to You")  Here's John Travolta and Olivia talking about her being cast in the movie...

Showbiz History: Wild at Heart, Treasure Island, Superbad, Etc...

A dozen random things that happened on this day (Aug 17th) in showbiz history...

1920 Maureen O'Hara born on this day in Dublin. We've written about her frequently. We ♥️. 

1934 The first (of many) sound film adaptations of Treasure Island the novel opens in movie theaters starring Oscar winners Lionel Barrymore and Wallace Beery, along with child star Jackie Cooper, himself already an Oscar nominee...the youngest Best Actor nominee of all time in point of fact. Cooper and Berry had previously co-starred in the instant classic tearjerker The Champ (1931)  so the advertising pushed the reunion hard...

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Interview: We the Animals' Jeremiah Zagar

by Murtada Elfadl

We the Animals has been compared to Moonlight (2016), The Tree of Life (2011) and Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012). While the comparison is reductive it provides a shorthand for describing this film. It’s a story of three young brothers - one of whom is queer - and their relationships with each other and with their unpredictable parents. There are elements of magical realism in a story grounded in the economic desperation of a working class family in upstate New York.

Raul Castillo (HBO’s Looking) and Sheila Vand (A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night) give perceptive performances as the adults. However it is newcomer Evan Rosado, playing the central character of Jonah, who’ll take your breath away. More sensitive and conscious than his older siblings, Jonah increasingly embraces an imagined world in the secret journals in which writes and sketches. It is an assured narrative debut from documentary filmmaker Jeremiah Zagar. We loved the film when it played Tribeca last spring. We had the chance to speak to Zagar recently in New York.

The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Murtada Elfadl: You've said that you read the book in one sitting while still at a bookshop, before even buying it. What popped in the book for you and made you want to make it into a film?  

Jeremiah Zagar: Literally the first page of the book is so visceral, rhythmic and immersive that I couldn’t stop reading it. Beyond that it felt like something I knew how to visualize. I read a lot of books but very few where I feel that I know how to make them into a movie. Somehow I felt this connection to the material that wasn’t only emotional, it was technical almost. I didn't want to change it at all, I just wanted to figure out how to put it on screen. I could see it, I could hear it, I could feel it in my head before it happened...

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