What did you see this weekend?

by Nathaniel R

Weekend Box Office Estimates (September 7-9)  🔺 = New or Expanded Theater Count
W I D E 800+ screens	PLATFORM / LIMITED excluding prev. wide
The Nun	The Wife
1. 🔺THE NUN  $53.5*NEW* Nun movies	1. YA VEREMOS $770K on 369 screens (cum. $3.3) Review
2. CRAZY RICH ASIANS $13.6 (cum. $136.2)  Review, Yeoh, Podcast	2. 🔺THE WIFE $712k on 153 screens (cum. $2)  Review, Poster Blurb, Glenn's Oscar
3. 🔺 PEPPERMINT $13.1 *NEW*	3. 🔺JULIET, NAKED $670k on 467 screens (cum. $2.4)
4. THE MEG $6 (cum. $131.5) Review	4. THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS $155k on 132  screens (cum. $11.9)  Review
5.🔺SEARCHING $4.5 (cum. $14.3) Review	5.  PUZZLE $121k on 131 screens (cum. $1.8)

What did you see this weekend? I'm in Toronto cramming movies into my eyeballs (just screened: First Man and If Beale Street Could Talk). Reviews soon... thankfully Chris at least is keeping up with the reviews immediately after his screenings. I'm slower - apologies!

In box office news this week: The Nun had the biggest opening weekend of its Conjuring franchise; Fallout became the #1 in the Mission: Impossible franchise globally; BlacKkKlansman is now Spike Lee's third biggest narrative feature (behind Inside Man and Malcolm X... though if you dont adjust for inflation its also behind Jungle Fever and Do the Right Thing); Crazy Rich Asians finally showed a bit of a slowdown after a month in release but hasn't started to lose theaters yet and is already well on its way to being very profitable ( $160+ million globally thus far on a $30 million budget); And The Wife is expanding well with a still healthy per screen average and now crossing $2 million which bodes well for Close's Oscar campaign if it's a slow-and-steady-wins-the-race kind of year. We'll see. 

1972: A Computer Animated Hand

By Tim Brayton

The Film Experience is going to look at the films of 1972 all month in preparation for the Supporting Actress Smackdown celebrating that year's nominees. It was a strong year for cinema in general, but in the history of screen animation, it's nothing less than one of the single most importany years ever. For it was in 1972 that a 27-year-old PhD student at the University of Utah named Edwin "Ed" Catmull, aided by fellow student Fred Parke, laboriously created a wireframe model of his own left hand, applied a series of polygonal shapes to it, and made it move along the joints between those polygons.

That might sound dully, deadeningly technical, and in a very real way, it is: Catmull and Parke were working in the storied computer lab of Dr. Ivan Sutherland, which was focused on pure research and industrial applications. Catmull himself was the only member of the lab with a strong interest in the filmmaking possibilities of their technology, which is likely why it fell to him to create what history has come to regard as the fist computer-generated animation of a natural, organic object.

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TIFF Review: "Widows"

by Chris Feil

If you thought that Steve McQueen’s Widows would be less of a body blow as his other films simply because the genius director is dipping into the mainstream, guess again. A quaint notion that is thankfully not the case - McQueen hasn't softened a bit, and thank goodness.

Watching the film is like laying on a bed of nails, danger at every turn as you dodge its narrative and formative land mines. McQueen’s previous films such as 12 Years a Slave and Shame depicted viscerally physical experiences, making for intense films that can be felt as deeply in the body as well as the soul. Though Widows is less concerned on physical tolls taken on its characters than those efforts, that doesn’t mean you don’t still feel Widows down to your bones.

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Queer TIFF: "Can You Ever Forgive Me?"

by Chris Feil

Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me? is the rarest of comedies, as lovely as it is scabrous, and able to craft a film cohering as many dualities and tonal contradictions in its construction as its protagonist. The film stars Melissa McCarthy as the shamed Lee Israel, once noted biographer and journalist whose late career stumbles found her forging letters of noted dead writers and famous personalities.

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Burning, The Cakemaker and more join the Foreign Film Race.

by Nathaniel R

We're now up to 31 Oscar submissions so, a third of our way to the finish line. Here are the new announcements since the last post. 

• The Cakemaker- Israel 
  A gay drama about a man who becomes friends with his dead lover's wife (who didn't know they were involved). It just won the Ophir for Best Picture (along with Best Director, Actress, and more). This had a theatrical release in the US over the summer. Have y'all seen it? 
• Gutland  - Luxembourg  
  We recently mentioned that this noir starring Frederic Lau (Victoria) and Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread) is streaming on Amazon Prime. But when we mentioned it we had no idea it would be Oscar submitted.
• The Resistant Banker - The Netherlands 
  WW II drama about a Dutch banker funding the resistance under the noses of Nazis. That sounds right up the ally of how Oscar used to play the Foreign Film category but times have changed. Will it be good enough to appeal to their WW II drama-loving previous natures?
• Offenders - Serbia
  A thriller about university students out to test a theory that human nature inevitably leads to anarchy.  
• Burning -South Korea
  The Cannes hit which gets a US release in early November. Oscar is notoriously resistant to Asian cinema which is a total shame since this one has received rave reviews and its South Korea's third time choosing a  Lee Chang-dong picture and he's such a talented filmmaker but Oscar has yet to recognize that. Or South Korea in general despite their awesome cinema.
• Champions - Spain
   A film about a team of disabled athletes starring real disabled people. It's apparently a huge crowd-pleasing hit in Spain

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