Monday, April 23, 2018 at 6:00PM by Nathaniel R
Mmmmmhow we love a good teaser. One that tells you almost nothing about the movie or tv series other than an overal mood so as to preserve / prolong the pre-release excitement. Here comes the eight hour miniseries Sharp Objects starring Amy Adams and Patty Clarkson, two of the best actresses in the business, the latter of whom hasn't had a high profile great part in way too long...
Monday, April 23, 2018 at 4:00PM Since we haven't done a link roundup in too long, here are way too many of them for your clicking pleasure and general infotainment.
Screens
• Cartoon Brew Freshly Oscared Guillermo del Toro is taking active role in Dreamworks Animation going forward
• Vulture "I ate like Olivia Pope for a week, and didn't die" - a hilarious journal/tribute to Scandal in its last season
• NYT a profile of Rachel Weisz. It opens with beauty tips, pregnancy, and lesbian sex and I shuddered thinking we were going to get a deluge of thinkpieces about editors assigning sexist men to write about actresses but we are saved from the thinkpieces because it turns out it's a Maureen O'Dowd article
• Playbill Amazon is launching a new short form series After Forever about a 50something gay couple tomorrow. Lots of theater folks are in it
More after the jump including Michelle Pfeiffer's Janet van Dyne, Isle of Dogs charity mission, Drag Race revelations, auctions of the unwanted (Ghost in the Shell and Weinstein Co), and lots of Avengers and Westworld...
Monday, April 23, 2018 at 12:55PM Jason from MNPP popping in from between Tribeca screenings to quick give us our Monday afternoon "Beauty vs Beast" fix -- I figure it's a Marvel Week what with that lil' Avengers movie opening in a couple of days and so what better time to step one step back and tackle their most recent smashing success, Ryan Coogler's Black Panther, which is still sitting pretty in the Top Ten, box-office-wise. 1.3 Billion dollars! I figure some of you have seen it? So let's face down its titular hero (Chadwick Boseman) and The Best Villain Marvel Has Given Us Yet Eric Killmonger (Michael B Jordan), which is totally that character's official name now.
PREVIOUSLY Mark Zuckerberg did even better than I expected with last week's The Social Network poll - he managed a whopping 14% of your vote, getting comfortably trounced, as well he should, by Rooney Mara's Erica. Said IanO:
"This is one Sorkin’s most electrifying scenes. I’m Team Erica because sometimes you see someone become a star (of a sort...) right in front of your areas, and it’s one of the greatest pleasures cinema. Plus she delivers that kiss-off line magnificently, with just a hint of pity and sadness colouring the brutality of the line. So even though I’m Team Erica, you have to give it up for Eisenberg too, who charts the journey from clueless arrogance to awful realisation beautifully. It’s one of favourite performances of the decade."
Monday, April 23, 2018 at 9:45AM The Supporting Actress Smackdown 1970 Edition arrives in three weeks (we've moved the date to May 13th) so as we approach and you vote (hint hint), let's talk context in movies and entertainment...
Great Big Box Office Hits: When it comes to box office, there are a lot of competing sources about what films were massive hits prior to the internet era when tracking success became such a cultural activity. But all sources basically agree that there were five true behemoths at the movies in 1970. The top four were the tearjerker Love Story, the all-star disaster flick Airport, the Altman comedy MASH, and the war drama Patton (remarkably they made up 80% of the Best Picture list... though prior to the 1980s it's always worth reiterating that the public had much more Oscary taste in their movies -- it was public taste that changed, not really the Oscar aesthetic... contrary to much of the grousing you here online about Oscar shunning hits and preferring underseen critical darlings). The fifth consensus smash hit was the Dustin Hoffman Christmas release Little Big Man which scored only 1 nomination from the Academy for Chief Dan George in Supporting Actor; he was the first Native American to score an Oscar nomination in any category!
Chief Dan George in "Little Big Man"Beyond that quintet the details about which films were big hits gets fuzzier though various sources also list some, though never all, of these movies: Ryan's Daughter, Tora! Tora! Tora!, Chariots of the Gods, The Aristocrats, Joe, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, the documentary Woodstock, and the musical On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.
Oscar's Best Picture Nominees: Airport (10 noms / 1 win), Five Easy Pieces (4 nominations), Love Story (7 noms / 1 win), MASH (5 noms / 1 win), and Patton (10 noms / 7 wins). Our theory as to what was just outside the Best Picture shortlist plus more '70 goodies follow...
Monday, April 23, 2018 at 4:42AM by Nathaniel R
| Weekend Box Office (March 23rd-25th) |
|
| W I D E 800+ screens |
L I M I T E D excluding prev. wide |
 I Feel Pretty |
 Lean on Pete |
| 1. A Quiet Place $22 (cum. $132.3) REVIEW, SECOND OPINION, SCREENPLAY |
1. 🔺 Bahrat Ane Nenu $2.8 on 305 screens NEW |
| 2. Rampage $21 (cum. $66.6) | 2. Beirut $1 (cum $3.9) on 755 screens |
| 3.🔺 I Feel Pretty $16.2 NEW |
3. Death of Stalin $340k on 210 screens (cum. $6.8) REVIEW |
| 4.🔺 Super Troopers 2 $14.7 NEW |
4. Lean on Pete $177k on 65 screens (cum. $347k) REVIEW |
| 5. Truth or Dare $7.9 (cum. $33) |
5. 🔺 The Rider $78k on 9 screens (cum. $142k) REVIEW |
A Quiet Place dominated the box office in its third weekend (it's added theaters each weekend despite opening very wide!). It's a genuine smash already earning back more than 10 times its budget in just three weeks time globally. Super Troopers 2 and I Feel Pretty, two new wide release comedies, didn't fare as well though I Feel Pretty could prove to have legs given that word of mouth is much stronger than Schumer's previous film, the misfire Snatched, and the budget is reasonable, too...
