Scary doll in frilly dress rules box office

Today, in honor of creepy Annabelle from The Conjuring franchise earning the #1 spot with her prequel Annabelle: Creation, we break with our usual box office format. This week's box office will be represented entirely by dolls. Which of these movies have you seen?

01 NEW $35 million

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Podcast: Detroit, Girls Trip, Atomic Blonde, Landline

Nathaniel and Nick discuss six new films. No spoilers.

Index (42 minutes)
00:01 Why you should see A Ghost Story & Lady Macbeth
04:00 Kathryn Bigelow stumbles with Detroit (what we hope she does next)
16:40 Atomic Blonde is a blast, a true feat of direction and Charlize Theron-ness
29:40 Girls Trip is crazy well-acted fun
37:00 Landline is a let-down
38:30 Recommendations from 1963 for the helluva it

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

Atomic Blonde, Detroit, Girls Trip

Locarno Winners: Huppert, The Big Sick, and More...

by Nathaniel R

Isabelle Huppert as "Madame Hyde"

The Locarno Film Festival wrapped up today in Switzerland and guess who's back for yet more film honors? Isabelle Huppert, that's who! In the new French film Madame Hyde she plays an eccentric teacher who is struck by lightning. When she wakes she, well, the title will probably cue you in to her sudden split personality. The sleeper hit/romantic comedy The Big Sick also took a big prize. The Awards are after the jump...

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Emmy Review: Main Title Design

Emmy voters will be deciding the wins in each category from August 14th-28th. We'll be reviewing a few of our favorite categories.

by Nathaniel R

The Academy of Television Arts first gave out the Main Title Design Emmy in the 1976. The New Original Wonder Woman was actually nominated (how fun!) but the prize went to something called Addie and the King of Hearts. The award has had a spotty history since, going in and out of fashion, changing rules, sometimes having no winner selected, and the category's numbers have fluctuated in silly fashion anywhere from two to six nominees in a given year with no rhyme or reason. The award seems to have stabilized itself around 2003 after which there have always been either five or six nominees each time. We treasure this category because it's one of the few in which the Emmy voters are forced to have a whole new slate of nominees each year. Some of the category's most memorable winners include Game of Thrones, Six Feet Under, United States of Tara, and Mad Men. Last year The Man in the High Castle took the honor. 

Who do you think will win this year? Let's watch the sequences nominated for 2017 after the jump... 

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On This Day: Basquiat, Last Temptation, Cleopatra

on this day in history as it relates to showbiz

30 BC  Cleopatra commits suicide, allegedly by purposeful snake bite. I don't remember that scene in Liz Taylor's Cleopatra but it might have been at the four hour mark and t'was possibly asleep

How to honor this day: play with someone's snake. In the absence of a suitable one, wink at someone as saucily as Liz

← 1915  "Of Human Bondage" by W Somerset Maugham published. 19 years later it becomes a movie and marks Bette Davis's ascent to superstar actress

How to honor this day: Let it all out like Bette in that performance that's pure 🔥

1927 Wings (1927) the first movie to win Best Picture has its NYC premiere. Five months later it will open in Los Angeles (things took longer to get around in those days) and four months after the LA premiere it will win the very first Oscars.

How to honor this day: Go see Dunkirk if you haven't which has good aerial sequences and be astounded that Wings set the bar so high for aerial sequences 90 years ago without the aid of current movie technology.

Jean-Michael Basquiat and Madonna in 1982, part of the East Village / Alphabet city scene that produced many legendary figures

1988 The modern artist Jean-Michael Basquiat dies of an overdose and Martin Scorsese's Last Temptation of Christ opens in theaters. 

How to honor this day: Watch either Scorsese's film or Julian Schnabel's Basquiat biopic starring a young Jeffrey Wright as the painter and David Bowie as Warhol (though sadly no one plays Madonna)

2016 Hell or High Water opens in theaters becoming a sleeper hit and eventually winning a Best Picture nomination.

How to honor this day: Read Daniel Walber's interesting column on its production design

Dana IveyHappy Birthday
Actors: LaKeith Stanfield, Cantinflas, Dana Ivey, George Hamilton, Dominique Swain, Cara Delevingne, Bruce Greenwood, Peter Krause, Jane Wyatt, John Cazale; Other crafts: director Ralph Nelson (Lilies of the Field), Bo-Derek-wrangler John Derek (Tarzan the Ape Man), writer William Goldman (The Princess Bride), rapper Sir Mix a Lot, and cinematographer Nelsson Lik-wai Yu (Still Life)

Oscar Winners Born on this Day:
Pioneer/producer/director/legend Cecil B DeMille (The Ten Commandments as epic finale to that career), actor/famous brother Casey Affleck, costume designer Ulla-Britt Söderlund (Barry Lyndon), and sound editor Mike Hopkins (King Kong)