Beauty vs Beast: Children of the Night

Jason from MNPP here with this week's brand new edition of "Beauty vs Beast." Isn't it weird that Marvel says they have no current plans to reboot the Blade series? I know, I know, we're supposed to be against reboots. But Blade is a great character with great name recognition, and he's a great character with great name recognition of color on top of that, so maybe we should set aside our prejudices in this instance. It has been thirteen years since the last film, after all. I really like the original Blade trilogy though, and so here on Wesley Snipes' 55th birthday let's give some love to the original 1998 film, which I've always in particular had a soft spot for... especially with regards to its bad guy played by a sleazily charismatic Stephen Dorff.

PREVIOUSLY Last week we wandered into the land of Gilead and faced off the Emmy nominated ladies of The Handmaid's Tale - sure enough voting for a bitter pill like Ann Dowd's villainous Aunt proved difficult in our current political situation and Elisabeth Moss took a whopping 80% of your vote. Said Duncan Dykes:

"Such great scene partners - feeding off of each other and selling the dystopian world better than any production design or visual effects could.... Points to Ann Dowd for consistently unexpected characterization - her apparently genuine care for some of the girls (Janine in particular, striking considering her initial torture of her) adds shades of humanity to her in most unnerving ways. She speaks more like a preacher or particularly disapproving parent than a general or warden, which makes the character all the more intriguing.

Ultimately however you have to go with Elisabeth Moss for a spellbinding symphony of a performance - deeply felt humanity, her drained voice and face, the precision of her furtive glances of longing or fear or paranoia or anger. She spends such stretches of the show with everything on the inside that when she gets to let loose and expose traces of the fury she feels regarding her situation, it leaves you shaking. Brava."

The Furniture Index

Can we have a break for applause for Daniel Walber's The Furniture column. His incredible series has been filled with sharp insights, a keen eye, and rich Hollywood anecdotes. Here's everything he's covered in the first three seasons, all 103 episodes stretching from a musical in 1935 to an erotic thriller from 2018. Please show your love in the comments if you look forward to these each week.

Early Cinema
• Top Hat (1935) Dancing sets

The Forties
• For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) moons and mountains
• Hold Back the Dawn (1941) Bored at the border
• How Green Was My Valley (1941) Designing dignity
• Ladies in Retirement (1941) Into the marshes with Ida Lupino
• That Hamilton Woman (1941) High ceilings
• Captain of the Clouds (1942) A Canadian air show
• The Magnificent Andersons (1942) Victorian Palace / Manifest Destiny
• My Gal Sal (1942) Nonsense Gay Nineties
• The Shanghai Gesture (1942) Appropriating Chinese design
• Gaslight (1944) Lighting of and in the set
• Black Narcissus (1947) Mad for matte paintings

The Fifties
• David and Bathsheba (1951) A humble palace of moral struggle
• A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) Decorative madness
• My Cousin Rachel (1952) Ghosts of property
• Knights of the Round Table (1953) Reframing King Arthur
• The Night of the Hunter (1955) American expressionism
• Lust for Life (1956) Van Gogh's inspiration

The Sixties
• How the West Was Won (1962) Saloon kitsch
• Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962) weird wonders
• Come Blow Your Horn (1963) Comedy by design
• Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) Your house is listening
• A Shot in the Dark (1964) Charmingly ridiculous
• What a Way To Go! (1964) Death by excess
• Fantastic Voyage (1966) Absurd anatomy
• The Oscar (1966) Celebrate the tackiness!
• Camelot! (1967) A silly and furry place
• Guess Who's Coming To Dinner and Doctor Dolittle (1967) matte paintings
• Is Paris Burning? (1967) Is patriotism subtle? Not very
• The Taming of the Shrew (1967) A scenery buffet for the Battling Burtons
• Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) Extravagant concentrated nostalgia

The Seventies
• The Exorcist (1973) A possessed bedroom
• Tom Sawyer (1973) Stovepipe and steamboat nostalgia
• Fellini's Casanova (1976) Grotesque extravagance
• The Molly Maguires (1970)  Demolition and preservation
• The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) Supertanker
• All that Jazz (1979) The creative erotics of scaffolding

The Eighties
• Querelle (1982) explicit architecture
• Amadeus (1984) Paper opulence
• Brazil (1985) Duct soup
• Beaches (1988) Color schemes
• Batman (1989) Nightmare at the museum
• Fanny & Alexander (1982/1983) theatrical magic
• Querelle (1982) explicit architecture

The Nineties
• The Age of Innocence (1993) a living museum
• Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) Dracula's astounding castle
• Orlando (1992) Otherworldy pageantry
• Toys (1992) Surreal spaces
• Addam's Family Values (1993) Setting fire to Thanksgiving
• The Madness of King George (1994) Cluttered musty madness
• Sleepy Hollow (1999) Historical realism meets nightmarish fantasy
• Topsy Turvy (1999) Imperial fantasy in Gilbert & Sullivan's London

Sidebars to TV and Oscars
• Best of Absolutely Fabulous - Special Report
• Emmy Production Design 2016 - Should win? Penny Dreadful, Veep, etc
• Emmy Production Design 2017 - Should win? The Young Pope, Feud, etc
• Oscar Set Design 2016 - Art Deco Again
• Oscar Set Design 2017 - Swarovski Crystal Diamond Mine
• The Furniture's Personal Oscar Ballot 2017 The Beguiled and more... 

2000-2015
• Dreamgirls (2006) Fame flattens your dream(girls), boys
• Pan's Labyrinth (2006) Feasts of flesh
• The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) Chicanery and posterity
• The Skin I Live In (2011) Decorating obsession
• Brooklyn (2015) and Carol (2015) Dramatically different department stores
• Joy (2015) Emerald city of home shopping
• Lady in the Van (2015) Crime scene home
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) The Forest

Recent Cinema
• 20th Century Women (2016) Unfinished house, collaborative kitchen
• Arrival (2016) and Passengers (2016) Lost in space and time

• Atomic Blonde (2017) Neon nihilism
• The Beguiled (2017) A plaster haze
• Beatriz at Dinner (2017) Tacky muted mansion
• Blade Runner 2049 (2017) Canadian brutalism in LA
• Childhood of a Leader (2016) Cruel curtained childhood
• The Conjuring 2 (2016) Malevolent secret codes
• Colossal (2017) Hoarding and emptiness
• Deadpool (2016) Junkyard
• Double Lover (2017/2018) cracked mirrors 

• Embrace of the Serpent (2015/2016) The venomous and fanatical
• The Eyes of My Mother (2016) Stark contrasts and devotional objects
• Everybody Wants Some!! (2016) 70's sitcom styles
• Fantastic Beasts (2016) and La La Land (2016) Magic unreality
• Florence Foster Jenkins (2016) Exuberant fandom
• Frantz (2017) Decorating for a lost generation
• Get Out (2017) Beige house of colonial horrors
• Ghostbusters (2016) Shrieking color scheme
• Hail Caesar (2016) Merrily We Dance
• Hell or High Water (2016) Old West descendants
• Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) A warm welcome

• Jackie (2016) and Paterson (2016) Home décor
• King Arthur Legend of the Sword (2017) Reframing King Arthur
• The Lobster (2016) Phony flowers
• The Lost City of Z (2017) deranged ambitions and indulgent fantasies
• Love and Friendship (2016) Country charm
• The Love Witch (2016) A tarot reading
• Mudbound (2017) architectural metaphors

• Personal Shopper (2017) Framing the unseen
• A Quiet Passion (2017) floral punctuations
• The Salesman (2016/2017) Crafting his own stage

• The Shape of Water (2017) A neon green future
• Slack Bay (2017) Giddy grotesqueries
• Star Trek Beyond (2016) Terrestrial fun
• Toni Erdmann (2016) The dangers of corporate upholstery
• Wiener-Dog (2016) Sickly green cages
• The Witch (2016) Design heralds doom

Oscar Chart Updates - Everything!

The Oscar Charts are all freshly updated (but for the second two pages of foreign film submissions which will go up very soon). It's an exciting time because before the fall festivals hit and while we're still contemplating the highlights of the year's first seven months, it seems like anything's possible. That feeling will soon dissipate of course but for now, (almost) anything goes. Biggest gains this update go to The Papers, mother!, The Big Sick, and Wonder Wheel. Meanwhile Wonder Woman enters several charts, though not with much in the way of current predictions as it gears up for a campaign. Dunkirk solidifies pre-release Oscar faith now that people have layed eyes on it en masse. Taking the biggest hit this time is Detroit tas it gears up for wide release but is proving divisive and controversial. Our initial hunch/faith in The Snowman (due primarily to the director) dissipates with its somewhat generic thriller trailer.

And here's the wonderfully opaque teaser for mother! which might be exactly the kind of thing that works in acting categories (where psychological horror is sometimes popular if the film is a hit) so I've had to boost Jennifer Lawrence up in the Best Actress chart... not sure what I was thinking to so undervalue her previously...

Check out the charts and report back, won'cha?

• INDEX • PICTURE • DIRECTOR • ACTRESS • ACTOR • SUPPORTING ACTRESS • SUPPORTING ACTOR • VISUAL CATEGORIES • SOUND CATEGORIES • SCREENPLAYS • ANIMATED FEATURES • FOREIGN SUBMISSIONS PT 1

July is a Wrap

Whew. That month was a swift one. It's August tomorrow, WTF? While we continue updating those Oscar charts please check out some highlights you might have missed in July... 

• Podcast is Back The Big Sick, Baby Driver, Dunkirk, and more
• Charlize Theron in Jade Scorpion an early peak at greatness in a terrible movie
• Bright Or, 'how will we define a Netflix blockbuster?'
• Soundtracking Chris revisits Young Adult
• Roundtable Drama Reese, Jessica, Oprah and more on the hunt for Emmy
• Being There (1979) unexpected essential viewing for 2017
• Okja's many delights on Netflix
• An Ode to Joan Harris for Mad Men's 10th anniversary
• An Ode to Julia TFE's first restaurant review (wait, what?)
• The Furniture  leered through Fassbinder's erotic Querelle
• Emmy Reactions our favorite nominations
• Emmy Reactions but how did they pass up ____?

COMING IN AUGUST: Robert Mitchum's Centennial, Kathryn Bigelow's Detroit, Emmy discussions as the TV Academy does their final voting, In the Heat of the Night (1967), Scarface (1983... I know I know), and much more. We haven't planned as far ahead as we usually do!

Four Movies Shared the Wealth This Weekend

By Nathaniel R

What did you see this weekend?

Weekend Box Office (July 28th-30th)
W I D E	L I M I T E D
1. DUNKIRK $28.1 (cum. $102.8) PODCAST	1. 🔺   A GHOST STORY $382k (cum. $941k) 329 screens
2. 🔺  THE EMOJI MOVIE $25.6	2. 🔺  DETROIT $365k 20 screens
3. GIRLS TRIP $20 (cum. $65.5)	3. MAUDIE  $350k (cum. $4.6) 228 screens REVIEW
4. 🔺 ATOMIC BLONDE  $18.5	4. 🔺  MUBARAKAN $300k 128 screens
5. SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING  $13.4 (cum. $278.3) REVIEW | 2ND OPINION | PODCAST	5. 🔺WOLF WARRIOR 2 $190k 53 screens
6. WAR FOR PLANET OF APES  $10.3 (cum. $118.6) REVIEWISH | PODCAST	6. 🔺 LADY MACBETH  $179k  (cum. $467k) 104 screens
7. DESPICABLE ME 3 $7.7 (cum. $230.4)	7. 🔺  AN INCONVENIENT SEQUEL $130K 4 screens REVIEW
8. VALERIAN $6.8 (cum. $30.6)	8. THE LITTLE HOURS  $125k (cum. $1.2) 96 screens  REVIEW
9. BABY DRIVER $4 (cum. $92) REVIEW | 2ND OPINION | POSTERIZED | PODCAST	9.🔺 THE MIDWIFE $78k   (cum. $112k) 27 screens
10. WONDER WOMAN $3.5  (cum. $395.4) REVIEW | TOP TEN | SPECIAL	10. THE HERO  $68K (cum. $3.8) 102 screens BEST ACTORS
🔺 = new or added screens numbers from box office mojo

Dunkirk and Girls Trip, both enjoyed very strong second weekends (giving their audiences exactly what they promised... which is all too rare!) and managed to mostly fend off the new challengers which were the animated Emoji Movie and Charlize Theron kicking all kinds of spy ass as Atomic Blonde. It was a fairly unique weekend since all four titles were within 10 million of each other - they all have a reason to celebrate. The only people not celebrating? Whoever chose to take their families to Emoji Movie which is the worst reviewed movie of the year. 

In limited release the doc sequel An Inconvenient Truth (reviewed), Kathryn Bigelow's race riot drama Detroit, the Hasidic drama Menashe (reviewed), and Brigsby Bear all barely dipped their toe into theaters but audiences expressed interest in all four. Expect expansions soon with Detroit going wide next weekend.