Showbiz History: Irene Dunne's Near-Record, Brittany Murphy's Untimely Death, Scream's Release

Today in showbiz history if you need something to celebrate with the world ending* and all...
*too dramatic? That's what it feels like lately, is all... 

1812 "Grimm's Fairy Tales" is published. They never stop influencing popular culture thereafter. 
1880 Broadway gets the nickname "The Great White Way" when it's first lit up by electricity
1892 Phileas Fog completes his trip 'round the globe in the novel Around the World in Eighty Days (later adapted to the screen)
1898 Irene Dunne, one of the greatest actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age was born on this day in Kentucky. She went on to five leading actress nominations (my favorite is The Awful Truth, 1937) without ever winning.

WHY THAT'S A BIG DEAL IN OSCAR HISTORY IS REVEALED AFTER THE JUMP...

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Jake Comes Back Singing

by Eric Blume

Playbill recently announced that one of our very favorite Oscar nominees/hunks/great actors, Jake Gyllenhaal, will reprise his four-day stint from October as French painter George Seurat in Steven Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George for an official ten-week Broadway run.  Previews begin February 11th.

I was able to catch Jake in the initial staged-concert run of the show, and he’s a sight to behold...

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A "Blade Runner 2049" Teaser is Here!

Chris here. Denis Villeneive has scored his biggest box office hit with Arrival (it's inching close to $100M) but he could score an even bigger hit next year with Blade Runner 2049. The sequel is bound to spur steady curiosity and shrieks of sacrilege from the original's faithful over the next year, but Villeneuve should be the force that unites both factions. And to ease (or maybe exacerbate) those thoughts, we have our first look at the visuals with the just released teaser! We'll save the full YNMS for a more revealing trailer, but I have some thoughts...

• That's a lot of voiceover for a teensy trailer. Uh oh, did they not learn from the original's struggles?
• Denis Villeneuve and Roger Deakins, reunited and it feels so good.
• Ryan Gosling gives good coat. With all that mood and stoicism, this teaser plays like Only God Forgives but, you know, not terrible.
• We see you on that piano, Ryan. La La Land crossover fanfiction!
• With these mostly dusty hues, it's a relief to know that this might be a decades late sequel that doesn't borrow too much from its original, no?
• Deckard seems to have gone all McMansion while in hiding. Maybe Sean Young is lurking somewhere after all.

What do you think of this first look?

Subtitles Fading But These Soldiers March On...

Year in Review. Every afternoon, a new wrap-up. Today an exhaustive list of how foreign films performed at the US box office...  

Perhaps no film is a more perfect encapsulation of the 2016 reality for foreign films in the US marketplace than Netflix's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon sequel. The first was an international theatrical phenomenon and a true blockbuster delivering over $100 million in the United States alone. The sequel sixteen years later was in English and went straight to streaming. 

Despite the inhospitable 21st century climate nowadays, specialty distributors fight on to deliver some variety to the US marketplace. Here's how they fared this year. These numbers were pulled from Box Office Mojo and we tried to be as thorough as possible (though we did skip documentaries and animated features which are sometimes screened in both dubbed and subtitled versions in the same marketplace)

TOP 100 FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILMS FOR 2016
By US Box Office Gross - final numbers. Title links go to reviews. 

01 Dangal $12.3 (India)

02 No Manches Frida $11.5 (USA) available to stream on IMDb

03 Sultan $6.2 (India)
Bollywood films account for a big portion of each year's foreign film grosses in the US. Up until the release of Dangal at Christmas, none were mightier for most of 2016 than the sports drama starring Salman Khan (pictured above).

Oscar Finalists, Isabelle Huppert, and buzzy Korean hits after the jump...

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Beauty vs Beast: Happy Gotham Holidays

Hey everybody, Jason from MNPP here with our final edition of "Beauty vs Beast" for 2016 -- we will be back after the holidays... as long as the world still exists. (Lately I wonder.) Until then let's think happy thoughts (or die trying) and consider one of my favorite holiday movies, Tim Burton's Batman Returns. I was just reading a piece on the film this morning, placing its bleak worldview of politics against our own (I did say these were happy thoughts right?) so the movie's feeling fresh as a bowl of milk. And there's always room beside my Xmas tree for these two great villains - as The Penguin at one point says to Miss Kitty...

"You're Beauty and the Beast in one luscious Christmas gift pack."

PREVIOUSLY Since Star Wars is in the air last week we forced you all to take sides between the greatest bickering space pair since Dave disconnected HAL - beating Han Solo himself is no small feat (he shoots first, remember) so give it up to Princess Leia, who hair-rolled away with just under 60% of your vote. Said tom:

"She has one of the most famous wardrobes in movie history, an entire fleet at her disposal, and her sidekick is gold. His best friend is a walking carpet - her words. I think she wins."