Triple (Poster) Threat

Manuel here with posters for three upcoming films we’ve been surprisingly quiet about here at TFE even though I know we're excited about (some of) them.

First up, Pan. I am vaguely curious about this Hugh Jackman/Joe Wright film but is it just me or has the marketing team been not really been doing their job on this film? It’s like that Rooney Mara Telluride Tribute was for naught! I mean, sure it was mostly for Carol, but you’d think they’d want to capitalize on her buzz!

Next, The Intern. Is this the film that will win Hathaway’s fans back (most of us never left!) or will it just fuel the fire? On a side-note, did you all read this fantastic interview with Nancy Meyers for New York Magazine? It’s worth a read in its entirety but my favorite line, obviously, was:

“Women can direct dinosaurs. Believe me.”

I am now imagining a Jurassic Park film directed by Nancy Meyers (imagine that raptor scene in a Meyers kitchen!) and boy would that be more enjoyable than the Trevorrow flick I finally caught up with this weekend.

And last but certainly not least, we have this bizarre poster for Steve Jobs (I do so love its main one), We at TFE will be catching this one soon at NYFF and will have plenty to say then, I’m sure. But for now, I’m going to obsess over Kate’s glasses and icy stare.

Which of these films are you most excited about?

Best Emmy Night Tweets

Too exhausted from travel for the typical live blog so we'll just share the best tweets from celebrities, friends and awesome people for the night. So refresh on occasion... 

But first of all here's "Taystee" herself Danielle Brooks. TWIRL, GIRL! 

more after the jump

Click to read more ...

Emmy Winners, 2015

Which of the prizes warmed the cockles of your heart? Which caused a blind rage? And which caused you to make these Amy Poehler or Lena Headey faces? 

Comedy Series, Comedy Veep (1st win in this category)
Lead Actress, Comedy Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep (6th win, 4th consecutive from this series, from 20 nominations from 3 series) which means that two iconic characters Lisa Kudrow's "Valerie Cherish" and Amy Poehler's "Leslie Knope" were never rewarded for their genius
Lead Actor, Comedy Jeffrey Tambor, Transparent (1st win for this role, 7 total nominations from 3 series)
Supporting Actress, Comedy Alison Janney, Mom (6th win, 2nd consecutive for this role, 10 total nominations from 3 series)
Supporting Actor, Comedy Tony Hale, Veep (2nd win for this role from 3 nominations) 
Writing, Comedy Veep (1st writing win for this series from 2 nominations)
Director, Comedy Jil Soloway, Transparent (1st directing win for this series)

Drama Series Game of Thrones (1st win in this category)
Lead Actress, Drama Viola Davis How To Get Away With Murder (1st win, also the 1st woman of color to win in this category
Lead Actor, Drama Jon Hamm, Mad Men (1st win in this category)
Supporting Actress, Drama Uzo Aduba Orange is the New Black (2nd consecutive win for this character)
Supporting Actor, Drama Peter Dinklage, Game of Thrones (2nd win this category)
Writing/Directing Game of Thrones 

Limited Series / Movie Olive Kitteridge
Lead Actress Limited Series/Movie Frances McDormand, Olive Kitteridge (1st win)
Lead Actor Limited Series / Movie Richard Jenkins, Olive Kitteridge (1st win)
Supporting Actress Limited Series/Movie Regina King, American Crime (1st win)
Supporting Actor Limited Series/Movie Bill Murray, Olive Kitteridge (1st win)
Director, Limited Series/Movie Lisa Cholodenko, Olive Kitteridge (1st win)
Writer, MiniSeries/Movie Olive Kitteridge 

Reality Competition The Voice
Variety Talk Show Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Sketch Show Inside Amy Schumer 

"Room" is the People's Choice

Great News: Room won the People's Choice award at TIFF! 
It couldn't have happened to a more deserving film and I mean that literally since it was the best of the 29 films I caught there. Confession: I really thought that Spotlight would take it since festival goers wouldn't shut up about that one. In the past twenty years the People's Choice Award has been a very solid indicator of a future Best Picture nomination. In fact, with one exception only (Hotel Rwanda) if the winner was from the States or the UK, it was nominated at the Oscars. Canadian winners (Eastern Promises and The Hanging Garden) as well as most of the non-English language winners weren't so lucky. A Best Picture nomination would be a very big deal for A24 as a young distributor but they've already released so many fine and daring films they've earned one, don't you think? 

How high would you rank the film now in your predictions? 

Winners List
People's Choice Room (Lenny Abramson)
    1st Runner Up: Angry Indian Goddesses (Pan Nalin)
    2nd Runner Up: Spotlight (Tom McCarthy)

FIPRESCI Discovery: Eva Nová (Marko Skop) 
FIPRESCI Special Presentation: Desierto (Jonás Cuarón) 
NETPAC Asian Cinema Award: Whispering Star (Sion Sono) 
Toronto Platform Award: HURT (Alan Zweig) 
    Honorable Mention: Neon Bull, The Promised Land, The Clan
Best Short Maman(s) (Maïmouna Doucouré)
     Honorable Mention: Rate Me (Fyzal Boulifa) 

Best Canadian Feature Closet Monster (Stephen Dunn)
    Honorable Mention: My Internship in Canada (Philippe Falardeau)
Best Canadian First Feature Film Sleeping Giant (Andrew Cividino)
Best Canadian Short Overpass (Patrice Laliberté)
    Honorable Mention: Bacon & God's Wrath (Sol Friedman)

The odd thing about the Canadian prizes is that Closet Monster, my favorite LGBT movie from the fest, which won the "Canada Goose" for Best Canadian Film is also a First Feature; there's another prize for that that it did not win! Of the other award winners, I only managed to catch Spotlight, Room, and the Toronto Platform Honorable Mention The Clan. It's a gut-wrenching true crime drama about a notorious family in Argentina who kidnapped members of other upper class families, some of whom they knew personally, for ransom money. I suspect it will be Argentina's Oscar submission but they don't announce until the end of the month.

Box Office: Johnny Depp gets Scorched

Tim here with the weekend box office estimates. After an exciting nailbiter last weekend, things got a lot more sedate. Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials took the #1 slot without too much effort, continuing the dominance of YA adaptations about attractive 20something teenagers fighting their way through a post-apocalyptic wilderness. Let's not crack open a bottle of champagne for all those Chosen Ones just yet, though; The Scorch Trials came up just short of the first Maze Runner's debut weekend last September, suggesting that if the franchise isn't necessarily on death's door, it seems to have already hit its theoretical peak.

WEEKEND TOP 10, ESTIMATED
01 Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials $30.3 new
02 Black Mass $23.4 new
03 The Visit $11.4 (cum. $42.3)
04 The Perfect Guy $9.6 (cum. $41.4) Tim's Review
05 Everest $7.6 new
06 War Room $6.3 (cum. $49.1)
07 A Walk in the Woods $2.7 (cum. $24.8) Reviewed at Sundance
08 Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation $2.3 (cum. $191.7) Tim's Review
09 Straight Outta Compton $2.0 (cum. $158.9) Podcast
10 Captive $1.4 new

The weekend's other major wide release, Black Mass, opened to a satisfactory number for what it is - a crime drama for adults, which means it's likely to hold on much longer than Scorch Trials - but it's not quite the triumphant return for Johnny Depp that some of us were quietly hoping for. Compared to his last couple of mega-bombs, it's already an unqualified success: by the end of Sunday, it will have already grossed more than three times as much as the notorious Mortdecai from last winter, and its opening weekend is about as much as the entire lifetime domestic gross of Transcendence. Still, aspiring thinkpiece writers can put away their "Depp is a major movie star again!" ledes for right now.

The most impressive performance in the top ten probably belongs to Everest: the star-packed thriller had a smallish platform opening, mostly limited to IMAX and other large format screens, that propelled it up to an impressive $13,872 per-screen average, by far the biggest of any film in the top ten. But even that pales next to the film that I suspect most of the Film Experience faithful want to hear about: Denis Villaneuve's Sicario, starring Emily Blunt, opened to $390,000 on 6 screens. If that doesn't sound like much, try this on for size: the film's $65,000 per-screen average is the highest of any 2015 release so far. Let's keep out fingers crossed that this means great things for the film as it starts to expand over the next two weeks.

How did you spend your moviegoing weekend?