We can discuss sexism in comic book movies when you get back from the theater.

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Secret in Their Eyes Character Posters

Manuel here sharing these new character posters for the English-language adaptation of the Oscar-winning film, The Secret in their Eyes. 

We talked at length about the film's trailer a few weeks back and the marketing for the film will surely continue revving up as we near its October release date.

The poster series is bold (if a tad on-the-nose) to deny us three sets of expressive eyes but it does force us to focus on these gorgeous movie stars' lips and eyebrows, while denying us another opportunity to gripe about the film's look (those wigs!!)

And yet, I'm surely not alone in flashing back to a handful of other eye-less character posters:

If you're going to ape a marketing campaign, you could do worse than reminding us all of that perfect Michel Gondry/Charlie Kaufman film. But perhaps that wasn't the intention, especially as it ends up being an unfair comparison on every single count; look at all the detail and suggestive plot elements we get in those 2004 posters and then turn to these new photoshopped images of Nicole, Chiwetel and Julia. They're much emptier and only tell us

Julia: Don't look back
Chiwetel: Don't look closer
Nicole: Don't look away 

Here's hoping the final Secret poster is a bit more inventive, though floating head composites are always a very real threat for all star movies. I'm personally hopeful about Julia's performance; are you? 

Titus Andromedon and the "GBF"

Please welcome new contributor Kyle Turner to the team, who has previously Smackdown'ed right here. In the wake of the Emmy nominations, he's here to talk about one very particular film & tv trope - Editor
 

In Tina Fey’s book of autobiographical essays Bossypants, she describes with delight and nostalgia her time growing up working at the Delaware County Summer Showtime program for the arts. And while her experiences about her background in theater are the surface, it’s her relationship to the queer community that serves as, perhaps, the thesis and thematic core of the essay. She writes carefully, balancing emotional reaction of the present juxtaposed against examining the events in hindsight. She talks about the lesbian best friends she had for several years, the way her hometown was like “Gay Wales” (“What Wales is to crooners, my hometown may be to homosexuals – meaning, there seems to be a disproportionate number of them and they are the best in the world!”), and, most important, the role of LGBT people in her personal narrative(s). She writes

I thought I knew everything after that first summer. ‘Being gay is not a choice. Gay people were made that way by God,’ I’d lectured Mr. Garth proudly. But it took me another whole year to figure out the second part: ’Gay people were made that way by God, but not solely for my entertainment.’ ”

In one quote, Fey pinpoints a problem that mainstream media often has when depicting queer (usually male) characters: they’re often asexual, thinly written, or designed with tropes built in as opposed to given the benefit of complexity that their straight counterparts more reflexively are given. They are, in a word, tokenized. [More...]

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Box Office: Amy and the Ant (Man)

It was a good week to be Amy Schumer. Thursday saw her among the Best Actress nominees at the Emmys from a very competitive field and the very next day her first star vehicle movie (which she also wrote) opened to great numbers, even slightly higher than those for the more established female comic headlining a summer movie, Melissa McCarthy in Spy (which has had solid staying power and recently topped $100 million)

It was also a decent week to be Marvel Studios executives, too. Despite low grosses (comparatively for Marvel) a $57 million opening for Ant-Man has to be considered a big success given a) the characters microscopic profile in pop culture, b) a non bankable star -- Paul Rudd is well-loved but he has never been a box office draw c) a troubled production history and d) a release date in the summer in which people are just starting to be critical of Marvel Studios after ten years of drooling all over anything they did. 

And of course it continued to be great summer to be Jurassic World which has amassed a simply spectacular fortune despite being merely an OK retread. Every other movie that's grossed over $500 million has had a lot more going for it in terms of newness or critical raves. I'm not trying to be mean -- it's hardly the worst movie in the top ten of all time (that honor belongs to Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace or Shrek 2) -- but the distinct probability that it could threaten Titanic's (1997) domestic gross to become the second most popular movie of all time (if you don't adjust for inflation) is unthinkable and quite depressing. So let's not think about it and become depressed... 

Happy thoughts then: What was most wonderful about your weekend?

BOX OFFICE
Early Estimates. July 17th-19th Weekend
01 Ant-Man $57.5 NEW WIDE
02 Minions $47 (cum. $213.4) Tim on the Minions phenom
03 Trainwreck $30 NEW WIDE
04 Inside Out $11 (cum. $305) Inside Out Articles
05 Jurassic World $10.4 (cum. $610.1) Jurassic Articles 
06 Terminator Genisys $5 (cum. $80) Review 
07 Magic Mike XXL $4.4 (cum. $58.5) Review
08 The Gallows $3.8 (cum. $17.8) 
09 Ted 2 $2.3 (cum. $77)
10 Mr Holmes $2.2 NEW LIMITED

Open Small Screen List Thread

Team Experience and I have been talking off blog about how better to handle TV coverage going forward. The disappointing Emmy nominations reminded us that while there's plenty of great work being done on TV, focusing on the Emmys turns out to be not even remotely the best way to honor it since they only have time for about 10 shows which they hang on to year after year. While we're never going to become The TV Experience (you need not worry movie-going cinephiles) nor will we be joining the traditional recapping game --- we experimented a bit but there's more than enough of that online and it wasn't really our thing --  but with the big screen / small screen / web screen lines are ever blurrier it's time to have at least a weekly column devoted to it.

Plus, the whole time I was watching Penny Dreadful Season 2, I was like 'Nathaniel, WHY are you not discussing this regularly with TFE readers? It's so gonzo and worth talking about!'

So our questions to you (yes even you who never comment - speak up) are:

1. What are your 10-15 favorite current shows that you (here's the key part of the question) most love to read about / discuss with others? 

2. What are your 10 favorite shows of all time (that are no longer airing)?

3. Which shows that are not endlessly obsessed over online (like, say, Game of Thrones), should be?