Oscar Volley It's Back
Oscar Charts Updated!
Sunday, April 26, 2015 at 9:08PM Who’s ever fallen in love with an android?”
So wonders the train captain, jovially dismissive of his staff of beautiful female robots aboard a train leaving the futuristic district of 2046. The answer, as we know from the annals of cinematic and literary history, is many a man, and Tak (Takuya Kimura) is merely the latest.
Dave continues our artificial intelligence celebration after the jump...
Sunday, April 26, 2015 at 5:00PM Tribeca ends tonight but we'll have a few more reviews for you as the team finishes up. Here's Joe Reid...
After the phenomenal success of Bachelorette (creatively if not commercially; I'm still fuming that it never got the promotional push it deserved), I expected Leslye Headland's follow-up film to have that same dark-heart-with-teeth approach to the tried and true "can men and women be friends" comedy. Intriguingly, a few things about that statement turned out to be not the case. The humor in Sleeping with Other People is still incredibly sharp, but where Bachelorette was as hard as nails when it came to female singlehood in a wedding-drenched world, Sleeping with Other People puts its beating heart on display.
Which isn't to say Headland has gone soft. [More...]
Sunday, April 26, 2015 at 1:31PM 
Oscar Isaac Dance Off to celebrate EX-MACHINA's wide release. Who'll join us?The concept of characters that don't age insures of at least one thing: they don't usually get to have sequels without looking ridiculous. Adaline may never age but her actressy vessell Blake Lively will. Still Blake had a good opening for what looked like a ridiculous movie so kudos to her! In other box office news, Furious 7 continued to the success story of the film year having already cracked a billion worldwide and bound to be more succesful domestically than anything released last year since it will soon surpass Katniss and that Sniper.
The happiest news for cinephiles is the success of A24's thinky sexy sci-fi oddity Ex Machina as it went into wide release with a per screen average as good as most of its competition. Russell Crowe's directorial debut (he also stars) The Water Diviner kicked off its US run without much fanfare but still managed over a million in limited release.
WIDE RELEASE
01 Furious 7 $18.2 (cum. $320.5) Review
02 Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 $15.5 (cum. $43.9)
03 Age of Adaline $13.3 NEW Trailer discussion
04 Home $8.3 (cum. $153.7) the rise and fall of Dreamworks
05 Unfriended $6.2 (cum. $25.1)
06 Ex-Machina $5.4 (cum. $6.9) Review
Russell Crowe seems pretty proud of himself.
LIMITED RELEASE - EXCLUDING MOVIES THAT WERE ONCE WIDE
01 The Water Diviner (AUS) 320 Theaters $1.2 NEW
02 Brotherly Love (US) 200 Theaters $.2 NEW
03 Clouds of Sils Maria (France) 71 Theaters $.2 (cum. $.5) Articles
04 Child 44 (UK) 510 Theaters $.1 (cum. $1)
05 Wild Tales (Argentina) 58 Theaters $.1 (cum. $2.5) Review
06 The Salt of the Earth (France/Brazil/Italy) 47 Theaters $.09 (cum. $.5) Conversation
07 What We Do in the Shadows (NZ) 18 theaters $.07 (cum. $3.2) Review
08 Kung Fu Killer (Hong Kong) 28 Theaters $.06 NEW
09 Adult Beginners (US) 10 Theaters $.04 NEW
10 Seymour: An Introduction (US) 378 Theaters $.03 (cum. $.5) Review
What did you see this weekend?
Any of these 16 movies listed or did you watch movies at home?
Sunday, April 26, 2015 at 9:55AM 
Tim here. Today's the 75th birthday of Giorgio Moroder, pioneering electronic-dance-pop mastermind, and winner of four Grammys. But this being a film site, what we're interested in is his work in movie scoring, for which he won three Oscars. And what stellar work it is!
Moroder's soundtracks - and even more than that, his songs - are absolutely definitive. Any child of the '70s or '80s can't help but associate Moroder's compositions with a certain kind of glossy, high-concept spectacle. Moroder's sleek, borderline-campy music brought pop-art grandeur to everything from the political drama Midnight Express (his Best Score Oscar) to the smutty musical Flashdance and from the kitschy Superman III to the sparkling black fantasy The NeverEnding Story. His compositions for these films are the opposite of timeless; they are emphatically and proudly mired in a specific period of pop culture history.
But for the same reason, his scores and songs are the best imaginable fit for the giddy, playfully shallow cinema of that decade, bringing the energy and dazzle of the first years of the Blockbuster Era to life with style and flair whose period-specific artificiality is their greatest strength, not any kind of weakness. But let's allow the man's music to speak for itself. Here are my three personal favorite from his 80s soundscapes.
From Cat People (1982): "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)", later used to magnificent effect in Inglourious Basterds
From Flashdance (1983): "Flashdance... What a Feeling" (his second Oscar, the first for Best Song)
From Top Gun (1986): "Danger Zone" (he won his third Oscar for "Take My Breath Away" from the same movie)
What are your favorite Moroder film scores and songs?
Saturday, April 25, 2015 at 9:00PM Previously on Daredevil. It felt lonely reviewing each of the first seven episodes since there wasn't much discussion here. Presumably those of you who were interested have now finished this series so here are much quicker thoughts on the last half of the season as well as some overall takeaways and dreams for Season 2.
1.8 "Shadows in the Glass"
We might safely call this episode "Daredevil Origins: Kingpin" but it is admirable how deeply invested the show wants you to be in its characters, even the villains. We begin with a shoutout to "Rabbit in a Snowstorm" and we spend the entire pre-title prologue in the silent company of Wilson Fisk who sees his younger damned self in the mirror. That's before we segueway into his backstory but structurally it's a very smart episode as we see Vanessa disrupting his routines... but in a way that's good for him. Daredevil decides to trust Ben Ulrich but Fisk throws them all for a loop when he comes out publicly as the city's secret philanthropist. B+
final episodes and hopes for season 2 after the jump...
Charlie Cox, Daredevil, Emmy, Netflix, Rosario Dawson, TV, superheroes