The Rise and Fall of DreamWorks Animation, Part 2: Fall

UPDATE 3/29: Well! Now Home has gone and ruined my entire beautiful narrative arc by wildly outperforming even the most rosily optimistic predictions during its opening weekend, with an estimated $54 million. With that total in its pocket, even under the worst imaginable scenario, it should still glide past $100 million in the United States with ease - $150 mil is certainly in play - and combined with its sterling overseas performance so far, it shouldn't have any problem turning a profit for DreamWorks. The day of reckoning has been put off.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. As DreamWorks's only 2015 release, the studio won't be able to build up any momentum, but it gives the powers that be a good chance to breathe easily and take a good long time to re-work their future plans. Hopefully the right lessons are learned from this ("Non-white girls can sell movies, too") and not the easier wrong ones ("That absolute piece of crap made us money! We don't ever have to try again!), and hopefully it will encourage this and all other animation companies to experiment a little bit more with new properties instead of just retrenching to sequels every time someone says "boo". -Tim

Tim here. Last week, we took a tour through the peak years of DreamWorks Animation, during which time the House That Jeffrey Katzenberg's Hatred of His Old Bosses at Disney Built established itself as the biggest gorilla in American feature animation. And as 2010 dawned, the studio was on the verge of a remarkable achievement. That year, DreamWorks released three feature-length theatrical films – the most any studio had ever produced. It proved to be a great year to do so, an extraordinary year for animation: five of the year's top ten films at both the domestic and worldwide box office were animated, an unmatched record.

That, of course, is exactly the problem. Having perfected a factory for producing animated features that anyone could follow, DreamWorks was as responsible as any studio for the glut of animation that hit in 2009 and has continued largely unabated ever since. By making its products too ubiquitous, the studio was making them routine and increasingly easy to ignore.

Not that it was apparent from the first of the year's releases, How to Train Your Dragon, which netted DreamWorks its best reviews ever and remains its highest-grossing Stateside release without the word "Shrek" in the title. [More...]

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A Glorious Geeky Gospel-Infused Pop Culture Collision

Grant Gustin & Jesse L Martin in "The Flash"I wasn't aware that Jesse L Martin, one of the best singing actors, was hoping to finance a musical short for himself but he is. The world collectively fell for his voice on the Original Cast Recording of "Rent." David E Kelley let him sing fairly regularly on "Ally McBeal" (those bar scenes made full use of the many musical alums in Ally McBeal's cast) and then he reprised his star-making role for the ill-conceived Rent movie. Since then he tends to be cast in non-singing roles -- even in musical shows like "Smash"! He's currently the adoptive father / police detective hero on CW's hit "The Flash" and he doesn't get to sing on that show either.

But listen to this -- here he is with two of his current co-stars on "The Flash" (Carlos Valdes and Rick Cosnett) to sing the theme song for Joss Whedon's "Firefly" It's a thank you to Joss who donated to their collective kickstarter project. A fourth co-star is also involved in this would be short (Patrick Sabongui who plays the incidentally gay police captain boss on the series) but he's not in this thank you video. Maybe he sings, too?

Let this double as a cry for action aimed at the CW writers room: The Flash obviously and desperately needs a musical episode. Make it happen in Season 2. To its very entertaining credit your show already embraces "anything can happen" insanity (Gorilla Grodd, hi!) so if Grant Gustin can't sing, just give the other guys all the songs. Make it work.

UPDATE: Grant Gustin can very much sing. (Sorry, I stopped watching "Glee" before he arrived and have never regretted the decision). A musical episode must happen.

Why are actors always so multi-talented? It's unfair. And wonderful.

Best Limited or Cameo Role. The Women

In the imaginary awards ceremony we hold for the Film Bitch Awards each year (when: January through March; where: Nathaniel's brain and on this website) Missi Pyle as "Ellen Abbott" announces the nominees for the limited or cameo role categories. With three or four sharp scenes in Gone Girl she's too big for this category but she's good TV, you must agree. Getting the balance right for this category is tricky. Which roles are too big to fit? Many of the people who immediately popped to mind this year as "cameos" were really were more than that. Oprah Winfrey is great in that crucial opening expose about voter suppression in Selma but she also marches, gets arrested and her throughline doubles as the whole narrative arc of the movie, so we couldn't really include her. Lindsay Duncan in Birdman, was another close call, but we opted to include due to only two scenes even though she's the focus.

We take this seriously y'all. As proof look at all these fine actresses we were considering... 

Top left to right by row: Karin Myrenberg (Force Majeure), Charlotte Rampling (Young & Beautiful), Lesley Manville (Mr Turner); Jena Malone (Inherent Vice); Alison Pill (Snowpiercer); Lindsay Duncan (Birdman); Hong Chau (Inherent Vice); Sela Ward (Gone Girl); Anamaria Marinca (Fury); Menna Trusslar (Pride); Tilda Swinton (Grand Budapest Hotel); Annie Funke (A Most Violent Year); Uma Thurman (Nymphomaniac Vol. 1); Casey Rose Wilson (Gone Girl); Kathleen Rose Perkins (Gone Girl); Karina Fernandez (Pride)

And here are the nominees, wrapping up nominations in all categories for the 15th annual Film Bitch Awards. The nomination stats are at the bottom of the "best scenes" page if you're interested. Gold, Silver and Bronze medals in all categories will be handed out this weekend.

Women's Pictures - Ida Lupino's The Trouble With Angels

“The sex of a director doesn’t mean a hoot. The one all-important thing is talent. Somehow it has evolved that directing is a man’s profession. A woman has a tough, almost impossible time breaking down this case barrier. Miss Arzner managed it. Ida is doing it now.”

When Rosalind Russell said this to reporters on the set of The Trouble With Angels, neither she nor Ida Lupino could have predicted that this would actually be Ida’s last film. So how exactly did a writer/director who’d made her name on small budget social message pictures end up directing a Hayley Mills comedy co-starring Rosalind Russell as a mother superior? And who could have predicted that a noir director could do comedy?

When Ida Lupino’s production company The Filmmakers shuttered its windows in the mid-1950s, Lupino moved to the burgeoning world of television to continue directing. Then (as now), TV was a much more open to female creators, and so Lupino flourished. She directed in a variety of genres, from comedy (Gilligan’s Island) to thriller (Alfred Hitchcock Presents) to Westerns (Have Gun - Will Travel). In many ways, Lupino was already the ideal television director. TV shows were shot quickly, on a budget, and often on location - just like Lupino’s early pictures. What Lupino got from TV - besides creative control and consistent work - was a chance to expand and diversify her previously narrow (but successful) body of work. And all that new experience helped when her friend William Frye handed her the script to a Catholic schoolgirl comedy in early 1965.

Hijinks and nunsense after the jump.

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Rebel Assignments: Film Directors + Madonna

David Fincher winning an MTV Movie Award for Se7en (1995) he was already an MTV darling at the Music Video AwardsA reader by the name of David recently asked which direct we wished would do a video from Madonna's "Rebel Heart". Given that David Fincher, now a reknowned auteur, came to fame via some of Madonna's best, it's a great question. More movie directors really ought to moonlight with music videos intead of just graduating from them. It's a unique form, basically both a musical and a short, that gives directors the chance to work faster and looser and play with ideas that they maybe couldn't risk in a feature without a test run.

Successful directors ought to donate their services at least once to either an upcoming band they want every to haer or a legendary artist whose work has meant a lot to them. So we're assigning a director to each Madonna song on her terrific new record "Rebel Heart" in order to pretend we've been gifted a video album specifically for Madonna fans and cinephiles alike.

It's a Venn Diagram niche, sure, but go with it.

Since the first track and first single "Living for Love" already got a fine toreador and minotaur themed music video -- and it's good if minimalist --  we should leave it be.

No no no. Scratch that.

"LIVING FOR LOVE"
Recreated by Gus Van Sant
We're completists. So we gotta try for the whole album. Gus Van Sant likes a good experiment and he can't just do a traditional "remake" so how about a shot-for-shot reinterpretation with a few inserts as he is prone to do. Madonna likes a good rolling cloud as much as the next Guy Gus (see Frozen/Ray of Light)

"DEVIL PRAY"
Assigned to Lee Daniels
This song sounds conservative but its lyrics are straight up messy mixing drowning metaphors, spiritual yearning, religiosity, the devil and a list of hallucinogenic drugs. So I think the only proper guide is the current king of absolutely fascinating messes, Lee Daniels. Look at the performances he got from Mo'Nique, Kidman, Oprah, and Taraji. Please get your hands on Madonna, you crazy beautiful man, and shake her up!

more assignments follow...

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