Curio: Alternative Oscar Art

Alexa here. It's that time of year, where artists and designers take a crack at creating alternative posters for the Oscar nominated films. As they do every year the BAFTAs commissioned posters for their nominated films; the Academy is at least featuring movie Valentines from illustrator Nan Lawson on its site but I wish they'd feature some alternative nominee posters too (grumble grumble).  To fill the void, here are some favorite designs I've spied floating around... 

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Review: 50 Shades of Grey

This review originally appeared in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad. It is reprinted here with a couple of minor adjustments.

SPOILER ALERT: Nothing happens in 50 SHADES OF GREY. Nothing at all. The property’s idiot savant genius may be how well it achieves this tabula rasa narrative and aesthetic zen state. Its slate is so blank that the audience is free to project whatever they’d like on to it including the drama. BYOE: Bring Your Own Everything. Perhaps this accounts for its enormous “event” like status at the box office. 

We begin with an embarrassingly botched interview between a young woman who we're supposed to think of as a frumpy plain jane, an unstylish deer in the headlights if you will, and the snappily dressed über intimidating businessperson who will decide her fate. (Think The Devil Wears Prada plus sexual tension minus jokes). Naive and beautiful young Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson), her name apparently downloaded from a romance novel generator, has gone to see the young billionaire Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) but she's not actually supposed to be there. She's doing it as a favor for her sluttier worldly BFF Karla (think streetwise Kit to impossibly virginal hooker Vivian in Pretty Woman) who happens to be sick on the day of her interview with the college's most successful alumnus/eligible bachelor. 

So our leads meet quite by accident. Is it fate? Will it get kinky? 

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Looking For Truth: Out of the City

Manuel here to offer this week's Looking recap filtered through a decidedly ranty diatribe on LGBT representation.

I was looking for glimpses of the city that had formed me. I didn’t hold out hope that a Hollywood product would show me anything I recognized beyond a consumer gay culture satisfied with glossy representations as a sign of progress. - Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

I couldn't let this week's recap go by without addressing that New Inquiry piece published last week about Looking which opens with a Rent anecdote and that quote above.

Sycamore's framing tells us everything about what I've elsewhere called "the burden of representation"; notice that every sentence starts with an authoritative "I" that is supposed to function as both a composite of those "I"s that Looking and the homonormative gay industrial complex displaces but which nevertheless points us to an individuality that would (and does) refuse an acknowledgement from such a representational vantage point. There is no hope that mainstream representations would present anything Sycamore would recognize; this is both the foundational claim and foregone conclusion of the piece. [More...]

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Beauty vs Beast: Little Drummer Bot

Howdy folks it's Jason from MNPP here, pulling myself out of the snow-heap I was buried under last week to drum up a new round of our "Beauty vs Beast" series, in which we ask you to pick sides between good and evil, movie-style. By this time next week the 87th Academy Awards will have come and gone in an explosion of gold-dust and gowns, so I figure I'll get one more contender in here before it's too late... and what better place to celebrate Oscar Season than with the Best Picture nominee that's all about the blood and the sweat and the brutality that goes into slicing and dicing art down to ecstatic perfection? Replace Miles Teller's drumsticks with little golden men and replace JK Simmons with, well, let's say Harvey Weinstein cuz you know why not, and you get the idea. Enter Whiplash, where losers need not apply.

poll by twiigs.com

You've got one week to pick your picks, and please do furiously hit up the comments, pounding your opinions yay or nay onto your keyboard so hard your fingers draw blood. Although I probably shouldn't say please? Fletcher doesn't like it if I say please.

PREVIOUSLY I go away for one week and before we know it Nathaniel's got us drowning in sexy gingers - he can't help himself! (And we're not complaining!) Last week's competition faced-off Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne two times over, and because we all love them both we were kind enough to spread the wealth - as the mother-son-lovers in Savage Grace it was Juli who came out on top, but it was Eddie and his Jupiter Ascending abs that dominated her goth stab in the dark in The Seventh Son. Said Nika of the latter, winning my heart with pure logic:

"I hated Eddie's performance in Jupiter Ascending, but, boy, he is shirtless. I can't resist."

Box Office: Grey Whips His Competition

Amir here, apologetic about the terrible pun in the headline, and bringing you the weekend’s numbers with a glass of wine and a pair of handcuffs.

Valentine’s Day just passed on by and more than any other year, it felt like a zenith for Capitalism and a nadir for humanity. 50 Shades of Grey came close to breaking February’s all-time record thanks to a massive audience who, going by the statistical reports of their age, mostly went to see what their mothers are secretly into. I won’t be watching the film until tomorrow night – I haven’t spent more than the cheap Tuesday ticket price on any film that won the weekend’s box office since… Toy Story 3? – so I’ll reserve my opinion on the film, but I’m genuinely looking forward to it. No, really. (Here's Nathaniel's review) Public response has been mixed, and if you, like Ana and me, are feeling masochistic, have a look at any conversation about the film on twitter and pull your hair in frustration at the short-sightedness, mob mentality and unbearable zero tolerance policies that are increasingly dominating our film discourse.

Sharp Dressed Men ruled the box office this weekend

TOP OF THE BOX OFFICE
Click on the highlighted titles for past articles on that film
01 50 SHADES OF GREY $85 new review
02 KINGSMEN: THE SECRET SERVICE $36.2  review soon
03 SPONGEBOB MOVIE $31.6 (cum. $94.8)
04 AMERICAN SNIPER $16.5 (cum. $304.2) 
05 JUPITER ASCENDING $9.2 (cum. $32.3) podcast
06 PADDINGTON $4.1 (cum. $62.3) 
07 SEVENTH SON  $4.1 (cum. $13.4) 
08 THE IMITATION GAME $3.5 (cum. $79.6) 
09 THE WEDDING RINGER $3.4 (cum. $59.7)
10 PROJECT ALMANAC $2.7 (cum. $19.5)
11 BLACK OR WHITE $2.5 (cum. $17.3)
12 THE BOY NEXT DOOR $1.7 (cum. $33.7)
13 STILL ALICE $1.7 (cum. $4.6) 

Kingsman: The Secret Service came a distant second with $35m, which is actually really strong. Add to that the international haul and this can be labelled a big success, especially considering that Colin Firth has only ever had two films open above 20 million, neither of which featured him in the lead. His highest opening ever, so congratulations to the Oscar-winning actor who might now have a spoof franchise on his hand.

Best Picture Watch: American Sniper is inching toward the top of the 2014 pile and by my estimation should be there in exactly 15 days. Whiplash finally passed the $10m mark, meaning that Winter’s Bone remains the last English language Oscar nominee to fail to break out of single digits (at $6.5m).

Toronto was at a whopping -41 degrees this weekend, so I didn't muster the courage to leave the house for a film, but I rewatched, among other things, The Grand Budapest Hotel, which is still my favourite of the best picture nominees by a wide margin. What did you watch this weekend?