ICYMI & August's 'Year of the Month'

Since I spent the last week completely absorbed in Supporting Actress Smackdown '73 (with a side of Into the Woods spazzing) I didn't have as much time to write. I'm super proud of this month's two part event (written & podcasted) and I'm so tempted to make Dana Delany's impression of Sylvia Sidney my new ringtone. I thank StinkyLulu for letting me be the Whitney to his Dolly. But here's a handful of other highlights you may have missed if you too had a busy week where one project stole your life. The team jumped in since I was smackdowning.

A Dame to Shill For cosign Jason's bigscreen/smallscreen lust for Eva Green's talent
Bergman's Ghosts Cries and Whispers is the greatest haunted house movie. But who or what is doing the haunting?
Is Lucy racist? Matthew refuses to see it
Hepburn's Hair Anne Marie shares a hairography theory
A Most Wanted Man & Guardians of the Galaxy reviewed. Michael is joining me on weekly review duties so you get two each week now + the podcast reviews

UP NEXT: I just got a new computer (it's so big I could trap Jeff Bridges inside it for decades!) and though the size of the screen is beyond glorious and will help with my writing and whatnot (particularly the whatnot) immensely, it rendered many of the ancient software programs I use to create the various entertainments on this here site unusable. Sad face. I will try to recover quickly.

Liz whips her hair back and forth

 But in August you can expect Emmy coverage & Oscar season warmups, The Giver, Love is Strange, the final episodes of "Hit Me" (cannot wait for Suddenly Last Summer and Gone With the Wind!), Anne Marie on Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and of course a celebration of 1989, our "year of the month" culminating in the Smackdown on August 31st.

• Brenda Flicker, My Left Foot
• Anjelica Huston, Enemies: A Love Story
• Lena Olin, Enemies: A Love Story
• Julia Roberts, Steel Magnolias
• Dianne Wiest, Parenhood

So queue up those four films and five performances and get your votes in (scale of 1 to 5 hearts) by August 24th. What other 1989 films should we discuss this month? 

Studio Ghibli is taking a break

Tim here. The story over the weekend as far as popcorn movies go might have been the monstrous over-performance of Guardians of the Galaxy, but for those of us who like a little more personal artistry and a little less big-budget sizzle out of our movies, Sunday's biggest news was the apparent revelation by Toshio Suzuki, general manager of Japan's Studio Ghibli, that the company is ceasing to produce animated films.

Or maybe not. The internet, in its glorious need for news, News, NEWS, has perhaps jumped the gun on some ambiguous words that have slightly different weight in Japanese than in English. They're merely talking about restructuring and re-evaluating their business and production strategies in the wake of Hayao Miyazaki's retirement. That certainly could mean that they're going to close; it doesn't mean they've closed yet (though that "yet" might well be nothing but diplomacy talking). What is certainly the case is that following the newly-released in Japan When Marnie Was There, Ghibli has no future plans involving animated features. So even if it's not The End, it's not a very good day for lovers of animation or just top-quality world cinema.

While we stew and wait for more news on the Ghibli front, I'd like to invite everyone to share their favorite movies from the studio. I'll start off: if I wanted to showcase to a newbie the breadth of Studio Ghibli's artistry (and today of all days, that's exactly what I want to do), these would be the five movies I'd pick:

• My Neighbor Totoro (1988) - a generous children's fable filled with a love of nature
• Grave of the Fireflies (1988) - a deadly serious examination of the human cost of war
• Porco Rosso (1992) - a clever spin on an animal fable and loving tribute to the beauty of flight
• Whisper of the Heart (1995) - a quiet, beautiful story of adolescent curiosity and self-knowledge
• Spirited Away (2002) - the perfect gateway drug: bold visions, fearless storytelling, impeccably clear characters

What are your favorite Studio Ghibli films? And how sad are you going to be if this really is the end?

Guardians of the Box Office. What Did You See This Weekend?

Amir here, with the weekend’s box office report. As expected, Guardians of the Galaxy topped the week’s chart, though it wasn’t quite expected that it would do this well. In true Marvel fashion, the previous record for the month of August has been blown up with a big bang, what with Guardians taking in nearly $25m more than Bourne Ultimatum. As I’m sure you know, I haven’t yet seen the film. Nathaniel has but is not enthused. 

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE
01 GUARDIANS OF GALAXY $94 *NEW* Review
02 LUCY $18.2 (cum. $79.5)  
03 GET ON UP $14 *NEW*
04 HERCULES $10.7 (cum. $52.3)
05 DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES $8.7 (cum. $189.3) Reviewish & Podcast
06 PLANES: FIRE AND RESCUE $6.4 (cum. $47.5)
07 THE PURGE: ANARCHY $5.5 (cum. $62.9)
08 SEX TAPE $3.5 (cum. $33.9) 
09 AND SO IT GOES $3.3 (cum. $10.4)
10 A MOST WANTED MAN $3.3 (cum. $7) Review

The other big opening of the weekend, the James Brown biopic Get On Up finished below Lucy, faring slightly better than that Clint Eastwood musical biopic no one liked earlier this year.

Just outside the top ten, there is Boyhood, now IFC Studio’s third best selling film of all time. Here’s an interesting statistic: My Big Fat Greek Wedding, IFC’s best selling film, has grossed more than all the studio’s other 331 films, combined. Even more mind-blowing than that fact is the below possibility:

I asked Richard Linklater about a Boyhood sequel. His answer was fantastic. pic.twitter.com/YV1OfgPBam

— Simon Crook (@sicrook) August 2, 2014

The prospect of a sequel to Boyhood doesn’t excite me much, but entertaining the thought that it could be in some way related to the Before trilogy is really messing with my head and I like it!

Other than Guardians, only two films boasted a better per screen average than Boyhood: Magic in the Moonlight and Calvary, a new limited release with a surprisingly strong opening and quite limited wide potential, I imagine. Otherwise, the small market remained relatively quiet. And so did I. August should be the month when I get back into gear and hit the theaters, but for now, these are all just names to me.

What did you watch this weekend?

Review: Guardians of the Galaxy

This review originally appeared in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

The Marvel Universe movies could have not existed before Right Now. Yet, for all the technological advances and computer wizardry that have made The Avengers and the like possible, the magic still comes from the humanity of the actors. No amount of technical prowess can make you care about Iron Man if a great actor hasn’t sold you on the bravado and change of heart of the man inside the suit. Captain America’s shield and super strength are great but his adventures don’t work if Chris Evans’s star turn isn’t so perfectly pitched to invoke fantasies of the nobility of a bygone American era. Without the humanity it’s just Trans4rmers and nobody wants that. (Shut up. I’m in denial about those billions). With Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel Studios has gone Cosmic opening up a whole new movie wing for their ever-expanding universe. As they leave Earth behind, have they found a way to retain the humanity?

Yes and no. But not in the way you might expect.

It helps of course, on a superficial level that the movie begins on Earth and shamelessly pushes collective 80s nostalgia buttons by making Peter Quill, our hero, relentlessly nostalgic about that era. We first meet him as a little boy in 1988 and his most cherished possession twenty some years later when the movie takes place isn’t any of his impressive weapons or starship but a walkman with a cassette tape called “Awesome Mix Tape Volume 1”. It also helps that Quill is played by the endearingly simple Andy from “Parks and Recreation” a.k.a. Chris Pratt. Pratt’s new body may be imposingly hard, with all its cuddly body weight chiseled off, but those years of familiarity have given him a phantom comfy-ness. 

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Linker by the Dozen

Salon talks to Patricia Clarkson about her career and why she never married or had kids
Pajiba 25 best triple exclamation point quotes from (recent) movie history. I added the (recent) because you know how people do with lists. It's always our lifetimes + one classic. But it's a fun list
Daily Telegraph interviews actress Rachel Griffiths on juggling career and family. "You can't win" she says
Antagony & Ecstasy remembers Eyes Wide Shut and wonders what would have happened if Stanley Kubrick had had more time with it

Gawker Bill Murray doing voicework for Jungle Book as "Baloo"
Film Stage first images from Rosewater, Jon Stewart's directorial debut
Towleroad a review of The Way He Looks. So bummed I missed this Brazilian romance at NewFest. Keep hearing good things
/Film Harry Shum Jr will co-star in the as yet untitled Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon sequel (it's based on the book Iron Knight Silver Vase but I'd be VERY surprised if they kept that title). So glad he found a post-Glee role. Love him.
Awards Circuit polled their whole staff on '10 greatest performances'... but i don't do 100s of click throughs to see all the lists so someone tell me who has the best taste ;)

super world
Comics Alliance on the importance of Superman's forelock curl
Variety looking back at Marvel's Phase 1 and Phase 2
Kate Mara Fantastic Four is a wrap. Cute photo of the cast 

...and finally. 8 Bit Video attacks The Avengers. These things are so cute but I long for them to do something less expected than a blockbuster action movie. You know?

I apologize in advance for this but why does my brain always want such incongruous things as 8 Bit Far From Heaven: Help Cathy retrieve her flying scarf. Find Cathy's philandering gay husband. Train is about to depart. Or 8 Bit 12 Yea-- no, too soon. 8 Bit Black Swan Slam your psycho mother's fingers in the door for points. Pirouette until you transform into a bird. Kill your doppelganger.   8 Bit The Hours: Think you can buy the flowers yourself? Load your pockets with stones. How long can you stay underwater? Make a birthday cake while a need child looks on. GO!