April Showers: Midnight Express (1978)

Waterworks some nights at 11. This one is from the vaults from the first season. But it's worth a revisit as the film is currently available on Netflix Instant Watch.

I've always been a little bit a lot perplexed by the famous shower scene in Alan Parker's Midnight Express (1978). I'm not exactly sure why it's in the movie. Midnight Express strongest asset is arguably its expressive physicality and gritty tactile quality; you feel like you're right there in the grotty hellish Turkish prison, sweating and suffering along with Billy Hayes (Brad Davis). But the sexual vibes coming off of the movie are at times unfathomable. Is it gay? Is it bi? Is it straight? Is it just horny? Or is its ambiguous eroticism simply a by-product of casting a star as carnally charismatic as Brad Davis in the lead role?

As warm up to the famous shower scene we get a montage detailing the friendship of Billy and Erich (Norbert Weisser) a fellow prisoner. They've been in this hellhole for years. We see them do yoga togethe and bathe each other. They even duet on a private meditation mantra...

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Box Office: Cameron Diaz Still Sells Tickets

Hey kids, it's Nathaniel. Amir is busy Hot Doc'ing it up in Toronto (yet another springtime festival!) so I'm here to quickly recite the box office chart. The producers of the Christmas release Annie (previously discussed) must have breathed a huge sigh of relief at the box office receipts for The Other Woman in which Diaz and her two new frenemies (Leslie Mann & Kate Upton) plot to destroy Jaime Lannister who is sleeping with all of them on the down low. Yep, people will stay come out in droves for Cameron Diaz in comic mode. Annie will open big... it's got several marketing hooks even before you get to audience love for funny Cam. 

I haven't yet seen The Other Woman yet but I hear it's quite regressive. Consider this scathing provocatively titled review at The Stranger...

The point of this movie is not sisterhood, but making sure women band together in the name of heterosexual competition. Cameron Diaz is too sexy, Leslie Mann is too frumpy, and Kate Upton is boobs, but boobs that are not good enough to keep a man goddammit. Nicki Minaj joins this horror show as the Sassy Black Secretary™ (it’s 2014, right?)...

THE TOP TEN
01 THE OTHER WOMAN $24.7 *NEW* 
02 CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER $16 (cum. $224.8) Review
03 HEAVEN IS FOR REAL $13.8 (cum. $51.9) 
04 RIO 2 $13.6 (cum. $96.1) 
05 BRICK MANSIONS $9.6 *NEW* 
06 TRANSCENDENCE $4.1 (cum. $18.4)  
07 THE QUIET ONES $4 *NEW* 
08 BEARS $3.6 (cum. $11.1)
09 DIVERGENT $3.6 (cum. $139.4) Review
10 A HAUNTED HOUSE 2 $3.2 (cum. $14.2)

In addition to Tribeca Film Festing, I went to Estelle Parson's new play The Velocity of Autumn in the hopes of catching at least one potential Tony Best Actress nominee before the announcement. But get this: Estelle called out sick so I was stuck with an understudy! The understudy wasn't bad and I liked the play about a very old very cantankerous lady armed with molotov cocktails in her Park Slope brownstone because her children want to put her in a nursing home. And yet it's so obviously a star vehicle (there are only two characters, Tony winner Stephen Spinella plays her son) that I was missing the expert comic timing of the Oscar-winning Parsons throughout. She would have maximized the punchlines and elevated it. The understudy switcheroo hasn't happened to me in a long time though so I made my peace with the theater gods quickly 'bout it. They've been good to me for the past several years and we've all called out sick from work in our lifetimes.

But I still fear the Tony nominations on Tuesday because I've seen like nothing that will be nominated this year. I was concentrating on Off Broadway too much I guess.

WHAT DID YOU SEE THIS WEEKEND? 

Tribeca: Three Bizarro Twin Gay Films

Tribeca wraps tonight but we're still writing. Here's your host Nathaniel on three LGBT offerings. Portions of this piece were originally published in his column at Towleroad

The Tribeca Film Festival, founded in 2002 at least in part to help revitalize the Tribeca neighborhood after 9/11, has migrated and grown over the years; in 2014 I saw almost everything in Chelsea. An apt location because there seemed to be a lot of gay movies. Here are three, the first two of which seem like warring fraternal twins and the other which may or may not have psychotic doppleganger issues.

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Tribeca: Women Behaving Badly

Coverage of the Tribeca Film Festival continues with abstew's thoughts on 'Lucky Them' and 'Bright Days Ahead'

Film is packed with male anti-heroes, men with arrested development, or the classic older man / younger woman love affair that at this point you'd have to do something completely out of the box for it to feel different or unique. While those storylines more often than not seem to carry a male sensibility about them, that hasn't stopped a couple of new films attempting to take those tried and true scenarios and mix them up with a feminine point of view. The latest films to do so (Lucky Them and Bright Days Ahead) have a couple of female directors (Megan Griffiths and Marion Vernoux) giving their leading ladies (Toni Collette and Fanny Ardant) a chance to indulge in their inner (wo)man-child. Unfortunately, in both cases, the gender swap doesn't bring any new insight. 

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Tribeca: On Distribution Anxiety and Stag Getaways

Tribeca coverage continues with Nathaniel on "Loitering With Intent" and "The Bachelor Weekend".

The way I see it, distributors pick up movies for one or more of four reasons, all of which are market driven. 1) The Shop-worn Genre. There's a reason so many low budget horror movies are made each year - the audience is faithful. There are virtually no other genres with audiences that loyal but faith-based movies are making a case for themselves right about now. Variations on this include any recognizable type, though: the murder mystery, the buddy comedy, sci-fi, etcetera 2) The Name Factor. If you can pin your marketing on recognizable faces or names in front of or behind the camera, you have a decent shot at getting media attention and then, goes the thinking, selling tickets. 3) Marketing Hook, Easily Identifiable. This is where  "high concept," the term being popularized in the 80s for movies you can sum up in one sentence, comes in. 4) Passionate Advocacy / Prestige. This one is harder to see coming but sometimes deep pocketed distributors do pick up films just because they love them and want them seen. Although even this passion is suspect because oft times the goal isn't wholly altruistic but part of the whole "prestige/awards" marketing hook and resume dreams.

But, real talk: The bulk of festival movies will never spend much time, if any, in regular movie theaters...

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