The Linking Games: Catching Blog

Self Styled Siren has ten rental suggestions for your friends who are haven't yet become true movie fans - 10 classics anyone will love
The Cut Scarlett Johansson's runway looks for her 29th birthday
Vanity Fair Jason Statham on 'poncy actors' and stuntment deserving Oscars 
Variety Emma Thompson is just killing it in these campaign stops for Saving Mr Banks

 Awards Daily on a live performance of the score from All is Lost
The Film Doctor revisits Frances Ha and its French New Wave inspirations
MNPP The Moment I Fell For... Mark Ruffalo
In Contention I'm beginning to realize that Guy Lodge and I have very very different taste in actresses. He thinks Julia Roberts is the MVP of August: Osage County. (I will say this for her: she has the toughest role and she is really going for it.)
Gurus of Gold for this week's chart David Poland had us imagine what would happen if Oscar held a "Best Casting" prize and didn't differentiate between Adapted and Original Screenplay. FTR I love some of the other gurus choices for Casting more than my own picks but I was doing it how I thought Oscar might...
Variety Bunheads after glow... TV giant Amy Sherman Palladino joins other producers to bring Sutton Foster back to Broadway in the new musical Violet. Yes, please.
Variety finally a worthy sounding project for Oscar nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno, the biopic Castro's Daughter

All Hunger. All The Time
The Hairpin Closeted characters from The Hunger Games' Katniss Everdeen to everyone in The Great Gatsby
Monkey See and yet more thinkpieces. On gender types: Is Peeta essentially Katniss's girlfriend?
Atlantic Wire An Open Letter to Jena Malone (who does make a fabulous Johanna) 

Tweet of the Week
By name you've undoubtedly heard that Mia Wasikowska and Johnny Depp are both in for a sequel to Eyesore in Wonderland.

It's Official: Johnny Depp and Mia Wasikowska love money!!!

— Pat Healy (@Pat_Healy) November 23, 2013

 

What else is there to say really?*

*although don't let that stop you from having doing what you do in the comments

Review: Hunger Games Catches Wispy Fire

This review originally appeared in my column at Towleroad

Their clothes ignite but does the movie?

The Hunger Games is not without its charms. Which is a very strange thing to say about a beloved bloody genre franchise about children murdering each other... but then *I'm* not the one suggesting it become a family theme park or inspire a cosmetics line. (Both very sensible and in no way inappropriate spinoffs!) At the very least, as these things go, it is infinitely preferrable to the Twilight Saga. They're the immensely popular twin (non-identical) poster girls for the increasingly crowded subgenre of YA dystopian fantasies in which a mopey teen passively navigates treacherous waters (and woods) and love triangles with death looming all around her. Both series trade on grand suicidal gestures ('I'll die of depression/eat the poison berries, if I can't have my man... I swear!') but at least The Hunger Games is self aware. It performs these defiant adolescent gestures with a sly and stately sense of morbid theatricality instead of self-pitying angst and is generally smart enough to express ambivalence about its content beyond the binaries of Team This Boyfriend vs Team That Boyfriend.

Miley's guards capture Liam on the lamBut, yes, when we return to the deadly adventures of Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) for HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE she is flip-flopping between Boyfriends.

If you need a refresher it's like this: Katniss and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) were co-victors of the last Hunger Games, a futuristic take on gladiator battles of ancient history. [more]

Click to read more ...

Team FYC: "World War Z" for Sound Mixing

[Editor's Note: With the critics' awards just around the corner and awards campaigning already in full swing, Team Experience decided it was the right time to begin a series championing some of our favorite contenders lurking on the fringes of the conversation. In 'Team FYC' we're individually selecting favorites in all Oscar categories starting today. To kick things off, here's Andrew Kendall on "World War Z" - Amir]

You might expect a thriller about a zombie infection spreading across the world to depend most on its visuals for effectiveness but months after seeing Marc Foster's World War Z – a uniformly impressive summer blockbuster – the technical aspect I’m still thinking about is its excellent sound design.

“Film is a visual medium”, it’s one of those phrases we hear ad nauseam, but sound didn't become a fixture in motion pictures for no reason. The work a good sound mixing team does in augmenting mood in a film is something which cannot be overemphasised. Oscar aficionados will remember that the difference between sound editing and sound mixing is the former's focus on the recording and creation of specific sounds and the latter on the film's entire soundscape, i.e. the layering, mixing and necessary balancing of score with dialogue and created sound. World War Z benefits from good sound editing, but it is the layering of the various, often discordant, sounds which forms the sometimes terrifying milieu.

From the get-go the sound team is working effectively at building the tension, like the early city scene where the silence inside the family car gives way to the cacapohony of a city under siege. But it is later sequences, like the horrific build-up to a celebration gives way to horror when zombies scale a Jerusalem wall, or the unbelievably taut silences at the WHO facility in Wales that really thrill. The sound mixing becomes indicative of the film’s own ability to know when to go big and when to dial it back, and ultimately it’s the wisdom of knowing not just what to do but how and when that makes the sound mixing of World War Z an easy choice for an FYC.

The film has received some notice for having two women helm the soundmixing team. Lora Hirschberg is an Oscar winner for Inception, Anna Behlmer is a ten time Oscar nominee. It’d be great to see them credited for their excellent work here in a year when the Best Picture hopefuls look to be hogging all the attention in the craft categories.

Podcast: A Nebraskan Thanksgiving!

Happy Holiday Podcast!

In this week's episode, Nathaniel, Katey and Nick prepare for the impending Thanksgiving dinners by sharing our favorite turkeys (movies) and succulent hams (actors). We answer reader-submitted questions on topics ranging from Jennifer Lawrence's meteoric rise to fame, through Michael Fassbender's decision not to campaign for Oscar and on to confessions about nominated movies and performances we've never seen. Plus: Nathaniel and Katey share celebrity run-ins with Melissa Leo (Prisoners) and Nicole Holofcener (Enough Said)

But we begin by taking a black and white road trip to Best Picture hopeful Nebraska with Alexander Payne as tour guide. (Nick doesn't like the way he drives but Katey and Nathaniel enjoy the view) 

You can listen at the bottom of the post or download it on iTunes. Join in the conversation in the comments.

Nathaniel and Katey (& their friend Rob in the middle) November 2012

We also briefly mention last year's Fox Searchlight Holiday party (as well as this year's) and our friend Rob so I thought I'd include this photo that Katey and I took there a year ago. 

A Nebraskan Thanksgiving

Katniss Sets Box Office Ablaze

Amir here with the weekend's box office report. To the surprise of no one, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire came out on top, edging out not just this week's meagre competition, but also the original Hunger Games. Back then, it was surprising that the YA adaptation could open to more than $150m, but with the book series now even more universally recognized and a leading lady who is threatening to become Hollywood's biggest star, these numbers aren't shocking. Still, to put things in perspective, Catching Fire now has one of the top five best opening weekends of all time, neck and neck with The Dark Knight Rises for the best 2D-only opening.

Batman franchise level openings for Hunger Games

Staggering numbers. The question at this point is whether the film has enough fuel in its tank to beat Iron Man 3 to the year's top spot.

BOX OFFICE
01 THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE $161.1 *new* 
02 THOR: THE DARK WORLD $14.1 (cum. $167.8) Review  
03 THE BEST MAN HOLIDAY  $12.5 (cum. $50.3) Discussion 
04 DELIVERY MAN $8.2 *new* 
05 FREE BIRDS $5.3 (cum. $48.5)
06 LAST VEGAS $4.4  (cum. $53.9)
07 JACKASS PRESENTS: BAD GRANDPA $3.4 (cum. $95.4)
08 GRAVITY $3.3 (cum. $245.5) Many Previous Posts 
09 12 YEARS A SLAVE $2.8 (cum. $29.3) Slavery in Cinema & Previous Discussions
10 DALLAS BUYERS CLUB $2.7 (cum. $6.4) Podcast & Review

The weekend's other debut is the critically dismissed Vince Vaughn joint, Delivery Man, about a man whose countless sperm donations in youth have led to countless children. I haven't seen it but I found Starbuck, the original Quebecois film this is based on, genuinely funny and engaging a couple of years ago at TIFF, where it was the runner up for the People's Choice Award. 

Beyond that, the main talking points are the buzzy Oscar contenders, all present in the top twenty at this point, unless you count Philomena a top contender. Dallas Buyers Club entered the top ten, 12 Years a Slave continues to hold well - am I the only one surprised by this film's success? Nebraska is also doing well (though Alexander Payne's approval ratings with critics continues to baffle me). But I think the real story is that All Is Lost has now reached almost $5 million,  pleasantly strong for a film with virtually no marketing hooks. I wasn't a big fan of the film, but I can't begrudge J.C. Chandor his success. He's an exciting talent.

Aside from Nebraska, I caught up with Terms and Conditions May Apply, which is on Oscar's documentary longlist and is actually really captivating, rewatched the superb Brazilian Oscar submission Neighboring Sounds, and caught up with an Iranian film called When Everybody Was Asleep, which is quite possibly the message-iest of all message-y movies. What did you all see?