Saturday, June 15, 2013 at 6:27PM 
This is the entry to a kino here in Norway. My friends didn't let me go in *sniffle* Be back to NYC and thus movies tonight. What did I miss these past ten days? Fill me in! What have you been seeing?
Thursday, June 13, 2013 at 11:08PM 
Tim here, in celebration of the silver anniversary of one of the best movies on the 1980s. On June 15, 1988, Bull Durham opened, immediately becoming one of the best-loved romantic comedy/sports movie hybrids ever made, and a quarter of a century on, it seemed like the ideal moment to look back to see just how well the quintessentially ‘80s movie has aged.
The answer, I am happy to say, is: pretty darn well, notwithstanding the set-in-stone timestamp of any movie that features Kevin Costner as a romantic lead (or features Tim Robbins looking like a 12-year-old). The chief appeal of Bull Durham remains exactly what it was 25 years ago: it really does offer something for everybody, in the words of the cliché.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013 at 4:39PM Hey kids. It's Nathaniel just checking in from my vacation. I hope you miss me but I'm loving this very unplugged trip -- today I lept from a dock in remote Norwegian village into the freezing cold ocean. Invigorating!
Anyway... when I arrived in Bergen Monday afternoon I was surprised to see Wenche Foss, beloved Norwegian postwar actress staring back at me on the Tarmac.
It got me to thinking about which actresses we idolize enough in America to give them this sort of treatment. Not that we do but IF we did as we should? Who would it be? Besides Dame Meryl of course?
Scandinavia Tuesday, June 11, 2013 at 7:00AM Alexa here, following up on Glenn's Cyndi Lauper post. I've been a Cyndi follower and sometime apologist (see: my previous support of Vibes) since grade school, so Sunday night was a big night. Now if only we could conjure the perfect role for her to complete her EGOT; perhaps Jonathan Demme could harness the power of her marvelous quirk? For now, here are some Cyndi creations to celebrate her Kinky Boots.
Illustrated poster by Nour Tohmé.
Kinky Boots support at the Keep-Calm-O-Matic.
Cyndi doll art and trading cards after the jump...
Curio, Cyndi Lauper, Kinky Boots, dolls Monday, June 10, 2013 at 4:56PM It's Tim, taking over Monday box office duties for Nathaniel while he's away, so if I've made some little formatting mistake, apologies in advance.
It says all there is to say about the cool state of the box office right now (nobody wants to put something out just in time to have Man of Steel cut its legs off next week) that the big story is a horror movie with toxic word of mouth hugely outperforming expectations. Truthfully, though, $34 million for the Ethan Hawke home invasion thriller The Purge is pretty impressive: it more than doubled the open weekend of Hawke's last horror picture, Sinister, while blasting past pretty much every comparable film in recent memory. That's what a drought in the marketplace will do for you: horror fans will turn out to see new wide releases if it's been a long time, even if the new release in question looks completely awful. I know whereof I speak.
Meanwhile, Wedding Crashers reunion/feature length Google ad The Internship has made exactly the non-splash that could be predicted based on how much nobody in the entire world was talking about the movie, though it's worth pointing out that it's not particularly out of line with the recent films Vince Vaugn and Owen Wilson have made seperately in the past few years. Also, Fast & Furious 6 broke the $200 million mark before Star Trek Into Darkness, which is a statistic that I don't think anybody would have willing to predict at the start of the summer.
BOX OFFICE TOP TEN
01 THE PURGE $34.1 *NEW*
02 FAST & FURIOUS 6 $19.2 (cum. $202.8)
03 NOW YOU SEE ME $19.0 (cum. $60.9)
04 THE INTERNSHIP $17.3 *NEW*
05 EPIC $11.9 (cum. $83.9)
04 STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS $11.4 (cum. $199.9) The Dumbing Down of Star Trek
07 AFTER EARTH $10.7 (cum. $46.1) M Night Shyamalan's Fall
08 THE HANGOVER PART III $7.3 (cum. $102.3)
09 IRON MAN THREE $5.8 (cum. $394.3) Reviewed & Podcasted
10 THE GREAT GATSBY $4.2 (cum. $136.1) Reviewed & Dreamt About
In limited release, Frances Ha and Before Midnight are both purring along nicely (both were up from last weekend, in fact!), though neither they nor anything else came close to breaking into the top 10. The only prominent new film, Joss Whedon's modern-dress version of Much Ado About Nothing, put up a strong but not mind-blowing $34,388 per-screen average at five theaters, and didn't even crack the top 20, though its nationwide expansion on June 21 ought to improve its fortunes considerably, while giving all of us who don't live on the coasts a chance to see what Whedon's post-Avengers palette cleanser plays like.
Did you see anything this weekend? I didn't, taking advantage of the weather to do yardwork, though a friend and I are catching The Purge tonight. Like I said, horror fans are used to seeing things that we know are going to be utterly worthless.
