Busting Ghosts and ignoring King Richard

What did you see this past week/weekend?  Will Smith's bankability was yet another victim of Warner Bros decision to release all their movies day and date on HBOMax this year. Without the visual effects spectacle audiences crave, King Richard was one of the superstar's smallest openings despite being a crowdpleaser. Alas, minus the crowds.

Weekend Box Office November 5th-7th 🔺 = new or expanding | ★ = recommended
1-5	6-10
GHOSTBUSTERS AFTERLIFE	BELFAST
1 GHOSTBUSTERS AFTERLIFE 🔺  $44	6 VENOM LET THERE BE CARNAGE 🔺$2.8 (cum. $206.5)
2  ETERNALS  $10.8 (cum. $135.8) Nathaniel's Review	7 NO TIME TO DIE $2.7 (cum. $154.6) Deborah's Review
3 CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG  $8.1 (cum. $33.5)	8 THE FRENCH DISPATCH 🔺$970k (cum. $13.2)  Elisa's Review
4 KING RICHARD  ★🔺 $5.7 Christopher's Review, Nathaniel's Review	9 BELFAST ★ $940k (cum. $3.4) Nathaniel's Review
5 DUNE  ★ $3 (cum. $98.1) Elisa's Review	10 RON'S GONE WRONG $888k (cum. $22)

More box office notes after the jump...

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Dame Judi Dench deserved the Best Actress Oscar for "Notes on a Scandal"

by Matt St Clair

Dame Judi Dench is an international treasure. The legendary actress currently has seven Oscar nominations under her belt, having won once in Best Supporting Actress for her role as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love (recently discussed right here at length). Should the stars align, she might add an eighth nomination to her record for her role as the lovable Granny in current Best Picture frontrunner Belfast. Even at 86 years-old, and with her deteriorating eyesight, Dench is still going strong, managing to get quality roles in an industry notoriously unkind to actresses when they reach a certain age and whose names don’t rhyme with Beryl Deep. 

Astonishingly, Dench didn’t become an official Academy darling until she reached her 60’s. Up until she joined the James Bond franchise as M in GoldenEye, and earned her first Oscar bid for Mrs. Brown in ‘97, Dench was more of a theater mainstay while working sporadically on film. Yet since that one-two punch, she's been a consistent movie presence with Notes on a Scandal being a high water mark. She deserved to win her the Best Actress Oscar that year...

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125 days until the Oscars...

It's 125 days until the Oscars and when we do countdowns at TFE we like to play number association. What do you think of when you hear the number "125"?  I personally think of 125th street in Manhattan since I have lived in Harlem for 16 years. The most famous attraction of 125th street might well be The Apollo Theater but curiously searching for articles or a list of movie scenes set there comes up a big blank. How is there not a big article about this already? There's not even a Wikipedia section for "references in film/tv".

The only things I could remember with the internet refusing to help (other than various comedy/concert films shot there) was the Emmy-winning recent documentary The Apollo (2019), a major Emmy submission from The Marvelous Mrs Maisel ("A Jewish Girl Walks Into the Apollo") and Denzel Washington giving good speech in Malcolm X (1992)...

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Farewell, Emi Wada (1937-2021)

by Cláudio Alves

In 1986, at the 58th Academy Awards, Best Costume Design was the fourth category to be presented. The honor befell on Audrey Hepburn, who received a standing ovation upon her appearance. The shortlisted artists made up a prestigious lineup that included Oscar winners from years past, like Albert Wolsky and Milena Canonero. Considering Out of Africa's dominance over the night, one might have supposed its period fashions had the win in the bag. However, the Academy's long love affair with Japanese costuming bore fruit for a second time. Akira Kurosawa's last great epic, Ran, won its first and only Oscar, a merited recognition of Emi Wada's efforts. The designer had spent three years creating the thousands of pieces required by the bellicose narrative, using historically accurate techniques and custom textiles to produce a painterly masterpiece of color, motion, and striking silhouettes. 

As we remember Wada's much-deserved triumph, we do so in mourning. Her family announced that the 84-year-old costume designer died earlier this month, leaving behind a legendary career in Asian film, theater, and TV…

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25th Anniversary: "Shine"

by Nick Taylor

One of my favorite bits of This Had Oscar Buzz’s year in review episodes is the segments where they discuss a film that overcame its middling quality to cash in on their buzz and score with the Academy. This is the energy I bring to you for my 25th anniversary retrospective of Shine, an Australian film that copped seven Oscar nominations and a Best Actor prize for Geoffrey Rush in his starmaking role. I do not remember hearing or reading a single solitary comment about this film in the years since I became a cinephile. The closest I’ve ever gotten comes courtesy of folks sticking up for their personal pet among 1996’s Best Actor lineup, or scattered comments that Geoffrey Rush was better in his other nominated performances. It’s slim pickings, and having finally seen Shine for myself, I find very little of worth to really excavate here. Who’s to say how much the Artist Biopic has fundamentally changed from one decade to the next?

Our protagonist is David Helfgott (played by Alex Rafalowicz as a child, Noah Taylor as a teenager, and Geoffrey Rush as an adult), an Australian pianist who became famous in his youth and was institutionalized for years in his adulthood following a breakdown at a college recital...

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