Friday, November 29, 2019 at 9:00PM Chris here. Thank you to all of you wonderful readers that keep TFE alive and well, year in, year out! This year, I am especially thankful for...
- my new spiritual guru, Baby Yoda.
- the reunion of Salvador and Federico in Pain and Glory.
- the funny and furious female ensemble of Parasite: So-dam Park, Yeo-jeong Cho, Hye-Jin Jang, Jeong-eun Lee, and Ji-so Jung.
Friday, November 29, 2019 at 9:40AM by Cláudio Alves
Tom Hanks has been nominated five times before. Can he get his sixth nod for playing Fred Rogers?
There was a time when I considered Tom Hanks one of Hollywood's most overrated actors. For years, his consecutive Oscar wins were the nadir of the actor's undeserved success, a symbol of the Academy' unfairness. In Philadelphia, he was overshadowed by a more awards-worthy Denzel Washington and, in Forrest Gump, he managed the impossible feat of being even more annoying than the rest of that insufferable Best Picture-winner. Worst of all, Tom Hanks had become something of a personal synonym for boredom.
I'm not proud of my youth's distaste for the actor, even though I still hold a negative opinion regarding his Oscar victories. The rest of my dislike, however, has vanished into thin air. I can pinpoint the exact moment when such growth occurred. When the clouds of skepticism parted, they illuminated the path by which I'd become a passionate fan of Tom Hanks, one of contemporary Hollywood's best actors…
Monday, November 25, 2019 at 6:00PM 
When I woke up this morning I didn’t know that Tom Hanks was going to make me cry before I finished my morning coffee. I made the mistake of reading the NY Times profile of him from last week so early while my emotions were still in a daze. Or maybe that’s just the power of Hanks. Ostensibly an interview to promote A Beautiful Day in The Neighborhood, the profile ends up becoming a treatise on what a nice guy Hanks is. As if we had any doubts.
Just the other day on the podcast I was questioning whether any press interviews or media could add anything that we didn’t know already to the very unmysterious Hanks. The trick this profile pulls off is giving up that illusion early on. The writer knows Hanks is nice, the reader knows Hanks is nice so she proceeds to list the many nice things he has done over the years. However the part that really got to me is his simple advise about expectations between parents and children:
“Somewhere along the line, I figured out, the only thing really, I think, eventually a parent can do is say I love you, there’s nothing you can do wrong, you cannot hurt my feelings, I hope you will forgive me on occasion, and what do you need me to do? You offer up that to them. I will do anything I can possibly do in order to keep you safe. That’s it. Offer that up and then just love them.”
The writer admits that he made her cry. So did I. I immediately wanted to call my mother.
Interestingly this writer, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, also profiled Bradley Cooper around this time last year. However that interview ended up being about how Cooper doesn't want to be interviewed and was the start of his cagey campaigning for Oscar that netted no major wins for A Star is Born (2018). These big media profiles still matter. The tone this time is very different, we will have to see how much that affects Oscar. One thing I’m sure of is that having niceness and geniality celebrated in such a big way is duly needed and appreciated.
Have you seen Beautiful Day yet? Has a celebrity profile ever brought tears to your eyes?
Sunday, November 24, 2019 at 5:33PM Did you see Frozen II this weekend? Everyone else did. It grossed a whopping $127 million. The big 'Let it Go' successor is "Into the Unknown" but clearly audiences are still very much into the "known" every weekend at the box office -- sequels continue to pack movie houses. Meanwhile Parasite and JoJo Rabbit and Pain and Glory, three success stories of platform releasing, all started to wane this weekend. They're now losing screens and momentum after two months of growth. Precursor awards and top ten lists and year end hoopla basically begins after Thanksgiving so if they're lucky they'll get a strong second wind. We'll see.
Sadly the superb Mr Rogers picture, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, opened somewhat quietly with only $13.5 million in wide release (which seems low for Tom Hanks). GO SEE IT, IT'S AMAZING.
| Weekend Box Office [Estimates] Nov 22nd-24th 🔺 = New or Expanding / ★ = Recommended |
|
| W I D E |
PLATFORM / SPECIALTY TITLES |
 |
|
| 1 🔺 FROZEN II $127 *new* REVIEW |
1 JOJO RABBIT $1.5 on 797 screens (cum. $16) ★ |
| 2 FORD V FERRARI $16 (cum. $57.9) REVIEW, PODCAST ★ |
2 PARASITE $1.2 on 433 screens (cum. $16.4) PODCAST, CLASS, BONG ★ |
| 3 🔺 A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD $13.5 *new* ★ |
3 🔺 HONEY BOY $269k on 44 screens (cum. $939K) REVIEW, PODCAST ★ |
| 4 🔺 21 BRIDGES $9.3 *new* |
4 🔺 WAVES $168k on 21 screens (cum. $335k) REVIEW, 2ND OPINION ★ |
| 5 MIDWAY $4.7 (cum. $43.1) |
5 PAIN AND GLORY $135k on 217 screens (cum. $3.3) REVIEW, PODCAST ★ |
Sunday, October 6, 2019 at 9:12AM By Cláudio Alves
Will a Tarantino movie finally be nominated for Best Production Design?
Let's take a look at the Best Production Design Oscar race. While period pieces and fantasy extravaganzas dominate the costuming category, production designers are more open to other styles, too, like sci-fi, contemporary excellence, and even superhero movies. That said, at least in regards to the films that have already opened, the major contenders are roughly the same as with the Best Costume Design Oscar race.
THOSE WE'VE ALREADY SEEN
Rick Heinrichs designed Dumbo's spectacular sets.
Rick Heinrichs won an Oscar for a previous collaboration with Tim Burton (Sleepy Hollow) and his designs for Dumbo are quite good, like nightmare visions of an Art Deco Disneyland. I’m less enchanted with Gemma Jackson’s pseudo-Arabian designs, but it would be foolish to count Aladdin out of the race...
