What did you see this weekend?

What did you see this weekend?

Weekend Box Office (Estimates) April 5th-7th  🔺 = new or expanded theater counts
W I D E	PLATFORM / LIMITED
1 🔺 Shazam!  $53.4 on 4217 screens *NEW*	1 🔺  The Mustang $771k (cum. $2) on 350 screens

2 🔺 Pet Sematary  $25 on 3585 screens *NEW*	2  No Manches Frida 2 $415k (cum. $8.7) on 275 screens

3 Dumbo  $18.2 on 4259 screens (cum. $76.2) BEST OF TIM BURTON	3 🔺  The Aftermath $375k (cum. $1.1) on 344 screens   REVIEW

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Extra! Extra! Link All About It

So much news and other things to link up. Okay, here we go...

Polygon <-- I wrote this piece for them on The Dark Knight and the Oscar quake that followed. Have a look won't you? 
The Ringer LOLZ. The forthcoming Downton Abbey movie ...with zombies
Variety Weinstein Company's library of hundreds of Oscary films and TV shows like Project Runway now owned by a new company Lantern Entertainment. 
MNPP Tab Hunter marathon on TMC this Friday!
/Film Batwoman series in development at CW. It's another one of those Berlanti superhero shows. I enjoyed The Flash for a time but I really wish if we're going to have this many shows that there would be some differentiation of producing teams so that there wouldn't be so much homogeny with point of view.

More after the jump including MoviePass trouble and new projects for Halle Berry, Taraji P Henson, Rose Byrne, and Kate Winslet... 

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Watching the Documentary Finalists: Part 3 - Confrontations

Glenn here looking at each of the 15 Academy’s documentary finalists from which five will be nominated for the Oscar.

We're at the final of three parts looking at the 15 finalists for the Academy's best documentary category. In the first part we examined people, in the second part we looked at world politics, and now confrontations. It's something that can come in a myriad of forms. Confrontations can be between enemies on TV sets around the nation or in the towns and jungles of Indonesia. Whether it’s the confrontation of death, or the confrontation of major religious corporation, these films encompass big themes that have a longstanding tradition in cinema but each go about it some wildly different ways.

All that after the jump

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IDA Nominations Honor Amy, Kurt, Nina and Marlon

Glenn here. The nominations and specialty category winners were announced today for the 31st International Documentary Association Awards. It's a line-up heavy on artist portraits, Ukraine, and films heavy on the use of archive footage. Last year's IDA list featured three eventual Oscar nominees (Finding Vivian Maier, Salt of the Earth and the winner of both Citizenfour), but other years since 2010 the number has only been two. Except 2011 when the IDA people went way off course (in the best possible way) and awarded Patricio Guzman's Nostalgia for the Light with no eventual Oscar nominees in their list (Guzman's The Pearl Button didn't find favor from them this year, though).

I see no reason why this year won't follow that ratio status quo. But firstly let's take a look at the nominees.

BEST FEATURE

• Amy
• The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
• Listen to Me Marlon
• The Look of Silence
• The Russian Woodpecker
• What Happened, Miss Simone?

I am extremely pleased to see the excellent Russian Woodpecker cited here. If Oscar could pay attention to that superb examination of paranoia amid the Ukrainian revolution then I would be more than ecstatic. And if you have the chance to see it then do yourself a favour. But what about the rest...

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Hot Docs "Best of Enemies"

Amir continues his coverage of Toronto's Hot Docs festival. Will he spot any future Oscar nominees?

It is hard to imagine today that there was once an America where political debates in the media were sensational, not just sensationalized. Harder yet is to envision a time when conservative political commentators weren’t complete buffoons, but rather eloquent, smart thinkers. That is exactly the time that Best of Enemies transports us to, Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville’s film about the televised debates leading up to the 1968 Republican and Democratic national conventions. ABC, then trailing as America’s third network and in search of a ratings boost, decided to pit two of the country’s most famous commentators against one another: the liberal Gore Vidal and the conservative William F. Buckley Jr. The two were known to dislike each other and their pairing on live TV was sure to cause a stir.

Their prediction proved to be correct when on the 8th night of a series of incendiary discussions, Buckley reacted to Vidal’s name-calling and being labeled a “crypto-Nazi” with a momentary burst of anger...

Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in the face and you’ll stay plastered.”

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