Podcast: Wonder Wheel, Wonderstruck, BPM, and Last Flag Flying

Nathaniel welcomes NYFF buddies and regular TFE voices Jose Solis and Murtada Elfadl to talk highlights from the fest, some of which are in theaters now! 

Index (43 minutes)
00:01 Intro, NYFF, and The Mountain Between Us tangent
02:50 Steve Carell and Bryan Cranston in Last Flag Flying
07:00 Mixed feelings on Wonderstruck
14:30 Woody Allen's Wonder Wheel starring Kate Winslet and Justin Timberlake
22:10 The Rider, Western, Lady Bird - a year of great female directors
30:00 France's BPM (Beats Per Minute)
34:21 Thelma, Faces Places
41:00 Wrapping up

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

NYFF Highlights

Box Office Weekend: Madea Rules, Snowman Drools

by Nathaniel R

Weekend Box Office (October 20th-22nd)
W I D E 800+ screens	L I M I T E D excluding prev. wide
1. 🔺 BOO 2! A MADEA HALLOWEEN  $21.6 new	1.🔺 GOLMAAL AGAIN $1.0 on 265 screens new
2. 🔺 GEOSTORM $13.3 new	2. THE FLORIDA PROJECT $636k on 112 screens (cum. $1.3) REVIEW 1, REVIEW 2
3. HAPPY DEATH DAY  $9.3 (cum. $40.6)	3.🔺 LOVING VINCENT $391k on 114 screens (cum. $1.3)
4. BLADE RUNNER 2049  $7.1 (cum. $74) REVIEW | SHORTS | "BESTS"	4. MARK FELT $192k on 332 screens (cum. $491k)
5. 🔺  ONLY THE BRAVE $6 new	5. 🔺 BREATHE $155k on 311 screens (cum. $187k)
6. THE FOREIGNER  $5.4 (cum. $22.8)	6. GOODBYE CHRISTOPHER ROBIN  $153k on 61 screens (cum. $232k)
7. IT  $3.5 (cum. $320.2) REVIEW | 5 TAKEAWAYS	7.THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER $114k on 4 screens new REVIEW

Another weekend that few studios will be celebrating, partially because there was so much competition with five new wide releases and five new platform releases...

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NYFF: BPM (Beats Per Minute)

by Jason Adams

The setting is a classroom; the conversations academic. Several cliques gather, piled high in the bleacher seating - they snap their approval and hiss their diss while sending flirty glances and fully enunciated lip smacks to the cute boys a row or two over. BPM (Beats Per Minute) is in its own way a High School Movie - everyone is young and they go to dances and they go on field trips (to actual schools, even) and harangue their teachers.

Of course everyone is young because they're all dying young and they go to dances to forget they're all dying and their field trips are to splash blood on the walls of the pharmaceutical companies keeping them sick, so it's a different kind of High School Movie. Mean Girls it ain't.

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Podcast: Festival Goodies Opening Very Soon

Nathaniel, Nick, Joe and Chris (who all attended TIFF together) discuss highlights from this past month of festivals, some of which are just opening in theaters.

Index (42 minutes)
00:01 Florida Project, Professor Marston...
07:00 Mudbound, First They Killed... and BPM
14:50 Under the radar beauties like Disappearance and A Fantastic Woman (and the joy of festivalling with Nick Davis)
27:00 Hoping to see again: Lady Bird, On Body and Soul, Three Billboards
34:00 We JUST saw: Mr Gay Syria, Spoor, and Wonderstruck
41:00 Byeeee

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Related Reading
Three Billboards (Chris's review)
Downsizing (Nathaniel's first impression)
First They Killed My Father (Joe's review)

Festival Fun. Coming Soon

NYFF Lineup: Call me by your florida project, Meyerowitz

The New York Film Festival's 55th edition begins on September 28th and runs through the first two weeks of October. This year they're super hooked on France (not that there's anything wrong with that) and their longstanding compulsion to screen every single thing that the prolific South Korean director Hong Sang-Soo has ever shot results in him hogging 2 of the 25 slots. Predicting a Hong Sang-Soo at NYFF is like saying "Woody Allen is filming an untitled new project this year"... it's always true so you will always be prophetic. 

Joachim Trier's THELMA - will it be Norway's Oscar submission?

The results of the NYFF lineup are helpful when planning your Toronto festival because many of the titles overlap. If it's showing at NYFF I try to avoid it in Toronto knowing I can see it in just two weeks time. But in some cases the need to shove something in your eyeballs will be too great to wait. 

How many of the foreign titles after the jump will be Oscar submissions this season? I'm guessing at least a few with the most likely being Sweden's The Square and Norway's Thelma. Other possibilities are Argentina's Zama (though Argentina often has several options), Finland's The Other Side of Hope (Finland's sole nomination comes from this director) and Poland's Spoor (two of Agnieszka Holland's previous movies have received an Oscar nomination, Europa Europa in screenplay and In Darkness for foreign language film).

The lineup is after the jump... 

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