Emmy Nominations Repeat Series But Fresh Notes in Acting Categories

Emmy is a beautiful lithe but deadly woman. Look at the lines in her figure! Each year she holds the world of television in her tiny gold hands but unless you're the one holding her you get jabbed by the dagger like wings.  Herewith the lucky official nominees of Emmy 2013 and the less fortunate players who should wear protective gear when approaching her.

DRAMA

OUTSTANDING DRAMA
Breaking Bad
Downton Abbey
Game of Thrones
Homeland
House of Cards
Mad Men

Series & Acting noms / commentary after the jump

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Box Office: The Lone Ranger Will Likely Not Ride Again

When I heard a few little kids doing that "bee-doh-bee-doh-bee-doh" siren noise in the exact inflection of a minion from Despicable Me 2 last week -- and that was just from trailer-indoctrination alone, y'know? -- I knew the box office would be gargantuan. And so it was becoming the 10th highest grosser of 2013 (thus far) after just 4 days of release. 

The Lone Ranger comes with a ready made catchphrase too... "Hi Yo, Silver. Away!" but the movie which is both too hip and too square for its own good (what is its target audience exactly? Other than "all" which often results in confusing tones), demeans the very use of it so you wont hear little kids doing any Lone Ranger chants in the streets. The box office opening for that film was dismal given its $215+ million budget. I'd say "don't expect a sequel" but you never know these days when they'll make a cheapo sequel (or reboot) to anything, "Branding" being everything in Hollywood.

TOP TEN
01 DESPICABLE ME 2 $82.5 *NEW* (cum. $142)
02 THE LONE RANGER $29.4 *NEW* (cum. $48.9)
03 THE HEAT  $25 (cum. $86.3) Capsule
04 MONSTERS UNIVERSITY  $19.5 (cum. $216.1) Review
05 WORLD WAR Z $18.2 (cum. $158.7) Review 
06 WHITE HOUSE DOWN  $13.5 (cum. $50.4)
07 MAN OF STEEL  $11.4 (cum. $271.2) Superheroes and Security
08 KEVIN HART: LET ME EXPLAIN $10.1 *NEW* (cum. $17.4)
09 THIS IS THE END $5.8 (cum. $85.8)
10 NOW YOU SEE ME $2.7 (cum. $110.4)

Of Note: Now You See Me has to be the sole contender for 'biggest hit of 2013 that nobody ever talks about' right? It's like one of those ol' CBS dramas from years past that were always super high in the Nielsens but had zero pop culture caché. 

Armie & Johnny get a look at their box office grosses

poll by twiigs.com

Honest question: who takes the blame for The Lone Ranger's failure to ignite? We've seen in the past that Hollywood is loathe to question the earning power of stars as big as Johnny Depp (note how long shtick-maestros John Travolta and Nicolas Cage were able to command huge paychecks in the 90s and Aughts with far far less in the way of consistent box office performance than Depp). Director Gore Verbinski has several blockbusters under his belt, too. Will they scapegoat the whole thing on poor Armie Hammer? He sure is handsome but he does seem to have been anointed the next big leading man far far sooner than his filmography requested. In fact, people were throwing leading roles and money at him after just one major supporting role (The Social Network), a film which he hardly had to carry or even elevate given how great it was coming together from virtually every angle. 

In platform limited release the coming-of-age summer film The Way Way Back (with a great cast that features Toni Collette, Sam Rockwell, Maya Rudolph and more) won the biggest numbers of the weekend which bodes well for its future. The documentary 20 Feet From Stardom, about backup singers to famous rock stars, continues to pull in big numbers on track to becoming the biggest doc hit of the year. Will an Oscar nomination follow? Oscar does like movies about the difficulties of showbiz. Oscar relates even if he's the biggest and sturdiest star of all. 

Reviews: I'm So Excited & The Heat

This review was originally published in my column at Towleroad

and i know i know i know i know i know i want you i want you ♫

Here's a film you'll never see on an airplane. Pedro Almodóvar's latest, I'm So Excited!, takes place (almost) entirely aboard an airplane like some lost "bottle episode" of an aborted Almodóvarian sitcom. But the stewards and pilots are less concerned with fastening your seat belt than unzipping your pants and more interested in spiking drinks than pouring them. It's arrived just in time for Gay Pride Weekend and what great timing; this is by far the gayest thing Pedro has done since Bad Education (2004) in which Gael García Bernal famously both tucked his junk for drag duties and showed it off in wet underwear poolside.

I think it was the internet critic David Poland (of Movie City News fame) who dubbed that earlier film "fag noir" and took some heat for that but I personally don't think Almodóvar would have minded. In fact, for a long time I miscredited the tag to Pedro himself. Pedro's characters are often outrageously hedonistic from nympho nuns to homicidal hotties to transgendered hookers and even the sanest among them act on melodramatic or comic impulse without shame or apology. In short, to appropriate a quote from Rich Juzwiak they're 'as faggy as they want to be'. And that's just the ladies! [more...]

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Cameron Diaz Joins the Cast of "Annie"

Anne Marie here to talk about the latest movie musical news. It’s official: Cameron Diaz will be the Miss Hannigan to Quvenzhané Wallis’s Little Orphan Annie in Will Smith’s Annie remake. Sandra Bullock turned it down so Diaz joins a brassy line of comediennes who've played this role including Dorothy Loudon, Betty Hutton, Carol Burnett, Nell Carter, Kathy Bates, Katie Finneran and most recently Jane Lynch in her Broadway musical debut.

Miss Hannigan History (Partial): Carol Burnett (82); Nell Carter (97); Kathy Bates (99); Cameron Diaz (14)

Accusations of stunt casting have already echoed through Hollywood and Broadway, but how true are they?

While the decision to cast an otherwise musically-untested star like Diaz (Her singing in The Mask was dubbed) may smack a bit of stunt casting, Diaz certainly has the comedic background to fulfill the terrifying-but-hilarious shoes of the booze-soaked orphanage matron. Cameron Diaz has shown all throughout her career the ability to be slapstick funny, lowbrow silly, and recently very, very bitchy. But, like every other Broadway geek, I had to ask: can she sing? I did some digging through past performances, and found three of note: My Best Friend's Wedding (in which terrible vocals were the point), Shrek, and this NSFW moment...

It’s hard to judge her voice quality from any of those numbers. This is usually a warning sign for me, but Miss Hannigan isn’t a musically difficult role. As long as Diaz relies on her comedic chops, she shouldn’t be Russell Crowe in Les Miz bad. I’m thinking more Julie Walters in Mamma Mia - musically acceptable and very funny.

Cameron Diaz’s movie roles have been a bit scattershot since she graduated from the ditz and dirty debutante phases of her career. With a few crowd pleaser comedies on the horizon, as well as this week’s teaser for The Counselor and this news about Annie - it looks like Diaz is finally finding a solid trajectory. (I refuse to use the word “comeback.”)

Thoughts?

Yes, No, Maybe So? "Malavita"... Which is Now "The Family"

It's not every month, hell, it's not every year when we get the trailer to a new Michelle Pfeiffer movie so naturally we have to talk about Malavita again. Or, I guess, The Family as it's been rechristened before release. It's always a pity when a movie ditches a really specific title for one that could work for thousands of movies and thus stakes no claim on personality whatsoever.

Perhaps the trailer itself has personality. Let's watch and discuss.

[watches]

Okay. Only watch that if you're the kind of person who doesn't care about spoilers. IF you are this kind of person i envy you because the movie studios don't care about them either - they love shovin' them into trailers. I get the sense you're basically seeing the whole movie here.  But we gotta break it down anyway as we do because...

LA PFEIFFER IS BACK

YES

• Michelle Pfeiffer saying "merci"
• This might be funny. It's kinda tough to tell in the trailer because so much of comedy depends on good editing and trailers never have a sense of that since they're cutting entirely different scenes and dialogue together for their specific 2 minute effect
• The return of Michelle Pfeiffer's Married to the Mob accent "we're not in Brooklyn anymore"
• Michelle Pfeiffer driving that car with those sunglasses
• Tommy Lee Jones has been on a real roll lately. Does this end the party or continue it?
• and Michelle Pfeiffer as fire starter. Bring it bitch. 

NO

• After Silver Linings Playbook, I'd like to believe that Robert DeNiro is back to acting rather than cashing in but a mob comedy is probably not the place to believe that.
• Whenever trailers show this much of the wink-wink laughs and action, I worry about "those are all the best parts" and there's a lot of ways in which this might be super offensive (xenophobia, "hurting people is hilarious!" immaturity and so on) rather than funny. 

MAYBE SO

 

• Luc Besson, in the director's seat, isn't totally reliable.
• The casting of the kids looks great visually but Dianna Agron coasts a lot on her looks and when you're playing Pfeiffer's daughter... well, she better take it up a notch. Pfeiffer never did that and good lord she could have coasted for decades with the ones she got.
• Also: Can you believe my restraint that I only used one photo of Pfeiffer to illustrate this?

Here's the trailer if you don't mind spoilers.

Are you a Yes, No or Maybe So?