Super Mario Bros: The First Movie

by Cláudio Alves

The new Super Mario Bros. movie is upon us and some of the early reviews could hardly be more scathing. This Chris Pratt and Anya Taylor-Joy animated romp has sunk a few critics into pits of despair, with some unfortunate souls stating it's even worse than the 1993 flop. We won't know until we see it but one can envision it being a downgrade in terms of sheer lunacy.

Say what you will about the 1993 movie, but it's a fascinating piece of cinema worth revisiting, its abject failure never stemming from a lack of crazy ideas. A lack of conviction, perhaps, since you can smell the flop sweat of exhausted writers, not to mention the confusion of cast and crew and audience, too! It is one confounding mess, and to watch it is to sense one's sanity slipping away...

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"Hello, it's me ♫ ♬ I was wondering if after all this showbiz history..."

7 random things that happened on this day (Nov 14th) in showbiz history

1941 Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion premieres. It reaps three Oscar nominations (including Best Picture) winning Best Actress for Joan Fontaine. (Olivia de Havilland was NOT pleased that her baby sister beat her to an Oscar... so she won two of them)

Network, Hoosiers, Adele, and more after the jump...

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NYFF: "Hopper/Welles"

by Jason Adams

Picture it: the year is 1970 and the director Orson Welles has just recently begun filming his experimental film The Other Side of the Wind, the production of which would ultimately outlast the director himself (Welles died in '85) and many of the people he put in front of his camera. (Wind was finally released by Netflix in 2018 after nearly 50 years of tinkering.) One such person Welles filmed was actor-turned-director Dennis Hopper, who was fresh off his counter-culture sensation Easy Rider. Strange bedfellows, these two, but they sat down for over two hours of filmed and oft-antagonistic conversation, and now producer Filip Jan Rymsza and editor Bob Murawski, who finally got Wind across the finish line, have gifted us with Hopper/Welles, the fly-on-the-wall footage of that moment screening at NYFF. It's something!

Full disclosure: I went in to Hopper/Welles expecting to find Welles a bit of a boor and Hopper a pip. Fuller disclosure: I came out with quite the opposite...

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"Speed" Turns 25

by Lynn Lee

When Speed was first released a quarter century(!) ago, the premise seemed ridiculous: Bomb on bus is triggered to go off if the speed ever drops below 50 mph.  A bus in Los Angeles, no less.  At rush hour!  (Actually, it’s always rush hour in L.A., then as now, which only reinforces the preposterousness of the scenario.)  Nevertheless, Speed managed to suspend viewers’ disbelief – and their breaths – with a combo of taut white-knuckle thrills that didn’t require elaborate special effects and light humor that relieved but didn’t distract from the constant tension. 

A major hit both critically and commercially, it went on to win two Oscars (for sound mixing and sound editing) and elevate the then up-and-coming Keanu Reeves to full movie star status.  Now that Keanu seems to be having another “moment” in his long and eclectic career, it feels like an especially opportune time to revisit the movie that vaulted him on to Hollywood’s A list.

How does it hold up?

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Beauty vs Beast: Pop Quiz, Hot Shots

Happy Monday! Jason from MNPP here with your weekly "Beauty vs Beast" fix - we're celebrating 1994  leading up to the Supporting Actress Smackdown and I figured I'd focus in on another great big hit from the year today (to compliment the Interview With the Vampire poll two weeks back), namely Jan de Bont's Speed. Which still holds up! I caught it on TV a couple of weeks ago and man, it still revs and roars. It's also got a stellar hero and villain pair - Keanu's buzzcut and biceps were The 1994 Fetish Du Jour, and Dennis Hopper is Dennis Hopper, the end.

polls

PREVIOUSLY I really thought that Jeff Goldblum's Finest Hour might put a dent in your acctressexual predilections but no, nope, not gonna happen, Laura Dern's Ellie Sattler still triumped in last week's Jurassic Park poll to the tune of 71% of your vote. Said chasm301:

"This movie is basically perfect and I would never pick against Laura Dern."