Posterized: Shailene Woodley

Shailene breaking glass againWith the excruciatingly titled The Divergent Series Insurgent upon us -- and already garnering terrible reviews even before one of those shameless audience-hating cash-grab two-parters -- it's probably time to talk about the slightly mystifying rise of its leading lady Shailene Woodley. While she's certainly easy to look at (but aren't most actors?) that doesn't really explain the career. I've been mostly quiet about this because I'm aiming for positivity in 2015 but I believe I'm developing a severe allergy.

Let's discuss why and her six major performances (How many have you seen?) after the jump...

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Year in Review: Women in Hollywood Box Office

Two yummy year in review lists per day. Here's Manuel to talk money 

Last year’s Box Office Top Ten is, as we all know by now, populated with talking raccoons, fighting robots, dangerous apes and superheroes of web-slinging and shield-throwing capabilities, so for this end of year report, we’ll focus instead on female-led films and how they fared with the public. It's a celebration of a corner of Hollywood more in line with the TFE sensibility.

Note: I am using “female-led” quite strictly (though, as always, quite subjectively in some cases).

Ensemble films like Guardians of the Galaxy, The LEGO Movie, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Godzilla are missing from the list below because, while they feature female characters in key roles, they remain male-centric, at best making their female-character (or if we're lucky characters) central amid an obscenely male-skewing world (Saldana in GOTG, Lawrence in XM:DOFP). At worst they side-line their actresses totally - what are Keri Russell and Elizabeth Olsen even doing in their respective films?.

After the jump see what the top 11 female-led films of 2014 grossed last year (along with other lists)

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Is Jai Courtney the Next Sam Worthington. Or Something More?

Jai Courtney photographed by Davis Factor for Flaunt MagazineNews broke today that 28 year-old rising star Jai Courtney won't have to turn down Terminator: Genesis as previously suspected due to his Divergent contract. He'll be able to make both Insurgent and the stupidly rebooting Terminator franchise. (I know I've said it about a dozen times but why on earth would anyone need to reboot a time travel franchise? You've got your "do-over!" right there in the narrative for chrissakes). The studios have worked out a deal and so he's officially on board Terminator: Genesis. He'll be taking over the role of Kyle Reese originated by Michael Biehn and later played by both Jonathan Jackson and Anton Yelchin. None of those three previous actors are anything alike so the role of our future savior's time travelling babydaddy is flexible you might say. 

But is Jai Courtney?

I'm not here to judge but to ask you to. I regret to inform that I'm not as familiar as I possibly should be given his current "in demand" status in Hollywood. I've seen him attempt and fail to break Shailene Woodley's spirit in Divergent (reviewed) and attempt and succeed in breaking lots of Russian bones in A Good Day To Die Hard but I haven't seen his breakthrough role on the Spartacus TV series or his work in Jack Reacher or I, Frankenstein. Perhaps you have?

In Divergent and in Die Hard 5 there was something of a Sam Worthington vibe:  capable, masculine, nice to look at but not (yet?) distinct exactly. Are the features too blandly handsome*? Is there star charisma inside? If there is he needs to unpack it soon. 

I was about to say that being Australian suggests that he is a lot more than the new Sam Worthington (they make such fine movie stars down under) but then I remembered that Sam Worthington was also, in fact, Australian. Oopsie.

The evidence remains inconclusive! I await your verdict in the comments. 

*The most distinct feature might well be his nose which has an adorable slope/tip

Review: Divergent

This review originally appeared in my column at Towleroad

Erudite. Dauntless. Abnegation. Amity. Candor. Doesn't have quite the same ring as "Charisma. Uniqueness. Nerve and Talent" does it? But it's with the awkwardly titled five factions of DIVERGENT's world that we begin. In some future Utopia young citizens must choose their faction (a fancy word for tribe) on their 18th birthday after taking an aptitude test that reveals where they truly belong. They have the option of any faction but most, we are led to believe, choose either the tribe they grew up in or the tribe of their aptitude and these are often the same. Nature vs. Nurture and all that, you know.

Our heroine Tris (Shailene Woodley) lives with her parents in Abnegation, the "selfless" tribe that runs the government -- your first clue that this is total science fiction! They also feed the homeless (aka the "factionless"), dress like monochromatic fashion-forward Amish and eschew mirrors. Beatrice is played by Shailene Woodley and her parents are Ashley Judd and Tony Goldwyn (Scandal) - our first clue that this is actually a Dystopia*; how long could any of them survive without mirrors?

Tris is ready to jump and we continue after ours...

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Box Office: Divergent's Not Dead

Amir here, with the weekend's box office report. As expected by every single person not living under a rock, Divergent took the top spot, affirming the unfortunate bankability of YA adaptations. Critically and commercially, it fell somewhere much closer to Twilight than The Hunger Games, but the target demographic seems content and that's all that matters to the studio. I'm sure a sequel is already underway, though my level of interest in finding out whether the source novel actually has sequels or not also falls somewhere much closer to my interest in Twilight than The Hunger Games, no. Sorry. I’ll pass on all of them.

BOX OFFICE
01 DIVERGENT $56 *new* 
02 MUPPETS MOST WANTED $16.5 *new*
03 MR PEABODY & SHERMAN $11.7 (cum. $81) this franchise's history
04 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE $8.6 (cum. $93.7)
05 GOD'S NOT DEAD $8.5 *new*
06 NEED FOR SPEED  $7.7 (cum. $34)
07 GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL $6.7 (cum. $12.9) 
08 NON-STOP  $6.3 (cum. $78.6) Amir's Review 
09 THE LEGO MOVIE $4.1 (cum. $243.3) Nathaniel's Review
10 TYLER PERRY'S SINGLE MOM'S CLUB $3.1 (cum. $12.9)

Muppets Most Wanted turned out to be an ironic title for a film with such a tepid reaction. It’s a shame considering what a real delight the last Muppets outing was and that the reviews for this aren’t half bad. This one will probably just make a profit because I suspect it will have the legs to stick around for a few weeks without massive drops. You know what will definitely make a profit though and probably already has? God’s Not Dead ! Like you, dear reader, I had not heard of it until this weekend and, like you, I have not rushed to see it. The box office numbers have been astounding though, with $8m already in the bank in three days for the indie on less than 1000 screens, so someone somewhere must have heard about it. Agree or disagree with the film’s beliefs/mythology, we have to concede that no film since 12 Years a Slave had managed to so succinctly describe its entire plotline in the title.

The critical darling of the hour, The Grand Budapest Hotel, earned $6.7m, a weekend gross that Moonrise Kingdom never achieved throughout its run. It’s still a very real possibility that it will end up as Wes Anderson’s most successful hit. On the limited release side, six new films opened on Friday, the buzziest of which are Jodorowsky’s Dune and It Felt Like Love. If you are one of the extremely lucky people who live near those theatres, you might want to keep an eye out.

My weekend consisted of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Arabian Nights, Majid Majidi’s Baduk and George Cukor’s The Philadelphia Story, and I’m happy to report I have nothing to complain about with that trio.

What did you watch this weekend?