Mary Poppins Returns Teaser

by Murtada

Self promotion and corporate synergy hit a high on the Oscars telecast Sunday. Disney which owns ABC and is releasing Mary Poppins Returns next Christmas, made sure that the stars of the film were presenters on the show. Not only that but host Jimmy Kimmel mentioned both Emily Blunt and Lin Manuel Miranda in his jokes, and both got invited to that misbegotten visit to nearby screening of another Disney film, A Wrinkle in Time. Finally the film’s first teaser was released during one of the commercial breaks...

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Sandy Powell's take on "Mary Poppins"

It's still 661 days until everyone's favorite supercalifragilisticexpialadocious singing nanny returns! It's a little early then to get an image from her movie but here we are...

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From Bedknobs to Balloons

Jason from MNPP here with a tidbit of movie news that hit over the weekend - it is official: after a few months of rumors the legendary Dame Angela Lansbury has joined the cast of Mary Poppins Returns, the sequel that Rob Marshall is currently directing with Emily Blunt stuffing her little feet into the great big sturdy shoes of Julie Andrews. The film will tackle elements drawn from the other seven books that Poppins author P.L. Travers (and tell me you don't immediately picture Emma Thompson when I say that name) wrote about the characters.

Lansbury is set to play "The Balloon Lady," and having never read the books I had to do some real digging to find out who the heck that supposedly "beloved" character was -- not even Wikipedia was any help. Thankfully Homorazzi knew what was up:

"Her character was introduced in Mary Poppins Comes Back, the second book of P.L. Travers’ series. She wreaks helium havoc in the park during one of Poppins’ outing with the Banks children."

Have any of you read the books? Is the character as beloved as they say? It's hard to think she won't be once Lansbury gets her hands on her. What a joy it will be to have this grand Dame back on the big screen. We've still got quite the wait on this movie though - it's not set for a release unti Christmas Day 2018.

Cinematic Shame... with a "Stay Positive!" Twist

Year in Review. Every day a new wrap-up. Tonight, the "worst" of the year... 

Since we are absolutely determined to make 2017 the greatest year it could possibly be despite oppressive circumstances, let this post serve as last call for excessive negativity. Get it all out of your system in the comments, mkay? We'll also put a positive spin on these dubious "awards" for ungreat things at the movie theaters this year... 

WORST OPENING SCENE(S)
Hacksaw Ridge begins with such overworked hokey cartoonish Americana and Andrew Garfield plays his eventual pacifist hero as such a Forrest Gump style village idiot that it's something of a miracle that the movie becomes a surprisingly watchable war drama thereafter.

Even Garfield manages to turn his initially quite awful (sorry) performance around in the final hour of the film. I personally haven't seen a decent / good movie start so much like it was a terrible movie since Juno, have you?

WORST MIDDLE
Suicide Squad is so inept that it never gets past character introductions. Criticisms that it was just a movie trailer with a real movie running time proved to have deadlier aim than Will Smith's Deadshot.

Best Acting in Bad Movies, and other "Honors" after the jump.... 

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SAG Nomination Surprises: Emily Blunt, Captain Fantastic, and More

As we've noted several times in the past, SAG nominations are often among the most surprising for two reasons. First, the nominating committee changes each year, drawn randomly from the Screen Actor's Guild enormous body of dues paying members. Second, because the members are randomly selected and (presumably) spread out more geographically than the easier to target Academy and Globe members, their nominations can often feel like they were voted on earlier and that's the case this year with more summer films nominated than other awards bodies went with. 

The nominees with commentary are after the jump...

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