CLÁUDIO ALVES: Praise be the 90-minute episode, the Rusical team, the queens of season 15, and the politically prescient writers who saw the current anti-drag policies coming a year in advance. Praise be to everyone! “Wigloose” is the episode of the year so far, which is saying something when you consider the utter mediocrity of its LSFYL. Then again, nobody should’ve had to fight for their lives this week. Even more than in the original “Daytona Winds,” the queens delivered excellence across the board. Sure, some did better than others, and the runway could break ties, but the talent is so evident it’s hard to keep euphoria at bay. And yet, after last year’s non-elimination-palooza, I can see why the producers and Ru herself might want to keep things tight. I’m sad, but I get it.
NICK TAYLOR: Praise be to the singers who actually interpreted all of those songs, too. I think the sheer brilliance of last week’s tooth-and-nail LSFYL and the performances in this week’s Rusical should (and, in a prior season, absolutely would) have prevented anyone from going home. Lord knows Marcia probably would’ve won this episode. Heaven Bacon was tailor-made for her...
On this day in history as it relates to the movies...
1828 Feral teenager Kaspar Hauser is discovered wandering Nuremberg, claiming to have been raised in total isolation. Theories abound and the story inspires many artists down the road including Werner Herzog in the film The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974). 1877 Influential dancer Isadora Duncan is born. Vanessa Redgrave gets an Oscar nomination playing her in Isadora! (1968) 1886 Al Jolson is born. Will later star in the first "talkie" The Jazz Singer (1927) 1894 Silent film star Norma Talmadge is born 1897 Bram Stoker's epistolary novel "Dracula" is published. Never stops being adapted for film and television but our hearts will always belong to Francis Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) despite the aggravating double possessive 1907 John Wayne was born. Did he always talk like that? 1913 Peter Cushing is born in England. Later stars in Hammer Horror films with his irl best friend Christopher Lee, the Dracula to his Van Helsing. Perhaps most famously Carrie Fisher 'recognizes his foul stench' when she's captured in Star Wars 1914 Geoffrey Unsworth, two time Oscar winning genius cinematographer is born. Shot so many gorgeous movies like 2001, Cabaret, Tess, Superman as well as a legendary bad one in Zardoz.
1920 Peggy Lee is born. The popular singer was mysteriously left out of AMPAS's annual "In Memoriam" section at the Oscars despite numerous film connections, like voicing multiple characters in Lady in the Tramp, starring in a remake of The Jazz Singer, popularizing the song "Why Don't You Do Right?" in Stage Door Canteen (later spectacularly used in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?), and even nabbing an admittedly strange supporting actress nomination for Pete Kelly's Blues (1955). Now where's that biopic we were promised from Todd Haynes starring Reese Witherspoon? 1926 Miles Davis is born. His biopic is in theaters currently because famous men get biopics. 1948 Stevie Nicks emerges with her diaphamous shawls from mother's womb; starts spinning. We see her gypsy. 1949 The legendary Pam Grier is born. Also answers to "Coffy," "Foxy Brown," and "Jackie Brown" 1961 Tarsem Singh is born. Eventually trades truly weird beautiful auteurial stuff for still weird CGI mainstream drudgery
1966 Helena Bonham Carter is born. Initially pegged as Merchant Ivory's favorite dress up doll, she goes on to have a rather spectacularly enduring career. Happy 50th Helena!
Helena's 10 Best Performances? My List...
Wings of the Dove (1997) shoulda won the Oscar
Fight Club (1999) shoulda been nominated for the Oscar
Howard's End (1992) shoulda been nominated for the Oscar
Sweeney Todd (2007) shame about the singing voice. because otherwise...
A Room With a View (1986)
Suffragette (2015)
The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
Eyesore in Wonderland (2010)
Lady Jane (1985)
Hamlet (1990)
1971Lenny, by Julian Barry. opens on Broadway. Barry adapts it to film three years later with Bob Fosse directing. They both receive Oscar nominations. Lenny even gets a third life in a way when it basically serves as the film within the film of All That Jazz 1984 "Let's Hear It For the Boy," from Footloose, hits #1 on the pop charts. Goes on to an Original Song nomination at the Oscars. Loses to "I Just Called To Say I Love You" by Stevie Wonder from Woman in Red 2006X-Men: Last Stand, the third X-Men motion picture, opened in theaters and was bad enough to destroy the franchise...except they kept right on making them. Tomorrow X-Men 6 opens, better known as X-Men Apocalypse.
Hello Cinema our friend Amir started a podcast on Iranian cinema. It's an interesting listen even if you know nothing about the topic, particular the first section on how Amir and Tina came to love cinema Coming Soon Ellen Page will star in Queen and Country based on a comic book about a British intelligence operative Comic Alliance on the petititon to cast an Asian American as Iron Fist in the upcoming Netflix series. This is SUCH a good idea, because that character was obviously envisioned as white for very problematic reasons given that he's totally tied to Asian culture.
Shadow and Act there's a Spike Lee box set coming this June which will include the first ever Blu-Ray of Summer of Sam so that's great news. /Film an infographic on Hollywood disasters. They love destroying New York City but it's not the only city they ruin Vanity Fair rejected movie poster designs for Gravity House Next Door a look back at Madonna's most beloved song "Like a Prayer" which just turned 25 years old! Kevin Maguire the X-Men do the Oscar selfie Playbill a history of Les Misérables which is reopening on Broadway. It just keeps coming back.
Release Date News Everest, that mountain climbing adventure with Jake Gyllenhaal and Zero Dark Thirty's Jason Clarke (among others in a fairly stellar cast) will hit IMAX and 3D screens on September 18th. In case you didn't hear James Gray's long delayed The Immigrant will open (finally) on May 2nd, nearly a year after its Cannes debut - nothing like striking when the iron is hot! And because they're just never going to stop and neither is Hugh Jackman despite his vague protestations, the X-Men have dates scheduled through 2018
And Today's Watch(es) Kevin Bacon goes a little Footloose on The Tonight Show (looking pretty good for 55) and it turns out Jennifer Lawrence recorded not one but two lipsynch numbers for American Hustle.The deleted one is to Santana's "Evil Woman" - I'm not embedding it here because it starts playing without asking it to. That is NOT okay in embeddable videos.
In this battle of the 80s remakes weekend, Footloose vs. The Thing, it was actually a 1960s derivative, the rock-em sock-em'ish robot movie Real Steel that triumphed.
Box Office (U.S.) Baker's Dozen -Actual Grosses 01 REAL STEEL $16.2 (cum. $51.7) 02 FOOTLOOSE new-ish $15.5 03 THE THING new-ish $8.4 04 IDES OF MARCH [capsule] $7.1 (cum. $21.7) 05 DOLPHIN TALE$6.2 (cum. $58.5) 06 MONEYBALL [review] $5.4 (cum $57.6) 07 50/50 [review] $4.2 (cum $24.2) 08 COURAGEOUS$3.3 (cum $21.2) 09 THE BIG YEAR new $3.2 10 THE LION KING 3D [review] re-release $2.7 (cum. $90.5 for the rerelease) 11 DREAMHOUSE$2.4 (cum $18.3) 12 CONTAGION$1.8 (cum $71.9) 13 ABDUCTION [review]$1.4 (cum $25.7)
Talking Points • Footloose's gross is far from spectacular but given the likelihood of solid word of mouth (I keep hearing "surprisingly good!" proving that basement level expectations can totally be a plus!) and considering they kept its budget down, it should turn a profit before it even leaves theaters. So don't expect the 80s remakes to stop.
• Speaking of turning a profit, 50/50 has already tripled its wisely wee budget. Well done.
• Pedro Almodóvar is the most dependable of foreign auteurs on the US box office charts, again opening with a fine per screen average; The Skin I Live In earned nearly a quarter million on just six screens. Whether or not it will hold well is another issue since it seems more divisive than recent Almodóvars. Skin... has alread earned over $19 million overseas. Pedro's biggest post Women on the Verge hit by a significant margin is Volver which earned over $85 million worldwide.
• Moneyball just entered the top 40 of the year, stealing past Midnight in Paris (which is incredibly STILL on over 100 screens). Don't you think both of them will be Best Picture nominated?
WHAT DID YOU SEE THIS WEEKEND? As usual, we love to hear what you thought of the new releases. Especially on days when you're suspicously quiet (speak up!) And given the ever crucial budgets to profit equations, which movie have you seen recently that showed you every penny onscreen?
It's actually nicely stylized. But note that the big sell is not Michelle Williams but Marilyn Monroe herself, whose font size towers over her pretenders. I wonder what this movie will mean to Michelle Williams career though? If it flops does Hollywood assume she can't carry a film, even though it's less a Michelle movie than another Marilyn nostalgia exercize?
I swear to god that tagline for Footloose irritates me like little else. It can't be your time, when you're robbing the previous generation of one of their quintessential identifiers. Saying that Footloose represents "our time" (i.e. today's teenagers) is like seventies teenagers pretending that the 1950s (Grease) were their ti... oh wait... uh...
Meanwhile you can't tell it here but the Puss in Bootsmotion poster is brilliant. You simply must click over if you love cats like I love cats.
Finally here are two European posters for David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method, which each put the three star faces all in each other's headspace -- one of them literally -- as their guiding design principle. You can see what they're going for but don't the faces need to be more level and more obscured by one another to achieve that psychological note. It's a little pedestrian, right? May the movie be anything but.
Tuesday, March 21, 2023 at 6:20PM ;)
