Beauty vs Beast: My Best Friend is a Vampire

Jason from MNPP here wishing everyone a happy week's worth of Halloween fun & spooky frivolity. Now that the New York Film Festival's behind us I feel as if I can properly focus in on the reason for the season - horror movies! So let's devote this week's "Beauty vs Beast" to one of the finest examples of the genre from our young new millenium - Tomas Alfredson's 2008 Swedish stunner Let the Right One In, which tells the tale of young Oskar and the strange "girl" named Eli who moves in next door. Eli puts the "bad dream" into the term "Manic Pixie Dream Girl," but Oskar, bullied though he may be, ain't no saint himself...

PREVIOUSLY Last week we wandered into the woods with Into the Woods and the battle between the Baker's Wife and The Witch was quite the doozy, but in the end (unlike the film) it was Emily Blunt who came out singing with 52% of the vite. Said PoliVamp:

"Baker's Wife easily. I was very unhappy with Streep's nomination, as she was only the 5th best performance in the movie (and Blunt is in that top 4 group). Also, Moments is my favorite song from the musical, give or take Agony, so this was an easy pick for me."

Beauty vs Beast: Which of the Woods

Jason from MNPP here seizing the moment with this week's edition of "Beauty vs Beast" -- well, seizing one of many moments, but not only moments, because if life were only moments then we'd never know we had one. You know how it goes. Anyway this moment, this one of many not only, is the birthday of the director Rob Marshall, who makes magical movies that, uh... defy description. Like Into the Woods, perhaps? Yes, we are in the right story.

PREVIOUSLY Here it is a week later and I'm still pretty shocked it took me over 125 editions of this series to get to my favorite movie Rosemary's Baby - but who won? Well you guys sided with the Devil, just like the Oscars did, and gave the prize to Ruth Gordon's Minnie Castavet and her eternally chalky undertaste - said Marsha Mason:

"I think Ruth had the greater acting accomplishment. Mia was good at being afraid, but Ruth pulled off "loud old NYC lady in league with Satan," succeeding in making her both hilarious, outspoken and very creepy. She reminds me of Barbara Bush that way."

20th Century Women & 21st Century Tweetweek

So much to cover today: Annette Bening in 20th Century Women, the Blade Runner sequel, and movie jokes about current politics after the jump...

There are few characters in film history that I personally relate to more than the inside out baboon in The Fly.

— Rich McCarthy (@Rich_McCarthy) October 5, 2016

Little known fact: Nicholson stopped acting to avoid a slew of ranked performance articles tied to a new project.

— Kristopher Tapley (@kristapley) October 5, 2016

Click to read more ...

Weekend Highs: Inside Emotions, Dinosaur Thrills, Prison Love

Two separate films earning over $90 million in a single weekend? Impressive. That didn't leave a ton to money to go round for other films, though. Spy is a solid performer at the box office but I'd actually expected it to be much bigger since it's the funniest film of the year. But all the action was at the dinosaur theme park and Pixar's return to form, the delightful Inside Out. The new film follows the emotions inside an 11 year old girl's head as she moves to a new city. I was resistant to the concept, which seemed too gimmicky and "Herman's Head" like, but resistance was futile: it's wonderful. Better still they didn't even remotely give the best stuff away in the trailer and that's such a surprise nowadways!

WIDE RELEASE BOX OFFICE
June 19th-21st Weekend
01 Jurassic World $102 (cum. $398.2) Jurassic Articles 
02 Inside Out NEW $91 Inside Out Articles
03 Spy $10.5 (cum. $74.3) Rose Byrne FYC
04 San Andreas $8.2 (cum. $132.2)
05 Dope NEW $6 Sundance capsule
06 Insididous Chapter 3 $4.1 (cum. $45.3)
07 Pitch Perfect 2 $3.3 (cum. $177.5) Review & Sequel
08 Mad Max: Fury Road $2.8 (cum. $143.6)  Review & Podcast & Random Articles
09 Avengers: Age of Ultron  $2.7 (cum. $451) Review & Marathon & Podcast
10 Tomorrowland $2 (cum. $87.6)  Review

The opening weekend for Dope was solid especially for a film with zero stars. It was one of the big sales at Sundance (7 million) and it nearly nabbed that back on opening weekend. Good word of mouth (which is likely - the film is very funny and likeable) could turn it into a minor hit. None of the miniscule limited releases caused a stir at the arthouse but The Overnight (also from Sundance -- why do they wait till all the heat dissipates to release those films?) took in $62,000 on 3 screens.

What did you see this weekend?
I'd already seen Inside Out so I started on the Smackdown movies -- Key Largo is so good. I hope y'all are watching along at home. I also went to a reunion concert for the original cast of Into the Woods . Let me just say that it was basically heaven on earth. I'm still high from it... and not just from the always sublime Bernadette Peters. I went in expecting more of a talk with a few musical numbers but they did several from each act. As it turns out the original Cinderella (whose voice is still ridiculously pretty) and the original Cinderella's Prince/Wolf got married in real life and they have kids now. Joanna Gleeson was still amazingly funny as the Baker's Wife,and so on.

And of course I took in a couple more episode of Orange is the New Black. I'm absolutely loving this newly low-key character-driven season. Gone are the distractions of the outside world that marred the otherwise brilliant Season 1, the absence of a focus pulling villain like season 2's Vee (Lorraine Toussaint's Emmy worthy work aside) means more focus on the complicated network of friendships and rivalries among the women in the prison and ways that they cope, or don't. I'm just loving it.

You?

White-Tailed Link

The Guardian features a new short story from Rupert Everett, writing about his altar ego movie star Keiran O'Nightley
Playbill reviews special features on the Blu-ray for Into the Woods
/Film Batman getting another animated film, this time in style of the 60s TVshow
Instagram Hugh Jackman is still threatening to quit Wolverine. I'll believe that when I see it. I'm not as gullible as the rest of the internet. It's the man who cried wolfverine.

Variety YouTube gets slammed for placing age restrictions on The Fosters' sweet gay kiss between high school friends Connor & Jude (actors Gavin Macintosh and Hayden Byerly who are 16 and 14 respectively) in an historic storyline
Playbill talks to Richard LaGravenese about Barbra Streisand's Gypsy project and the (gulp) Lady Gaga rumors
Boy Culture Madonna performs "Ghosttown" her best single in ages with... Taylor Swift?
Empire Broadway legend Audra McDonald will play the wardrobe in Beauty & The Beast extending its all star singing cast. But the wardrobe doesn't have any solos. Grrrrr
The Matinee why don't contemporary films produce iconic film cars any more 
Variety NBC will next mount The Wiz for a live music event. That actually might be an inspired choice. We'll see.
Coming Soon I could've sworn this was old news but maybe it only feels like old news since everything is being remade / recycled but Disney's Mulan will get a live-action redo
/Film talks to Elizabeth Olsen about The Scarlet Witch 
Salon fills you in on 'everything you need to know about' Trevor Noah, the young comic who is taking over The Daily Show when Jon Stewart leaves
AV Club Jon Hamm could have starred in Gone Girl? Huh.

TODAY'S WATCH
Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson IS Bambi... in this well deserved SNL spoof of Disney's live action remake obsession of their animated canon

The Rock also starred in a...uh... 'suck the poison out of me' sketch. Haha.