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Entries in Into the Woods (51)

Friday
Jan022015

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)

Click to read more ...

Wednesday
Dec312014

Screener Adventures from American Snipers to British Painters (Pt. 2)

Previously... I shared brief thoughts about rewatches of Big Hero, Grand Budapest, Babadook well as The Homesman and Skeleton Twins.

What came next in the home-screening adventures, you ask? Here I am to answer. I haven't had as much time as I'd hope (aint that always the case) but I've been trying to cram movies in. Here are a handful of notes on movies from the screener stack.

AMERICAN SNIPER
Credit where credit is due: For once a Clint Eastwood movie is not filmed like its sinking into an inky black void where color is a total affront to sober intent. It turns out Tom Stern can make movies that take place in reasonably well lit places. Okay, okay, let's not get carried away. It's still largely colorless but this time there is daylight though the subject matter remains brutal. I'm not sure what to make of its dead-eyed killings which aren't filmed with any rah-rah glee that you'd think would accompany the movie's conservative America is #1 conservatism. Even its one note patriotism is presented rather than, I think, fully endorsed: Chris Kyle, very well played by Bradley Cooper though there isn't much in the way of an arc, memorably refuses to engage with any criticism and is all "God, Family, & Country" in each scene. But something about its very matter-of-fact presentation and inarticulate hero wore me down after awhile despite gripping action sequences. I have no idea how Oscar might respond but my hunch is it's either full hog or both sound nominations only a la Lone Survivor

Meryl's Insane Bankability Continues! Well done, diva.INTO THE WOODS
Reviewed by ranking its musical numbers here. It was the second time I'd seen it having watched it on a big screen originally. Weirdly I think the cinematography, which often looked too muddy and dark on the screen works a little better on a TV. But anyway...  let's hear it for Disney for a great opening weekend. It's important that musicals do well so that we get more of them! Into the Woods won not only the biggest opening weekend ever for a Broadway adaptation but the biggest of Meryl Streep's career, as well. I imagine we'll continue to talk about Into the Woods for a while --  multiple Oscar nominations coming -- so I'll let this be all for this post.

THE JUDGE
I already peed on that here but it keeps haunting me like bad trip flashbacks. Especially the dye job on Vera Farmiga who deserves better Hollywood, come on. Also that scene where RDJ is like superhero-lawyer and stops a bar fight with the power of his wily words!

ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE
A love letter from Tangiers & Detroit to all of you who recommended this movie throughout the year. Though I was once the type who would rush to anything vampiric, I'll readily admit that Hollywood's overuse of the bloodsuckers finally wore me out; I've been avoiding all such movies for years now. But I should have trusted Jim Jarmusch to come at it from an entirely different angle and I don't know how I missed that it was shot by Yorick Le Saux who won my silver medal for cinematography in 2010 for I Am Love. Detroit has never looked so beautifully haunted, Tilda and Tom couldn't have been a more exotically languid well-cultured pair, its slow moods weren't trying but contemplative, and the ending was pitch-perfect delayed gratification.

Excusez moi


MR TURNER
A surprise. If you only listen to this movie as opposed to watching it (which is what I sometimes do when The Boyfriend is watching TV) it sounds rather like a horror movie. I'm not kidding. There are a lot of scary animalistic noises supposedly emanating from human people (not just Spall's famed grunt speak) and the score by Gary Yershon might be the creepiest outside of Under the Skin this year.  

P.S. Speaking of The Boyfriend...
This time of year chez moi he watches a ton of screeners since he doesn't go to many critics screenings with me. I usually don't watch carefully (having already seen them) and drift in and out as I'm working. He is unpredictable about movies. He loved Pride and Ida (as most sane people do), thought Mr Turner was "good. well made" but clearly had no passion for it. Cried huge apartment-flooding puddles during Still Alice and Wild, and inexplicably H-A-T-E-D both Force Majeure and A Most Violent Year (what the what??? x 2). Finally, he was paying so little attention to Love is Strange that I had to make him shut it off. That wonderful movie from Ira Sachs is too delicate for half-watching. It requires your full attention or that glorious final 15 minutes just won't resonate. 

Have you ever learned something new about a movie you loved by catching only pieces of it or hearing it in the background?

Monday
Dec292014

Reviewish: Into the Woods, Musical Numbers Ranked

This review originally appeared in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

Once upon a time Stephen Sondheim wrote a musical classic Into the Woods. The first act brings together classic fairy tale characters into one comic misadventure and the second act debunks the “happily ever after” myth and transforms the whole play into a masterpiece about virtually all the Big Stuff: growing up, parenting, marriage, death, rebuilding after great loss.

Cinderella's family mocking our movie musical anxiety

When it comes to lines we can repurpose to talk about the prospects of a film version, Little Red said it best:

It made me feel excited. well, excited and scared.

Isn’t that how devotees of the movie musical feel each time a new one arrives? A bit of background to justify the high-anxiety. The live-action movie musical died alongside Bob Fosse's alter ego in All That Jazz (1979). The genre was six feet under for two full decades despite intermittent attempts at excavating its exquisite corpse (Annie, Little Shop of Horrors, Newsies). The Disney animation renaissance of the 1990s renewed interest and the genre was successfully reborn at the turn of the century by the one-two-three-four punch of Dancer in the Dark, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Moulin Rouge! and Chicago. That's a four consecutive high quality film run that this ancient-newborn genre has yet to match since. And why is that exactly? Some people blame the lack of strong directors who are skilled in the form, others the resistance to new blood (nearly all modern musicals are adaptations). Still more culprits are Hollywood’s frequent miscasting since musical skill is considered optional.

But The Witch (Meryl Streep) would like us to stop bitching and get on with this review...

Click to read more ...

Sunday
Dec282014

Box Office: The Battle of the Holiday Releases Part 2

Manuel here offering up the sequel to last week’s Battle of the Holiday Releases you didn’t know you needed. Those Middle Earth dwellers are nothing if not resilient warriors and thus it comes as no surprise that The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies held on to #1 for the second week in a row despite some competition from a singing witch and a martyred soldier, both proving quite the challengers. That bodes well for the awards prospects for Rob Marshall’s big screen adaptation of Into the Woods and Angelina Jolie’s uplifting war drama Unbroken. Box office alone does not win awards (or nominations) but it surely doesn’t hurt. It was a busy Christmas week -- even embattled and corporate freedom of speech poster boy The Interview made a dent in a little over 300 screens. 

Random Trivia: This is the first time since December 2007 when two live-action musicals have made it to the Top Ten. Can you name them? Hint: they also involved Disney & Sondheim.

TOP SIXTEEN

01 HOBBIT: BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES $41.2 (cum. $168.5)
02 UNBROKEN $31.7 NEW (cum. $47.3)
03 INTO THE WOODS $31.02 NEW (cum. $46.1) Interview
04 NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: SECRET OF THE TOMB $20.6 (cum. $55.3)
05 ANNIE $16.6 (cum. $45.8)
06 HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PT1 $10 (cum. $306.65) Review
07 THE GAMBLER $9.3 NEW (cum. $14.3) Review
08 THE IMITATION GAME $7.93 (cum. $14.6) Review, Glenn's take
09 EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS $6.75 (cum. $52.5) Review
10 WILD $5.4 (cum. $16.3) Review, interview, podcast
11 BIG HERO 6 $4.8 (cum. $199.9) ReviewBrief take
12 TOP FIVE $3.8 (cum. $19.2) Brief take
13 THE PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR $3.2 (cum. $66.9) Review
14 INTERSTELLAR $3 (cum. $177.3) Review
15 BIG EYES $2.98 (cum. $4.4) Open Thread
16 THE INTERVIEW $1.8 (cum. $2.8)

There’s a fascinating discussion to be had about the way Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper (notching the highest limited box office for Christmas Day record) and James Franco/Seth Rogen’s The Interview (making history by well, being released?) were released the same day as Ava DuVernay’s Selma. Together they make quite the triptych on American politics, don’t you think? While Tim Burton's Big Eyes struggled, The Weinstein Company must be happy with the way The Imitation Game is expanding (cracking the Top Ten while being in less than 1000 screens; has it made it near you?).

PLATFORM (Under 100 screens)

01 AMERICAN SNIPER $0.61 4 locations NEW (cum. $0.85)
02 SELMA $0.59 19 locations NEW (cum. $0.91) Review, podcastpremiere
03 MR TURNER $0.25 24 locations (cum. $0.49) Review, Interview 
04 INHERENT VICE $0.2 16 locations (cum. $0.96) Conversation, FYC Josh Brolin
05 WHIPLASH $0.18 87 locations (cum. $5.45) Review, JK Simmons
06 CITIZENFOUR $0.06 40 locations (cum. $2.1) Podcast, FYC Editing
07 THE HOMESMAN $0.059 61 locations (cum. $2.1) Review, brief take
08 THE BABADOOK $0.058 47 locations (cum. $0.6) Interview

Below these, two foreign language films bolstered by good reviews opened at two locations: Two Days One Night, featuring the luminous Marion Cotillard ($0.48 for the five-day frame) and Oscar-shortlisted Leviathan ($0.023 for the week).

What did you catch Christmas Day? 

Saturday
Dec272014

Meet the Contenders: Chris Pine "Into the Woods"

Abstew continues the contenders series highlighting one performance per opening weekend

Chris Pine as Cinderella's Prince in Into the Woods
Best Supporting Actor

Born: Christopher Whitelaw Pine was born August 26, 1980 in Los Angeles, California

The Role: After a labored development over the years (the musical opened on Broadway how long ago?!?) and much controversy before it was even released (they cut what songs exactly?!?), the film version of Stephen Sondheim's beloved musical Into the Woods finally made its way to the big screen courtesy of Disney and Chicago's Oscar-nominated helmer, Rob Marshall. The story interconnects classic characters from fairy tales (Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Rapunzel) and shows how the story continues after their happily ever afters. Joining in the colorful cast of characters is Chis Pine playing the charming Prince to Cinderella.

Click to read more ...

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