Friday, April 24, 2015 at 9:19AM Manuel here encouraging you to gawk at Jake Gyllenhaal in the new poster for his boxing film Southpaw (which got the YES/NO/MAYBE SO treatment a couple of weeks ago when we first saw how ripped our darling Jakey had gotten for this Antoine Fuqua film).
It’s a stunning poster.
I’m literally left with no words; I have nothing else to add. Do you?
Monday, April 20, 2015 at 8:00AM
Manuel, who is deathly afraid of heights, here to discuss the newest poster for Robert Zemeckis's upcoming film The Walk.
1. This looks like a dolly zoom waiting to happen.
2. I miss Death Becomes Her/Back to the Future Zemeckis. Heck, I even miss Cast Away/What Lies Beneath Zemeckis. Might this be the film that restores my faith in his kinetic filmmaking after over a decade of losing him to performance capture (and that Denzel film which everyone seemed to warm up to but which left me cold)?
3. Oh, this is giving me vertigo.
4. The poster doesn’t really draw attention to it, but the blue-eyed, strawberry-blond Joseph Gordon-Levitt from the trailer still haunts me.
5. God, my palms are sweaty. And this is just a poster! Bring back that gorgeous minimalist teaser!
6. Can this live up to Man on Wire, James Marsh’s Oscar-winning documentary about this very “walk” which I saw through my sweaty palms but remember liking a lot?
7. “Every dream begins with a single step” suggests the marketing will be pushing this as an uplifting “true story." One hopes Zemeckis offers us a tad more. Related: will they really be billing it as The Walk: A True Story, and if so can we just call it TWATS for short?
8. The more I stare at this the dizzier I get and now my toes are tingling.
9. Snowden or Petit; which Joseph Gordon-Levitt “based on a real person” performance are you most looking forward to?
10. Will I survive watching this on IMAX 3D? he typed while wiping his sweat-stained keyboard.
I can’t look at this anymore without finding a nearby paper bag but I’m curious what those less heights-averse folks have to say about this poster and upcoming film. Will you take the first step with Zemeckis and JGL when this opens in October?
Monday, April 13, 2015 at 5:00PM Channing Tatum's got the moves on the first of what is surely a series of character posters. Still wish we were getting new characters rather than bringing back the old ones (Channing excluded of course) since sequels shouldn't really try to repeat but venture forward... but what can you do?
How do you suppose Mike gets "back to the grind" when the whole plot of the first film was him moving on from it?
Sunday, April 12, 2015 at 3:23PM 
Scott Eastwood (Son O' Clint) headlines the new Nicholas SparksFurious 7 and Home dominated the charts just like last week and Cinderella logged its fifth consecutive week in the top five -- she's got legs, that girl with in the glass slippers.
The only new wide release The Longest Ride, came in third. It's on the lower end of the nevertheless very consistent scale of Nicholas Spark adaptations. They've never opened below $10 million but average out around $17 million for a first weekend. The Notebook (2004) remains the most successful overall though it also opened in the lower end of the range. So only time will tell how popular the latest one is.
WIDE RELEASE
01 Furious 7 $60.5 new (cum. $252.5) Review
02 Home $19 (cum. $129.5)
03 The Longest Ride $13.5 NEW
04 Get Hard $8.6 (cum. $71.2)
05 Cinderella $7.2 (cum. $180.7) Review
The point is that Nicholas Sparks is as much of a brand as, say, Marvel movies or Bond pictures. The plots and actors may vary from film to film but you mostly know what you're going to get.
This snarky dismissal made me giggle:
No, I WON'T be seeing the new Nicholas Sparks movie! I expect to see a man hold a lady's face, not simply adjust her hat
Meanwhile in limited release While We're Young continues to perform for Noah Baumbach despite its initial mixed response with criticss, and Ex Machina, Alex Garland's directorial debut was the biggest movie in limited release with a quarter million despite only 4 screens. The other strongest "per screen average" belonged to the Juliette Binoche/Kristen Stewart duet Clouds of Sils Maria which we'll talk about real soon.
What did you see this weekend?
Friday, April 10, 2015 at 6:00PM My schedule has been in complete disarray so I haven't yet seen Ex-Machina, opening today in limited release, but I've heard many thumbs up from the critical community.
As an early adopter of this year's "it" girl, Alicia Vikander, I'm excited to see her as a cyborg or whatever she plays in the movie. But we'll get around to Alicia and her men (Domnhall Gleeson & Oscar Isaac) after we see the picture.
Ex Machina (2015) marks Alex Garland's directorial debut but his name is already a familiar one at the movies from adaptations of two of his novels, and as a screenwriter himself. He has also served as an executive producer on a few movies, not pictured here like 28 Weeks Later (2007) which of course spun off from the film he wrote, and this summer's Big Game (2015) an action film starring Samuel L Jackson as the President of the USA.
HOW MANY GARLAND-RELATED FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN?
THE BEACH (2000) based on his novel
28 DAYS LATER (2002) original screenplay
THE TESSERACT (2003) based on his novel
SUNSHINE (2007) original screenplay
NEVER LET ME GO (2009) his screenplay adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel
DREDD (2012) his screenplay adaptation based of the comic strip character Judge Dredd
If you've read any of his novels -- the only one that hasn't been adapted for the screen is "The Coma" -- you win bonus points, and must share your feelings. It's the law.
