Streaming Roulette: Netflix & Prime for January

Curiously Netflix and Prime have no recent movies available to start 2019 with.  In the first half of January Netflix only has Solo: A Star Wars Story (beginning on the 9th). The situation at Prime is a bit better with Leave No Trace (3rd), Beautiful Boy (4th), and Eighth Grade 13th) all available soon. In other words, now is a great time to hit the actual movie theaters and catch up on Oscar hopefuls since the streaming services won't help much. Nevertheless here's a perusal of 'new'  streaming options.

As is our practice we've frozen the films at utterly random moments without cheating (whatever comes up comes up) for this quick preview. Let's go...

What just happened?!

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Links: Letitia, Lists, Lady Gaga, and 'Live-Action' Remakes

• Slate a rant about Vice's insulting post-credits sequence. A *lot* of people really hate Vice. Will that stop the Academy from voting for it? The studio controlled the conversation for a long time with the embargo and it built up real awards steam. We shall see.
• Cartoon Brew looks into Disney's weird stance about their Lion King remake. They keep saying "it's not animated" but we all know it is!
• /Film the live action remake of Japanese hit Your Name will be 'Americanized'

• Deadline Dame June Whitfield of Absolutely Fabulous fame has died at 93
• Into the Spider-Verse the screenplay is online if you're interested
• Vulture a survey and exploration of what Asian-American art meant this past year featuring Burning, Crazy Rich Asians, Searching and more...
• The Atlantic has a series of articles called "And Scene" that's worth checking out zeroing in on great scenes from the year
• Coming Soon supposedly Bird Box had the best first week of all time for views on Netflix but the company is still totally cagey about stats and numbers so it's hard to trust. We don't even know what counts as a view really - did you have to finish watching it for example?
• The Root Letitia Wright crowned box office queen of 2018 (it helps to be in the top two grossers of course)
• Vulture "horror is not defined by what scares you"
• MovieWeb More news on what Disney+ streaming service is planning (i.e. tons and tons of Marvel shows)

List-Mania
• IndieWire 52 directors choose their favorite films of the year. This is a good read and the variety of titles cited is noteworthy, reminding you more than critics lists have how different each person's experience of cinema in a particular year can be.
• Cinemablographer chooses 20 best performances of the year and Nicole Kidman makes the list twice! Some unusual picks here but thankfully no category fraud!
• Furious Cinema top 20 of the year, in no particular order featuring Suspiria, Spider-Verse, and more
• Jesse Knight best movie taglines of 2018 beginning with... Dog Days (lol!)
• Vulture 10 best podcasts of 2018
• The Guardian Mark Kermode's top 10 list with BlacKkKlansman, Leave No Trace...
• Vulture 10 best film scores of 2018

Exit Video
Lady Gaga performs inside a mecha-robot in her new Las Vegas residency show "Enigma"

I’m gonna be thinking about this for a few days... the POWER... #ENIGMA pic.twitter.com/4Yj9orazre

— LG Updates (@LadyGagaVegas) December 29, 2018

Review: "Bird Box" on Netflix

by Eric Blume

The new limited-theatrical-release / now-on-Netflix movie Bird Box is a puzzlement. It’s a post-apocalypse thriller directed by Oscar and Emmy-winner Susanne Bier, and stars Sandra Bullock, John Malkovich, Jackie Weaver, and Trevante Rhodes as survivors of a world-ending crisis.  A lot of talented people are involved in this film, so it’s a true curiosity that the whole thing ends up a gigantic shrug.

The details of this apocalypse are a little murky, but it goes something like this. Scary creatures (which we never see) are appearing around the globe, and they tap into your deepest fears somehow(?), and cause you to immediately commit suicide...

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Netflix December: Mowgli, Dumplin', and The Lobster

A belated Streaming Roulette. We forgot to share Netflix's new offerings so here we are a week late, surveying new titles by freeze framing films at random places with the scroll bar and whatever comes up first, that's what we share. No cheating.  Whats new on Netflix? Let's see...

I killed your brother.

The Lobster (2015/2016)
"Heartless Woman" absolutely upset me in this movie... but I love the rest of the movie (including that nobody has a name except the main character) which made my top ten list in its year. The Favourite is my new favorite Yorgos Lanthimos now, though. Which is your favorite of his merciless and haunting but sometimes indelibly funny movies: Dogtooth, Alps, The Lobster, Killing of a Sacred Deer, or The Favourite?

Related: Remember that great piece Daniel Walber wrote about The Lobster's phony flowers and production design.

[whispering in foreign languages]

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Why does everyone want to talk about Chris Pine's penis?

Guest article from Anna from Defiant Success

Following its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this past September, film critics who had seen David Mackenzie’s Outlaw King were all abuzz on Twitter. The one scene they were very vocal about: star Chris Pine going full frontal. Following the social media explosion, Pine expressed his discomfort not at filming the scene but rather at how it was receiving more attention than the rest of the movie. (“There’s so much beheading in this. And yet people wanna talk about my penis.”) Subsequent interviews had Pine talking about how there’s a double standard in Hollywood towards performers going full frontal for their work; men receive a lot of press for whipping it out but when women bare it all for the camera, it’s barely noteworthy. In all honestly, Pine isn’t wrong in the slightest.

Mind you, there have been male frontal nudity scenes for decades -- at least for as long as the MPAA rating system has been in existence...

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