The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
Tim here. There's a good movie to be made out of Pixels, and it would be the easiest thing in the world to get there. First, keep all of the visual effects setpieces from the movie as it exists, for they are surprisingly beautiful and convincing considering how much lower the film's budget than the usual summer tentpole. Second, make exactly the opposite choices that the filmmakers actually did, because there's literally not one thing about the plot, characters, tone, morality, or basic comprehensibility about Pixels in this form that works.
The film began life in 2010 as a lovely little conceptual short by French filmmaker Patrick Jean (which you can watch here, and have a far more enjoyable 2.5 minutes than anything in the lugubrious 105 minutes of the feature), whence it was almost immediately nabbed by Adam Sandler, who wanted to transform it into a feature. And that's really sad, because of all the changes that would have clearly benefit Pixels at some stage in its development "don't make it an Adam Sandler vehicle" is unquestionably at the top of the list. [More...]
I had a busy movie weekend with Southpaw (better than it should be), Ant-Man (fun but also *shrugs*), a second viewing of Tangerine, and a double-podcast recording session (coming soon). Last night I nearly slipped into a coma of boredom when accidentally catching a half hour of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. (As I type this The Boyfriend is watching The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part One but not even Julianne Moore can get me near that. The appeal of that franchise continues to escape me -- not scary, not moving, dull action sequences -- and since it does I'm not sitting through a padded four-hour finale.)
Pixels high concept was so review and quality-proof that it seemed likely to explode just from brand(s) familiarity alone (like, oh, Jurassic World). But nope. Slightly lower on the list Jake Gyllenhaal had his best opening where he was the main draw since Jarhead in 2005. (I'm not counting Prince of Persia since the video game was the main draw and no one seems to remember that movie just 5 years later, including Jake Gyllenhaal).
What did you see this weekend?
BOX OFFICE Early Estimates. July 24th-26th Weekend 01 Ant-Man $24.7 (cum. $106) 02 Pixels $24 NEW 03 Minions $22 (cum. $261.5) Tim on the Minions phenom 04 Trainwreck $17.2 (cum. $61.5) Podcast 05 Southpaw $16.5 NEW 06Paper Towns $12.5 NEW 07Inside Out $7.3 (cum. $320.3) Podcast 08 Jurassic World $6.8 (cum. $623.7) 09 Mr Holmes $2.8 (cum. $6.4) 10 Terminator Genisys $2.4 (cum. $85.6) Review
David Poland won't review Pixels 'because... why?' VarietyOur Brand is Crisis starring Sandra Bullock gets an October 30th release date. With that film, The Walk and Freeheld all coming out it could be a huge year for features based on documentaries at the Oscars TFE in case you missed it Ann Dowd is in that film, too and loved being part of the ensemble Towleroad I interviewed the director/star of Do I Sound Gay?, a documentary on the gay voice that's out right now The Guardian reviews the latest Jason Reitman live read (The Big Lebowski) and loves on Michael Fassbender as "The Dude" and Patton Oswalt (in John Goodman's role of "Walter" and Mae Whitman (multiple parts) in particular. Not so much Jennifer Lawrence in Julianne Moore's original part
Variety interviews legendary documentarian Barbara Kopple. My shame: I've still never seen Harlan County, USA but people always say it's amazing Comics Alliance on rumors about "Robin" in Batman v Superman. He might be played by Zach Snyder's son Eli who has only worked for his dad but it's "not entirely" and only "sort of" nepotism. (Related: on the internet, words continue to lose their meanings) /Film looks at upcoming video game based movies. I don't play video games so none of this means anything to me but if you do... (I amend. There's one I'll see called Assassin's Creed but that's only because Fassy and Cotillard are both in on the heels of co-starring in Macbeth) Awards Daily loves Grandma and agrees with us that Lily Tomlin needs to be in the Best Actress conversation Gold Derby I forgot to mention that they were bought up by a larger media company so congrats to Tom O'Neill. That leaves David Poland, Jeffrey Wells, Sasha Stone and little ol' me as the last of the original indies still doing this. Not everyone wants to be bought up... I'm not sure who I'd be without The Film Experience... but on the other hand, money is nice. green. useful.
Off Cinema Esquire has a fascinating/terrifying long read on climate scientist 'what if the end of the world was your day job?' Stage Buddy for Kander & Ebb's 50th anniversary, a ranking of their top 50 songs. Wow this is comprehensive. The order is all out of whack (Cabaret and Chicago combined only get 3 songs in the top 25!) but still, good job Andrew! This reminded me how much I loved the music in The Visit and how great the music is in New York New York.
Speaking of... here's your Showtune to Go from The Scottsboro Boys (2010) which I'm so sad I never saw during its Broadway run (this song "Go Back Home" which comes fairly early in the show is so gorgeous). I only heard raves and it won 12 Tony nominations but in the season of The Book of Mormon there was no oxygen for the competition. Maybe someone will one day make it into a movie?
Tuesday, July 28, 2015 at 7:38PM 
Tim here. There's a good movie to be made out of Pixels, and it would be the easiest thing in the world to get there. First, keep all of the visual effects setpieces from the movie as it exists, for they are surprisingly beautiful and convincing considering how much lower the film's budget than the usual summer tentpole. Second, make exactly the opposite choices that the filmmakers actually did, because there's literally not one thing about the plot, characters, tone, morality, or basic comprehensibility about Pixels in this form that works.
