Podcast: 22 Jump... Streep

The gangs all back to talk new releases. We ride along with Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson as they drive through post-apocalyptic Australian in The Rover, laugh with the abortion romcom Obvious Child, and share thoughts on two huge sequels to movies that all four of us loved a couple of years ago  (How To Train Your Dragon 2 and 22 Jump Street). Is the love still strong?

Naturally we also talk Meryl Streep since we recorded on her birthday. Expect the usual tangents... somehow Kerry Washington and Maleficent show up (among other weird intrusions).

53 minutes
00:01 Intro & Meryl Streep's Birthday
02:20 David Michôd's The Rover
09:00 How To Train Your Dragon 2
18:15 Channing Tatum & Jonah Hill and "The Ice Cube" in 22 Jump Street
31:30 Obvious Child
41:35 Katey's 2004 List (shout-out to last week)
45:55 Our Favorite Meryl's

You can listen at the bottom of the post or download the conversation on iTunes (though sometimes it takes a day to show up there). Continue the conversation in the comments because, you know, we're allowed to have different opinions and the more the merrier.

Streep Day Plus New Releases

Scooby Doo? Now They've Gone Too Far!

In what is unmistakably a sign of the apocalypse, Warner Bros is prepping a reboot of Scooby-Doo which was live action'ed in the long long ago era of 2002, the same year that spawned the original Spider-Man already two-years replaced to no one's advantage. We already know that Tomb Raider will happen sooner rather than later. What's next from the early Aughts? Red Dragon, which was itself a do-over of Manhunter (1986)? 8 Mile starring Macklemore? Stuart Little? Panic Room? Legally Blonde? Oceans 11 with an all new cast of younger cool? Charlies Angels? 

The most depressing thing about the do-over craze isn't that it exists exactly since the movies have always tried to repeat successes. But that it did not replace sequels. Several franchises from the nineties and early aughts are STILL producing sequels (Fast & Furious, The Bourne Identity, X-Men, Mission Impossible, etcetera). You can't have both, Hollywood. We'll have nothing new ever. Blargh!

poll by twiigs.com

A Great Big Weekend in Movie Theaters

What a delicious crop of movies to take us through the weekend! I'm tempted to just sit in the theater and play hooky from the blog till Monday. Two highly anticipated sequels in 22 Jump Street and How To Train Your Dragon 2 (the latter of which I've seen and loved) will surely crush the box office but there's a whole mess of movies worth seeing in arthouses right now, many of which we've already written up from festivals. If you're in the big cities here are just a handful of many choices.

I like this poster• Hellion (Sundance review) starring Aaron Paul as a grieving widower who's losing control of his sons. Juliette Lewis plays his sister-in-law
• Borgman The Netherland's Oscar submission last year
• Obvious Child (Sundance review) a romantic comedy that's getting a lot of attention due to its filthy mouth and abortion plotline
• The Rover (Cannes review) David Michôd's follow up to his outstanding debut Animal Kingdom is another crime drama. This one stars Guy Pearce again and Robert Pattinson.
• A Coffee in Berlin - this comedy was a huge hit in Germany. It used to be called Oh Boy! 
• We Are the Best - a girl band 80s-set movie from the great Swedish director Lukas Moodyson (Together, Lilja 4ever). I've only heard wonderful things and I have to stop putting it off.

Are you going to the movies this weekend? I'm off to see Edge of Tomorrow right at this moment (I'm late I know) due solely to the surprise of those extremely positive reviews. The premise, at least as delivered in the trailer, held zero interest so if I hate it I'll have to seek vengeance on the nation's film critics somehow. 

Ant-Man Shrinks, and Other Lukewarm Stories

I don't always get around to stories when they hit. Join me in the catch-up comments...

Fan made poster (if I knew who made it I would credit them, but so many blogs are bad about giving creditAnt-Man Shrinks
By now you've heard and digested or, more likely given this crowd (you didn't even comment on that juicy misogynistic She-Hulk debacle!), ignored the drama surrounding Disney/Marvel's Ant-Man movie. The long and short of it: Edgar Wright, of Shaun of the Dead / Scott Pilgrim fame who is unarguably adept and inventive about action-comedy (a unique skill given how unfunny action 'comedies' usually are), abruptly left over creative differences. Now from the roster of potential replacements (none of them even ⅕ as interesting as Wright), one has already fallen away. Leaving us sad for Paul Rudd (probably locked into the role for a decade) and Joss Whedon's Avengers: The Age of Ultron (doesn't Joss need Ant-Man to have his story work since Ant-Man created Ultron?) 

The probable answer as to why is that Disney/Marvel, now that they've won all the moneys in the world and are surely empowered by the knowledge that audiences are lemming-like about these things and will turn out in droves for even dud superhero movies  (Thor: The Dark World, Amazing Spider-Man 2, Iron Man 2), can afford to dump directors with artistic vision and focus on generic bosses who will just keep the assembly line running with less "ideas" / back-talking. Capitalism eventually ruins everything. Marvel sadly didn't learn the inspiring lesson they could have from hiring Joss Whedon. He made The Avengers the success it was, basically rescuing The Black Widow entirely, understanding how tiresome Iron Man had become and how to limit the dose, finding a way to make Thor and Hulk work in a team format even when they've never worked on their own. You need an artist to accomplish these kinds of juggling miracles and feats of resuscitation, not hired hands. 

The silver lining? This Ant-Man debacle did inspire the parody Michael Haneke twitter account to chime in...

. @marvel plz plz i bein praktisn wth mi cat!!1! he help katch ants 4 film. most he killd tho lol #haneke4antman pic.twitter.com/KcXEmX0bIA

— Michael Haneke (@Michael_Haneke) May 28, 2014

Who Stopped Roger Rabbit 2?
It's a story that never quite dies. It is... undead. The Dissolve performs the oft performed reanimation of that story corpse wondering why the sequel never happened and if it might happen now since the original people all still want it to. Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) is the Movie of the Week over there which is why they're asking.

In a Hollywood culture that prizes franchises and recognizable characters above all else it is a still a SHOCK in all caps that this sequel never came to be. In many ways this movie is the movie that proved to Hollywood that people would go nuts for a mix of new envelope pushing visual effects mixed with old school nostalgia. Which you could argue led to Toy Story which you could argue led to everything. I am ultra fond of that movie (I'd have easily nominated it for Best Picture that year) but I also have a not-so secret amount of affection for the fact that it never produced a sequel.

Why would I not want a sequel to something I love that much? Well, sequels are in so many ways our collective junk food and in an era where movies produce not only sequels but reboots and straight-to-dvd spinoffs and other forms of money-grubbing self-cannibalizing, Roger Rabbit feels comparatively monumental in its mystic standalone purity.

Finally...

Big Hero 6 Teaser
I meant to share this last week and completely forgot. I don't have much to say about it other than that it is adorable despite doing nothing other than ripping off The Incredibles (2004) for its "too fat for this suit" slapstick teaser but people have very short memories about these things so everyone can LOL anew

Box Office Holiday: Mutants, Reunited Stars, and Immigrants

Amir here, with the long weekend’s box office actuals. All was well in America (and all other markets in the world) as audiences stormed to see X-Men: Days of Future Past. The film’s haul was impressive, even though it fell short of the series’ best (The Last Stand) despite the inflation of 3D tickets, but it’s safe to say fatigue hasn’t yet kicked in with this group of superheroes. In the process, X-Men knocked Godzilla off the top spot perch. Nathaniel quite liked the film, despite its limitations. I haven’t yet seen it, and with the news that Edgar Wright has been kicked off the director’s chair of Ant Man, have vowed never to see another superhero film, but that’s a gripe for another article.

X-Men: Weekend of Godzilla Past

MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND BOX OFFICE
01 X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST $110.5 *new* Review
02 GODZILLA $38.4 (cum. $155.7) Review & Podcast
03 BLENDED $17.7 *new*
04 NEIGHBORS $17.1 (cum. $116.8) Review & Podcast
05 THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 $10 (cum. $187.1)

06 MILLION DOLLAR ARM $9.1 (cum. $22.7)
07 THE OTHER WOMAN $4.5 (cum. $78.6)  
08 RIO 2 $3.4 (cum. $122.5)
09 CHEF $2.9 new (cum. $4.2)
10 HEAVEN IS FOR REAL $2.7 (cum. $86.5)
11 CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER $2.2 (cum. $254.1) Review
12 BELLE $2.1 (cum. $4.3) Review

The other big opening of the weekend was Blended, for which the $18m dollar sales is being branded a flop but this isn’t true when you stop to consider just how unappealing everything about this film is. The title sounds like a youtube compilation of mishaps to people who are making smoothies. The trailer sucked the life out of every single theatre I saw it in, and a lot has changed for the leading duo since they starred together in their hit 50 First Dates and The Wedding Singer, most notably the fact that they weren’t has-beens then.

Marion Cotillard in The ImmigrantOn the limited side, the Sundance critical hit Cold in July was the most significant release, but without much advertising muscle or star power, it managed a modest $4k per screen average. James Gray’s The Immigrant pulled in similar averages but on a much larger scale as it expanded to 147 theatres. If you live in the vicinity of any of those 147 screens, you Must. Go. Now! It is one of the best of the year.

Nathaniel was on a viewing/reviewing spree this weekend with X-Men, The Normal Heart, Mad Men, and some 1941 pictures (vote!) but I didn’t watch a film. Instead I had the pleasure of talking to Godfrey Cheshire for a few hours! Amazing, right? It was a hoot!

How did you spend the weekend?