Second Helpings. How Often Do You Have Them?

Ten years ago today Spider-Man 2 (2004) was released. I loved it so much that I went back the next day for seconds. This is not in my nature. This is so infrequent for me, in fact, that I can remember every single time it's happened. The othertimes being Queen Margot (1994) and Ladyhawke (1985) and, once on DVD if you want to count that, with Trouble in Paradise (1932). Because those four movies are so similar, what.

So I guess my next-day-rewatches are on the same timetable as Cher's #1 singles and Diane Keaton's Oscar nods arriving once per decade; We're due for another.

This still from Sam Raimi's awesome movie (still my choice for best superhero film) neatly sums up how I feel about the hateful reboot franchise which is just wasting so much money and talent (Andrew Garfield, who was supposed to be one of our great new actors, has literally been in nothing else since Social Network and it's been FOUR YEARS). In case you need help interpreting the photo the reboot is James Franco and he's trying to kill the best superhero. Greed ruins everything.

Anyway...

How often have you seen the same movie on consecutive days? I doubt I'll ever start doing this but I will probably end up seeing movies a second time more frequenty than I used to since MoviePass makes the money much less of an obstacle. I saw Snowpiercer today and may actually need to see it a second time to clarify my feelings. 

Some Came Linking

Vulture dreams up sequels for The Fault In Our Stars. We'll obviously take the Laura Dern one
The Awl "The Tortured History of Entertainment Weekly" - god I was so in love with that magazine when it debuted in the 1990s. The first issue I remember buying was #5 with Jamie Lee Curtis on the cover for Kathryn Bigelow's Blue Steel
Pixar Times Pixar teases the first five minutes of Inside Out their June 2015 release
Theater Mania Laura Benanti auditions for Peter Pan Live! 

Boy Culture RIP supporting actress Martha Hyer, Oscar-nominated for Some Came Running (1958) 
Kenneth in the (212) teases a new stage production with the music of the The Go-Gos?
Comics Alliance a giant statue of Spider-Man in Korea is causing a stir thanks to its Spider-Manhood
Empire there's a new trailer for The Boxtrolls
Variety expects crazy ladies to dominate the Guest Actress race at the Emmys 
THR has a lengthy cover story on the suicide of the director of Searching For Sugar Man 

Foreign Film Oscar Watch
The Great Beauty, Italy's Oscar winner just lost its home-field Oscar race to a film called Human Capital which also won three acting gongs. Human Capital wasn't eligible for submission by Italy last year (since it hadn't yet opened by the cutoff date) so it could well be Italy's submission this year.

P.S.
I'm not sure how I missed this excellent interview with Lori Petty over at The Daily Beast on Sunday but it's a must read if you have any affection at all for Lori or the 1990s when she just kept doing her inimitable thing all over now classic movies like A League of Their Own, Point Break, and... well, the interview weirdly neglects Tank Girl but what can you do? She talks working with Jodie Foster, Madonna, discovering Jennifer Lawrence and how she got her cameo part in Orange is the New Black despite definitely being off the radar in recent years. 

Lori Petty & Naomi Watts in Tank Girl (1995)

Why do you think the roles started drying up after Tank Girl?

Well, because I was thirty-something and I hadn’t married my agent, married any guy co-stars, or gotten fake titties or Botox. I never wanted to be a bombshell; I wanted to be an actor. I would much prefer to be a woman than a man, but if I was a dude, maybe I’d have Johnny Depp’s island because women in this industry after a certain age definitely don’t get to do Pirates of the Caribbean. Poor Keira [Knightley], they even airbrushed huge tits on her on the poster, and she’s flawless! I was trying to play football with a baseball, and you can’t really do that.

Link o' the Morning To You

Film Society NYC's annual Asian Film Festival starts at the end of the month and will pay tribute to Jimmy Wong Yu (Taiwanese director), Lee Jung-jae (Korean actor), and Sandra Ng (Hong Kong actress) among others. Lots of interesting sounding films as usual
TMZ a few dozen images from the set of Star Wars Episode VII - mostly it's just charactor actors mulling about Tattooine sets with dark sunglasses in those earth colors heavy robes. Don't get too excited.

MNPP Good morning Jamie Dornan. This new photoshoot seems to be taking over the web (but I am willing to predict that 50 Shades of Gray won't do justice to Dornan's smolder.
LA Times Ann B Davis, "Alice" the housekeeper from The Brady Bunch has passed away. She was already a two-time Emmy winner when she started that show in 1969 but can you believe The Brady Bunch was never nominated for a single Emmy? Of course the awards were much different then with far fewer categories. Out of curiousity I looked up on the nominees that year from The Brady Bunch's first year 69/70 and the winning comedy was "My World and Welcome to It" and the winning 'new series' (a category they don't have anymore) was "Room 222" which was an interracial drama. I've never heard of either.
Towleroad Penny Dreadful [SPOILERS] got a man on man kiss last night between Josh Hartnett and Reeve Carney. I did *not* see that development coming given what we've seen of Hartnett's character
Collider James Cameron on his new projects, Avatar and Terminator franchises, and one old aborted movie involving a webslinger
James Cameron's Spider-Man Treatment  I can't decide whether or not to read this. I love Cameron movies so much that I fear forever wishing this had happened

Brie & ShaiToday's Must Read
Lynn Hirschberg invites Shailene Woodley and Brie Larson to dinner for Vulture and she agonizes about how to cook for them (in a kind of gentle mocking tone?) and they talk friendship, staying honest, and fixing Hollywood. Brie Larson reveals that she misses rejection ("it's real and I don't want to lose that") and Shailene talks about her failed Oscar campaign for the Descendants (‘Are you telling me that if I dress a certain way, my chances are better for an Oscar? That makes me want to show up naked.’).

Anyway it's a great read...

They both approved of my soup (thank God!) and did not question my out-of-­season tomatoes imported from some ­faraway, nonlocal place. The girls talked like long-lost sisters, airing their ­frustrations and expectations in equal measure. Woodley, for instance, hates sleeping scenes in movies. “It’s so ridiculous the woman wakes up and she’ll have makeup on! I don’t even look like that after a photo shoot!” And both women worked hard not to be judgmental. “Girls in this industry sabotage one another,” Larson said. “We will never do that.” It was a lovefest with big stakes: Together and apart, they were constantly pondering how to improve the movie business. Or, at least, how to mobilize their army of two.

It's  sad to me that Shailene Woodley spoke out against feminism recently because she clearly doesn't know what it means and would love it if she got educated and understood it.

The Darling Buds of May: Aunt May

May's end snuck up on us so quickly. We meant to do far more of these "May" characters. But here is abstew with one final tribute to a darling bud named May...

Full Name: May Parker aka "Aunt May" The complete name of the Aunt May from the comics is May Reilly Parker-Jameson (she later marries the father of The Daily Bugle's J. Jonah Jameson)

Film She Starred In: Although Aunt May has appeared in all of the recent Spider-Man big screen ventures of the past 12 years (5 and counting), let's focus on the first, Sam Raimi's 2002 film, simply named, Spider-Man.

Played By: Acclaimed British actress Rosemary Harris brings this Aunt May to life. Adding some gravitas to the film, Harris studied at the famed Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and is a nine-time Tony Award nominee (winning in 1966 for The Lion in Winter) and an Academy Award nominee for Best Supporting Actress in 1994's Tom & Viv. [More...]

Click to read more ...

The Amazing Samey-Man, A Redundant Box Office Chart

Amir here, with the weekend’s box office report. For the past ten days, I have been drowning in a stack of Hot Docs screeners, missed deadlines and research for [shameless self-promotion!] the next episode of my podcast. As I recover from all of that, it is reassuring, in a perverse way, to look at the box office top ten and realize that all is the same in the world. Order is restored. The audiences are happy. A fucking superhero film has won the day.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 came out on top with a figure that is being labelled “disappointing” around the web despite being higher than the GDP of nine small countries combined. Sure, that number is lower than the earnings of previous Spidey outings, but none of the preceding films suffered from an Electro that looks like an early draft version of a bad 80s sci-fi villain, or a Harry Osborn that looks like an early draft version of a bad 90s Leo DiCaprio. All this despite tens of millions of dollars spent on the CGI budget...

LOLZ

THE TOP TEN
01 THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 $92 *NEW* 
02 THE OTHER WOMAN  $14.2 (cum. $47.3)
03 HEAVEN IS FOR REAL $8.7 (cum. $65.6) 
04 CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER $7.7 (cum. $237.1) Review
05 RIO 2 $7.6 (cum. $106.4) 
06 BRICK MANSIONS $3.5 (cum. $15.4)
07 DIVERGENT $2.1 (cum. $142.6)  Review
08 THE QUIET ONES $2 (cum. $6.7)
09 GOD'S NOT DEAD $1.7 (cum. $55.5)
10 THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL $1.7 (cum. $51.5)

The rest of the top ten looks mostly similar to previous weeks. The Other Woman, a film led by three women that miraculously manages to fail the Bechdel test, is in second place, while Heaven Is For Real and God’s Not Dead continue to surpass all expectations as they hold on to the third and ninth positions, respectively.

On the limited end of things, Walk of Shame proved to be an aptly portentous title for the film's red carpet premiere, as it limped to a $745 per screen average on its opening weekend, but two smaller films did solid business. Belle, a historical drama about the true story of an illegitimate mixed-race child to a navy admiral received respectable reviews, while the Polish film Ida, Pawel Pawlikowski’s black and white, WWII drama has become one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year. I saw this one at TIFF last year, and its meticulous, chilly design gained my admiration more than love, but I’d happily give it another shot.

What have you watched this weekend?