Saturn Nominations 2019: Endgame

by Nathaniel R

Avengers Endgame dominated with 14 nominations

The Saturn Awards, which used to be held in June each year are moving to September which means the nominations have been delayed for some time now and the eligibility period for the 2019 nominations covers a 16 month period from March 1st, 2018 through to July 7th, 2019. Moving forward, the eligibility should revert to a July to June basis with the ceremony in September (September 13th this year). They're also soon announcing a streaming partner so it will become a televised ceremony starting this year.

We love the Saturn Awards in concept -- it's a worthy goal to honor genre films (fantasy, horror, action, thrillers, and sci-fi are the pet causes) because any genre is capable of greatness -- but they've never quite been able to get their act together and each year's nominations are always agonizing or inexplicable in some way or another...

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Posterized: The still-young career of Tom Holland

by Nathaniel R

With Spider-Man Far From Home owning the holiday weekend, the just turned 23 year old Tom Holland is back in the spotlight. He's already been a professional actor for 11 years, starting with a West End production of Billy Elliott in 2008, where he first played Billy's best friend and later graduated to the lead role to rave reviews. His first gig in front of cameras (The Impossible, 2012) also prompted critical superlatives and he was well on his way to major stardom. We were rooting for him from then on and knew he would be the perfect Spider-Man before he was cast. Thankfully, the MCU made a good decision there and the rest has been history.

So let's take a trip back through his shortcareer via movie posters. How many of his 12 key screen projects (11 features and one major television event) have you seen? The posters are after the jump...

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Halfway Mark Box Office (Pt 1: The Mainstream)

As part of our midway through the year report (we've already seen fun halfway top fives from the team and favourite male performances) here's a look at the box office year thus far. Tomorrow we'll get a bit more niche, okay? Figures here are estimates as of Sunday June 30th for films released in the first six months of the year.

BOX OFFICE TOP TENS IN SIX CATEGORIES
🔺= the movie is still in over 100 theaters.

1. TOP GROSSING FILMS WITH A FEMALE LEAD
(Excluding films where a male lead is just as prominent as his female co-star)

Captain Marvel

01 Captain Marvel (Disney/Marvel) $426.7 starring Brie Larson. March 8th
02 Us (Universal) $175 starring Lupita Nyong'o. March 22nd
03 Alita Battle Angel (Fox) $85.7 starring Rosa Salazar. Feb 14th...

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Review: Dark and Tired Phoenix

This review was previously published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad...

Don't they have any healing and creative rejuvenation among the super-powered mutations at Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Children? If so they needed them to lay their hands on this franchise for a few years before making another bungled attempt at the beloved Dark Phoenix storyline (from the 1980 comic books) within this movie franchise's 19 movie years. But that's a rhetorical question. If Dark Phoenix (2019) is indication, mutations cannot save this franchise.

When we return to our characters, much has changed since our last visit. Which is fine since who wants to be reminded of X-Men Apocalypse? The X-Men are now no longer shunned by society but held up as heroes. Professor Xavier (James McAvoy, phoning this one in... but then who isn't?) has a direct phone to the White House, like a Batman / Commissioner Gordon sitch on steroids. Their first mission, which serves as kind of a second prologue to the over and underwritten film, is making Raven (Jessica Lawrence) nervous for some underwritten/performed reason...

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Bentonville: Fearless stuntwomen, retiring post-masters, and troubled schoolgirls

Part 2 of 3

Playing in traffic... (Captain America: Winter Soldier) one of the daily jobs of Hollywood stuntwomen

Aside from the very first opening night activities at Bentonville, the first film I attended was a work-in-progress doc called Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story. The director April Wright is still working on the final cut so there's still time to get more focused (it was easy to imagine this as an even fuller miniseries as it's trying to covering a lot!) but whatever it'll be in its final form will be entertaining...

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