Box office charts, Or, 'this is why we can't have nice things'

by Nathaniel R

Weekend Box Office (Sept 15th-17th)
W I D E	L I M I T E D
mother!	BEACH RATS
1. IT $60 (cum. $218.7) REVIEW	1.🔺BEACH RATS  $320k on 67 screens* REVIEW
2.🔺AMERICAN ASSASSIN $14.8 new	2.  DO IT LIKE AN HOMBRE  $125k  on 226 screens (cum. $2.3)
3.🔺mother! $7.5 new REVIEW	3.🔺BRAD'S STATUS   $100k on 4 screens new REVIEW
4. HOME AGAIN  $5.3 (cum. $17.1)	4. 🔺 COLUMBUS $89k (cum. $637K) on 62 screens

As you've probably heard box office for 2017 is way down, the lowest in several years overall. I've read numerous reports blaming this on Hollywood's overreliance on event movies and franchises and the like but here's a depressing theory: I don't actually think that's the problem...

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Thor Ragnarok Pride!

You guys Thor Ragnarok is celebrating Gay Pride with its new character posters. Thanks, Marvel. It's not quite enough to forgive you for trying to throw us off the Cappy/Bucky romance with that weird kiss your lover's niece thing in Civil War but noted and appreciated.

 Click on any of them to embiggen.

Okay, okay, nitpickers. This is probably just a celebration of the rainbow bridge to Asgard where Thor and family reside but we'll allow for the double meaning.

P.S. We did have to eject a poster of Anthony Hopkins to make this work but the designers made him so superfluous by repeating Loki's color and Hopkins is already filler in that Emmy race he's in so he'll sit this one out! 

Beauty vs Beast: Super Cat Scratch Fever

Jason from MNPP here with today's new "Beauty vs Beast" -- I finally got my boyfriend to watch Wonder Woman this weekend (it's finally out on VOD) and he was as surprised as I was by how much he enjoyed it (I was skeptical given DC's lousy track-record and he was skeptical because he doesn't like superhero movies). But he had one complaint that I very much got - there are a couple of full-body CG shots where Diana's hopping around where the effects look pretty goony, or as my boyfriend put it, "That looked like Catwoman." 

Which got me thinking about Catwoman. The Halle Berry one, I mean. Which isn't as dire for me as it is for most - I actually enjoy the 2004 dud, albeit for camp value. But you kind of get the feeling that the film's director Pitof (whose career was, probably rightly, murdered by the film) intended the camp value, which then got me thinking about what a blessing it is that Patty Jenkins was able to give us a female superhero and take her (and her girly love for love) seriously - there's a long history of female superheroes being treated as less than serious by male directors, from Supergirl to Showgirls. 

Of course Tim Burton took Catwoman seriously once, and from that we got the Greatest Superhero Performance of All Time. And he also proved that taking something "seriously" doesn't mean you have to drain all the fun, or even the camp, from it - a lesson every DC movie not named Wonder Woman could stand to learn. So I hope we get a proper Catwoman movie some day, but until then, I'll make due with the camp of Halle Berry smashing the beauty magnate villanness Sharon Stone's cement face in. Which leads me to this week's purrfect poll...

PREVIOUSLY When I was out of town last week Nathaniel took y'all back to Disney's film Hercules (which sidenote I have never seen, whoopsie) and faced off its hero and hell-ward villain, and in a squeaker the titular ginger took the crown with just over 51% of your votes. Always bet on ginger. Said Emma:

"I consider Hercules the second dishiest Disney character (second only to Nick from ZOOTOPIA... don't judge me!), so had to vote for the eye candy."

Tweetality

Two truths.

Is Jessica Chastain the New Jessica Chastain?

— FILM TWlTTER (@filmtwiter) August 17, 2017

Biggest fight in combat sports history, sorry Mayweather/McGregor #ThorRagnarok pic.twitter.com/BjsPvqYnRN

— Chris Hemsworth (@chrishemsworth) August 23, 2017

After the jump: cool cats, controversial fav Scorsese, eclipse jokes, Emmy jokes, niche actressexual polls, and much more...

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Beauty vs Beast: Children of the Night

Jason from MNPP here with this week's brand new edition of "Beauty vs Beast." Isn't it weird that Marvel says they have no current plans to reboot the Blade series? I know, I know, we're supposed to be against reboots. But Blade is a great character with great name recognition, and he's a great character with great name recognition of color on top of that, so maybe we should set aside our prejudices in this instance. It has been thirteen years since the last film, after all. I really like the original Blade trilogy though, and so here on Wesley Snipes' 55th birthday let's give some love to the original 1998 film, which I've always in particular had a soft spot for... especially with regards to its bad guy played by a sleazily charismatic Stephen Dorff.

PREVIOUSLY Last week we wandered into the land of Gilead and faced off the Emmy nominated ladies of The Handmaid's Tale - sure enough voting for a bitter pill like Ann Dowd's villainous Aunt proved difficult in our current political situation and Elisabeth Moss took a whopping 80% of your vote. Said Duncan Dykes:

"Such great scene partners - feeding off of each other and selling the dystopian world better than any production design or visual effects could.... Points to Ann Dowd for consistently unexpected characterization - her apparently genuine care for some of the girls (Janine in particular, striking considering her initial torture of her) adds shades of humanity to her in most unnerving ways. She speaks more like a preacher or particularly disapproving parent than a general or warden, which makes the character all the more intriguing.

Ultimately however you have to go with Elisabeth Moss for a spellbinding symphony of a performance - deeply felt humanity, her drained voice and face, the precision of her furtive glances of longing or fear or paranoia or anger. She spends such stretches of the show with everything on the inside that when she gets to let loose and expose traces of the fury she feels regarding her situation, it leaves you shaking. Brava."