The Magnificent...Two

Movie Stars still matter. As long as they're real movie stars and not just "leads". Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks both became famous in the 1980s and they continue to be two of the most reliable leading men thirty-ish years after their first hits. So nothing about the success of The Magnificent Seven and Sully is complicated or surprising. Congrats to those perennials. Here are the weekend box office charts:

TOP TEN WIDE
01 The Magnificent Seven $35 NEW Review
02 Storks $21.8 NEW 
03 Sully $13.8 (cum. $92.3)  Review
04 Bridget Jones's Baby $4.5 (cum. $16.4) Review
05 Snowden $4.1 (cum. $15.1)
06 Blair Witch $3.9 (cum $16.1) Review & Remembering Blair Witch (1999)
07 Don't Breathe $3.8 (cum. $81.1)
08 Suicide Squad $3.1 (cum. $318.1) Review & Worst of Year
09 When the Bough Breaks $2.5 (cum. $26.6)
10 Kubo and the Two Strings $1.1 (cum $45.9) Review

TOP TEN LIMITED
(Excluding Previously Wide)
01 No Manches Frida $740K (cum. $10.3)
02 The Beatles: Eight Days a Week... $397K (cum. $1.4)
03 The Queen of Katwe $305K NEW 
04 The Hollars $273K (cum. $729K)
05 The Dressmaker $180K NEW
06 Don't Think Twice $132K (cum $4) Review 
07 Hunt for the Wilderpeople $78K (cum. $5) Review
08 Cafe Society $57K (cum. $10.9) Review 
09 Greater $55K (cum. $1.8)
10 Indignation $25K (cum $3.3) Review

While the inspirational drama Queen of Katwe didn't exactly sell out its shows this weekend at 52 locations, word of mouth has been so strong on that picture that we can expect it will expand well once that word of mouth has a chance to be heard. The Dressmaker wasn't quite as big a draw in select cities but Kate Winslet and the movie's wackiness (anyone longing for the days of hit Australian comedy imports of the 1990s should run to the theater) should help keep that one afloat for a bit.

What did you see this weekend?

Kate Winslet's The Dressmaker Joins the Amazon Studios Family

Daniel Crooke here. In the past eight months we’ve seen Kate Winslet in her most peppery Polish accent pin a lifetime of parenting flaws on Steve Jobs, and rule a Mob roost with Russian verve in Triple 9. Audiences down under have already feasted upon her new film The Dressmaker, which won Best Actress honors for Kate, and Supporting Actress and Supporting Actor to Judy Davis and Hugo Weaving, respectively from the Australian Film Institute. Yet despite making its North American debut last year at TIFF, U.S. audiences have unfortunately been kept in the dark. A crying shame, once you’ve seen the splashy hats and dresses, striking desert landscapes, and simmering performances on display in its bold trailer so memorably exalted in Nathaniel’s YNMS.

Now, thanks to Amazon Studios, we will finally witness her smolder with a cigarette as an Aussie farmhouse carelessly blazes over her shoulder.

Amazon has five films currently in and out of the Cannes competition – Woody Allen’s classic Hollywood comedy Café Society, Park Chan-wook’s gothic lesbian thriller The Handmaiden, Jim Jarmusch’s ambling slice of lifer Paterson and Iggy Pop documentary Gimme Shelter, and Nicolas Winding Refn’s fashion world phantasmagoria The Neon Demon – and when you add Spike Lee’s kaleidoscopic Chi-Raq and Kenneth Lonergan’s Sundance pickup Manchester by the Sea to the pile, you’ve got to applaud their team’s adventurous, cine-literate taste. With The Dressmaker, they instill faith in the box-office and streaming potential of female filmmakers, expand their international reach, and continue to stand up for films that don’t snugly fit into classifiable categories bottom-lined with boring expectations. Their added commitment to real theatrical releases begs the question: who says streaming’s killing the cinema?

What do you make of Amazon Studios’ continuing foray into the marketplace? And, more importantly, on a scale of Carnage to Eternal Sunshine, how psyched are you for a new Winslet vehicle?

Mad Max, Kate Winslet and Cate Blanchett Win Big at the Australian Academy

Glenn here. As expected, it was a big night for Oscar hopeful Mad Max: Fury Road at the AACTA Awards last night, while Cate Blanchett gave yet another wonderful speech upon winning the Longford Lyell Award for outstanding achievement to Australian screen. Split over two ceremonies in Sydney, this year’s “Australian Oscars” were honouring the most successful year for Australian film on record – yes, that means of all time (inflation not included) – as well as television. Miller’s film picked up eight trophies all up, bringing the total number of AFI/AACTA Awards won by the franchise to 16, while Miller has now amassed 8 career statues. Yes, eight!!

Jocelyn Moorhouse’s homegrown phenomenon The Dressmaker was also a hit winning five including for actors Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, and Hugo Weaving as well as the audience choice award, which goes to show just how popular that period western has been here and how much it's captured the public's attention (it has come within mere millions of Mad Max’s box office). The most sentimental win of the night was for lead actor Michael Caton, the industry legend whose first win finally came at age 72 in Last Cab to Darwin about a dying man driving cross-country. AIDS-era gay romance Holding the Man sadly went home empty-handed despite being one of the finest dramas this country has ever produced.

Best Film: Mad Max: Fury Road
People's Choice Award: The Dressmaker
Best Direction: George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road
Best Lead Actor: Michael Caton, Last Cab to Darwin
Best Lead Actress: Kate Winslet, The Dressmaker
Best Supporting Actor: Hugo Weaving, The Dressmaker
Best Supporting Actress: Judy Davis, The Dressmaker
Best Original Screenplay: Robert Connolly and Steve Worland, Paper Planes
Best Adapted Screenplay: Reg Cribb and Jeremy Sims, Last Cab to Darwin
Best Documentary Feature: That Sugar Film

More winners + Cate Blanchett (!) after the jump...

No, we won't stop using this gif!

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Mad Max & Fashionable Kate lead the 'Australian Oscar' nominations

The AACTA Awards, essentially the Australian Oscars, are in their 5th year. But the "5th" business they're promoting is misleading. It's the fifth year under their new name, AACTA, but they've actually been giving out prizes since 1958 when they were called AFI Awards... not to be confused with the AFI events across the Pacific, America and Australia both starting with "A" and both having Film Institutes. But they're obviously promoting a reboot mentality since they consider the 2011 AACTAs the "inaugural" awards.

Leading the pack this year are Kate Winslet's fashionista revenge comedy The Dressmaker (still awaiting news on a US release) and the critically beloved Max Mad Fury Road with 12 and 11 nominations respectively. George Miller's action masterpiece could even win since AACTA doesn't have the genre bias Oscar does -- Australia's industry is to small to have such silly biases! -- giving Best Film to The Babadook last year. If Mad Max Fury Road could repeat this trick at the American Oscars -- 11 nominations (!) -- 95% of cinephiles would experience the rapture and never be heard from again.

The film nominees are after the jump...

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TIFF: Kate Winslet Goes Couture in 'The Dressmaker'

Glenn here. I'm not in Toronto (booo!), but I did get to see this homegrown film recently so let's talk about The Dressmaker. This is a film that makes a lot better sense when the end credits roll and you realize that director Jocelyn Moorhouse co-wrote the screenplay with her husband, none other than P.J. Hogan. It makes sense because The Dressmaker, despite the refinement suggested by its prestige audience-courting title, is kinda crazy. It is a buoyantly excessive feat of far-fetched camp that isn’t as good as its highly-stylized cinematic cousins of the early 1990s such as Strictly Ballroom, The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, and Hogan’s own Muriel’s Wedding, yet which nonetheless has enough of a unique voice to work as a very Australian piece of crowd-pleasuring fluff. It’s the cinematic equivalent of Betsy Johnson designing an haute couture line for Dior. [more...]

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