Beauty vs Beast: Little Drummer Bot

Howdy folks it's Jason from MNPP here, pulling myself out of the snow-heap I was buried under last week to drum up a new round of our "Beauty vs Beast" series, in which we ask you to pick sides between good and evil, movie-style. By this time next week the 87th Academy Awards will have come and gone in an explosion of gold-dust and gowns, so I figure I'll get one more contender in here before it's too late... and what better place to celebrate Oscar Season than with the Best Picture nominee that's all about the blood and the sweat and the brutality that goes into slicing and dicing art down to ecstatic perfection? Replace Miles Teller's drumsticks with little golden men and replace JK Simmons with, well, let's say Harvey Weinstein cuz you know why not, and you get the idea. Enter Whiplash, where losers need not apply.

poll by twiigs.com

You've got one week to pick your picks, and please do furiously hit up the comments, pounding your opinions yay or nay onto your keyboard so hard your fingers draw blood. Although I probably shouldn't say please? Fletcher doesn't like it if I say please.

PREVIOUSLY I go away for one week and before we know it Nathaniel's got us drowning in sexy gingers - he can't help himself! (And we're not complaining!) Last week's competition faced-off Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne two times over, and because we all love them both we were kind enough to spread the wealth - as the mother-son-lovers in Savage Grace it was Juli who came out on top, but it was Eddie and his Jupiter Ascending abs that dominated her goth stab in the dark in The Seventh Son. Said Nika of the latter, winning my heart with pure logic:

"I hated Eddie's performance in Jupiter Ascending, but, boy, he is shirtless. I can't resist."

Beauty vs. Beast: Evil Julianne & Evil Eddie

Jason is out of town so it falls on me to complete his Beauty vs. Beast duties this week. I cycled through so many possibilities before I succumbed to this fact: I spend at least 15 minutes of every day lately fantasizing that off camera  Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmaybe are reenacting mother/son Savage Grace sequences at all of their awards season campaign stops. In addition to being the frontrunners for Best Actress and Best Actor they also are the primary villains of two of this weekend's big poorly reviewed would be blockbusters that busted no blocks. So a twofer today, Savage Grace's psychotic beauty and murderous beast and Jupiter Ascending and The Seventh Son's Beauties who are also both Beasts.

Two Gingers, Twice. You've Got Two Votes. Go! 

poll by twiigs.com

poll by twiigs.com

You have one week to vote starting now!

LAST WEEK
Last time we looked to Groundhog Day and discovered we had more wintriness to endure. The battle of Phil Connor vs. Punxsutawney Phi is apparently doomed to repeat itself forever; you couldn't decide resulting in the second 50/50 split in this series history (the first and only other time was the Black Swan episode) 

Brookesboy summed up your wishywashiness this cycle

I started voting for little Phil because he's got better hair. But it was only a shadow of a doubt. Gotta go with Bill.

Podcast: Jupiter Etcetera

Remember us? It's been a month. How did that happen? Nathaniel, Nick, Katey and Joe are finally reunited. We had intended to talk Oscar nominations but we're so far past Nomination Morning that the conversation has a mind of its own and just goes where it may. Nathaniel keeps trying to bring up Nightcrawler and Ben Affleck, Amy Adams, Magic Mike and Djimon Hounsou's agent work there way into the conversation, too.

[42 Minutes]
00:01 We're back. DGA Awards & Birdman
10:54 Eddie Redmayne vs Michael Keaton vs Bradley Cooper
19:30 Original Song: Selma, The LEGO Movie
23:11 Beyond the Lights & Gugu Mbatha-Raw
27:20 Seventh Son & Jupiter Ascending 

This IMAX showing of Seventh Son begins in 5 minutes pic.twitter.com/QJzXS4eNCK

— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) February 6, 2015

REFERENCED IN THIS PODCAST
American Sniper Conversation from the podcast "Fighting in the War Room" 

Please to enjoy and continue the rambling conversation in the comments. You can listen at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. 

Jupiter Ascending & More

Box Office: Jupiter Descending

Amir  bringing you the weekend’s box office news. While awards season was in full swing this weekend with the DGA, BAFTAs and Grammys, Spongebob: Sponge Out of Water swept in and wiped off its competition while entering the top five best selling February releases of all time. This is one those films that totally slid below the radar for me; then again, the Venn diagram of people who care about this film and people who care about DGAs and BAFTAs is two separate circles. The weekend’s far buzzier title for cinephiles was Jupiter Ascending, the new visualeffectsapalooza from the Wachowski siblings. It is predictably visually stunning with incoherent plotting and confusing editing etc. etc. Like Cloud Atlas, this was mostly a failure, financially speaking, and you have to wonder how long it will be before they stop getting bankrolled for their strange visions. Finally, Julianne Moore and Jeff Bridges’ Seventh Son also bombed, but Universal, having predicted the dreadful critical response, made the very smart decision of opening it internationally a few weeks ago, so they’ve already made up the costs elsewhere.

TOP TEN
01 THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE $56 NEW
02 AMERICAN SNIPER $24.1 (cum. $282.2) 
03 JUPITER ASCENDING $19 NEW 
04 THE SEVENTH SON $7.1 NEW  
05 PADDINGTON  $5.3 (cum. $57.2)
06 PROJECT ALMANAC  $5.3 (cum. $15.7)
07 THE IMITATION GAME $4.8 (cum. $74.7) 
08 THE WEDDING RINGER $4.8 (cum. $55.1)
09 BLACK OR WHITE $4.5 (cum. $13.1)
10 THE BOY NEXT DOOR $4.1(cum. $30.8)

American Sniper slipped to number 2 on the list but is now firmly the third best film of 2014, still with a reasonable shot at becoming first. Not that being the box office champ necessarily helps its chances with winning the Oscar though – the last time the box office champ (among the nominees) won the Oscar was Slumdog Millionaire in 2008. The Imitation Game is the second best selling best picture nominee and will remain so, given it is still going strong at the theatres. Here is an interesting stat in case you love meaningless stats: the second best selling film is the most likely winner of the Academy award in recent years. Of the thirteen winners this century, five came second in financial terms. Those horrendous “honor the man, honor the film” ads might pay off after all.

I don't think I've ever hated a modern Oscar campaign tactic as much as this one. (h/t @raysubers) pic.twitter.com/atOAIEUxAZ

— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) February 3, 2015

I haven’t been catching up with recent releases at the theatres, but have been rewatching all of Iranian auteur Dariush Mehrjui’s films because of my upcoming introduction of his film, Hamoun, at TIFF, which you should attend if you’re in or around Toronto!

What have you been watching?

Thoughts I Had... on a bunch of new posters

We've neglected to share new posters so, let's do. A few brief thoughts, in the order they came, after each poster: Starred Up, Whiplash, The Seventh Son, Theory of Everything and American Horror Story: Freakshow.

Discuss!

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