Top Ten "Big Red" Characters

by Nathaniel R

Red is currently a hot color in Hollywood and not because they've all become Almodóvar acolytes (if only!) Consider what's happened in just the past six months. Red gooey Carnage got titular billing in October's superpowered hit Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Then in early November, personality-free Celestial "Arashem" bossed the Eternals around on the big screen and the very next weekend Clifford the Big Red Dog joined them in theaters. 2022 also wants in on the fun and Pixar's Turning Red hits Disney+ tomorrow March 11th.

Because we're feeling silly, it is absolutely time for a list of TOP TEN BIG RED MOVIE & TV CHARACTERS. There was a lot to choose from in film and tv history even if there were too many devils. Why it always gotta be satanic? Red gets a bad rap on the colorwheel of personality...

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Links: Sally Sings, Scarlett Settles, and Sorkin Speaks

• /Film If you're in Los Angeles, there's a live-to-film concert of Nightmare Before Christmas coming on October 29th and 31st. Billie Eilish will be doing "Sally's Song"
• Vulture Best Actress will cause even bigger than usual stan-wars this season
• Vanity Fair Aaron Sorkin finally breaks his silence about his long working relationship with disgraced bully producer Scott Rudin

• Letterboxd an interview with Melanie Lynskey for her new film Lady of the Manor
• Tom & Lorenzo Maggie & Jake at the Lost Daughter premiere at NYFF
• The Guardian why haven't there been more black queer love stories post Moonlight?
• The Times Jake Gyllenhaal interview
• Uproxx a really fun perceptive review of Venom: Let There Be Carnage
• Variety a report on the "Power of Women" dinner in Beverly Hills
• FSR a brief history of Marcia Lucas and Star Wars

Finally... According to Variety Scarlett Johansson and Disney have settled their Black Widow dispute out of court AND Disney has added that Tower of Terror starring Scarjo is back on. This all obviously means that Scarlett was paid handsomely enough for everyone to make nice again. Deadline, in a follow-up piece, suggests she received an additional $40 million for Black Widow. Good for her again for reminding the mighty Mouse House that a contract is a contract and they can't treat people this way. Especially not people with the means to fight back so Scarlett did everyone in Hollywood a service. (The millions of obnoxious people calling her greedy online should burn their latest paycheck without cashing it -- just one to put their money where their mouth is -- and then clock how they feel about not being paid for their work as promised). The new streaming frontier has thrown Hollywood economics into disarray and that's particularly true for the talent. They used to make lots of money in residuals for example... sort of an accidental pension plan but streamers have not been structured to pay people more if their show happens to be a success (unless it's a long running tv series of course and they need to renew contracts). Eventually all this will be ironed out but until then its safe to assume that the corporations are not willingly sharing the new wealth since they're not yet expected to. Expect a lot more battles over paydays and, one assumes, the actors union getting a little more wise to the new streaming economy, contractually speaking.

YNMS x 4: Dear Evan Hansen, Stillwater, Venom 2, and The Green Knight

Ben Platt and Kaitlyn Dever in "Dear Evan Hansen"Besieged by movie trailers we are. Movie studios hopes you'll go back to the movie theater ...sort of. They also hope you'll join their streaming service, whatever it is, and stay at home. Have any of these movies -- Dear Evan Hansen, Stillwater, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, or The Green Knight -- already sold you a ticket? 

Let's look at their trailers after the jump...

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Watch at Home: 1985, Roma, A Simple Favor

What's newly available for home viewing this week? Herewith a very quick survey of new releases and/or great deals

DVD/Blu-Ray
• All About Nina -Festival critics loved it (and Mary Elizabeth Winstead's performance) but it was lost in theaters. Can it find a second life now? 
• Fahrenheit 11/9 -Michael Moore didn't make the doc finalist list this year but his new doc is now on DVD
• A Simple Favor -Paul Feig and two terrific actresses, perfectly cast, delivered one of the year's best comic surprises
• Venom - The Spider-Man spinoff that was so successful we're sure to get loads of other villain spinoffs of superhero movies. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to threaten you.

New iTunes 99¢ Deals
I do not know what possessed them but they have a TON of great films for 99¢ this week (there's usually just a couple of must-sees). That's a price point we can get behind for streaming especially since otherwise you're at the whim of Netflix and Prime's extremely limited movie menus. You might want to check out 1985, Austin based filmmaker Yen Tan's latest LGBT drama. This one is in black and white and about a young man (Cory Michael Smith) who returns home to his parents in Texas (Michael Chiklis and an excellent Virginia Madsen) to say goodbye during the AIDS epidemic.

SO MANY FAMOUS FILMS FOR 99¢ THIS WEEK: Airplane, Annie Hall, Beetlejuice, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, The Birdcage, Black Hawk Down, The Black Stallion, Blue Velvet, Boyhood, Capote, A Clockwork Orange, Eat Drink Man Woman, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Gravity, Gremlins, Hairspray, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Heat, Kung Fu Hustle, Inherent Vice, Leave No Trace, Leaving Las Vegas, Lenny, The Madness of King George, The Magnificent Seven, Manhattan, Marty, Memento, Midnight Cowboy, Moonstruck, Moulin Rouge!, My Cousin Vinny, Mystic Pizza, Point Break, Raging Bull, Rainman, Spy, Sweeney Todd, Terminator 2, and Under the Skin.

This feels like my village. It's drier there but it feels like it.

Brand New Streaming
• Roma - Netflix's Best Picture hopeful is now streaming. Turn off your phone and all the lights. Then turn the sound way up. In other words treat it like a true cinematic experience if you're watching it at home. After Children of Men, Y Tu Mama Tambien, and Gravity (among others) we think it's safe to say that Alfonso Cuarón has earned the world's full attention. 

Halloween stays on top. Suspiria packs houses (albeit only two of them)

by Nathaniel R

Staying power or lack of competition? Halloween, A Star is Born, and Venom held on to the top three spots in wide release (with Venom booting Crazy Rich Asians out of the top ten films of 2018...sigh) while the platforming Oscar hopefuls continued their slow crawl towards public awareness beyond people like us if you know what I mean...

Weekend Box Office Estimates (October 26-28)
W I D E 800+ screens	PLATFORM / LIMITED excluding prev. wide
1.  Halloween $32 (cum. $126.6) Review	1. 🔺 Johnny English Strikes Again $1.6 on 544 screens *NEW*

2. A Star is Born $14.1 (cum. $148.7) Review, Soundtracking, Podcast	2. 🔺 Free Solo $1 on 394 screens (cum. $5.1)

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