What did you see this weekend?

by Nathaniel R

Weekend Box Office (March 23rd-25th) Estimates
W I D E 800+ screens	L I M I T E D excluding prev. wide
1. 🔺Pacific Rim: Uprising $28 NEW	1. 🔺 Isle of Dogs $1.5 on 27 screens NEW CAPSULE
2. Black Panther  $16.6 (cum. $630.9)  PODCAST	2. 🔺 The Death of Stalin $1 on 140 screens (cum. $2) REVIEW
3.🔺 I Can Only Imagine $13.8 (cum. $38.3)	3. The Leisure Seeker $315k on 117 screens (cum. $717k)
4. 🔺 Sherlock Gnomes $10.6 NEW	4.  Thoroughbreds $160k on 117 screens (cum. $2.7) REVIEW
5. Tomb Raider $10.4 (cum. $41.7)	5. 🔺 Flower  $125k on 57 screens (cum. $190k)

6. A Wrinkle in Time $8 (cum. $73.8)  REVIEW	6. 🔺 Getting Grace $107k on 60 screens NEW
7. Love, Simon $7.8 (cum. $23.6) REVIEW	7. A Fantastic Woman $100k on 121 screens (cum. $1.6)   REVIEW  | OSCAR WIN
8. Paul, Apostle of Christ $5 NEW	8. Foxtrot  $76k on 26 screens (cum. $270k)
9. Game Night $4.1 (cum. $60.8)  REVIEW	9. The Party $$47k on 70 screens (cum. $677k)
10. 🔺 Midnight Sun $4.1 NEW	10. 🔺 Itzhak $41k on 29 screens (cum. $115k)
🔺 = new or expanding its theater count numbers (in millions unless otherwise noted) from box office mojo

What did you see this week? I did a triple feature to try to not fall any further behind with Pacific Rim: Uprising, Isle of Dogs, and Unsane.  Curiously, Pacific Rim Uprising, the #1 film of the weekend, was the only theater that wasn't jam-packed. Then again this is NYC so directors are more of a draw here so Soderbergh and Wes Anderson pulled them in. Especially Anderson. The movie is such a delight. I'd totally be okay with him making every other movie of his as an animated feature.

Drag Race: Tens Across The Board!

Nathaniel R retakes the crown Ruviewing duties from Chris Feil who is on a well deserved short break.

True story. Shortly after I queued up to watch the season 10 premiere online it froze on this image. Was it a meta acknowledgement of all the grumbling about the just completed All Stars 3?  Try again sooner is what they did and the results are sooo promising. 

"10s! 10s! 10s! across the board," was RuPaul's rallying proclamation in promos for the tenth anniversary season of RuPaul's Drag Race. That's a lot to live up to but the show, newly expanded to 2 hour episodes essentially (90 minutes + Untucked), is ready to gag you honey. The premiere episode, to borrow from chatterbox Monique Heart, delivered giving us the 'ooh ah ah sensation'...

Click to read more ...

"ACS: The Assassination of Gianni Versace", Finale

by Jorge Molina

Episode 8: “Creator/ Destroyer”
Though the penultimate episode is a deeper origin story for Andrew, we open again a Versace vignette: their only appearance in the episode. But this one does not feature Edgar Ramirez, or Penelope Cruz. We see Gianni as a young boy in Italy, developing a passion for dressmaking. His mother is supportive enough to not only understand this passion, but fosters it. “You can do whatever you want in life, but you have to work for it.” Despite his classmates’ teasing and the repression of other adults, Gianni takes on the craft from his mother.

The show continues to make thematic connections between Andrew Cunanan and Gianni Versace, implying that their life paths and goals were remarkably similar. They are both immigrant stories chasing the American Dream against a system and a society that constantly looks down upon and underestimates them. They are two different sides of the same coin. I think the show is oversimplifying a much more complex issue and boiling it down to thematic parallels, but it is effective in the context of a somewhat fictional miniseries... 

Click to read more ...

Film Bitch Awards Finale - The Medal Ceremony

by Nathaniel R 

Cue trumpets and confetti!  The 18th annual Film Bitch Awards have finally reached their conclusion with the "best scene" page fully up and complete with nominations and medals for BEST KISS, BEST ACTION SCENE, and BEST MUSICAL SEQUENCE and the like.

64 movies were honored over our 40 regular categories for the 2017 film year. Lady Bird and Get Out led this past year's crop with 13 nominations each and 10 and 9 medal wins respectively. Other top ten entries that scored multiple medals were Call Me By Your Name, Baby Driver, and Atomic Blonde. The films that made the strongest showing without scoring in headline categories or the top ten list were: Phantom Thread, The Greatest Showman, and Blade Runner 2049.

Some curiousities: The Florida Project won only gold medals, never a silver or bronze. Oscar's best picture winner The Shape of Water was nominated in six categories but only took home one medal (gold for Production Design). And the film that Oscar completely ignored that performed strongest here was --  no surprise I suppose -- France's Oscar submission BPM with 8 nominations, 1 gold, 1 silver, and 4 bronze medals.

Part 1 - Film, Director, Picture
Part 2 - Acting Categories 
Part 3 - Visuals
Part 4 - Music and Sound 
Part 5 - Non-Traditional Acting Categories
Part 6 - Character Prizes
Part 7 - Best Scene Work *NEWLY COMPLETED*

...and in case you missed it, the top ten list write-up. We hope you enjoyed all our 2017 coverage. Now on to 2018 as Spring begins!

Months of Meryl: "Out of Africa"

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep. 

 

#12 — Karen Blixen, aristocratic Danish author who owns a coffee plantation in Kenya during the first decades of the twentieth century.

JOHN: Did Karen Blixen once have a farm in Africa? Like a marching zombie with arms outstretched, Karen intones this mantra via voiceover several times during Out of Africa, either because she remains in disbelief at her accomplishment or feels compelled to remind the viewer of a reason to focus on Ms. Blixen amid Sydney Pollack’s African travelogue.

Out of Africa tells the tale of Karen Blixen, a headstrong woman who relocates from Denmark to Kenya circa 1914 to marry her lover’s twin brother (Klaus Maria Brandauer), run a short-lived coffee plantation, and eventually fall in love with English game-hunter Denys Finch Hatton (Robert Redford). Out of Africa was a project that piqued but ultimately eluded such directors as Orson Welles, David Lean, and Nicholas Roeg. As envisioned by Sydney Pollack and distributed by Universal Pictures in 1985, it's a colossal Hollywood production that endlessly reveres the natural beauty of its Kenyan environs while dodging engagement with the colonialist specificities of its time and place...

Click to read more ...