Beauty vs Beast: Defriended

Jason from MNPP here wishing the great Rooney Mara a happy 33rd birthday (it's tomorrow) - do you think she will have birthday pie? I like to think that once she got a taste of pie filming A Ghost Story she hasn't been able to stop. Eat all the pie, Rooney! You've earned it. Anyway I've had Rooney on the brain over the past few weeks (more than usual anyway, which is always some) thanks to the presence of Mark Zuckerberg in our lives - who can look at his face and not want to re-visit all of her take-downs in The Social Network? You're a stronger person than me if you don't find yourself muttering "Good luck with your video-game" to yourself a couple times a day. In that spirit then this week's "Beauty vs Beast"...

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PREVIOUSLY I really though y'all would have to give it to Jake Gyllenhaal for his performance in Stronger but every time I doubt your commitment to actresses I get proven hella incorrect - you picked Tatiana Maslany (and I mean no knock on her, she's terrific) with 60% of your vote. Said Bushwick:

"Team Tatiana for her patience - Jake’s reluctance and sassiness and Miranda’s indoor smoking seemed much more unbearable than losing my legs!"

Isle of Dogs Goes Wide.

What did you see this weekend? We'll skip the charts this week but let it be known that The Rock had another #1 opening weekend ($34 million for Rampage), horror hit A Quiet Place closed in on $100 million, and Isle of Dogs went wide in its 4th weekend and has a cumulative gross of $18 million. That means it's going to be about as succcessful as Fantastic Mr Fox and The Life Aquatic (i.e. his second tier successes) with his tier 1 biggest hits by a large margin being Grand Budapest Hotel, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Moonrise Kingdom. 

I've been a bit sad that the inventive delights and storytelling nuances of Isle of Dogs aren't being discussed as thoroughly as the film's take on Japan...

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Milos Forman (1932-2018)

by Nathaniel R

Milos Forman directing Thomas Hulce on the set of Amadeus (1984)

One of the world's most acclaimed directors has passed away at 86 years of age after a long full life and a pretty sturdy filmography. Milos Forman won two Oscars during his career for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and Amadeus (1984) began life as Jan Tomas Forman in Czechoslovakia. Like another two-time Best Director winner (Ang Lee), he was twice honored in the Foreign Language Film category before his English language Oscar wins...

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Drag Race: "Last Ball on Earth"

by Nathaniel R

You can't blame RuPaul for so many apocalypse jokes. It really does seem like the world is on fire of late. Last days, indeed. So if we're going out have a ball. Or throw one. Which is another way of saying bless this show for existing because FUN and a sense of humor are so needed and both are in such short supply. This week's maxi-challenge was runway based as the queens had to come up with three global warming end-days looks...

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More Streaming Options

If you're bored with your new choices on Netflix, thought we'd give a shout out to a few options for only 99¢ on iTunes at the moment. Stronger, with Jake Gyllenhaal (who won our Bronze for Best Actor for last season) is their movie of the week. But in their often changing "Movies You Might Have Missed" section, also 99¢, they're currently offering five Pedro Almodóvar movies (Volver, Women on the Verge, All About My Mother, I'm So Excited, and Kika), Meryl Streep in She-Devil (which the Month of Meryl column hits next Thursday), the Glenn Close classic Fatal Attraction, David Fincher's Se7en, and, um, a Chinese remake of the unimprovable 90s romcom My Best Friend's Wedding... but at least it stars Shu Qi so it *might* be worth 99¢

And still more streaming options if you're not in the mood for Dwayne Johnson's Rampage this weekend or you've already see the delightful / problematic / futureOscarnominee Isle of Dogs. Amazon Prime has added a 55 wide movie collection called Movies From OutFest which is LGBTQ titles from film festivals over the last several years including a movie I've had friends rave about (52 Tuesdays) but which I've managed to not see up til now and the new musical Hello Again with a cast stacked with NYC stage greats like Martha Plimpton, Audra McDonald, and Cheyenne Jackson which I haven't seen so I'll be queueing that right up.