New Linklater Film to Open NYFF

Chris here. You may think it's a little early to start prepping for fall film festival season, but New York Film Festival wants to prove you wrong. The festival just announced its opening film and it's one we've heard surprisingly little about: Richard Linklater's Last Flag Flying.

The film will be a spiritual sequel of sorts to Hal Ashby's The Last Detail, with Bryan Cranston taking over Jack Nicholson's reins. Cranston stars with Laurence Fishburne and Steve Carell, and the men head off on a coastal road trip after Carell's son dies while serving overseas in Iraq. If this sounds on the treacly side, we can count on Linklater to give it some verve. Plus if NYFF has the confidence in the film to announce its major placement several months away, the Texan filmmaker could have something special coming our way.

The film will open in the Thanksgiving corridor on November 17, so distributor Amazon is likely gunning for Oscar consideration. Previous NYFF openers range from last year's nominated 13th to all-around dud The Walk, so we'll be curious to see how the film lands. Could this be Linklater's post-Boyhood return to Oscar graces?

Emmy FYC: Justin Theroux in "The Leftovers"

For the next two weeks with Emmy nominating ballots in progress Team Experience will be sharing personal favorites. Here's Eric Blume...

When you talk about Justin Theroux, inevitably you turn to the subject of fairness.  On one level, is it fair to the rest of us mortals that Justin Theroux looks like this... 

Then again, it’s exactly because Justin Theroux looks like that that he is grossly undervalued.   Usually, if someone who looked like that was even just able to spell his own name, he would be fawned over.  But in the acting game, male beauty is rebuffed, and awards bodies tend to eschew acknowledgement if the male actor isn’t an everyman.

Part of the glory, ironically, of Theroux’s acting in HBO’s The Leftovers is that he so deeply inhabits the everyman, in the true sense of that term.  The trajectory for his character, Kevin, was of loving husband and father, trying to protect and save his family, as men do.  He couldn’t understand how to bring his family together, how to truly be vulnerable enough to connect.  And Theroux’s physical power was the perfect foil for his paralyzing inner fear...

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Beauty vs Beast: The Men In Rosemary's Life

Jason from MNPP here on another Monday afternoon with another round of our weekly "Beauty vs Beast" series - today happens to be the 49th anniversary of my favorite movie Rosemary's Baby. Roman Polanski's masterpiece (one of his several masterpieces) was dropped from beak of the devil's stork into the world on June 12th 1968, a wailing bundle of joy (with its father's eyes) that became the 8th biggest film of the year, scoring over 33 million at the box office (aka 230 million in 2017 dollars, putting it on par with what Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them made last year) and forever giving pregnant woman something shiny and new to worry themselves about. (All of them witches!)

This being my favorite film we've already devoted one of these columns to it - we faced off the womenfolk with Rosemary (Mia Farrow) taking on Minnie (Ruth Gordon) last fall. Gordon won, same as the Oscars. So this time around let's turn our attentions to their respective partners! There's no time like Right Now for "Sleazy White Men Who Think They Own Women's Reproductive Organs" after all, so I give you Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes), star of "Nobody Loves an Albatross" and a world-class creep, and Roman Castavet (Sidney Blackmer), door to door Satan salesman. Choose wisely, your womb will thank you...

PREVIOUSLY We took a quick trip to the Moors last weekend to put poor Jane Eyre through the wringer again but in the end Mia Wasikowska came out on top (and who wouldn't want to come out on top of Michael Fassbender) with 58% of your vote. Said Nick T:

"I'm so happy to cheer for Jane. It's a great performance (yay Mia!), and if Jane won't act as her own hype man then I'll happily do it tor her."

The Furniture: Ghosts of Property in My Cousin Rachel

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

by Daniel Walber 

Location is everything. Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel is so intimately associated with the Cornish landscape that you can go take a “My Cousin Rachel Walk” along the coast. Its cliffs and pastures feature prominently in the new adaptation of the book, starring Rachel Weisz, which was shot close to the novelist's home.

The 1952 version, meanwhile, was shot almost entirely inside an American film studio. The real Cornwall only makes a few brief appearances. But, despite the appeal of literary tourism, authenticity is not necessarily art. The location choice forces much of the plot indoors, taking full advantage of the complex and Oscar-nominated work of art directors Lyle R. Wheeler and John DeCuir and set decorator Walter M. Scott. It's more subtle, more effective.

After all, natural beauty is not really at the heart of the drama. This is a story about wealth, property and suspicion...

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Box Office: My "Secretary" Diana and My Cousin Rachel

By Nathaniel R

Universal's attempted monster movie franchise launch didn't go so well. The Mummy met scathing reviews and a disappointing opening weekend. Now, a $32 million launch would be major news for many films but not for a $125 million budgeted feature starring Tom Cruise that is intending to launch a whole "universe". Not everything can be Marvel's Cinematic Universe, Hollywood!

In the absence of a strong competitor and on terrific word of mouth (no small thing), Wonder Woman continued her reign at the box office. Given a relatively small second week drop (43% while DC's usual superhero sophomore frame drop is 67%) the Amazon princess is looking to join the $300 million club stateside which will put her right up there with Supes and Batman. DC's "Big Three" indeed.

Charts and further comments after the jump...

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