Weekend Box Office: Mario Closes in on a Billion

By Ben Miller

For the third straight week, The Super Mario Bros. Movie ran away with the weekend box office, this time to the tune of $59.9 million.  That's good for the 7th-best third weekend in history.  The domestic total currently sits at $436 million with a matching number overseas.  At $870 million and climbing, expect it to become a billion dollar film (and probably franchise) in the upcoming weeks.  Couterprogramming did pretty good for the horror sequel Evil Dead Rise with a solid $24.5 million haul.  That's equivalent to its 2013 predecessor, which ended at around $54 million.  With a $19 million budget, it once again shows that horror is the most profitable of genres...

Weekend Box Office (actuals) April 21st-23rd 🔺 = new or expanding /  ★ = Recommended
WIDE (Over 800 Screens)	LIMITED / PLATFORM
THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE	SOMEWHERE IN QUEENS
1 THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE $59.9 (cum. $436) 4,350 screens	1 🔺 SOMEWHERE IN QUEENS $671k *NEW* 602 screens

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The Academy sticks with March for Oscar night

Contrary to the Academy's pre-pandemic intention with Parasite's big night being the earliest Oscars of all time* (February 9th, 2020), Hollywood's High Holy Night has settled back into March as its sweet spot, when the bulk of ceremonies have been held throughout history. Forty-nine of the ninety-five ceremonies to date, or roughly 52% of them, have been held in March. In short, AMPAS is no longer trying to progressively shorten the season as had been their pre-COVID plan.

The 96th Oscars will be held on March 10th, 2024 to be exact. The press release and a bit more Oscar history are after the jump... 

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TCM Film Festival: Final Diary - Xanadu

By Christopher James

Have you ever watched a movie and realized it was instantly going to be part of your personality? Last weekend at a midnight screening of Xanadu, I thought I was merely filling a critical hole in my gay camp movie repertoire. The Olivia Newton John 1980 roller skating musical was a bomb when it first opened. Yet, through hit songs like “Magic” and “Xanadu,” the film hung around long enough to become a cult classic. Obviously the term “roller skating musical” doesn’t inspire much confidence in a film’s storytelling prowess. Xanadu isn’t a “so bad it’s good” curio piece. Instead, it’s an ambitious, messy, misunderstood masterpiece about the ebbs and flow of art and taste...

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"Elemental" to close Cannes

by Nathaniel R

Pixar's Elemental will close the Cannes Film Festival this year (Out of Competition) on May 27th before hitting theaters on June 16th. If you missed the original Cannes lineup post, that's here. The only other Pixar features to premiere at Cannes were Up, Soul, and Inside Out. Elemental is directed by Peter Sohn (The Good Dinosaur) 

In other TFE-specific Cannes news, our favourite Italian Elisa Giudici will be covering the festival again for us this year and we couldn't be happier about that. Stay tuned for more on Cannes.

Erotic Thrillers: Part 3 – Bare Witnesses

by Cláudio Alves

Making your way through the Criterion Channel's Erotic Thrillers collection, you'll start noticing a recurring concept here and there. One of the most prevalent is voyeurism (peeping toms or bystanders) twisted by the advent of violence. That very idea can lead to a consideration of the audience as another variation of the voyeur, whether in a critique or apologia. Fear and desire often mix, the horrified spectator enlivened by the hideousness they just saw even as trauma lingers in the psyche. Excited by danger and drunk on terror, they're laid bare for the camera in more ways than one.

As our cinematic odyssey reaches the end of the eighties, we encounter three tales of eroticized witnessing – Curtis Hanson's The Bedroom Window, Bill Condon's Sister, Sister, and the program's first woman-directed picture, Sollace Mitchell's Call Me…

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