Beauty vs Beast: Girl-On-Girl Power

Jason from MNPP here feeling sweaty and gross here in the annual inferno named July -- I wish I could say I was using this week's "Beauty vs Beast" to cool us down but instead I'm turning the heat up up up thanks to today being the 78th birthday of the spicy Paul Verhoeven, helmer of the hotly anticipated rape-revenge thriller Elle with Isabelle Huppert, and of legendarily epic dumpster-fires (a term I use in this context with extreme admiration) like Showgirls and Starship Troopers and today's honoree, 1992's Basic Instinct. Muy caliente! So everybody slip off your underpants (if you're wearing any), straddle your favorite gal-pal in the bathroom, and help me slash away at this one...

PREVIOUSLY Anticipating this past weekend's Ghostbusters we hit rewind to Paul Feig's last great comedy Spy, forcing you to choose between Head Funny Lady Melissa McCarthy and Supporting Funny Lady Rose Byrne - well it was as called in these parts a total Supporting Actress Smackdown, with Byrne slinking off with 73% of your votes. Said Jakey:

"What a stupid fucking retarded poll."

Ranking the Ghostbusters Orginal Star Cameos

Murtada here. It’s been a full 3 days since Ghostbusters has been released. The reviews, including Nathaniel’s, are respectable but not euphoric. Same with the the box office. It could’ve been much worse. The Ghostbros still won’t shut up, so let’s rank how their so called childhood heroes, did this time around.

Ghostbusters tried to blend nostalgia with a new story and characters, the same way that Star Wars did successfully last year with The Force Awakens. While I liked the movie and thought it was the best blockbuster released this lackluster summer season, I would say that its nostalgia blend was not successful. All of the original cast - except for Rick Moranis and Harold Ramis - came back for at least one scene each. But most of the cameos were extraneous to the plot and could’ve easily been cut. The actors’ commitment also left a lot to be desired.

Let the ranking begin! 

SPOILERS ahead, proceed with caution...

Click to read more ...

The Furniture: The '70s Sitcom Style of Everybody Wants Some!!

Daniel Walber's series looks at Production Design in contemporary and classic movies

A very loud lamp from Everybody Wants Some!!College freshmen are usually a bit confused. Sometimes they even have trouble figuring out what kind of movie they’re in. But not Jake (Blake Jenner), the well-adjusted protagonist of Everybody Wants Some!! He’s got it all figured out by the film’s second half, when which he lets out the following pearl of wisdom: “Like most things with these guys, it’s total bullshit. It’s more about seeing how witty they can be.”

And he’s dead right. This movie is about a bunch of dudes who live from joke to joke, bouncing around town with an unceasing attitude of breezy, sex-charged humor. This isn’t one of those Linklater movies with big, yet simultaneously narrow ideas about what it means to be human (or married, or young, or male). Instead, like most of his best work, it’s content to soak in the sun and have a good time.

Now, if Jake had been paying attention to the production design, he probably would have picked up on this vibe even faster. Every set could be from a 1970s sitcom. Production designer Bruce Curtis and art director Rodney Becker, both of them Linklater regulars, and set decorator Gabriella Villarreal (American Crime) have crafted a perfectly playful atmosphere out of a silly, occasionally garish interpretation of the period.

It kicks off in the kitchen of the “baseball houses,” the team’s unconventional dorm...

Click to read more ...

Thoughts I Had While Staring at The Edge of Seventeen Poster

Manuel here. How do we feel about Hailee Steinfeld? I have never seen her Oscar nominated turn in True Grit so I'm obviously at a disadvantage in discussing her career but really enjoyed her in Pitch Perfect 2, The Homesman and Begin Again. I may give the Coens film a chance but if the upcoming The Edge of Seventeen is my first chance to see Steinfeld carry a movie, I think I'll be okay.

Kelly Fremon (who wrote the Rory Gilmore Alexis Bledel pic Post Grad) wrote and directed the teen flick and it may very well be this year's Perks of Being a Wallflower. We finally got a chance to see a poster and a trailer so check out unfiltered thoughts after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Box Office: Ghostbusters, Sultan, Café Society

Though the new Ghostbusters couldn't defeat the very family friendly Secret Life of Pets to take the box office crown, it was still a win for Paul Feig & Melissa McCarthy company (their best opening yet, just beating their previous best for The Heat). Other winners this weekend: Sultan, the Bollywood sports drama starring Salman Khan, is now the #1 foreign language release of the year, jumping over the Chinese hits The Mermaid and Ip Man 3; Woody Allen's Café Society experienced more demand in its opening weekend than of his films since Blue Jasmine; and, finally, the provocative survivalist family drama Captain Fantastic led by a typically sterling Viggo Mortensen expanded fairly well. Next weekend will be key for Captain Fantastic with word of mouth; there's neither anything like it in the marketplace nor really anything to compare it to in ages (since maybe The Mosquito Coast in the Eighties?) but unfortunately that much originality in topic and purpose usually hurts movies at the box office in this era of intense branding.

TOP WIDE
800+ screens. arrows indicate gaining or losing screens
🔺01 The Secret Life of Pets $50.5 (cum. $203.1) 
🔺02 Ghostbusters $46 NEW Review 
🔻03 The Legend of Tarzan $11.1 (cum. $103) Review 
🔻04 Finding Dory $11 (cum. $445.5)  Review
🔺05 Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates $7.5 (cum. $31.3) Review
🔻06 The Purge: Election Year $6 (cum. $71)
🔻07 Central Intelligence $5.3 (cum. $117.5)
🔺08 The Infiltrator $5.2 (cum. $6.7) NEW Review
🔻09 The BFG $3.7 (cum. $47.3) Review
🔻10 Independence Day: Ressurection $3.4 (cum. $6.7) 

Sultan is now the #1 foreign hit of the yearTOP LIMITED
Excluding previously wide. 
🔻01 Sultan $985K (cum. $5.2)
🔻02 Hunt for the Wilderpeople $563K ($1.4) Review 
🔺03 Cafe Society $355K NEW Review
🔺04 Captain Fantastic $277K (cum. $406K) Review
🔻05 Swiss Army Man $262K (cum. $3.7) Halfway Mark Achievements

What movies did you catch this week?

Beyond Captain Fantastic and Ghostbusters, I Netflixed it bingeing Stranger Things (we'll talk about it soon) and finally finishing Grace and Frankie Season 2, and I apologize that I didn't have Estelle Parsons on my Guest Actress ballot for Comedy and that Emmy didn't nominate her either. This is why they need blue-ribbon panels; there are just too many eligible shows that voters aren't taking seriously that contain better specific performances than the shows they vote for reflexively in all categories as we saw all over the Emmy nominations.