Beauty vs Beast: Bad Romance

Howdy, everybody - Jason from MNPP here with a brand new round of "Beauty vs Beast" for you on this first Monday of June. Coming up on this first Friday of June a movie called My Cousin Rachel is coming out (you can watch the trailer right here) that stars Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin and is adapted from the 1951 book by Daphne du Maurier (who also wrote The Birds and Rebecca). The book was already turned into a movie once in 1952 with  Richard Burton and Olivia de Havilland (which I have never seen; have you?) - anyway it's one of my favorite genres, the overheated gothic romance, brimming with lace and poisons, and I can't wait.

So in the spirit of such things this week we're tackling one of the greatest of all when it comes to these stories - Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. There are a couple of film adaptations but let's go with the most recent, Cary Fukunaga's 2011 film starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender, since I found it a grand adaptation.

PREVIOUSLY We spent last week trapped in that damn cryogenic container so we've got to skip back two weeks to our last competition, which pit the Ellen Ripley of Ridley Scott's Alien against the Ellen Ripley of James Cameron's Aliens. And it was the bigger badder bitchier (her words not mine!) version of the latter who stomped away with 67% of your votes. Said markgordonuk:

"Alien is my favourite movie but the Aliens performance is something else, the looks and glances, the fear, the physicality, the line readings, the no bull attitude, I could go on, such an Iconic performance, everyone knows who Ripley is."

Mid-Year Report: Blockbuster Bombs - Why Did They Flop?

by Séan McGovern

If 2017 is showing any consistency in audience tastes over the last few years it's that no amount of star power, budget or marketing gimmicks can force audiences to buy tickets, with news that the US Memorial Weekend was the lowest grossing since 1999. I've been told variances of the rule that for every production budget on a bockbuster, you can expect the marketing budget to be half if not equal to that - meaning that managing to break even is still a loss.

The year is noticeable once again for some high profile box office casualties - King Arthur, Ghost in the Shell, Power Rangers, Baywatch, possibly Alien: Covenant and the latest Pirates of the Caribbean, which regardless of its #1 spot at the Box Office has a budget of $230m (!) to recoup and turn into profit.

There is plenty of speculation that the way we watch films is contributing to the losses, but how to explain Star Wars, Guardians of the Galaxy and the Marvel Universe - huge financial successes that tick many of the same boxes as the recent failures? If we like to believe that audiences are more selective or that we truly consider the reviews, then why do the Transformers films keep getting made? (seriously please someone explain)

Full figures (and reader speculation welcome) after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Beauty vs Beast: All About Ellen

Jason from MNPP here with this week's All Sigourney edition of "Beauty vs Beast" -- everything should always be All Sigourney, don't you think? Most especially Alien movies. I can't tell you how much I missed the grounding presence of Ellen Ripley this past weekend, whiplashing around Ridley Scott's scattered Covenant. If only we were getting Neill Blomkamp's proposed sequel, I kept thinking. An Alien without a Ripley is a body without a heart or a brain - an exo-skeleton full of acid.

So that's where I stand on Covenant. And even if they're more positive than I am most (if not all?) reviews continue to point to the first two films as the franchise's high-water mark. But instead of facing Ripley off with Giger's literal Beast I thought it would be more interesting to do a variation on the eternal "Alien or Aliens" question, and face off Scott's Ripley against James Cameron's Ripley, as the low-key smartypants of the first movie is in many ways quite a different beast altogether from the ass-kicking maternal Cassandra of the second. Which Ripley's your jam, and why?

PREVIOUSLY We tackled Alfred Hitchcock's personal fave Shadow of a Doubt (1943) last week for Joseph Cotten's birthday and it was Cotten's Uncle Charlie who triumphed over his niece Charlie (Teresa Wright), although it was close (as it ought to be with such doubling going on). Said Dancin' Dan:

"This is impossible, pitting one of my favorite Hitchcock heroines against one of my favorite Hitchcock villains. But I'm going to give an EVER SO SLIGHT edge to Young Charlie, for the sole reason that, as much amazing work as Cotten does in the role, Hitch helps him with Uncle Charlie's creepiness much more than he helps Wright (never better) in building Young Charlie's character."

Box Office: The face huggers still got it!

By Nathaniel R

It was a battle for box office dominance in outer space as Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 and Aliens Volume 6 (shut up) faced off. The champion was those nasty acid-blooded face huggers rather than the comic bro huggers. Not that Drax and Starlord have anything to worry about having just crossed the $300 million mark domestically.

It's also worth noting that Demian Bichir has both #1 movies -- he has a small role in Alien Covenant and a big one in Lowriders, which logs a second week on top of the limited release chart. Charts and a few more comments are after the jump... 

Click to read more ...

Yes No Maybe So: "Alien: Covenant"

Colony ship Film Experience crew member Robert here!

Since Prometheus blasted us back into the Alien universe to mixed reaction (hey, I really liked it!) there has been a flurry of talk about what the next entry in the franchise would be. For a while it was looking like Neill Blomkamp would get his shot at reviving the franchise with original star Sigourney Weaver, but Ridley Scott's sequel to Prometheus – originally not related to the Alien franchise, now called Alien: Covenant – put those plans on ice.

After a very tense teaser a few months ago we have a full trailer and it looks like it will be a bumpy ride for all. Trailer with the accompanying "Yes No Maybe So" after the jump...

Click to read more ...