More Guild Honors: Make-Up, Sound, and Adapted Scripts

Three sets of awards were handed out yesterday so let's talk MUAHS (Makeup and Hair Stylists), CAS (Cinema Audio Society) and USC Scripters.

USC Scripter
This Adapted Screenplay prize (not a guild prize) is from the University of Southern California but it's built itself up as quite a tradition in awards season. This is its 28th year! The prize goes to both the original source material author and the Screenwriter adapting it. Their winner usually wins the Oscar and they chose (no surprise) The Big Short originally a non-fiction book by Michael Lewis (all three the movies based on his books have been nominated for Best Picture) and adapted by Charles Randolph & Adam McKay. 

ICYMI: Manuel's fun ranking of the most quotable Screenplay nominees

Cinema Audio Society
The Revenant took this prize beating Mad Max, Bridge of Spies, Star Wars, and The Hateful Eight. It's up against the first three again on Oscar night plus The Martian. 

Makeup Artists and Hair Stylists Guild
Period Makeup: Mad Max Fury Road
Period Hair: Cinderella 
Special Makeup Effects: Mad Max Fury Road
Contemporary Makeup: Furious 7
Contemporary Hairstyling: Pitch Perfect 2

Carol keeps losing prizes (sigh). Anyway, solid choices though one can quibble. I never took in Furious 7 so that one is a bit of a headscratcher sight unseen... especially with Sicario in the running. It's also a bit perplexing to think of Pitch Perfect 2's hair work topping Spy's funny and elaborate quick changes (which I favoried in my own awardage) or Ex Machina's sleek style. You can see the complete MUAHS awards here (American Horror Story: Hotel, Game of Thrones and Dancing with the Stars were big in their TV categories).

Do you think Fury Road, The Revenant, and The Big Short will repeat these wins at the Oscars?

Box Office: Ted 2 No Match for Jurassic 4 & Inside Out 1

Weird. Despite a lot of love for Seth MacFarlane's Ted (2012) just three years ago its sequel significantly underperformed with a much weaker opening... like $21 whole million weaker. I say weird because nowadays audiences tend to run screaming with wallets wide open to anything sequelish that they liked before. Witness the explosive returns for Pitch Perfect 2 (which has tripled the gross of its predecessor... also three years old). Speaking of sequels... Jurassic World is now the biggest grosser of 2015 and its only in its 3rd weekend with a typically huge box office holiday fast approaching. The weird thing is that people don't seem to love it. They only seem to love being able to return to that park... which bodes really well for Jurassic Park-World 5,6,7, etcetera one supposes. 

Magic Mike XXL and Terminator 5 arrive Wednesday but neither are as family oriented as the current top two so the holiday week could well be huge for all four. Unless Terminator G goes the way of Ted 2 under the 'nah, been there' umbrella?

WIDE RELEASE BOX OFFICE
June 26th-28th Weekend
01 Jurassic World $54.2 (cum. $500) Jurassic Articles 
02 Inside Out $52.1 (cum. $184.9) Inside Out Articles
03 Ted 2 NEW $33
04 Max NEW $12.2
05 Spy $7.8 (cum. $88.3) Rose Byrne FYC
06 San Andreas $5.2 (cum. $141.8)
07 Dope $2.8 (cum. $11.7) Sundance capsule
08 Insidious Chapter 3 $2 (cum. $49.7)
09 Mad Max: Fury Road $1.7 (cum. $147)  Review & Podcast & Random Articles
10 Avengers: Age of Ultron  $1.6 (cum. $452.4) Review & Marathon & Podcast

Notes
Jurassic World is the first film to hit $500 million in US theaters since The Avengers (2012). The latter went on to gross $623.3 million but it took a week longer to hit the half billion mark. Jurassic World may well surpass The Avengers but I hope Avatar's $749 million US record is safe since Jurassic World would be a really lame #1 of all time since it's basically a remake. Finally, incredibly Cinderella is still in theaters, albeit only 235 of them, but in its 16th week it has now passed the $200 million mark and seems likely to end the year in the box office top ten (it's number #4 right this moment but will soon slip a rung). The fairy tale doesn't come to BluRay and DVD until September 15th.

What did you see this weekend?

Get Ready for a Third Round of 'Pitch Perfect'

Margaret here with breaking news: Hollywood loves money, water is wet and Pitch Perfect 3 is officially in the works.

Pitch Perfect 2 is still in theaters, and presumably since it's nearing a $300 million worldwide take (which would be more than respectable even without its vastly profitable soundtrack tie-in), Universal has just announced that they've staked out July 21, 2017 for the threequel. 

Critics were less than enthused about the second installment, but heaven knows if they can squeeze three movies out of The Hangover and Meet the Parents then there's no harm in in making room for movies starring and produced by women in the franchise club.

Screenwriter Kay Cannon is in talks to return for round three, and while there's no word on whether Elizabeth Banks will be back to direct, it has been announced that both Rebel Wilson and Anna Kendrick are on board.

See how ecstatic she looks? 

The question is... how? Considering how inevitable another sequel seemed, it was strange to see the Pitch Perfect 2 screenplay consistently cutting off potential avenues for a sequel.

Of course, the most sensible (read: boring) solution would be to repeat the premise with a new slate of actors and have the original stars cameo in mentorship roles. But it's early yet, and we can hold out hope for a dramatic creative swerve. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a gritty game-change chronicling the harsh reality of post-college a cappella life, where the gang reunites to busk in the big city by night while by day they try to break into an unsympathetic industry. Featuring lots of shaky-cam, naturally. In what direction would you steer the Pitch Perfect series?
 

Review: Pitch Perfect 2

The standard formula for sequel-making is easy to remember: do it again, only bigger. Elizabeth Banks has taken this to heart while working both sides of the camera. Pitch Perfect 2 marks her feature directorial debut but she's still fully visible as one half of the insult-comic pundits that barrage the acapella groups with shade as we watch them perform. The absurd notion of live commentary during vocal performances continues to be a pretty good unspoken joke unto itself so naturally Gail (Banks) and John (John Michael Higgins), have larger roles this time. They're like the Waldorf & Statler to the Bardem Bella's Muppets only hornier and way more intrusive. The comparison may be fusty but so is the jokey tone - vaudeville sized in its caricature driven gags and completely shameless at wringing laughs from crude, repetitive and stereotype-loving jokes. In fact, it's so broadly cartoonish that it's easy to imagine virtually any of the cast members as muppets, especially Fat Amy (née Fat Patricia). 

Who among you didn't visualize Rebel Wilson as a Muppet just now; the resemblance is uncanny!

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Curio: Parroting Pitch Perfect

Alexa here with your weekly arts and crafts.  Since I spent all weekend revisiting and obsessing over the end of Mad Men I wasn't amongst the throngs seeing Pitch Perfect 2. The first is certainly the most quoted film of the past 5 years in my house; I do worry that this one will try too hard to be just as aca-quotable and fall flat for me. Also, the presence of a sequel might mean it's time for me to (begrudgingly) retire some quotes from the first. So by way of eulogy, here are some of my favorite Pitch Perfect quote arts and crafts. Yes, I may own a few of these...

Perfect ending throw pillow available here.

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