Doc Corner: 'We Met in Virtual Reality' on HBO Max

By Glenn Dunks

I recently rewatched Steven Spielberg’s largely unsuccessful Ready Player One, a movie with many faults that are not relevant right now. But key to its failings is how completely uninterested in virtual reality it actually is. For all of its effort in setting up its admittedly rather awe-inspiring virtual world, it completely misunderstands (or, more likely, is just uninterested in exploring) why people would turn to such a space in the first place.

I thought of Ready Player One a lot as I watched Joe Huntings’ We Met in Virtual Reality, which is shot entirely in a VR landscape with all the boxy, hyper-coloured, anime-infused glory. This isn’t an action movie though. Rather, it’s a sweetly affecting documentary about online connections and the way some people feel more at home with a dragon tail and hooves than they do in the real world.

Click to read more ...

VES Nominations & Final Visual Effects Oscar Predictions

by Nathaniel R

on the set of Solo: A Star Wars Story

The Visual Effects Society have released their nominations for the year. Avengers: Infinity War, Incredible 2, and Lost in Space lead the nominations in the movie, animated movie, and television divisions.  The full list of nominations, Oscar predictions, and a few comments follow...

Click to read more ...

Oscar Charts!

A tip of the hat to you. Just letting you know that most of the Oscar charts have all been updated. 

This week sees gains for Stan & Ollie (especially all things John C Reilly and that wonderful makeup job to make him more Laurel-like), Ready Player One and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (given their multiple finalist list bids), A Quiet Place (given that it's still campaigning and got that absurd "supporting" actress nomination at SAG), and Bohemian Rhapsody all over the place (because, 'Facts are Facts America,' sometimes massive popularity makes quality a complete non-issue!)

Check 'em out, won't you? They're updated
INDEX |  PICTURE  
DIRECTOR |  ACTRESS | ACTOR  | 
SUPPORTING ACTOR | SUPPORTING ACTRESS |
 SCREENPLAYS | FOREIGN  FILM 
VISUAL | SOUND | ANIMATION / DOC

Box Office: Ready Player Dogs

by Nathaniel R

Weekend Box Office (March 23rd-25th)
W I D E 800+ screens	L I M I T E D excluding prev. wide
1.🔺Ready Player One $41.2 (cum. $53.2) NEW REVIEW	1. 🔺 Isle of Dogs $2.8 on 165 screens (cum. $5.9) CAPSULE | HOMAGE OR APPROPRIATION
2. 🔺Tyler Perry's Acrimony  $17.1 NEW	2. 🔺 The Death of Stalin $1.4 on 484 screens (cum. $3.9) REVIEW
3. Black Panther $ 11.2 (cum. $650.6) PODCAST	3. 🔺 Baaghi 2 $580k on 123 screens NEW
4. I Can Only Imagine $10.7 (cum. $55.5) NEW	4. 🔺 The Leisure Seeker $248k on 38 screens (cum. $1)
5. Pacific Rim Uprising $9.2 (cum. $45.6) REVIEW	5. 🔺 Finding Your Feet  $61k on 14 screens NEW

Spielberg had his biggest opening in years with Ready Player One, though a lot of people (including our own Chris Feil) don't love the film. Black Panther just won't quit, now nearing the domestic totals of Titanic  (unadjusted) and Jurassic World  and only just starting to lose theaters in its 7th weekend. Meanwhile...

Click to read more ...

Review: "Ready Player One"

by Chris Feil

The pairing of godfather of contemporary pop culture Steven Spielberg with a film adaptation of Ernest Cline’s reference heavy Ready Player One sounds like one that would fit like a glove. Cline’s novel has great reverence for the Spielberg canon, not to mention a wide-ranging affection for video games, cinema, and general geekery that is greatly indebted to him as one of our greatest storytellers. The chance for the legend to riff on the likes of John Hughes and Robert Zemeckis already carries a bit of whimsy, an acknowledgement of the type of now omnipresent fan culture that he laid the groundwork for. Don’t forget Spielberg was the original movie nerd, and the opportunity to play with some of his own inspirations like King Kong should naturally allow him to approach the material with necessary affection.

But this perfectly-fit glove turns out to be an inside-out rubber one that’s spent the day scrubbing an ancient multiplex floor, and it’s our hands that end up covered in junk...

Click to read more ...