Links

BuzzFeed Netflix not legally responsible for your 'viewing history' - it's so funny that people thought they were
The Hairpin Mission: Impossibly Silly "I Still Don't Understand How Tall Everyone Is"  
Interview Director Marielle Heller talks about the ratings and sexuality of her daring debut The Diary of a Teenage Girl 

Towleroad George Takei once asked Gene Roddenberry about including gay characters on Star Trek. Interesting historical response but what's their excuse now since that franchise is still alive?
IndieWire How to apply for a Women of Color directors and screenwriters 10 day retreat
This is Not Porn Cute. Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg take a break during Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade 

Tim is the Best
Antagony & Ecstasy revisits Dog Day Afternoon... (great films often generate great writing about film)
Antagony & Ecstasy also revisits the very first unreleased Fantastic Four (1994) and claims its still the best adaptation of Marvel's first family (bad films often generate great writing about film) 
.... moral of combining them: Timothy Brayton often generates great writing about film.  

Off Cinema 
Laughing Squid a feline feeding machine to let your cat be more self-actualized indoors
Gothamist sad news: Annie Lennox's daughter's boyfriend has gone missing after a tandem kayak accident 

"Clobberin' Time"
There's a lot of handwringing going round about what exactly happened between Josh Trank and the studio and the source material to make Fantastic Four so bad. Film School Rejects even felt it needed a six-year timeline. But there's also post-mortems about the opening weekend which are lower than usual for superheroes.Variety argues that audiences are getting wise to money grabs (with tanking reboots like FF and diminished returns for Spider-Man) and studios need to think harder about repackaging known brands. But I personally don't know if that's the case -- I mean audiences are still putting up with needlessly padded "part 1 and part 2" finales which everyone knows are not artistically motivated decisions aimed at providing them with the best possible movie. So until audiences start bailing on those, I'm not eager to give them too much credit for protecting their wallets against Hollywood's 'screw-quality / make another billion quick' tactics. 

Ingrid Bergman Centennial: The Film That Brought Her to Hollywood

August 29th marks the Centennial of Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982), one of the greatest of all movie stars with a career that stretched from the early 30s through the late 70s, encompassing multiple classics, multiple countries, and multiple Oscars. We'll be proceeding mostly in chronological order. Here's Abstew to kick things off with "Intermezzo" - Editor

Had it not been for a Swedish elevator operator working in the building that housed the New York offices of Selznick International Pictures, the world might never have discovered the young actress that would become the Hollywood legend Ingrid Bergman. It was 1936, and the soon-to-be star had just appeared in a Swedish film named Intermezzo about a famous concert violinist (played by Sweden's first stage star Gösta Ekman) that leaves his wife and family and has an affair with his much younger accompanist. There was clearly something special about the actress playing the love interest. The elevator operator wasn't the only one to see it, but he happened to have the ear of Hollywood producer David O. Selznick's talent scout Kay Brown (since she rode in his elevator everyday), telling her to seek out the film and to pay special attention to the girl in the picture. And in the early part of 1939, Brown flew to Stockholm and persuaded the young actress from Intermezzo to come to America and star in the Hollywood remake. Thus launched the international career of Ingrid Bergman and, as they say in the pictures, a star was born.

But her path to stardom in Hollywood wasn't without its hurdles...

Click to read more ...

Uptown Link You Up

Guardian Amy Schumer taking up active role in fight for more US gun control
Variety in strange news MacBeth will be available to stream shortly after its December release
Empire Channing Tatum has only just now agreed to play Gambit in the upcoming superhero film. This is why i hate internet superhero culture. We've been hearing about this for about ten months. And he's only just made it official so now we get to hear about it again? 
/Film Relativity's bankruptcy has saved us from at least one reboot: The Crow (though as with Terminator the idea of rebooting it makes no damn sense since the very concept enables endless sequels with very little connective tissue to the originals
Playbill at least one cast member (Josh Gad) of Beauty & The Beast is done filming
The Matinee looks back at Her after reading Aziz Ansari's "Modern Romance" 
E! Online WHOA. Kyle Chandler played Coach Taylor (Friday Night Lights) again... albeit for just a few seconds

 

YNMS
We've done so many of these lately that to do them all would be a bit like becoming a trailers only site and no thank you... so a few that we missed are Alex Ross Perry's Queen of Earth starring Elisabeth Moss who was so so excellent in Perry's Listen Up Philip (it also has a great poster!),  the Oscar hopeful Brooklyn (which I loved at Sundance), Nancy Meyer's The Intern which we will obviously see because Anne Hathaway (♥), the Half Nelson directors returning with Mississippi Grind though they've moved from Gosling to Reynolds in the "Ryan" department, that continuous shot German movie Victoria (which Sebastian already talked about) and the latest trailer for the animated version of The Little Prince. 

Video To Go
"Uptown Funk" as sung by the movies. 

Cute. (I was wondering what they'd use for "Michelle Pfeiffer" and had no idea that she was referenced in The Bucket List) But wow is that a boy-movie montage. Even the dance breaks are sans-actresses!

Inside Jurassic XXL's Genysis

Proving difficult to recapture a surprise novelty hit audience?You guys. I'm disappointed in the American public. Here we are on a national holiday weekend and they're still going to the dinosaur island off the coast of Costa Rica and a reheated pointless Terminator reboot of much better work from the world's most successful Canadian director! And they're doing that when the All American Pixar is knocking it out of the park with a story about a Midwestern girl moving to San Francisco and Channing Tatum and friends having a road trip strippers party from Florida to South Carolina. But America wants what it wants and in this case they wanted the microwave-reheated franchises from beyond our borders. 

Early estimates had Inside Out leading but when later estimates came it it fell back into second place which means it now takes the record from My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) of the highest grossing movie that never had a #1 weekend. And the record will hold since there's no way it hits #1 next weekend with Minions opening to steal the family dollar away.

UPDATE With actuals in My Big Fat Greek's Wedding on most successful film that was never #1 at the box office lives on, since Inside Out just barely edged out the dinosaurs.

BOX OFFICE
July 3rd-5th Weekend
(some "new" titles have cumulatives since they opened early for the holiday)
01 Inside Out $29.7 (cum. $245.8) Inside Out Articles 
02 Jurassic World $29.2 (cum. $556.5) Jurassic Articles 
03 Terminator Genisys NEW $27 (cum. $42.4)
04 Magic Mike XXL NEW $12.8 (cum. $27.8) Review
05 Ted 2 $11.1 (cum. $58.5)
06 Max $6.6 (cum. $25.3)
07 Spy $5.1 (cum. $97.5)
08 San Andreas $2.8 (cum. $147.1)
09 Me and Earl and the Dying Girl $1.2 (cum. $3.9) Michael's Review 
10 Dope $1.1 (cum. $14.1) Sundance capsule

11 Mad Max: Fury Road $1 (cum. $149) Review & Podcast & Random Articles
12 Avengers: Age of Ultron  $.8 (cum. $454.2) Review & Marathon & Podcast 
13 Love & Mercy $.7 (cum. $10.5) Best Actor
14 Pitch Perfect 2 $.5 (cum. $182.3) 
15 Insidious: Chapter 3 $.5 (cum. $51.2)
16 I'll See You In My Dreams $.4 (cum. $5.8) Best Actress

WHAT DID YOU SEE THIS WEEKEND?
Do tell. 

Yes No Maybe So: Secret In Their Eyes

It might be time to revisit the last Argentinian winner of the Oscae which triumphed over an absurdly strong Foreign Language Film shortlist in 2009. For those still smarting from the losses of Un Prophete and The White Ribbon, bad news: The Argentinian film could be coming back for more Oscars.

Not really.

Sort of.

It's been remade for English language marketplaces as Secret In Their Eyes. And though extremely mainstream genres like murder thrillers generally don't pique Oscar's interest (unless there's the patina of class via subtitles or world class filmmakers behind the camera) you never know. Though we generally disdain remakes of foreign films -- we can read so who needs 'em? -- they've cast three very watchable actors as the central trio: Chiwetel Ejiofor in the Ricardo Darin role, and Julia Roberts and Nicole Kidman as the women in his life / workplace. 

Let's break down the trailer after the jump...

Click to read more ...