Streaming Tops: Top Gun, The Sea Beast, RRR, House of Gucci, etc...

by Nathaniel R

The original Top Gun (1986) has been popular on streaming all summer

We heard your response that adding streaming charts to the weekend box office was too much / too confusing so we'll do them separately. It's interesting to know what people are watching even if the data is highly questionable with no checks and balances to accuracy; we mostly have to make due with what the streamers themselves release (and who knows what agendas they have when there's no way to verify their figures) or third party services that also have unknown metrics. But we digress.

Charts are for July 12th or thereabouts (hint: there's also no set system of when numbers are reported from service to service as there is with the world of theatrical releases...)

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Beauty vs Beast: The King and... Who?

Jason from MNPP here. Tomorrow is the 97th anniversary of the great Yul Brynner's birth, and while there are several options we could tackle for this week's "Beauty vs Beast" (The Ten Commandments being the most obvious) I decided to go with the most awkward for me - 1956's technicolor musical The King and I, because I feel like we could use a colorful musical right this minute. There's just one problem, which is what renders this "awkward" - I haven't ever seen The King and I. Whoops!

I know the basic gist - Deborah Kerr plays a school-teacher who moves to Siam and she and the King (Brynner) teach each other about their different cultures and fall into something like love. But specifics? Notsomuch. So here's the deal - I will go home and watch The King and I this week, pinky swear, and you guys tell me in the comments what your "Pros" and "Cons" are for each character in place of me listing them. Deal? Deal!

PREVIOUSLY Last week we went looking for the best Wingman of the Top Gun bunch, and as I figured might happen the current anti-Cruise zeitgeist carried Iceman (Val Kilmer) up into the stratosphere with 52% of the vote. Tom Cruise, your career is in the Danger Zone! Said Travis:

"I'm just very concerned for the well-being of anyone that would vote for a tiny troll over the delicious Iceman."

Beauty vs Beast: Who's The Maverick Now

Jason from MNPP here - I think that most of us have mixed (to put it mildly) feelings about Tom Cruise, who is celebrating his 55th birthday today (yes, he was Born on the Third of July). But there's no arguing that his radar for Big Mainstream Action Movie Success has seemed fairly fine tuned for all of the four decades that he's been batting in the major leagues. Well... until The Mummy this summer, which more than just being a bad movie (he's had plenty of those) felt like an actively bad choice for him particularly. The role didn't fit him and he didn't manage to make it fit him by the sheer force of smiling will that his stardom's been so foundationally built upon.

So perhaps that why now he's finally stepping back into the role that made him a star in the first place, and asking us to remember when something as simple as a jet plane and a pair of aviator glasses was all it took to throttle the box office - the Top Gun sequel, subtitled Maverick, was finally made official this week - it will be out in two years (July 2019) and it will be directed by Joseph Kosinski, who worked with Cruise on the (underrated, says me) sci-fi flick Oblivion. So let's look back ourselves, here on this Patriotic Eve, at the movie as American as American Military Might...

PREVIOUSLY I was about to say that we couldn't have made a more wild swing, celebrating Tom Cruise this week to having celebrated Peter Lorre last week, but you know... not really? Perhaps as Cruise grows older he can embrace his diminuitive weirdness to similar effect. Anyway as for last week's Maltese contest it was Bogart who won, but barely, with just 53% of the vote. Said Tom:

"I think both are lucky Mary Astor isn't here. But as it is I vote for Sam. He does such wild and unpredictable things."

In Celebration of "Top Gun 2"...

Best Sound Mixer Kevin O'Connell: 21st time's the charm

Tim here. Somewhat overlooked in all the furor over the rightfully furor-inducing parts of the Oscars on Sunday, a little bit of history was quietly made.

When the four-member team from Hacksaw Ridge took to the stage of the Kodak Theater to accept the award for Best Sound Mixing, the worst losing drought in the history of the Academy Awards ended. Kevin O'Connell received his first nomination in that category in 1983, for the subdued domestic drama Terms of Endearment, which perhaps unsurprisingly lost to The Right Stuff. 33 years and 21 nominations later, in a career including 209 films to his credit as a mixer, he finally picked up his very first statue on Sunday. You may remember him as the guy who thanked his late mom for helping him to get his first job in the industry, and who asked as thanks only that he'd mention her one day as he accepted an Oscar.

Whatever feelings one might have about the film, it's hard not to be excited on O'Connell's behalf...

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