Cmasterclay

In terms of design that poster is ugggggly, but what really matters are the reviews coming out of TIFF this weekend.

No one said Argo or Birdman "locks" to win Best Picture in September, either.

Oscars aside, this movie at bare minimum seems like its going to be fascinating and generate alot of conversation, which is a good thing.

Or maybe it's just, you know, a good movie.

I can never really tell what Variety is thinking these days for that very reason. Tis a shame. I mean the Guardian review is certainly strong but 4/5 isn't exactly a "THIS IS WINNING BEST PICTURE" level rave, which is great, as you said, because thank goodness. Suffragette seems to be doing better review wise, even if its not getting the attention.

While those tweets are rather effusive the reviews themselves are not universally stunning. They're kinda more along the lines of Black Mass- two incredible performances worthy of awards, but the movie itself treads familiar ground and is just pretty good. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie/danish-girl/review/820725?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/sep/05/the-danish-girl-review-eddie-redmayne-transgender-venice-film-tom-hooper http://variety.com/2015/film/festivals/the-danish-girl-film-review-eddie-redmayne-1201586696/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/the-danish-girl/review/

We're def gonna get another something! Looking beyond the kids fare in Maze Runner and Hotel Transylvania, there's a ton of breakout potential among adult hits this year. One of Everest, Black Mass, The Martian, Steve Jobs, or Bridge of Spies seems liable to do really huge numbers. Or maybe they all regress towards the mean and all of them do 100 mill type business, I don't know. But this September and October is PACKED. This weekend though, LOL. Has there ever been a sequel that less people asked for than a non-Statham Transporter movie? I can't think of any.

Uh, it's nine reviews in and like five of them didn't even give scores. The biggest raves have been from the trades, who don't give scores. If Variety, Screen Daily, and Wrap all scored it like 8.5/10, and THR gave it a 4/5, the average rating would be damn good.

Early word is very strong, we might have a contender on our hands here: http://variety.com/2015/film/reviews/spotlight-review-michael-keaton-tom-mccarthy-venice-film-festival-1201580933/ http://www.timeout.com/london/film/spotlight http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/venice-review-tom-mccarthys-spotlight-with-michael-keaton-rachel-mcadams-mark-ruffalo-liev-schreiber-stanley-tucci-20150903

Big news out of Venice so far is that both Beasts of No Nation and Spotlight are GREAT, especially the former. Both will get serious looks come award-season, if this is any early indication. Excited for Black Mass tomorrow, the studio is incredibly confident in it, which is usually a great sign. The full lineup for Telluride (this weekend!) has been fully announced. In addition to being the American premiers of big contenders like Beast, Black Mass, Spotlight, Son of Saul, 45 Years, and especially Carol, it is also the world premiere of Steve Jobs (obviously a huge contended), Suffragette (ditto), and the Room (Brie Larson is apparently a big time player in Best Actress for this). It's the most exciting time of the year! Here's the full line up: http://deadline.com/2015/09/telluride-film-festival-2015-lineup-carol-michael-keaton-rooney-mara-1201513617/

Beasts of No Nation is going to be a fascinating case. Reviews are good enough for serious Best Picture consideration, and at bare minimum serious BSA consideration for Elba, but who knows how the Academy is gonna handle it with the Netflix release? Going to be interesting to see, and potentially seismic, actually.

Final pre-fest predictions 1. Suffragette 2. Joy 3. Danish Girl 4. Carol 5. H8ful 6. Miles Ahead 7. Bridge of Spies 8. Revenant (Mild Disappointment) 9. Youth Missing the cut 10. The Martian 11. Spotlight 12. Black Mass (have a feeling it's gonna be better than we think) 13. Inside Out 14. I Saw The Light 15. MEDIOCRE! 16. Freeheld/Son of Saul

This thread proves that the term "Oscar bait" needs to be retired ASAP. Not because this movie looks good (it certainly doesn't, IMO), but because it ruins any potential for smart discussion of a movie's flaws and just retreats into everyone calling whichever late-season release they don't like "Oscar bait." By most traditional definition, Selma was as "Oscar bait" as it gets- a big-time biopic about a famous person with relevant social themes and a starry cast- and that movie fucking rocked. Same applies to Lincoln. They were able to triumph over being Oscar bait with subversion, intelligence, and craft, but people spent months labeling them as such and sucking all the air out of the room. If Imitation Game and Theory of Everything had been able to do the same, the same principle would apply to them, but they didn't. Just looking at this season, really, what could be described as Oscar bait? Miles Ahead is a traditionalist biopic about a musical legend with a baity lead part, but I have no doubt that the movie has the potential to be awesome and Cheadle has the potential to crush it. Suffragette is a socially relevant historical drama with a starry cast, about as biopic as it gets, but the trailer rocked and it looked quite good. Steve Jobs apparently is kinetic as hell and has a subversive structure and style, but it's also an awards-seeking biopic about a very famous guy, so is that "Oscar bait?" Everything from Black Mass (starry gangster true story with big dramatic monologues and a physical transformation!) to Everest (sad human survival drama!) to the Revenant (true story with a capital a Artiste director!) can be called Oscar bait, but that doesn't make them less compelling. The problem with the word Oscar bait is that it gives free reign for the types who think all intelligent dramas are for pretentious squares and that the Academy should only award movies like Jurassic World to use a word that paints all these movies with a broad strokes and enhances their unearned credibility. It hurts smart discourse. Here's a better way to describe Danish Girl: maudlin, traditionalist, cliche-ridden, artificial schlock. And is it desperate for awards attention? Absolutely. But Oscar-bait as a concept really hurts discourse over the last four months here.

It's that time of year again. Venice starts today, Telluride starts on Friday, Toronto starts next week, and New York starts at the end of the month. Venice kicked off already with Everest, which is getting decently strong reviews but not Best Picture worthy ones. The next few days at Venice are packed, so this could be a good place to discuss them. Everest today, Spotlight and Beasts of No Nation Tomorrow, Black Mass Friday, Danish Girl Saturday, and A Bigger Splash Sunday- all world premiers. Should be good. Awards season is officially in gear.

Actually just finished the book. It's a great story and it has a ton of potential, especially with this cast. The movie certainly seems to be elevating some characters (Cumberbatch, who barely plays in the book) and minimizing other (the characters played by David Harbour and Coltrane are essentially co-leads), but I'm sure they'll make it work, and it makes sense thematically. Also, Edgerton's part might be primed for an Oscar run.

This might have been pointed out already and I missed it, but WAYF probably had one of the most disadvantageous release dates in recent memory. The entire audience for this movie is older high school/college students. It just so happens that this weekend in either move back weekend for college, high school prep/orientation weekend, OR the the party weekend that follows the first week back at school for those who started early. No one in this movie's target demographic is possibly seeing a movie this weekend. Absolute failure to match demographic/release schedule. Sure, it was being dumped anyway, but that's still a pretty inexplicable failure on WB's part.

1. Yes 2. No 3. No 4. Yes 5. No 6. Yes 7. Yes 8. Yes 9. No 10. Yes 11. Yes 12. Yes 13. Yes 14. Yes 3. Impossible 5. Uncle 8. Hit 9. Ant

What the hell are you even talking about? What does that have to do with anything whatsoever?

What does this have to do with anything? Anyway, Stephan James was incredible/BSA worthy in Selma, so I'm in on this. I think he can be a star.

Fuck it, Jump Street.

I've obviously been vocally opposed to the fanboy "IT HAZ 2 B A FAITHFUL ADAPTASHUN!!!11" mumbo jumbo that's been so omnipresent lately, but Iron Man 3 suffers from a different problem- while it certainly tries to be interesting and play by its own rules, it forgoes any development of established characters and a defined universe, meaning that it nails the furniture but kind of forgets a foundation. I like that it tries to be a different type of movie, but unlike Ant-Man, which found creative ways for these small-scale ideas to work while developing the characters/plot in a sensible way, it sort of feels like they shot a bunch of cool scenes, and then tried to put them together in the editing room (or as it is now known, American Hustling). It's like Shane Black wrote this fun as hell buddy farce action comedy, and then did a Find+Replace to add a bunch of Iron Man stuff into it- and for me, it kills its identity, because it's stuck in this weird limbo between Marvel and an identity of its own, and it doesn't really seem cohesive. It seems like the script was built around cool conceptions and then the plot was forced around it, instead of a tight structure enhanced by intelligent, unique ideas. But that's just what I think- I totally understand why you DID like it. Also, your second point is sig worthy. My soul dies a little everytime that we default into Rank the Marvel movies. We're a bunch of really smart, interesting writers on here, and it seems kind of wasteful, when there's SO MUCH to talk about, for big topics to just devolve into the same discussion every week. (Yes, I realize that sounds elitist as shit) SOC probably has the least discussion about the actual movie I've seen for ANY 60 million opener- even something like Home garnered more talk. Which is a shame, because there's so much to pull apart here.

Watched it a second time this past semester with my ex. Did not enjoy it as much as my initial Christmas viewing. Bale is still incredible and Renner is a standout. Cooper and Adams are totlly good, and Louis is a star. Lawrence, didn't buy it after watching Robbie in WOWS. All that said, this movie feels much more like a collection of scenes then a movie. It has no cohesion or rhythm. Its like DOR got a bunch of buddies together and shot some great pieces for their acting portfolio, and then decided to release it as a movie. That said, I don't hate it like some do, because Bale is just so infinitely watchable.

Amell looked fucking great on last Monday's RAW. Unlike most celebrities on RAW dude is actually atheltic as shit, trained a bit back in the day, and even does all in his own stunts for his show (which I haven't watched). He's def gonna do good on Sunday. Also, Stewart is the greatest and THIS is his first post-Daily Show gig, which is a huge coup for WWE.

It's probably a bad thing that I don't consider November and December fall or winter, I now consider them the "holiday" season because of box office. I will not accept summer until May 1st. These movie executives won't get me again. It's also probably bad that I don't even question whether May, traditionally a spring month, is even summer. Because, ya know, it is.

I was still wearing jackets in D.C. in April. That ain't fuckin summer.