BoxOfficeFangrl

AB apologized to his teammates and wasn't suspended after all, only to post this on his Youtube channel late last night: Yes, that's a recorded phone call with Jon Gruden... and also the Moonlight soundtrack:

I mean, considering that Scarlett's leading with "I believe Woody Allen" in September and her history, the odds are good she will run afoul of Film Twitter and be "cancelled" multiple times by next February. Again, I'm not sure how much it will matter to Oscar voters. A huge mitigating factor with Best Actress last year is that everyone knew Lady Gaga had Best Original Song in the bag, probably even before the movie was released. Even if the Academy had showered A Star Is Born with wins, were voters really going to give a singer moonlighting as an actress two Oscars in one night? They love a breakout ingenue in this category, sometimes over more acclaimed performances, but Emma Stone and JLaw for example didn't have two nominations in the same year. It made that Actress race completely different. If The Farewell were an actual entry as a foreign language, I mean, an international film, in a way Awkwafina would be in a much better position to get nominated. $16 million (so far) for a movie mostly not in English is a really good result these days.

Back when Denzel or Cate Blanchett "only" had Supporting Oscars, you had cinephiles saying they were greats and what a crime of cinema it was, that they hadn't won in lead (yet). I just don't get that sense there's the same sentiment towards Renee Zellweger, maybe people wish she'd won for something different than Cold Mountain, but there's not the same common feeling of her being under-rewarded by Oscar overall. Little Women is iconic but I wonder if voters will see Sersh playing a young woman adjusting to growing up, again, and kinda shrug about it? Obviously we haven't seen the movie yet, beyond that, AMPAS voters might not take to it.

Well, ScarJo is off to an eventful start to her Oscar campaigning... Kinda wondering if it will help, as there is likely a "silent majority" in AMPAS who agrees with her about Woody Allen? I'm thinking of the Honest Oscar Ballot person who said they voted for Green Book because they felt the attacks were unfair and no one was going to tell them what to do. Film Twitter will drag Scarlett all season but a lot of older Academy members will feel she did nothing wrong and throw her their support. OTOH, who benefits the most in Best Actress from a ScarJo stumble? I'm thinking Renee or Saoirse, though we aren't even one week into September, so everything can change...

There was a point where Dakota Johnson was considered for the lead, but producers decided to keep the lead Asian-American (the real life woman who is the basis for Constance Wu's character is of Asian decent).

Why did men want to see Wolf of Wall Street? People like crime/heist stories. Women want to see stars they like in an edgier Robin Hood/Ocean's 8. The trailers and ads are short but you can tell the movie is about the women and is going to explore their motivations, how they relate to each other and how they got to this place in life. There will be women watching Hustlers to ogle the cast too, but any woman can get an insight into what "really" goes on in strip clubs or see women "turn the tables" on powerful men. They can leave the movie wanting to take a pole dancing class or dare to dream they will have a body like JLo at 50. Straight women have been seeing R-rated movies with scantily-clad/naked women for decades: action movies, horror movies, comedies. At least here it actually makes sense for the setting and the story is from a female perspective.

Watched the trailer for Parasite, it's definitely not going to get the "nothing happened, I feel asleep it was so boring" complaints you saw about Roma in the Honest Oscar Ballots last year. Neon don't have Netflix money but maybe Parasite being more accessible will make up for it? Joker is about a guy, hate to say it, but that improves the chances Oscar voters could see it as "worthy" of a Best Picture nomination compared to something with an evil/complicated woman as lead, the sort of movie which often "shockingly" ends up being relegated to the acting/tech categories. Unfortunately there are some voters who seem to find it harder to view a movie about women being "important" enough for Best Picture, not always, but a lot of the surprise BP snubs or just misses in recent years are female-centered. Not that a woman can't be in it, but too feminine and it's a "problem" for its Oscar chances (lol I still don't understand how Shape of Water won it all).

I wasn't that familiar with the last days of Judy Garland, her voice sounded much better than I'd imagined, not a total shadow of her glory days. AMPAS clearly doesn't mind lip syncing, post BoRhap, I wonder if they considered dubbing in Judy's vocals where they could or finding a soundalike. Garland dying winless, only for someone to get Best Actress decades later for playing her in a so-so biopic, is the most "typical Oscars" thing ever. Also, A Star Is Born as an entity through the years seems kind of snakebit with the Academy, lots of nominations between all the different versions but very few wins. Zellweger will have a great narrative, but last year showed there are limits to how far that can take a lead actress contender at the Oscars, especially vs. competition in Best Picture nominees. Interestingly, the '54 A Star Is Born was *not* a Best Picture nominee while The Country Girl was. Screeners weren't a thing in the 1950s, but Best Picture is the grand prize. Then and now, more voters will see performances in movies nominated in that category and/or with higher nomination totals, than non-BP/lone acting nominees. In a tight race, it can make the difference.

Don't Let Go (the movie) might have done slightly better in January, maybe? "Groundhog Day, but a [horror/thriller/rom-com/etc]" is an easy sell. Or maybe it needed more star power, there was a Sandra Bullock movie sort of like this and it wasn't a huge hit, either.

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OMGWTAFBBQ!!!!! Twitter reactions are AMAZING, tho! Schefter broke the news and so many people were convinced he got hacked or was that fake Adam Schefter account. That OJ tweet is for real, I see. Yeesh. Crazy how the big 2012 draft debate was RGIII vs. Luck: one retired before 30, the other had one great run before his knee got ruined in his first year, was never the same and is now a backup to a 22 year old. Meanwhile Russell Wilson and Nick Foles are Super Bowl champions. Also, how crazy that Brady is still there winning rings after Peyton and his replacement are out of the league!

Leo's not doing the del Toro movie, either, it's going to be Bradley Cooper (who is seemingly trying out some...interesting facial hair at the moment, ahead of filming). Ultimately DiCaprio turned down chances to work with PTA and GdT, not sure how much the order matters. Generally though, I agree it would be nice if Leo worked more in general. Personally, I would love to see him in something that, on paper, started out with zero hopes of being a Best Picture contender. I don't mean "DiCaprio must join the MCU!", more like, surprise us and star in something like A Quiet Place (a grown up horror/thriller), play a Bond villain, or reunite with Kate Winslet again but in something lighthearted. Stars who know their strengths are smart, but I just feel that all kinds of films can be well-made and enjoyable and end up being remembered in the long run. The "important" or "worthy" movies that contend for Oscars, the sorts of projects that Leo makes almost exclusively now, aren't always the ones that are rewatched or loved years down the line. And to talk about OUATIH, I can't picture the Cruise of today in either lead role, maybe up to Collateral or so, when he wasn't as caught up in being Tom Terrific at all times.

Should have used The Fugees (original or remix) in the trailers, kind of a cliché at this point, but it helps a trailer get talked about, plus the opening lines really would have worked here: So many people think it's Margot Robbie in this, plus I just learned of Emma Mackey, another Margot lookalike besides Samara, or maybe we should say they all resemble Jaime Pressly? Someone put together a project where they're all sisters or clones or alternate universe versions of each other...

To me it looked like something critics would find "heartwarming" but general audiences would struggle to care about. I'm not sure how much a Springsteen biopic would make right now, so a movie where it's about some other guy who likes his songs has an even lower ceiling. Yesterday has a similar premise but with more of a hook and surrounding an even more iconic act, still it's a modest hit at best. Mamma Mia wasn't an ABBA biopic, but had huge advantage with years as a massive stage hit before it became a movie. At least Blinded by the Light didn't cost much ($15 million budget). Anyway, some British writer needs to come up with a project where Viveik Kalra and Daniel Radcliffe play long lost half brothers.

IB has an awards pedigree plus Tarantino and wasn't entirely not in English, that helps sell audiences when they would be leery if it was a foreign-language movie not from a star and director they had a long history with. Because it was a Weinstein Company film, Tarantino probably had an easier time in convincing the studio that Americans would go with the subtitles, one of the Big Six would have had "nervous" execs sending notes like, "Can't they just speak in French/German accented English? You don't want to confuse/alienate Middle America!" It isn't that Americans can't read subtitles at the movies, ever, but they really have to have incentives to do so in large numbers, be it a director/A-list stars they trust, dazzling visuals and/or amazing reviews. And sometimes those things still aren't enough to get past the biases. You know, when films started, everyone had to read to follow the story because they didn't have a way to record sound on film at first. True, the picture switched between the scene and the dialogue, but that was a population that wasn't nearly as visually stimulated like 21st century people who are used to video games, looking at multiple screens at once, etc. and audiences back then managed to follow what was happening in movies just fine, from what I can tell. Maybe because movies were naturally more visual in the Silent Film era, so the story was less dependent on dialogue anyway?

It's just not what general audiences in the US are accustomed to for the theatrical experience, people unashamedly declare, "I don't like to READ when I go to the movies, har har!" like a badge of honor. There are exceptions every so often, but they are pretty rare here when you consider how much money subtitled Hollywood movies make overseas. I don't know if studios care that much really, they will see a foreign breakout and think they can just do an American remake, every other movie now is a remake anyway. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think being third this summer after Rocketman and Yesterday couldn't have helped Blinded by the Light in the Great Jukebox Musical Faceoff of 2019. Like, if there had been a third sort of "concert drama" last December after A Star Is Born and Bohemian Rhapsody, it probably would have underperformed. Mary Poppins Returns was a different sort of thing, not really in competition with those two, maybe some of the predictions were too much, but it missed expectations. There's a market for musicals/dramas with music but it's not like 70-80 years ago, it's not an endless audience. With Hollywood and child actors hitting puberty, movies/TV make things with younger kids, but a lot of the stuff with teens in high school uses 18+ actors instead because they can work longer and are past awkward phases. Disney/Nickelodeon shows use real teens, but they generally like to make their own stars out of unknowns (and are not without their own issues). So someone who's broken out in movies as a kid is in a weird in-between as adolescence hits. The child actors good at drama, sometimes they are just advanced for their age, like the 6'2'' seventh grader who is amazing at basketball. They have tools that others their age don't, so they stand out. But as they become teens/young adults, other people have caught up/surpassed their abilities. Hollywood's also about appearances, the adorable kid doesn't always grow up to have movie star looks, so they get shoved aside that way, too. For that awards season with Room, Jacob's parents attended the awards shows with him of course, and all these awards watchers were losing their minds over his father, he got dubbed the Hot Dad : But genetics are funny and famous kids can burn out, or not, it can go either way, really.

Haddish had Night School last year and is on The Last O.G., which has been renewed for a third season, hits at least. Looking over her filmography, she's worked a lot since Girls Trip. After being under the radar for years it must be a major adjustment to get offered so many roles-you would worry it could all go away like that. She might feel she doesn't have the luxury to be selective, but too many flops and the offers start to dwindle.

Dora the Explorer probably peaked in the mid-aughts as a thing so they probably made her a high school girl to appeal to kids who grew up watching the show. The problem is that Dora the cartoon series is made for children ages 1-4 and isn't really the kind of property that either sparks a ton of lingering nostalgia in tweens/teens or ever had much appeal to adults. The movie is better than an extremely repetitive animated show for toddlers has a right to be, but that's not enough to make a Dora movie a WOM phenomenon. Angry Birds as a craze was already kind of passe when the first one was released, the studio got lucky before. Not surprising the bubble burst with a sequel three years later, they might have been better off latching onto a newer craze in the interim.

They just did a modern version of Little Women last year: Marmee texts the girls, the military dad Skypes home from the front, Ryan from High School Musical was Laurie. It was a no1curr flop, but old stories like LW get revisted because people still relate to their themes however many years later. Girls still face huge pressure to be a certain kind of woman, to look a certain way, society/relatives can have old-fashioned ideas about how a "lady" should act and don't hesitate to tell you what a "disappointment" you are, guy/girl friendships can get derailed if one person develops feelings... And even when an old story is retold, the remake is often about the time in which it is made, even if the setting is still 100+ years ago. The themes a remake leans into tend to be the ones that mirror what's happening in the world at the moment.

For most of the trailer, I was wondering if the Henry Golding character was a figment of Emilia Clarke's imagination? She's "quirky" and he seems too good to be true. With the illness angle introduced in the trailer, I'm wondering if the movie title is meant to be prophetic, but it would be awfully grim for a Christmas movie that they want to have good WOM...

They go on to mention other movies with moved/cancelled release dates due to real life events, and also suggest the movie having a surprise fall film festival screening as a possibility.