Cap

ScarJo not showing up at the premiere... what’s the O/U on her preggo? 🤔 eta: lmfaaaaaoooooo 🍿

Warning to All: There was a fan premiere event in Australia last night; they're starting one in London in 20 minutes; there's one in NYC tonight, and there's something going on at the El Cap. So, to quote a dear friend: "It's basically just a race to see who makes a burner account and writes a plot summary first" for Twitter and reddit. Someone is gonna get spoiled.

91% with 47 Review is not mixed, Twitter. Did Twitter lie to me? Anyway, Good. F9 was a good first start to rebooting the box office. We need Widow to keep the momentum going.

NAAAAH. Black Widow could be BOMBING and no one would give AF cause fandom is SOOOOOOO HIGH on Loki right now.

You need the whole thing: 😂

Search the BlackWidow tag and click “Latest”. None of them are terrible. They are a mix of “this was neat, but not really needed” to “it’s okay but omg David Harbour and Florence Pugh 😍😍” to the standard “Marvel did it again!!” Conscious seems to be: story is thin, but the action is great.

And...

JULY SCHEDULE: WESTERNS So this is totally bonkers, but... We've been doing this for a year. I want to thank everyone that's been apart of it! I never imagined we'd still be doing this a year later! Even as theaters open back up, and life "gets back to normal", I hope we can continue for another 100 movies! It was a year last month that @The Panda published the bi-annual BOT Top 100 List, and the rest is kind of history. It feels fitting that we come full circle with Panda's new list: BOT's Top 50 Westerns of All Time (Or Cowboy Films/Westerner At Heart Must See) The deadline is the end of July. Please submit your list! We're joining the Western wagon train with July's schedule. We've decided to put the schedule together in chronological order, based off of @Jake Gittes's suggestion, so we can see how the genre has evolved and changed over the decades. PROGRAMMER'S PERFACE: I also want to put up a warning, particularly since most of these films come from the 20th Century, that the myth of the Old West and The Cowboy is pure fiction that originated from adventure novels written in the turn of the 20th Century, and from Buffalo Bill’s Cowboy Rodeo. There are very few women in these movies, who are not either wives or Salon Girls. The cowboys were not all white men like John Wayne; in fact, about 30% of them were Mexicans and Blacks/Ex-Slaves. Most of the classic Westerns of the genre completely omit that Chinese immigrants built the Union Pacific Railroad. The genre's attitude as a whole to the Native American genocide is abhorrent. There were very few Native American "raids" or "attacks". The Searchers is based on a fictional account of the real 1836 kidnapping of Cynthia Ann Parker. Alan Le May, the author of the book the movie is based on, said he found only sixty-four real life cases of this happening in the ENITRE 19th Century. You were more likely to die of starvation or hypothermia (or dysentery!). And there were even less gunfights at dawn. (Fun fact, the Shoot Out At the OK Corral only lasted about a minute!) The Old West a romanticized, white washed myth of Manifest Dynasty. So why watch them? Because like all old movies, we can learn. We can see how our past society wrestled with its own past, and what themes and morals they respected above all. In John Wayne’s 1972 New York Times Obit, then President Carter called him: "a symbol of many of the most basic qualities that made America great. In the age of few heroes, he was the genuine article. Mr. Wayne's ruggedness, tough independence, sense of personal conviction and courage -- on and off the screen -- reflected the best of our national character.” We can see how we have grown -- and haven't grown -- from our sins. The myth of the American West, and that cowboy spirit, still has control over public subconscious, even in the 21st Century. So I hope you can enjoy them for the complicated films that they are, even if Hoo Boy, it's about to get problematic up in here. So, without further ado, first up we have: STAGECOACH (1939) "My name is John Ford, and I make Westerns" is how the man himself introduced at DGA meeting in 1950. That's one way to put it. Another is: John Ford is the most influential American filmmaker of time. He started his career in 1914, when he followed his older brother Francis from Portland, Maine, to Los Angeles, California. He worked old jobs on sets, and even as an actor and stuntman, before he directed his first film Straight Shooting in 1917 starring Harey Carey. He would go on to direct a total of 147 projects -- that includes 118 features, 14 shorts, 10 documentaries, and 5 TV episodes -- over fifty-nine years. His work would earn him 4 Academy Awards for Best Director (still a record). He outlasted all of his peers and the Studio System that he helped establish. One could say the Golden Age of Hollywood started and ended with him. Eastwood called him the "Grand Daddy of all directors." Spielberg once claimed to watch a John Ford movie before he started filming on every one of his pictures. Orson Welles watched Stagecoach forty times before filming Citizen Kane; when asked by Peter Bogdanovich who his favorite American directors were, Welles replied: “I like the old masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford. With Ford at his best, you get a sense of what the earth is made of -- even if the script is by Mother Machree." Thankfully Stagecoach is not Mother Machree. The film follows nine strangers on a Stagecoach as they have to pass through -- to quote the script -- "Apache Country". What unfolds is a mortality tale about classism, sexuality, greed (and terrible depictions of Native Americans!). It also features a stunt action sequence which will look really familiar if you're a Spielberg or Donner fan. We're starting with Stagecoach, because before it, the Western genre had almost run its course. It was considered low-bow entertainment and passe. Think of this as the Iron Man of the Western genre. It launched the genre into a new stratosphere and launched its star, John Wayne, into infamy. Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5423825182?pwd=T1VuUmJ5OVB1ZjRNQmNHRVpDQ3lkUT09 Meeting ID: 542 382 5182 Passcode: BOT

I will make sure to get in a list. It will probably be a basic list, but I will get you something!

That actually sounds like a great double feature.

Quick update! Because this weekend is the Fourth of July, we are going to do the movies on Monday night and Wednesday night this week. We have canceled Valley of the dolls, and we are going to show westerns for the rest The month To sync up with @The Panda’s top 50 western list. I’ll get the full schedule out this evening, but this week we’re gonna start with John Wayne and John Ford’s STAGECOACH on Monday, and John Huston’s THE TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE on Wednesday!!

It's the double feature at my drive in, so locally, yes.

I am in! We just returned from F9. By the way some folks in the telegram chat were talking, I was expecting it to be a total car crash. It’s not. It’s still stupid, but it’s fun stupid. It’s definitely nice to see an Justin Lin behind the wheel again. And there’s tons of fan service to keep people happy.

LOL at that tweet. Interesting info. The "motor vehicles and parts" are both 25% above trend, yet still down from April, because you can't get them. They legit can't build the new cars fast enough with the "chip shortage", which as caused the used car market to go bonkers. Glad restaurants are back. But weird that theaters aren't, since they are safer than restaurants. I feel like the messaging on theaters this whole year has been terrible. But, eh, what can you do?

To make a list of just John Ford movies or not? 🧐

I have JUST finished the whole series, so my ranking is at my Letterboxd Fast Five The Fast and The Furious Hobbs & Shaw 2 Fast 2 Furious Tokyo Drift Furious 7 6 4 The Fate of the Furious. Five is perfect. I love five. And then I have more spoiled thoughts on the other ones. But I love five And the only reason that I ranks seven above six and four is because of the song. If they didn’t have that song, I’d probably rank it next to last.

KEVIN GETS ME THE BEST GIFTS FOR MY BIRTHDAY!!! FIRST LOKI, NOW

@CJohn has been banned for 24 seconds for making me check the reports tag for no reason. LMFAO, try harder with the trolling.

YUP. AND CONFIRMED BY WORD OF GOD

@charlie Jatinder Honestly? This is basically Doctor Who. They could run this for another 10 years based off of the set up in the first three episodes.

OMFG YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 GENDERFLUID AND BI/PAN 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

P A T T I

Also, I can’t believe y’all took the bait. LOL @Plain Old Tele

What’s crazy is that Netflix has his next movie which is the adaptation of Tick Tick Boom. Which is Jonathan Larson’s lesser known musical instead of rent. So even though we’re not gonna get box office numbers, it is interesting because he’s quickly up for that a third time to see if he can sell something. I also might have more to talk about in the morning. I want to sleep on the musical thoughts. PS, I don’t know if it’s a good thing that were comparing LMM to MNS. I don’t know if that bodes well for his career trajectory