Considering Twentieth Century Fox executives are probably still counting the cash they made from Avatar , it seems silly to pass around the collection plate for them after a down year of releases in 2010. That said, which surprising Fox production managed to top the ticket sales of such high profile disappointments as The A-Team , Knight and Day and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader ? Hint: Lesbians.
The folks at Rotten Tomatoes have tabulated their annual Best of the Best list, inserting Tom Hooper’s 2011 Best Picture winner The King’s Speech into the annals of Oscar history. But comparing great films to other great films has always been something of an apples to oranges situation; how can you measure, say, The Godfather Part II against An American in Paris — two very different films that occupy adjoining slots on the list and have the same Tomatometer ranking (98 percent)? With a carefully calculated algorithm, that’s how! Still… why does The King’s Speech not quite feel right sitting so high above other bona fide classics?
Say you’re Saturday Night Live and you’re trying to promote this weekend’s episode hosted by Miley Cyrus. How do you maximize interest in the controversy-prone guest? Judging from this new promo, apparently by ignoring any recent Miley headline (about bongs and familial upheaval ) and letting the pop star play with a soundboard, say “pretty cool,” and get hugged by Keenan Thompson. Proceed at your own risk.
The world has used this week to get their licks in on James Franco following his sleepy performance as Oscar co-host, but not Donald Glover. “It was pretty funny to watch somebody as high as Franco [host the Oscars],” the Community star joked to Vulture . “Was he not? Was he not high? Can you watch and be like, ‘That dude was totally sober!’ When they called his name out he literally gave the thumbs-up.” Whether Franco was addled or not — absolutely not , according to his reps — Glover plans on following in his perceived footsteps as host of the mtvU Woodie Awards at SXSW later this month. “If I’m not high [at the Woodies], it’ll be a problem.” [ Vulture ]
“Michael Cera runs. He runs in Superbad , escaping the police with his friend Jonah Hill, and he runs in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist , after a derelict played by Andy Samberg verbally assaults him on the steps of downtown Manhattan’s Grace Church. For all his running, never once is Cera chasing anybody. (The closest he comes is in Juno : just after crossing the finish line and failing to locate Juno in the stands, he runs to the hospital where Juno is giving birth.) He is never the pursuer. But then again, he is rarely the pursued. In Nick and Norah , nobody chases after him when he runs away, and in Youth in Revolt he is pursued only by a phantom, an id he cannot vanquish and is not sure he wants to. That is the essence of his running: a contest with himself, a test to see if he can become a man — if he can, to use the term of art, man up .” Now you know. [ The Believer via Looker ]
Colin Firth isn’t the only person with a voice. The New York Post brings news of a “bombshell” lawsuit from the makers of Hoodwinked that alleges Harvey and Bob Weinstein paid them $500,000 in “hush money” to keep the suit under wraps until after The King’s Speech won its Oscars. Considering the news of said legal documents are just coming out now, though, doesn’t it seem to have worked?
Perhaps in response to all those people left stymied by Hereafter ‘s Oscar nomination for visual effects (especially when Tron: Legacy got shut out of the category, poor thing), Warner Bros. have released a shot-by-shot reel showing how VFX supervisor Michael Owens and Scanline VFX put together that nine-minute opening tsunami sequence. And when you see how the live-action parts came together combining CG, green screen, water tanks, and on-location photography — well, “Oscar-nominated Hereafter ” doesn’t sound so silly anymore.
Much of the emotional power of Joel and Ethan Coen’s Best Picture contender True Grit comes from the contributions of longtime collaborator and nine-time Oscar nominee Roger Deakins, a cinematographer whose compositions and visual choices lend the Western a subtle, nostalgic quality. It’s fitting, then, that when Deakins played My Favorite Scene with Movieline recently, he pointed toward a film that also utilizes the understated to great — but very different — effect.
Dana Carvey hosts this weekend’s Saturday Night Live , marking his fourth appearance as host — which ranks him third all-time for former cast members, 24 of whom have returned to host the show they once called home. And while you might think that having an alumnus host would automatically translate into a great show, hosting SNL is a completely different animal than being a cast member.
