Ellen Degeneres will be back for the second time as Oscar host next year, having done it once before in 2007. This screams to me they were looking for a "safe" host, after all the controversy Seth MacFarlane brought last time (although he did what they wanted him to do, boost their ratings in that target "young men" demo). But at least she's funny. The 2014 Oscars are set to take place March 2 on ABC.
It's a limited release this weekend, but with some serious critical acclaim (93% RT, 82 Metacritic), James Ponsoldt's The Spectacular Now looks to bring back the serious teen romance, sort of in the vein of 1989's Say Anything. That film just so happens to be one of my favorite movies ever, so count me in. It's been a while since we had a good one of those.
According to Deadline, a deal has been struck and three screenwriters hired to start working on not just two, but three sequels to the $2 billion hit, all to be filmed at the same time and released annually. The first sequel is coming out in Dec 2016, the next in 2017, and the last in 2018.
I can't imagine how much it's going to cost to make three Avatar movies at once, but I guess their faith is justified by the massive success of the first one. Do you think the novelty will have worn off by now, though? James Cameron is still at the helm of all this, of course, set to direct and co-write all of them, so I'll guess we'll be seeing what he's got left in his bag of tricks.
I'm not usually one for posters in the first place, but this one's kinda cool.
Ten movie recommendations for the new month have been posted, along with a new description in our Movies of the Month page! The theme for August is "Going Global," and the ten films of World Cinema have been listed (one of my favorite selections is the fanciful Amelie, from 2001). Head on over to our Movies of the Month page to check out the list for August. Happy Movie Watching!
Right after the first set pics came out, David O'Russell swung by GMA this morning to premiere the trailer personally. Looks great to me- a bit Scorsese-esque. Out on Christmas Day
One of Guillermo del Toro's best movies is now out on blu-ray, and you need to check it out if you haven't seen it. From 2001, it's a chilling ghost story set in a Spanish orphanage in the 1930's, during the Spanish Civil War. Some pretty cool cover art, too.
I don't know how Angelina Jolie tops the Forbes list when she hasn't had a movie out since The Tourist, but somehow she's number one. The rest of the women are more understandable, but most of them are making a lot of that money off of endorsement deals. And the combined total is still nearly three times less than what the men make. Hard to believe, isn't it?
TOP TEN
USA Today has the first set pictures from David O'Russell's latest Oscar hopeful, American Hustle, out on Christmas Day. Here he combines the casts from The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook (Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence) to tell the story of an FBI sting operation against Congress in the 1970's. Bale, as usual, is pretty unrecognizable from these pics.
Ben Stiller's latest, out Dec 25th. Looks interesting, an update of a story told in the 1947 film version starring Danny Kaye.
In honor of the anniversary of The Scopes Monkey Trial this week, one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies, Inherit the Wind. The great Spencer Tracy tells it like it is:
There was no real competition this weekend for Fox's The Wolverine, which pulled in $55 million and earned an A- Cinemascore from audiences. It's a pretty respectable haul, but studio estimates had been projecting as high as $80 million, so it may be seen as a slight disappointment, although it's right in line with the opening of the last X-Men movie, First Class from two years ago. The film also opened to $86 million overseas, which is actually a franchise record, for a worldwide total of $141 million, so really the movie is a success any way you look at it.
Last week's The Conjuring held well for $22 million this week, amassing $83 million and passing Saw's $72 million total from director James Wan. In third place, Despicable Me scored another $16 million and has now passed $300 million in its fourth week- on track to become the second biggest movie of the year, after Iron Man 3. The rest of the top 5 rounds out with Turbo and Grown Ups 2, the latter passing $100 million to become yet another Adam Sandler vehicle to pass that mark.
Top 5:
In limited release news, Fruitvale Station expanded to 1000 theaters this week and cracked the top ten, with $4.7 million. This is possibly due to the recent topicality surrounding the film's subject matter, which has heightened interest in the material and given it a higher profile. And Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine opened in NY and LA this weekend to a scorching per theater average of $102K. The movie's set to expand further in coming weeks, so be on the lookout for it. Next week August kicks off with Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg in 2 Guns vs. The Smurfs 2.
The Movie Seasons
Use this site for movie and television recommendations throughout the year- we have picks for the changing seasons, holidays, and moods, along with new releases and recaps of the best shows on TV
