New 'Batman v Superman' Scene Shows an Angry Supes Unmasking the Dark Knight

I don't know what the hell's going on in this scene that was just released, but I do know that this is NOT my Superman. That's right- I believe Zack Snyder despises this character with every fiber of his being and has decided to demonize him for the masses as much as humanly possible. I'm as likely as anyone else to go see this movie next March, because I'm a masochist I guess, but I can tell you right now that this will never, ever be the correct interpretation of the iconic American hero. Siegel and Shuster must be spinning in their graves.

'Spotlight' Wins Top Honors at Gotham Awards

Awards season has officially kicked off, people. Last year was the first year anyone really paid attention to the Gothams, or as I like to call them, the mini-Indie Spirit awards, and that was because they were first to anoint Birdman, which then went on to win the guild awards and the Oscar. Who knows if they will be just as foreshadowing this year, but they did go big for Spotlight in Best Feature, Screenplay and Ensemble, and many are predicting it to be the critics favorite this year. The critics awards kick off tomorrow with the National Board of Review, and then the New York Film Critics Circle on Wednesday. Stay tuned.

GOTHAM AWARD WINNERS

• Best Feature: Spotlight
• Breakthrough Actor: Mya Taylor, Tangerine
• Best Documentary: The Look of Silence
• Breakthrough Director: Joan Carpignano, Mediterranea
• Best Actress: Bel Powley, The Diary of a Teenage Girl
• Best Actor: Paul Dano, Love & Mercy
• Best Screenplay: Spotlight
• Breakthrough Series, Longform: Mr. Robot
• Audience Award: Tangerine
• Ensemble Performance: Spotlight

The Gothams also made some cool choices with Paul Dano and Bel Powley in Actor and Actress, two people who are unlikely to receive such recognition elsewhere, although Dano has a shot in supporting at the Oscars. I also like the nods for the transgender, iPhone filmed true indie Tangerine, and The Look of Silence, the sequel film to The Act of Killing, looks poised to hit big in the documentary race.

Paul Dano gets a boost with a Best Actor award for playing Brian Wilson

BOX OFFICE 11/27-11/29: 'Hunger Games' Stays On Top; 'Good Dinosaur' and 'Creed' Solid Over the Holiday

The holiday weekend saw the release of three new films, but none could top Mockingjay from its hold on the number one position, as it fell about 50 percent from last week to bring in 51 million over the three day weekend, and 75 million since Wednesday. That's less than its predecessor, but no one's really complaining, as the final Hunger Games movie has already earned 440 million worldwide. Meanwhile, Pixar's The Good Dinosaur came in second with 39 million for the weekend and 55 million over the five day frame, which is actually a bit of a letdown for Pixar, since most of their films earn at least 60 million across the opening three days, and this will be no match for the phenomenal success of Inside Out earlier this year.

Creed, although coming in third, was more of an unabashed success, outperforming expectations to pull in 30 million on the weekend and 42 million since Wednesday, earning an "A" Cinemascore along with excellent reviews and will easily surpass its 30 million dollar production budget. Of course, that's actually the biggest debut ever for a Rocky movie, but those numbers obviously don't account for inflation, since ticket prices were much cheaper thirty years ago. Spectre and The Peanuts Movie rounded out the top five, while the other new release, Victor Frankenstein, had one of the worst debuts ever, bringing in just 3 million.

Top 5:

1. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay- Part 2- 75.8 million
2. The Good Dinosaur- 55.6 million
3. Creed- 42.6 million
4. Spectre- 18.2 million
5. The Peanuts Movie- 13.6 million

In limited release, The Danish Girl got off to a good start, earning 185k from 4 screens, while Spotlight and Brooklyn continue to do solid business, bringing their respective totals to 12 and 7 million each. Carol also stayed strong in limited release, having not expanded yet, but earning another 203k from 4 locations for a new total of 588k. Next week it's the Christmas horror movie Krampus against a slew of indie releases like Spike Lee's Chi-Raq, Youth and Macbeth, as we wait for Star Wars to roll around on the 18th. See you next time.

Movie of the Day: "Nobody's Fool" (1994)

On this Thanksgiving Day I'm recommending Nobody's Fool, a movie from 1994 that basically existed as one of the latter day starring vehicles for the great Paul Newman, who was entering his 70's at the time. It's a movie about an old man who lived his life selfishly and now kind of has to make up for lost time with his son and his friends during the holidays, but it's all about Old Blue Eyes here, and the pleasure of watching him simply be him. He's just as charming and effortlessly charismatic as ever in his old age- I must admit he's one of the few older men that I could actually buy younger women continuing to throw themselves at no matter how old he got (as often happened in his later films, like Slap Shot, The Color of Money and this one). Spend Thanksgiving with one of the greats.

Trailer:

Black Panther and Winter Soldier Show Up in First Trailer for 'Captain America: Civil War'

The trailer for the next Avengers movie, aka the third Captain America sequel, showcases a lot of different people, including looks at Bucky and Black Panther, although they're keeping Spider-Man under wraps for now. It doesn't look too bad, as the Captain America movies actually are the better of the separate Avengers franchises, and hey, they're probably better than the Avengers movies overall. Also notable- this is Black Widow's fourth distinct hairstyle. What a way to distinguish your character, right?

Movie of the Day: "The Last Waltz" (1978)

We're doing a truncated Movie of the Day series this week for Thanksgiving, once again because I think I've almost exhausted the canon of movies that celebrate the holiday specifically. Next year we're probably going to have to go with "dysfunctional families" to mark the occasion. But for now we have one of the great music docs of all time, directed by Martin Scorsese. It's the farewell concert from The Band, one of the great groups from the 60's,  when they decided to hang it all up and threw one last bash on Thanksgiving Day with a bunch of their famous friends. This movie is often seen as representing the end of that era as a whole, and it's hard not to notice why as you watch Robbie Robertson and the rest of these guys interviewed by Scorsese- they're morose, bitter and just plain burned out. In that way you can definitely see this film as the last gasp of the 60's, and it's a strange feeling of melancholy mixed in with absolutely incredible music. One of my favorites of the genre.

Trailer:

Indie Spirit Nominations Go For 'Beasts of No Nation,' 'Carol' and 'Spotlight'

The Independent Spirit Award nominations are here, and to be honest, my favorite thing in these nominees are the three nods for It Follows in cinematography, editing and director. That's pretty awesome. Them embracing Netflix's Beasts of No Nation is nice to see as well- it remains to be seen whether the industry will do the same thing with the Netflix production. Another note is that this is the second organization to reject Rooney Mara's placement in supporting for Carol- she was nominated in Lead with Cate Blanchett, but if the Oscars also reject her placement it probably means she won't get nominated at all, since they haven't nominated two actresses in the lead category since Thelma and Louise.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Beasts of No Nation
Carol
It Follows
Meadowland
Songs My Brothers Taught Me

BEST DIRECTOR
Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson, Anomalisa
Cary Joji Fukunaga, Beasts of No Nation
Todd Haynes, Carol
David Robert Mitchell, It Follows
Tom McCarthy, Spotlight
Sean Baker, Tangerine

BEST DOCUMENTARY
Best of Enemies
Heart of a Dog
The Look of Silence
Meru
The Russian Woodpecker
(T)error

BEST EDITING
Beasts of No Nation
Heaven Knows What
It Follows
Room
Spotlight

BEST FEATURE
Anomalisa
Beasts of No Nation
Carol
Spotlight
Tangerine

BEST FEMALE LEAD
Cate Blanchett, Carol
Rooney Mara, Carol
Bel Powley, The Diary of a Teenage Girl
Brie Larson, Room
Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, Tangerine

BEST FIRST FEATURE
The Diary of a Teenage Girl
James White
Manos Sucas
Mediterranea
Songs My Brothers Taught Me

BEST FIRST SCREENPLAY
The Diary of a Teenage Girl
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Mediterranea
The Mend
Room

BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM
Embrace of the Serpent
Girlhood
Mustang
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
Son of Saul

BEST MALE LEAD
Abraham Attah, Beasts of No Nation
Jason Segel, The End of the Tour
Christopher Abbot, James White
Koudous Seihon, Mediterranea
Ben Mendelsohn, Mississippi Grind

BEST SCREENPLAY
Anomalisa
Bone Tomahawk
Carol
The End of the Tour
Spotlight

BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE
Jennifer Jason Leigh, Anomalisa
Marin Ireland, Glass Chin
Robin Bartlett, H.
Cynthia Nixon, James White
Mya Taylor, Tangerine

BEST SUPPORTING MALE
Idris Elba, Beasts of No Nation
Richard Jenkins, Bone Tomahawk
Paul Dano, Love & Mercy
Kevin Corrigan, Results
Michael Shannon, 99 Homes

JOHN CASSAVETES AWARD
Advantageous
Christmas, Again
Heaven Knows What
Krisha
Out of My Hand

ROBERT ALTMAN ENSEMBLE AWARD
Spotlight

They got a little creative with their nominations here, choosing things like Anomalisa, Beasts of No Nation and It Follows, so the Indie Spirits are continuing its turnaround that started last year in trying to go back to their roots in honoring true American independent productions. As always, the ceremony is held the night before the Oscars, February 27th.

'It Follows' lands three Indie Spirit nods

'Amy' and 'The Hunting Ground' Among This Year's PGA Documentary Nominees

The producers guild has announced its five nominees for Documentary Feature of the year, and in doing so becomes the first guild to announce choices for the year. Their narrative features are the ones with significant Oscar influence, but the documentaries usually end up with at least a few corresponding nominees in the Best Documentary category as well.

• The Hunting Ground
• Amy
• The Look of Silence
• Meru
• Something Better to Come

The Amy Winehouse doc Amy was the most successful of the year, but it's still on the bubble for an Oscar nomination, since the documentary branch prides itself on being snobby and somewhat resentful of mainstream success in its category, strangely enough. The Hunting Ground, the doc about the rape crisis on college campuses, just aired on CNN last night in defiance of threats of lawsuits from accused attackers in the film, including an NFL player for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I think that one is pretty much secured a nomination come Oscar time. The PGA awards will be held on Jan 5th, where the documentary award will be given out alongside the rest of the narrative features.

Steve Carell Gives Advice in New Trailer for 'The Big Short'

This looks like a parody trailer right down to the voiceover, doesn't it? But apparently it's real, which means Paramount has no idea how to market this movie. It premiered at AFI fest to a somewhat divided reaction, but some people really loved it- Adam McKay directs a dense, wonky look at the Wall Street fiasco from 2008, and supposedly it was just too complex for a lot of viewers to grasp. It's coming out on Dec 23rd.

Gal Gadot Debuts Wonder Woman

A new picture of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman was released the other day and she looks a little more like a Jedi than a superhero, don't you think? I wish the movie was going to be good, I really do, but I have no hope for most of the WB heroes movies. They've taken Zack Snyder's approach with all of it and it's absolutely the wrong way go about DC's mostly lighthearted, fun, and comic book-y superheroes, aside from Batman. They can't all be dark.

BOX OFFICE 11/20-11/22: Final 'Hunger Games' Opens on Top

In one of those weird box office stories where a massive opening is perceived as a slight disappointment, Mockingjay-Part 2 topped the charts this weekend as expected, but with "only" 101 million, about 20 million or so off predictions and over a 50 percent drop from the last movie's opening weekend. What does this mean? Well, how about the studios stop splitting the final book in a successful series into two unnecessary movies that makes both of them worse than if it had been one film? That's what I would take from this, but the truth is, how can anything that makes 100 million on a debut weekend be labeled disappointing? Yes, it'll make less than the other films in the series, but in fairness, this was also by far the worst book. I'm just happy these things are over.

The other releases didn't make 15 million, with Seth Rogen's The Night Before coming in with 10 million, and Julia Roberts' thriller The Secret in Their Eyes, opening with just 6.6 million, the lowest of her career. Spectre and The Peanuts Movie filled out the holdovers, with Spectre's total rising to 153 million, and Peanuts closing in on 100, with 98.9 million in the bank.

Top 5:

1. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay- Part 2- 101 million
2. Spectre- 14.6 million
3. The Peanuts Movie- 12.8 million
4. The Night Before- 10.1 million
5. The Secret in Their Eyes- 6.6 million

In the specialty box office, Carol opened strong in 4 theaters with 248k and a 62k per screen average, good for the third highest PTA of the year, behind Steve Jobs and Sicario. Of course, the story with these is all about expansion, but you can probably count on The Weinstein Co. to make sure this Oscar contender is not perceived as a failure, so look for a slow rollout. Spotlight meanwhile, expanded to about 600 locations and earned over 3 million, marking its entry into the top ten as it looks to bring in the adult audience over the next two months. Thanksgiving week sees the debuts of Pixar's The Good Dinosaur and Creed, along with Victor Frankenstein and The Danish Girl in limited release. I'm personally rooting for Creed next week, but we'll see how it goes. See you after Turkey Day everybody.

Kevin Hart and The Rock Team Up for 'Central Intelligence'

I have yet to see Kevin Hart in a single movie that he actually stars in, and since this one is from the guy who made We're the Millers, I don't think it'll be my first. However, with these two guys in it, I'm sure it'll be a big hit, no matter how awful it turns out. Yeah, that fat Rock joke? Shudder. And yes, I'm still calling him the Rock and always will.