I'm not exactly sure who convinced Disney there was an audience for a Pete's Dragon remake, but it looks like we're getting one this summer anyway. It looks kinda...meh? Sort of How to Train Your Dragon-esque, I guess, but probably lesser.
Oscar Predictions 2016 Part 1: Shorts, Sound and Effects
Okay guys, it's my favorite time of the year- final Oscar prediction time. As always, I do these in five parts, starting with the below the line categories and moving up from there, so here we go now with the sound and short categories.
ANIMATED SHORT
- Sanjay's Super Team
- World of Tomorrow
- Bear Story
- Prologue
- We Can't Live Without Cosmos
Boy, would I love to pick World of Tomorrow to win this. It's an excellent short and it's currently streaming on Netflix for anyone who wants to watch it, but as usual, this one tends to go to Disney or Pixar when they have a decent contender in the mix, which they do this year. So I'm going with Sanjay's Super Team, but World of Tomorrow SO deserves this and I really hope it wins somehow.
Winner: Sanjay's Super Team
Alternate: World of Tomorrow
LIVE ACTION SHORT
- Shok
- Ave Maria
- Stutterer
- Day One
- Everything Will Be Okay
Educated guess time, because I have seen none of these, as per usual. From what I'm hearing, Shok is the frontrunner, so I'm going with that.
Winner: Shok
DOCUMENTARY SHORT
- Body Team 12
- Chau Beyond the Lines
- Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah
- A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness
- Last Day of Freedom
Even tougher, because again, I know nothing about these films. And the truth is, neither do most Academy voters, so the only people who fill out these categories are probably the doc short filmmakers themselves. I'm betting on Body Team 12 here, but apparently Chau Beyond the Lines and Claude Lanzmann are easily in the running too.
Winner: Body Team 12
Alternate: Chau Beyond the Lines
SOUND MIXING
- The Revenant
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens
- The Martian
- Bridge of Spies
Everyone thought Mad Max was going to sweep both sound categories, but then The Revenant won this award at both Bafta and the Cinema Audio Society. That means I have to choose it to win here, which begs the question of whether I should also choose it for editing or stick with Mad Max and go for the less common split.
Winner: The Revenant
Alternate: Mad Max: Fury Road
SOUND EDITING
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens
- The Revenant
- The Martian
- Sicario
I want to predict Mad Max for this but I just can't bring myself to not go for the same film in both sound categories. If The Revenant is going to win sound mixing, it really should take editing too.
Winner: The Revenant
Alternate: Mad Max: Fury Road
Dark Horse: Star Wars
VISUAL EFFECTS
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens
- The Revenant
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- Ex Machina
- The Martian
Man, I'm choosing Star Wars here, because it won both the Bafta and Guild award, which means it has to be the frontrunner. But the funny thing is, the Academy has gone with a Best Picture nominee (when one is nominated) for nearly the entire history of this category. So Mad Max and Revenant have an equal chance of taking this, and even though Star Wars won those precursors, it wasn't up against Revenant at Bafta. So I'm not real confident about this choice- then again, it does make sense that they'd want to hand Star Wars some kind of token win in acknowledgment of all the money it's made. Oy.
Winner: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Alternate: The Revenant
Dark Horse: Mad Max: Fury Road
Makeup, Sound and Scripter Awards Go Out
Last night, a couple more guilds weighed in, as well as the USC Scripter award, which has a long streak of predicting the Adapted Screenplay Oscar winner that looks to not be broken this year.
USC Scripter
To no one's surprise, The Big Short took this prize last night, and will definitely go on to win the Oscar after having taken the Writers Guild trophy as well. The movie still has an outside shot at Best Picture, due to that PGA win, but more and more it looks like brainy films Spotlight and Big Short will have to settle for the screenplay prizes.
Makeup and Stylists Guild
Another non-surprise, as Mad Max swept up this trophy from the guild yesterday, or at least the one for makeup, as hairstyling was awarded separately to Cinderella. But expect Fury Road to take the Oscar, which is awarded as one prize for both makeup and hairstyling.
Cinema Audio Society
The sound mixing guild awarded The Revenant last night, and this matched up with Bafta's choice last week as well, so it looks like I'm going to have to predict Revenant for sound mixing. The Oscars have two annoying sound categories- mixing and editing, whose guild doesn't award until next Saturday, but it's normally a smart move to predict the same movie for both. However, almost everyone thought Mad Max was going to sweep the sound awards, so I may end up predicting a split between them this year.
BOX OFFICE 2/19-2/21: 'Deadpool' Stays on Top
Unsurprisingly, Deadpool was in first place again this weekend with a 55 million haul, bringing its total to 235 million domestic, which makes it officially the highest grossing X-Men movie in the franchise- although the idea that Deadpool is part of the X-Men gang is kind of a joke in itself, as anyone who saw the movie can tell you. It's already made nearly 500 million worldwide, which will of course ensure that it becomes the biggest R-rated movie ever, and that's without coming out in China, which this one isn't allowed to do.
New releases The Witch and Risen did fairly well for the kinds of movies they are, but neither was big enough to topple Deadpool, obviously. Risen made 11 million, continuing the success for these kinds of faith based movies, and The Witch did 8 million, making it A24's biggest opening yet. Holdovers Kung Fu Panda 3 and How to Be Single rounded out the top five for the weekend.
Top 5:
- Deadpool- 55 million
- Kung Fu Panda 3- 12.5 million
- Risen- 11.8 million
- The Witch- 8.69 million
- How to Be Single- 8.2 million
Next week we have Gerard Butler starring Gods of Egypt against the tearjeker Eddie the Eagle and the action movie Triple 9, but more importantly, it's finally Oscar weekend, as we will see what seems like the now overdue finish line for this neverending Oscar season. Looks like The Revenant has all the momentum at the moment, but whatever wins is bound to be forgettable at this point, with 2015 not being a particularly strong year for movies in general. But hey, at least Leo DiCaprio will finally get his Oscar, right?
New Trailer for 'The Jungle Book' Shows Off Baloo, Bagheera and Shere Khan
Okay, so I don't know what anyone else thinks, but man this looks terrible. All I see when I hear the celebrity voices coming out of these obvious CG animals is disembodied sounds that don't match the image they're coming from. I suppose you could say this about all of these movies, but why on earth wouldn't you just watch the cartoon if you want to see these characters in action?
Emanuel Lubeski Wins the Top ASC Award for 'The Revenant'
Another guild announces, but this one was no surprise at all, as everyone expected The Revenant to take the cinematography prize from the American Society of Cinematographers, and this happens to be his third consecutive win in the category. It will also be his third win in a row at the Oscars, after having won the last two years for Gravity and Birdman. That will be an unprecedented feat, but voters at the Oscars are voting for the movie, not the cinematographer himself, so you can see how that might happen.
'The Revenant' Wins Best Picture and Director at the BAFTA Awards
Well, there you have it. The Revenant is looking very strong heading into the Oscar race, and even though I said I was betting on the PGA's pick The Big Short...I may be changing my mind. The DGA winner has historically been strongest after all, and that PGA-only stat is still fairly new. It's possible, but with all the technical support, Leo's impending Best Actor win, and Inarritu's inevitable Best Director win- it sure seems like it should be The Revenant now, shouldn't it? Elsewhere, BAFTA can sometimes be helpful in deciding some of the below the line categories- looks like it will be Revenant vs. Mad Max for most of them, but Star Wars now seems all but assured for Visual Effects. I think it's either a Revenant sweep or The Big Short wins 3- Picture, Editing and Screenplay. Still haven't decided which one to bet on yet, but predicting a split has always been risky, so I am now leaning towards The Revenant for everything.
- Best Picture: The Revenant
- Best Director: Alejandro Inarritu, The Revenant
- Best Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
- Best Actress: Brie Larson, Room
- Best Supporting Actor: Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies
- Best Supporting Actress: Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs
- Best Adapted Screenplay: The Big Short
- Best Original Screenplay: Spotlight
- Best Cinematography: The Revenant
- Best Costume Design: Mad Max: Fury Road
- Best Makeup/Hairstyling: Mad Max: Fury Road
- Best Music: The Hateful Eight
- Best Production Design: Mad Max: Fury Road
- Best Sound: The Revenant
- Best Visual Effects: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
- Best Animated Film: Inside Out
- Best Documentary: Amy
- Best Film Not in the English Language: Wild Tales
- Best British Film: Brooklyn
- Best British Animated Short Film: Edmond
- Best British Live Action Short Film: Operator
- Best Debut Film: Theeb
- Rising Star Award: John Boyega
'Spotlight' and 'The Big Short' Split the WGA Awards
WGA was the least exciting guild this year, because everyone has known for months that Spotlight and The Big Short were going to win this, and that both will also win their respective Oscar screenplay categories as well. So this is was the least surprising result of the season, and tells us nothing new about the Oscar race.
- Original Screenplay: Spotlight
- Adapted Screenplay: The Big Short
- Documentary Screenplay: Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
BOX OFFICE 2/12-2/14: 'Deadpool' Shatters Records Over President's Day Weekend
The R-rated Ryan Reynolds starring superhero movie Deadpool blew everything out of the water this weekend with an estimated 135 million opening over the three days, but an expected 150 million over the four day weekend. The huge success of the film was way beyond all expectations and will probably open the door to more R-rated superhero properties now, seeing as it's 20th Century Fox's biggest opening weekend ever, the biggest ever opener for an R-rated movie, and probably quite a few other records that I won't bother to list, because, well, you get it. It's big. Reynolds spent the last ten years of hi life trying to bring this property to the big screen, so this relaunches him back onto the A-list after a decade of flops, but I'm willing to bet he'll be tied to this one character for a long time.
The other new releases, How to Be Single and Zoolander 2, didn't make enough for second place, which went to Kung Fu Panda 3 again, as the other two disappointed, especially Zoolander, which got slaughtered by critics and earned a "C+" Cinemascore. It actually earned just 15 million over the weekend, which is almost the exact same number the first one did back in 2001. The Revenant came in fifth, bringing its new total to 160 million, as it marches towards Oscar glory.
Top 5:
- Deadpool- 135 million
- Kung Fu Panda 3- 19.7 million
- How to Be Single- 18.8 million
- Zoolander 2- 15.6 million
- The Revenant- 6.9 million
Once again, not much to report on in limited release, as the big story this weekend was all Deadpool and what that might do for the other kinds of hero movies in the future. I would say hopefully it means that studios might take more risks with some darker, more original comic book properties, as the great thing about this one is that it couldn't feel less like a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie if it tried, and that includes the so-called more inventive stuff like Guardians of the Galaxy. But you never know. Tune back in next week to see if the biopic Race, the Jesus movie Risen, and the horror movie The Witch, can do anything against Deadpool in its second week, but the answer will probably be no.
Nicholas Hoult and Kristen Stewart Fall in Love in Trailer for 'Equals'
As you should know by now, I have less than zero interest in anything Kristen Stewart ever does- some people just continue to have completely inexplicable careers in movies, and she's one of them. But I do like Nicholas Hoult, probably because I have a soft spot for him ever since About a Boy.
New Look at 'The Huntsman: Winter's War' Features a Battle Between Sisters
This battle of the sisters stuff looks nuts, and the whole idea of the ice sister seems to still be cashing in on the appeal of Frozen after all this time. But the effects don't look too bad, unlike both films it's advertizing the similarities to- Alice in Wonderland and Maleficent. I don't know though. I kinda like the idea of all three actresses in this as warriors, but it still looks essentially dumb, like all these movies have been.
Final 'Batman v Superman' Trailer Shows Off Batman in Action
Looks like WB's marketing department finally figured out how to cut a semi-appealing trailer for this film. It may be too late though, as rumors are swirling that the movie is a disaster and the studio's panicking. If this is true, it would be the biggest non-surprise of the year so far, at least for me, but it does put the whole slate of upcoming DC universe films into disarray. If this one sucks who's going to want to see a Justice League movie next year, right?
