For over a decade, Elizabeth Banks has popped up memorably in comedic and dramatic roles in everything from Catch Me If You Can to Seabiscuit to the Spider-Man trilogy to The 40 Yr. Old Virgin to W. to The Hunger Games franchise.
Yet 2015 has been the year which has undoubtedly catapulted Banks to new and unanticipated heights. She made her directorial debut with this summer’s Pitch Perfect 2 and along with it came a record. The massive $69 million opening for the pic earned her bragging rights for largest opening of all time for a first time director. She appeared in the smash hit as well. The $184 million domestic take of the sequel guarantees Ms. Banks many more opportunities behind the camera.
Around the same time, she was co-starring alongside John Cusack and Paul Dano in the acclaimed Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy. For her work, she is in the running to receive her first Oscar nomination.
Her terrific year capped off with her turning up for the final time as crowd favorite Effie in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2. Three examples of the best year yet for not only a talented actress, but a suddenly hot director.
Prior to 2015, not many knew the name Alicia Vikander but that has certainly changed and the 27 year old Swedish actress looks primed for Oscar attention and stateside stardom. In the spring, her role as robot Ava in Alex Garland’s science fiction sleeper hit Ex Machina garnered Vikander well deserved attention.
The momentum has kept up this fall with her role in Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl, in which Vikander is expected to land (and potentially win) the Supporting Actress category at the Academy Awards. There’s even a long shot possibility that she could be nominated for both of the aforementioned pictures.
Ms. Vikander did also appear in two other high profile efforts that failed to perform well – The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Burnt. Yet her exposure this year has led to choice projects in 2016: 17th century drama Tulip Fever with Dane DeHaan and Christoph Waltz, The Light Between Oceans alongside Michael Fassbender, and what will surely be her most mainstream pic to date, the untitled fifth Jason Bourne flick with Matt Damon.
All in all, Vikander made a big impression in 2015 that is bound to carry on.
Director Judd Apatow has had a fine history of bringing comedic performers known more for their small screen work to silver screen glory. Steve Carell in The 40 Yr. Old Virgin. Seth Rogen in Knocked Up. Kristin Wiig and Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids (which he produced).
It happened yet again in 2015 with Amy Schumer for this summer’s Trainwreck, a critically acclaimed box office hit which gave the celebrated comedienne her inaugural starring vehicle. Schumer made the most of it, writing the script and giving Apatow a bit of a comeback vehicle after a couple of commercial disappointments. The pic earned $110 million stateside (and an 85% Rotten Tomatoes rating) while giving humorous supporting roles to Bill Hader, Tilda Swinton, and even LeBron James.
2015 has been a watershed year for Ms. Schumer. In addition to her considerable film success, her Comedy Central show “Inside Amy Schumer” was nominated for five Emmys (after winning a Peabody last year) and she capped the year off with an HBO stand-up special.
Expect to see lots more of Schumer on the big screen as she is currently working on a buddy comedy with her buddy, Jennifer Lawrence. We will certainly remember this year as the one which turned her into a movie star.
This is the third full year of this blog’s existence and in 2013 and 2014, I posted six separate entries about actors and actresses that experienced terrific years during those frames. I’m doing the same for 2015, but for my first, there’s a twist. It’s not a specific performer that gets the honor of having a watershed year but rather a feeling. Nostalgia.
In 2015, we have witnessed franchises that began four decades ago and two decades ago become the defining pictures of this calendar year. We’ve seen the early days of a generational defining musical genre become the surprise hit of the summer. And next month, we are highly likely to see the year culminate in a nostalgic frenzy.
We begin in the summer when Avengers: Age of Ultron was widely expected to be the season’s largest grosser. That was until Jurassic World shocked everyone with the highest domestic premiere of all time with $208 million with an eventual $652 million haul. The franchise that Spielberg began sparked the interest of those who were wowed by its dinosaurs over 20 years earlier. They attended this new World and took their kids along with them.
This same summer saw another long time franchise that had stood dormant for 30 years get rebooted to acclaimed results and brisk box office when Mad Max: Fury Road took in $153 million stateside. George Miller (who helmed the original trilogy) brought his wild action set pieces to a whole new audience and gave fans one of the most heralded pics in the genre in years.
In August, a generation of listeners who grew up on late 80s and early 90s gangsta rap celebrated the release of Straight Outta Compton, which focused on the formation of NWA. It would make an incredible $161 million.
This past Thanksgiving weekend continued the reminiscent trend in the form of Creed. While it might be the seventh movie in the last near 40 years to feature the iconic character of Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa, the actor/director turned the reins over to upstart filmmaker Ryan Coogler. The results? A $40 million opening and the best reviews of the series since the Oscar winning original. Stallone could be well on his way to a Supporting Actor nod and Creed itself could find itself in the Best Picture mix.
Of course, not all attempts to tap our nostalgic nerve succeeds and it’s usually due to quality. This held true for Arnold’s summer return in Terminator: Genisys and the Vacation franchise being retooled with a younger set of Griswolds. And remember Jem and the Holograms from a few weeks back? Didn’t think so.
In less than three weeks, we will witness hyper drive when it comes to the subject of this post. That would be Star Wars: The Force Awakens. As you know, it marks the return of some of the most beloved film characters ever seen in the most famous franchise ever to reach the screen. It could very easily result in record breaking box office numbers all over the world.
2015 surely will be remembered in motion picture history as a year in which we collectively celebrated our film memories. And that makes this choice an easy one for my first of six posts of what we’ll remember about this year on the silver screen.
I’m going to keep this post short and sweet. Today, my movie blog turns 3 years old!
It’s been great. I’m truly humbled that people take the time to read the thoughts in my head and reviews and box office predictions and anything else I choose to write about. 2015 is already the most viewed year of the blog in its three year history. I’ve said I’d probably write this blog even if people didn’t read it, but it’s better when they do! So thank you.
As for the future, I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing. The blog has evolved as its existence has gone on and I anticipate the same. The reviews and weekly box office predictions and Oscar talk will never cease. Yet who knows what I’ll choose to write about next week? Next year? That’s the fun part.
In a previous post, I referred to a love of movies as The NeverEnding Story. It’s so true. Just in the next three months, there’s a new Bond feature coming. A new Quentin Tarantino effort. A new frickin Star Wars, people!!!
We’ll watch and experience it together I hope and I’m grateful for your eyes reading it.
If a Mount Rushmore were to exist for horror film directors, there is no question that Wes Craven would be on it. Eyes wide open. Certainly not sleeping. It was with great sadness that film lovers learned of his death at age 76 due to a battle with brain cancer. His influence has been inescapable and that is no understatement. When I learned of his death, I was watching the MTV VMA’s (a horror show of a different kind) and the network was incessantly running promos for their TV version of Scream, based on the franchise he directed.
For over 40 years, Mr. Craven’s work was synonymous with being on the cutting edge of the horror genre. 1972’s The Last House on the Left and 1977’s The Hills Have Eyes are hard edged genre classics. 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street brought the slasher flick to new heights. 1996’s Scream both parodied horror movies while being a brilliantly effective one of its own.
These are the obvious titles that will be discussed with his work but allow me to put forth two more that probably won’t be focused on as much. 1988’s The Serpent and the Rainbow is a voodoo infused underrated effort that is definitely worth a look. 2005’s Red Eye is an effective B movie thriller with taut direction and quality performances from Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy.
Craven is also responsible for 1982’s fun monster pic Swamp Thing and directing Meryl Streep to an Oscar nomination in 1999’s drama Music of My Heart. There were missteps too. His 1995 Eddie Murphy vanity project Vampire in Brooklyn immediately comes to mind. The Scream sequels tended to go down in quality as they continued on.
Yet few filmmakers have defined and redefined a particular genre as much as Wes Craven. His works have and will continue to stand the test of time. One only needs to look at how many of his pictures have already been remade or spawned sequels. The original editions of Elm Street and Scream in particular stand as hallmarks of horror that will continue to make audiences lose sleep and laugh about it forever. When it’s impossible to imagine a genre of film without the contribution of one man, that’s a legacy of greatness. Few directors can make that claim. Wes Craven was one of them. Sleep well, Mr. Craven.
When you’ve got yourself a documentary about a major Hollywood production that never ended up being made and its director Tim Burton isn’t the most eccentric individual being interviewed, you’re probably in for something fascinating. And so it is with The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?, which tells the tale of why Burton’s proposed reimagining of the Man of Steel never made it to the screen.
The more eccentric character is by far Jon Peters, the mega producer who had successfully worked with Burton to bring Batman to the masses in 1989. The two were deep into pre-production on the late 1990s Superman Lives project before the plug was pulled and some of this doc’s greatest moments involve Peters being interviewed and, even more so, other people talking about him. Peters started out as Barbara Streisand’s hairdresser before becoming a major producing player. We hear tales of Peters’ insistence on having a giant spider featured in the film, his preference on having scripts read to him while he lays on the couch, his proclivity for putting employees in headlocks and trying out his jiu jitsu moves on underlings.
There’s a lot more to the story of how Superman Lives died and director/writer Jon Schnepp explores it in great detail here. This documentary has had its own difficult history in finally being released and it was partly funded through a Kickstarter campaign. The Supes reboot went through three screenwriters during its gestation: Kevin Smith at first, who brought his comic book geek sensibility before being jettisoned by Warner Bros brass, Peters, and Burton; Wesley Strick, who would eventually suffer the same fate; and its final writer Dan Gilroy, who would go onto direct my favorite pic of last year, Nightcrawler. Nicolas Cage was to star in the title role and there’s even fascinating footage of him trying on the iconic Superman costume, which the doc spends a lot of time talking delving into. In the late 1990s, Cage seemed like a fairly logical choice as he was coming off an Oscar for 1995’s Leaving Las Vegas and headlining A list action projects like The Rock, Con Air, and Face/Off. In other words, it was a few years prior to Cage seemingly accepting every single script that came his way. Other casting choices are discussed, including Sandra Bullock as Lois Lane, Chris Rock as Jimmy Olsen, Christopher Walken as Brainiac, and Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor (that actor would go onto play him in 2006’s Superman Returns).
What emerges from the documentary is a film about a film never made (it was three weeks away from shooting) that probably would’ve been something to behold. Would it have been good? Hard to say. The two subsequent Superman reboots that would follow years later (the aforementioned Superman Returns and 2013’s Man of Steel) were both rather disappointing in my view and many comic book lovers felt the same way. Burton’s track record over the last quarter century has been hit and miss. While his take on Batman was a rousing success, his “reimagining” of Planet of the Apes in 2001 left much to be desired. What’s clear is that it would have been a much different Superman than we’ve ever seen and would have looked a whole lot different (the long portions about its production design are quite intriguing).
One important through line that runs in the doc is the fact that Superman Lives was by no means guaranteed massive success in the late 1990s. We must remember that it wasn’t until the turn of the century that 2000’s X-Men truly helped usher in the golden age of comic book flicks that we’ve seen steadily over the last 15 years. When this project was gestating, 1997’s Batman and Robin had essentially killed that Caped Crusader franchise until Chris Nolan brought it back to life eight years later. Warner Bros. was nervous about a similar fate for Burton’s new project. Ironically, it was Batman and Robin director Joel Schumacher who killed Burton’s Batman series and helped pump the brakes on Burton’s budding Superman picture.
For comic book lovers, The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened? will be a treasure trove of intel on why this project never saw the light of day. Yet for movie fans in general, it provides key insight into how movies are made… and how some aren’t made. And how its possibly crazy main producer was obsessed with spiders and jui jitsu.
I understand. The name comes from a rather ingenious movie game idea that came to my attention via my Uncle Steve over the weekend and I’ve been rather preoccupied with it ever since. If you’re a true movie buff, it’s quite a bit of fun and it’s something good to quiz your fellow movie buff friends on.
The concept is simple. Take the character names (real or fictional) of actors who’ve appeared in a film together and make your subject guess which picture they all appear in together. Still confused? This should clear it up:
Batman, Al Capone, Lois Lane, Chris Kyle, Katniss Everdeen, and Jeffrey Dahmer.
I’ll give you a moment… (DON’T READ ON IF YOU’RE TRYING TO GUESS)
That would be American Hustle, whose cast included Christian Bale (Batman in The Dark Knight trilogy), Robert De Niro (Capone in The Untouchables), Amy Adams (Lois Lane in Man of Steel), Bradley Cooper (Chris Kyle in American Sniper), Jennifer Lawrence (Katniss in The Hunger Games franchise), and Jeremy Renner (Jeffrey Dahmer in Dahmer). Kinda fun isn’t it?
Or how about Elvis Presley, Andy Kaufman, Virginia Woolf, Ty Cobb, and Ernest Hemingway?
That would be Batman Forever with Val Kilmer (Presley in True Romance), Jim Carrey (Kaufman in Man on the Moon), Nicole Kidman (Woolf in The Hours), Tommy Lee Jones (Cobb in Cobb), and Chris O’Donnell (Hemingway in In Love and War).
There’s last year’s Best Picture winner Birdman with Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton), The Hulk (Edward Norton), Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone), and Princess Diana (Naomi Watts).
And 2012’s Oscar winner Argo starring Daredevil (Ben Affleck), Walter White (Bryan Cranston), Fred Flintstone (John Goodman), Shawshank Warden Norton (Bob Gunton), and “Orange is the New Black” main character Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling).
This December’s eagerly awaited Quentin Tarantino pic The Hateful Eight boasts Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell), Dorothy Parker (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and Magic Mike (Channing Tatum).
What 1991 Oscar nominated political drama features Robin Hood, Ren McCormack, Harvey Dent, Harry Lyme, Dracula, Carrie White, Felix Ungar, Albert Einstein, President Snow, Uncle Buck, and “Seinfeld” neighbor Newman? It’s Oliver Stone’s JFK and I’ll let you figure out who’s who… it’s part of the fun!
And many of you took in this weekend’s #1 pic Ant-Man with Brian Fantana, Liberace, Kate Austen, Congressman Peter Russo, and Papa Doc.
I could go on and on, but just thought this might provide some film buff fanatics with an enjoyable new way to quiz and frustrate your friends. And thanks to Uncle Steve!
As I’ve spoken about on this blog before, it was a Thursday evening in October 2012 when I decided on a whim to start it. After years of thinking I should have one, within about an hour, I had the first post up. It was this one:
From that evening on October 11, 2012 to today – June 28, 2015 – toddmthatcher.com has morphed into something I never could have figured from that snap decision over two and a half years ago. And now I sit here writing my 1000th blog post.
This seems like a fine occasion to take a little stock. 152 countries have looked at this blog. The top ten:
The United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Indiana, the Philippines, France, Mexico, and Brazil.
The bread and butter of the blog continues to be the box office predictions for every wide domestic release that comes out. In fact, six of my top 11 most ever read posts are the box office predictions. They generate the most traffic. Here’s the top ten:
Man of Steel, Entourage, Ted 2, Oz: The Great and Powerful, After Earth, The Wolverine, Pacific Rim, Iron Man 3, Turbo, and Fifty Shades of Grey.
I am encouraged to see Entourage and Ted 2 at numbers 2 and 3. Why? Those are both very recent releases and it indicates correctly that readership for this site has been and continues to increase, for which I am extremely grateful to this blog’s readers.
My recent deviation from movies to my love of the state I’m proud to call home resulted in a post called A Love Letter to Ohio and it marks my third most read entry of all time.
What’s the most read individual post? It remains The 007 Files: My Rankings of All 23 James Bond Movies and later this year, I’ll need to change the name of that post to 24 when Spectre is released.
When this blog has its annual anniversaries, I will continue to delve more into the sincere appreciation I feel every day for the fact that actual eyeballs read what I write. For now I’ll just thank you and thank you again and that I cannot wait to write the next thousand.
Those appreciation posts always find a way to mention Tarantino, the writer/director who took My Love of Movies to a different level over two decades ago. So we will end for now on one of the many brilliant clips of his and I’ll be ready to write my box office predictions for next weekend’s holiday frame at Post 1001…
At the end of his celebratory press conference after reaching the NBA Finals in his first year back with the Cleveland Cavaliers, Lebron James said the following (as I minorly paraphrase):
Nothing is guaranteed.
I can’t guarantee the championship.
But I promise we’ll play our (butts) off.
He used a different word.
That, my friends, is Ohio. That encapsulates the spirit of the Buckeye State and its people.
For sports fans in this state, there’s been some magic happening here in Ohio lately. From a favorite son of Akron who had gone astray to taste victory in South Beach returning home to a third string quarterback at THE Ohio State University defying all odds to bring a championship to the state. It’s the kind of thing that would be just entirely too unrealistic for a movie. Yet truth in Ohio is stranger than the fictional robots and superheroes and A Capella singers on our summer screens.
Let’s stay on the entertainment tip for a second. Don’t think Ohio has much connection to the world of film? We got the guy who invented the motion picture camera named Edison. There was also a director named Spielberg born here. And actors named Clark Gable and Paul Newman and Bob Hope for starters. A comedian named Dave Chappelle. That beloved fictional President named Josiah Bartlett? That guy who played him is from Ohio. As is his press secretary C.J. And his advisor Sam and that means Ohio is home to Rob Lowe and Peaked in High School Rob Lowe and Super Creepy Rob Lowe. Superman may be from Krypton but the duo that actually created him are straight outta Cleveland. Bart Simpson’s voice was first heard here. So were these voices… Dean Martin, Dwight Yoakam, Dave Grohl, Marilyn Manson, Roy Rogers.
Forget the fictional presidents. We’ve had 8 real ones. Ohioans built the first airplane. An Ohioan was the first man to orbit the Earth. An Ohioan was the first man on the moon. An Ohioan was the first to knock out Mike Tyson, whether for real or in the video game.
The list goes on and on with countless athletes and other game changers to mention like Jack’s Nicklaus and Hanna. Woody. Lebron. Ted Turner. Gloria Steinem. Cy Young. Jesse Owens. Scrawny Arms Rob Lowe.
Ohioans know this rich history and appreciate and value it. We also know it’s not always sunshine and rainbows and gold pants. There has been severe economic turmoil in recent times that seemed nearly insurmountable. There have been sports droughts that also appeared to be never ending. And it continues… Just who IS the Browns QB this week?
I’ve listed a lot of notable Ohioans, but the people who’ve inspired me in Ohio have not been famous. It’s been the same people that inspire you. Family. Friends. Coworkers. It’s the same people that inspired those notable folks in the paragraphs above. That’s Ohio. If you’re reading this from another state – have no fear. I’m sure your state is special too – but this post is about MY state. And it’s something else.
So we can look back in pride at these last few years in Ohio history. The state has dug itself out of recession to prosperity. It seemed impossible but it happened with dedicated people leading us there. Our football team had a field general who no one had heard of a couple months beforehand that led us to the promised land. Our professional basketball team lost a prodigal son only to watch him journey back and lead us to the possibility of a championship we haven’t seen in over half a century.
As that Ohioan said, it’s not guaranteed. That being said, from the air above the clouds all the way to the moon to the camera that allows for the subject this blog is usually focused on, Ohioans play their butts off trying. And that’s why I love calling it home.
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