Here’s what happened today in Oscar History.
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This Day in Oscar History: August 6 (2020)
Poll: What Are You Watching? (Aug. 7-9, 2020)
Loading ...Trailer Watch: Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020) Updated
New Trailer (#2) / New Poster (#3)
Bill & Ted Face the Music, updated
Preview Link: CLICK HERE for all of the new content as well as the original.
2020 Spring Season Preview Wrap-Up: March
Below is a wrap-up of the predictions I made several months ago, an exploration of what succeeded and what failed, and how I observe things to have gone. NOTE: This was the first month were exhibitors and studios had become skittish, so a lot of these pictures may have been rescheduled (several times, possibly).
March 6, 2020
Onward
Oscar Prospects: What I said: “Excellent. Few Pixar films haven’t competed for the Best Animated Feature Oscar and being an original production, that will continue to be the case.”
Oscar Results: Still Excellent. With the pandemic ravaging theaters, the primary seasons for animated features seem to be barren, leaving this Pixar feature and Trolls World Tour as the only contenders so far this year.
Box Office Prospects: $250 M
Box Office Expectations: What I Said: “Excellent. Every original Pixar film, with a few exceptions, has done exceptionally well at the box office, so this one should as well.”
Box Office Results: $61.6 M
Thoughts: [Unexceptional] Yanked from theaters after only two weeks in release, this result certainly is unexceptional. That said, it had a tepid debut of $39 million, and had only made $61 million after two weeks. Some of that may have been early leeriness from audiences over the pandemic, but I don’t know that that’s entirely true.
Looking at the Weekend: Aug. 7-9, 2020
It’s another week with no wide releases and the trend doesn’t look to be stopping anytime soon.
Our Highest Rated Films: Out Stealing Horses
Our Best Awards Ratings: No consensus.
OTHER LIMITED RELEASES
Black Water: Abyss (Limited)
Creem: America’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll Magazine (Limited)
SamSam (Limited)
Trump Card (Limited)
The Green Years (Virtual)
You Never Had It: An Evening With Bukowski (Virtual)
Review: Sicario (2015)
Sicario
Rating
Director
Denis Villeneuve
Screenplay
Taylor Sheridan
Length
121 min.
Starring
Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin, Victor Garber, Jon Bernthal, Daniel Kaluuya, Jeffrey Donovan
MPAA Rating
R for strong violence, grisly images, and language
Original Preview
This Day in Oscar History: August 5 (2020)
Here’s what happened today in Oscar History.
Born
Died
Released
Film Preview: Valley of the Gods (2020)
Page Revisions:
(August 2, 2020) Original
Release Date:
August 11, 2020
Synopsis:
From IMDb: “Entwines Navajo lore with a reclusive trillionaire and his would-be biographer, creating a fascinating, mysterious and idiosyncratic vision of America.”
Poster Rating: –
Review: There was no poster immediately available for my review. Should one become available in the future, this section will be updated.
Trailer Rating: B-
SEE ALL TRAILERS BELOW
Review: There are two competing mythos at work in this film, the Navajo and the Ancient Egyptian. Those religious structures never quite mesh in the trailer, making it feel disjointed and unfocused.
Oscar Prospects:
None.
Trailer #1
The DVD Report #684
Girl Crazy was the last and best of the four MGM musicals that Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland made between 1939 and 1943. It was the second of three film versions of the 1930 Broadway musical starring Ginger Rogers and introducing Ethel Merman.
Unlike the 1940 Rooney-Garland musical Strike Up the Band, which only utilized the title song from the George and Ira Gershwin original, substituting in songs by other composers, all but one of the songs in 1943’s Girl Crazy was written by the Gershwins for the 1930 Broadway version. The one added song (“Fascinating Rhythm”) is from another Gershwin score. Who needs substitutions when the original score includes such gems as “I Got Rhythm,” “Treat Me Rough,” “Bidin’ My Time,” “Embraceable You,” and “But Not for Me?”
Unlike the kids they played in Babes in Arms, Strike Up the Band, and Babes on Broadway, Rooney and Garland were all grown up now. Rooney made this between The Human Comedy and
The supporting cast includes Gil Stratton, Robert E. Strickland, Rags Ragland, June Allyson, Nancy Walker, and Guy Kibbee.
Also new from Warner Archive is Million Dollar Mermaid, long considered the crown jewel in Esther Williams’ career. It’s the one film she made highlighting her swimming skills in which MGM’s writers were not forced to come up with novel ways of getting her into the water. The film is a biography of Australian-born swimmer Annette Kellerman (1887-1975) who gained greater fame in the U.S. after being arrested for wearing a one-piece bathing suit in 1907 Boston. She later became a major attraction at New York’s Hippodrome and a silent film star. Victor Mature co-stars as her future husband, with Walter Pidgeon as her supportive father. Her older brother, cinematographer Maurice Kellerman (1883-1943), is not mentioned in the film directed by the legendary Mervyn LeRoy (Quo Vadis).
This Day in Oscar History: August 4 (2020)
Here’s what happened today in Oscar History.
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Poll: Now That You’ve Seen “The Informer”
Film Preview: Sputnik (2020)
Page Revisions:
(August 2, 2020) Original
Release Date:
August 14, 2020
Synopsis:
From IMDb: “The lone survivor of an enigmatic spaceship incident hasn’t returned back home alone-hiding inside his body is a dangerous creature.”
Poster Rating: C / C-
SEE ALL POSTERS BELOW
Review: (#1) The shadow play here is weakly done, becoming far too obvious for its own good. (#2) The worse decision, though, would be to make it still as obvious, but less clear. I cannot imagine anyone seeing this and wanting to watch this film.
Trailer Rating: B
SEE ALL TRAILERS BELOW
Review: This horror concept is handled well with fleeting glimpses of the parasitic monster at the core of the film’s terror. That said, it also feels a bit too much like Alien for its own good.
Oscar Prospects:
None.
Trailer #1
Oscar Preview: Weekend of Jul. 31-Aug. 2, 2020
We had no films release this past weekend with the potential for Oscar nominations.
This Day in Oscar History: August 3 (2020)
Here’s what happened today in Oscar History.
Born
Died
Released
