1. Woody Allen & Cate Blanchett
Woody doesn't have a regular muse these days, but last night I had the pleasure of watching Blue Jasmine and let me say I'll pay to see it once again, but this time in a theatre near me. In my opinion, this is one of the best "Woody Allen directed dramas" ever (along with Interiors, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point), not only because Blanchett's performance or Woody's words alone, but thanks to the combination of both two. I was tented to include Sally Hawkins in the title and as one of the major causes for Blue Jasmine's quality, but she kinda pales in comparison with the movie's leading lady (not get me wrong, Hawkins is deliciously good in this one, but Blanchett just excels!). If Woody makes a movie with his biggest muses", I would love to see "our dear Cate" as part of the cast.
2. Interesting Summer blockbuster season this year
It has been an interesting Summer season: audiences seem less seduced by crappy movies and the ones who become box-office sensations are the most well-received, critically speaking:. While there wasn't a "king of the box-office" like The Avengers last year or Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 in 2011, good Summer movie got solid profits:
- Iron Man 3 got support from the critics and the love of the audiences, grossing $407.7M in U.S.;
- Monters University who did well between the critics and took home $258.6M from American audiences;
- Fast & Furious 6 proved the franchise stills having solid cinematic entertainment to offer, getting good reviews and $238.0M at box-office;
- Star Trek: Into Darkness disappointed about its quality, being less well-received than the first movie, but it managed to get a 87% score at Rotten Tomatoes and $226.2M at the box-office;
- and others.
And then we have "not that big success people were expecting" like The Great Gatsby (mixed reviews, but stunning visuals and solid box-office - $144.5M) and Pacific Rim (72% at Rotten Tomatoes, but only $92.9M) and big flops like The Lone Ranger (a movie designed to be this year's commercial sensation with a huge budget of $225M that only got $86.8M at the U.S. box-office, one month after its wide release). Audiences are paying attention to reviews and seem to only pay for what's worthy. Audiences are starting to demand good Summer movies.
3. Fruitvale Station and Michael B. Jordan's breakthrough performance
Fruitvale Station will make an impression during awards season, for sure, but, no matter what, it will always be seen as one of the best movies of 2013. Winning both the Jury Grand Prize and the Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival, Fruitvale is indie gold, a ressonating study about prejudice, crime, family and how a person isn't just "good" or just "bad". Oscar is played by Michael B. Jordan (Chronicle, The Wire T.V. series and Friday Night Lights T.V. series), who carries the movie with a strong screen presence and a complex performance, proving to be one of the year's cinematic revelations in the acting department. It's always nice when we see a promising face, but it's kinda exciting when we have a promising black face in an industry that stills being seen as a factory of mostly white superstars (but thank God things are changing in a positive way).
4. Toronto International Film Festival lineup
August: Osage County, The Fifth Estate, Kill Your Darlings, Blue Is The Warmest Color, Dallas Buyers Club, Devil's Knot, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: His and Her, Don Jon, Gravity, The Invisible Woman, Labor Day, Only Lovers Left Alive, The Past, 12 Years a Slave, Under the Skin, Young and Beautiful... just to name the ones I'm more excited about. TIFF managed to have a great selection for this year's edition and let me say I'm sorry I'm not rich in order to travel to Toronto and spend some money. Most of the most promising projects of the years are going to show at Toronto, I believe I'll spend a lot of September days reading reviews...
5. American Hustle movie trailer
David O. Russell seems to have become a beloved director to most audiences thanks mostly to The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook (both critical and box-office sucesses) and this year we will have a new movie coming from him: the crime comedy/drama American Hustle, starring Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner and it-girl of the moment Jennifer Lawrence. A trailer like American Hustle's is rare nowadays - it does not show the whole plot, seducing you with brief clips with a catchy song and barely no dialogue in it... and guess what? I want to see it even not knowing exactly what it is about (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST7a1aK_lG0).
6. Meryl Streep line delivery in August: Osage County movie trailer
"Is anybody S'POSED to smoke?!"
7. Scarlett Johansson's "kind of" comeback?
Ten years after the movie who turned her into one of Hollywood's muse at the time, Lost In Translation, Scarlett Johansson is on the rise again: last year's critical and box-office sensation The Avengers gave her the love from the audiences and this year she's in a triangle of highly antecipated indie movies: Joseph Gordon-Levitt's directorial debut Don Jon (a Sundance hit), Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin (his first movie since 2004's Birth) and Spike Jonze's Her (where she gives her voice to an operating system called Samantha). Don Jon already gave her biggest raves in years and if the movie does well during award season, some major award recognition may happen for her. Under the Skin and Her remain unseen, but Glazer's upcming movie may work as an acting showcase for her and Spike Jonze's is already seen as a possible Oscar contender, so it will be an interesting year for Miss Johansson. It seems she's more concerned about being an actress again than being a sexy celebrity who appears in movies: THANK GOD!
8. Christopher Nolan will be back next year
"The Young Master" will be back next year with a sci-fi production called Interstellar, a movie about "a group of explorers make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage" (according to IMDb). Something that may sound a bit complex, but since we are talking about Nolan, the word "complex" is the same as "it will be great". With an all-star cast composed by Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, Casey Affleck, Wes Bentley, John Lithgow, Ellen Burstyn, Topher Grace, among others, the announcement of Interstellar was one of the best cinematic news of the year and it is one of the most antecipated movies for 2014 for me and for a lot of cinema folks, for sure.
9. Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson are no longer the Harry Potter kids
Allen Ginsburg (Kill Your Darkings) and Nicki (The Bling Ring), a Beat Generation icon and a celebrity and luxury brand obsessed teen thief...and thinking about they were Harry Potter and Hermione Granger a couple of years ago (while I haven't already seen Radcliffe as Ginsburg, I believe in the reviews I read). In spite Watson was able to start her break-up process with Hermione's character earlier than Radcliffe (thanks to her amazing turn as the flirty Sam in The Perks of Being a Wallflower), he did it too (a praised performance in Broadway's revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying contributed largely) and, this year, both came to us as serious actors and not the faces of a franchise. Emma Watson, particularly, is estabilishing herself as a promising name in the industry and judging by her current post-Harry Potter success and the caliber of her future projects (Darren Aronofsky's Noah and an adaptation of Beauty and the Beast by Guillermo del Toro), I guess we'll hear a lot about her in a near future.
10. Gravity is finally coming
Alfonso Cuarón has been cooking this movie for "centuries" and finally it will be released this year. After having almost every actress attached to star in this highly antecipated sci-fi epic, we'll see Sandra Bullock lost in the space's darkness this October and while Bullock's presence doesn't quite seduce me, this project alone is intriguing and judging for Cuarón's previous works (specially Children of Men), I want to pay a ticket for Gravity in the hope of having a great cinematic experience.
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