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Total box office after 11 days is $262 million. That’s right over the rainbow.
But “Moana 2” has made almost as much in just 6 days: $221 million. “Moana 2” will pass “Wicked” in a day or two at this point.
The box office is booming!
“Gladiator II” has soared to $111 million.
All those designer popcorn buckets are being sold, as a result!
Oscar contenders “A Real Pain,” “Anora,” “Queer,” and “All We Imagine as Light” are doing well, too. “Conclave” made almost $600K this weekend despite being the number 1 movie on VOD.
A lot of records have been broken, and audiences are back in theaters. Now, that’s a happy Thanksgiving.
“Yellowstone” ratings rose a bit last Sunday after Sarah got taken out by assassins.
That’s just two weeks after John Dutton — aka Kevin Costner — bought the ranch. Sarah had ordered his hit and made it look like a suicide. But last week her accomplice got rid of her, too.
“Yellowstone” linear numbers went up by about 300,000 viewers to 6.29 million. They’re down about 3 million from Season 5 Part 1.
There are only three episodes left of the series. The actors have been letting it known in interviews that the final episode is the end, and that’s it. All signs point to Jamie (Wes Bentley) either being killed or the ranch being blown up, or something really bad happening.
Cheryl Hines: we figured out weeks ago that she didn’t care if husband Robert Kennedy Jr. cheated on her, had a “digital affair,” or wanted to “impregnate” a journalist.
She obviously didn’t care that he’s an off the wall conspiracy theorist who threw in with Donald Trump. After all, Trump won! And “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is gone. What else could Hines do but join the MAGA crowd?
Now’s she’s shilling some beauty product. She’s put up a video of Kennedy taking a shower in the background of her infomercial. Why did anyone ever think this woman had a brain? Kennedy is currently seen in a viral video interview in which he says his addiction to heroin made him a better student at Harvard.
Because as “Cheryl David,” she was the ballast to fictional Larry’s buffoonery. But in fact, she is complicit. When the internment camps go up, and the deportations begin, when vaccines are stopped and fluoride is removed from drinking water, Cheryl can go sell them her crap. If only we could hear Suzie from “Curb” go after her. That’s a season I’d like to see!
“You can’t take a shower!” The MAGA grift runs deep. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appears in a promotional video showering to help his wife Cheryl Hines hawk self-care products. Get ready for four years of this. pic.twitter.com/nephQ674Rv
Someone tell L. Frank Baum that “The Wizard of Oz” is the gift that just keeps giving.
Yesterday, “Wicked,” in which the Wizard becomes a villain after decades of just bumbling around, crossed the $200 Million mark. It’s been in release 9 full days (the first was previews). The total now is $214 million.
“Wicked” started a little slowly but has soared over the holiday weekend. Original estimates of $175 million are now out the window. I guess this explains the musical’s enduring popularity on Broadway. It’s been playing for 300 years and is always full.
As I said yesterday, music from the movie is also booming on the charts.
What happened to the poor Wizard anyway? He landed in Oz and put on a pretty good show. When Dorothy arrives, he’s revealed as kind of a nitwit circus barker. According to “Wicked,” he’s been turned into an evil guy. It’s not fair. And will we ever know where he went in the hot air balloon?
Elsewhere, “Gladiator II” is no slouch. The Ridley Scott film should hit $100 million today. Reading the trades and Oscar progs, I see there’s a new PR idea that “Wicked” should win Best Picture because the Wizard is supposed to be Trump. This is hooey. If “Wicked” makes $500 million, its Oscar chances are diminished greatly I think. But it will get a record number of nominations.
A more interesting story is about “Conclave,” which is number 1 on the home viewing chart and still attracting theater audiences. Edward Berger’s brilliant film deserves many awards, if not the biggest ones. Ralph Fiennes and co. are sublime.
The great back up singer and songwriter Leah Kunkel died this week. She was 77 and according to reports from her friends, her death was sudden.
Leah Kunkel was the sister of the late Mamas and Papas star Cass Eliot of the Mamas and Papas. When Cass died, Leah helped raise her daughter, Owen.
We learned a lot from the movie, “20 Feet from Stardom” about back up singers. Leah Kunkel was a voice heard on most of the singer songwriter albums of the seventies and early 80s. She was much in demand, singing with James Taylor, Art Garfunkel, Jackson Browne, and many others. She also made solo albums and was part of a group called the Coyote Sisters. She was married for some time to Russ Kunkel, the in demand drummer who played on a lot of those albums.
After her music career, Kunkel became a lawyer.
Songwriter Stephen Bishop (“On and On”) wrote on Instagram: “Leah helped to give me my big break by giving a tape of my songs to Art Garfunkel. She always championed my music, and believed in me when I needed it most. We co-wrote “Under the Jamaican Moon,” together and I’ll always cherish that collaboration. We should have written more songs together. Her talents as a solo artist—her songwriting and her beautiful voice—were remarkable, and yet I feel she was so underrated.”
There’s a new number 1 album this week, and it was unexpected.
Kendrick Lamar dropped his surprise “GNX” album this week amid his ongoing feud with fellow rapper Drake.
The “Not Like Us” artist sold 324,285 copies mostly from streaming equivalent. Less than 1/10 of that was actual sales, but who cares? Kendrick is no shmendrick.
Kendrick’s surprise put a damper on the “Wicked” soundtrack release. The album was still pretty “Popular” with 130,000 copies sold, and most of those were actual physical sales — 80,000.
Last week, the number 1 album was something called “Golden Hour Pt 2” by someone called Ateez. This week it fell 86% to number 25.
Back to Kendrick: so he and Drake are still fighting about something. But now Drake is suing his record company, Universal, claiming they made “Not Like Us” into a hit and forgot all about him. I know nothing of this, but I do know that Drake keeps himself on the outside of the record biz. It’s not helpful. He needs to Get with the Program.
It looks like director Doug Liman and Tom Cruise’s supernatural thriller, “Deeper,” is going forward.
At a screening of Gregory Kershaw and Michael Dweck’s documentary, “Gaucho Gaucho,” Liman told me last week that he and the “Mission Impossible” star plan for a “scary” movie. “I have never done one,” said Liman, “and neither has Tom Cruise.”
Liman — director of hits like “Edge of Tomorrow” and “American Made” — hosted the “Gaucho Gaucho” a private screening of excerpts in his downtown Manhattan apartment, followed by a Q&A with Michael Dweck. The filmmakers already had celebrity fans from their previous effort the 2020 film, “The Truffle Hunters.” Liman also joined the gang of admirers, hence the screening. “Gaucho Gaucho,” about Argentinian cowboys, is making the rounds of film festivals to much acclaim.
On the face of it, “Truffle Hunters” and “Gaucho Gaucho” could not be more different. Shot in black & white, “Gaucho Gaucho” takes place in a hilly landscape, featuring a community close to nature, far from our tech world. In one clip, a still mound moves. A horse rises from rest, a man on top of it—all in one long take. The filmmakers knew this “horse whisperer” often slept on his animal, and simply filmed it—like a Warholian meditation. The Hollywood filmmakers appreciate how challenging such a one-shot scene can be. No tricks, cut-aways, or B-roll–just the camera recording what takes place, taking its time. The audience at Liman’s comprised documentary filmmakers all know that even non-fiction filmmaking relies on crafting. Without the customary “script,” Kershaw and Dweck get as close to the real moment as one can get with thrilling results.
Prior to their recent screening at DOCNYC, I had a chance to speak to them on Zoom. Onto the next project, they were filming in Burgundy, in France’s wine country, yet another off the grid community—their specialty. While the doc team was honored to be lauded by Zemeckis and Hanks, and to meet Liman and be friends, as they said, they work on a smaller canvas. “We have the luxury of time to create the film we want to make,” said Dweck.
“We desire to take the documentary genre to the language of cinema. Our process is intuitive. We go in with a hunch, shooting one scene a day which gives us time to study the lives of inspiring people.” Referring to gauchos, they observe, American cowboy culture is about domination over land. A gaucho gaucho is more than simply a gaucho who goes through the paces without the adherence to a distinct code of behavior and ethics. He is a man to be honored.
“We are looking for magic. We are surprised every day. We may be shooting a family having lunch without knowing that this day his cow had died,” said Dweck. “Our films make audiences consider their own relationships to family, food, the environment.”
Woody Allen turns 89 tomorrow and hasn’t lost a step!
According to the media in Spain, Woody and wife Soon Yi turned up in Barcelona yesterday. Woody is getting ready to make a new film there.
Woody told me last spring he was ready with a new screenplay as soon as he found the financing. It seems like he did with previous producer Ed Walson, who’s backed many of Alleb’s films and his Broadway musical of “Bullets over Broadway.”
One of Woody’s biggest hits was made in Spain. “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” was a Best Picture nominee. Penelope Cruz won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
This would be Woody’s third film he’s shot in Spain — the other was “Rifkin’s Festival.” It’s also his 53rd feature (I think). He’s made an average of one movie a year since the early 80s.
Woody Allen has directed more actresses to Oscars than any other director. They include Cruz, Dianne Wiest, Diane Keaton, and Cate Blanchett. He won the Oscar in 1978 for Best Picture and Director (and Keaton’s Best Actress) for “Annie Hall.”
Woody’s influence is still felt in the movie world. One of his more recent films, “A Rainy Day in New York,” starred Timothee Chalamet, Elle Fanning, and Selena Gomez. Gomez was such a hit with her droll delivery that she wound up basically playing that role in “Only Murders in the Building.” Chalamet and Fanning had such good chemistry that they now co-star in “A Complete Unknown,” about Bob Dylan.
Bruce Willis’s daughters, Scout and Tallulah, have shared new pictures of him on Thanksgiving
The photos are poignant as Bruce is battling FTD aka frontal temporal dementia, and aphasia.
Willis’s condition began in 2014 and went either undiagnosed or unannounced for several years. During that time it worsened, yet Bruce continued to appear in straight to video films in which he had just a few lines. It was painful to watch such a big movie star be humiliated in that way.
Nevertheless, Bruce looks happy and healthy here. But it’s a suffering that no one deserves.
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