CinemaInternational

Universal canceled any FYC Promotion for Cats. In essence, they have already disowned it.

Criterion Channel for January incoming films.... https://letterboxd.com/chrissweet1967/list/all-the-films-coming-to-the-criterion-channel/?fbclid=IwAR2h9PRyVyjpnl4LAF2g7ln0VnF6SDJdKnwjKBbSfDOndqh6EkM1ZnjCOmo

Resurrecting this, because I received a book yesterday that relates to modern realities, classics, and how films are reckoned as essential. This is the book i received: It was a new edition (after a long wait) of this earlier title (up through 2002)... there was an earlier edition too. Anyway, to get down to it, after a little time looking at the new book, I took my old edition down from the shelf and started writing down the films that were added and the films that were removed. Now, I haven't quite located all of the new additions yet, but to boil it down simply, most of the new additions reminded me of the types of films that would be like the more controversial choices on The Essentials this year (only a few of the silents, never in the book before, plus Design for Living, Alien, Blade Runner, Christopher Strong, Halloween, In the Mood for Love, The Nutty Professor (1963), The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, A New Leaf, Mikey and Nicky, Detour, Point Break, Showgirls (!), and She Done Him Wrong, of all the pre-2002 titles added for this new edition felt mainstream; post-2002 is a different matter naturally) Many were obscure titles or influenced by Criterion editions or to put it bluntly felt like they were thrown in to fill a certain quota that is meant to be inclusive yet also feels a bit condescending to the very people its meant to celebrate (at least to me) Then on the other hand, you had (at least) 145 films removed since the last edition. Some seemed inevitable. Pretty Baby (1978) just seems perverted today. Recent controversies about actors and filmmakers claimed Manhattan, Love and Death, and The Usual Suspects. Driving miss Daisy, a film I really like, I kind of knew would be gone because of the controversies of people saying it was too cozy. Other titles like California Suite, The Buddy Holly Story, 10, and Biloxi Blues also felt like once popular titles barely mentioned today. But then there were a ton of mainstream films pulled shockingly from the pool: Amadeus, The Fisher King, Dead Man Walking, The English Patient, Kramer vs Kramer, Rain Man, Suddenly Last Summer, The Big Chill, Body Heat, Aladdin, Catch-22, About Schmidt, Lili, The More the Merrier, Monsters Inc, Gandhi, The hours, Chicago, The Country Girl, Bad Day at Black Rock, Ruthless People, Camelot, Chariots of Fire, Amelie, Absence of Malice, Paint your Wagon, A Night to Remember, On the Beach, The World of Henry Orient, Starman, Shrek, The Trip to Bountiful, Shakespere in love, The Whales of August, Mr and Mrs Bridge, The Ramains of the Day, Romeo and Juliet (1968), Tender Mercies, Places in the Heart, Pelle the Conqueror, Apollo 13, and The War of the Roses got bumped. And to just rub in a point, Showgirls made it in instead. And titles not mentioned very much today that were in there before, like lovely and Amazing and Daniel, remain in the mix still. What gives?

Poor Yesterday.

I just went to the 5-screen theatre in town today to see Frozen II before it left town after tomorrow. Why am I bringing this up? Well, Cats was playing in the theatre right next door. I was essentially sitting only 10 feet removed from Cats. At one point, I went to use the bathroom. When I was heading toward there, I peered in through the window in the door and saw Cats, which looks odd. When I was coming back, I looked in again, trying to see inside. The dancing in the film actually looks adept, but its the special effects I think that are making it get the catcalls. Anyway, as far as I could see the theatre playing Cats didn't have anyone in it, unless they were in the far back. So, a good 25 to 30 minutes later, close to the end of Frozen, I saw two people come into the theatre, and I wondered if they had walked out on Cats, provided they were in the back of that theatre and I just didn't see them. If that was the case, wow.

That was a wonderful film. I saw it a few months ago and was pretty much blown away.

I wonder if the extra $10 a month is being used to finance Universal movies, since Comcast owns Universal.....

Somewhere in Time was a throwback to the romantic fantasy tearjerkers of the 1940s, like Portrait of Jennie and The ghost and Mrs Muir (the endings of the two films are very similar). Christopher Reeve played a young playwright who after the opening of his play was approched by a dying, elderly woman who presents him with a watch saying "come back to me". Several years later, he sees an old photograph of a beautiful young woman (Jane Seymour), and finds that she was a respected actress and the same woman who, in old age, gave him the watch. He becomes determined to find out how to travel back in time so he can meet this woman in her youth and to try to fulfill her dying wish. He eventually does travel back in time with a risky mental method, all the way back to 1910, where the two of them fall madly in love. But what with the time warp and her Svengali-like manager (Christopher Plummer), things are set for a lush romantic tearjerker. Over half the film is set in 1910, and the period detail is marvelous, and Reeve and Seymour make a touching couple. There is also a nice one-scene cameo for Theresa Wright. It's very old-fashioned which might explain why critics in 1980 were a bit hard. But the film's best ingredient is the music. My word, the music. John Barry, always a great composer, contributes his most lushly romantic and heartrending score of all the films he did. It's one of the best musical scores ever put to film and could make a stone cry.

I'm sorry, this whole fiasco and reactions is one of the fuinniest things I've seen in quite some time!

Furriesat this film are going to be like the cute lady, who loved anything "cute", in the 1986 film True Stories, who went into pure overload when she saw a procession of babies in strollers.

When I first saw your comment, I had some tea in my mouth. I was laughing so hard I almost choked, and laughed so hard I was in tears. Thank you.

On IMDb... On Letterboxd....

One more razzie prediction. Until Cats came along, one of the most high profile disasters was Serenity which came out at the start of the year. It took your typical neo-noir storyline (murder, adultry, deviousness) and then went bonkers with a bizarre plot twist or two. It was regarded as being laughable, and what with big names stranded in it, Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, and Diane Lane, I still think the Razzies will nominate it. Speaking of Hathaway, she was considered to appear in Cats. Good thing she didn't. If she had appeared in both Serenity and Cats (not to mention the tepidly received remake of Bedtime Story/Dirty Rotten Scoundrels called The Hustle), she would be a shoo-in for a Razzie win.

In the Heights and the new West Side Story are due in 2020, and many other big musicals have worked out. Wait and see.

The only Universal releases on Metacritic with worse scores than Cats. I've only seen 2 of them, and Somewher in Time is a lot better than a 29!

Opening weekend box office prediction from Variety:

She was actually quite open and charming in Philomena as a simple, cheerful woman. Also had the biggest laugh of any 2013 film when her character said that she wanted to see Big Momma's House on on demand video.

Saw two of the Michael Parks films this afternoon, Bus Riley's Back in Town and Wild Seed. To my surprise, Wild Seed was the better of the two, a wonderful little mood piece with fine work from Parks and Celia Kaye, coupled with a probing look at personalities that feels very New-Hollywood- like and has that gorgeous black and white photography and a fine jazz score. Bus Riley was pretty good too, but it was all too clear it was filmed at Universal rather than in the midwest where it was supposed to be. Again Parks turned up good work, Janet Margolin was touching, Ann Margret made a beautiful bad girl. Point of unintentional laughter: Match Came's wild, crazy Brett Somers cast as a spinster schoolteacher who has a near nervous breakdown when she sees Parks in only his underwear. Knowing her persona on that game show, she'd ask him out on a date at the very least! Looked at the first few seconds of The Happening as well. Unintentional laughter there too with the credit "Introducing Faye Dunaway" followed by the immortal words to start her big screen career: "I'm hungry..... I'm hungry...... I'm hungry..... You don't remember a **** thing"

Rolling Stone calls it the worst film of the decade..... https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-reviews/cats-movie-review-taylor-swift-927486/

I know its a tweet, but my word what on earth when it comes to the second part? This film is insane....

Another bad review, this one from NPR, which is obviously concerned about drunk driving after the film is over https://www.npr.org/2019/12/19/787550587/cats-spay-it

So is this one. Bad films in general, congregate here!