771 replies to this topic

[Victoria Watcher]

[Victoria Watcher]

Barbie

Napoleon (November)

Oppenheimer

Mission Impossible

 

 

 

Which ones you going to?

[Mike K.]

I saw Asteroid City last week.

I’ll never get that time back.

[Danma]

Barbie

Napoleon (November)

Oppenheimer

Mission Impossible

 

 

Which ones you going to?

 

I hope to see all four at some point, although only 1 or 2 might be in a theatre. Napoleon looks like a classic Ridley Scott epic!

[FawltyVic]

Barbie

Napoleon (November)

Oppenheimer

Mission Impossible

 

 

 

Which ones you going to?

Oppenheimer doesn't interest me.

 

Barbie I'm not so sure of. I like the two stars, but I heard the studios/writers stuck woke politics into the film. I'll wait and see.

 

Napoleon and Mission Impossible for sure.

[Matt R.]

Apparently Kevin Costner is in Haida Gwaii this week, doing a little fishing.

[FawltyVic]

Spotted these trailers tonight. All of them piqued my interest for one reason or another:

 

Godzilla Minus One

Directed and written by Takashi Yamazaki

I saw Yamazaki's work first with 2002's Returner. Since then he's directed multiple films; Space Battleship Yamato, Stand By Me Doraemon, Destiny: The Tale of Kamakura and Lupin III: The First.

 

https://www.youtube....h?v=rYpQYlPqk9Y

 

The Outlaw Johnny Black

Starring Michael Jai White and a host of familiar faces (I'm not kidding, check IMDB), five years in the making and it looks good. Comes across as a blaxploitation movie meets Mel Brooks.

 

https://www.youtube....h?v=2JHKRGIXKqY

 

The Retirement Plan

Stars Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman, Jackie Earle Haley and Ernie Hudson in an action comedy. Cage plays a man who's simply trying to enjoy retirement, but can't.

 

https://www.youtube....h?v=bzNufalaomI

 

Wonka

IMDB says it's an adventure comedy film, but I swear the trailer looks like a musical without admitting it's a musical. Lots of British stars here including Hugh Grant, who gets a resurgence in his box office appeal from his role in Dungeons and Dragons. My only problem with this movie is the use of CGI for the Oompa Loompas instead of dwarven actors.

 

https://www.youtube....h?v=otNh9bTjXWg

Edited by FawltyVic, 13 July 2023 - 12:06 AM.

[FawltyVic]

Apparently Kevin Costner is in Haida Gwaii this week, doing a little fishing.

I guess he joins a long line of stars that come to the island to fish.

 

I remember reading some time ago, Don Wilson of The Jack Benny Program used to come up here with another celeb in the 50s or 60s to fish.

[Matt R.]

I heard lots of stories working for the OBMG for a bunch of years, fishermen love to talk.

[Victoria Watcher]

Saw Oppenheimer.

 

It's quite good.

 

*** Spoiler alert -spoilers below ***

 

The bombs worked as designed.

 

Seriously though, Robert Downey Jr. puts in a heck of a performance as Lewis Strauss and the movie is as much about him as Oppenheimer.  At 58 years old now, he reminded me a bit of Al Pacino at his prime.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 21 July 2023 - 09:49 PM.

[Victoria Watcher]

 

 

Seriously though, Robert Downey Jr. puts in a heck of a performance as Lewis Strauss

 

 

 

While it is true that Strauss could not explicitly discuss classified fusion research, the speech is barren of implicit hints of a new source of power. Strauss focused on fission–the discovery of fission, fission-product applications, and the economic feasibility of fission power.

 

Strauss's optimism for fission continued several days later when reporters on a Meet the Press radio broadcast asked him about the quotation and the viability of "commercial power from atomic piles." Strauss replied that he expected his children and grandchildren would have power "too cheap to be metered, just as we have water today that's too cheap to be metered." That day, he said, might be "close at hand.  I hope to live to see it."

 

 

https://www.nrc.gov/...p-to-meter.html

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 22 July 2023 - 12:59 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

[Victoria Watcher]

Filmmaker Greta Gerwig’s female-fueled Barbie started off with a stupendous $70.5 million on Friday, including $22.3 million in previews. If early modeling is correct, the Warner Bros. movie is headed for a historic $155 million-plus opening domestically, a threshold usually reserved for male-driven superhero fare or marquee IP such as the final Harry Potter movie. (Some show the movie even crossing $160 million, although Warner Bros. is remaining more circumspect and sticking with $150 million-plus in case Saturday traffic tails off.)

 

______________________________

 

Not that Oppenheimer, from Universal, is any slouch. The three-hour historical drama about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the making of the atomic bomb is likewise coming in well ahead of expectations. Nolan’s movie earned $33 million on Friday for a projected $77 million weekend, which would mark the filmmaker’s third-biggest domestic debut behind The Dark Knight Rises ($160.9 million) and The Dark Knight ($158.4 million), not adjusted for inflation. It also will come in ahead of recent summer pics including The Flash, Elemental and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

 

 

 

Barbie is skewing heavily female, or 68 percent, while Oppenheimer is male-dominated (64 percent).

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.hollywoo...ing-1235541719/

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 22 July 2023 - 10:55 PM.

[Victoria Watcher]

In 1943, thousands of workers began arriving at remote outposts in Washington, New Mexico and Tennessee where American ingenuity would be pressed to its limit in a secret and frantic push to build the first atomic bomb.

 

One particular group of eight women at Hanford in Eastern Washington and Los Alamos in New Mexico would have been among the forgotten, if not for the FBI’s feverish hunt for private details about their lives. The government that had recruited them to the elite Manhattan Project was now trying to strip them of vital security clearances by proving they were lesbians.

 

The Manhattan Project’s defining role in U.S. history is now in the spotlight via the newly released movie “Oppenheimer,” which chronicles the famed scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer’s work and the government’s hard-line efforts to kick him, too, out of the nuclear weapons program.

 

 

https://www.seattlet...oject-revealed/

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 22 July 2023 - 11:19 PM.

[AllseeingEye]

Oppenheimer is excellent; quite the supporting cast too. I agree Downey was very very good and will no doubt be in the Best Actor Oscar conversation this year. We went to the 7:45 showing at Silver City and it was packed. Luckily Mrs ASE is way more on the ball than me and purchased our tickets in advance.

 

For those rusty on the events leading up to the development of the atomic bomb, and especially about Oppenheimer himself I would suggest doing a bit of background reading on the man as the movie does tend to dive right into certain aspects of both his life and character and without some knowledge or understanding of them some viewers may not get their nuanced meaning.

 

That is important to know IMO because the movie is called Oppenheimer - not "The Bomb" or "Mushroom Cloud on a Clear Night". Its really a study into the life and influences, the personal and professional relationships and motivations of one very tortured man, its not at all a deep technical treatise of the bomb itself. The screen time devoted to the final preparations for and then the actual Trinity test is maybe ten-fifteen minutes, tops.

 

Two thumbs up but do note its 3 hours so be prepared to sit on your bum for awhile.

[Victoria Watcher]

For those rusty on the events leading up to the development of the atomic bomb, and especially about Oppenheimer himself I would suggest doing a bit of background reading on the man as the movie does tend to dive right into certain aspects of both his life and character and without some knowledge or understanding of them some viewers may not get their nuanced meaning.

 

That is important to know IMO because the movie is called Oppenheimer - not "The Bomb" or "Mushroom Cloud on a Clear Night". Its really a study into the life and influences, the personal and professional relationships and motivations of one very tortured man, its not at all a deep technical treatise of the bomb itself. The screen time devoted to the final preparations for and then the actual Trinity test is maybe ten-fifteen minutes, tops.

 

 

This is right.  And of course, because it's Christopher Nolan, you just know it might not all go in a nice chronological order lol.

 

I was slightly confused by the order of events and you are given few clues as to what things happened when*.  There is no 1942 or 1951 printed on the screen to help.   One of the very last scenes, is actually 1963 (I looked it up), and all the actors have been aged for this scene.   The first scene in the film is 1926 (I looked it up), so it's all quite well done.   Although Emily Blunt might wish she does not actually age that poorly lol.

 

• Before bomb
• Making of bomb
• Events after the bomb

 

^ Those keep jiggling in and out of order.

 

*but by the end you will mostly understand.

 

Florence Pugh is quite naked in the film, if that's your thing.  She was in 2019's Little Women directed by Greta Gerwig, that coincidentally is the Barbie movie director (and writer and executive producer) this week too.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 23 July 2023 - 12:37 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

Box Office Stunner: ‘Barbie’ Opens to Staggering $155M, ‘Oppenheimer’ Snags $80.5M

 

 

Thanks to the Barbenheimer phenomenon, it is the first time in history that a three-day weekend has seen one movie open to $100 million or more and another to $50 million or more. And it is the fourth-biggest weekend of all time at the domestic box office.

 

 

 

 

https://www.hollywoo...ing-1235541719/

 

 

(Barbie) The pic launched to an impressive $182 million from 70 markets for a global bow of $337 million against a $145 million production budget. 

 

_______________

 

Overseas, Oppenheimer launched with a strong $93.7 million from 78 markets for a global start of $174.2 million against a $100 million production budget.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 23 July 2023 - 08:49 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

The only real casualty was Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part I, which despite strong reviews and a healthy opening weekend fell 64 per cent in its second weekend. Overshadowed by the "Barbenheimer," glow as well as the blow of losing its IMAX screens to Oppenheimer, the Tom Cruise vehicle added $19.5 million, bringing its domestic total to $118.8 million.


https://www.cbc.ca/n...ffice-1.6915435

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 23 July 2023 - 10:54 AM.

[Mike K.]

I think Barbie might end up like Fight Club, where audiences that go see it in theatres have no idea what the actual theme of the film is, based purely on the name and previews.

[Barrrister]

What is the theme of Barbie?