June Expiration Watch: Art of the Tease

Turns out some of the more impressive additions to Instant these last few months were little more than loaners. I'm not really sure the point of acquiring streaming rights to a film for only two or three months (why not six? or a year?), but if you were excited by such recent additions as The Terminator, Chinatown, Angel Heart, and classic Kubrick and Scorsese�not to mention the perennially peripatetic James Bond films�then you better get your licks in while you can.

And since no one else seems to be tracking this, here are the most notable films that debuted on the service in recent months that are now expiring:

Arrived in May

Bang the Drum Slowly (1973)
James Bond Films (list below)

Arrived in April

Angel Heart (1987)
Bad Company (1972)
Chinatown (1974) - review
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) - review
Dragonslayer (1981)
Lars and the Real Girl (2007)
The Odd Couple (1968)
Roger Dodger (2002)
Spanglish (2004)
Rocky (1976) + sequels
The Running Man (1987)
The Terminator (1984)

Arrived in March

As Good As It Gets (1997)
Dr. Strangelove (1964) - review
Gattaca (1997)
Taxi Driver (1976)

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Escape to The Movies: TRANSFORMERS - AGE OF EXTINCTION

It is what it is. This time, I liked it.

Also: STILL more Transformers!

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Transformers: Age of Extinction - Better Than The First Three

Big Picture: NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY

Yet more TRANSFORMERS, because it's that time of every other Summer...

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Nothing Gold Can Stay - The Most Bizarre Episode of Transformers

Podcast!

Am I on a Podcast again? I am!

Also, some TRANSFORMERS because it's that kind of week.

Escape to The Movies: 22 JUMP STREET

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : 22 Jump Street - Comedy Lightning Strikes Twice

Also: SPOILERS.

Big Picture: LINK BE A LADY

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Link Be A Lady

Escape to The Movies: HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2

I liked it.

Also: "I May Have Been Wrong About Maleficent."

Also: Reviewed the Retron 5 for Escapist.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : How to Train Your Dragon 2 - Dragon Training Pays Off

58th David di Donatello Award Winners

Yesterday the Italian Academy had their awards ceremony and to my huge surprise top award went to a movie that perhaps has a relevant story for Italian audiences but not any more for world audiences as topic has been covered extensively plus film had not much outstanding as performances, cinematography, direction, tech spec was truly average. Yes, in my opinion La Grande Bellezza as a movie is superior to Il Capitale Umano. Still, La Grande Bellezza won big with nine awards but did not got the top award. Sigh.

Event press coverage claims that the show was stolen by Sophia Loren, who was honored with a special prize for her performance in La Voce Umana (Human Voice) the short directed by her son Edoardo Ponti.

If you wish to watch the awards ceremony then take a deep breath as this is one ceremony where people really talk, talk, talk (uff!) non-stop, but here it is.




Winners are in *BLUE. To check winners in all categories go to the new Academy web site that finally has been updated to a more user friendly site.

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5/12/14
A few minutes ago the Accademia del Cinema Italiano announced the nominations for the yearly Italian cinema top awards and not surprisingly the race is between two movies by two Paolos, both very well-established directors: Paolo Virzì and Paolo Sorrentino.

As a matter of fact Paolo Virzì's Il Capitale Umano (Human Capital) has 19 nods to 18 for La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty), so it is open race BUT I have a favorite, one film that was one of the best I saw last year with one of the best actors in the world Toni Servillo. Yes I loved La Grande Bellezza for the outstanding performance by Servillo but also for Sorrentino homage to Fellini.

Awards ceremony will be on June 10.

Best Film

*Il Capitale Umano (Human Capital), Paolo Virzì
La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty), Paolo Sorrentino
La mafia uccide solo d'estate, Pierfrancesco Diliberto
La sedia della felicità, Carlo Mazzacurati
Smetto quando voglio, Sydney Sibilia

Best Director
Carlo Mazzacurati for La sedia della felicità
Ferzan Ozpetek for Allacciate le cinture (Fasten Your Seatbelts)
Ettore Scola for Che strano chiamarsi Federico. Scola racconta Fellini
*Paolo Sorrentino for La Grande Bellezza
Paolo Virzì for Il Capitale Umano

Best New Director
*Pierfrancesco Diliberto for La mafia uccide solo d'estate
Valeria Golino for Miele
Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza for Salvo
Matteo Oleotto for Zoran il mio nipote scemo (Zoran My Nephew the Idiot)
Sydney Sibilia for Smetto quando voglio

Best Actress
*Valeria Bruni Tedeschi in Il capitale umano
Paola Cortellesi in Sotto una buona stella
Sabrina Ferilli in La grande bellezza
Kasia Smutniak in Allacciate le cinture
Jasmine Trinca in Miele

Best Actor
Giuseppe Battiston in Zoran il mio nipote scemo
Fabrizio Bentivoglio in Il capitale umano
Carlo Cecchi in Miele
Edoardo Leo in Smetto quando voglio
*Toni Servillo in La grande bellezza

Best European Film
Ida, Pawel Pawlikowski
La vie d’Adèle, Abdellatif Kechiche
*Philomena, Stephen Freas
Still Life, Uberto Pasolini
La Vénus à la fourrure, Roman Polanski

Best Foreign Film
12 Years a Slave, Steve McQueen
American Hustle, David O. Russell
Blue Jasmine, Woody Allen
*Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson
The Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese

To check nominees in all categories please go here.

New in June: Go Big or Go Home (2014)

Netflix continues to bolster its back catalog of important directors. There are new additions this month from Woody Allen (Annie Hall), Jim Jarmusch (Coffee and Cigarettes), Howard Hawks (El Dorado), Steven Spielberg (1941), and three more from Robert Altman, not to mention the return of those itinerant Francis Ford Coppola films that never seem to stick around for more than a month or two. And in the No News Is Good News department, the handful of James Bond movies that showed up last month remain available�a first in the year-plus since this blog began. Bond titles, as many of you know, usually vanish after 30 days. But one of the bigger stories in June is the streaming debut of a movie as infamous as it was unavailable (at least in the U.S.), and as underrated as it was underseen�the one, the only:

Ishtar (1987)

"Honest and popular don't go hand in hand"

An early example of a movie reviewed for its budget rather than its quality, Ishtar sits only a notch below Heaven's Gate in terms of the critical scorn and audience indifference hurled its way. It may not have ruined a studio, but it certainly helped ruin the directorial career of Elaine May (who also wrote it), and long served as one of a handful of poster children symbolizing Hollywood excess prior to today's Tentpole Era. Me, I've always thought the movie got a bum rap. Having seen it during its initial�extremely brief�theatrical run, I remember being puzzled by the critical pummeling. Certainly it wasn't The Greatest Comedy Ever, but it was clever, entertaining, and silly in equal portions. Essentially a big-budget homage to the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby road pictures (anyone remember those?), it revels in the absurdity of Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty, as two of the world's worst songwriters, getting dragged into an international crisis involving the CIA, gunrunners, and Middle Eastern revolutionaries. Hoffman and Beatty have a blast playing against type (Beatty is hopeless with the ladies), bringing real zest to their off-key interpretations of the deliberately awful Paul Williams songs they're meant to have written. Some of it may be dragged out and, at times (yes), excessive, but like the characters in a Will Ferrell or Farrelly Brothers movie, these are very smart people playing stupid, and most of the time they get it right�especially Charles Grodin, whose sly underplaying steals every scene he's in.

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Big Picture: E3MAGEDDON: CROSSOVER

So that happened.

The Escapist : The Big Picture : E3-mageddon: Crossover

Escape to The Movies: EDGE OF TOMORROW

Go see it.

Just for fun: E3 - The Movie

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Edge of Tomorrow - Tom Cruise Is Cool Again

Big Picture: WUNDERPANTS

And now we start the clock on how long this is actually relevant. Ball's in your court, Warner Bros...

The Escapist : The Big Picture : Wunderpants - Wonder Woman's New Clothes