Yes, Joe Russo’s Video Response was, indeed, Ill-considered and Irritating

In October, Francesca Scorsese, whose father is the legendary Oscar-winning American filmmaker Martin Scorsese, posted a fun video on the social media application TikTok in which Martin Scorsese jokingly and playfully directs the family dog named ‘Oscar’ through an ‘audition’ for ‘a role.’ Explaining jokes defeats the purpose of the joke, but, for the purpose of this article, I should stress that the joke has nothing to do with the dog’s name — rather what is so funny and charming about the video is, first, the reveal that he’s talking to a dog, and, later, the family dog’s responses (or lack thereof) to his direction. I, and many others in the online film community, enjoyed the video quite a bit. Then, sometime thereafter, frequent Marvel collaborator and Avengers: Infinity War co-director Joe Russo posted a video response to Instagram, in which he said that he, too, has a Schnauzer as a pet, and then he makes note of the Scorsese family dog’s name before announcing that it’s ‘cute,’ but his dog’s name is Box Office.

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Study finds that ‘Flickering Lights (2000)’ is the Most Popular Danish Film in Denmark

Top Left: Mads Mikkelsen in Flickering Lights (Scanbox; Rolf Konow). – Top Right: Poul Bundgaard, Ove Sprogøe, and Morten Grunwald in the Olsen Gang-films (Nordisk Film). – Bottom Left: Mads Mikkelsen in Another Round (Nordisk Film). – Bottom Right: Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Fares Fares in the Department Q-films (Nordisk Film; Henrik Ohsten).

The Danish news agency Ritzau reports that Anders Thomas Jensen’s 2000s dark-comedy Flickering Lights (Danish title: Blinkende Lygter) was found to be Danes’ favorite Danish film ever made. The study was conducted by the data analytics firm YouGov for the Danish streaming service Nordisk Film+. A total of 1,529 Danes in the 18 to 79 age range participated in CAWI-interviews for the study, which has ultimately resulted in a top ten list that includes two film series (each counted as a single film). Interestingly, a total of nine films (including one of the film series) that were released have all come out in the last forty years, and, incredibly, a film released during the COVID-era placed second!

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Goodbye 2022: Did Cameron & Cruise Resuscitate Movie Theaters?

Like I always like to do, I’m going to try to sum up the year that was in my final post of the year partially entitled ‘Goodbye’. So, goodbye to 2022. There are a lot of things one could talk about. I like to keep things cheery so the title of the post has been kept to filmmaking and the movie theater industry.

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Ten Most Read Articles & Reviews: 2022

As the year is coming to an end, it makes a lot of sense to me to look back on the year that is coming to a close. Although it isn’t yet time for me to announce my 2022 year-end lists and awards winners (they’ll be released in January and February 2023), this is the right time to take a look at the ten most-read articles and reviews that I wrote this year. Let’s have a look at what caught your eye this last year.

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First ‘Batgirl’ then ‘scripted content’: Warner Bros. Discovery’s recent decision-making is worrying

Photo: Chris Yarzab / Flickr

In recent days, it was revealed that the Warner Bros. Discovery merger had already had a huge impact on upcoming releases and the extremely popular streaming service HBO Max, arguably the service with the best content library. First, it was revealed that the upcoming Batgirl film, which had finished production, had been canceled. It was no longer to be released in theaters or on HBO Max. Then, we found out that the Scoob! sequel, an animated film due to be released later this year, had also been thrown away entirely.

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Sad News: Bruce Willis to Retire from Acting due to Aphasia diagnosis

Bruce Willis in UNBREAKABLE – PHOTO: Buena Vista Pictures Distribution.

Sad news coming out of Hollywood today, as the Willis family has put out a statement confirming that their patriarch, Bruce Willis, one of the biggest male action stars in Tinseltown for the last thirty-five years has decided to step away from his acting career due to recent health issues and the fact that he has been diagnosed with aphasia.

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The 94th Oscars Ceremony was already problematic before Will Smith struck Chris Rock

A visibly-emotional Will Smith sits down after having slapped Chris Rock on stage at the Dolby Theatre – PHOTO: AMPAS, 2022.

Others may disagree but the Academy Awards ceremony — arguably Hollywood’s biggest night — is never boring to me. Some cinephiles think of it like their Super Bowl, their WrestleMania, but I don’t think anyone expected the ceremony to devolve into a contact sport as it briefly did in the Dolby Theatre at the 94th Academy Awards, when one of Hollywood’s last name-brand movie stars, the almost-always cool Will Smith, lost his temper. It was certainly one of the uglier moments in Oscar history, and it also topped what was previously the craziest moment in Oscar history.

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Goodbye 2021: Vaccinations, Variants, and Streaming

Sometimes once a year comes to an end, I like to close it out with a few thoughts on the year that is about to be behind us. Just last year, I spent a lot of my Goodbye 2020 article on the state of the film and movie theater industries during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it certainly seems like this edition of these New Year’s Eve articles will have to have a similar focus.

Because while I do think it’s possible to see a light at the end of the tunnel since most people are accepting the vaccines, it is also true that the world isn’t completely out of the woods yet (in part due to the various different variants of the contagious disease that has dictated our lives for a very long time now). But what has all of this meant for the aforementioned industries and, more broadly, the ‘movie year’ that was 2021? Well, let’s talk about that.

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Another Round is Being Remade with Leonardo DiCaprio. How Should We Feel About That?

On Monday April 26th, 2021, the day after Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round (Danish Title: Druk) had won the Best International Feature Film Oscar, DEADLINE Hollywood reported that, to the surprise of no one, Hollywood wanted to make another English-language remake of a popular non-American hit. What was surprising, however, was that the English-language remake rights had been acquired by Appian Way, Endeavor Content, and Makeready for the purpose of developing a remake as a star vehicle for Leonardo DiCaprio, arguably the biggest movie star on the planet. So, how should we feel about that? Is it an exciting pat on the back, or should we be upset?

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A Celebration or a Clusterfuck? My Thoughts on the 93rd Academy Awards

In honor of Thomas Vinterberg’s extremely moving acceptance speech last night, allow me to open with a reference to arguably his most famous film. There is a moment in Thomas Vinterberg’s Cannes Awards-winning Dogme-film Festen (international title: The Celebration), where the main character Christian (played by Ulrich Thomsen) asks his father, whose birthday is being celebrated, what speech he would like Christian to read for him — the green speech or the yellow speech? His father chooses the ‘green’ speech, and, as a result, the events of the unforgettable film take place. Sometimes a single decision can change everything. And, in the case of the 93rd Academy Awards’ ceremony, a decision was made that ultimately destroyed an otherwise decent ceremony.

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