Welcome to the weekend, everyone!! It’s Martin Luther King (MLK) day on Monday so I get an extra day, yay! 😀
What are your weekend plans? Are you going to the movies to catch up on all those Oscar nominees you’ve missed? Check out my Oscar nomination commentary post in case you don’t know which ones those are. Well, as customary, some studios are taking advantage of the nominations to expand the number of theaters, no doubt some would get an Oscar boost of exposure.
According to Box Office Mojo, Gravity is expanding to 944 theaters nationwide, whilst August: Osage County is going to be in over 2000 theaters. Not bad at all for an indie film with only $20 mil budget, but not surprised considering the distributor is The Weinstein Company, who’s no stranger to Oscar campaigning. Stay tuned for a guest review of August: Osage County for this weekend from someone who’s seen the stage play.
My #2 fave film of the year, Her, is currently open in more than 1700 theaters. So no reason for you not to catch it! 😉 Apparently Captain Phillips is still in theaters (about 900 theaters nationwide) and Dallas Buyers Club is shown in about 400 theaters. All of the films I mentioned are on my Top 10 list of 2013, so obviously I highly recommend them!
One film that’d likely get a MLK Day boost is 12 Years a Slave. According to EW.com, the studio will re-release it into 700 theaters nationwide today. Can you believe it that it’s made less than $40 mil so far since its limited release back in October? I hope it won’t end up to be the lowest-grossing Oscar Best Picture winner (IF it won that is). Anyway, to mark Dr King’s birthday, the studio made a recut 12 Years promo that combines footage of the film and audio from King’s I Have a Dream speech, delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during 1963′s March on Washington. Apparently, Dr. King gave his speech not far from where the real-life Solomon Northup was drugged, kidnapped, and sold into slavery in 1841. Wow, I did not know that. Check out the video below:
Well, in the new releases front, we’ve got a Ride Along (billed as a Training Day comedy w/ Ice Cube & Kevin Hart), Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, and the horror movie Devil’s Due. Since I’ve seen the Jack Ryan movie (expect review next week), I’ll probably do home cinema this weekend and watch It Happened One Night, one of my BlindSpot list, yay!
So what are you going to watch this weekend? Movie theater or home cinema for you?
FLIXCHATTER FILM BLOG 
This weekend, if I see anything, it’ll be home cinema. I need to see if I can get my hands on the nominated foreign flicks and documentaries. If I can, I will have seen all of the feature length nominees.
Then I need to hope the Uptown shows all of the nominated shorts again. 😉
Hey James, I can send you The Act of Killing ahead of our meeting, just email me your address. You can just bring it back in Feb if you have seen it by then.
I’m hoping to see Blue Jasmine or Philomena but my hubby doesn’t want to see ’em so I’ll have to find a friend who wants to go. Not even sure if they’re still shown around me.
Blue Jasmine probably isn’t. That one was in theaters in July. It might get a re-release, though, now that Blanchett is nominated. Philomena should be, though. Still in almost every theater around me.
I’ll be catching up on Her (the only best picture nominee I haven’t seen yet). I’ve had my eyes on it for a while but had been holding off because my movie watching buddy didn’t think he’d like it, despite me telling him how great the reviews are. But now that it’s nominated he gets no choice in the matter! 😉 Glad to hear that it’s your number 2 of the year!
YAY!! I LOVE that film, and it looks beautiful on the big screen. I hope you like it as much as I do.
Hey Ruth! I’m actually in pretty good shape on my Oscar watching. The only best picture nominee I need to see is Philomena. I do plan on catching up with a couple of the documentaries. Probably won’t catch the new Jack Ryan film until Tuesday. And of course I have some Denver Broncos football to take care of Sunday afternoon. (fingers crossed).
I’ve watched a lot here recently. I have a ton of reviews written and ready to post I need to get on that.
I only have two more to go, Philomena and Dallas Buyers Club. I probably wait until DVD for the latter though. I quite like the Jack Ryan movie despite it being a run-of-the-mill action thriller. I like Pine as Ryan and LOVE Kevin Costner, though I wish he had more to do!
I’ve always been a big fan of Kevin Costner. I was really pumped to see him in the trailers. Dallas Buyers Club is pretty rough…well, VERY rough. But McConaughey absolutely embodies that character. Not one I will see again but it’s a committed performance no doubt.
Last weekend seemed to be the big “Awards Dump” week in my town at least, as Her, Llewyn Davis, Nebraska, and August: Osage County all released at once. The only best picture movie I still need to see is Philomena, assuming I even bother with it. Outside of it being awarded best picture both at the Globes and the Oscars, I’ve literally never heard one single thing about this movie at all, lol. And from the looks of it, it doesn’t really look all that interesting, either, but I dunno…
As for this week’s releases, I’ll be seeing Devil’s Due with a friend. I’m in the mood for a good laugh this weekend, and it looks like just the right type of comedy to do the trick. 😉
Hi CHris! WOW, that is a lot of Oscar hopefuls in one weekend. I LOVE Dame Judi, she’s the appeal about Philomena for me. The subject matter might turn some people off though.
Ahah, I saw the marketing ploy of using that devil baby left in a stroller and scare off people on the sidewalks in NYC. Boy it’s sooo disgusting and preposterous but I’m sure it’ll garner attention. I think it’s appropriate to call it a comedy, ahah.
I already saw all the Best Picture nominees so I’m just going to stay home and watch something else as I want to catch up on some 2013 releases that I missed and watch a Charles Chaplin as I’m just doing a bit of exploration into silent cinema as I have 2 silent films in my Blind Spot series for the year.
WOW good for you Steven! Btw, I submitted ur K-19 review to reddit, hope you get some traffic.
Nice that you’re exploring silent cinema, for me I still have to catch up on the talkie classic movies 😀
I’m seeing Jack Ryan tonight, hopefully it’s an improvement over the awful The Sum of All Fears, I was pissed after seeing that film. I don’t know how can the filmmakers could screwed up so bad by adapting a pretty great book but they did and we have to wait over ten years to see another Jack Ryan flick.
I probably won’t be watching any movies at home for a while, sold my projector and now waiting for a 3D projector I want to come down in price. I just can’t watch movies on regular TV anymore, I’m such a snob, LOL.
Cool! I’m curious to hear what you think. I could hardly remember Sum of All Fears, ahah, but one thing for sure, I much prefer Pine over Affleck! This one is not based on Clancy’s book though, it’s an origins story of sort, though it happened very swiftly!
Wow, how much is a 3D Projector?? Ahah yeah, you are a big screen snob Ted 😀
Just saw Jack Ryan earlier tonight and I thought it’s very good, funny that they kept saying it’s an original story but they took the plot from one of Jack Ryan books, Debt of Honor. In the book, a powerful Japanese business mogul tried to destroy the US economy and start WW3. In this film, they’ve changed the villain to a Russian mogul but a lot of elements were very similar to the novel. I’m kind of getting annoy by this kind of tactics the studios pulled. Fox did a similar marketing ploy when they promoted Prometheus and kept insisting it wasn’t a prequel to the Alien films yet it’s a direct prequel! Okay rant over.
The projector I want is still cost over $2000, I’m waiting till it hits around $1200. I’m assuming once the new model comes out, the price of the older one will go down.
I just saw and can’t even put into words what I think of it – in a good way. 🙂 To see the Best Picture nominees, I’m going to attend AMC’s Best Picture Showcase actually – two weekends of movies, body odor and popcorn. It’s going to be great! 😀
Oh cool! So they’re showing all 9 of the Best Picture nominees in 2 weekends? That’s awesome, enjoy your time at the movies Katy 😀
Yeah, AMC Theatres even holds 24 hour marathons too. Thanks Ruth! It’s going to be a blast!
Are you gonna be blogging about that? I hope you would!
Don’t tell anyone but I havent actually seen any of the best picture nominees!
Oh no! Better rectify that situation soon Mikey! At the very least you’ve got to see Gravity man.
I was hoping to catch Nebraska, but none of the show times work for me. 😦 I’ll be watching Inside Llewyn Davis instead.
Hi Brittani, yeah the indie films usually have such limited showing times. I love Nebraska more than ILD but I’d still recommend it for Oscar Isaac’s performance.
Hi Ruth! I’m slowly making my way through this year’s crop of Oscar films. Caught Her and Dallas Buyers Club during the week, then watched The Wolf of Wall Street yesterday. Really enjoyed all three, especially Wolf. This week I’m going to try to get to American Hustle and Inside Llewyn Davis. Kind of shocked the latter didn’t get much Oscar love after hearing so much about it.
Enjoy your extended weekend!
Cool post. Loved that video of 12YAS. Can’t wait to see that one! I watched American Hustle on Friday. I was out of town celebrating my mom’s birthday yesterday, so didn’t watch anything. Tonight I’ll watch the SAGs, which I missed.
What did u think of American Hustle? Are u gonna post ur review Fernando? Tell ur mom happy belated birthday! 😃
Yes. I’m going to include a small review as part of my Scattered Frames feature. Little preview: didn’t hate it, didn’t love it, thought it was boring.
And thank you, I’ll tell her!
Oh cool, I’ll definitely read it when you post it. I didn’t think it was boring but I don’t know that it was stellar enough to be sweeping so many awards this year either.
Yeah, it’s a tad overrated. Loved the performances, though.
Hopefully, the Oscar nominations will boost the box office figures for those films. I stayed in last weekend, but I might see Jack Ryan later this week.
I think it will in varying degrees, esp w/ Gravity. I know some of my coworkers haven’t even seen that yet n we’re planning to after hearing the nomination.