February 26th, 2017
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The Independent Spirit Awards winners were handed out last night. While they are rarely a good predictor for the Oscars, Moonlight’s performance was so dominant that its chances of winning Oscars have ticked up a couple of percentage points.
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November 23rd, 2016
The Independent Spirit Awards nominations were announced last night and thus the 2016 Awards Season begins. There were a few surprises and some snubs to discuss, but for the most part, there’s not a lot nominations that broke the established narrative. It’s because there isn’t really an established narrative. This means films that earn nominations here have a much better chance of doing well going forward and Moonlight looks like it could rise up as a result.
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September 12th, 2016
This week, the biggest hit of the year so far, Captain America: Civil War, comes out. It is also one of the best and the Blu-ray is a contender for Pick of the Week. Unfortunately, the screener is late and I don’t like awarding Pick of the Week to a release where I’m still waiting on the Blu-ray. The rest of the contenders are smaller films, including The Bloodstained Butterfly, which arrived late. Part of me wants to give the title to The Transformers: The Movie, but while I plan to buy the Blu-ray, I understand that Nostalgia has a lot to with that. ... Oh what the hell, doing it. The Transformers: The Movie is the Pick of the Week.
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August 16th, 2016
There are a lot of releases on this week’s list, but most of them are like The Angry Birds Movie on DVD, Blu-ray Combo Pack, or 4K Combo Pack. They are good, but not good enough to be a Pick of the Week contender. The best new release is The Fits, but it is only coming out on Video on Demand.
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June 8th, 2016
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The Witness was the top draw on the theater average chart earning $14,523 in its lone theater. The Fits was the only other member of the $10,000 club earning $10,602, also in one theater. One last note: We are still relying on estimates for Art Bastard and since it is an independent film, we might not get the final number. At the moment, it has an average of $9,800 in two theaters, so there's a chance it actually snuck its way into the $10,000 club.
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June 5th, 2016
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows will top the box office chart this weekend with a respectable $35.25 million, according to studio estimates released on Sunday. The weekend as a whole is looking fairly ordinary though, thanks in large part to the muted debuts of X-Men: Apocalypse and Alice Through the Looking Glass last weekend, and their predictably-steep post-Memorial-Day declines. Apocalypse is off 66% this weekend to $22.325 million and $116.5 million in total. Alice will eke out $10.7 million or so for a two-week total of $50.8 million. Overall, the market will be down about 1% from the same weekend last year, and 20% below the comparable weekend from 2014.
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June 3rd, 2016
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One second. ... I'm going to have to take a break to recover from that pun in the title. That one hurt me just typing it up. There are several films on this week's list that are earning unanimously positive reviews, or very close to it. Unfortunately, none of them look like they have what it takes to be a break out hit in limited release. The Fits (Reviews) is just too small a film, while both The President (Reviews) and The Wailing (Reviews) are foreign-language films. Hopefully I'm just being too pessimistic.
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