Beyond the Screen #4: Memoria Limited Release, No Time to Die Figures, Willy Wonka and Home Sweet Home Alone
We take a look back at news of note in the world of film.
Memoria to Play in Limited Theatres Forever
Theatrical releases have become increasingly unpredictable as of late, though the tendency has favored shorter windows. Standing in a league of its own, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria will debut on the 26 December, going on to play in a single theatre per week, till the end of time, or cinema, whichever comes first. This release strategy positions the Cannes-favorite as a never-ending roadshow, befitting the museum-piece nature of Weerasethakul’s, or “Joe’s” as he calls himself, work. In his own words, for Memoria the “cinema experience is crucial… Let’s embrace the darkness and dream, one at a time”. For international audiences, we’ll have to make do with a hobbled product, streaming through MUBI in key markets (South Africa hasn’t received a streaming date yet).
No Time To Die Killing it Internationally
While the latest Bond has set the international box office on fire, standing at a global total of $313 million, its American performance hasn’t been as hot, raking in about $56 million dollars for its opening weekend, more or less exactly what had been predicted before Venom 2: Let There Be Carnage overperformed. With a huge budget of $250 million to $300 million, plus a stop-start marketing campaign, revived over and over again amidst pandemic schedule changes, No Time To Die will have to have outstanding legs to break even. However, the copious amounts of product placement and tie-in advertising campaigns associated with the film, including prominently swigged Heinekens, cellphones given more close-ups than Ana de Armas, etc., should help the 25th Bond film on its way to turning a profit. Check out our ranking of all of the Bond films.
Timothée Chalamet is Willy Wonka in Prequel
Do you remember the crazy old kook from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? The curly-haired, eccentric millionaire, flamboyant and strange in equal measure? Have you ever wanted to see a sexy, younger version of him? Well, if the look of Timothée Chalamet’s sneak-peek has given us any indication, that’s exactly what you’re going to get. The star of the upcoming prequel film WONKA, tweeted an on-set snapshot on the 10 October, giving us a look at the young Willy Wonka, apparently decked out in exactly the same outfit he’ll be wearing in his old age. Some fans of the original film, and book for that matter, may object to the idea of a prequel, in that it isn’t in the best interest of the character to reveal too much. He’s a chipper, far-flung, and clearly peculiar baron, whose tales of great exploit in Oompa Loompa land should seem at least a little tall (let’s not forget the much-derided young Wonka scenes of Tim Burton’s remake, featuring Johnny Depp). Twitter has taken a sillier route, comparing Chalamet’s outfit to Gonzo’s in A Muppet Christmas Carol, or E.T. in drag, plus allusions to the increasingly handsome depictions of the character we seem to be getting.
David Fincher Presents Video Essay Series ‘Voir’
After teasing new material from master director David Fincher via Twitter, Netflix has put to rest any theories that Mindhunter will be returning for a third season, as many had presumed. According to this tweet, Fincher’s “surprise” has turned out to be Voir: “a new documentary series of visual essays celebrating cinema, from the mind of one of film’s modern masters”. Though far from what fans were expecting Fincher to be up to, the series, which will premiere at AFI-fest, isn’t exactly outside of the cinephile director’s ballpark. The teaser reveals almost nothing, save that David Prior is also involved as executive producer.
New Batch of Trailers
Cyrano, starring Peter Dinklage and based on Erica’s Schmidt’s 2018 stage musical, looks earnest and grand, a prime candidate for an overdrawn take on the classic tale, but director Joe Wright has certainly earned our trust as a helmer of period films. Operation Mincemeat, a true-to-life war drama chronicling one of the great ingenuities of the allied forces during the 2nd World War, led by the ever-reliable Colin Firth, should at best make some waves at the Academy Awards and at worst keep the old folks entertained, despite its unfortunate (yet appropriate) title.
Pedro Almodóvar’s much-anticipated follow-up to Pain and Glory, another collaboration with his muse Penélope Cruz, Parallel Mothers, has finally gotten a trailer, though as is typical for Almodóvar’s films, promotional material is elusive. The trailer for Scream 5, simply titled Scream, likely to be one of the bigger releases of the coming months, features fittingly jaded members of the original cast, as well as a corny home security spin on the original’s classic opening.
Home Sweet Home Alone, a sequel to the first two Home Alone films, which does NOT feature Macaulay Culkin but instead features the comic relief support from Jojo Rabbit, Archie Yates. One can only hope that the poor kid doesn’t suffer the ire of fans of the original, who have already decried the Disney+ production as an abomination. Once an uber long documentary feature, now a three-part mini-series, Peter Jackson’s Get Back, a more magnanimous account of the break-up of the Beatles, cobbled together from the hours of footage shot for the Let It Be documentary, is at last approaching release.
