'Twin Peaks' update

From darkhorizons, Though Showtime had numerous TV shows to promote and talk about at their Television Critics 

Association panel, the one that everyone was asking network President and CEO David Nevins about was David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” revival.

No footage from the new episodes were screened but it has been confirmed that filming has wrapped with Lynch currently in the midst of editing the show ahead of a premiere in the first half of 2017.

One of the big questions is episode – how many have been done? Turns out even the network doesn’t know. Nevins says: “We don’t even know for sure how many episodes there will be.”

President of Programming Gary Levine adds: “It is a fluid process. David Lynch who is doing it all, he co-wrote with Mark [Frost], he directed every episode, he’s editing every episode, scoring every episode. It’s a process of seeing how it evolved. That organism continues to evolve. Until he’s figured that out and shows it to us, we actually won’t know.”

They also confirm episodes won’t have to conclude within a 60 minute timeframe either, but one thing they won’t do is release the entire season at once – it will be a weekly show.

Incredible new "Rogue One" trailer debuts during the Olympics!

The Muppets' Dr. Teeth & The Electric Mayhem Outside Lands 2016

'Suicide Squad' Shoots Down August Record with $135 Million Opening

From boxofficemojo, For the third time this year a superhero movie has broken an opening weekend record and with it a continuing trend that finds the previous week's box office champion suffering a hefty second weekend drop. This time around it's Warner Bros' Suicide Squad decimating the previous August opening weekend record by more than $40 million while Universal's Jason Bourne experiences a 62% drop in its sophomore session. That said, with the top twelve totaling a massive $223.9 million, this weekend's top twelve was up a whopping 87% compared to the same weekend last year. In fact, this is the first time this calendar weekend has ever grossed over $190 million, let alone cracked the $200 million mark.

Finishing in first place with an estimated $135.1 million, Warner Bros. and DC Comics' Suicide Squad now holds the largest August opening weekend, topping Guardians of the Galaxy's $94.3 million from 2014. The film also had the largest August opening day with $65.2 million, which included the largest August Thursday preview total of $20.5 million. Combined with a $132 million international opening from 57 territories, the film's global opening haulranks 24th all-time with $267.1 million, topping Deadpool's worldwide opening of $264.7 million earlier this year, which opened in 63 international markets.

Budgeted at $175 million, the film's theatrical longevity now comes into question as it holds a mere 26% rating onRottenTomatoes and could be looking at a steep, 65+% drop next weekend. Earlier this year, fellow DC Extended Universe release Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice opened with a record-breaking $166 million only to end up dropping 69.1% in its second weekend and ultimately only delivering $330.3 million domestically, a 1.99 multiplier, the worst multiplier for a film opening over $100 million ever.

Suicide Squad did score a "B+" CinemaScore, which is slightly higher than Batman v Superman's "B", but that's hardly enough to make much of a difference. It's current 7.1 rating on IMDb is, however, lower than the 7.5Batman v Superman had at the same point in its release cycle as audiences seem to be having a similar reaction to the film as they did its DC predecessor. From an audience perspective, the audience was 54% male vs. 46% female with women rating the film an "A-" on the CinemaScore scale versus a "B+" from the men. Interestingly enough, IMDb's user voting currently shows a similar trend with females scoring the film 7.3 vs. males scoring it with a 6.9. Additionally, 54% of the audience was under the age of 25 and 76% of the audience was under the age of 35.

Of the film's opening weekend haul, $11 million came from 382 IMAX screens, $13 million from Premium Large Format (PLF) screens and another $3.2 million from Extreme Digital (XD) theaters.

Looking ahead, in all likelihood it seems safe to expect a drop around 67% or more next weekend with a strong possibility Suicide Squad may finish with a multiplier right around 2.22, pushing hard for a $300 million domestic run, perhaps coming up a bit short.

GET MORE: Compare 2016's Superhero Movies Side-by-Side!

Finishing in second place, and dropping 61.6% after taking the top spot at last weekend's box office, Universal'sJason Bourne finished second with an estimated $22.7 million. While the latest installment in the Bournefranchise had a strong opening, including an "A-" CinemaScore, it was obviously affected by the release of Suicide Squad.

There just doesn't seem to be enough room on the release schedule as Bourne may have been better off had it waited until the last weekend of August. In fact, had Bourne waited a few weeks to release it may have also helped Star Trek Beyond, which dropped another 59% this weekend after dropping 58% in its second weekend when it faced Bourne's debut. The final month of Summer 2016 has certainly had its share of strong openers and anticipated features, but by sharing a large portion of the audience they are cannibalizing each other.

One holdover from last weekend that wasn't relying heavily on the male demographic was Bad Moms and it certainly helped the film its second weekend as it dropped only 40.4% for an estimated $14.2 million. The cume for the $20 million feature has now climbed to $51 million domestically.

The weekend's other new wide release was EuropaCorp's Nine Lives, which featured Kevin Spacey as a talking cat. The family feature delivered an estimated $6.5 million from 2,264 theaters and may struggle next weekend as Pete's Dragon is likely to steal the majority of any remaining audience next weekend. The film scored a "B+" CinemaScore and currently sports a dismal 4% rating on RottenTomatoes.

Elsewhere in the top ten, Warner Bros. and New Line's Lights Out has now crossed $54.7 million domestically and $85.7 million worldwide on a budget right around $5 million. Additionally, Illumination Entertainment and Universal Pictures' The Secret Life of Pets took in another $11.5 million for a fourth place finish domestically and added another $68.6 million internationally as the film's global cume has now topped $500 million and stands at an impressive $502.2 million.

Speaking of animated films, while this past week saw the end of the domestic run for Disney's Zootopia with $341.3 million, the studio still has Finidng Dory in worldwide release and, with a global cume of $870 million, it is about to pass Batman v Superman and become the fourth highest grossing release of 2016 at the worldwide box office. With $473.8 million, Dory currently ranks as the eighth highest grossing domestic release of all-time and will be passing Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace in the next couple of days for the seventh slot.

Next weekend sees the release of Disney's Pete's Dragon in 3,400 theaters, Sony will release the R-rated animated feature Sausage Party into 2,800+ theaters and Paramount will release the Meryl Streep-ledFlorence Foster Jenkins into 1,500 theaters.

One final note, there will not be a weekend preview this coming Thursday, but we will be back next Sunday with a full recap of the weekend.

For a look at this weekend's estimated results click here and we'll be updating the charts with weekend actuals on Monday afternoon.

Depressing - Marsha turns 60 today

Morgan Freeman narrates a person walking down the street

Christopher Guest’s First Comedy in Nearly a Decade Is About the Competitive World of Sports Mascots

Christopher Guest, the Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show director, is releasing his first film in nearly a decade, and it sounds perfectly Christopher Guest–ian. The comedy Mascots will arrive on Netflix on Oct. 13 and stars numerous Guest regulars, including Jane Lynch, Parker Posey, John Michael Higgins, Fred Willard, Ed Begley Jr., and many more.


Mascots is set the cutthroat world of sports mascots competitions, a somewhat absurd premise that seems right up the alley of a director who has previously explored the competitive worlds of dog shows and small-town community theater. The teaser doesn’t reveal any actual footage from the film—instead, it shows off the “Gold Fluffy,” the most prestigious award a mascot could hope to achieve.

'Suicide Squad' apparently sucks

Vanity Fair:


“Suicide Squad” is bad. Not fun bad. Not redeemable bad. Not the kind of bad that is the unfortunate result of artists honorably striving for something ambitious and falling short. “Suicide Squad” is just bad. It’s ugly and boring, a toxic combination that means the film’s highly fetishized violence doesn’t even have the exciting tingle of the wicked or the taboo. (Oh, how the movie wants to be both of those things.) It’s simply a dull chore steeped in flaccid machismo, a shapeless, poorly edited trudge that adds some mildly appalling sexism and even a soupçon of racism to its abundant, hideously timed gun worship. But, perhaps worst of all, “Suicide Squad” is ultimately too shoddy and forgettable to even register as revolting. At least revolting would have been something.

BuzzFeed:


Harley Quinn is an embodiment of all the conflicting things this frankly disastrous new movie, choppily written and directed [by] David Ayer, is attempting to do. She’s meant to be fun in her I’m so cra-azy way, but she’s also a woman in an abusive relationship the movie has no idea how to handle. She’s supposed to be strong, and in the literal sense, she does bash things with a baseball bat. But she’s also a psychological prisoner who has surrendered her sense of self. She’s a goth icon who talks like a 1930s gangster moll and who owns a gun reading ‘love’ and ‘hate’ on the barrel, but in her deepest heart, all she wants is to be a housewife in curlers, looking after the kids while her green-haired hubby heads off to work. She’s anarchic, but not really, and a good time, but not really, and she’s fucked up, but not really — or at least, not really in a way the movie’s ready to take time to explore. Sure, Harley is a tricky character, but she’s been shaped into an intensely sexualized mascot for a film that yearns for edginess, but can’t get over the rounded curves of its female lead.

The New York Times:


A series of tactical skirmishes with faceless minions — semi-zombies that can be slaughtered en masse, without a second thought — leads to a big final showdown. Spoiler alert: It’s essentially the final showdown from ‘Ghostbusters’ and at least a half-dozen other recent blockbusters, with a few differences of what I guess we should call nuance. You can safely duck out of the theater and spend a good 20 minutes on the claw machine or Instagram, slipping back in to catch the final song and the sequel-teasing extra scene during the end credits.

Vulture:


How early will the fanboys who flock to see “Suicide Squad” — smug in the knowledge that they’ve won the day, that Hollywood is now desperate to cater to their tastes above all others’ — admit that they’re watching the year’s most muddled piece of storytelling? Will they say, “Enough!”? Or will they vent over the damage to their favorite characters and promptly move on to debating who should direct the next stupid, overblown “Suicide Squad” movie?

ScreenCrush:


After one of the crummiest summer movie seasons in recent memory, asking one film to redeem four months of tepid blockbusters might have been a suicide mission in and of itself. But “Suicide Squad” doesn’t even come close. From the first scene to the last, it’s an absolute mess, one whose harried pacing, jumbled narrative, and blaring soundtrack of radio hits suggests a desperate post-production attempt to reconfigure what Ayer got on set into something palatable and poppy. The movie opens with a shot of the logo for Belle Reve Prison, which serves as the Suicide Squad’s home base; the facility’s slogan is “’Til Death Do Us Part.” The direness of this movie, along with the staggering number of films yet to come in the DC cinematic universe, makes these words feel like the ultimate threat.

The San Francisco Chronicle:


If you know someone you really can’t stand — not someone you dislike, not someone who rubs you the wrong way, but someone you really loathe and detest — send that person a ticket for “Suicide Squad.” It’s the kind of torment you can wish on your worst enemy without feeling too guilty, not something to inflict permanent damage, just two hours of soul-sickening confusion and sensory torment.

Time Magazine:


Harley Quinn’s entrance is the best moment in “Suicide Squad.” After that, you can leave. Robbie is a criminally appealing actress, likable in just about every way, but that intro aside, “Suicide Squad” doesn’t serve her well. It serves no one well, least of all its audience ... Now and then there’s a dash of color, especially when Leto’s Joker appears, with his silvery capped teeth and Day-Glo hair. Leto seems to be channeling, consciously or otherwise, Richard Widmark in the 1947 noir “Kiss of Death”—that’s the one where Widmark’s truly creepy-evil character pushes an old lady in a wheelchair down the stairs. But Leto is so textbook twitchy that he barely comes off as menacing. And his scenes with Robbie have no spark, no lunatic ardor. If you can’t strike a spark with Robbie, something’s terribly wrong.

Rolling Stone:


Who stole the soul of “Suicide Squad”? I’d say it’s Ayer’s willingness to go all limp-dick and compromise his hardcore action bona fides for a PG-13 crowdpleaser that would rather ingratiate than cut deep, or even cut at all. My heart sank during the film’s big battle between the Squad and zombie soldiers. You heard me: zombies! The walking dead aren’t the only clichés that eat away at the potential in this material. Superfreaks become supersweeties and “Suicide Squad: Dawn of Dullness” (my subtitle) does the impossible. Forget “Batman v Superman” — at least it tried. This botch job makes “Fantastic Four” look good.

The Genius Way Kevin Smith Wants To Make His Buckaroo Banzai Show Awesome

From cinemablend, As television gains more and more respect as an artistic medium, it begins to drive more prestigious talent to work within its confines. Kevin Smith recently re-tried his hand at small screen directing on The Flash to great effect, and he will soon have the opportunity to continue in that medium with his 10-episode update of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension for Amazon. However, he has no intention of going it alone, and Smith recently revealed how he plans to makeBuckaroo Banzai a collaborative filmmaking experience, and the big names he's throwing around make this a seriously exciting prospect. He said:


The big fun for me is going to be collecting the team, 'cause I ain't gonna direct it all. I wanna get the people who loved it as much as me, so people like Richard Kelly, Edgar Wright, I'm gonna reach out to Quentin Tarantino, see if they'll direct an episode. 'Here's a chunk of change, a 50-page script, eight days... go make your section.' That'd be fun. It also means I won't take all the heat myself. (laughs) 'Quentin was here, he didn't fuck it up!'

Kevin Smith laid out his plan to make the Buckaroo Banzai something to remember.while speaking to Comingsoon.net at Fantasia Fest. The genre-bending project has several characteristics that perfectly suit it to the capable hands of several different and well-established filmmakers. For the episodes of the series that require more sci-fi chops and a quick-witted, cult sensibility, Smith is wise in wanting to hand the series off to filmmakers like Richard Kelly and Edgar Wright. For the episodes that juxtapose numerous set pieces with heavy dialogue scenes, he'll talk to someone like Quentin Tarantino, who has a proven track record handling that type of workload.

It most likely helps that there's a very specific source material available to keep everyone on track. As Buckaroo Banzai will take ten episodes to follow the overarching narrative of the original 1984 film, Kevin Smith can at the very least use that original source to give general guidelines regarding tonal and visual consistency. Smith claims that all of these filmmakers are similar fans of the 1984 tale of a brilliant hero's quest to save Earth from an alien attack, so he can trust them to direct autonomously.

We have a distinct feeling that Kevin Smith might be onto something with this particular methodology. Although none of the aforementioned filmmakers have done too much in the realm of television in recent years, Smith recently proved that great things can happen when a competent movie director takes the leap to the small screen. (And Edgar Wright's Spaced and Asylum are two of the best TV comedies of all time, so there's his cred.) Smith's work on "The Runaway Dinosaur" episode of The CW's The Flash easily stood out as a top-tier episode of the hit series' second season, and he has shown a clear interest in continuing his work as a TV director. If he can enlist his own dream team of directors to make a similar leap, then we're in no position to complain about anything.

Nothing is set in stone, but this idea has us incredibly excited about where Kevin Smith's Buckaroo Banzai could go from here. We will bring you more information related to the upcoming Amazon series as more details become available to us.

UPDATE: FANS SUCCESSFULLY RALLY TO BRING BACK THREE 'SESAME STREET' CAST MEMBERS

From metv, Talk about the neighborhood coming together for a good cause. After it was reported last week that three longtime cast members were let go from Sesame Street, the show is now taking steps to bring them back to the neighborhood.

Here's the backstory. Last week, Bob McGrath revealed he was let go from the series after 45 seasons. His fellow cast mates Emilio Delgado and Roscoe Orman were also give pink slips in an effort to save money after the show switched from PBS to HBO earlier this year. The news didn't go over well with fans. People flooded social media to criticize the decision and beg Sesame Workshop to bring back McGrath, Delgado and Orman. Many also pointed out the show was wrong for retaining younger cast members while discarding the ones who have been there since the beginning.

Now here's the good news. Late last week, Orman told Buzzfeed News the outrage from fans helped Sesame Workshop realize they were an integral part of the show. In particular, the three actors who were let go might come back to the series in the near future.

Here's the full statement:
To all of you who have expressed your appreciation and support for the years of work and service to Sesame Street by me and my colleagues, I thank you!

Due to your overwhelming reaction regarding the status of myself and others on the show, the new producers of Sesame Street have reached out to us with an expressed desire to continue our longstanding relationship, to be initiated with a meeting in September. Hopefully, this will result in the inclusion of veteran cast members in upcoming productions. I look forward to sharing with you at such time, the results of that conversation. Thanks again for your loving support and devotion to Sesame Street and to what it has meant to the children of the world.

It's refreshing to see fans come together to make a difference. Are you excited Bob, Luis and Gordon are possibly coming back to the show?

3 a.m. | The SIMPSONS