OCTOBER 10TH, 2014 — RDJ reports for Jury Duty

Theater ThursdaysHello again, my fellow geeks!

First, the good news. I am still alive. Yes, It was touch and go there for a little while, but it looks like I’m going to be okay. The sad thing is, I’m only slightly joking. When last I posted, I was getting over a nasty case of Acute Bronchitis and on the mend, but then, I was knocked down again with a serious upper resp. infection that became a fungal infection. In case that sounds bad…it is. It means that I was having serious trouble drawing breaths, one after the other, which is what you have to do to live. The doctors wanted to put me in the hospital for observation because the oxygen levels in my blood….zzzzzz

Sorry, I just realized how BORING that all was. Lets just say that I was sick. Very sick and unable to do much of anything. I’m not 100% yet, but I am getting better.

Now! Movies!

While I was out, Denzel Washington busted heads and took names and The Equalizer became his biggest debut ever and one of the biggest September openings of all time. It took about 10 years to get that film made, but I bet it won’t take that long for the sequel.

Last weekend, Director David Fincher had his own record weekend as Gone Girl opened to almost 40 million dollars. Not only is it his biggest opening, it’s also one of his very best films. I am a well-known Fincher acolyte and even I was knocked back at how great the film actually was. It’s a career best performance by Ben Affleck and a truly star making performance by Rosamund Pike. To give you an idea of how good this film is, it features an amazing performance by Tyler Perry. I look at that sentence and I still cannot believe I just typed that.

Last weekend also saw the 32nd Nicolas Cage film of 2014 as the long-awaited (by the author at least) remake of Left Behind opened and failed to impress anyone except Nick Cage’s accountant as he cashed the check and added the amount to the tax bill that Cage has been paying off for the last decade.

This weekend brings us the first Robert Downey Jr. film without Marvel in the title since…Due Date?

RDJ starts working on his post Iron Man career with THE JUDGE (R 131 minutes) a film that he and his producer/Wife have shepherded to the screen. With Co-Stars like Robert Duvall and Billy Bob Thornton, it’s sure to be an acting master class.  I’m glad that this film is being made, because it’s the kind of film that we don’t get very often anymore. It reminds me of a John Grisham novel to film adaption that we would see every two years or so in the 90’s, but that have become very rare in the past few years.

Also this weekend,  Universal is rebooting their Classic Monsters line with Dracula Untold (PG-13  93 Minutes) which they’ve said could fit into cannon should the film be well received. That is about as wide open a statement as one could ever give, so take it with a grain of salt.

Well, that about does it for this week, but next week we have Brad Pitt commanding a tank in WWII and yet another Nicolas Sparks story that isn’t The Notebook. In fact, all future Nicolas Sparks films should just be called “Not the Notebook“.  This “Not the Notebook” is called Best of Me.

Until next time, Keep the Projector Threaded.