Bill Bregoli - At The Movies - January 1st 2025

Well, Wednesday is Movie Day here on WNTK and that means we get together with Bill Burgoli. How's it going Bill? It's going pretty well, how about you? Well, I'm just fine. It's the end of the year and it's time for some new, new year and new stuff, isn't it? That's right, but we still have some unfinished business with the old movies and Sonic 3.

was number one over the weekend with the three-day weekend with 38 million dollars and it's now made over 137 and that was kind of expected but Mufasa actually in second place gave it a run for its money with 37 million dollars and it actually made more money this past weekend than its first weekend. It went up six percent.

I guess people will finally realize what it was about. Yeah. And it helped. And also the families were all together for the holidays. So let's bring the kids. Yeah, it's definitely a kids movie. Yeah. Yeah. So that helped them. And then third place was definitely not a kids movie, Nosferatu. Yeah. The vampire movie, the vampire. I guess I'm calling it a vampire origin movie because it's kind of like the first of the vampire stories.

And that opened really well with $21.1 million. And it was the biggest opening for its distributor folk films. So they're very happy. And as kind of expected, Wicked was number four with 19.45 million. That did really well. And it's now made over 400 million just in North America. Whoo hoo. That's pretty good. Whoo hoo. Wicked. Yeah. Doing OK. And Moana, too.

was in fifth place with uh... and just behind that and eighteen point two million dollars that's now made over three hundred ninety four million and uh... does he's very happy about that so they've got two films in the top five and uh... number six was a complete unknown the bob doin bio-picked it really well well i would expect that too it's uh... yeah and needless to say got a note it's getting an interesting split in audiences getting the older people who don't know who bob doin what else there is

And it's getting the younger ones who are watching it to see Timothy Chalamet. Well, there you go. It's, yeah, bridging the generation gap. That's right. Something for everyone. And so if you're a movie distributor, what do you do on the weekend after big Christmas family movies? You just kind of punt and put out some strange and interesting things coming up this weekend. We have one called Vermiglio.

I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right. It takes place in 1944 in this mountain village in Italy where the war is very far away but all of a sudden a young man named Pietro comes in. He's a deserter and he's taken in by the local schoolmaster's large family and this changes everything. Apparently the schoolmaster has some secrets because

There's a scene in the trailer where a young girl goes, I know where Grandpa keeps his secrets. Oh. So there's something going on with him. And of course, he falls in love with the eldest daughter. And this leads to marriage and strange stuff. This is the official submission of Italy for its best international feature film category for the Oscars. So they're putting it out by

Whether it gets nominated or not remains to be seen, but this is what Italy wants to be their nominee film. Hmm. Okay. And needless to say, it's an Italian, but there are subtitles. Yeah, but there are subtitles. And then we have a whole, just a hard of a bunch of creepy movies. We have one called The Damned. And this takes place

In the 19th century, in this isolated fishing post, we'll have more somewhere. And this widow has to make an impossible choice. In the middle of everything, and they're all starving in their village, this ship sinks off the coast of their fishing village. And she has to figure out whether to kill those who were shipwrecked or survive the winter with what's left of their food. And they pretty much decide to let them starve.

Not to help the victims of the shipwreck and that comes back to haunt them That's called the damned won't be in a lot of theaters, but we'll be in theaters also in theaters is another creepy movie called the monster beneath us and is about to

woman and her son they moved back to unoccupied house where her ex-husband had was recently found dead but it's a big old english mansion and of course it's haunted and uh... there's something in the cellar in this one too hmm yeah it's not an angry water eater and and and then there's a few opening wider i talked about this a few weeks ago but it didn't open a very many theaters now it's going to be

And a lot more places is called September 5th. And this takes place, the entire movie takes place in one room, the ABC TV control room during the Munich Olympics, when they have to figure out how do we cover a story like this where sports grow? This is news. This is different. Yeah, we talked about that last week. So it's an interesting time. Yeah. And they work in some real footage of people like Jim McKay.

And also whenever you see Jim McKay, at least when you ever see his face, it's really Jim McKay, and this is what he said during those days. And there's some interesting things they have to figure out. How are we going to, they're shooting film in those days? And their thing is, how do we get the film back and forth to be processed when the Olympic Village is shut down and not letting anybody in or out, but our cameraman's in there? So they get a strapping young man who works for them, and they

find some some sweats and like the uniform clothes for the olymp for the athletes. They fake his ID. The graphics department fakes him an ID and they taped the film canisters to the guy's belly and send them in and out. There you go.

Yeah, simple. Interesting stuff like that. And it's more about journalism than it certainly is about sports. Well, it shows a little bit behind the scenes there. And you mentioned something, and you and I both know this because we worked closely with Network News. But the Network News has its own graphic arts department. And those people are on call all the time. They're always working.

You know, you wouldn't think it, but a graphic arts people are, you know, they're, they're important part of the TV news operation. So yeah. Yeah. And they show them working and also important to this whole operation. And you'll see in the film was the young German woman who was the interpreter. Mm hmm. Yeah. Those are all Americans and for the most part in that newsroom. That's worth checking on again. It's called September 5th. And on Netflix is something a lot lighter.

Wallace and Grumett from Ardenman Animation. It's clay animation at its best, and Grumett is the dog, and Wallace is his owner, I guess you could call it, is human. And he likes to make inventions. So he comes up with a smart gnome, a garden gnome, which has AI, I guess, and it's supposed to help

It's supposed to help Wallace with all his grommet, I mean with all his duties in the backyard. But of course it goes crazy and everything goes out of control. Very cute. I saw it at a special screening and the animators were there and they brought the actual puppets that they use. And they were a lot smaller than I expected but you know they have to move them frame by frame.

Well, that's it. It's a challenging thing to make. But the end result is actually, it can be really good. I mean, there's some of them, the marionette puppets that they made in the early 60s for the space shows like Fireball, Excel. Those were rather creepy looking. But some of the clay ones are actually very nice. Yeah.

Yeah, they're very charming. Thank you forever. Isn't that the second Wallace and Gromit film? Because there was another one several years ago. Yeah, this is a sort of a sequel. Right. And if you're an older person and a film buff, you recognize that they bring back little moments from other films, tape fear and things like that. They kind of find out. That's a good thing. I think that's, yeah, that's it.

Yeah, they have a villain who's a he's a penguin, but his name is feathers McGee. Wow. Irish penguin. And I'm penguin with a and he pretends to be a chicken. So he puts a red rubber glove to look like, you know, a chicken's comb. Sounds like a great movie, even for adults and kids. Right. So that's what we've got on the weekend after Christmas.

Well, great. Well, thanks, Bill. Happy New Year, and we'll look forward to more stuff next week. Happy New Year to you, too.