"...you think Donald tells his wife everything?"

Whelp, as one of the headlines said, the latest J. K. Rowling juggernaut is #1, while the new debuts are down.  Down, down and very dreadfully down!  Does no one want to dream anymore?  I guess Rowling will get to give away another billion dollars after all... didn't she do something like that?
I'm telling you darlings, directors don't matter anymore!  The golden age of the Auteur is over.  I mean, does anyone even care that David Yates directed this?  Or do parents drop off their little beasts at the cinema and say "Ooh!  I hope the 3D and the 1080p is good this time!"  And... dayamn!  Their IMDb web graphic costs more than the average movie did thirty years ago!  In any event, I think we're going to be hearing more from this crazy Lisbeth Salander... I mean, Newt Scamander.  Now, you might be thinking that that's a strange name and all that... but I say perhaps it's a start to erasing Gingrich from our minds once and for all.  A more than suitable replacement!  That's the ticket.
Meanwhile, I try to be optimistic.  The other headlines say that the new debuts really really ate it at the box office this weekend... I prefer to think of it as a triumph of indie cinema, if there's any left.  The IFC channel produces their own shows now, and how long has it been since they showed The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love?  (...note: had to use Yahoo to find that.  You let me down, IMDb!)  I mean, take what they're showing RIGHT NOW as I write this... 1993's The Fugitive.  After that, 1994's The River Wild, and then, 1999's The Green Mile.  Hollywood's best and brightest.  Not one indie movie in the bunch.  NOT ONE.
So let's try to devote some words to the two new debuts this week.  The first is called The Edge of Seventeen, possibly influenced by the Stevie Nicks song of the same name... now, is it just me, or does that sound almost egg-zactly like The Police's "Bring on the Night"?  Same key, same tempo... whatever.  Anyway, life imitates art and vice versa, because the star of The Edge of Seventeen, Oscar-nominated Hailee Steinfeld, appeared in a publication called "Seventeen" magazine.  I know because it gave me a rather nasty paper cut that still smarts.  Love those razor-like covers!  Anyway, the movie was written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig who got the idea after seeing that episode of The Simpsons when Nelson Muntz starts dating Lisa Simpson.  I'm just sayin'.............
The other debut is a boxing movie called Bleed for This.  Well, after Jake Gyllenhall and now Miles Teller, I guess playing a boxer is one of those seven roles that actors often talk about.  The others being cowboy, astronaut, soldier... lawyer?  Race car driver?  Also, a great excuse to crunch those abs.  I saw Miles Teller on the Colbert show and all that, and, well... I don't even want to expound on the (waning?) influence of Colbert on things.  Please don't leave us!  For me, I will say that it was probably the title that turned people off.  Same thing happened with Only the Strong.  Love that movie.  But 90% of the movie-going public said, "Well, I'm not strong, so I guess I'm not going."  Um... capoeira much?  What part of "Mark Dacascos is a national treasure" don't you understand?