Along with a lot of folks on the web, I too am actually looking forward to this one…but probably more as a DVD release. I just can’t imagine myself making the effort to see “Race to Witch Mountain” at the theater. I dunno, we’ll see. It all depends on whether the Dan Haggerty retrospective is happening that weekend or not.
The bonus for me here is that I’ve almost completely forgotten what the original “Escape to Witch Mountain” was all about, so I can’t make the comparison that many worried/excited fans are blogging about and therefore I’m not bothered about the memory of the original being tarnished. I know that this trailer conjures fond (yet hazy) recollections of the original, so its spirit must be intact. However, the thing fans will definitely have to brace themselves for is a more hip, rollercoaster ride type of flick – a popcorn movie. While the original may have had more going for it in terms of depth, this latest film will certainly will be lighter fare. It’s made by the guy who made “The Game Plan” – big Hollywood fluff. Change, rarely for the best, is inevitable. All we can hope for is that it’s fun.
I’m also really pulling for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in this one. I like the guy. I think both he and Vin Diesel got screwed by getting the big push towards movie action stardom during a bad time in cinema history – basically when most everything sucked. Both of these guys had their initial hit or two and then were immediately fast-tracked into numerous overblown action clunkers that never went anywhere. Since then they’ve grabbed onto more family friendly fare in order to try and gain some footing. It’s not their fault. They both have the chops, it’s just that the films they were supposed to become giant action stars in were awful - Dwayne had “Walking Tall” and “Scorpion King,” however “The Rundown” was pretty great, and Vin had “XxX” and “The Chronicles of Riddick,” while both films had mixed reactions they did fail to boost the actor into action superstar status. It sucks that they didn’t get Schwarzenegger’s 12-year “Conan” to “True Lies” heyday as action stars. Instead, they went right to “Junior” in just a few years. Good news is that Vin’s journey into cutesy seems to have lasted only one film – “The Pacifier” – he’s now gone back to his roots in “Fast & Furious.” And for Dwayne, “Race to Witch Mountain” looks like a healthy combo of action and family fun, so perhaps this will be a proper vehicle for him to show what he’s got.
Posted by Scott Mendelson in Writer's Corner at 12:16 PM
PST
First of all, the top three movies that opened on Christmas day all broke the record for the biggest Christmas Day opening of all time. The previous high was Ali, which snagged $10.2 million in 2001 on its opening day (and proved to be severely front loaded, natch). Marley & Me opened with a whopping $14.5 million. The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button opened in second with a surprising $11.5 million. It took in $10.2 million on Friday and if it doesn’t peter out by the New Year, it retakes the front runner position from Slumdog Millionaire for the Best Picture race (it may just make back its $150 million budget… I was doubtful).
Look for lots of gossip columns/blog entries on Monday detailing how Jennifer Aniston (with the help of Owen Wilson) defeated her ex-husband Brad Pitt at the box office, never mind that one was advertised as a family-friendly, PG-rated dog movie and the other was a nearly three-hour sobering drama about aging and dying (the latter opening in 600 fewer theaters). I’ll say they’re both winners, they both performed well above relative expectations. and leave it at that (from what I’ve heard, both movies are about loss and aging).
Third place went to Bedtime Stories, which had $10.3 million. Most, including me, thought it would win the derby, but its third place finish is more a sign of the other films’ strength than any weakness of this Adam Sandler vehicle. It did another $10 million on Friday, so it’ll still post Night At The Museum numbers - a touch over $30 million. Fourth place went to Valkyrie, which pulled in $8.5 million. With its Friday numbers already at an additional $8 million, the three-day number looks to be right in the $25 million range where Tom Cruise vehicles usually reside (The Last Samurai, Vanilla Sky, Collateral). So, looks like all the hub-bub about Tom Cruise’s fallen status was for naught. People just didn’t want to see Lions For Lambs no matter who was in it (it was an interesting, thoughtful movie, but not something that needed to be seen in theaters).
The only real flop of the season was the allegedly atrocious The Spirit. Only $6.4 million worth of moviegoers have so far paid to see Frank Miller’s cinematic defecation on Will Eisner’s grave. Alas, from what I’ve been told, at no point does the title character exclaim: “What are you, retarded? I’m the goddamn Spirit!”. This superhero entry is the final film in Lionsgate’s aggressive and somewhat innovative 12-film blitz that started at the very end of August (twelve films in sixteen weeks, all in different genres and what not). Ironically, it appears that they saved the worst for both best and last, opening and closing this experiment with Disaster Movie and The Spirit, respectively.
The holdovers all more or less copied their prior weekend business (as is usually the case for the last two weekends of the year). Yes Man and Seven Pounds will close out the first holiday weekend with about $50 million and $40 million respectively. Both will try their darnedest to squeak past the $100 million mark by mid-January. Obviously, the happy Jim Carrey comedy has a better shot than the downer Will Smith drama, but these are so far fine totals for both films, respectively (especially as their opening weekends were tempered by last week’s brutal snow storms).
So, everything looks to be absolute gangbusters for the end of the year. We may have a $200 million 3-day number by Sunday and we’ll see what happens after that. Mazel tov to Aniston (her second biggest opening after Bruce Almighty), Cruise (Valkyrie has outside shot at being Cruise’s biggest non-M:I and non-Spielberg opening ever), and Pitt (who will have his third biggest opening ever for a stand-alone star vehicle, after Mr. And Mrs. Smith and Troy). And mazel tov to Frank Miller, who got exactly what he deserved this holiday season.
Here’s a Special Film Threat Edition of He Shot Cyrus’ most popular feature.
These are three scenes that are special to me for one reason or another. Sometimes, it’s nostalgia. Other times, it’s just entertainment. Sometimes…it’s the hardly-visual hamster in the foreground running on the treadmill.
Here are Three Scenes I Love from Christmas movies.
Love Actually
A corny pick, I know. Not every movie can put the Xin X-Mas like Die Hard. Knightly bats a lackluster .013 average as far as entertaining movies are concerned but somehow everything that should have sucked about this movie didn’t. Nothing like forbidden love to make you think about Jesus’ birthday.
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
This one isn’t actually from the movie, but it’s the most memorable thing about HA2:LINY (as I like to call it). I like how their dad supposedly sounds like a South Dakotan transsexual prostitute. “Hi kids, weirrr home errrlee.”
A Christmas Story
Somehow I missed all 24 hours of TNT’s Christmas Story marathon. Every year, I tune in and out trying to catch this scene. Seen that kid stick his tongue to the pole too many times to count. Missed Santa booting a boy in the face. I’d like to share that special moment with you now.
Posted by Scott Mendelson in Writer's Corner at 11:14 AM
PST
This fake trailer for Thundercats: The Movie is one of the better, more technically accomplished fake trailers I’ve seen in awhile. The editing and special effects are terrific and, unlike most mash ups, this actually has the rhythm and flow of a real preview. Starring, among others, Brad Pitt, Vin Diesel, Hugh Jackman, and Alexa Vega, this is a very on-point deconstruction of summer tent-pole trailers. It also scores as a biting take on the whole ’same-shit, different costumes’ feel of many fantasy films and/or live-action updates of comics and cartoons (cough-Wolverine-cough). Whether they intended to or not, the gang at Wormy T have made a true piece of satirical art.
If you were given the opportunity to go back in time
and delete a film from history, would you?
A couple of weeks ago, Burbanked wrote a great post about Six Days, Seven Nights that asked that same question. Immediately, a specific film came to mind. I would delete The Birth of a Nation! The film makes my stomach turn with its awful depictions of African Americans and its celebration of the Ku Klux Klan. Sure of my answer, I began to write this post. Then, like any 80s baby in this situation, I thought of Back to the Future II and how bad things got when Biff turned out rich. Remember when Marty breaks into his house? Next thing he knows, he’s dodging baseball bat swings. What if I deleted Birth of a Nation and suddenly didn’t know my address? Let’s take a careful look at what we’re dealing with here.
Birth of a Nation was a huge success when it was released in 1915. It pulled in over 10 million dollars (those were 1915 dollars!) worldwide. Its success turned filmmaker D.W. Griffith into a household name (especially if your home was filled with racist Klansmen with a love for cinema) and secured him a place in film history. Besides the financial success, it was also the first film screened at the White House and is credited as the driving force behind the 1920s Klan revival.
From a technical standpoint, many techniques not widely known at the time including iris shots and extreme closeups were used by Griffith. Any film historian knows that Griffith merely popularized them but invented almost none of them. Borrowed from other short silent films of the time, Griffith was the first to bring them all together into one film. Also, in a world of shorts, Nation was a twelve-reel film with a 190 minute running time (at 16 frames-per-second). Griffith is credited with establishing the 90+ minute standard for feature-length productions. Technically speaking, Nation is an extremely impressive film. Filmmakers used Nation as a movie-making model. The precedents set by Griffith in 1915 are still in full effect today. So what would movies today be like if Nation never existed? What would America be like if Nation never existed?
We know the effects on both now. The Ku Klux Klan had between four and five million members in the Unites States within the years following Nation’s release. The diminishing organization saw a second rise thanks to the film. Riots broke out in the cities that screened Griffith’s groundbreaking project. Black filmmakers struggled to have a voice in a time where they were silenced cinematic ally. Oscar Micheaux and John W. Noble both directed films in response to Nation (Within Our Gates and The Birth of a Race, respectively) and the NAACP used the film as an opportunity to educate people on the real events that took place during Civil War times. But………the Klan was back.
Film history was forever changed by Nation too. This 190-minute movie filled with influences reaching from Griffith’s own backyard to other countries across the world set the new standards for filmmaking. Like with the switch to sound or fully-colored productions, everything American filmmakers knew about their craft was changing. But would these changes have still been made if Nation hadn’t done it first? Clearly, it would have. Film was already advancing technically in radical ways across America and Europe. That’s where Griffith got his influences. If cinema was already heading in this direction, with multi-reel films being produced in multiple countries, then why wouldn’t one of them be the first breakthrough smash-hit? People blame Jaws for forming Hollywood’s “blockbuster” model but if the shark had worked like Spielberg wanted it to and the film had flopped, why wouldn’t Star Wars have created the blockbuster four years later?
In short, Nation was the first to push mainstream cinema towards feature-length films, and arguably the first to make film “mainstream” in the first place,” but that doesn’t mean that no one else would have done it. Who knows, maybe Rex Ingram’s The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1920) would have been the one to study in our Film History courses? Or Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid (1921). What I’m trying to say is that the changes made to cinema were inevitable. They were going to happen with or without a film glorifying and inspiring the revival of one of the ugliest, most vile organizations in the country’s history. In my opinion, any film that brings the Klan back should be deleted from history even if it means that the next time I think I’m home, a protective black man turns my face into a Rawlings baseball for trespassing.
[Note: Some of you might know me as El Gringo at He Shot Cyrus. For those who don’t, feel free to know me as Scott at Film Threat.]
Posted by Scott Mendelson in Writer's Corner at 11:46 PM
PST
How odd is this? In literally seven days, we’ll have four films starring the four biggest stars on the planet, four of the very last true movie stars who still do star vehicles. This weekend we have the biggest star on earth, Will Smith, with the dark, depressing Oscar-bait vehicle Seven Pounds. We also have Yes Man, the first true comedic star vehicle for comedy icon Jim Carrey since Bruce Almighty back in 2003 (Fun With Dick And Jane was a tag-team picture with Tea Leoni). Both films probably have ceilings of $125 million and both should be considered major successes if they get anywhere close to that.
The next weekend we have the former king of the mountain, Tom Cruise, trying to reassert his box office credibility (and save his fledgling United Artists) with Valkyrie. It’s a darn good movie, but box office may be limited as there aren’t any set pieces that merit repeat viewing (again, $125 million seems to be the best case scenario here, which would be right in line with The Last Samurai and Minority Report).
Next we have Bedtime Stories, this year’s attempt at Night At The Museum, another kid-friendly fx-filled fantasy yarn starring a popular comedian. This time, the automatic ‘advance straight to Go, collect $200 million’ award goes to fellow comedy giant Adam Sandler (in his follow up to You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, which this non-Sandler fan is placing on his best of 2008 list). We’ll see if the Adam Sandler quality to box office pattern holds true again (that’’s ‘good movie = underwhelming grosses’), but I’m pretty sure this one is so well positioned and high-concept that it would make $150 million even if Michael Madsen were in the lead.
While all four of these films have the potential to do well with the long Christmas break season, I have to note two oddities. First of all, we have four films from four of the biggest true movie stars all going head-to-head with each other. They all have their reasons though. Will Smith scored huge with this weekend the last two years in a row, with fellow Oscar bait The Pursuit Of Happyness and I Am Legend. Jim Carry scored the prior two years on the pre-Christmas jaunt as well (Lemony Snicket and Fun With Dick And Jane both crossed $100 million). Bedtime Stories is trying so hard to be Night At The Museum that it’s choosing the same release date. As for Valkyrie, well, apparently MGM wants to make sure it’s out by 2008 for tax-related reasons, make of that what you will.
The truly funny part is that the two drama divas and the kings of comedy are not opening against each other. Sure, it would be foolish for two zany comedies and two dark dramas to open directly against each other, but it still feels like a missed opportunity. In comic book terms. ‘what would happen if Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler fought each other?’ and ‘who would win in a smack down between Tom Cruise and Will Smith?’. As it is, it feels like a super-hero/super villain team up where they end up fighting the other guy’s nemesis at the climax.
Random thoughts as the night dwindles on. Any takers on who will emerge victorious and who will crash in defeat? Place your bets, folks, this is going to be an epic confrontation (complete with collectible cover).
Former Film Threat colleague Mark Bell coined a term a while back in reference to the clan of boorish film journalists who are constantly invited to junkets, festivals and various other film related activities. He called it “film industry inertia” wherein no matter how crappy and unprofessional the writer, how lousy their manners and behavior, no matter how “in-bed” they are with certain studios (thus screwing over ones they aren’t in cahoots with) these creepy critics are still first in line to get screeners and press invites to film events. Thus readers are forced to go to their sites first to get breaking news on buzz-worthy flicks.
I don’t know how they continually get away with it. Mostly it has to stem from the fact that publicists need to do their job and get word out on their films no matter how much of an asshole the writer/blogger/journalist has become over the years. And part of it stems from fear that said writer/blogger/journalist might stomp their feet and cry about what they “aren’t” getting and thus try to make a film, PR firm or studio look bad. In any case, it’s rewarding bad behavior and today, a rare thing happened: Roger Friedman opened his mouth a few too many times and was not granted access to an early screening of “Valkyrie.”
On his blog at the FOX News website (well, that explains a few things), Friedman had a full blown foot stomping tantrum and claimed he was “banned” from seeing “Valkyrie.” Notorious suck-up Friedman whines, “This column has been banned from seeing a preview screening of Tom Cruise in Valkyrie. The publicists for the film at 42West and United Artists sent me an email on Saturday to that effect. So what shall we do?” Hmmm…funny thing is, Friedman wasn’t banned from anything, he just simply wasn’t invited.
L.A. Times blogger Patrick Goldstein (one of the few film writers out there who still seems to derive comedy from Friedman’s slanted writings) caught on to Friedman’s bitch session and did some legwork to get the real scoop. He spoke with UA marketing exec Michael Vollman who shed some light on the studios decision. Turns out Friedman has not only continually made fun of star Tom Cruise over the years but of late he’s set his negativity on “Valkyrie” itself, never missing a chance to take a pot-shot at the film. In fact Vollman swears Friedman told one of the publicists for “Valkyrie” that “I’m going to hate the movie.”
So just to recap; Friedman has a longstanding dislike of Tom Cruise and has been badmouthing “Valkyrie” every chance he gets. He even goes so far as to tell a person involved in the PR of the actual film he hates it before even seeing it. Then, when he doesn’t get invited to an early screening of the film, he claims he was banned and ends that statement with a poor me “what shall we do?” Then, rather than accept responsibility for publicly poking fun at “Valkyrie” for months leading up to the films release and therefore digging his own grave in terms of a sneak-peek, Friedman tries to make it seem as though the studio didn’t want his “straight shooter” opinion on the film out there for all to see. He then goes on to quote Eugene Levy’s diss on the film as a way to prove that he was right, that “Valkyrie” is bad.
Wow. Just…wow. For starters Roger, don’t twist facts to make it look like you’re being mistreated. You made your bed, now lie in it. Funnily enough, I always thought film writers were doing their job so people could read about films, not so we could each voice our displeasure with a certain person or studio. Furthermore, everyone should be striving to see a film with an open mind, especially if they’re expected to write intelligently about the film after the fact.
As I mentioned at the start of this blog, it’s not a secret to anyone involved in film journalism that Roger Friedman is a bottom of the barrel guy who writes for a top of the line (in terms of traffic) website. And most people don’t care that he acts like a high schooler in a clique who will make life a living hell for people who don’t do what he wants. In fact it’s really become a game wherein many of us gather to watch him and other creeps of the crop gather around publicists at screenings or festivals and act out their role of spoiled, self-important pricks that they are. But it’s so refreshing to see a studio finally stick it to one of these unprofessional louts and call them on their bad behavior. Now if only other studios and PR firms would follow suit, we could start to turn around the sinking ship that is informed film journalism.
Posted by Scott Mendelson in Writer's Corner at 10:59 AM
PST
First of all, do you know anyone who is going to refer to this film by its full title? I know Fox wants a franchise of origin stories (Magneto is next), but just calling it Wolverine would have sufficed.
As for the trailer, I’m relatively unimpressed. The action looks big, but for some reason the whole movie feels small, especially when compared to the immediate competition (Star Trek, Terminator Salvation). It’s a good thing this is the first film of the summer, because that’s the only trump card it has (it’s Paramount’s job to now convince moviegoers that Star Trek is the real first film of summer). That ‘Logan hangs onto a helicopter’ shot is fine, but it’s not what you end a trailer on.
On the plus side, I’ll see Liev Schreiber in most anything. And while it’s nice that they got a real actor to play Sabertooth, but where art thou, continuity? I don’t think Gambit looks as bland as others do, but then I’m not a die-hard fan either. The other fan cameos are too inside-baseball for this casual fan, so I won’t comment on them (I guess Ryan Reynolds was tired of doing quirky, mind-spinning comedies that no one saw). Frankly, assuming any of them survive, Fox has enough new mutants in this film to start a whole new series (the “Weapon X” franchise?).
Oh, and regarding that shot of Logan in the Civil War: Over 50,000 Canadian citizens fought for the North, and 10,000 fought for the South in the American Civil War.
And, of course, the film also has plenty of detractors – in this case, probably the same kind of people who choke on the barrel of a gun every holiday season. But to be fair, the problem many of these folks have with “Monsters vs. Aliens” is the easy comparison drawn to two of Pixar’s most cherished titles – “Monsters Inc.” and “The Incredibles.” Sure, any fool can see it, but what the hell’s wrong with that? At least they’re not giving us another “Bee Movie” or Shrek sequel…not now, anyways. Also, this comparison is based almost entirely on the look of the film – yes, a CG animated film featuring monsters and aliens will more than likely look quite a bit like “Monsters Inc.” and “The Incredibles.” But at the center of “Monsters vs. Aliens” I can feel a Godzilla movie as its heart and soul. And that’s a really great thing as it’s been a few years since we’ve had a new Godzilla movie and it will be several more years before we have another – not counting the 3D IMAX Godzilla film supposedly hitting theaters next year. Looks like 2009 could be huge for giant 3D monsters, so can’t we all just get along?
Posted by Scott Mendelson in Writer's Corner at 12:07 AM
PST
This Watchmen piece was apparently shown at this summer’s Comic-Con. It’s far superior to the second trailer that came out last month. I’m going to assume at this point that the amount of slow motion footage in the trailers is not representative of the film itself (there’s your running time solution right there). Maybe it’s just a matter of the characters not actually speaking, or the haunting music, or maybe it’s the token footage that deals with the mundane (after all, Watchmen is not hip or cool, but a sad and sorrowful tale of opportunities lost and dreams unfulfilled), but this is a far more promising glimpse into 2009’s most nail-biting ‘Geez, will it be good?’ movie.
And here is the full Terminator: Salvation trailer that just went up. This looks like a dark, gritty war picture that just happens to involve giant killer robots, which is just the way to go with this material. Whatever concessions were made for that alleged PG-13 rating, the tone wasn’t among them. Ironically, this may end up resembling the underrated 2002 Christian Bale/Matthew McConaughey dragons vs mankind flop, Reign Of Fire, which was itself incredibly bleak for a summer popcorn film. So far, all signs point to a solid winner here.
Between Watchmen, Terminator Salvation, and Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, Warner Bros is well on its way to leading the pack this summer (of course, Harry Potter 6 will make so much money that Watchmen can flop and they’ll still be just fine).
