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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Friday Estimates by Klady – 9/7

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15 Responses to “Friday Estimates by Klady – 9/7”

  1. Chicago48 says:

    I saw Yuma, liked it. Good character development, suspenseful. The audience – older mature. 1/2 full theatre at 4:45.
    Hope it has legs. Needs to be seen. This is the season for the adults to come out and support movies.

  2. Jerry Colvin says:

    Loved both Yuma and Shoot ‘Em Up. Concerned that I’d never heard of Shoot ‘Em Up until about two days ago. A movie this good should be better marketed.

  3. bipedalist says:

    Go Yuma. Great movie. Hope it makes a bundle.

  4. ployp says:

    Shoot ’em Up coming to Thailand on the 20th. I’ll be the first in line at the cinema!!!
    Sadly, no release date yet for 3:10 to Yuma.

  5. Rob says:

    Boy, I had a great time at Shoot ‘Em Up, but I guess it’s running into the same type of problem as Grindhouse.
    I wonder if Turturro will be able to get more bookings for Romance & Cigarettes, as it’s apparently drawing a decent crowd to the Film Forum.

  6. Telemachos says:

    Guess I’m in the minority…. I was bored by 3:10 TO YUMA. It did nothing for me; felt forced, artificial, and unsurprising in every way. In fact, all it did was make me appreciate OPEN RANGE more.

  7. CharlieDontSurf says:

    No I was bored for the most part with Yuma also. Love westerns but thought Yuma was pretty crapy, esp the last 30 minutes or so, short of the star power.
    Directing was devoid of any style or originality. An episode of Deadwood, which I don’t even like, feels more real and original than this movie.

  8. Chicago48 says:

    Open Range was a good movie too, required patience. But all westerns IMO require patience to watch bec it’s a lot of character development and motivation – why people do what they do.
    Does anyone know if there are FEWER theatre outlets in the U.S. than ever before? Seems there’s a lot of product out there but fewer theatres to put them in. Just wondering.

  9. ployp says:

    As someone who’s looking in, Chicago48, I think that the problem is that studios want to open their movies on as many screens as possible, leaving no room for smaller films in the cinema. This topic was discussed a while back on this blog.

  10. tjfar67 says:

    Too bad about SHOOT ‘EM UP. I expect YUMA to have decent legs, since it’ll appeal to adults more than SHOOT.
    A movie like SHOOT lives or dies by it’s opening weekend. It seems to be more of a movie geek movie and may tick off the typical action movie fans.
    “Hatchet” was crap. It should have gone DTV. It’ll actually play better on video after a few beers and the right group of friends.

  11. anghus says:

    it seemed like the majority of Shoot Em Up’s marketing was based online. I saw banner ads and rollover clips on a majority of film websites, and the tv ads were sparse.
    I love Clive Owen, but can we add him to the “Can’t open a movie no matter how hard the Studios push him on people” list. That list right now includes
    Josh Lucas
    Jude Law
    Colin Farrell
    There are more, but it’s early and i’m blanking.

  12. jesse says:

    You know, I have to wonder about the Colin Farrell thing. Certainly he didn’t “open” Alexander or even do much for Miami Vice, but back in 2003 he was front and center in several hits. The Recruit did $50 million or so; Pacino helped, but Pacino solo (or even Pacino with other young stars) isn’t guaranteed box office. S.W.A.T made like $120 mil, didn’t it? Farrell was top-billed in that and we’ve seen that Sam Jackson isn’t always solid for box-office. Even Daredevil did $100 million; no one really liked it, granted, but Farrell was the best thing about it.
    I’m not saying he’s hugely popular or anything, but I feel like people act like he’s one of those “stars” who’s never actually been in a hit, and that’s not really true. Ask the Dust and The New World and A Home at the End of the World were never going to be big hits; the only truly mass-market movie he’s done since 2003 was Miami Vice — which, granted, was a major box-office disappointment. But no one’s acting like Jamie Foxx is a completely fabricated star, even though he’s had a roughly similar box-office track record.
    Jude Law and Josh Lucas and Clive Owen (and Ewan McGregor, for that matter), I totally agree — even though Law, Owen, and McGregor are three of my favorite actors around (Law has been stuck in handsome-cad parts lately but think of him circa A.I./Road to Perdition/Cold Mountain — really varied, excellent work).

  13. Lota says:

    SHoot em up was ok, entertaining but not much for my cerebral cortex.
    There are only a few men and women who can open a movie at all. But we’ve had that debate and list several times on this blog, and yes Clive goes into the list “can’t” and Russell Crowe, post telephone assault, is crossing over into that list too.

  14. bulldog68 says:

    I’m not too sure about agreeing that the B/O records of Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx are all that similar.
    The most recent $100M+ grosser for CF is SWAT in 2003. The only others on his resume are Daredevil, (Credit to Ben Affleck), and Minority Report, (Credit to Tom Cruise) I think however that CF has deliberately stayed away from what could be termed obvious B/O spectaculars. His choices have not been the commercially driven bonanzas, but more ‘artistic’ leaning.
    Jamie Foxx is just coming off of his biggest hit, Dreamgirls, and I do believe he was a factor in getting it there. His other efforts have at least gotten to at least 60M with his bomb being Stealth, and he had third billing, (or is it fourth after the jet). He is making smart choices for his career, not too artsy, yet with enough commercial meat that could keep him a viable box office draw, as well as a critical success.

  15. anghus says:

    Ewan McGregor, THANK YOU.
    i knew i was missing one.

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon