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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Box Office Hell – April 18, 2008

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17 Responses to “Box Office Hell – April 18, 2008”

  1. brack says:

    I’m going with EW this week, everyone else seems to be underestimating FSM and overestimating TFK.

  2. Agreed. Although I haven’t seen the marketing for The Forbidden Kingdom. Are the Weinsteins or Liongate in charge of that aspect?

  3. IOIOIOI says:

    Camel: the advertising for the Forbidden Kingdom has been pretty good, and I believe Lionsgate has been running the show on this one. Nevertheless, I am going with the 5XPENIS over Jet Li’s ability to keep a promise. Nice to see the kid from Sky High in a trippy martial-arts period piece.

  4. brack says:

    TFK’s trailers weren’t bad, but I haven’t really seen any TV spots. Then again, I DVR most shows, and may miss them, but I’ve seen a lot more FSM ads than TFK. I’m rooting for both to do well.

  5. abba_70s says:

    Early numbers at boxofficemoguls say it’ll be a close 1-2 for FK followed by FSM. Honestly, I’m rooting for both to do well. It’s been a LOOOOOOONG spring. Prom Night or 10,000 BC anyone?

  6. Chucky in Jersey says:

    This weekend is the spring edition of the Jeffmcm Film Festival. Sarah … Street Kings … Horton … even Osama and Blueberry Nights … all promoted with a proper dose of name-checking.
    The public sees the non-stop name-checking and decides to just say no.

  7. RocketScientist says:

    Christ GOD, Chucky, we get it – you hate name-checking. You namecheck name-checking, asshole – find a new dead horse to fucking beat all ready. Christ!

  8. jeffmcm says:

    Chucky, you obviously don’t understand what I’m trying to tell you, which I’ve always been very clear about. I have no love of name-checking, which I had never even heard of until you started mentioning it every Saturday afternoon. I merely think that your bizarre, relentless anti-name-checking crusade is mysterious (as in, it makes no sense, nobody else agrees with you, etc) and annoying (see Rocketscientist’s post). Only a person single-mindedly confident that what they are posting is correct and necessary to the education of the world would persist in this manner, which is also puzzling.
    If you would ever explain yourself or provide any context whatsoever, probably nobody would care. But as it is, it’s like somebody posting every week “Iron Man will fail because they used the Chromium font in their billboards” and ever explaining why.

  9. jeffmcm says:

    That should read ‘never’.
    Also, My Blueberry Nights, from the director of In the Mood for Love, is a pretty good movie. No opinion about that others cause I hain’t seen them.

  10. LexG says:

    My Blueberry Night has HOT CHICKS.
    PORTMAN HELLS YES. LEXFAVE NO. 9.
    Seriously, though, Jeff, the fact that he personally named you in that post (while never, ever answering your pleas to explain his hairbrained theories) suggests he’s doing this shtick intentionally just to get under your skin.

  11. LexG says:

    Or maybe the entire board’s skin. It’s certainly working. The Matrix thing he’s pulled this week would seem to tip his hand too far in revealing it as a running gag. It’s simply the most absurd thing ever.

  12. leahnz says:

    what’s name-checking?

  13. brack says:

    I don’t understand how all these movies have been promoted with “name checking.” Last I checked, people go see movies for various reasons, and a lot of times it has to do with who is involved. I don’t see what’s wrong with that.

  14. jeffmcm says:

    Lex, it’s possible, but I think some kind of OCD or Asperger’s is more likely.

  15. Chucky in Jersey says:

    I would argue that name-checking = lack of creativity = Hype and B.S.
    The ads for “Osama” name-check “Super Size Me” — a pic that a lot of people saw as a hit job on McDonald’s. The ads for “Blueberry Nights” not only name-check “In the Mood for Love”, they don’t ID the director — very selfish when you’re handling arty fare. Not surprisingly both titles are stiffing.
    These days the industry model is Everything Has to Be Pre-Sold, Nothing Can Sound Original. It’s becoming comic book, franchise, remake, sequel, TV-based, name-checking, Oscar-whoring or any combination of same. Wait till grosses go down one summer — a very real likelihood with the US in a recession.

  16. brack says:

    Hollywood has been making prepackaged stuff for a very, very long time. Think of all the classic films that were first books. You’re not pointing out anything new or anything that says anything about the quality of the films being released, just that there’s name checking, and it’s really silly if you think about it.

  17. jeffmcm says:

    The massive error you insist on making, Chucky, is conflating the marketing with the making of the movies you’re talking about. They are not the same thing. If your crusade is against lazy marketing teams, then proceed with the wind at your backs, but it has always sounded like your beef is with the movies themselves – that since My Blueberry Nights name-checks an earlier movie from the same director – regardless of quality of either movie – that, logically, it must be a prepackaged piece of crap, which is not true if you know anything else about the situation.
    I just can’t stand this kind of monolithic thought.

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