BYOB – Weekender 1212
I forgot to mention…
The Day The Earth Stood Still is the worst movie I have seen from a studio all year… going away.
And that IS my complete review.
April 19, 2024
BYOB
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BYOB: 235 Years Of Relative independence
BYOB Weekend: Hop, An April Fool’s Gag?
| Friday | Screens | % Chg | Cume | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Title | Gross | Thtr | % Chgn | Cume |
| Venom | 33 | 4250 | NEW | 33 |
| A Star is Born | 15.7 | 3686 | NEW | 15.7 |
| Smallfoot | 3.5 | 4131 | -46% | 31.3 |
| Night School | 3.5 | 3019 | -63% | 37.9 |
| The House Wirh a Clock in its Walls | 1.8 | 3463 | -43% | 49.5 |
| A Simple Favor | 1 | 2408 | -50% | 46.6 |
| The Nun | 0.75 | 2264 | -52% | 111.5 |
| Hell Fest | 0.6 | 2297 | -70% | 7.4 |
| Crazy Rich Asians | 0.6 | 1466 | -51% | 167.6 |
| The Predator | 0.25 | 1643 | -77% | 49.3 |
| Also Debuting | ||||
| The Hate U Give | 0.17 | 36 | ||
| Shine | 85,600 | 609 | ||
| Exes Baggage | 75,900 | 62 | ||
| NOTA | 71,300 | 138 | ||
| 96 | 61,600 | 62 | ||
| Andhadhun | 55,000 | 54 | ||
| Afsar | 45,400 | 33 | ||
| Project Gutenberg | 36,000 | 17 | ||
| Love Yatri | 22,300 | 41 | ||
| Hello, Mrs. Money | 22,200 | 37 | ||
| Studio 54 | 5,300 | 1 | ||
| Loving Pablo | 4,200 | 15 |
| 3-Day Estimates | Weekend | % Chg | Cume |
|---|---|---|---|
| No Good Dead | 24.4 (11,230) | NEW | 24.4 |
| Dolphin Tale 2 | 16.6 (4,540) | NEW | 16.6 |
| Guardians of the Galaxy | 7.9 (2,550) | -23% | 305.8 |
| Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles | 4.8 (1,630) | -26% | 181.1 |
| The Drop | 4.4 (5,480) | NEW | 4.4 |
| Let's Be Cops | 4.3 (1,570) | -22% | 73 |
| If I Stay | 4.0 (1,320) | -28% | 44.9 |
| The November Man | 2.8 (1,030) | -36% | 22.5 |
| The Giver | 2.5 (1,120) | -26% | 41.2 |
| The Hundred-Foot Journey | 2.5 (1,270) | -21% | 49.4 |
Review: Little Women (no spoilers) - The Hot Blog
Box Office First Look - The Hot Blog
Why You Should Be Afraid Of The End Of The Paramount Decree - The Hot Blog
Strange weekend. Lots of leftovers, very little worth seeing, and i’ll probably go watch The Day the Earth Stood Still just so i can be in on the discussion.
Their marketing weirds me out.
“The only place to see the trailer for XMEN ORIGINS: Wolverine”.
Odd
“Delgo”?
Seriously.
“Delgo”?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!??!
It’s like “Final Fantasy” made by the dudes who brought us 1960s tube perennial “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
Jennifer Connolly strikes again, I suppose.
I guess you didn’t see the X-Files: I Want To Believe. And is there a scene with Jennifer Connelly staring into the ocean at the end of a pier?
This is a left-fielder but I’ve wondered this for years and many of you guys do this for a living:
Do professional critics still take *notes* in the screening room? I know many times over the years Ebert has mentioned jotting stuff down in his notebook (usually really trivial-sounding dumb shit), Glieberman I believe has mentioned it, and I remember some ancient letter or editorial in the LAT where someone was complaining that one of the Times critics with the initials K.T. (I’ve always wondered if they meant Kenny or Thomas) chicken-scratches noisily like a motherfucker through films.
Is this still standard practice? Isn’t it kind of annoying? Are scribblers ever seated next to non-scribblers, and the non-scribblers get pissed? (I would; Some college-paper-writing douche broke out a legal pad during a sneak preview years ago, and it became one of those persistent moviegoer annoyances like a snorer, a nose breather, or a candy sucker where the whole experience becomes about waiting for this fucker to his thing instead of watching the screen.)
Between regular ol’ memory, the press notes, and now, especially, the Internet, do you still really need to strap on the PRESS HAT and the Memo pad and make like Bernstein interviewing Jane Alexander, all to stay on top of the rigorous plotting of “Yes Man”? Isn’t moviegoing more of an emotional/sensory experience than the journalistic reportage of facts.
Just wondered if this practice had fallen by the wayside in recent years, especially with so many old newspaper guys being ushered out. It sounds antiquated and pretty annoying, and the younger dudes today, seems if they wanna get a particular quote or character name right, that shit takes .05 seconds on google after the movie.
LexG: I usually sit by myself and take notes, to get quotes and credits right. (Remember: At festivals, I often among the first people to review certain films, when there aren’t yet credits easily avilable on line.) If anyone complains, I pistol-whip them. That shuts them up more often than not.
Lex- I still scribble furiously in the dark, usually with the aid of one of those infernal lighted pens that invariably konks out midway thru the screening.
The ironic part is that only a fraction of the notes I take usually make it into my review.
On a completely unrelated note, this will be the first year in memory that I won’t be writing one of my traditional “years-in-review” in which I contextualize the year in film before listing my top ten, runner’s-up and worst list.
In an effort to save space–i.e., paper–my douchebag editor has merely requested a list of 10 movies with “one or two sentences about each title.”
The best-list as haiku? Huge “sigh.”
(And happy holidays, Joe.)
I just checked, my two most-hated studio movies this year were Mirrors and Prom Night.
So far.
How about the Pacino/Avnet double-header of “88 Minutes” and “Righteous Kill,” Jeff?
Or “Four Christmases,” “Vantage Point,” “Made of Honor,” “The Ruins,” “Rambo,” “My Best Friend’s Girl” and “Zack and Miri.”
And on the “indie” front, Abel Ferrara’s woebegone “Mary,” “The Children of Huang Shi.” “Blindness,” “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” “Bonneville,” “Chapter 27,” “The Lucky Ones” and “Quid Pro Quo.”
In a category of wretchedness all by itself, David Zucker’s “An American Carol.”
The only one on Movieman’s list there that I’ve actually seen is “The Children of Hunag Shi” and it wasn’t “worst of the year” worthy, but was quite dull and not a good telling of a worthy story. The ability of Jonathan Rhys Meyers to still get work boggles my mind. Why they didn’t get David Wenham, who has a brief role at the start of the film, to play his character is beyond me. A whole big problem with that film would’ve been solved by merely throwing out Meyers’ casting.
Worst of the year for me, so far – i’ve successfully avoided most of the studio and arthouse dross – have been Paul Cox’s insulting and demeaning Salvation, the dire “comedy” farce of The Plex, the deranged but yawn-inducing Thai musical 881, Neil Marshall’s arch and messy Doomsday, the trite relationship dross of Five Moments of Infidelity, Zhang ke Jia’s snooze fest Useless, Jonathan Ogilvie’s half-made Hugo Weaving and Rose Byrne vehicle The Tender Hook, the ever-frustrating abuse-drama Gardens of the Night and the seemingly endless and overly cutesy Definitely, Maybe.
Having said that, I’m sure I’ll catch plenty more 2008 stinkers in the coming months on DVD.
Kam- Most of your “worst” titles haven’t played the States: maybe that’s a good thing.
Although “Doomsday” was truly miserable–and a huge disappointment coming from the gifted Neil Marshall–I loved “Definitely, Maybe.” For my money, it’s one of the most satisfying rom-coms of ’08.
“Huang Shi” made my list precisely for many of the reasons you cited, Kam: it was an incredibly tedious, hackishly made and pedantic telling of the sort of amazing true-life story that would seem to have “can’t miss” written all over it. Meyers was blah (except for “Match Point” and “Velvet Goldmine,” I’ve never really been a fan), but he isn’t the primary reason the film stunk so bad…or sunk so low. It’s easily Spottiswoode’s worst since the immortal “Stop!, or My Mom Will Shoot.”
See the 2007 doc “Nanking” for an infinitely superior treatment of the subject.
Zack and Miri horrible? Someone doesn’t like comedy.
I like comedies just fine, but “Z&M” is the worst Kevin Smith film to date. And that’s coming from a Smith fan who dug even “Mall Rats” and “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.”
2008 comedies I enjoyed that scored at least a “B” rating from me?
(Admittedly some of these stretch the designation of “comedy”):
“Burn After Reading,” “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” “Pineapple Express,” “27 Dresses,” “Definitely, Maybe,” “Semi-Pro,” “In Bruges,” “Miss Pettigrew,” “Leatherheads,” “Step Brothers,” “The Promotion,” “Sarah Marshall,” “Son of Rambow,” “Priceless,” “Sex and the City,” “The Grand,” “Bottle Shock,” “Swing Vote,” “Tropic Thunder,” “Kabluey,” “The House Bunny,” “Ghost Town,” “Hamlet 2,” “Religulous,” “Synecdoche, New York,” “Me and Orson Welles,”
“Finding Amanda,” “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People,”
“War, Inc.,” “Stuck,” “W,” “In Search of a Midnight Kiss,” “Role Models,” “Last Chance Harvey,” “Marley and Me,” “What Just Happened”…..
Mallrats is easily Smith’s worst movie, but I like it for the most part.
I left out “Married Life.”
That’s one of my favorite movies of the year, period.
Maybe I’m crazy, but I loved “Doomsday.”
Lex,
Yes, lots of press take notes during screenings. I am one of those who never takes notes. First, because I don’t like to be pulled out of the experience of being immersed in the film by taking notes and second, because I find the incessant chicken-scratching noise of note-takers to be annoying as hell. It’s almost as irritating as the crackling noise of someone unwrapping a cough drop or hard candy during a quiet moment of a film. But, I also have a very good photographic memory and can recall minute details of films while I’m writing a review, even during the pressure of seeing and reviewing 3-5 films a day during a festival, or months after seeing it. Not everyone can do that, and if you don’t have that kind of recall, I can see why you’d find notes helpful. I very rarely use quotes from a film in a review, so don’t need to worry about that.
The point Joe makes about credits or even press notes often not being available during fests is a valid one, though … and really an issue that the people who’s films are playing fests need to address. If your film is in a fest, you should provide some sort of press notes, even if it’s just a brief synopsis and full list of credits, period. Basic marketing skills. Anyone who’s submitting indie films to fests needs to learn them.
i am reeaaally looking forward to ‘married life’, which is due for release here sometime this year…man, living at the bottom of the world can be so annoying
I’m alot like Kim in that I don’t take notes. When I do a review, I try to stay away from the standard plot point/opinion stuff and go with my feeling on a film. Writing stuff down takes me out of it. If I’m watching a film for enjoyment I’d never take notes and I enjoy films so why mess with what I like?
However if I’m at a festival doing 3-4 films a day, I usually bust out the notepad because I swear, when it comes time to finish the ones I haven’t done, many times I forget I even saw some of the more “trivial” fare.
Also…
“Zack and Miri” is my least favorite Kevin Smith film (it felt rushed and like it needed more story/script work) and I still really liked it alot.
Movieman, the only movies on your ‘awful’ list that I saw were The Ruins, Zack and Miri (which I thought were merely mediocre) and Rambo, which was pretty bad, but not quite so ungodly awful. Z&MMaP was Shakespeare for me, compared to either Jersey Girl or Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
The worst indie I saw this year was Savage Grace, head and shoulders below anything else.
Also, I more or less loved Doomsday.
Could Ray Pride be gaining influence? Without fact checking, I believe so.
No sooner does he blast a good story (Poland follows, hot-bogging it) with “A Roster Of Vet Crickets Consider General Media Predicament (No One Under 60 Need Opine),” than young gun Debruge gets “10 NYC Film Crickets (Mostly Under 30) Who Write For Cheap (Or Free)” on a puff piece with quotes from Crystal Skull loving and famously live-blogging Uhlich and Kohn and ever misinterpreting-her-seniors Longworth:
http://www.mcnblogs.com/filmessent/2008/12/squabbling_over_docs.html#comments
http://weblogs.variety.com/thompsononhollywood/2008/12/yates-revolutio.html
I’d hate to have to rush a review. It only occurred to me the next morning what a male fantasy Poppy was in Happy Go Lucky. An attainable Bettie Page. It must have been her passing.
I liked Zack and Miri‘s first half, but the second half (basically once they started making the movie and you realise there’s no way in hell anybody would want to watch this movie) was a disaster.
Even when it’s a porno as it was in Smith’s film, one of my biggest film pet peeves is when movies have movies-within-movies or tv series-within-movies or stage-shows-within-movies that have no basis in reality whatsoever. Take movies like The TV Set or Centre Stage or, yes, Zack and Miri and the all feature productions within themselves that nobody in their right mind would produce in real life and yet they’re the catalyst for so much within the film? Immediately takes me out of the movie.
Unless it’s Showgirls and Staying Alive. The stage shows within those movies are hysterical.
Is there any other holiday season release running more TV spots than Valkyrie right now? Seriously: I
You know what they’re not really running much TV for, is BEDTIME STORIES. And I think that’s going to be H U G E. Either they’re super confident and don’t need to oversell it, they’re just running their promo exclusively on family shows none of us watch… or they’ve blown what should be the biggest movie of the season.
Like, we’re all fixated on Ben Button and Valkyrie and Rev Road, but let’s face it, that two second bit in the trailer of Sandler looking directly into the camera and shouting in his old SNL voice something about wishing for “A HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS”– That’s like a 50 mil weekend right there.
That shit is going to CLEAN HOUSE, and none of us are even talking about it.
OK This is important so somebody pipe up:
Has anyone seen DELIRIOUS? Not the John Candy soap opera spoof from ’91, but this Tom DeCillo movie with Buscemi?
HOLY SHIT WHY DIDN’T SOMEBODY TELL ME ABOUT THIS????
ALISON LOHMAN = MEGA OWNAGE but she doesn’t work NEARLY ENOUGH for someone who OWNS so hard; I didn’t even know she was in this, but it was on cable tonight and she’s all being HOT and AWESOME and wearing TINY OUTFITS and BEING FUCKING DOWN TO PARTY AND SHIT, seemingly playing some popstar and being scantily clad in every scene.
OWWWWWNAGE. ALISON LOHMAN = AWESOME. Anyone ever see that Egoyan movie where she– Well, Poland asked me to be less X-rated but that GLAZE on her face was the hottest thing in the history of hotness.
ALISON LOHMAN and EVAN RACHEL WOOD and KRISTEN STEWART should do a movie where they where WHITE MIDRIFF Ts, SHORT SKIRTS and HEELS and DRIVE AROUND BEING AWESOME.
GOOD IDEA.
re; BEDTIME STORIES…they’ll blast us dude, don’t worry. The timing is wrong right now. Incidentally, part of that was filmed where my day job is (Calistoga, CA) and I swear, 15 people I know chatted up Sandler, got a pic, autograph…pet his bulldog. The guy could not have been nicer.
T. Holly….I don’t understand your post about Ray and that Variety article. Please to clarify…
As far as note-taking, it depends how long the review is going to be.
If it’s 800 words (or, god forbid, 1000-1300 as it was when I first started), I take notes, to get the good quotes down accurately.
In a 200-word cap, there’s no room for that. So usually no need for notes, unless the quote is amazing.
One critic I dislike a fair bit uses a clicky light-pen that keeps flashing on and off. Another, who is a friend, has a clackety mini-keyboard. I’ve realized I shouldn’t sit near either.
Rambo was not a “good” movie, but it was an awesome one. I still don’t know if Stallone thought the end battle was supposed to be funny or not. I don’t want to know, either.
Don Lewis, on the future of critics, is Peter Debruge saying there are writers of arts and letters who’s wordsmithing is enjoyable to read among Keith Uhlich, Vadim Rizov, Kristi Mitsuda, Michael Koresky, Karina Longworth, Eric Kohn, Nick Pinkerton and Aaron Hillis? If so, he needs please to clarify…
LEX MOTHERFUCKING G = THE FUTURE OF CRITICISM.
CHRIST, someone fucking HIRE ME ALREADY FOR FUCK’S SAKE, I only bring 1,300 readers a day to Poland and Wells’ blogs.
I WANT TO BE A FUCKING FILM CRITIC, only I don’t want to ever sit by movieman and Leydon’s chicken-scratching glow-pen note-taking asses in the fucking screening room.
Come on, LOU FROM CADDYSHACK, put in a good word for me somewhere homes.
FUCK YEAH. Ask DREW sometime; I’m one of the smartest, funniest, and most cine-literate motherfuckers in all L.A.
I deserve better than some wack-fuck posthouse job.
I WANT TO ORDER SOME LA WEEKLY AD ESCORT ONLY INSTEAD OF PUTTING IT IN HER I WANT TO PAY HER TO SIT HERE AND READ MY COLD BLOG POSTS AND TELL ME I AM GOD COME TO EARTH AND FUNNIER THAN ANYONE HERE, THEN I WILL TICKLE HER AND MAKE HER WEAR A PAPER CROWN AND SAY “YOU ARE A SUPERIOR ENTITY O CHOSEN ONE.”
FUCK YEAH.
PUSSY OWNZ. BE GOD.
Oh, yeah, a Russian or Eastern Bloc chick would be most preferred.
‘Cause that snizz is the hotness. KNOW.
THE COLD BLOG MEN = FUCKING EUNECHS. EMBRACE YOUR INNER PERV.
THEY SHOULD HAVE GEISHAS IN THE U.S. MAN IS KING.
Looking forward to my mornin’ lecture from D-PO in full-on WILL BRIMLEY IN OUR HOUSE MODE.
IT’S ALL GOOD NOTRODLURIE, you still own and shit, but I can’t help it if THE LEXMAN’S STAR is shining so BRIGHT that I can’t contain it.
NOW GIVE ME A COLUMN, SON, I BRING IN HALF YOUR GODDMAN READERSHIP JUST TO SEE WHAT MY AWESOME HILARIOUS ASS WILL DO NEXT.
THE PETITION STARTS HERE:
THE LEXBLOG. I’d fucking RUN goddamn MCN and bring in BILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLIONS.
Or you can live in denial.
Oh, and if you haterz don’t BELIEEEEEEE that, look no further than the biggest LEXHATER of em all, BITCH PERM. Homeboy doesn’t even clock in unless it’s to ride my bullshit looking for validation for his boring ass.
Seriously, he’s a HB lurker; Google his dumb ass sometimes; Motherfucker only clocks in to jock my shit… If it weren’t for me, he wouldn’t have a thing in the world to say and probably wouldn’t even click on the Hot Blog.
With me around, he shows up to ride my bozack like it’s HOT TO TROT up in here.
In other words, POINT FUCKING PROVEN that LEXG is the STAR FUCKING ATTRACTION HERE.
FUCK YEAH.
LEXG’S ANTICS = MENTIONS IN ******VANITY FAIR*****, DEFAMER, AND LA WEEKLY.
ACKNOWLEDGE THE HYPE POLAND.
GIVE ME A JOB, ROD LURIE KIMMEL.
Lex, when you stick to discussing film, you can be very interesting and insightful. I enjoy your contributions to serious film talk here. But these drunken rants have become really boring and unfunny. Just my two cents.
I take it personally when LexG’s comments follow mine until 3am. Put it to use dude, and become a war correspondent
http://media-rare.blogspot.com/2008/12/cnns-prisoner-of-war-from-mens-journal.html
or let a film student make a Grey Gardens about you.
T.Holly nails it!
If I Google Lex I find lots of unfunny rants banged out in caps written by a loser. Google is fun!
I also found some porn.
I barely remember even posting half the genius found above, so imagine my delight when I woke up to read such hilarious lines as the one where I reference HOT TO TROT, or where I talk about Poland being like Wilford Brimley.
Those are some great fucking lines.
And not one dude pipes in with a, “Yeah, LexG, Alison Lohman is hot.”
They should just call this The Gay Blog.
Oh my sides!
Tell us more funny jokes Lex!
So – did Mcweeney really split AICN for a new site?
Looks like it.
Hot to Trot — a much understood and sadly under-rated comedy. Which reminds me: What is Bobcat Goldthwait up to these days?
Actually, his real misunderstood comedy is SHAKES THE CLOWN — easily one of the best comedies of the 90’s. The cast of comedians alone is stunning.
“When he gets home he’s gonna fuck that little dog!”
Bobcat Goldthwait directed and appears in Windy City Heat from a few years ago, which is an ugly little turd of a movie.
Can somebody tell me what the new not-AICN site is? Please tell me it’s Mcweeny.com.
So I made it to Twilight and Punisher tonight. While I can see why Twilight has been successful, to me it felt like a sub-Buffy TV pilot with especially stupid characters and a totally unconvincing love story, and since that was supposed to be the core of the movie, it was pretty much a failure as a result. Seen objectively, we’ve got a deeply dysfunctional relationship between the two of them.
Punisher was, thankfully, a lot more entertaining, and kind of a welcome return to basic B-movie level pleasures. I never saw the Thomas Jane movie but this one felt like what a true Punisher movie should feel like – angry, guilty, degraded.
From the AICN TB’s, I think it’s something like hottflix or hitflix…something that sounds like it needs three x’s on the end.
He supposed to be on G4 tonight, or last night. Either way, I love the irony that the guy who Harry said he’d never split from, has split.