MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Friday, August 7th, 2009 - 9 Comments »
Be Sociable, Share!

Box Offiice GI Hell

bohell080709.png

Be Sociable, Share!

9 Comments »

9 Responses to “Box Offiice GI Hell”

  1. xiayun says:
    August 7, 2009 at 12:15 pm

    My predictions:
    1. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra – 47.0 (New)
    2. Julie & Julia – 22.7 (New)
    3. G-Force – 10.0 (-42.9%)
    4. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – 9.5 (-47.0%)
    5. Funny People – 9.5 (-58.1%)
    6. The Ugly Truth – 7.0 (-46.9%)
    7. A Perfect Getaway – 5.5 (New)
    8. Aliens in the Attic – 4.5 (-43.8%)
    9. (500) Days of Summer – 4.3 (+54.8%)
    10. Orphan – 4.1 (-45.5%)
    11. The Hangover – 3.5 (-32.6%)
    12. Ice Age 3 – 2.7 (-51.1%)
    http://piaofang.blogspot.com/2009/08/weekend-box-office-predictions-aug-7-9.html

  2. NickF says:
    August 7, 2009 at 1:42 pm

    $45 mil for the weekend would be a nice amount for G.I. Joe to start at.

  3. Scott Mendelson says:
    August 7, 2009 at 3:27 pm

    For the record, I saw GI Joe this afternoon and quite enjoyed it. It kinda crumbles in the last twenty-minutes (bad plotting issues), but it’s far, far better than you’d expect considering its buzz. It’s a real action picture through and through.

  4. movieman says:
    August 7, 2009 at 4:21 pm

    I saw “Joe” this afternoon, too, Scott.
    The first half felt stultifying, nearly as unbearable as “Transformers 2.” But the second half–when it switches into unadulterated camp terrain–was deliciously entertaining. The dialogue is atrocious, the profligate waste of so many good actors (especially poor J-G Levitt) is downright criminal and the f/x overload is deadening (and deafening). And yet I laughed harder than I did at virtually any movie this summer; at least during the delirious second half. The fact that the humor seemed so unintentional, accidental even, only made me cherish it all the more.
    Was gifted with an unusually early–for the Cleveland market anyway– press screening of “Basterds” yesterday afternoon, and I’m still processing it. I will say that it’s possibly the first Tarantino movie that Tarantino haters might actually like.

  5. The Big Perm says:
    August 7, 2009 at 5:05 pm

    I’m surprised to hear that…Basterds sounds like it’s long and draggy (not like that can describe all of Tarantino’s other movies, if you’re not into that).
    Maybe it’s weird but I find Levitt being Cobra Commander funny…I guess he’s an adult but he seems like a high-schooler.

  6. Geoff says:
    August 7, 2009 at 11:09 pm

    Strange quirks in my schedule allowed me to see both Julie and Julia and GI Joe, today – I enjoyed them both for different reasons. Julie and Julia is definitely the better movie and (this is faint praise for me) definitely the best film that Nora Ephron has directed.
    Early box office numbers are getting out from Steve Mason and Nikki Finke – Joe did about $22 million today, bigger than I would have thought and probably could break $55 millino. Once again, Paramount has successfully a launched a new brand property, they have a real knack for this.
    J&J did over $7 million and could break $20 million – I guess this Meryl Streep hype is the real deal.
    Funny People has dropped huge, disappointingly – it probably won’t even crack $10 million in its second weekend and might not crack $60 million. Apatow is getting knocked down a notch.

  7. movieman says:
    August 8, 2009 at 5:06 am

    “Basterds” is fascinating in so many ways, but I’m not sure what the fanboy brigade will make of it.
    65% or better is subtitled (the dialogue is mostly in German and French), it felt oddly conventional (!) for a Tarantino film (the studied pacing, the easy-to-follow revenge/narrative arc, the fealty to “Tradition of Quality” production values, etc.), Brad Pitt has a glorified cameo and there’s precious little action. I think it’s going to play better in big-city arthouses than in flyover country (the place where “G.I. Joe” killed).
    Yet people who’ve never had much use for Tarantino may love it. There’s a big-deal arthouse in the Cleveland market whose primary demographic is (a) older and (b) Jewish. I think they’d enjoy this; and you probably couldn’t have paid them to see “Kill Bill,” “Death Proof” or virtually any other post-“Pulp” Tarantino.

  8. Cadavra says:
    August 8, 2009 at 10:05 am

    This won’t hurt Apatow. Most comedy filmmakers who try a serious film get slapped down at the B.O. (Woody being a sometime exception). It’ll be written off as a pro bono labor of love, and he’ll be back to penises and puking in no time.

  9. christian says:
    August 8, 2009 at 10:09 am

    I saw Apatow on Jon Stewart and as he started talking about how he masturbated to Bill Kristol…well, life is too short.

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