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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Friday Estimates by Gravy Tie Klady

Friday Estimates 2013-10-05 at 9.29.53 AM

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27 Responses to “Friday Estimates by Gravy Tie Klady”

  1. movieman says:

    I know that it wasn’t the hit (critically or b.o.-wise) Harvey had hoped for, but I was still shocked to discover that “Salinger” is already available as a Netflix Instant Play: a mere month after opening in theaters.
    This has gotta be some kind of record, no?

  2. Etguild2 says:

    Interesting that Fox/New Regency has released three films this year all predicated on the star power of a dynamic duo (Affleck/Timberlake, Wilson/Vaughn, Wahlberg/Crowe) and all three have whiffed, while the studio’s sell of a female duo (Bullock/McCarthy) was a wild success.

    Sign of the times that of the three moderate releases this weekend, it’s the Spanish-language comedy “Pulling Strings”, and not the JFK assassination drama “Parkland”, or the evangelical country music weepie “Grace Unplugged,” that finds real success.

    Awful start for the supremely bizarre and enjoyable “Bad Milo!” off the Duplass Bros. shingle.

    And poor holds for pretty much everything from last weekend…”Rush” and “Don Jon” deserved better.

  3. Ray Pride says:

    How soon is its American Masters window? That could be the reason.

  4. pj says:

    Parkland not reporting? Don’t seen numbers on any site.

  5. movieman says:

    Has “Salinger” already aired on PBS, Ray???
    I didn’t think it was getting the American Masters treatment until sometime in 2014.

  6. Ray Pride says:

    “Salinger will air in January 2014 as American Masters’ 200th installment”

    I was presuming TWC had accelerated rights on various windows b/c of the upcoming showing.

    And: “Netflix last year sealed pay-TV window pact for TWC docus and foreign films, including the “The Artist” (winner of 2012 Academy Award for best picture) and “Undefeated” (Oscar winner for best documentary in 2012), as well as a range of movies released by multiplatform distribution label RADiUS-TWC.”

  7. movieman says:

    I thought it was 2014 for the PBS showing.
    No matter how you cut it, it’s still very strange for Netflix to add a film to their streaming service a month after the theatrical launch.
    And prior to a (2014?) dvd release.
    “Salinger” was never even a VOD title.
    I’m pretty sure this is unprecedented.

  8. berg says:

    the same company also has a narrative version of Salinger in the works as well as a book, so at this point it’s about synergy

  9. anghus says:

    Glad to see Gravity do well. It’s nice to know there are still marketing departments capable of selling an event off season and giving people a reason to buy tickets.

    Sad to see Rush dying on the vine. When people scream “why doesn’t Hollywood put out good movies”, i point to the box office chart and declare ‘because America doesn’t want a good movie, they want their eyes and ears fucked senseless with something familiar’

  10. cadavra says:

    Pantelion has figured out what the studios can’t: make a slick-looking, Hollywood-style, Hispanic film, set it in L.A. (preferably in show biz), have some of it in English, toss in a couple of familiar Anglo actors (e.g., Stockard Channing, Tom Arnold) and sit back and watch the dough roll in. Not that different from what Tyler Perry has done. And the biggest kink of all is that they can do very, very well without Whitey.

  11. Etguild2 says:

    What’s amazing is it took this long, especially for Lionsgate. Bollywood has been finding success for years with no white actors and virtually no advertising. And it’s a much smaller niche.

  12. movieman says:

    Just got in from a “Captain Phillips” sneak.
    Ehhh.

    It felt like a 1960’s-style Stanley Kramer message movie w/ action chops.
    Hanks is…Hanks, with a sometimes risible New England accent.
    My sneak aud ate it up, though: even applauding at the end.
    I’m sure it’ll reap critical plaudits, serious awards traction and sizable b.o., but it’s precisely the type of film I’m traditionally (and notoriously) resistant to–e.g., “The Killing Fields.”
    P.S.= I know Variety gave it a nice review, but the “Book Thief” trailer is positively dreadful. Amusingly, they actually resuscitate the old “In a World..”-style voiceover schtick.

  13. Jack1137 says:

    movieman what message was it giving?

  14. scooterzz says:

    my problem with ‘captain phillips’ was that i never felt any sense of tension or involvement… i was willing to write that off to the fact that i knew the story and resolution beforehand but remembered that, in the case of ‘united 93’, i also knew the story but was involved enough to hope for a different ending (weird, right?)…. hanks was fine, the somalians were impressive… it just kinda left me cold…. at the l.a. press conference, pretty much everyone i talked with felt the same way…..

  15. scooterzz says:

    that said and, in an effort to be more positive, just watched a screener of ‘curse of chucky’ and (i know i’ll be killed for this) it’s great fun…lots of twists, turns and callbacks…a really unexpected reboot…it’s direct to dvd and vod and will probably clean-up on halloween….
    also, just watched the first ep of ‘american horror story: coven’….this should be a very fun season….

  16. Jack1137 says:

    scooterzz My question is are the Somalians presented in a sympathetic light?

  17. scooterzz says:

    one is a complete villain, two are complicit in the crime(s) and one is sympathetic in that he is, at least, empathetic to the situation of the title character….

  18. Chris says:

    There is sympathy for their dilemma. We are shown the cruel and hopeless world where they live, where piracy is one of the few “jobs.” Not that the movie buys their justification, but it does allow them to say that their current piracy is a kind of payback for what might be termed piracy on the part of the western world — overfishing the waters off their country. They even refer to the ransom demand as a “tax.”

  19. Jack1137 says:

    Thanks scooterzz Chris.The reason i was asking was with a Film like this that tends toward Academy Honors with this Diector and Mr.Hanks i suspected they would portray the Somalians as Victims.

  20. scooterzz says:

    well, y’know… there is a hint of that…

  21. movieman says:

    From what I could infer, Jack, Greengrass was attempting to make a leftist treatise about race, the global economy and the fruits/evils of rapacious capitalism within a Third World context.
    I sure hope the dude who plays Hanks’ principal antagonist doesn’t pull a Haing S. Ngor and win the best supporting actor Oscar.
    Like Ngor, he’s a non-actor essentially playing “himself.” (And also vis-a-vis Ngor, I could only understand half of what came out of his mouth.)
    The movie left me as cold as Scooter says it did him and his LA press compatriots. It’s a “well-made” film, just not a terribly compelling or even particularly convincing one. (And the hagiographic treatment of Phillips was borderline embarrassing.)
    P.S.= Kathryn Bigelow did this movie’s final act a whole lot better in “ZDT.”

  22. Etguild2 says:

    So excited for “Curse of Chucky!!!!”

  23. Chris says:

    Um, Barkhad Abdi is a Minneapolis resident of 14 years and employee of a wireless store who plays a Somali pirate. He is not “playing himself.”

  24. Chris says:

    (and, in real life, he speaks English just fine)

  25. movieman says:

    Chris- He’s a non-pro playing a character from–I’m assuming–his native land. That’s what I meant by “essentially playing himself.”
    I don’t think anyone would confuse him with an actual pirate, lol.
    Certainly not on the basis of a less than expert performance: he seems to have been cast more for his ravaged look than any particular thesping skills.
    I was relieved when the pirates’ dialogue was subtitled since I could barely decipher any of their “English.”

  26. Chris says:

    FYI, that’s not what “playing himself” means. And your difficulty with his speech is deliberate — he’s playing a character who can barely speak English. How’s your “Somali?”

  27. movieman says:

    That’s what “playing himself” means to me, Chris.
    Find a native of the country the character is supposed to be from (previous acting experience not required) and cut them loose before the camera.
    And apparently you’re better versed in Somali-accented (broken) English than me.
    50% of the pirates’ dialogue was incomprehensible to my ears.

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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