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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

4-Day Estimates By Tomorrow Lands Klady

4 day estimates 2015-05-25 at 12.02.59 PM

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21 Responses to “4-Day Estimates By Tomorrow Lands Klady”

  1. Pat Hobby says:

    As usual, Clooney can’t open a film big unless he has help.

  2. movieman says:

    “Cinderella” has been teetering on the edge of $200-million for what seems like a month now.
    At this point, I’m wondering if it’ll ever get there.
    Maybe if Disney finds a way to keep it in (second run) houses all summer…

    Kind of hard to believe that “Paul Blart”–after its soft-ish opening–is closing in on the $70-million mark.
    Guess I’m clearly in the minority for preferring “Tomorrowland” to “Age of Ultron,” and “Age of Adaline” to “PP2.”

  3. movieman says:

    Oh yeah–although this sort of goes without saying, doesn’t it?–“Fury Road” to “F7.”

  4. leahnz says:

    what about ‘spy’? i think i love melissa McC and i’m super straight, she’s the shit in that

  5. Chucky says:

    “Spy” is a wet kiss to the CIA and it doesn’t open for another 2 weeks.

    OTOH it is wonderful to see “Good Kill” get shot down. A movie that worships US drone warfare against Muslims, pushed into arthouses with the nefarious Academy Award Nominee reference — and its box office gross makes it K.I.A.

  6. leahnz says:

    ‘“Spy” is a wet kiss to the CIA”‘

    ha hey and bond is a big spit-swapping twisty-tongue frencher to MI5 (not to mention the legion of doom and some Oscar Whores for good measure) er it’s open here, weird, maybe a little slap in the face of the CIA just to mix it up?

  7. Bulldog68 says:

    Much has been made about the success of Mad Max as an R Rated action film making some dollars at the box office. I only stopped to think about it recently but having seen it twice now, I’m finding difficulty as to why the R rating when stuff like the Taken series is rated PG13.

    There is hardly any gore at all. One F word as far as I can remember, and yes, there was a c section, but the carnage was more car wrecks than hand to hand combat and people getting stabbed.

    Heck the Bourne series has more up close and personal killings than Mad Max.

    Do you guys think the R Rating was in fact a plus for the marketing dept? Or if it was advertised as PG13, then it may have been viewed as a softer Max? Do you think the R Rating was in fact warranted, given what goes for PG13 these days?

  8. movieman says:

    Bulldog- I said pretty much the same thing to my screening companion.
    We both agreed that “Fury Road”‘s “R” rating felt somewhat excessive in light of what routinely passes for “PG-13” these days.
    Like you, I also wondered if the “R” was strictly a marketing decision on WB’s part.
    I sincerely doubt whether the “PG-13” dino-violence in “Jurassic World” will be any less intense (or graphic) than anything in “Fury Road.”

  9. EtGuild2 says:

    “Cinderella” got to the $500 million mark worldwide most people thought it would fall short of though thanks to…of course…Japan and their national obsession with Disney princesses. 5 weeks in a row on top there…$527 million worldwide.

  10. PcChongor says:

    Like most non-sensical R-ratings, “Fury Road” didn’t get an R for the violence, but for the scantily clad breeders and the entirely off-screen c-section scene. It’s a shame too because even though the film itself is great, it really feels like a bit too much for a pg-13 and a bit too soft for an R.

  11. Pete B. says:

    I guess MM:FR gets the “R” for the brief shot of nudity with the lady who is bait, and the large women getting breast pumped. Otherwise it has less gore/flesh than the Road Warrior had decades ago.

    I wondered why it wasn’t PG-13 after seeing it as well.

  12. michael bergeron says:

    I have no dog in this race, but there was the scene where Immortan Joe gets his insides ripped out through his mouth ….

  13. leahnz says:

    fwiw fury road has an R16 rating here – the highest R outside of the fairly rare R18 ‘adults only’ rating – for “violence & content that may disturb” (ratings restrictions for nudity is mentioned specifically by name)

  14. Bulldog68 says:

    “I guess MM:FR gets the “R” for the brief shot of nudity with the lady who is bait.”

    They never really showed her naughty bits though. More or less a distant shot and she covered up as the shot got closer.

  15. PcChongor says:

    Yeah but you’re forgetting that to the MPAA, a brief shot of a bare ass is pretty much the same thing as one added “fuck” or forty extra extremely graphic on-screen deaths.

  16. Stella's Boy says:

    I saw Fury Road with my brother-in-law and halfway through he asked me the rating and didn’t believe me when I said it’s R. The fact that it is R while something like Taken (repeated beatings, stabbings, shootings, etc.) is PG-13 is just a joke.

  17. Nick Arden says:

    >>>As usual, Clooney can’t open a film big unless he has help.

    Clooney couldn’t open an envelope.

  18. Geoff says:

    SPOILER ALERT

    I have seen ‘Fury Road twice now, loved it, but it is DEFINITELY an R-rated film – no there’s not much gratuitous that is shown, but there is a ton of grotesque stuff there if you really stop to watch for it:

    – the guitarist basically has a burnt face that is covered with bandages
    – Immorten Joe has his face ripped off in the climax (right on the edge just like the chainsaw scene in Scarface)
    – Max getting tattooed all over his back in the beginning
    – the gun baron with the amorphous body then shot up with blood squibs near the end
    – the other baron who has his eyes shot out in the middle

    None of this stuff is lingered on but none of it is really hidden either…..and why should it be? If Warners had a few shots cut out to earn a PG-13 rating, then it would have just pissed off the fanboys and hurt the amazing buzz that this film was getting leading to its release.

    Yeah you look at films like the first Taken and The Dark Knight and they come close, but you see the difference: no blood is shown and that’s what it takes to nab the PG 13-rating. Blood is SHOWN in Max Max: Fury Road kind of like Pulp Fiction actually…..it’s just not lingered on. But that gets you an R-rating.

  19. Bulldog68 says:

    Ever wonder how Temple of Doom got by with a PG13 for its heart ripping scene? Or how about Lone Ranger? Sucker Punch?

    Not campaigning that Mad Max should have been PG13. Just wondering about the consistency of the MPAA.

    Imagine, we live in a world where The Dark Knight is PG13, but Philomena and The King’s Speech are Rated R.

    WTF.

  20. jesse says:

    I think that’s one place where the old-people mindset of “comic book heroes are basically kid stuff” that keeps a movie like THE DARK KNIGHT from much serious awards consideration does help the studio bottom line: by the same token, they see Batman and they think PG-13, unless it’s really graphically violent or sexual.

  21. EtGuild2 says:

    Not sure where else to put it; ALOHA is one of the strangest studio releases I’ve ever seen.

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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.”
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