The Hot Blog Archive for April, 2008
Klady's Weekend Estimates – Pre Tax '08
The number that really struck me this morning was for La Misma Luna/Under The Same Moon, which has quietly grossed over $10 million now and should settle in to the box office neighborhood of Y Tu Mama Tambien and Volver.
For some reason, The Weinstein Co, which was a partner in the buy of the film, keeps getting credit for releasing the film… but the film is, in fact, being released by Fox Searchlight domestically. This is a rare foreign language release for the studio, having got their collective hand slammed in the money door three times in 2003 with Lucia, Lucia, L’Auberge Espagnole, and The Dancer Upstairs, which collectively earned $5.5 million… not to mention the Night Watch/Day Watch combo, a record-breaker in Russia and good for less than $2m domestically.
So congratulations are in order for Searchlight.
The news is not quite as cheerful with Young @ Heart, the studio’s first doc release under Peter Rice.
There were only three $1 million-plus docs last year, including Sicko… the other two did $1.4m and $1.1m. And there were only four more that did over $500,000. The Oscar winner, Taxi to The Darkside? Under $250k.
This year, you might include the Stones concert film as a doc…but really, should we? Is the Vince Vaughn comedy tour really a doc? Because no other docs this year have hit $250k.
Young @ Heart may pass that number. So is that a hit? Or a miss?
Tough sledding.
There Will Be Blu: Episode 2
I wrote a piece on Blu-ray and There Will Be Blood based on Stu Van Gogh’s near ear removal over the lack of great extras on this week’s DVD release… which then vanished when the servers were “maintained” last night.
TWBB is the next to last Oscar title to land on DVD (Juno arrives this week) and the only one not available in hi-def.
Is PT Anderson waiting for the best DVD format to be available for release to offload his goodies? The Blu-ray of TWBB is actually set for release… in Europe… on July 7. Of course, Miramax owns international on the film. And Paramount’s Sweeney Todd, which was just released in the US with no hi-def, is due on Blu-ray via international owner WB on May 19. Both are, of course, Region 2. Argh.
Or is Paramount just not ready for Blu, either by contract or by being set up to produce product? Paramount had hinted about a Blu-ray release, with an HD release no longer viable. But there has been no clear indication that Paramount has been released from their HD obligations… obligations that were paid for with many millions of dollars.
And then there is this…
There were 32 Paramount Blu-ray releases before the deal got done. Recently, 11 of those titles went back on sale on Amazon.com. (The other have a post-first-purchase EBay life.)
Meanwhile, Universal’s next big DVD release, Charlie Wilson’s War, has no current HD plans indicated in any market in any format at all.
And…
The Speed Racer International Trailer landed on the web site, with no family (except… is that a spoiler?), more action than any of the other trailers, and an Asian element that starts to show that The Wachowskis made this one with the world clearly in mind.
What is also beginning to become clear is that instead of feeling encumbered by the limitations of CG, they pushed the form in a way that reaches past the idea of reality. Pulling a frame for this entry was almost impossible, as the movement is so much of what the images are about.
The website also has a steering wheel POV that allows you to click on each of the Mach 5’s buttons to see what it will do, like replacing its own tires, sawblading other cars, etc.
I am getting more excited. And hoping not to be dissapointed.
Speed Reading
As for Speed Racer, IO is right to say that The Second Weekend of the Summer looks crappy on paper.
What is unique about it, however, is that there is a limited history of major releases on that date.
The Matrix Reloaded – which opened to $92 million and is still in the Top Ten All-Time for May, with $282 million at the box office
Friday Estimates by Klady – 3/12/08
So what happened on Prom Night?
1. The best marketing materials for girls in this genre since The Ring.
2. Tracking doesn’t get teens… just doesn’t… why do people still get surprised?
3. Did I mention the marketing materials?
Street Kings will also do better than its best estimate for the weekend. See answer #2 above… and add penises.
Smart People will also be on the high side of estimates… and this is when star power does matter… when a $3.5 million opening looks good.
And those people who are going to Smart People? Many of the same adults who went to go see Leatherheads… and told their friends that they could wait until DVD.
Sorry…
I forgot that we were having maintenance last night from our server company… I should have put up a note.
In the process, I also lost a new entry… argh… which I will rebuild later today.
Meanwhile… the sound of a lie to come being danced around…
The Audacity Of Truth… Redux
It’s been a few days since I have mentioned politics in this space. But once again, someone trying to make evil from an honest voice has reared its head.
Maybe people will disagree. The Clinton and McCain campaigns certainly have. And The Huffington Post has responsibly – in spite of their “blogger,” who has now made two heavily promoted nasty posts out of one California fundraiser that press was not invited to attend, report on, or record – offered the tape recording that his quotes were pulled out of, along with a full transcript.
Here is what he said –
The truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you’ll find is, is that people of every background — there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you’ll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I’d be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you’re doing what you’re doing.
Is that not the cold, hard truth?
I guess you could spin the mention of religion as some form of attack, but coming from a man who has spent the last six weeks being beaten up because he was “too close” to his retired pastor, it would be stunning to read this – and the guns and other “take to ground” choices – as anything other but a fair look at how people behave when they feel threatened.
The first thing I thought when reading this full transcript was that Michael Moore MUST come out for Obama now, because he just was quoted saying very much what Moore has been saying in ALL of his films. Fear creates separation. Hope must overcome cynicism and that fear to become trusted.
OF COURSE people in Pennsylvania hit by closings and unemployment are bitter… what the hell else would they be?
I was also reminded of that scene in Primary Colors, where the Clinton character speaks at a closed or closing mill, and is reminded that they can take a curse word or two there. This is yet another example of Obama playing on exactly what Bill Clinton played on when he was running for office… offering hope to people who suffered… who are angry… who are bitter… who are scared.
These comments are exactly WHY I support Obama… not why I would call him elitist. He is as honest a man as any politician I know of
Box Office Hell – 4/11
Prom Night reference
The Messengers – $14.7m – 2/2/07
When a Stranger Calls – $21.6m -2/3/06
A Must See
Tarsem’s The Fall is a deeply flawed piece of storytelling… but if you are at all serious about cinema, you MUST see the film on a big screen during its upcoming run via Roadside Attractions, supported by “Presented by” credits from Fincher and Jonze.
Tarsem made this movie on his own dime, shooting for years around his schedule of commerical shoots in the world’s most exotic locations. And piece by piece, it is frickin’ breathtaking. The story device – a sick soldier telling the story to a little girl in order to trick her into getting him drugs that he wants to use to commit suicide – is iffy, though in the end, the emotion works. But the tale, which mixes The Wizard of Oz, Baron Munchausen, and other admitted tall tales leads to exception bouts of visual imagination unlike you will see in all but a small handful of films.
So… see it.
Unless your date is studying film at Columbia, you may not get laid until you wake him/her up and get her to another movie. But if you love the visual, you owe it to yourself to suck this one back.
The trailer… and my review from Toronto ’06
Home Again… Naturally.
Ahhhhhhhhhhh…
There is something great about being home.
And now, the work begins. Time to get my head back into things in a real way.
I am thrilled that Michael Wilmington has started working with us at MCN. And his review of Shine A Light has all the passion and detail that has made him one of America’s best.
Get ready for a load of new stuff in the next week as I ermerge from my traditional post-Oscar coma…
Drives Me Crazy
I have read at least 3 news stories today quoting numbers that are used to support an argument by the article’s author. But while people are busy whining about blogs, how is it that they – and more importantly, their editors – getting that all stats are simply not the same.
An AOL poll about television is, a) based on people who are using AOL’s site, b) based on a site, AOL, that is owned by Time-Warner, not an unbiased place to start, 3) naturally manipulated by the news, views, and ads on that AOL site, and 4) based on people who opt-in, who are notoriously unreliable.
I didn’t run into it today, but my friend, Anne Thompson, runs stats from Fandango each week as though they are news. They are not. Of course there is a natural tendency for more ticket sales to reflect more popular movies. But audiences that buy tickets online, people who hang out on Fandango, the theater chains that Fandango serves, race, age, and sex all are variables that are not in any way counted in this “survey.” With all due respect, it is nothing but a slightly interesting artifact.
And in today’s NY Times, a lazy reading of the MPAA materials about the last year at the box office leads to a quote of a MPAA “stat,” that is actually from the portion of their report that was based on a survey. There is a HUGE difference from a hard fact, based on hard numbers, and a number coming out of a survey… especially when movie surveys come up misleading time after time after time, based primarily on the questions asked, not any ill intent. (As I often comment… could YOU really tell someone on the phone tomorrow how many movies you will go to a theater to see this summer? Without looking at a release chart and estimating? Speaking for myself, I could see 20 mainstream releases… or 30.. or more… in the 16 weeks of the summer season.)
This really isn’t about the constant backhanding of the web with cheap disdain… though that raises my fury. It really is about reporters and editors not paying attention to where their information is coming from. Sometimes a banana is just a banana. Sometimes, it is a soda or a pie or a penis or some pudding. That detail matters if you seek to make a legitimate argument and not just to support your position with any “survey” or “stat” that’s handy.
It Should Be Noted…
There is no mention of Paramount anywhere on the trailer of Tropic Thunder, as there was none on The Ruins.
There is a Paramount tag on materials for Kung Fu Panda, though the distributed by card for Paramount is stuck on the back side of the trailer, not up front.
If you want to read the tea leaves – though the tea is read, cold, and ready to move along – these are much stronger messages than a lot of the gossip that floats around. Credits are a powerful public comment taken quite seriously because the lack thereof can be embarrassing… just recall how Par Vantage ended up forcing its logo onto No Country For Old Men publicity and marketing materials domestically and gave space to Miramax on There Will Be Blood as well.
BYOB – Beware The Nines Of April
Travel day.
What other familiar phrases could use refreshing?
And what else do you have to say?
Mrs Coen & God Come To Broadway… Coo Coo Ca Choo
The experience of Odet’s The Country Girl, starring Morgan Freeman, Frances McDormand, and Peter Gallagher, and directed by Mike Nichols was interesting.
The show is still in previews, though the many lost lines during last night’s performance was off-putting, in that the show is about a guy who may or may not be able to remember his lines in a play. But that, I can forgive.
What struck me really odd was the choice of this show for this remarkable group of actors. It’s a decent show… but it’s a tiny, minor piece, more famous for who played the title role (Grace Kelly) than the show itself. The story is, basically, about an aging actor who lost his career after falling off the wagon hard, who gets a second chance. His wife, The Country Girl, is either a manipulative shrew or a patient, generous, supportive soul, depending on the perspective of the scene.
Thing is, in 2008, nothing this woman does seems remotely out of line, even when we are on the shrew tack.
And it is also worth noting that you can feel the audience connect mostly with the dozen laugh lines in the show… and the couple of big speeches. But the cast sparkles as an ensemble when they are funny.
Each actor gets at least one bite of scenery leveling dialogue… and all deliver. But by the second act of the show, I kept finding myself considering how much better this group would have been supported by a script from the same period, but with some intense energy. His Girl Friday, the boy-girl redo of The Front Page is what kept hitting me. McDormand can do anything, in my book. But here, she is quite muted. And Freeman is a force of nature, though he never seemed very relaxed on the stage, aside from in a couple of longer dialogue runs. Gallagher gets better and better on stage, where his looks are not as distracting to casting people.
What it felt like to me was the third show in a four show season of a theater company. If we had seen Freeman’s Cyrano to McDormand’s Roxanne and McDormand’s Hildy to Freeman’s Walter and then The Country Girl, it would have been a pleasant evening of theater… and a great short breath before the season close with Freeman’s Higgins to McDormand’s Dolittle and Gallagher’s Pickering.
It’s not the mess that the recent Cyrano on Broadway was. Nichols delivers and the set is spectacular in its understatement. But in the end, the show is just… okay.
This is a season with a lot of straight plays… most of which have already exited, stage right. Survivors include the deservedly Pulitzer-winning August: Osage County and Mamet’s laughfest, November. Many shows were, to be fair. limited engagements. A Catered Affair, which is really a play with a few songs, is about to get sadly slaughtered (the intention is good… the show is missing any excitement… Light In the Piazza without the Italians). Cat On A Hot Tin Roof is black, Macbeth is Patrick Stewarted, and Les Liasons Dangereuses is a Roundabout with Oscar-nodded Laura Linney.
Things aren’t much more exciting on the musical side, with Cry-Baby a possible teen girl hit, but not half the show that Hairspray was, and the only originals coming in are the oddball Passing Strange and In The Heights. South Pacific, Gypsy, and Sunday In The Park With George are bone fide revival hits.
Funny season.
