MCN Weekend Archive for July, 2011

Friday Estimates: July 8, 2011

Transformers 3, already over $500 million worldwide, hold well in the US. Newcomer Horrible Bosses looks like it has a big enough lead over the more family-oriented Zookeeper to stay in the #2 slot for the weekend.

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Wilmington on Movies: Zookeeper

  Zookeeper (Two Stars) U.S.: Frank Coraci, 2011 Zookeeper is a Kevin James comedy of almost stupefying dopiness; a movie that, at its worst, makes you feel (to succumb for a moment to Zookeeper’s own vice of ludicrous exaggeration), as if you were sinking slowly, slowly into a huge steaming vat of vanilla pudding, while…

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Box Office Hell — July 7

Our Players|Coming Soon|Box Office Prophets|Box Office Guru|EW|Box Office . com Transformers: Dark of the Moon|46.0|52.1|43.0|46.0|47.0 Horrible Bosses|27.8|23.2|29.0|27.0|25.0 Zookeeper|23.5|27.8|23.0|21.0|23.0 Cars 2 |13.0|13.3|13.0|15.0|15.0 Bad Teacher |8.0|8.4|n/a|n/a|8.3

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Wilmington on DVDs: The Rest. Season of the Witch, Hobo With a Shotgun, The Fearmakers, Rope of Sand, The Cocoanuts

Season of the Witch (Two and a Half Stars) U.S., Dominic Sena, 2011 ( 20th Century Fox ) It’s good, or at least encouraging,  to find a big movie super production that has at least a little literary-dramatic ambition — and the new Nicolas Cage show, Season of the Witch, certainly has some of that. Produced to a…

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Critics Roundup — July 7

Horrible Bosses |||||Red Zookeeper |Red||||Red Septien (NY) ||||Green| Project Nim (limited) |Green||Green|Green|Green The Sleeping Beauty (limited) ||||| Beats, Rhymes and Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest (limited) |||Yellow|| John Carpenter’s The Ward |Yellow||||

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Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: Classic and Blu-ray. Three by Pixar: Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up

PICK OF THE WEEK: CLASSIC AND BLU-RAY Three from Pixar (Blu-ray)   For the past few years, the jewels in the Disney Studio’s animated crown have usually been the Pixar movies: those wittily written, brilliantly characterized, wildly popular, critically hailed (well, as long as it’s not Cars 2) feature-length gems from Disney head John Lasseter’s brainchild…

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Wilmington on DVDs. Pick of the Week: New. 13 Assassins

 PICK OF THE WEEK: NEW “13 Assassins” (Three and a Half Stars) Japan: Takashi Miike, 2010 (Magnolia)   13 Assassins. The sons of the Seven Samurai? In an abandoned mountain village that they have turned into a huge, ingenious booby trap, 13 samurai, or free-lance fighters, assembled by an idealistic master warrior, await their enemy:…

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DVD Wrapup: Of Gods and Men, Oblivion, Transformers Headmasters, People of Sunday, Trailers From Hell, BloodRayne …

Of Gods and Men: Blu-ray At a time when people who believe they’ve been washed in the blood of the lamb can manipulate the words of Jesus Christ to justify blowing up abortion clinics, sexually abusing children and protecting the predators, denying marriage to same-sex couples and harassing the families of soldiers killed in combat,…

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Weekend Estimates – July 4, 2011

NOTE: 4 day Estimates Transformers: Dark of the Moon|116.2 (28,960)|NEW|180.9 Cars 2|31.9 (7,750)|-60%|122.8 Bad Teacher|17.7 (5,800)|-54%|63.1 Larry Crowne|15.7 (5,290)|NEW|15.7 Super 8|9.6 (3,100)|-35%|110.1 Monte Carlo|8.8 (3,570)|NEW|8.8 Green Lantern|8.0 (2,440)|-64%|103.7 Mr. Popper’s Penguins|6.8 (2,370)|-46%|51.8 Bridesmaids|4.4 (3,150)|-31%|153.8 Midnight in Paris|4.3 (4,980)|-15%|34.5

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The Weekend Report (4 day) – July 4, 2001

Transformers: Dark of the Moon certainly had an effect on other business with last week’s leader Cars 2 taking a 60% hit and most of the other holdovers dropping at least by half. The newcomers both performed at the low end of projections even if they attracted their target audiences. Larry Crowne not unexpectedly had exit demos that translated into 64% female and 81% older than 35 years of age.

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Wilmington on Movies: The Makioka Sisters; Live Today, Die Tomorrow; Onibaba

  The Makioka Sisters (Four Stars) Japan: Kon Ichikawa, 1983 Kon Ichikawa’s 1983 film of the famous ‘40s novel by Junichiro Tanizaki — with its subtle and exquisite dramatization of a crucial period in the lives of four beautiful, upper-class sisters living in Osaka — is one of the great Japanese films, and perhaps one…

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Friday Estimates: July 1, 2011

The Cars That Change and The Cans That Don’t are #1 and #2 as expected. Cameron Diaz’s bad teacher beats out Julia Roberts’ cranky middle-aged teacher for the #3 slot, somewhat unexpectedly.

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Wilmington on Movies: Larry Crowne

      “Larry Crowne” (Two and a Half Stars) U.S.: Tom Hanks, 2011 In Larry Crowne — a romantic comedy with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts that should have been a timely, funny show, but isn’t — Hanks plays the title character, an up-from-working-class managerial guy suddenly cut adrift from his life, and forced to try to find…

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MCN Weekend

Gary Dretzka on: The DVD Wrapup: Ophelia, Ambition, Werewolf in Girls' Dorm, Byleth, Humble Pie, Good Omens, Yellowstone …More

rohit aggarwal on: The DVD Wrapup: Ophelia, Ambition, Werewolf in Girls' Dorm, Byleth, Humble Pie, Good Omens, Yellowstone …More

https://bestwatches.club/ on: The DVD Wrapup: Diamonds of the Night, School of Life, Red Room, Witch/Hagazussa, Tito & the Birds, Keoma, Andre’s Gospel, Noir

Gary Dretzka on: The DVD Wrapup: Sleep With Anger, Ralph Wrecks Internet, Liz & Blue Bird, Hannah Grace, Unseen, Jupiter's Moon, Legally Blonde, Willard, Bang … More

Gary Dretzka on: The DVD Wrapup: Bumblebee, Ginsburg, Buster, Silent Voice, Nazi Junkies, Prisoner, Golden Vampires, Highway Rat, Terra Formars, No Alternative … More

GDA on: The DVD Wrapup: Bumblebee, Ginsburg, Buster, Silent Voice, Nazi Junkies, Prisoner, Golden Vampires, Highway Rat, Terra Formars, No Alternative … More

Larry K on: The DVD Wrapup: Sleep With Anger, Ralph Wrecks Internet, Liz & Blue Bird, Hannah Grace, Unseen, Jupiter's Moon, Legally Blonde, Willard, Bang … More

Gary Dretzka on: The DVD Wrapup: Shoplifters, Front Runner, Nobody’s Fool, Peppermint Soda, Haunted Hospital, Valentine, Possum, Mermaid, Guilty, Antonio Lopez, 4 Weddings … More

gwehan on: The DVD Wrapup: Shoplifters, Front Runner, Nobody’s Fool, Peppermint Soda, Haunted Hospital, Valentine, Possum, Mermaid, Guilty, Antonio Lopez, 4 Weddings … More

Gary J Dretzka on: The DVD Wrapup: Peppermint, Wild Boys, Un Traductor, Await Instructions, Lizzie, Coby, Afghan Love Story, Elizabeth Harvest, Brutal, Holiday Horror, Sound & Fury … More

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