MCN Originals Archive for May, 2016

The Weekend Report (3-Day Weekend)

Apocalypse couldn’t blow up to $80 million; Alice Through The Looking Glass cracks $33 million; and Birds was almost $25 million Angry.

Read the full article »

The Weekend Report

X-Men: Apocalypse led the field for the Memorial holiday frame with an estimated $64.8 million (all figures represent first three days of extended weekend). Session’s other national debut, Alice Through the Looking Glas , took second with $27.9 million.

Read the full article »

Friday Box Office Estimates

Apocalypse noise at $26.2 million, Alice hardly heard at $9.7 million; and birds stay Angry at $5 million, even after a 54% plunge.

Read the full article »

Wilmington on Movies: Alice Through the Looking Glass

This new movie’s flaws seem to me less ruinous, its strengths less negligible, and its effect more enjoyable than naysayers have allowed. That doesn’t mean that you should rush out and see it, simply that the people involved did a better job than they have been credited.

Read the full article »

The DVD Wrapup: Zoolander 2, Finest Hours, A Married Woman, Manhunter, The Damned and more

With approximately 100 minutes to go, co-writer-director-star Ben Stiller will be required to recycle gags from the original, coordinate the many cameo appearances of well-known stars and fashionistas, preen in character for the camera and hope that viewers have forgotten that Robert Altman’s Prêt-à-Porter did a far better job skewering the industry seven years before Z1 was unleashed in 2001.

Read the full article »

The Weekend Report

The debut of The Angry Birds Movie flew to the top of the weekend charts with an estimated $39.1 million. Other wide openers were Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising in third spot with $21.8 million and the 1970s-style neo-noir spoof The Nice Guys a step back at $11.1 million.

Read the full article »

Friday Box Office Estimates

Kids love anthropomorphic animals… even birds who can only fly by slingshot. And satire is what closes on Saturday night according to George S. Kaufman and The Nice Guys, which WB really worked their asses off on, is suffering through that this weekend. ope for legs. In between, take a wonderfully broad hit comedy, cleverly add girl power, and… meh. Less than half the opening of Neighbors for 2. Meanwhile, Weiner and Maggie’s Plan get solid, if not overwhelming arthouse launches.

Read the full article »

The DVD Wrapup: Theeb, Naked Island, Witch, Maurice Pialat, Cop Rock and more

There are times when Naji Abu Nowar’s terrific World War I adventure, Theeb, feels very much like Lawrence of Arabia writ small. Less than half as long, it tells a similarly exciting story from the point of view of Bedouin tribesmen who attach themselves to a British Army officer assigned to blow up an Ottoman railroad in the heart of the desert. Because Theeb is essentially a coming-of-age story, it betrays no secrets to reveal that the officer rather quickly becomes a non-factor in the drama, leaving only what he left behind to drive the narrative

Read the full article »

Review: The Nice Guys, Maggie’s Plan

Although unshielded,  The Nice Guys are the newest crew of the buddy cop genre that spawned 48 Hrs., Lethal Weapon, Bad Boys and more recently,Ride Along. They are bigger goofballs than their antecedents and, regrettably, lack the requisite charm to divert attention away from a muddy narrative that involves nefarious shenanigans linking the automobile and porn industries.

Read the full article » 1 Comment »

Cannes Review: Hell Or High Water

“Three tours of Iraq and no bail-out for people like us,” reads a spray-painted wall in the opening shot of Hell or High Water (formerly Comancheria), a crime drama from David Mackenzie (2013’s Starred Up). With gripping tension and real-world stakes from the get-go, the graffiti message resonates as a reminder of the bitter resentment people have for financial institutions, and they’re willing to fight back against them.

Read the full article »

The Weekend Report

Captain America: Civil War took a sharp turn but nonetheless maintained a commanding lead  with an estimated $72.6 million. The week’s two national rollout performed roughly as expected, with Money Monster slotting third with $14.8 million and the The Darkness a notch back at $5.2 million.

Read the full article » 2 Comments »

Cannes Review: The Transfiguration

Out of the darkness, the remedy to tired post-Twilight vampire movies arrives in Cannes with little to no fanfire: U. S. director Michael O’Shea’s The Transfiguration, a debut that drives an sturdy stake into familiar material while breaking new ground in urban realism.

Read the full article »

Friday Box Office Estimates

No surprise to find the Avengers sequel disguised as a Captain America movie still in front by a large margin. The 74% drop isn’t even a surprise, matching last summer’s Avengers: Age of Ultron and running only $16m behind the same. Some may be disappointed with the Money Monster opening, but it’s solid given its material. Its figure outpaces Hail, Caesar! and The Finest Hours‘ openings, which are really the only comparables this year and isn’t far behind Bridge of Spies‘ opening last year. Good start for Love & Friendship on four screens, projecting a $25k per-screen for the weekend.

Read the full article »

Cannes Review: The Student

On Day 3, sidebar program Un Certain Regard has again proven more interesting and daring than the Competition. It’s a list of films that already includes a fundamental powerhouse: The Student, by Russia’s Kirill Serebrennikov,

Read the full article »

The DVD Wrapup: Mustang, Where to Invade Next, Patty Duke, In a Lonely Place and more

Nominated for a 2015 Academy Award in Best Foreign Language Film category, Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s and co-screenwriter Alice Winocour’s heart-breaking coming-of-age drama, Mustang, describes what happens in a country, Turkey, where the dreams and hopes of too many girls are crushed at the onset of puberty.

Read the full article »

Review: DHEEPAN, THE LOBSTER

At its heart, Audiard’s film is about identity. In the process of starting a new life his trio of refugees have the additional hurdle of adopting roles that have little bearing on their pasts. Ironically, the scenario playing out in the building among the locals is presented as more tenable to their experience than they are allowed to admit.

Read the full article »

The Weekend Report

Captain America: Civil War delivered a blistering blow with a potent estimated debut of $182.4 million. The film accounted for roughly 76% of all weekend ticket sales, and coupled with its Disney stablemates, corralled 87% of business for the frame. The company also became the first in 2016 to surpass $1 billion at the domestic box office on Friday and set a new record for that benchmark as well. While no one put out a sacrificial lamb as counterprogramming, the second weekend of Mother’s Day served that purpose with a carbon-copy gross to its opening session.

Read the full article »

Friday Box Office Estimates

“In a world… in which $70m – $85m opening days have become shockingly normal…” here comes the next Avengers installment, sans a couple of Avengers, with a Captain America title, thus opening just slightly lower than the two Avengers movies. Notably, it opened to less than Batman v Superman, though expect that to flip soon. Down-ballot films were clearly damaged, though The Jungle Book held well, even it had been a regular weekend slate.

Read the full article »

Review: A Bigger Splash

There’s a glow that enshrines the Mediterranean isle of Pantelleria. The idyllic fashion in which it’s presented in Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash, the skeptical would conclude it was a fictional locale. It’s not. Pantelleria is a getaway for wealthy Europeans.

Read the full article »

The DVD Wrapup: East Side Sushi, Glassland, Scherzo Diabolico, The Club, Sharkansas Women’s Prison Massacre, Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party and more

In addition to excellent acting, Marty Rosenberg’s cinematography makes the sushi look consistently mouthwatering. East Side Sushi may not carry the weight of a potential nominee for an Oscar or a Spirit nomination, but it succeeds nicely as an entertainment that can be enjoyed by teens and adults. The blend of ethnic elements is as natural and unforced as the Juana’s prize recipes. It reminds me favorably of the underappreciated rom/com/dram The Ramen Girl, in which Brittany Murphy played a fish out of water in Tokyo. Predictably, that wonderful picture went straight-to-DVD, too. Need I mention that the casts for both pictures are predominantly non-white?

Read the full article »

MCN Originals

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