Posts Tagged ‘127 Hours’

Weekend Box Office Report — November 28

Sunday, November 28th, 2010

Tangled Up in Blues … and Reds

A quartet of new releases for Thanksgiving failed to topple Harry Potter from the top of the charts during the gobble, gobble fest. The first part of the Potter finale — Deathly Hallows — grossed an estimated $51.2 million for the weekend portion of the holiday frame. Just a cluck behind was the animated Rapunzel of Tangled with $49.2 million ($69.1 million for the 5-days).

The other three wide release freshmen clustered in positions five to seven with indifferent results. The glitzy musical Burlesque crooned $11.4 million, rom-com Love and Other Drugs ingested $9.6 million and Faster added a tortoise-paced $8.2 million.

The big noise of the session proved to be the well positioned awards contender The King’s Speech that amassed a heady $86,000 screen average from just four venues. There was also an impressive $610,000 for local hockey comedy Lance et compte in Quebec, but a dull $212,000 for Bollywood entry Break Ke Baad. And a new seasonal Nutcracker in 3D was virtually D.O.A. with a $62,700 tally from 42 screens.

Adding it all up, Thanksgiving box office was a smidgen less than last year’s result.

Industry trackers generally predicted that Deathly Hallows would prevail at the box office but few anticipated that Tangled would be truly competitive with the Hogwart’s grad. They also generally over estimated the strengths of the remaining trio of new entries; especially Faster, which was given the edge over Love and Other Drugs.

Overall weekend numbers added up to roughly $187 million that translated into a 6% decline from the immediate prior session. It was also a slight 1% decline from Thanksgiving weekend 2009 when The Twilight Saga: New Moon and The Blind Side led with respectively $42.9 million and $40.1 million. The top new entry, Old Dogs, ranked fourth with $16.9 million.

The current session also saw expansions for 127 Hours and Fair Game that were encouraging but nonetheless displayed signs of fatigue. Still with critics groups just weeks away from announcements both films could well experience second winds. The potent arrival of The King’s Speech however has put that film in the forefront and its now vying with a real royal wedding as well as a smattering of pictures yet to be seen for late year honors.

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Weekend Estimates – November 26-28, 2010

Title Distributor Gross (average) % change * Theaters Cume
Harry Potter & the Deathly Hollows, Part 1* WB 51.2 (12,420) -59% 4125 221.2
Tangled BV 49.2 (13,660) NEW 3603 69.1
Megamind Par 12.9 (3,770) -20% 3411 130.5
Unstoppable Fox 11.7 (3,670) -10% 3183 60.6
Burlesque Sony 11.4 (3,740) NEW 3037 16.8
Love and Other Drugs Fox 9.6 (3,920) NEW 2455 13.8
Faster CBS 8.2 (3,360) NEW 2451 11.8
Due Date WB 7.2 (2,830) -19% 2555 84.9
The Next Three Days Lionsgate 4.8 (1,860) -27% 2564 14.5
Morning Glory Par 4.0 (1,630) -24% 2441 26.4
127 Hours Searchlight 1.7 (5,900) 89% 293 4.4
Fair Game Summit 1.6 (3,960) 8% 396 6
For Colored Girls … Lionsgate 1.4 (2,360) -38% 605 36.6
Red Summit 1.4 (1,540) -43% 914 86.2
Skyline Uni/Alliance 1.1 (900) -70% 1189 20.1
The Social Network Sony .73 (2,510) -22% 291 90.4
Secretariat BV .66 (1.310) -32% 502 57.6
Lance et compte Seville .61 (6,930) NEW 88 0.61
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest Music Box/Alliance .36 (1,970) -10% 184 4.2
Despicable Me Uni .35 (1,320) 31% 266 249.7
The King’s Speech Weinstein Co. .34 (86,030) NEW 4 0.34
Inside Job Sony Classics .31 (2,330) -9% 132 2.6
Weekend Total ($500,000+ Films) $179.40
% Change (Last Year) -1%
% Change (Last Week) -6%
Also debuting/expanding
Break Ke Baad Reliance .21 (2,500) 85 0.33
Nutcracker 3D FreeStyle 62,700 (1,490) 42 0.09
Made in Dagenham Sony Classics 62.500 (5,680) 64% 11 0.12
The Legend of Pale Male Balcony 11,400 (11,400) 1 0.01
The Unjust CJ 7,200 (7,200) 1 0.01
Tere Ishq Nachaye Eros 4,200 (200) 21 0.01

Domestic Market Share (Jan. 1 – Nov. 21, 2010)

Distributor (releases) Gross Market Share
Warner Bros. (27) 1674.1 17.80%
Paramount (18) 1578.1 16.70%
Fox (17) 1333.8 14.10%
Buena Vista (15) 1174.6 12.50%
Sony (23) 1161.6 12.30%
Universal (18) 793.9 8.40%
Summit (11) 512.7 5.40%
Lionsgate (15) 500.4 5.30%
Overture (7) 81.8 0.90%
Fox Searchlight (7) 81.4 0.90%
Focus (7) 75.2 0.80%
Weinstein Co. (7) 62.6 0.70%
Sony Classics (21) 57.8 0.60%
MGM (1) 51.2 0.50%
CBS (2) 50 0.50%
Other * (296) 242.7 2.60%
9431.9 100.00%
* none greater than .04%

Top Limited Releases * (Jan. 1 – Nov. 21, 2010)

Title Distributor Gross
Hubble 3D WB 18,355,494
The Ghost Writer Summit 15,569,712
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Music Box/Alliance 11,282,938
The Young Victoria * Apparition/Alliance 11,131,232
Get Low Sony Classics 9,080,285
A Single Man * Weinstein Co. 7,935,872
The Girl Who Played with Fire Music Box/Alliance 7,837,823
Cyrus Fox Searchlight 7,461,082
Babies Focus 7,444,272
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnasus * E1/Sony Classics 7,394,171
City Island Anchor Bay 6,671,036
The Last Station Sony Classics 6,617,867
The Secret in Their Eyes Sony Classics 6,391,436
It’s Kind of a Funny Story Focus 6,350,058
Winter’s Bone Roadside Attraction 6,225,414
Waiting for “Superman” Par Vantage 6,130,466
Under the Sea 3D * WB 5,504,062
Precious Lions Gate 5,085,319
I Am Love Magnolia 5,002,411
An Education * Sony Classics 4,963,224
* does not include 2009 box office

Weekend Box Office Report — November 21

Sunday, November 21st, 2010

Harry and the Deathly Swallows … Gulp!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 ascended to an estimated $126.2 million and corralled more than 60% of weekend ticket sales. Comparatively speaking the remaining films in the multiplex had to settle for chump change, including the bow of the thriller The Next Three Days which slotted fifth with $6.7 million.

The session also included the new Bollywood release Guzaarish, which garnered a better than respectable $423,000 at 108 venues. Among the few exclusive bows both the British import Made in Dagenham and France’s White Material were just OK with respective openings of $39,300 and $35,800, each playing on three screens.

It was the biggest opening yet for a Harry Potter film but while the juggernaut provided a big box office boost from last weekend it was insufficient to stave off a decline from 2009.

Expectations were high for the first installment of the last chapter of the Potter franchise. Advance sales and online tracking anticipated a $100 million debut and that number expanded following word of advance Thursday midnight screenings estimated at $24 million. Large format engagements were estimated at $12.4 million and if that number holds up it will be a record.

Internationally the early estimates are roughly $205 million from 54 markets. It includes all-time records in the U.K. and Russia and otherwise just sensational debuts elsewhere. The final, final Potter putter is schedule for July 2011.

On a decidedly downbeat note, The Next Three Days came in well below tracking that suggested a $10 million launch. The film also received a drubbing from critics.

Weekend revenues lurched toward $200 million, which translated into a 64% hike from seven days back. It was however 25% behind the 2009 slate led by the second installment of Twilight (New Moon), which bowed bitingly to $142.8 million with the unexpectedly $34.1 million potency of The Blind Side right behind it.

The contender’s roster failed to see any additional dynamos this weekend and the titles already in the marketplace were finding the Darwinian aspect of the exercise unrelenting. Both Fair Game and 127 Hours added a significant number of playdates with the latter continuing to maintain a hefty $8,330 engagement average. The other surprise in the mix is the continuing stamina of the non-fiction Inside Job that’s racked up $2.2 million to date.

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Weekend Estimates – November 19-21, 2010

Title Distributor Gross (average) % change * Theaters Cume
Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows, Part 1* WB 126.2 (30,600) NEW 4125 126.2
Megamind Par 16.2 (4,280) -45% 3779 109.5
Unstoppable Fox 13.0 (4,060) -43% 3207 41.9
Due Date WB 8.9 (2,760) -42% 3229 72.4
The Next Three Days Lionsgate 6.7 (2,590) NEW 2564 6.7
Morning Glory Par 5.2 (2,050) -43% 2544 19.8
Skyline Uni/Alliance 3.4 (1,170) -71% 2883 17.6
Summit 2.4 (1,190) -51% 2034 83.5
For Colored Girls … Lionsgate 2.3 (1,920) -64% 1216 34.5
Fair Game Summit 1.4 (3,730) 41% 386 3.7
Secretariat BV 1.0 (970) -56% 1010 56.4
Paranormal Activity 2 Par .93 (840) -69% 1101 83.6
The Social Network Sony .91 (1,590) -49% 571 89.2
127 Hours Searchlight .90 (8,330) 104% 108 1.9
Saw 3D Lionsgate .82 (1,020) -71% 806 45.3
Jackass 3D Par .72 (1,050) -68% 687 116.1
Life As We Know It WB .52 (930) -50% 558 51.6
Guzaarish UTV .42 (3,910) NEW 108 0.42
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest Music Box/Alliance .41 (2,180) -22% 188 3.5
Inside Job Sony Classics .37 (1,770) -22% 211 2.2
Weekend Total ($500,000+ Films) $191.50
% Change (Last Year) -25%
% Change (Last Week) 64%
Also debuting/expanding
Today’s Special Reliance 88,400 (1,670) 53 0.09
Made in Dagenham Sony Classics 39,300 (13,100) 3 0.04
White Material IFC 35,800 (11,930) 3 0.04
Queen of the Lot Rainbow 16,400 (2,730) 6 0.02
Copacabana Seville 14,100 (2,010) 7 0.01

Domestic Market Share (Jan. 1 – Nov. 18, 2010)

Distributor (releases) Gross Market Share
Paramount (18) 1555.1 16.80%
Warner Bros. (26) 1538.8 16.70%
Fox (17) 1320.7 14.30%
Buena Vista (15) 1173.4 12.70%
Sony (23) 1160.3 12.60%
Universal (18) 790.4 8.60%
Summit (11) 508.5 5.50%
Lionsgate (14) 490.6 5.30%
Overture (7) 81.7 0.90%
Fox Searchlight (7) 80.3 0.90%
Focus (7) 75.1 0.80%
Weinstein Co. (7) 62.5 0.70%
Sony Classics (21) 57.3 0.60%
MGM (1) 51.2 0.50%
CBS (2) 50 0.50%
Other * (288) 240.7 2.60%
9236.6 100.00%
* none greater than .04%

Top Domestic Grossers * (Jan. 1 – Nov. 18, 2010)

Title Distributor Gross
Avatar * Fox 476,883,415
Toy Story 3 BV 414,681,777
Alice in Wonderland BV 334,191,110
Iron Man 2 Par 312,445,596
Twilight: Eclipse Summit 300,551,386
Inception WB 291,914,445
Despicable Me Uni 248,900,040
Shrek Forever After Par 238,667,087
How to Train Your Dragon Par 218,685,707
The Karate Kid Sony 176,797,997
Clash of the Titans WB 163,214,888
Grown Ups Sony 162,147,232
The Last Airbender Par 131,733,601
Shutter Island Par 128,051,522
The Other Guy Sony 119,256,755
Salt Sony 118,485,665
Jackass 3D Par 115,357,091
Valentine’s Day WB 110,509,442
Sherlock Holmes * WB 106,967,985
Robin Hood Uni 105,425,146
* does not include 2009 box office

Interview: In Arm’s Way With Danny Boyle

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

In 127 Hours, Danny Boyle doesn’t present Aron Ralston as any kind of idealist of the great outdoors, or as a man surmounting the wilderness. Rather, the climbing enthusiast who was trapped for days in a Utah canyon by a fallen boulder is a blithe young man who may have reached the limits of his capacity for invention. There’s powerful imagery involving women and water in his follow-up to Slumdog Millionaire (written with Simon Beaufoy) but it’s James Franco’s portrayal of Ralston as he moves toward the choices he must make in order to survive that carry the film. Ralston’s not a literary stoic like James Salter, who wrote in his 1979 mountain-climbing novel “Solo Faces,” “There is something greater than the life of the cities, greater than money and possessions; there is a manhood that can never be taken away. For this, one gives everything.” Comparatively, Ralston’s just a kid with a dull pocketknife. But he does find what he must give in order to live to tell the tale. Boyle and I talk below about music, sound design, Sigur Rós, why a documentary of this material wouldn’t work, James Franco’s canniness, Sisyphus, John Ford landscapes, hallucinations, Scooby Doo, why Boyle used two directors of photography, using numbers in movie titles and how he’s been obsessed with stories from a confined point-of-view since before he became a filmmaker. We both talk fast and often overlap; we discuss pivotal plot points and other story elements. His laughter is generous and infectious, and there was a lot more of it than indicated. While edited, I wanted to preserve some of Boyle’s headlong speaking rhythm as much as possible. We spoke October 14, 2010 at the Elysian Hotel, Chicago.

PRIDE: You haven’t let up on your music and sound design. You evoke what Aron’s memory is doing to him that way, and it’s powerful, music, its hold over us. If you get it wrong, it’s abject. When you just get it right, sound and music, it bores into the brain, whereas we classify visuals in a literal fashion—

BOYLE: Yeah—

PRIDE: But music and sound design… whoosh.

BOYLE: I was just telling these three, I think they’re students, I was telling them, about seventy percent of a movie is sound. Seventy percent! It’s always thought of as a visual medium, and it is, of course, but it’s not.

PRIDE: It’s why 16mm optical failed as an exhibition medium, crap sound.

BOYLE: Crap sound. Yeh. Yeh. The first movie we made, when we made Shallow Grave, we had this discussion, because we had a million pounds and we were all just working out how to spend it. I said to them, we talked about, why was it, when were looking at movies in Britain, the British movies looked shit, and the American movies looked great, even if they weren’t great movies, they looked great. Why is it? And it was sound. American movies know you spend money on sound. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t spend money on it. We ring-fenced money for Shallow Grave, proper money. Because we ran out of money, of course, for everything else. But we didn’t spend the sound money. And that was one of the reasons the film was a success and looked like it supposedly revitalized the British film industry. It’s only because we spent a lot of money on sound! [laughs] We dealt with it properly rather than threw it away, y’know.

PRIDE: Then you use one specific passage of music at the end that’s a rush. Sigur Rós, you can basically lay it on top of anything. You just feel great—

BOYLE: It’s wonderful. It’s wonderful. I don’t think you can put it on top of anything

PRIDE: The piece you use—

BOYLE: “Festivale—”

PRIDE: “Festivale,” four different filmmakers could use it similarly for a climactic moment— [Boyle chuckles] And if it’s decent work, it would still soar.

BOYLE: It’s a beautiful piece of music, yeah, they do do wonderful music. I used their music in the temp score of Slumdog Millionaire. And then we replaced with A. R. Rahman’s score, we replaced it completely. And it was just temp… And then I gave it to the marketing department, and they used it, Hippopolia, Hippopopobolia, [“Hoppípolla”] whatever it’s called, that song, and they used it in the adverts for Slumdog, the nationwide advertising campaign they used it in which helped the film a lot. So when we came to this one, I wanted a song that took you through to the ending and celebrated people, really. ‘Cos the other thing about the Sigur Rós, which is weird about their stuff, is that it had a kind of life spirit in it that celebrates people, somehow, I don’t know quite what it is, and anyway, it fitted. It was so wonderful. And we spoke to them, because they don’t, they don’t license stuff without seeing how it’s being used, and they came in and watched the movie and… Yeah, they were very pleased. So yeah… it was good.

PRIDE: You don’t need to understand the lyrics, even when they’re singing Icelandic as opposed to the one album that was gibberish— [Boyle laughs agreeably] It still, it just soars… it’s rooted in the Icelandic music traditions if you hear their choral music or their classical music, pop music, but theirs, it’s just, “Hey, I’m a spiritual goofball.”

BOYLE: I know, I know, I know. I love that stuff.


PRIDE: How did Rahman’s score work on this film, it’s vital, it’s surging, there’s “world music” to it, but they’re not readily classifiable rhythms.

BOYLE: He was delighted to do it, because his problem—not problems technically or talent-wise—but his problem is obviously that he’ll be pigeonholed in the West as an exotic composer, at best, if not just purely an Indian composer. Where in fact his talent is completely universal… and extraordinary. On this, we started with solo guitar. He started working with this guitar player, a session musician from L. A., a solo guitar player, very, very good one. And so all the music you hear in it, even though some of it isn’t played on guitar, it all began on guitar, on solo guitar. And bluegrass. So that was the starting point for him. And that’s typical for him, he approaches it thoughtfully like that, tunes just pour out of his m—, his head. We had a great time doing it. I mean, obviously, unlike Slumdog, on this, we used two or three, three or four pop songs as well, for deliberate reasons. And so there’s not quite as much of his score as there was on Slumdog, but he could have scored it all. He was quite happy to. I said, no, we have to keep, I wanted the feel of an already existing song for all sorts of reasons at different times.

PRIDE: The film’s insanely upbeat. I didn’t feel claustrophobic or anxious. But then we already know, as in a Greek tragedy, we know what’s going to happen—

BOYLE: Yeah, yeah.

PRIDE: This is an interesting thing, like Titanic; you can be as giddy as you want to be because you know the result. Pretty much, audiences are going to know what Aron has to do. The actual moment of contact, the sound design as he approaches the nerve, that’s the only time I was flinching. Even though he’s fading and ebbing and hallucinating it’s just… I’d even say it’s a light film.

BOYLE: [leans in, quieter] But it’s… I always wanted to do it in that way, I always thought, when I read it, when I read his book, which obviously is the starting point, apart from hearing the story, I found the chapters in the canyon exhilarating. I didn’t like the other chapters at all, where he was talking about his upbringing and his background story and stuff like that.

PRIDE: I only looked at the photo section this morning: not only is his kit the same—

BOYLE: Exactly!

PRIDE: But you have—

BOYLE: Oh, no, everything is the same!

PRIDE: The splatter on the canyon wall, you’ve got the same size, shape—

BOYLE: Yeah! But that picture is the one he takes at the end of the film, where he takes a picture of the hand that he’s left behind. The rock is exactly the same, the rock that—

PRIDE: And the S-tree above him—

BOYLE: It’s weird, isn’t it? I mean, it’s weird having that document, to base everything on.

PRIDE: It’s freeing, isn’t it? “I’m going to be utterly real with this, then and only then, I’m going to build out.”

BOYLE: Yes. That’s what we said to him. It’ll be… Because he was nervous, obviously. When I first met him, he was not even nervous; he was just completely blocked. He didn’t want to know about this approach. He wanted to do it as documentary where he kept control. But when I met him again in 2009, he was nervous about giving us the freedom to do it and I said, well listen, the only way to have a decent film is if you let us tell the truth through a certain amount of fiction. And I said if you tell it all through fact, it won’t work. And I said, I said, most especially, you won’t arrive at a point where you can tolerate him cutting his arm off. People will walk out. But I said, if you put people in a position where they’re on that journey with him… And they feel like they’ve been with him the whole time, and not with you, Aron, they’ve been with James Franco. ‘Cos that’s the other thing I said to him, I said, y’know when you cast an actor… you want to do a dramatized documentary, because you want to cast someone who looks like you… but you never see, because you keep him at a distance. I said, you’ve got to commit to someone and they become you. But I want us to watch James Franco go through what you went through and he’s called Aron Ralston, and he is Aron Ralston, and it is your story, but isn’t told through a slightly different medium, which is me, James and the cameramen and y’know and on we go. To give him his credit, he did, he agreed, not reluctantly, but with reservations, but he appreciated it by the end, I think. And it’s the way to get at the story best.

PRIDE: Franco this year, I mean, the feat of his performance in Howl

BOYLE: I still haven’t seen it, I haven’t seen Howl.

PRIDE: He’s just got it all down.

BOYLE: Did he get it?

PRIDE: Yeah. It’s not mimicry, he inhabits it, it begins with mimicry—

BOYLE: He’s a very clever guy. He gives the impression of being stoned the whole time, and like half asleep? He’s as sharp as anything. And he picks up things so fast. I was amazed at that. And it is a front, that stoned thing, to keep everybody at bay. That’s what he’s doing, he’s sussing you out even though you think, “Does he know I’m here?” He’s kind of sussing you out. Yeah, I liked him a lot.

PRIDE: He’s the animal just waiting to pounce.

BOYLE: Yes, he is, isn’t he?

PRIDE: This is the Sisyphus myth as a Western.

BOYLE: Yeah. A man and a rock.

PRIDE: One man against the landscape except Utah’s John Ford-style horizon is above him.

BOYLE: Yeah, slightly outside, obviously. The weird thing about it is, ‘cos people… what we tried to do, deliberately, we tried to not to do the… What I didn’t want to do is what you’d normally do, which is every three minutes you cut away to a landscape shot and show, y’know—

PRIDE: Like in movies with relentless establishing shots that break any sort of psychological tension?

BOYLE: I agree, I agree. And even more so, I thought, because he can’t see any of this. All he can see is the sky, he’s got the blue sky— he could be on top of a building, in a box on top of a building, because he just can’t see anything. I thought, why should we be doing all that the whole time? You’ve got to try and as much as possible make it an immersive, first person experience that you go through.

PRIDE: The vitality of his mind is what you’re getting at, the visual vocabulary getting more vivid as he begins to hallucinate. The intensity of the hallucinations increases as he grows weaker—

BOYLE: Yeah.

PRIDE: And the rainstorm saves him then! That’s bizarre. “I’m gonna drown! No, I ‘m saved!”

BOYLE: [big laugh] I love that. He was obsessed with rain, with the potential of flash flood. Which was extraordinary of course, because we thought—

PRIDE: You don’t flag that. It just occurs.

BOYLE: Yes, it just happens.

PRIDE: Raindrops then, “Yiiiiiikes!”

BOYLE: Yiii! No, he was obsessed with the possibility of flash floods happening, which is ironic considering. It just shows you, doesn’t it, we’ll hang onto life as long as we can. So he’s dying… but he’s obsessed with the danger of dying in a different way, which is flash flood drowning him.

[Both laugh.]

BOYLE: Yes, bizarre.

PRIDE: The second time we see the Scooby Doo, in his imagining of where the girls have gone that night, is he waving with the right arm, the same arm that’s pinned?

BOYLE: [laughs] What, Scooby Doo?

PRIDE: The balloon moving down the road at night, I think he’s waving with—

BOYLE: That same hand? I think he is, actually. I think that is his right hand. But I think that was dictated by the Scooby Doo franchise, to be absolutely honest.

PRIDE: Why two DPs?

BOYLE: Well. This is very interesting. Because when we were setting it up, I was thinking about the limitations of the story in terms of how reductive it is, and obviously, particularly this approach, that basically excludes everyone apart from at the beginning and the end, and just one person. And obviously Franco is a fantastic actor who can display many moods and tones, and indeed he starts to go multi-character, voices, eventually in the chatshow [part]. And I thought, I can provide a bit of contrast through and variation through music and rhythm and editing and stuff like that. I can keep it changing as well. And I thought, maybe, we should get two cinematographers and from different disciplines. And their work will be, there’ll be a stylistic variation within certain sequences. That didn’t work at all! Because although we got these, we got Anthony [Dod Mantle], who’s from northern Europe, and Enrique [Chediak], who’s from Ecuador, with a different sensibility you’d think… and they both shot the same way!

PRIDE: Wow.

BOYLE: That’s because, I realized, in retrospect, what dictated is not a style that they bring to it, it’s actually what James does, the way James performs. They follow. However, the other advantage, and this did work, was that I could keep shooting seven days a week rather than have a break.

PRIDE: Like an old-school Hong Kong director.

BOYLE: Yeah. I didn’t want a break. I thought, for this kind of story, it’s wrong. To reflect? I thought, if I’d’a got it right or not, reflection is not gonna fuckin’ help it, I’ve gotta kinda… Once I put my nose on it, I’ve gotta keep going until it’s done. Like him. Once you go in the canyon, you’ve just gotta do it. You can’t legally do that with your employees. So I had two crews, I had a blue crew and a red crew, and I would stagger their days off. Sometimes they’d shoot simultaneously, sometimes they’d shoot separately on different sets, different elements like stunts, involving stunt doubles or falling, that kind of stuff. There was lots of material for them to shoot but I meant I could continue. James agreed to do six days a week and he would have done seven days a week but they seventh day he had to go to New York to show his face at these classes that he has to go to. So we would finish, whatever time on a Sunday, he would finish on a Sunday night, and he’d leave on the overnight plane to New York. Then he’d show his face on Monday morning class and then he’d get the flight back to L.A., sleep in the airport so that he could get the first flight to Salt Lake City on the Tuesday morning and be on set for 8am.

PRIDE: It’s like a work-release program where you’re lying to your parole officer.

BOYLE: It’s just… It’s like.. [grins as he trails off] All that obsessiveness, that compulsiveness is reflected in the film. If you’d made it in a leisurely way, it would have looked leisurely, y’know? Hence, the ambition of the DoPs didn’t work out in one sense, but it did in another way, multiple times.

PRIDE: You saw the opportunity and ran with it within the parameters you were allowed.

BOYLE: Yes! Absolutely.

PRIDE: Most of the look continues with the the saturated, grainy, post-DV palette you’ve grown fond of. There are things like the wide shot of the blue night sky with the car full of half-naked party people, this looks like an Icelandic hallucination…

BOYLE: That was Park City! We did that up at Park City. When we started shooting, it was quite wintry in Salt Lake, and unfortunately, we thought it’d be dry in the desert, but actually, because the desert’s high, it was also wintry. The memory of the people…

PRIDE: It’s just a layered, vital image, snow is flying, light sources are unnatural, the music’s going da-da-dah—

BOYLE: It’s triggered by, it’s a music-trigger memory. The music pops into his head and this image that he associates with it, it’s “Ca Plane Pour Moi.” Plastic Bertrand. Yeah!

PRIDE: I remember dancing to that song.

BOYLE: [laughs] That’s what you hope, that’s what I hoped, people would go, [high-pitched sound of illumination] “Oh! Oh!” You kinda remember it like that. Because songs, sometimes you remember them, and you think, bloody hell! What was that song I used… ! And they get forgotten. There’s a great ABBA song that they’ve never really sung, called “The Day Before You Came.” Oh! What a song! It’s an amazing song. And it was [covered by Blancmange] and I don’t think they ever did anything else. [It was the last song ABBA recorded.] And I was thinking of it the other day, it was like, “Oh!” “Don’t I know this song? Is this part of my collective memory? I think it is!”

PRIDE: [flipping through photo insert] That caption, that cutline Aron puts in the book, “The Last Photograph Of My Right Hand.”

BOYLE: Yes. They went back and rescued the hand. In fact, while we were prepping, we asked to see the photographs. ‘Cos we asked Aron, and he said, I haven’t got them, the rescue services have them. And I’ve never seen them. So we asked to see them, and they sent them to us. [whispers] It was shocking, Oh!, i-yi-yi. I think it took about twelve blokes when they went back to shift the rock when they went back in and they pulled the hand out and held it up and photographed it. Ohhhhh. That will make your stomach turn. It was like, Fuck. It was… flattened. You know, like in Roger Rabbit? At the end, when he gets flattened, when the villain gets flattened? It was like that, it was flattened in a way… if you’d seen it, it would be, “I don’t believe that.” If you had no context, you’d think, “What’s that?” But in context, it was like, ohhhhhhhhrrrr. Rough.

PRIDE: Do you feel this is a claustrophobic movie?

BOYLE: No, I never thought of it as claustrophobic. In fact, I don’t think he talks about it being claustrophobic in the book at all. He doesn’t mention it like that. I think his biggest, his issue in the book is that at night it’s fucking cold. That’s his problem, trying to keep warm, ‘cos he’s only got, he piles all his stuff on to try to keep this bloody cold wind out of him. Yeah. That’s what they are, that’s how they’re formed, those slot canyons. Some of it’s flash floods, but a lot of it is wind and microscopic particles of dust in the wind over generations, well, not generations,millennia. Just wearing it out. It’s so smooth, some of it, it’s been sanded down, literally, to fine sandpaper.

PRIDE: Why titles with numbers in them?

BOYLE: Somebody told me the other day you should always do that, it’s a bit like having a wedding in your title. A wedding. They always work! People are trying to work out the numbers, even if they don’t like the film very much, they’ll spend time thinking. What’s this about? What does this relate to? Yeh.

PRIDE: The film is subjective; you’re portraying a vision. A movie ought to be a hallucination as compelling as a religious vision, and Aron’s fluctuating grasp on reality and memory is what you’re bringing to life.

BOYLE: Yes. I couldn’t get it out of my head. I tried, in the 80s, when I wasn’t a filmmaker, but I would have liked to have been! I tried to, there was an amazing story about an Irish journalist, called Brian Keenan. He was kidnapped in Beirut for five years and held hostage, chained to a radiator. And for three of those years, another guy was chained to the radiator as well. A British guy, a British journalist called John McCarthy. And Keenan is a difficult Irishman, as he admits in this amazing book he wrote about it, called “An Evil Cradling.” And he’s a difficult Irishman, he does not like Englishmen. And their bond they grew together? Was extraordinary. But chained to a radiator for five years! I thought what an amazing film that would make.

PRIDE: You were compressing the story for years, you just didn’t know it. You’ve made that film now.

BOYLE: In a bit more accessible way. There’s another one actually that I got involved with and didn’t work out called “The Birthday Party,” which is not the Harold Pinter play. It’s a novel; it’s not a novel, but a real-life experience of a guy who was kidnapped in Manhattan for a weekend and held in a bedroom in Brooklyn by these young black guys. [deep breath] And he had a bag on his head for all the weekend. And they fed him. And had sex on the bed beside him. And all the time he sat there with his bag on his head. And they threatened to shoot him. It’s an extraordinary, I thought, [whispers] that would be an amazing film, if you could shoot the whole film inside that bag. And you can just see out the corner, underneath, and could just see them have sex, then they bring a gun, threaten to shoot him unless he gives them the PIN number on his card for the ATM machine. Anyway, I’ve always been interested in that stuff.

127 Hours expands Friday to 23 markets and an additional 25 on Friday, November 24.

[Photos: Chuck Zlotnick; Danny Boyle by Ray Pride, from Sunshine publicity tour, 2007.]

Danny Boyle

The Kids Are All About Oscar Picks

Tuesday, November 16th, 2010

David and I were talking about the latest Gurus chart, and I made the (half-joking) observation that we should do kind of an anti-Gurus chart of my kids’ random Oscar picks. In the past when I’ve had them choose Oscar winners with random methods including Magic-8 Ball, Twister, Guitar Hero, and “Pin the Oscar on the Donkey’s Butt” they’ve averaged just about as well as folks paid to pontificate on the politics of Oscar Night. Plus, they’ve had a lot of fun doing it.

It just goes to show you, no one really knows anything, maybe not even the people being paid to know about things.

There have been some occasionally heated discussions here and on The Hot Blog about film critics and what “qualifies” someone to write about film. Generally, for what it’s worth, I think having a broad knowledge of film, a passion for movies, and the ability to write about why you like or don’t like a given film in a coherent way that connects with your readership qualifies someone to write about movies, though this is not necessarily the same thing as more purely academic film criticism.

As to what qualifies someone to be or not to be an Oscar pundit, well, that depends, I think, on what you’re looking for. Random guesses abound on the internet, and once you get it down to a Top Ten or so, pretty much anyone who works in any aspect of this business is entitled to offer a qualified opinion on which films or actors they think should win. Understanding the politics involved behind the scenes may be a little more tricksy, but if you’ve kept up at all with the recent history of Oscar winners it’s not terribly difficult for the average person to make educated guesses that are as accurate as (maybe better than) those of the experts.

In the spirit of “the average folks” versus “the experts,” I asked my kids (plus one friend) to give me their early weigh-in on their Best Picture pick based on the Top Ten on the Gurus chart, based on the titles alone if they didn’t know anything else. (For the record, Neve has seen The Social Network and Inception, and all of them have seen Toy Story 3). I also asked them to weigh in on which film had the worst title.

Their not-so-expert opinions are below. I’ll check in with them closer to Oscars for their picks in the major categories. If you have ideas on how they should make their picks this year, let me know.

______________________________

LUKA (AGE 7)

BEST PICTURE PICK: I think Toy Story 3 will win because I really like it. It was kind of sad, but some parts were funny, and it had a really good story. And I think they’re gonna make a Toy Story 4.

WORST TITLE: I think 127 Hours is a really bad name for a movie because no one wants to watch a movie that’s that long. That sounds like a really, really, really long movie. And boring.

______________________________

VEDA (AGE 9)

BEST PICTURE PICK: Toy Story 3, because it was really good and sad and it had great animation and stuff. And great characters like Woody and Buzz.

WORST TITLE: The King’s Speech. Boring. I think it’s about a guy standing there who’s giving a boring speech to try to put everyone to sleep so he can steal the town’s rarest thing.

______________________________

JAXON (AGE 11)

BEST PICTURE PICK: Toy Story 3, because it had really good animation and also it had a really good story behind it.

WORST TITLE: The King’s Speech sounds like a guy standing on a big platform just speaking for two hours. Boring.

______________________________

NEVE (AGE 13)

BEST PICTURE PICK: Either True Grit or Inception. Inception because I thought it was very interesting and I liked all the plot twists and how you had to pay attention to every thing or you’d be lost. And True Grit because I loved the trailer and I read the summary and it looks really interesting. No Country for Old Men terrified me, but I appreciated its artistry, so I think this one will be good.

WORST TITLE: The King’s Speech. The title sounds boring, because who wants to see a movie that’s about some guy’s speech? A good title is everything, right? If it’s bad, and people think it sounds boring, no one will come see it. See, this is why I get Veda to help me with my titles for my writing.

______________________________

KENDRA (AGE 14)

BEST PICTURE PICK: The name Inception really grabs me. It sounds very dramatic. I also like the sound of Black Swan. That sounds interesting, too.

WORST TITLE: I concur on The King’s Speech. It just sounds really boring. Maybe it’s not, it might be a really good movie, but that’s how it sounds.

Exclusive MCN Clip – Danny Boyle & James Franco Discuss 127 Hours

Monday, November 8th, 2010

Weekend Box Office Report – November 7

Sunday, November 7th, 2010

No Brainer

Megamind led a torrid weekend box office frame (the largest for a pre-Thanksgiving November) with a first salvo estimated at $47.5 million. Two other national openers followed in succession with strong numbers. The comedy road trip Due Date grossed $33.4 million and the Afrocentric For Colored Girls bowed to $20.1 million.

There was also a pair of Bollywood films timed to the Dwali holiday. Golmaal 3 had solid returns of $443,000 from 86 screens while Action Replayy was disappointing with $232,000 from 99 venues. In Quebec Reste avec moi pancaked on a gross of $25,600 in an initial 19 playdates.

In limited and exclusive runs the politically charged Fair Game polled a respectable $663,000 that indicates challenging expansion plans. Among the remaining newcomers there was a good solo for Algerian Oscar submission Outside the Law of $7,500. But the big noise of the weekend was the not-for-the-squeamish 127 Hours, which played to near capacity at four and generated a staggering screen average of $66,570.

Weekend revenues ballooned as a result of buoyant new titles and some very strong holdovers.

The latest from DreamWorks Animation, Megamind, was generally pegged to debut in a mid-$40 million arena though some felt it could have performed better on a less competitive weekend. Though that contention is dubious, the rest of the year really doesn’t offer that option with both pre-sold and award titles beginning to open up the multiplex floodgates.

Due Date — with its obvious references to Trains, Planes & Automobiles — renewed faith in the power of a high concept comedy. But the riskier For Colored Girls, based upon the acclaimed play by Ntozake Shange, was the session’s major question mark. Many had pursued the property for decades and concluded that it was unfilmable, so when Tyler Perry unexpectedly stepped forward there was a collective shudder. Critical response was mixed to positive while the opening box office was better than anticipated.

Overall box office should top $155 million for the weekend and best the immediate prior session by 67%. It’s also a 28% improvement from 2009 with the launch of the animated A Christmas Carol opened to $30.1 million with the frame’s other debs The Men Who Stare at Goats and The Fourth Kind slotting third and fourth with respectively $12.7 million and $12.2 million.

If you believe that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, the opening weekend of 127 Hours would certainly buttress your argument. Aside from sterling reviews, the fact-inspired tale of endurance has generated a lot of ink centering on the intensity of the viewing experience that appears to cause at least a few patrons to faint at every screening. The industry will be watching intently to see whether it remains a date movie as it expands nationally.

Also under the microscope is Fair Game that fell short of dynamic initial business. There’s already debate about the decision to open in more than a handful of venues and a feeling that rapid expansion will result in further disappointment along the lines of Conviction.

__________________________________________________

Weekend Estimates – November 5-7, 2010

Title Distributor Gross (average) % change * Theaters Cume
Megamind Par 47.5 (12,040) New 3944 47.5
ue Date WB 33.4 (9,960) New 3355 33.4
For Colored Girls Lionsgate 20.1 (9,440) New 2127 20.1
Red Summit 8.8 (2,720) -18% 3229 71.8
Saw 3D Lionsgate 7.9 (2,820) -67% 2808 38.5
Paranormal Activity 2 Par 7.1 (2,250) -57% 3168 77
Jackass 3D Par 5.0 (2,330) -41% 2165 110.8
Secretariat BV 4.1 (1,570) -18% 2614 51.1
Hereafter WB 4.0 (1,680) -38% 2365 28.7
The Social Network Sony 3.5 (1,890) -22% 1860 85
Life As We Know It WB 3.1 (1,610) -23% 1950 48.6
Conviction Fox Searchlight 1.5 (2,280) -16% 672 4.5
The Town WB 1.2 (1,510) -39% 801 89.8
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest Music Box/Alliance .74 (3,720) 2% 199 2
Fair Game Summit .66 (14,410) New 46 0.66
Easy A Sony .50 (1,070) -53% 468 57.3
Legend of the Guardians WB .45 (610) -74% 740 54
Golmaal 3 Eros .44 (5,140) New 86 0.44
Waiting for “Superman” Par Vantage .38 (1,570) -36% 242 5.4
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps Fox .34 (960) -57% 353 51.9
Weekend Total ($500,000+ Films) $149.10
% Change (Last Year) 28%
% Change (Last Week) 67%
Also debuting/expanding
127 Hours Searchlight .27 (66,570) 4 0.27
Action Replayy Viva .23 (2,340) 99 0.23
Stone Overture .18 (1,630) -28% 109 1.5
Four Lions Drafthouse 41,300 (5,160) 8 0.04
Reste avec moi Seville 25,600 (1,350) 19 0.03
Client 9 Magnolia 18,400 (6,130) 3 0.02
Red Hill Strand 8,400 (1,680) 5 0.01
Outside the Law (Hors-la-loi) Cohen Media 7,500 (7,500) 1 0.01
Trapped CJ Entertainment 4,400 (4,400) 1 0.01

Domestic Market Share (Jan. 1 – Nov. 4, 2010)

Distributor (releases) Gross Market Share
Warner Bros. (25) 1457.6 16.50%
Paramount (16) 1423.7 16.00%
Fox (16) 1290.9 14.50%
Buena Vista (15) 1163.9 13.10%
Sony (23) 1151.1 13.00%
Universal (17) 776.9 8.80%
Summit (10) 488.3 5.50%
Lionsgate (13) 444.2 5.00%
Overture (7) 81.2 0.90%
Fox Searchlight (6) 75.9 0.80%
Focus (7) 74.8 0.80%
Weinstein Co. (7) 62.3 0.70%
Sony Classics (21) 55.5 0.60%
MGM (1) 51.2 0.60%
CBS (2) 50 0.60%
Other * (281) 233.2 2.60%
8880.7 100.00%
* none greater than .04%

Top Global Grossers * (Jan. 1 – Nov. 4, 2010)

Title Distributor Gross
Avatar Fox 1,953,205,209
Toy Story 3 BV 1,061,408,156
Alice in Wonderland BV 1,024,537,295
Inception WB 831,539,135
Shrek Forever After Par 737,766,901
Twilight: Eclipse Summit 691,483,448
Iron Man 2 Par 622,718,600
How to Train Your Dragon Par 495,792,295
Despicable Me Uni 492,994,376
Clash of the Titans WB 489,778,913
Sherlock Holmes * WB 367,796,599
The Karate Kid Sony 359,315,646
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time BV 335,692,394
The Last Airbender Par 318,404,181
Robin Hood Uni 311,826,207
Shutter Island Par 301,977,955
Sex and the City 2 WB 301,158,934
Salt Sony 291,684,047
Resident Evil: Afterlife Sony/Alliance 277,419,991
Grown Ups Sony 270,265,798
The Expendables Lionsgate/NuImage 269,273,037
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel Fox 264,341,533
Knight and Day Fox 256,518,022
Percy Jackson & the Olympians Fox 226,497,209
Valentine’s Day WB 217,596,116
* does not include 2009 box office

Friday Estimates – November 6

Saturday, November 6th, 2010

Megamind|12.4|3944|New|12.4
Due Date|12.1|3355|New|12.1
For Colored Girls|7.4|2127|New|7.4
Saw 3D|2.5|2808|-76%|2.5
Red|3.4 |3349|-25%|51.5
Paranormal Activity 2|2.5|3229|-27%|65.5
Jackass 3D|1.6|2165|-50%|107.3
Secretariat|1.2|2614|-24%|48.2
Hereafter|1.2|2365|-44%|25.9
The Social Network|1|1860|-32%|82.5
Also Debuting
Fair Game|0.18|46||0.18
Golmaal 3|0.12|86||0.12
127 Hours|77,400|4||77,400
Action Replayy|58,200|99||58,200
Four Lions|12,700|8||12,700
Reste avec moi|7,600|19||7,600
Client 9|5,450|3||5,450
Red Hill|3,000|5||3,000
Outside the Law (Hors-la-loi)|2,000|1||2,000
Trapped|1,500|1||1,500
||||
*in millions|||

Critics Roundup — November 5

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

Megamind||||Green|
For Colored Girls|Yellow||||
Due Date|Yellow|Green|||
127 Hours |Green|Green|Green|Green|
Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer ||Green||Green|
Fair Game|Red|Yellow|||
Four Lions|||Green||
Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench|||Yellow||
Outside the Law (Hors-la-Loi)|Green||||

Edelstein Rolls Back Rock To Call Danny Boyle A Shallow Whore

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

Edelstein Rolls Back Rock To Call Danny Boyle A Shallow Whore

17 Weeks To Oscar: It’s Raining Men

Thursday, November 4th, 2010

The Best Actor category is always loaded. This happens to be a strong year for Best Actress as well. But with the ladies, there are a good number of completely worthy performances. In the Actor this season, there are more than five Undeniables. Yet, some of them will be denied.

Javier Bardem is an Undeniable. There is no tougher movie in our American mainstream cinema this year than Biutiful. Compared to a film like Hereafter, it is the suicide bomb vs. the 100 virgins you party with after you are freed from your mortal coil. It’s the story of a man who is connected to The Dead finds out he is going to die himself and struggles mightily to tie up loose ends for his children and others whose lives he has touched, for better or worse. But Bardem… my God… he is not only 100% present in every moment we experience with him on screen, but he oozes empathy through all the harshness, never for a second falling into the sentimental, commanding the audience to stay with him… this is about you… this is about your soul… life is a scary ride, but here we go.

Robert Duvall is an Undeniable. One of our greatest actors and has been for decades. Get Low gives him room to perform to most of his strengths as an actor… all those colors, power seething under restraint. And then, he gives us one of the great one-person speeches, near the end of the film, and pulls it off brilliantly when it could have gone so wrong. This is the role that aging actors dream of finding… and Duvall wears it like a handmade glove.

Jesse Eisenberg is an Undeniable. His “Mark Zuckerberg” is not only the single most unforgettable character of the year so far, his reading of Aaron Sorkin’s unique verbal music is definitive in The Social Network. Lots of great actors have made wonderful moments of Sorkin’s words, but Eisenberg seemed born to it, a perfect blending of an actor’s unique being and a writer’s precision.

Colin Firth is an Undeniable. Last year, he broke through the awards ice with an unexpected, tortured, desperate man whose façade had all the charm of, well, Colin Firth. This year, his is still under siege, but his own mind is responsible in The King’s Speech. It’s closer to roles that we have known Firth in over the years, but a great balance between his ascendant prince, an uncommon Australian, and a wife who has a clear vision of the entire chess board makes audiences want to scoop up all three actors and thank them for being.

James Franco is an Undeniable. He holds the audience in his palm from the third minute of 127 Hours (when we first really see him) until the very last moment, when he hands it all back to the real Aron Ralston for a closing bow. It is a tribute to Franco and Boyle and the whole team that something as tightly defined as being stuck in a narrow passage of rock for more than 5 days feels like so much more. But first, it is on Franco. As an audience, we cannot disconnect from him for a single moment or the illusion is over. And we don’t.

That’s five. And that doesn’t start to take into account the performances that are on the way from reigning Oscar champ Jeff Bridges, Hollywood favorite Mark Wahlberg, and nice-to-see-you-back Jack Nicholson, at least two of which look like Undeniables in the making.

That’s seven, folks.

So whom do you leave out?

(more…)

127 Hours, director Danny Boyle, screenwriter Simon Beaufoy, producer Christian Colson

Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010

The Holiday Film Special

Sunday, October 31st, 2010

The Holiday Film Special
David Carr Sniffs Brand
And – McGrath On Aron Ralston, Life And Limb
While – Danny Boyle Anatomizes A Key Scene From 127 Hours
With – Chomet On Conjuring Tati
Plus – Riff-Rafferty And Aronofsky Talk Werewolf And Swan
And – Rozen Thinks Rachel McAdams Ought To Be A Superstar Already
AndLyall On King Firth
And – Five “Breakthrough” Perfs
With – Holiday Movie Picks From John Cameron Mitchell, Glenn Ficarra & John Requa And Mike Leigh

Boyle Sez “Hope” Is The Message Beyond The Boulder

Saturday, October 30th, 2010

Boyle Sez “Hope” Is The Message Beyond The Boulder

127 Hours, actor James Franco

Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

DP/39 Sneak Peek: Casting James Franco In 127 Hours

Sunday, October 24th, 2010

Best Picture Chart – 19 Weeks To Go – 10/21/10

Thursday, October 21st, 2010
BEST PICTURE
Picture
Studio
Director

Stars
Comment
The Ten, If I Had To Pick Today
Dec 25
True Grit
Par
Coens
Bridges
Brolin
Damon
Nov
24
The King’s Speech
TWC
Marshall
Firth
Dec 1
Black Swan
FxSch
Aronofsky
Portman
Oct 1

The Social Network
Sony
Fincher
Eisenberg
Dec 10
The Fighter
Par/Rel
O. Russell
Wahlberg
Nov 5
127 Hours
FxSch
Boyle
Franco
Oct 22
Hereafter
WB
Eastwood
Damon
June 18
Toy Story 3
Disney
Unkrich
July 16

Inception
WB
Nolan
DiCaprio
July 9
The Kids Are All Right
Focus
Cholodenko
Bening
Moore
The Next Tiers Of Likely
Dec 17
Everything You’ve Got
Sony
Brooks
Witherspoon
Nicholson
Nov 24
Love & Other Drugs
Fox
Zwick Hathaway
Dec 29
Another Year
SPC
Leigh
Broadbent
Staunton
June 11 Winter’s Bone
RdAtt
Granik
Lawrence
Feb 19
Shutter Island
Par
Scorsese
DiCaprio
July 30
Get Low
SPC
Schneider
Duvall
Spacek
Murray
Sept 15
Never Let Me Go
FxSch
Romanek
Knightley
Mulligan
Garfield
Sept 17
The Town
WB
Affleck

Renner
Hall
Cooper

Nov 19
Made In Dagenham
SPC
Cole
Hawkins
Oct 8
Secretariat
Dis
Wallace
Lane
Dec 25

Somewhere
Focus
Coppola

Dorff
Fanning

Dec 10
The Tempest
Mir
Taymor
Mirren
Dec 31
Blue Valentine
TWC
Cianfrance
Gosling
Williams
Dec 29
Biutiful
RdAtt
Gonzalez-
Inarritu
Bardem
Dec 29
The Way Home
NewMkt
Weir
Farrell

by David Poland

Previous Chart

September 29, 2010