Screener

Len Wiseman goes from ‘Underworld’ to ‘Nocturne’

Len Wiseman, who has been floating around different projects for the past year or so, is in talks to direct a pitch for 20th Century Fox “based on an original idea about a group of people who survive the end of the world and the mystery surrounding how they got to that position,” tentatively called Nocturne.

The idea doesn’t sound original at all.  In fairness, they may be withholding the secret sauce.  Considering the project is looking for writers, it’s also possible they haven’t figured out exactly what will be in the secret sauce either.  Because Wiseman’s been attached to a number of projects that haven’t come to fruition (out of proportion, I think, to the amount of films he’s actually directed), I’m skeptical of this project.  Last year, for example, he was attached to direct Motorcade with Tom Cruise starring, but now that project will star Ryan Reynolds with Jon Cassar directing.  He was also supposed to direct a video game adaptation Gears of War and Atlantis Rising, in which the famed city of Atlantis declares war on the world.  However, this announcement does provide a good opportunity to rehash all the movies/television shows/books that have used the same plot point as Nocturne.

“Flash Forward”:  This brand new ABC show centers on an event where almost every person in the world has a vision of themselves six months in the future.  Everyone abandons all activity and tries to figure out what their clue meant.  It borrows a little bit from “Lost” and sounds strongly apocalyptic.  It also is a little too similar to the “mystery surrounding how they got to that position” part of Nocturne’s plot description.

2012: It’s coming out this Friday, and has a soft spot for those that enjoy the architectural demolition derbies that come along with the apocalypse.

“Left Behind” series:  There’s a reason The Passion of the Christ earned so much money.  A religion angle is not only plausible, but profitable.  This popular Christian series, which was made into a movie starring Kirk Cameron, follows a group of sinners who are left behind after the Rapture for being unbelievers.  It takes them some time to figure out what happened, and then to identify and usurp the Antichrist.

The Road: Coming out this fall.  The apocalypse, but with two people against man-hungry cannibals with a side of post-apocalyptic depression.

The most interesting part of this spare plot description is that the characters themselves seem to be flummoxed about their position.  Were they knocked out and woke up in a nuclear bunker?  Did they get unplugged like in The Matrix?  If it weren’t for the fact that the “mystery” part was just used in “Flash Forward,” I would be more forgiving of this pickup, but it will be up to the assigned writers to prove me wrong.

'Precious' gold at the box office

The weekend was one for the record books.  Opening in 18 locations, Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire earned an unheard of $100,000 per location.  Most strong specialty releases open between $10,000 and $25,000 per location.  Last year's indie standout Slumdog Millionaire opened at $36,000 per location at ten engagements, which was considered an unusually high number.  How did Precious bring in so much money?  Every theatre played the movie between nine and fourteen times each day, devoting more than one screen to the movie.  The movie opened in New York, Los Angeles (the two specialty release standards) as well as the Atlanta and Chicago metro areas.  Executive producers Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey hail from these two cities, which also have robust African-American populations, so they were able to work off their strong local fan bases.  Lionsgate has a huge hit on their hands, but scaling this release will still be tricky and require some deft handling to ride this incredibly strong wave of interest.

The number one film of the weekend was A Christmas Carol, which rang in the holiday season with a $31 million gross.  With seven more weekends until Christmas, the movie will have plenty of time to share its Christmas cheer.  The movie is also the largest 3D release to date, a welcome sign of exhibitors' progress in digital conversion.

The Men Who Stare at Goats opened at number three with $13.3 million, kicking off the fall and winter of George Clooney, who has two other films opening within the next month and a half (Fantastic Mr. Fox, Up in the Air)

The Fourth Kind ($12.5 million) drew in almost twice as many viewers as The Box ($7.8 million).  It seems that The Fourth Kind registered as scarier than The Box, which is more of a convoluted thriller.  The Fourth Kind also used vérité-type techniques, like hit Paranormal Activity, to tell its story.

In its second weekend, Michael Jackson's This Is It dropped 40% to $14 million.  Its domestic and foreign total will easily clear the $60 million paid by Sony, which also has a stake in other Jackson-related material.  Plus, the movie will stay in theatres beyond its planned two-week release, which will add to its profits.

After its spectacular wide release two weeks ago, Paranormal Activity settled down and dropped 47% to $8.6 million amidst the horror/sci-fi competition.  Through the weekend, the movie's cumulative gross reached $97.4 million, a sure sign it will cross the $100 million mark within the week.

The films in the seventh to tenth spot of the top ten dropped a below-average amount.  Couples Retreat dipped just .5%, Law Abiding Citizen fell 16%, and Where the Wild Things Are a slightly larger 28%, and Astro Boy 25%.  Each of the films had something different to offer their audience than the new releases, so the lack of competition helps explain their above-average staying power.

This Friday, disaster romp 2012 will blanket the marketplace, while comedy Pirate Radio opens smaller, along with a four-location rollout of Wes Anderson's stop-motion animated Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Tis the (early) season for 'A Christmas Carol'

Despite opening nearly two months before the holiday,  A Christmas Carol  will roll out in 3,683 theatres, including 2,050 3D screens, 141 of which are IMAX.  The movie is expected to earn in the $25-$35 million range.  As the holiday season approaches, it should pick up even more business, though it will lose 3D screens once Avatar releases on December 18th.  Our critic and executive editor Kevin Lally called the movie "Dickens for the ADD generation," noting "[director Robert] Zemeckis’ penchant for rollercoaster-like 3D action" seems tailored for a "videogame-nurtured audience."  To each generation, their own. (I count myself among the Mickey's Christmas Carol generation)

Two horror-thriller-sci-fi movies will battle at the box office this weekend: The Box (2,635 theatres) and The Fourth Kind (2,529 theatres).  Neither has accumulated much acclaim.  In an effort to punch up The Box, which was originally a short story about a simple choice ("If you open this box, you will receive $1 million and someone will die"), director Richard Kelly created a convoluted plot that "winds its way through suspense, psychological thriller, science fiction, conspiracy theory and horror genres with an overlay of Christian religious motifs and a dab of existentialism." Wow.  The Fourth Kind follows Paranormal Activity by purporting to show real events--case studies of people who were abducted by aliens.  The trailer is pretty frightening, but critic Michael Rechtshaffen found "the gimmick proves more distracting than disturbing."

The Men Who Stare at Goats (2,443 theatres) is a light war romp about a reporter who discovers the  U.S. Government sponsored a unit to try to investigate the use of psychic powers for combat.  Unfortunately, the movie includes one scene where a soldier is given LSD and starts firing shots into a crowded military courtyard, only to put the gun in his mouth to kill himself.  Because of yesterday's military shooting, audiences may not be able to flip back to comedy so soon after seeing such an eerily similar event.  However, the older-skewing satire is expected to play well for several weeks in an open field for comedies, so this should not be the death knell for the movie, especially given George Clooney's spot-on performance.

Budding awards favorite, Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire, is opening in 18 theatres.  While most specialty films will open in a mix of multiplexes and arthouses, Precious is debuting in multiplexes and theatres in primarily African- American neighborhoods.  In New York, it's playing in Harlem.  In Los Angeles, it's playing in Crenshaw.  The movie has already drawn a wave of controversy, with many critical of reviews and cries of racism being thrown around.  Not only is the movie powerful and violent, but it opens up a dialogue about race that incites incredible emotion.  With its disenfranchised child in the lead and the resulting social critique (including that of exploitation), this movie is the Slumdog Millionaire of '09.  Just don't presume it ends up with Precious winning a million dollars.

Zhang Ziyi to star in book club hit 'Snow Flower and the Secret Fan'

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a novel about a secret language, nu shu, used by women in China.  Often written on fans, the language provided a rare opportunity for women to interact with each other in 19th-century China, since the women's feet were bound, they remained cloistered in their homes, and were subject to their husband and sons.  Written by Chinese-American writer Lisa See, the novel follows two such women who were chosen as laotong (old sames) by a matchmaker, a rare form of friendship that requires being born on the same day, in the same birth order, and having other complementary characteristics.

The novel's historic setting and theme of friendship made it a big hit on the book club circuit.  So perhaps it's no surprise that two middle-aged wives, the book club stereotype, are producing a film based on the book, though they bring some unusually high-powered connections to the table.  The producers behind it?  Wendi Murdoch, wife of Rupert Murdoch (the president and CEO of Newscorp.), and Florence Sloan, wife of Harry Sloan (the chairman of MGM).  They just added actress Zhang Ziyi to their list of producers.  The star of Memoirs of a Geisha, another book club hit, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has a rare appeal that extends across cultural boundaries.  Her role in production could also help the film get past China's film quota, which limits the amount of foreign films that are exhibited each year.  Wendi Murdoch is Chinese-born, and Florence Sloan is Malaysian and Chinese.  For a cross-cultural, Chinese-based production like this, their cultural fluency will be a prized asset.

The project is in search of a distributors and backers at the American Film Market, though the production has already set a start date for next year.  While the project is commercial and has a global audience, it's worth noting that so far it is being produced outside the studio system.  Certainly those currently on the project are uniquely suited to the task, but was Memoirs of a Geisha's $162 million gross on an $85 million budget just not good enough for the big studios?  Or did the producers of the project snag the rights before anyone else?

Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin to host the Oscars

This year's Oscars will have ten nominees for Best Picture and two hosts sharing the limelight.  Steve Martin had hosted the Oscars twice before, but Alec Baldwin will be hosting for his first time.

Over at The Envelope, The LA Times' award blog, Elizabeth Snead suggested that Baldwin was either discovered or taken for a test run at Elle's Women in Hollywood awards.  After watching the YouTube videos of Baldwin's performance, it's clear that he's an ace at hosting.  While most hosts seem to put so much energy and song-and-dance into their duties, Baldwin's persona is detached and deadpan.  It seems like he's doing the act for himself, not the audience.

Baldwin passed the test of making fun of celebrities without coming off as mean-spirited.  His wry delivery lets flat jokes pass and good ones receive a roar of appreciative laughter and applause.  As a fan of his pompous, self-interested character on "30 Rock," I look forward to seeing Baldwin take a little bit of Jack Donaghy to the Oscar stage.

Perhaps the Academy is hedging their bets by having Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin co-host.  Martin's style involves more interaction with the audience.  His opening monologue in the 2001 Oscars seemed like he was talking to his friends.  He picked out and picked at celebrities in the audience without them seeming to mind.  If the Oscars maintain anything from last year's ceremony, they'll need someone comfortable sitting down in seats with people.  If that role could go to Martin, Baldwin could complement Martin by continuing to be his aloof self.

Baldwin and Martin.  Let the Oscar shake-up continue.

George Clooney and Alexander Payne could pair up for 'The Descendants'

George Clooney under the direction of Alexander Payne?  Sounds like a winning combination to me.  Clooney is known for choosing atypical comedies, and Payne's movies are darkly comedic, yet embraced by a wide range of viewers.   He now plans to direct The Descendants, an adaptation of the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings.  This will be the first project he's directed in five years, and the first film he has directed without also receiving a writing credit.  He previously wrote and directed four films within the span of eight years: Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt and Sideways.

The plot, as provided by Variety, "centers on a wealthy landowner who takes his two daughters on a search for his wife's lover in the hopes of keeping his family together."  A look at a summary of the source novel, however, reveals more nuance as well as the trademark dark comedy tone Payne is so adept at handling.

Clooney will play the landowner who is descended from a Hawaiian princess and a haole (white person/foreigner).  He's had a life of leisure and is married to a beautiful, adventurous woman, now in a terminal coma after a catamaran accident.  His 10 and 17-year-old daughters are strangers to him, and his relationship with them is awkward at best.  He's also mulling over a business deal that would involve him selling his family land to a real estate developer.  As he's contemplating pulling the plug on his wife, he finds out that she has been having an affair for some time with a real estate broker.  He gathers his children (the eldest sent from her boarding school) in  search of his wife's lover.

Among his other talents, Payne is a director of actors.  He exacted an amazing performance from Reese Witherspoon (pre-Legally Blonde) when she was an up-and-comer in Election.  In his past two high-profile films, he directed his actors to Oscar-nominated roles (with the exception of Paul Giamatti, who still deserved one).  Jack Nicholson and Kathy Bates were nominated in About Schmidt, and Thomas Haden Church and Virginia Madsen were nominated in Sideways.  Is Clooney angling for an Oscar follow-up to Syriana?

The movie will start shooting in February in Hawaii.  Clooney is currently in Spain shooting The American while three of his films debut this fall: The Men Who Stare at Goats, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Up in the Air.

Michael Jackson's 'This Is It' beats the competition to the top

The documentary of a concert that never was, This Is It, easily found its place at #1 this weekend, bringing in $21.3 million.  Michael Jackson's songs have spent plenty of time at #1 on the Billboard charts, but now the late music icon can add #1at the box office to his list of accomplishments.  Globally, the movie was even more of a success, passing the $100 million mark in its first weekend.  Sony paid $60 million for the movie (not including marketing), so the doc will turn a healthy profit.  The fact that Sony holds rights to Jackson's music will also help the parent company's bottom line.

In second place, Paranormal Activity dropped just 21% to gross another $16.5 million.  The movie is on track to pass $100 million in the next couple of weeks.  Despite many viewers who have faulted the movie for being too slow or boring 90% of the time (see the semi-literate comments below the Paranormal Activity review), it appears the horror flick has become one of those films you need to see just to weigh in on, especially if you're a teenager.

Three spots lower, Saw VI dropped 61% to $5.6 million.  While the original Saw possessed the robust word-of-mouth that has helped Paranormal Activity, the jig may be up.  Currently, Saw VII (in 3D) is slated to begin production in January 2010 for a release next Halloween, but the lackluster box office may change plans.  Whether or not this series is declared dead, with horror franchises it's only a matter of time before they're resurrected.

Amelia rose two spots to #9 this weekend, adding 250 theatres and only dropping 23%.  While these are strong second-week results, the cumulative gross for the film is just $8 million, a disappointing sum.

The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day had a per-screen average of $6,700 for a $462,000 total.  Gentlemen Broncos, a Fox Searchlight release that seems to have been recalibrated for a small theatrical release, probably to platform for the DVD, made $5,000 per screen.  While these are the kind of averages that work better on 3,000-screen releases, these movies will likely see more traction in their DVD windows.

This week will see a return to wide releases. A Christmas Carol will open in theatres just as stores are taking their Halloween decorations down, and The Men Who Stare at Goats will provide some indie-tinged comedy. The Box and The Fourth Kind will compete for thriller audiences.  Precious: Based on the novel 'Push' by Sapphire will also debut in a limited amount of theatres, giving us a taste of its box-office prospects, so check back on Friday for the full roundup.

Tales of infidelity at the London Film Festival

FJI Executive Editor Kevin Lally reports on some highlights from the recently concluded Times BFI London Film Festival.

I'm back from a week's vacation in London, England, but I couldn't avoid making it a bit of a busman's holiday, since the 53rd annual Times BFI London Film Festival happened to coincide with my visit. I left before the closing-night screening of a film this Beatle fan can't wait to see, the John Lennon drama Nowhere Boy, and I was too late to secure one of the remaining press seats for the Q&A sessions with Clive Owen and Julianne Moore, but I still managed to sample a number of intriguing films amidst my theatregoing and museum-gazing.

This year's festival, which hosted 193 feature films, sought to raise the event's profile with more star-driven U.K. premieres and a new awards ceremony. Among the stars turning up to represent films like The Road, Chloe, A Serious Man, and the George Clooney trifecta of Up in the Air, The Men Who Stare at Goats and Fantastic Mr. Fox were Bill Murray, Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen, Emma Thompson, Colin Firth and, of course, Mr. Clooney himself. Jacques Audiard's acclaimed A Prophet took the award for Best Film and Defamation scored the Grierson Award for Best Documentary.

For my own screening choices, I opted for films that haven't yet screened in New York or may never appear stateside. By sheer chance, a recurring theme of my selections was the price of marital infidelity.

Chloe, the new film from Canada's Atom Egoyan, is a remake of the 2003 French drama Nathalie, about a gynecologist (Moore) who hires a young call girl (Amanda Seyfried) to test the faithfulness of her college professor husband (Liam Neeson). But Seyfried's Chloe is more of a wild card than Moore ever anticipated, and the experiment wreaks havoc on the elegant wife and mother's pristine home life. Moore brings depth and subtlety to her performance, but ultimately Chloe is an unconvincing melodrama that goes way over the top.

A much more persuasive infidelity tale is Leaving, a French-language drama with a sensational performance by Kristin Scott Thomas. The bilingual actress plays a married mother of two teenagers who falls madly in love with the Spaniard (Sergi Lopez) who's been hired to fix up a home office for her return to work as a physiotherapist. But husband Yvan Attal refuses to accept this attack on his marriage and does everything he can to thwart his wife until she agrees to return to him. Briskly directed by Catherine Corsini, this feminist look at a woman's right to choose passion could be a smart pickup for an American distributor.

Infidelity also propels the narrative in Adrift, a 1980s-era Brazilian drama from writer-director Heitor Dhalia. The story centers on 14-year-old Filipa (poised and pretty newcomer Laura Neiva) during a summer holiday with her family at the beach. The girl adores her novelist father, but soon discovers he’s having a fling with an attractive American who lives nearby. As Filipa deals with the sexual games of her teenage friends, she also learns that her parents’ marriage is far more complex and troubled than she ever knew. The film is well-acted all around (including by French star Vincent Cassel showing off his fluent Portuguese) and the locations are handsome, but this coming-of-age tale is far too familiar to travel much beyond its native Brazil.

A more original family drama came from Spain: Ander, the story of a single, forty-something Basque farmer whose life changes when he breaks his leg and his family hires a Peruvian ranch-hand to take over his chores. The awkward rapport between Ander and his temporary replacement suddenly turns sexual, and the lonely farmer struggles to come to terms with what he has made of his life. With distinct echoes of Brokeback Mountain (and a similar leisurely pace), this debut feature from Roberto Castón, director of the Bilbao Gay Film Festival, should intrigue audiences at various gay festivals, but its understated style limits its theatrical potential.

Groundbreaking music-video and feature director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) has also been in a family frame of mind lately. His documentary The Thorn in the Heart pays tribute to his feisty Aunt Suzette, a teacher who worked at various schools in rural France from the 1950s to mid-’80s. This is a film of very modest pleasures, with far more resonance for the admiring director than for a general audience. Still, it wouldn’t be a Gondry film without quirky touches like the makeshift cinema he builds in one village, or the experimental short he creates with a group of schoolchildren wearing “invisible” bluescreen costumes. The one dark element in the portrait is Suzette’s relationship with her struggling gay son, a model-train aficionado who built the miniature villages which charmingly introduce each stop in Gondry’s nostalgic journey.

Finally, family is the enemy in Glorious 39, the new melodrama from well-regarded British writer-director Stephen Poliakoff (Gideon’s Daughter, Close My Eyes). Romala Garai (Atonement) stars as a young actress in 1939 Britain who discovers that the aristocratic clan that adopted her as a child is full of dark secrets, mainly driven by their desire to appease the growing Nazi threat at any cost, including murder. The movie is like a Merchant Ivory version of a paranoid thriller—lushly appointed and completely daft. Top Brit actors like Bill Nighy, Julie Christie, Jeremy Northam, David Tennant, Hugh Bonneville and Christopher Lee try but fail to lend this overwrought tale some credibility.

The London Film Festival also showcased the British premieres of many of the year’s most acclaimed festival films, such as The White Ribbon, Lebanon, Mother, Precious, Vincere and Sweet Rush, plus “Treasures from the Archives” like Abel Gance’s J’Accuse, Anthony Asquith’s silent Underground, Capra’s Dirigible, Bergman’s The Touch, and John Stahl’s Leave Her to Heaven. It’s a world-class festival and a treat for Londoners, who probably don’t care that the earlier Toronto and Venice events get a lot more press.

'This Is It' to thrill audiences through Halloween weekend

When Halloween falls on a weekend, the box office usually suffers, with the exception of horror movies.  The choice between trick-or-treating and seeing a movie is pretty obvious for most people.  To max out their revenue during this slow weekend, even the two big horror movies went wide last weekend.  Saw VI and Paranormal Activity should continue to see healthy grosses this weekend, as audiences get into the Halloween spirit.

Michael Jackson, of course, does have creepy song "Thriller" in his repertoire, and This Is It (3,481 theatres) includes a graveyard, zombie-walking sequence set to the song.  The concert documentary kicked off its two-week engagement on Wednesday, earning $7.4 million domestically its opening day.  With no other wide releases opening this weekend, This Is It may pick up some extra business to supplement its solid, but not stellar opening.

Opening on just three screens, The House of the Devil is a retro '80's throwback, taking place in the time period "for no apparent reason other than writer-director-editor Ti West doesn't want mobile phones to gum up his feeble plot."  Devoid of scares, "it borrows literally from a well-known horror film made by a guy in a Swiss jail."  So for those of you who have seen Rosemary's Baby, this movie may be a pass.

Director Jared Hess follows up Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre with Gentlemen Broncos, which is receiving a quiet theatrical release in two locations.  The movie's "unrelenting strangeness" may make it better suited to a DVD release, where those that enjoy the movie can recommend it to their like-minded friends.

A "bloated follow-up" to the cult hit, The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day  (68 theatres) also seems more suited to the DVD market.  Critic Michael Rechtshaffen predicted it won't turn a profit for its distributor "until the Saints go marching back into the video store."  Its mix of violence and comedy comes across as a cartoonish "Godfather III meets The Three Stooges," so those curious about the combination should check it out.

Based on the true story of a phenotypically black child born to white Afrikaners, Skin features such a striking genetic anomaly our critic Ethan Alter felt it would be more powerful as a documentary.  While he praises Sophie Okonedo's performance, "there's an artificiality to the proceedings" that "a documentary would likely have been able to circumvent."

On Monday, we'll see if This Is It held on through the weekend, and if the horror movies are able to draw crowds in spite of the wealth of off-screen spooky options.

'This Is It' shows Michael Jackson as we want to remember him

I knew Michael Jackson first as someone photographed with scarves and clothes covering his head.  Magazine articles speculated about his appearance and plastic surgery, allegations were put forth about his sexual abuse of children, and his own children had mysterious paternity and maternity.

That's not the Michael Jackson you see in This Is It.  For a younger generation, many of whom filled the seats at my Wednesday night screening, the concert documentary offers an opportunity to see the King of Pop back in peak form.  He's guarded, not reclusive, and his exacting nature comes across as perfectionism, not diva behavior.

Because Michael Jackson is holding back on singing in the rehearsals to preserve his voice, the most stand-out songs are those staged with elaborate choreography.  The dancing has incredible energy, precision, and ingenuity.  Even surrounded by powerful dancers half his age, Jackson comfortably holds the lead.  The dancers also help cue our awe.  A casting session whittles down the hundreds of immensely talented dancers vying for a spot, and the ones that remain seem overjoyed by the opportunity to work alongside one of their idols.  They applaud during rehearsals and show an incredible amount of respect for the man who has influenced contemporary dancing.

For those curious about the challenges of staging big concert productions, plenty of behind-the-scenes moments abound.  The audience at my screening got a big kick out of Jackson's direction to let a song intro "simmer," and shouted the phrase back at the screen with a joyful glee--"Let it simmer, Mike!"  One of Jackson's accompanists, after getting grilled by Jackson about the "simmering" pace, goes on to convey his respect for a pop artist who is such a perfectionist.  He actually knows all his records and exactly how everything should sound.  In the age of Auto-Tune, Jackson is a welcome anomaly.  Though it seems he was planning on using echo effects live, judging from one performance, he brings with him a history of pop singing independent of the technological crutches standard in today's music world.

This Is It is worth going to the theatre for the crowd, but not necessarily for the IMAX.  While the quality is far better than you would expect, the aspect ratio sometimes shifts to something smaller and grainier.  Director Kenny Ortega, who was in charge of both the stage and film production, puts together an engaging two-hour experience.  He expertly conveys half-completed effects, and instead of feeling like you missed something, you fill in what could have been.  By showing us the strength of Jackson's would-be stage performance, This Is It seals his reputation as an icon.