Screener

Today's Film News: A Big Happy Family Again

Diane Keaton has hit a rough patch with comedies lately (Because I Said So, Mad Money), and Steve Martin hasn't done too well for himself either (the Cheaper by the Dozen movies). Now maybe they'll both have a chance to redeem themselves, since they're teaming up for the comedy One Big Happy, from the creators of the TV series "Party of Five." Lorne Michaels is attached to produce, which hasn't always meant instant success (The Ladies Man, anyone?), but it indicates the movie will be more than a cheap throwaway. Variety reports that Keaton and Martin will play a couple, as they did in the early-90s Father of the Bride movies.

For perhaps the first time in history, the soap opera "The Bold and the Beautiful" is at the center of a labor dispute. Over the weekend, as the two actors' unions SAG and AFTRA tried to hammer out a deal that would find them renegotiating their contracts with the AMPTP as a united front, the two groups decided to split off instead. The tipping point, Variety reports, was when SAG reportedly tried to take control of the cast of the soap opera, which had been previously under AFTRA's jurisdiction. Now the two unions are going it alone in renegotiations, which makes it all the more likely that we'll be seeing-- sigh-- yet another strike.

Mos Def dazzled me in Be Kind Rewind, and now he'll have his chance to show his stuff in a very different role in Cadillac Records. The Brooklyn-based rapper and actor will play Chuck Berry in the drama, a fictional take on the 1950s music label Chess Records. The Hollywood Reporter writes that Gabrielle Union has also joined the cast as Geneva Wade, a girlfriend of Muddy Waters.

And finally, this photograph has nothing to do with anything except that the Kids Choice Awards were held yesterday, and it's a slow news day, and there's not much better than seeing a sexagenarian Indiana Jones smiling through the slime. Happy Monday!

Weekend Roundup: Audience Says 'Hit Me' to 21

I'm going to credit Film Journal's executive editor Kevin Lally for the success of 21 at the box office this weekend. Amid a sea of negative reviews, Kevin's stood out as particularly glowing; audiences clearly took his advice, putting 21 in the #1 spot for the weekend with a $23.7 million haul. It came in well ahead of its only real competition, the stalwart Horton Hears A Who!, which fell to #2 with a still-strong $17 million. Horton also became the first movie of 2008 to cross the $100 million mark.

As for the other new releases, audiences pretty much treated them exactly the way they deserved to be treated. In a glorious move away from the trend, lazy spoof Superhero Movie didn't rake in the cash. It didn't fare too badly either, coming in at #3 with $9 million, but that's well below what Meet the Spartans made in January and what other similar spoofs have done in the past. If this is a sign that the genre is flagging, I think we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

Elsewhere, Stop-Loss fared OK in moderate release, coming in at #8 with $4.5 million. The real test will come next weekend, once MTV's teen-centric marketing has worn off and the audience knows it's getting in for an Iraq War movie and not a soapy melodrama. And Run, Fat Boy, Run, the most mediocre comedy Simon Pegg has ever made, made mediocre money. It couldn't even land in the top 10 with its $2.4 million draw, and had to settle for 13th place.

Holdover Meet the Browns saw a steep 60% drop, falling to #4 and a $7.7 million take; even though the movie has taken in $32 million in just two weekends, it's a lackluster performance from the Tyler Perry juggernaut. Drillbit Taylor, though, is a product from yet another never-ceasing production house that is faring even worse. The Judd Apatow-produced comedy fell to #5 and $5.8 million, though given that it didn't debut much higher, that's not actually too great a drop.

Shutter did pretty much what all Japanese horror remakes do, dropping sharply in its second weekend to #6 and $5 million; expect it to disappear entirely in another two weeks. 10,000 B.C, on the other hand, is hanging in there, coming in at #7 and adding another $4.8 million to its $84 million take. Give it a few more weeks and it might be the second movie of the year to cross the $100 million mark.

Rounding out the top 10, College Road Trip and The Bank Job continue hanging in there together, coming in at #9 ($3.5 million) and #10 ($2.8 million), respectively. Given that The Bank Job debuted with very little fanfare but has hung on this long, it's the real success story among the entire current crop of films.

After the jump is the full top 20, courtesy of Box Office Mojo. Under the Same Moon dropped in the box office despite upping its theatre count, but according to Variety, the Weinstein Company still has big plans to target this drama to Spanish-speaking audiences. Other than that, the biggest surprise is the undying Juno, which has probably seen its last weekend in the top 20; it still made half a million bucks over the weekend from 444 theatres, despite my impression that everyone in the universe had already seen the movie and gotten sick of repeating "I'm fo shizz up the spout" to their friends.

Box Office Outlook: Taking Card Counters To The Bank

Since Horton Hears A Who! has dominated the box office for the last two weeks, Hollywood is sticking it to the kids this weekend and offering movie only for grown-ups. Well, at least one movie for grown-ups, a few for teenagers or grown-ups with low expectations, and one for no one with intelligence, which may guarantee that it becomes the #1 movie of the weekend. None of the reviews so far have been particularly enthralled, which might make the whole scheme backfire, handing the keys to the castle once again to that blasted elephant. You'd think that with superheroes, card sharks, marathon runners and soldiers in the mix, at least one of them could make a fair run at the crown.

21. Opening in 2,648 theatres. It's the movie Vegas (probably) doesn't want you to see! Based on the true story of M.I.T. students trained to count cards and walk away from casinos as millionaires, 21 stars Jim Sturgess as a student with big dreams that also involve big amounts of cash. He gets involved in a campus group organized by a professor (Kevin Spacey) who teaches the math whizzes to count cards, all the better to win at blackjack. As is usually the case, though, the casinos don't like it when people come in and actually win money, so soon the M.I.T. scammers are wrapped in a world a whole lot more complicated than Boston Common. Kate Bosworth and Laurence Fishburne also star.

Appropriately enough, 21 screened at ShoWest in Vegas two weeks ago; our Kevin Lally caught it there and writes, "There's less here than meets the eye, but the show is bright and brisk enough that audiences will likely be happy they took the gamble." Owen Gleiberman at Entertainment Weekly agrees, calling it "a clever and novel card-sharp thriller." The Washington Post, on the other hand, deems it "slick but resoundingly empty," and the Village Voice calls Sturgess "a bust [...] in a movie that wastes a lot of time and money and really, really shoulda stayed in Vegas."

Run Fat Boy Run Does Pegg, Audience No Favors

 

Comedians, more than any other kind of actor, quickly develop themselves as a brand. With a few exceptions, you know what you will get from an Adam Sandler movie, a Will Ferrell movie, or, in earlier days, a Jim Carrey movie. Outliers are either clear from the start that they won't be what the fans expect (Punch-Drunk Love for Sandler, Stranger than Fiction for Ferrell), or quickly rejected at the box office.

Simon Pegg is on his way to building a similar brand for himself in America, after the low-key success of both Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. He's beloved among a small group of fanatics, but largely unknown to the population at large, which makes any risks at this point especially dangerous. If you're still trying to get people to just take a look at you, you need to show them the best stuff, the stuff that will make you famous.

That's why Run, Fat Boy, Run is such a bewildering mistake on Pegg's part. He re-wrote the screenplay with another comedian known in small circles for a distinctive brand of comedy, Michael Ian Black. The pairing is a dream come true for some comedy fans, but somewhere between picking David Schwimmer as director and pretending Pegg is the "fat boy," the whole thing goes horribly wrong. Run, Fat Boy, Run is not at all the subversive and silly comedy it could have been. Instead, it's exactly what you would expect from the posters, which feature Pegg in running clothes bearing the slogan "Erectile Dysfunction Awareness." Har har.

Up against Superhero Movie this weekend, Fat Boy actually stands out of an example of comedy done competently, with actual effort for jokes and actual talent onscreen. But it's so mainstream and so bland that the only thing special about it is Pegg himself, who proves that he's got leading man qualities if he ever finds someone willing to exercise them. Oh, and Hank Azaria, who is so well-known for his many voices on "The Simspons" that it's a shock to see him naked onscreen, totally ripped. He may be the voice of Comic Book Guy, but he sure doesn't resemble him.

In short: Don't get your hopes up for Fat Boy. Any given 10 minutes of Shaun of the Dead would probably elicit as many laughs as the entire movie does. But hold out hope for Simon Pegg, whose big-screen stardom just got a little more distant but is still totally possible.

Today's Film News: Subway Screenwriter Success Story!

Next time you New Yorkers are frustrated because of construction delays in the subway, keep those curse words to yourself-- that's a Hollywood screenwriter slowing down your commute! Yet another Cinderella story has emerged in the trades today, with Staten Island-based transit worker Michael Martin's screenplay, Brooklyn's Finest, getting ready for production in May. The Hollywood Reporter writes that Martin began the screenplay after he totaled his car, with money in mind rather than a Hollywood future. Don Cheadle, Richard Gere and Ethan Hawke are preparing to star in the ensemble crime drama, with Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) directing.

Ice Cube, the media mogul who defies categorization, will be steering away from his family-friendly Are We There Yet? series and making a movie for grown-ups again. He's teaming up with Dimension Films to make Janky Promoters, one of those movies where the title says it all. Cube and another actor will play music promoters totally unprepared when they book a major hip-hop act. Dimension head Harvey Weinstein told Variety, "He's a brand, like Tyler Perry, and that's the direction he's headed in." So, basically, it's Ice Cube's world, and we're just watching his movies in it.

While the rest of America figures out exactly who they want their politicians to be, Oliver Stone is busy building his own political dynasty. Yesterday he announced that Elizabeth Banks had been cast as Laura Bush in the George W. Bush biopic W, and now James Cromwell and Ellen Burstyn have signed on as Poppa and Mama Bush. You'll remember that James Cromwell also played Prince Philip in 2006's The Queen, which means he's slowly taking over as every fictional version of a head of state. Until he plays Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I won't be too concerned.

Nate Parker shone big in his role in December's The Great Debaters, and now he may have a chance to step out from under Denzel Washington's shadow. The Hollywood Reporter writes that Parker will star in Blood Done Sign My Name, an adaptation of a true story about the murder of a black Vietnam veteran by a white businessman in a small North Carolina town. Jeb Stuart, who wrote The Fugitive and Die Hard among others, will direct and write. Parker will play a local teacher who stepped in during the civil unrest that followed the murder.

New York Needs Dinner at the Movies Too!

Cinematical had a pretty harsh take on Variety's article about the Village Roadshow upscale theatres coming to the U.S. They and their commenters pointed out, rightly, that the people who can afford a $35 movie ticket can probably afford the home theatres that pull people away from the cineplex to begin with, and the promised amenities of digital projection and 3D features are becoming more and more common in regular theatres as well. Sure, food served at your table and comfier seats are great, but are they good enough?

For me, the more important question is one raised by New York magazine's Culture Vulture: When are we New Yorkers going to see some of this action? The rollout will apparently include New York eventually, but the current focus is on wealthy suburbs of places like Chicago, Seattle and Dallas. Of course, as I mentioned in this morning's post, the trend of food service with your movie and high-class amenities has been in play for a while now, and theatres across the country are drawing people in on the simple promise of making moviegoing as much of a treat as, say, going to a play.

But New York, the supposed cultural mecca of America, has seen none of this. With every article Film Journal has written about new theatres that feature bars, restaurants, bowling alleys and whatnot, I've seethed with jealousy. New York has some of the best independent theatres in the country, and places like the Angelika serve delicious food in their cafe, while venues like the Lincoln Plaza appeal to older moviegoers who don't tend to talk the whole way through Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. Yes, in New York moviegoers really have it easy, with virtually every American release available in locations all over the city. But what about the fun stuff?

I'm still not totally convinced the $35 movie ticket idea can fly, given how good at-home theatre systems are and how much complaining there is about what it costs to go to the movies to begin with. But the dinner-and-a-movie concept is wonderful, and it works whether you're eating beer and pizza or sushi and wine. A favorite theatre of mine, Asheville, North Carolina's Brew and View, sells $2 tickets to second-run movies and sells you pizza in the back that you can bring to your seat. That's actually cheaper than the usual dinner and a movie, and a whole lot more fun too-- sure, it gets a little raucous, but you paid $2! Village Roadshow has a great idea, and may find success, but that's not the only way to do it. Let's see a little more creative thinking, a little more thought on what else brings people to the movies, and maybe some thought that New Yorkers might like some dinner with their movies too.

Today's Film News: More Dinner, More Movies

Theatres offering high-end menus and other plushy comforts are nothing new-- our Andreas Fuchs has been covering a number of them all over the country in his "Dinner at the Movies" series in Film Journal. But now those 300 or so high-end theatres will be getting company, Variety reports. A group of investors will be opening Village Roadshow Gold Class Cinemas across the country in affluent suburbs, modeled on the deluxe cinemas Village Roadshow operates in Australia. Tickets will cost as much as $35 and valet parking, a cocktail bar and reclining seats will all be part of the package. Meals will be served as well, with sushi and wine replacing popcorn and Coke. For the time being we'll all pretend there is no looming recession that could possibly get in the way of this plan.

In casting news, Elizabeth Banks, known for comedic roles in movies like The 40-Year  Old Virgin and Wet Hot American Summer, is joining the cast of Oliver Stone's W, a biopic about the current president. Banks will be playing First Lady Laura Bush, though most of the movie reportedly takes place before Bush took office. Josh Brolin, currently doing his best imitation of 1970s San Francisco politician Dan White, will play George W. Bush.

Sadly, Anthony Minghella died before finishing his planned segment for I Love You, New York, an episodic feature consisting of a series of short films by famous filmmakers about the city. Now The Hollywood Reporter has announced that Shekhar Kapur, known for directing the commanding Cate Blanchett in the two Elizabeth pictures, will helm the script Minghella had already written. It looks as if Minghella's last film will be the HBO movie The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, set for broadcast later this year.

And finally, the dream of two more film students just came true. Variety reports that DreamWorks has bought the rights to the spec script Imaginary Friends, a fantasy adventure with no other plot details available. The lucky writers are Cornelius Uliano and Bryan Schulz, both of whom graduated from the Brooks Institute of Photography in California within the last three years. Uliano appears to be younger than I am. Let the resentment begin!

Will The Recession Take Away Our Film Sets Too?

I just finished writing an article for our upcoming issue, which will come out at the ShowCanada Expo in Alberta next month. The story is about the British Columbia film industry, specifically two government organizations that exist to support and promote film production in Canada's most western province. In the era of Giuliani and Bloomberg's support for film production here in the States, we forget how often Vancouver used to stand in for the fair city of New York, or anywhere else in America for that matter. I was surprised to learn while writing the article that British Columbia is the third-largest film production center in North America, just ahead of L.A. and New York.

The problem for the province right now, of course, is an even bigger problem for the U.S.: The American dollar is worthless, which makes the Canadian dollar valuable, which makes Canada no longer a cheap destination for location shooting. Even with the intensive tax breaks offered to foreign productions in the province, shooting in Canada instead of New York is not the instant budget-slasher it used to be. In fact, given aggressive tax breaks in New York and other states, it's probably cheaper to stay home.

The potential fallout of the looming recession has been analyzed from all sorts of angles in the media, including in one Variety article analyzing the labor cuts and stalling development in Hollywood. But no one seems to be discussing how it might affect what we see onscreen. With foreign dollars worth so much more on our soil, will we be seeing more Bollywood movies set in New York, or a Japanese horror movie taking place in the Arizona desert? Conversely, given the tightening of belts all over the country, will studios be scaling back on location work, confining their movies to soundstages as if it were the 1940s all over again?

The Canadian industry, from Montreal to Vancouver, is probably asking this question the loudest; despite increases in domestic production in British Columbia, foreign production companies still make up about 75% of the business there. American moviegoers may be getting movies that are actually filmed where they're set-- at least if they're set in places with hefty tax breaks-- but the Canadians may get a shriveling industry. British Columbia is far too well-established a production center to die entirely, but the lean times in America could get even leaner for Vancouver production companies.

Personally, I see the location shooting crunch as a perfect situation for the return of a classic genre: the film noir. The old ones were all set in Los Angeles and filmed largely on soundstages, perfect for a modern production company strapped for both cash and plane tickets for the crew. Your costume needs are pretty simple-- snappy fedoras for the men, waist-cinching dresses for the ladies-- and special effects are minimal, since the old movies weren't allowed to show fake blood. Hey, for true authenticity you could shoot it on black-and-white stock, with the money you save from staying on a soundstage. Yes, I think the gumshoes and dames are due for a comeback... teach the kids these days how murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle.

Today's Film News: Back To The Negotiation Table

The Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists-- better known as SAG and AFTRA--are heading back to the negotiation table with the studios, hoping to hammer out a new contract before the current one expires June 30. The plan, says Variety, is to get a contract for features and primetime television. The two acting unions have a history of animosity, which is why they have to work things out amongst themselves before they take on the AMPTP. The potential strike, of course, is pretty much a worst-nightmare situation in Hollywood right now, given that we've only just recovered from the months-long TV drought. Keep your fingers crossed.

Warner Bros. has bought the rights to a book proposal with possibly the best title ever written: I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President. The young adult book, to be penned by "Daily Show" writer Josh Lieb, is about a geeky 13-year-old who is actually an evil genius and the third-richest person on the planet. Just read this synopsis from The Hollywood Reporter: "The story concerns the boy's attempt to prove himself in the eyes of his do-gooder father by being elected class president. Unfortunately, the tactics he uses to stage coups in Central America prove to be less effective in running a middle-school campaign." This concept seems, in every way, flawless.

3D movies are intense enough as it is-- just the sight of Bono popping out of the screen in U2 3D can make your heart pound. But is the world ready for a 3D slasher movie? That's what Jaime King is assuming, at least, now that she's taken the lead role in My Bloody Valentine 3D, a remake of the 1981 thriller. Presumably because Halloween is too played out, the story takes place around Valentine's Day, when a serial killer targets couples who celebrate the holiday.

And finally, Harvey Weinstein may think he has all the power he needs, but he's no match for legions of Star Wars fans with a cause. The Weinstein Company has been holding off on the release of a dramedy called Fanboys for two years now. The story, about friends trekking to Skywalker Ranch for an early screening of the first Star Wars, was deemed too depressing because of a subplot about a friend with cancer; Weinstein reshot key scenes, using Drillbit Taylor director Stephen Brill, to excise the cancer story. But 40 minutes of the movie had already been shown to Star Wars fans, and they were livid. Now they're threatening to boycott this weekend's Superhero Movie and other TWC releases unless the original, unedited Fanboys is released. The Hollywood Reporter has the whole messy story, as well as one excellent quote from the fans: "It's not going to work, Darth Weinstein." Wait, does that make Michael Eisner Emperor Palpatine?

Today's Film News: Kristen Bell Forced To Settle

We're not sure what Kristen Bell did to deserve this, but apparently the only men worthy of her affections are Napoleon Dynamite, the main character from "Las Vegas" and the poor man's Dane Cook. That's at least what the casting for When in Rome is telling us, now that Jon Heder (Napoleon), Dax Shepard (Employee of the Month) and Josh Duhamel ("Vegas") have joined the cast of the Bell vehicle. She plays a woman who steals enchanted coins in Rome, and suddenly finds herself pursued by a variety of men. Lucky for Bell she at least has Anjelica Huston on her side, playing her boss, the curator of the Guggenheim.

Everyone figured Tony Soprano was unofficially in charge of the tri-state area, but now James Gandolfini will make it a little more official, playing the New York City mayor in the upcoming remake of The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3. John Travolta stars as a criminal who takes a subway car hostage, with Denzel Washington as an enterprising cop on his trail.

I must confess, I have for years confused Thomas Sangster with Freddie Highmore. Both are young British actors with sandy hair and toothy smiles; both were being cast as adorable moppets around the same time, in Love, Actually and Nanny McPhee (Sangster) and Finding Neverland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Highmore). But now Sangster has a chance to break out of the pack. The Hollywood Reporter writes that Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are considering the now-17-year-old actor for the lead role in their adaptation of Tintin, the Belgian comic strip series. Andy Serkis has already been cast in the motion-capture film, as Tintin's companion Captain Haddock.

And finally, Tracy Morgan, Catherine Keener and James Marsden are looking to help Al Gore's daughter Kristin make her Hollywood debut. No, really. The three actors have joined the cast of Nailed, a political comedy set to be directed by David O. Russell with a screenplay he co-wrote with the younger Gore. Jessica Biel is already set to star as a woman who has a nail gun shot into her head, which motivates her to travel to Washington, D.C. and lobby for better health care. She enlists a clueless congressman (Jake Gyllenhaal) to help her with her cause.