Screener

Today's Film News: More Sex, More City?

Not everyone can snag a first-look deal with a major studio the same day of their feature directing debut, but it seems when you've got Sex and the City on your side, the rules are a little different. Michael Patrick King, who wrote and directed this weekend's guaranteed blockbuster, has signed a deal with DreamWorks for his next project, Variety reports today. While he says the project won't be a sequel to Sex and the City, he doesn't rule out the possibility either. Speaking as a fan of the show-- stop it! Stop it now! Leave well enough alone!

Robert Rodriguez is still apparently planning a remake of Barbarella following his success in the horror/action world (Sin City, Planet Terror), but in the meantime he'll be making a pretty big shift. The Hollywood Reporter writes that he'll direct the family adventure movie Shorts, about a town swept up in a craze when a local boy discovers a rainbow-colored rock that grants wishes. Huh? William H. Macy, Leslie Mann, Jon Cryer and James Spader will fill in the grown-up roles, with Kat Dennings and Jimmy Bennett representing the younger generation.

David Gordon Green is another director making a shift in genre, going from indies like George Washington and All the Real Girls to this summer's Pineapple Express. It seems he'll continue heading in that direction, Variety reports, directing the comedy Your Highness with Pineapple star (and college friend) Danny McBride. McBride, who I am convinced is the next big thing in comedy, will play an arrogant, lazy prince who has to save his father's kingdom.

And finally, National Lampoon has wandered through the weeds a little lately, making low-budget comedies no one really wanted to see. It seems they're hoping to get the mojo back by returning to their fertile roots: college. The production company has gotten behind the spec script Frat Chance, the Reporter writes, about a nerd who must pledge a fraternity to fulfill his scholarship. We can't even imagine the hijinks that will ensue. Well, we can, but we can't imagine how they'll be funny the 10th time around.

Box Office Outlook: Let's Talk About Sex

After a May full of explosions and superheroes and battles of all kinds, it's finally-- finally!-- time again for a movie for women. And Sex and the City, if some predictions are correct, may turn out to be the biggest chick flick of them all. Based on purely anecdotal evidence, women who rarely go to the movies (my mom) and women who rarely go to chick flicks (me) are flocking to theatres this weekend, along with the show's existing die-hard fans (my sister). Male heroes will dominate the movie marketplace for the rest of the summer, but this weekend is the time for ladies to put on their fancy shoes and come to theatres in droves.

SEX AND THE CITY. Opening in 3,100 theatres. Three years after the show's series finale, the women of Sex and the City have made it to the big screen. Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) is still with her soulmate Mr. Big (Chris Noth), but talk of commitment soon brings about trouble. Samantha (Kim Cattrall) has moved out to the West Coast to manage the career of her actor boyfriend Smith (Jason Lewis), while Charlotte (Kristin Davis) remains happily married with Harry (Evan Handler) and her adopted daughter Lily. And Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) is settling into life in Brooklyn with Steve (David Eigenberg) until a crisis of faith threatens their marriage.

The fact is that the Sex and the City movie is a two-hour-plus version of the TV show; some critics fell for it, while others left the theatre screaming. "May well be the most effervescent film fantasy since Beauty and the Beast," writes Carrie Rickey of The Philadelphia Inquirer. And Claudia Puig at USA Today cheers, "As indulgences go, this one is easier on the waistline than downing a tub of Ben & Jerry's and won't deplete the wallet like a Louis Vuitton handbag." But the fun isn't just limited to the female critics. Owen Gleiberman at Entertainment Weekly calls the movie "a big sweet tasty layer cake stuffed with zingers and soul and dirty-down verve," and Peter Travers of Rolling Stone writes that "Parker is funny, touching and vital." On the other hand... Rex Reed calls it "nearly two and a half hours of tedium and gratuitous product placement," and Variety sighs, "Even a glossed-up version of Manhattan is a hard place to go home again."

Today's Film News: No No No!

Before we get into today's first, most hilarious piece of film news, I will direct you to this video, taken from many, many scenes from last summer's Transformers.

OK. That's pretty much what I said when I read today's Hollywood Reporter piece that Michael Bay will be producing a movie based on... Ouija. You know, the game where you become convinced a piece of cardboard has become psychic and is predicting your future, when it's actually your friend forcing the piece to spell out your crush's name? Ouija is produced by Hasbro, also the makers of the Transformers toys, of course. The toy company has a six-year deal with Universal to develop projects based on its products, and somehow, instead of movies based on Hasbro games like Monopoly, Risk or even Mouse Trap, we are getting a Ouija movie.

The Terminator series is all about people traveling from other times, so it makes sense that they would add a blast from the past to the cast of the upcoming Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins. Shirley Manson, the frontwoman for the mid-90s grunge band Garbage, will play the CEO of a high-tech company, according to The Hollywood Reporter. So the future is actually a lot like 1996?

Fans of TV's "The Office" know that Dwight Schrute probably believes in Transformers, and belives he could beat them in a fight, given half a chance. So it's pretty thrilling to hear that Rainn Wilson himself will have a small role in the upcoming Transformers 2, according to the Reporter. He'll play the professor of Shia LaBeouf's character, apparently a freshman in college now. Hopefully he'll bring along Dwight's ninja gear and prepare to kick some serious ass.

And finally, Brett Ratner really won't stop ruining everything. Having driven two franchises into the ground, he's moving on to a third, planning a fourth Beverly Hills Cop movie, with Eddie Murphy slated to reprise his role as Axel Foley. Variety reports that Jerry Bruckheimer, who produced the first film back in 1984, won't even be involved this time. When you find yourself missing the artistic input of Jerry Bruckheimer, you know times are hard.

Today's Film News: Minghella and Pollack Leave Legacies, and Confusion

Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack were the powerhouse producers behind Mirage Films, the production company with a first-look deal at The Weinstein Company. But after Minghella's death in March and Pollack's on Monday, the fate of the company is up in the air, writes The Hollywood Reporter. It's all speculation at this point, but the article suggests that Mirage products not attached to co-producers (such as the HBO movie The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency and a remake of the German hit drama The Lives of Others) may be shepherded by the Weinsteins or Pollack's daughter Rebecca, formerly an exec at United Artists. It's at least good to know that, following the loss of two great filmmakers, there are people willing to make sure their last efforts will see the light of day.

The fact that the biggest movie release of the weekend is aimed squarely at women is sending box-office pundits into a panic. Variety reports that, while women all over the country are preparing to line up for midnight screenings of Sex and the City, men would "rather be shot than sit through the movie." The most optimistic numbers have Sex and the City making Devil Wears Prada kind of numbers, while those of us who are not box-office experts but know plenty of women feel confident that this movie will make way, way more money than anyone expects. Mark my words: Indiana Jones may even get a run for his money from four women in stilettos.

In America, when celebrities say stupid things in public, we either give them a reality show or, very occasionally, make them apologize on "Oprah." In China, though, one slip of the tongue can mean being banned for life. That's the fate facing Sharon Stone, according to The Reporter, who said at Cannes that the recent earthquakes in China were "karma" for China's treatment of Tibet. The country is now banning all of Stone's films, which means the country's teenagers will have a lot fewer options for the Friday night tradition of renting a movie just to make fun of it.

Wedding comedies seem to be the rage now, and with screenwriters running out of ideas for how to make nuptials entertaining, they're resorting to hostage situations. Variety reports that Touchstone will produce the spec comedy script Wedding Banned, about a long-divorced couple who kidnap their daughter on her wedding day to keep her from making the mistake of her life. All this, you know,  instead of talking it out like grown-ups before the dresses were paid for.

Weekend Roundup: How Many Crystal Skulls Can $101 Million Buy?

I haven't been able to get the Indiana Jones theme out of my head all weekend, and neither has the rest of America. We as a nation sent the fourth Indy movie to a rollicking $101 million opening weekend, with an additional $50 million from its Thursday and Monday playdates. That makes it the second-best Memorial Day opening of all time, behind only last summer's Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. The crazy people who though Indy might best the five-day record set by Revenge of the Sith two years ago were disappointed, but otherwise, there are plenty of happy people on the Paramount lot.

Elsewhere, though, it's a mixed bag. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian managed to snag second place after last week's first-place bow, despite a 58% audience decline that resulted in a meager $28 million take for the weekend. (The rest of these figures will be for the three-day weekend period, by the way.) For contrast, look at Iron Man, which came in right behind it with $20 million despite having been in theatres for an extra two weeks. Given that Iron Man still holds the record for the biggest opening of the summer, we may see it hanging on even longer than some of these other upstart blockbusters.

The rest of the list was populated with some smaller numbers, all of them in the single-digit millions. What Happens in Vegas hung on OK at #4 with $9 million, well ahead of Speed Racer, which came in at #5 with a weak $3 million. Clustered right behind it were movies Speed Racer was intended to cream, like Made of Honor (at #6 with $3.3 million) and the ever-durable Baby Mama (#7, $3.3 million). All of these movies are quickly shedding theatres, as is Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which feels like it's been around forever but is still bringing in audiences, coming in at #8 with $1.7 million.

Rounding out the top ten were two movies that couldn't even break $1 million. (Shows you how much of the national audience Indy managed to eat.) Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay makes its last stop in the top ten with $940 K, while The Visitor keeps hanging on at #10, drawing in the adult audiences the summer blockbusters won't bother with; the indie drama netted $723 K, bringing its total to an impressive $4.3 million.

Given how much money is contained within the top ten this week, Box Office Mojo didn't even bother to number anything after #11 (Forbidden Kingdom, if you're interested). So check out the listings for the top ten after the jump, and just wait 'til next weekend, when yet another blockbuster comes out and the summer movie season rolls merrily along.

Today's Film News: Brett Ratner One Step Closer to World Domination

I can't believe I'm about to mention "American Idol" here for the second time in two days, but it keeps being relevant to movie news. During the show's finale on Thursday, two commercials for Guitar Hero featured the final contestants acting out the dancing-in-the-underwear scene from Risky Business-- holding Guitar Hero guitars, of course. Turns out that was the brainchild of Brett Ratner, who will be using his expertise in exceedingly commercial filmmaking to make, well, commercials. Variety announced today that he's forming Brett Ratner Brands as a consultancy business, teaching ad execs how to harness the power of the movies to sell who knows what. Turns out, there is no God but money, and Brett Ratner is its messenger.

I was going to say something in the previous item about how it meant the apocalypse was nigh, but I think this next bit of news proves it even better. Uwe Boll, director of the famously loathed Alone in the Dark and In the Name of the King, is working on two new movies based on real stories: Stoic, about a group of prisoners who tortured a fellow inmate, and Janjaweed, about the Sudanese militia groups accused of conducting the Darfur genocide. The Hollywood Reporter quotes Boll as saying, "What can I lose? I got so bashed for my video game adaptations I don't care anymore." I wish I could not care anymore, but right now I'm so depressed at the thought of these movies I want to crawl under my desk.

On to the best news I can scrounge up today: Cannes is actually hosting some sales! The independent film industry isn't dead (yet)! Sony Pictures Classics picked up the rights to the acclaimed documentary Tyson, while Focus and IFC "enjoyed a lot of action," according to Variety. While many foreign entries have been snapped up, some of the highest-profile American films mentioned yesterday-- Two Lovers, Che, and Synecdoche, New York-- remain homeless. Forget that recession, distributors, and get buying!

And finally, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull made as much as $30 million yesterday, on a school night, says Fantasy Moguls. What did you do?

Box Office Outlook: Crystal Box-Office Grosses

Ba-ba-ba-ba! Ba-ba-ba! Ba-ba-ba-BA! Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba! You know you're already singing along. It's finally-- finally!-- time for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and even though halfhearted reviews from critics have pretty much spoiled all the plot points, I am not deterred! By the time you read this I will have seen the movie on opening night, Sno Caps in one hand and popcorn in the other, mentally shushing all the talking idiots in the theater and fervently hoping for a secret Sean Connery cameo. And to prepare myself for the experience of seeing what might just be the biggest-opening movie in history, I'll look back over some of the reviews, along with a few more of the weekend's releases. Though, with Indy coming to over 4,000 screens and everything else opening on fewer than 10, it's not really a question of which one matters most.

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL. Opening (Thursday) in 4,260 theatres. Well, it's been nearly 20 years since his last adventure, but intrepid archaeologist Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is back in action. This time it's the Cold War, and the Russians are the bad guys, seeking control of the mysterious Crystal Skull, an artifact possibly left on Earth by aliens that imbues its owner with unbelievable power. Along on the journey are Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf), a mouthy kid, and Indy's old flame Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen). Cate Blanchett puts in a performance as the villainous Russian Irina Spalko, and John Hurt and Ray Winstone play Indy's colleagues, who may or may not be exactly what they seem.

It's not exactly fourth verse, same as the first, with this franchise revival, but most of the critics are happy enough to be in Indy's company, even if it's not as much fun as it used to be. Our Kevin Lally says the script "isn’t as consistently satisfying as the best episodes in the series," but as a whole, the movie "feels of a piece with its predecessors." "It's the most tender, warm-spirited and entertaining picture Spielberg has made in years," writes Salon.com, and the Washington Post cheers, "The boy is back in town." On the other hand, Manohla Dargis at The New York Times says the movie "comes alive only in isolated segments," and Rex Reed at The New York Observer curiously dubs it "a four-star yawn." And the Wall Street Journal sighs, "All of it amounts to a been-there-done-that-better recapitulation of Mr. Spielberg's career."

American Idol Finale Launches Summer Movie Marketing

Did you catch "American Idol" last night? Come on, you weren't just a tiny bit curious about which David would triumph, and how many sappy guest appearances you could tolerate before drinking yourself to sleep? I admit, I'm a very infrequent viewer of the show, but even I couldn't resist tuning in to last night's two-hour finale extravaganza. (Two hours! To announce one winner!) And I caught an onslaught of marketing, not from the usual "American Idol" partners, but from virtually every major movie that's coming out this summer.

I wrote a piece for this month's Film Journal about the creative ways marketers are targeting online audiences. But the one guaranteed place to get to viewers via good old-fashioned TV commercials is "American Idol," which pulls in the kind of broad demographics that usually only the Super Bowl can manage. Thus we saw ads for not only the family-friendly Kung Fu Panda and Get Smart, but the next big superhero movie The Hulk and Mike Myers' anti-PC comedy The Love Guru. Advertisers were smart, too. There were trailers during the commercial breaks, of course, but several stars stopped by the show in person, including Myers and the cast of an R-rated movie that doesn't come out for nearly three more months.

The appearance by Tropic Thunder stars Jack Black, Ben Stiller and Robert Downey, Jr. was the cleverest promotion-- they appeared as The Pips under archive footage of Gladys Knight singing "Midnight Train to Georgia"-- even if it wasn't as funny as it should have been. But the subliminal marketing of it was brilliant. There's Black, who's coming up very soon in the family friendly Kung Fu Panda, and Downey, who's wowing audiences as Iron Man even as we speak. Both of these films are from Paramount, which is also distributing Tropic Thunder. Though the title of the August movie was never mentioned, seeing the three of them together is a trigger for those of us aware of the movie, and makes the otherwise uninitiated audience like them as a trio a bit more. Those three names together might not have made sense yesterday, but now when the ads for Tropic Thunder inundate us come July, some small part of us will say "Oh yeah! Those guys who were the Pips!"

The bit itself seemed a little poorly thought out, with not enough jokes and going on way too long, the entire length of the song. Why did Downey periodically wander off the set? Why did Black show up with his pants off at one point? And, seriously, why were the three of them never dancing in sync? But even with a B for execution, the idea gets an A for sheer synergistic brilliance. Check it out below, and if you like, take a look at the original (thanks to Slate's Idolatry for pointing it out) to realize which one of them would have truly been a great Pip. (I'm sure this is not really a mystery.)

Today's Film News: Demme Makes Sense Again

Martin Scorsese's ongoing campaign to become the High King of Music Documentaries will have to be put on hold, now that he's dropped out of directing an untitled doc about Bob Marley. But all is not lost! Jonathan Demme, who made the iconic concert movie Stop Making Sense, will take over, according to Variety. Scorsese's movie was the one that was approved by the Marley estate, while the unauthorized biopic planned by the Weinstein Company remains threatened by possible litigation.

The West Wing of Oliver Stone's White House is finally fully staffed. Richard Dreyfuss will soon sign on to play Vice President Dick Cheney, according to The Hollywood Reporter, and will presumably immediately head to the film's set in Louisiana. Some might argue that Dreyfuss doesn't have the required mien of evil and doom that a man playing Cheney would require, but given that he aged 30 years over the course of Mr. Holland's Opus, I fully expect the world from him.

As Cannes heads into its final weekend, the buying market is starting to look similar to the way it did at Sundance, when it took much longer than usual for some of the highest-profile projects to get picked up. Variety reports that two of the biggest films, James Gray's Two Lovers and Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche New York, have yet to be picked up. Steven Soderbergh's Che, which just debuted yesterday, also has no bites, but Soderbergh is considered "too big to ignore," the article states. Sign of the financial times, or sign of low quality? Only a distributor can help us find out.

And speaking of Che, the first, frenzied reviews are in, and they are decidedly mixed. Variety complains that "if anything, Che seems diminished by the way he’s portrayed here," while the ever-prolific Jeffrey Wells calls it "not just "take it to the bank" gripping, but levitational -- for someone like myself it's a kind of perfect dream movie. And Variety blogger Anne Thompson quotes several anonymous critics outside the screening who call it "'A folly.' 'A mess.' 'Great." Her take? "Noble failure." Perhaps that goes a long way toward describing that Cannes buying drought.

Indiana Jones Wins Us Over No Matter What

It's hard, if not downright impossible, to kill a tentpole summer movie with bad reviews. Lord knows we film critics have tried. But still when it comes to some of the biggest names of summer, the studios treat critics like kryptonite, keeping us at bay until the last possible moment and then practically begging us to be nice.

That instinct was prominently on display when Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull debuted at Cannes on Sunday. The screening was a sign of bravado on the part of Paramount-- Look! We don't fear the French!-- but an undertone of fear ran through the planning stages. Remembering how The Da Vinci Code was practically booed out of the country two years ago, studio handlers limited press access to the movie's key players and sent George Lucas out weeks ago to lower expectations. Remember that he told Entertainment Weekly "A lot of the critics forget that they didn't like the first three, and so they get off on this one, too — or it's not the Second Coming."

So half the critics went into Sunday's press screenings, both at Cannes and at home, expecting to hate it. And half resolutely hoped that it would be at least as good as The Last Crusade. The result was curious. Though reports from the scene in Cannes said that reaction was mixed, the Rotten Tomatoes score stayed at a positive 80%. But looking at the reviews, there's a definite forced enthusiasm. Our Kevin Lally called it "the most Spielbergian of the series, with all the assets and deficits that implies," while David Poland of Movie City News wrote the cryptic "You can feel the Indy magic at various moments through this film. However…"

See what they did there? You simply can't excorciate Indiana Jones. There are people who stick up for Temple of Doom, even though it has to be one of the most simultaneously racist and sexist movies of the 80s. And for all our jokes, most of us went willingly along with the idea of a 65-year-old action hero, because in some ways, Harrison Ford is simply untouchable. For all our horrific memories of The Phantom Menace, it maintains an overall positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. When something is so beloved for so long, you're willing to let it let you down a little, so long as it gives you at least a fraction of what you came for. Even if Jar Jar Binks is part of the package.

Of course Indiana Jones wasn't going to get booed at Cannes. That would be the equivalent of the critics tracking down their 12-year-old selves and kicking them in the shins, insisting that the movie hero they love is just an old guy in a silly hat. Instead the critics have twisted themselves into pretzels finding ways to praise a movie that, were it just any other action-adventure epic (think The Mummy), would probably have barely made an impression on them. Like I said, critics can't kill public enthusiasm for a movie, but in this case, they can't even kill the enthusiasm in themselves. In some part of their core, the rousing march of a theme song inspires the movie love that made them get that job to begin with.

This is all projection-- I haven't seen the movie yet, insisting upon going with my friends on opening night, along with the other fools who will ignore mixed reviews and show up in droves. And oh, will we ever show up. These half-hearted, almost apologetically tepid reviews tell me more than any pan or rave ever could. The message is clear: Resistance is futile. Crystal Skull is your new master now. And you're going to love it.

I sure plan to.