The studio estimate I posted on Saturday morning for Hellboy II‘s opening weekend was $35 million and change. This estimate was made with a presumption that Saturday grosses for Guillermo del Toro‘s film would dip a bit on Saturday, as sequels tend to do. This is precisely what happened. After taking in $13.7 million on Friday, Hellboy II dropped to $11.7 million yesterday. GDT and Universal are savoring their first-place victory while it lasts, knowing that next weekend’s box-office heat will be almost entirely about The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia!.

W costars Josh Brolin and Jeffrey Wright were arrested at a Shreveport bar early Saturday morning, apparently for refusing to leave at closing time. Five other W crew members involved in filming the Oliver Stone movie were also involved. Wright was reportedly maced and stun-gunned, but otherwise no kickin’ and a gougin’ in the mud and the blood and the beer. The W guys got arrested by the bulls, however, and were all taken down to the station and had to post bail.

The Shreveport Times reported that Brolin was booked and posted $334 cash bond to be released. Police did not say Saturday night whether he or the others had been released. Brolin is portraying President George Bush in the film, and Wright is playing Colin Powell. W began filming in May in Shreveport.
“Officers were called to the Stray Cat, a bar in the 200 block of Travis Street, just after 2 a.m. to deal with a rowdy patron, according to a Shreveport police patrol report. As more officers arrived, several other patrons at the bar, including Brolin and fellow actor Jeffrey Wright, tried to impede the officers, according to the report. In all, the report lists 10 officers called to the ruckus.
“Brolin, Wright and four other people were charged with interfering with police, a misdemeanor.
“City Jail booking records show Brolin had $130 in his possession he had to hand over to police in addition to his driver’s license, a belt, a cell phone, a lighter, a ring, his wallet and a watch.”

A KSLA news story said that “workers at the Stray Cat Bar [said] they asked Brolin, Wright, and about five other crew members to leave the bar twice. When they didn’t leave, they say bartenders called downtown police who responded just after two in the morning.
“Police reports list officers arresting a 29-year-old Eric Felland for remaining in the bar, resisting arrest, and public drunkenness. Officers say five others who were hanging out with Felland, including both 40-year-old Brolin and 42-year-old Wright, interfered with the arrest. Police charged them with just that — interfering with an officer.
“A man who works the graveyard shift at a nearby downtown business says he saw most of the incident, where he claims there were at least four police cars and several bicycle police on scene.
“‘”I’ve seen my share of disturbances and for the most part the cops just send them on their way, but that was the first time I’ve seen that many people at once get escorted into cars, I mean I think it was getting to the point where the cops were checking with each other to see who had room to put [people] in,’ said downtown worker Anthony Thompson.”

Admittedly, Gillian Armstrong‘s Death Defying Acts (Weinstein Co., 7.11) fared poorly with the Rotten Tomatoes gang (50% positive with the homies, 20% positive with the elites). And yes, it’s my own fault for missing the one screening that was made available by Weinstein Co. publicity (i.e., last Thursday night at the Grove). Still….

It seems strange or head-scratchy or something that this not-inexpensive drama about magician Harry Houdini (Guy Pearce) being conned by a fake medium (Catherine Zeta Jones) in a search for his dead mother has opened so quietly. It’s as if the film slipped into theatres through the back door. Part of the reason for the deafening silence is that the Weinstein Co. isn’t very flush these days, okay, but this was a really quiet opening. You could hear a pin drop.

Here‘s a 7.13 chat between Patti Smith and N.Y. Times reporter Deborah Solomon, the subject primarily being Steven Sebring‘s Patti Smith: Dream of Life, which I saw and fell for six months ago at the Sundance Film Festival. When will Los Angelenos get to see it? Or San Franciscans, for that matter? No clue.

Palm Pictures is opening it at Manhattan’s Film Forum on August 6th. Some scattered openings will follow in September and October. San Diego, it appears, will have it before Los Angeles.
Six months ago I called it “an authentic spiritual adventure film — a mostly black-and-white exploration of Smith’s life, loves, history, poetry, music, alliances, relationships, etc. It feels at times like a companion piece to D.A. Pennebaker‘s Don’t Look Back (the monochrome classic about Bob Dylan touring England in the mid ’60s), at other times like a patchwork meditation, a home movie, a concert film, a fashion show. It’s about music, heroes, rants, chants, parents, deaths, declarations and determinations.
“For me, the authenticity is in the way Sebring has captured (or emulated) the grit and textures of Smith’s prose, and the fierce spiritual tension that her band music has always injected in one form or another. ‘Life is an adventure of our own design…a series of lucky and unlucky accidents,’ yes…but having a locomotive inside you helps. There is no boredom or lethargy in this lady’s life…not a lick of this. The movie is a pleasure, a journey, an attic sift-through, a huge charge.”

A clip of Heather Ledger‘s “Joker” taunting the actual Sen. Patrick Leahy — awesome.

I finished Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglorious Bastards this morning at 2:30 am, and yesterday’s opinion (based on having read the first 80 pages) is basically unchanged. I’m still calling it a categorically insane World War II attitude comedy on top of a quasi-“exploitation film” about angry Jews paying back the Nazis for their many atrocities. It begins and ends in QT’s movie-nut head, and is very entertaining for that.
The film is going to seem loony-tunes to some, and that’s good. The Cinema Paradiso section (pretty young Jewish refugee running a Paris cinema, changing reels, not smoking for fear of burning the stored silver nitrate film reels) goes on a bit, page 50 to 100, give or take. A lot of bodies hit the floor from page 100 to 165. A lotta blood and bullets. The violent finale is wackjob. It’s either insane beyond measure or wildly imaginative in a good way, or both.
Oh, and the actor who gets to play the role of Colonel Landa (a.k.a. “the Jew Hunter”) is going to have a field day. Brad Pitt‘s “Aldo the Apache” part should be beefed up a bit; he’s too peripheral over the last 30 or so pages.

“Clearances” are gentleman’s agreements between theatrical chains that are basically about respecting territory and boundaries. One L.A. clearance arrangement that’s been in effect for some time is between the Landmark plex on West Pico Blvd. and the AMC Century City 15 plex, located about a mile or so to the northeast. The basic deal has been to give each other economic breathing room by not showing each other’s films. Simple.

But all that has recently changed. The Landmark has essentially decided that with times being tough all over, their indie-movies-for-upscale-audiences plan hasn’t been bringing in enough dough and it’s time for a new strategy. And that means showing more mainstream-y films even if their AMC cousins are showing the same titles. Which is a roundabout way of saying fuck the Diaz brothers.
Situation: The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia! will be opening at both the Landmark and the AMC C.C. plex next weekend, and it may be that the Landmark will beat out the AMC as far as Mamma Mia! business is concerned due to the latter having a stronger 25-and-over female customer base.
“Landmark just decided to do it,” a friend confides. “They decided they really wanted The Dark Knight and WB was perfectly willing to let them show it. Landmark, meanwhile, had Mamma Mia! exclusively for that area, but now AMC is going to go show Mamma Mia also.” In short, a little tit-for-tat, quid pro quo action.
Landmark CEO Ted Mundorff was unavailable, but his sentiments were summed up by a professional colleague: “Let’s just show good films that everyone likes and not be so exclusionary.”

The friend believes that the Dark Knight booking is as much about appealing to Landmark regulars who are serious Chris Nolan fans (Memento, Insomnina) as much as anything else. I’m not sure I can buy that one but whatever. I myself am a Nolan fan first, a Heath Ledger fan second and a Batman fan second.
Before they altered or broadened their identity by letting mainstream popcorn movies in, Landmark had been…how to say it? The term is either “suffering” or “somewhat hurting,” but then so has everyone else in the indie exhibition sector. It’s not a flush time right now. The Landmark has been plugging along, but the biggest indie films they’ve been showing have been The Visitor, Mongol and Guillame Canet‘s Tell No One. That’s fine as far as it goes, but an operation like the Landmark needs more grease on the axles.
As someone else put it, “There’s so much good product around now. Why not just just give people what they want?”

Hellboy II: The Golden Army is the weekend’s #1 film — it did $13.7 million last night and is projected to earn $35.8 million for the weekend. I was foreseeing something in the mid to high 20s, so this is a bit of a surprise. Of course, sequels are always hot the first day. And Hellboy II may be down 50% or more next weekend when The Dark Knight rolls in. it may be a push to reach $100 million domestic.
Awful-third-act Hancock will come in second with $34.6 million by Sunday night. It’s off only 35% from last weekend, and the cume right now is $166 million. It’s going to top $200 million easy, which is quite a marquee-draw accomplishment on Will Smith‘s part given the conviction in most quarters that it’s a piece of shit. The last 35%, I mean.
Journey to the Center of the Earth will come in third with about $19.6 million….fair.
WALL*E will come in fourth with about $19 million. It’s down to about $4900 a print, which means it could be a push to $200 million. It’s one of the two or three best films of the year and obviously a sizable financial success, but some are going to call these numbers disappointing. For whatever reason, the real-life tele-tubbies in the hinterlands aren’t going for it the way they could. Too arty, too adult? Are they hip to the satire element and not coming due to an undercurrent of resentment? “Make fun of us and our high-starch, high-cholestoral Jabba lifestyle?,” etc. “We’ll show you, Disney/Pixar!”
Fifth-place Wanted will take in $11.7 million. Get Smart will be sixth with $6.9 million — a current cume over $112 million. Eddie Murphy‘s Meet Dave will pull in a pathetic $4,927,000 with an average of $1600 a screen for a seventh- place showing.

It’s not that I haven’t been reading Larry Gross‘s “48 HRS. Journal” series — a note-paddy, stream-of-consciousness memoir of his experience as a screenwriter on that semi-legendary Walter Hill film — at MCN. I’ve been swigging it down along with everyone else. A lot of it feels like solid first-person stuff, sharply observed, perceptive at times, honest.

But the occasional Sloppy Joe aspect has begun to to grate and piss me off. At times it reminds you of that Truman Capote “this isn’t writing, it’s typing” crack. You can say “hey, where’s the editing?” or you can say, “Wow, Gross’s avoidance of traditional sentence and paragraph structures is too cool!” Call me an old-school guy. Why didn’t Gross just buckle down and tighten this sucker into shape?
It is very nice knowing, however, that that the legendary four-minute-long shot of Nick Nolte prowling around a police precinct — uncut, moving from desk to desk, cop to clerk and back again — was shot on June 16, 1982. And it’s mildly interesting knowing that the Paramount brass — Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, etc. — wanted Eddie Murphy axed from the film because he wasn’t funny enough, or a good enough actor.
Whatever happened to Walter Hill? He sounds like such a wise and tough hombre in the Gross series, but he’s been convincing many of us that he’s been in a creative dead zone for 20 years now. I mean, it hurts but let’s face it.
The fact is that the Walter Hill label really meant something for about a ten-year period. He made seven strong (or reasonably half-decent) stylish actioners with a recognizable auteurist stamp from ’75 to ’84 — Hard Times, The Driver, The Warriors, The Long Riders (which I consider his absolute best), Southern Comfort, 48 HRS. and Streets of Fire. He was regarded back then as a class act — a bright, thoughtful and seasoned fellow who read lots of books — even though he carried a slight swaggering-hack aura. A little touch of that skilled-whore Sam Peckinpah vibe.

Then came the long gradual downturn into schlock and mediocrity — Brewster’s Millions, Crossroads (which was awful — I knew Hill was in big trouble the minute I saw it), Red Heat, Johnny Handsome, Another 48 HRS., Geronimo, Wild Bill, Last Man Standing, etc. He hasn’t been “Walter Hill” for so long, it looks like up to me.
It doesn’t figure that a guy who “had it” and was considered one of the Big Guns would gradually cheese out and melt down on a slow-mo basis unless….well, unless some sort of personal problem took over. I’m presuming that was the case, or maybe Hill just ran out of gas. He’s been working and all, but the best thing he’s done this century is direct a Deadwood episode. Hill is not that old (66 is the new 51), and an artistic comeback in the big-screen arena would be a truly great and exciting thing.

Peanuts, popcorn…hey, getcha “Wilhelm Scream” ring tone right heah!

Perhaps the first time that a major comic actor (i.e., Peter Sellers) improvised his way through a scene to this degree. And in a tragic sexual melodrama yet. I’m trying to think of another film over the last 30 or 40 years, one with this kind of dark shading, which took occasional time-outs for diseased loony improv from a skilled comedian.

I’ve finished 80-something pages of Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglorious Bastards script and while it’s easy to see why others have called it Kill Bill meets The Guns of Navarone meets The Dirty Dozen meets Cinema Paradiso, I have to say that I’m mainly enjoying it as a violent, vaguely art-filmy World War II attitude comedy — a deliberate exploitation piece full of war cliches turned on their ear, and a general theme of Jewish payback upon Nazi swine for the Holocaust.

It is absolutely the most inauthetic, bullshit-spewing World War II movie that anyone’s ever written. And I love it, love it, love it for that. Every other line is a howl or a chortle. It almost could have been written by some 15 year-old suburban kid who used to play pretend WWII games with his friends when they were 10 or 11. Four or five times I literally laughed out loud, and that’s rare for me. And every scene is pure popcorn, pure shit-kickin’ Quentin, pure movie poontang.
When I read the character name of “Pvt. Butz,” a German combat soldier, I almost fell out of my chair. This is straight out of the mind of Stanley Kubrick when he called two hotel-clerk characters in Lolita “Mr. Swine” and “Mr. Putz.”
Chris McQuarrie‘s Valkyrie script plays it straight and authentic, and is what it is, love it or not. But the Inglorious Bastards script flaunts its fakery and movie ‘tude to such a degree that it’s pure adolescent (i.e., teenage boy) pleasure. The Europe it depicts doesn’t exist and never will exist, and that’s totally fine. The German and French characters are so idiotically cliched they almost sound like the kind of material that a John Candy SCTV skit would use. But not quite. It’s actually kind of perfect that way. The balance, I mean.
The script of Inglorious Bastards seems twice as fake as the Italian villlage in Blake Edwards‘ What Did You Do in the Warm, Daddy?, and that was pure mid ’60s Hollywood bullshit. It’s faker than Hogan’s Heroes, even. If Tarantino has done any research about France, Germany or any World War II particulars other than watch World War II movies, I’ll eat my motorcycle tool kit.
He doesn’t care, of course, and that’s why he’s Quentin Tarantino You can feel him in his element, living in his head and flaunting a clever, dumb-ass yarn that entertains every step of the way, and — this is the cool part — in a kind of oddly sophisticated fashion. Which is what he’s been doing since Pulp Fiction.

The spelling errors, I have to say, are a complete howl. Something in me refused to believe that Tarantino is just a spelling moron. He’s either an idiot movie savant of some kind, or he sat down and decided to deliberately misspell stuff in order to give the people reading it a little tickle. Toying with them, flaunting his supposed illiteracy, but doing it to a degree that it almost seems a wee bit insincere. That said, the errors may be dead real, and if so it’s almost impressive on a certain level. Tarantino could have easily told a freelance editor to clean up the mistakes. The fact that he didn’t spells confidence.
Over and over he writes “heer” rather than “Herr,” the German name for mister. He writes “merci be coupe” when he means “merci beaucoup.” There’s a line that goes “the Feuhrer himself couldn’t of said it better ” when he means “couldn’t have said it better.” He tries to pluralize the French-Jewish family name Dreyfuss to great comic effect. We are told that the Dreyfuss family includes a mother named “Miram” and a brother named “Bob.” (“Hey, Bob, get me one of them there quawssaunts, would ya?”)
He spells Dr. Goebbels as Dr. Gobbles….gobble, gobble! (And then he spells it “Geobbels” later on.) Tarantino seems constitutionally incapable of typing the word “you’re” — he has to write “your” every time. We’re told at one point that “there gonna die” instead of “they’re gonna die.” Adolf Hitler is described as a “manic” instead of a maniac. Time and again people in Hitler’s company address him as “mine Feuhrer” instead of “mein Feuhrer.” We are told that German soldiers have “brought the world to there knee’s” instead of “brought the world to its knees.” Not long after this QT uses the word “wennersitnitzell,” by which he means “weinerschnitzel.” (I think.)
This is too dumb, too hayseed. It has to be a put-on.

And then comes an American GI character from Boston named Donny who carries a baseball bat and has come to be known as…I won’t say it, but it’s genius-level. (And I’m not being snide.) The nickname for Brad Pitt‘s Lieutenant Aldo is Aldo the Apache. (Because of his penchant for scalping Nazis.) There’s a great scene with a German Sgt. Rachtman being interrogated by Aldo and his men, each one of the Hebrew persuasion, and Rachtman being asked where some nearby German troops are holed up, and he answers….I can’t say this either, but it’s brilliant. Okay, I’ll say it — “fuck you and your jew dogs!”
We’re introduced to Jewish characters named “Mr. Goorowtiz” and “Mrs. Himmelstein”? These are names from a ’50s comedy skit on Your Show of Shows or The Jackie Gleason Show. Over and over it’s “Basterds” this and “Basterds” that — why is the “b” capitalized? At one point a character is asked, “How did you survived the ordel?” (This is an exact transcription.) Tarantino even spells “gimme” wrong — “gimmie.”
I could go on and on, but this script — again — is pure relish, pure pleasure and pure money. Everybody and his uncle will get the humor, and it’ll generate serious dough all around. It’s too bad Harvey Weinstein‘s company can’t afford to fund the film on its own (as Nikki Finke has reported). If the budget doesn’t go too high Bastards will almost definitely turn a profit, with which the Weinstein Co. could help to pull itself out of a financial hole. Considering that Tarantino’s Grindhouse help out the company in that hole, wouldn’t that be the decent symmetrical thing?