Day: June 5, 2013

Update: “The Peter Berg film tested through the roof at both Archlight and before a blue-collar audience.” — Filmmaker friend who knows and hears stuff.

Earlier: I’m feeling a natural sense of caution and concern about Peter Berg‘s Lone Survivor, which Universal has decided to open on 12.27 in order to exploit possible award-season huzzahs. Pic is basically about a Zero Dark Thirty-type mission gone wrong — about a real-life Seal Team assassination attempt on 6.28.05 that didn’t pan out and in fact resulted in everyone on the squad getting wasted except one. Pic stars Mark Wahlberg with Taylor Kitsch, Eric Bana, Emile Hirsch and Ben Foster costarring. Problem #1, for me, is that Berg directed Battleship — one of the all-time worst spectacle-monster films ever made. Problem #2 is Kitsch, who has proved that he’s not that adept at conveying intelligent thought + he’s suffered through the triple-whammy of John Carter, Battleship and Savages. I hope he gets through this. I don’t hate the guy or anything. We all go through bad patches.

Has the critical tide has turned on Marc Forster and Brad Pitt‘s World War Z (Paramount, 6.21)? Will anyone at Paramount give o hoot if it has? World War Z is about as critic-proof as they come, but on a deep-down level the filmmakers want the approval of the critical elite, even if Paramount marketing execs are indifferent. In any event Scott Foundas‘s Variety rave indicates that other critics may follow suit…maybe.

“Rising from an early grave of negative pre-release publicity, director Marc Forster and producer-star Brad Pitt’s much-maligned World War Z emerges as a surprisingly smart, gripping and imaginative addition to the zombie-movie canon, owing as much to scientific disaster movies like The China Syndrome and Contagion as it does to undead ur-texts like the collected works of George Romero.

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Now You See Me star Jesse Eisenberg is anything but a jerk (which is how some Shallow Hal journos are describing him) for calling Univision’s Romina Puga “the Carrot Top of interviewers.” More actors and directors on the movie-junket circuit need to say straight-from-the-shoulder stuff like this. Chatty-Cathy TV interviewers always take the conversation in the most inane, brain-numbing directions so thank God Eisenberg briefly lost his composure and became Tommy Lee Jones and told her what he really thinks of the hideously ingratiating attitude and the soul-smothering questions that people like her tend to generate.

Now You See Me star Jesse Eisenberg.

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