Day: May 25, 2018

Franchise Fatigue! “Solo” Is Falling!

by

Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Fritz has tweeted that Disney-Lucasfilm is confirming that Solo: A Star Wars Story is looking at a four-day Memorial Day weekend haul of $105 to $115 million, which translates into a three-day-weekend tally of under $100 million. The studio’s previous four-day estimate was in the range of $130 to $150 million. Solo is playing in 4,380 domestic situations. First-day (i.e., Friday) grosses are around $32 million, including Thursday night’s $14.1 million.

The last Star Wars flick, The Last Jedi, opened five months ago. It brought in a first-weekend haul of $220 million in North America for a grand domestic total of $620 million and $1.3 billion worldwide.

Bring It, “Sicario” Brahs

by

From my 6.19.15 Sicario review: “The tale, such as it is, is told from the perspective of Emily Blunt‘s FBI field agent, who, being a 21st Century woman, is in touch with her emotions. She is therefore constantly stunned and devastated by the unrelenting carnage of the Mexican drug trade, blah blah.

“You know what I’d like to see just once? A female FBI agent who isn’t in touch with her emotions, or at least one who tones it down when it comes to showing them. Too much to ask for, right?

“One of Blunt’s battle-hardened colleagues, a senior veteran with a semi-casual ‘whatever works, bring it on’ attitude, is played by the ever-reliable Josh Brolin. My favorite character by far was Benicio del Toro’s Alejandro, a shadowy Mexican operative with burning eyes and his own kind of existential attitude about things. Benicio the sly serpent…the shaman with the drooping eyelids…the slurring, purring, south-of-the-border vibe guy.”

Crisis Publicist Paul Bloch Ascends

by

Paul Bloch, the well-liked Rogers & Cowan publicist with a easygoing manner and an endless repertoire of sweaters and watches, passed this morning at age 78. He was the lanky bald finesse guy whom big-name stars always hired when they got into trouble or needed something smoothed over or the press kept at arm’s length — Tom Cruise, Eddie Murphy, John Travolta, Michael Keaton, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Lisa Marie Presley, Nick Nolte, et. al. Back in the day Bloch also repped Sharon Stone, Kevin Costner, Anthony Hopkins, Farrah Fawcett, Barry Gibb and Diana Ross. Big brand name, nice guy, mellow presence. Born in 1940, Bloch started in the Rogers & Cowan mailroom in 1962. Hugs and condolences to friends, clients and family.


Paul Bloch (r.) with client John Travolta, sometime in the mid to late ’90s.

Meh Shelley Drama Highlights New Brad Pitt

by

A friend who saw Haifaa al-Mansour‘s Mary Shelley (IFC Films, opening today in one theatre in Santa Monica) says the standout is 25 year-old Douglas Booth, who plays Percy Bysshe Shelley. I don’t even remember him from Darren Aronofsky‘s Noah (’14) or Lone Scherfig‘s The Riot Club (’14), and sitting through the Wachowski brothers Jupiter Ascending, in which Booth also costarred, made me too miserable to notice anyone or anything. I just wanted to die.

IFC’s West Coast p.r. rep didn’t even invite me to see Mary Shelley. He/she probably calculated that I’d trash it but it got trashed anyway by everyone else. It only has a lousy 33% RT rating.

At age 16, the actual Mary Shelley (Elle Fanning) began a physical relationship with the already married Percy Bysshe Shelley. Together with Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont (Bel Powley, whom Booth is seeing in real life), Mary and Shelley left for France and travelled through Europe. Claire began sleeping with Shelley, and then started sleeping with Lord Byron, who dumped her. Mary became pregnant thrice by Shelley, but two of the babies died. Shelley’s wife committed suicide, after which he and Mary got married.

At age 18 Mary wrote “Frankenstein”, which was allegedly some kind of metaphorical saga about her life. Shelley was Dr. Henry Frankenstein — she was the unloved, spat-upon, misunderstood monster.

Read more

Avoidance Syndrome

by

Although I’ve been an Alfred Hitchcock fan since childhood, I’ve avoided seeing Under Capricorn (’50), an early 19th Century drama set in Australia, all my life. Despite knowing there are always elements in a Hitchcock film that are worth seeing. Despite the legendary Jack Cardiff (Black Narcissus, The African Queen) having shot it in Technicolor, and despite Hitchcock having reportedly used ten-minute-long takes. Despite the stellar cast — Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, Michael Wilding, et. al. The forthcoming Kino Lorber Bluray (out on 6.19) is a 4K restoration, and I still won’t touch it. Because Hitch himself never hesitated to call it one of his worst films. Plus it was a box-office stinker — cost $3 million, made $1.5 million.

Too Fuddy-Duddy For Proverbial Sack

by

Several online forums have repeated an Alfred Hitchcock assertion, possibly sourced from his 1962 interview with Francois Truffaut, that one reason Vertigo was a financial failure was because the 49-year-old Jimmy Stewart looked “too old” to be the lover of Kim Novak, who was 25 during filming. (Vertigo was shot between September and December 1957.)

Stewart’s John Ferguson does in fact seem too rigid and stodgy for Novak, not just because of his mostly gray hair but a generally stuffy conservative bearing. (That awful brown suit, for example.) But Hitch could have easily made Stewart appear younger by giving him fair, blonde-tinted hair with a slightly longer, less conservative cut. Only a year earlier Stewart had worn a blonde, almost bushy wig in The Spirit of St. Louis when he played the 25 year-old Charles Lindbergh.

There was nothing loose or sensual or sexually upfront about Stewart in Vertigo. Nothing. He looked and behaved like a Republican governor of a midwestern state, or an Air Force colonel or a corporate real-estate broker. One glance at Novak and you could imagine her nude under satin sheets, but it’s impossible, really, to think of Stewart’s character in even a partial state of undress, much less buck naked and doing the deed. It feels creepy to even describe this, and I’m fully aware that in his youth Stewart was quite the randy fellow.


James Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (released in May 1958).

Stewart as Charles Lindbergh in Billy Wilder’s The Spirit of St. Louis (released in April 1957).

Read more

Cuffed, Pled, Bailed

by

Harvey Weinstein surrendered to the cops this morning, and was subsequently arrested “on rape, criminal sex act and other charges from encounters with two women.” Seven months have passed since the Weinstein allegations broke in the N.Y. Times and The New Yorker. The reports immediately transformed Harvey into toast and launched the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements. His attorney’s claim that Weinstein “didn’t invent the casting couch in Hollywood” is true, but hardly a defense. He’ll almost certainly do time.

Read more