“Proving to be a late summer sleeper, The Illusionist summoned an estimated $8 million at 971 venues over the extended weekend, its first nationwide. Like Little Miss Sunshine, the $16 million period drama has maintained a high per theater average with each expansion, suggesting broad appeal and strong word-of-mouth, and, with a $12.1 million gross in 17 days, it has already exceeded the rosiest of expectations prior to opening. Producer Bob Yari will expand The Illusionist to around 1,400 theaters on Sept. 8.” — from Brandon Gray‘s “Box Office Mojo” report on 9.4.06.

A speed-the-plow version of Anne Thompson‘s Telluride impressions on her Risky Biz blog: (a) Little Children (New Line, director-writer Todd Field) — Telluride reaction was “decidedly mixed…some people don’t buy this movie”…a “deglamorized” Kate Winslet has solid shot at a best actress nomination; (b) The Namesake (Fox Searchlight, director: Mira Nair) — “Strong stuff”, “positive” Telluride reaction, pacing needs to be tightened; (c) Venus (Miramax, director: Roger Michell) — Telluride reaction: “The folks loved it but critics may be mixed: the movie is a smart, well-made, conventional crowd-pleaser. Oscar Watch: No question that Peter O’Toole will move the aging Academy.” (d) The Last King of Scotland (Fox Searchlight, director: Kevin Macdonald) — Good Telluride reaction, Best Actor buzz for star Forrest Whitaker; (e) The Lives of Others (Sony Pictures Classics, director-writer Florian Henckel-Donnersmarck) — Telluride reaction was “rapturous…if Germany submits the film for Oscar consideration, it should land a nomination”; (f) Catch a Fire (Focus Features, director: Phillip Noyce) — “Good” Telluride reaction, and star Derek Luke “could prevail in an unusually weak year for leading men, but the movie will need brilliant marketing from Focus Features and huge critical and audience support to survive the competitive Oscar season”; and (g) Infamous (Warner Independent, director: Douglas McGrath) — Telluride reaction was “positive”, but star Toby Jones “can’t go up against the memory of Philip Seymour Hoffman, last year’s Oscar winner, nor will Sandra Bullock erase Catherine Keener as Harper Lee. But Daniel Craig‘s powerful performance as Smith has a shot as supporting.” Wells comment: This will never, ever happen — Craig is a fine actor, but is seriously miscast here.

One of the late Steve Irwin‘s contemporaries, cameraman and spearfisherman Ben Cropp, has spoken to a cameraman friend who was nearby when Irwin was killed yesterday by a sting ray tail and has seen the footage. Here’s Cropp’s description, as passed along to The Australian on Saturday night:

“Steve was up in the shallow water, probably 1.5 meters to 2 meters deep, following a bull ray which was about a meter across the body — probably weighing about 100 kilograms — and with quite a large spine. And the cameraman was filming in the water.”
Cropp said the stingray freaked when he felt cornered by Irwin and the cameraman. “Steve was alongside and there was the cameraman ahead, and [the animal] probably felt there was danger and it balked. It stopped and went into a defensive mode and swung its tail with the spike. Steve unfortunately was in a bad position and copped it.
“I have had that happen to me, and I can visualize it — when a ray goes defensive, you get out of the way. Steve was so close he could not get away, so if you can imagine it — being right beside the ray and it swinging its spine upwards from underneath Steve, and it hit him.”

“I’m on my way back to L.A. from Telluride, and without question the biggest find of the fest was The Lives Of Others, a German-made from first-time director Florian Henckel-Donnersmarck, who worked six years on the film and it now being courted by all the agencies,” a friend wrote early this evening.
“Sony Pictures Classics picked it up last May, and it’s set for a February ’07 release. This should be the German Oscar entry for Best Foreign Language Film, from which a nomination is all but assured, and perhaps even the Oscar itself.
“The story’s basically about the last days of Stasi, the diseased East German Secret Police, as things were falling apart in ’89. It’s about a Stasi agent (Ulrich Muhe) eavesdropping on a playwright (Sebastian Koch) and his actress wife (Martina Gedeck), and the stuff that comes to the surface when they begin to intreract.
“Philip Noyce‘s Catch a Fire also was getting good buzz on the street and many were calling Mira Nair‘s The Namesake her best ever (although I missed it).

I watched the trailer for All The King’s Men for the eighth or ninth time last night, and I’m starting to seriously doubt my ability to watch the full-length feature version of this Steven Zallian film with anything close to a neutral and receptive attitude. Sean Penn‘s squealing, vocal-chord-shredding delivery of that stump speech (“Yo’ weel is mah strength!”) at the end is driving me up the wall. It’s chalk-on-a-blackboard time. “They want to take from yew…and ahh weeyull not let theyemmmm!”

I’m sitting in a Starbucks on Marshall Street in Syracuse, and it seems like a fair and reasonable thing to say that the louder a person (a woman in particular) giggles, laughs and shrieks in a crowded cafe, the less worthy they are as a human being and the less gifted their children will turn out to be, if and when they conceive. Loud whoops of laughter from groups of college-age chickie-babes are on the same level of offensiveness as a fat homeless man urinating on a crowded street in broad daylight. I’m listening to these women right now and I’m thinking, “You’re future is mapped out for you…you’ll never be invited to the White House…you’ll almost certainly suffer through a bad marriage…you’ll never run your own business…it’s highly doubtful that you read books, and if you do it’s only airport fiction,” etc.

The buzz on Alfonso Cuaron‘s Children of Men (Universal, 12.25), which had been teetering since Universal bailed on its original early fall opening in favor of a Xmas debut, has now downshfted due to a yes-and-no Venice Film Festival review Variety‘s Derek Elley, along with a similar view posted by Screen Daily‘s Steve Marshall.

Children still sounds like an absolute must-see, but these reactions leave me with no choice but to scratch Children from Best Picture consideration, and to scratch Cuaron from the Best Director ranks. Sorry, Uni publicity pallies, but it’s a tough world out there and cigars cannot be handed out for “pretty good” with two exceptional standout selling points.
Elley gives Children of Men a passing grade, but says the only aspects of this futuristic melodrama that really and truly kick ass are Emmanuel Lubezki‘s hand-held cinematography and Michael Caine‘s supporting performance as an eccentric hippie-ish type. Otherwise, he says, it’s not bad, spotty, touch-and-go.
Elley praises the “gritty, docu-like sequences [in which] Cuaron and camera operator George Richmond orchestrate several lengthy single takes that have a front-line feel….these include an attack in a car (a single take that required a special rig for the camera to get inside and around the car) and the movie’s showpiece climax. Latter single take recalls Full Metal Jacket in its landscape and Black Hawk Down in its intensity.”
He also singles out Caine for bestowing “some heart and soul due to a wonderfully eccentric [turn] that’s awards-season-worthy. Caine’s beatific performance, in hippie spectacles and shoulder-length hair, is treasurable, and provides the two shafts of sunlight in the otherwise gray and wintry movie,” he says.
Otherwise, Elley calls Men “an often grippingly realized portrait of a not-so-futuristic Blighty, in which fascism and infertility have become uneasy bed partners” but ” a fine but flawed exercise in dystopia. Much more effective when it’s a down-and-dirty actioner than when the script tries to grapple with the multitude of personal and political issues raised, pic suffers from cold lead playing by Clive Owen.
“Set only 21 years in the future, in November 2027, pic — based on the 1993 novel by British writer P.D. James, better known for her murder mysteries — posits a world racked by infertility and social chaos, in which terrorism is the norm. The U.K., however, is a relative haven of peace — ‘The world has collapsed; only Britain soldiers on,’ trumpets Brit-TV propaganda — and as a consequence immigration is out of control.
“Cuaron clearly got to know Blighty when shooting Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. He paints a grungy, Orwellian country of perpetual security announcements, prowling armed police, garbage in the streets and illegal immigrants in cages — in fact, not so different from the U.K. today, and far more believable in every respect than in the feeble V for Vendetta.”
Elley says that “Cuaron’s decision not to shoot in widescreen actually accentuates the movie’s gritty power” — which means what? That Cuaron went with a 1.33 to 1 aspect ratio like Gus Van Sant‘s Elephant and Last Days, or that he shot it in standard, no-big-deal 1.85 to 1? Is Elley hinting that the normally effective way to shoot a dark futuristic flick is to shoot it in widescreen scope (2.35 to 1)? This part of the review lost me.

Indie producer Christine Vachon (Far From Heaven, Boys Don’t Cry) has it in for Manhattan’s Angelika Film Center, according to a N.Y. Post excerpt from her upcoming memoir called “A Killer Life: How An Independent Producer Survives Deals and Disasters in Hollywood and Beyond” (Simon & Schuster, 9.19). “I hate the Angelika,” Vachon has reportedly writen about the Houston street plex. “I won’t see movies there. The seats are uncomfortable, the sound is crummy, you can hear the 4/5/6 train rumbling underneath you, and the film projectors are terrible. Don’t even get me started on how the Technicolor [in] Far From Heaven looked on their screens. I couldn’t watch.”

“I must ask why you (and others, including David Poland) are ignoring the artistic crime being committed by Fox against Mike Judge‘s Idiocracy this weekend. By most accounts, this film’s satire sounds quite scathing. And the reviews seem to be generally positive (67% positive from Rotten Tomatoes), except for EW‘s truly idiotic online non-review, so I can’t buy the ‘it must be really awful’ studio line.
“That the film hasn’t been released anywhere on the east coast, and has been unceremoniously dumped in limited release in a few cities — dumped to the extent that frickin’ Moviefone actually refers to the films as ‘Untitled Mike Judge Project,’ and very few people have even seen a poster for the damn thing — is news of some sort, certainly, for entertainment journalists.
“I know you’re not in LA right now (where it’s playing), but I still think this deserves a mention. Also, it’s playing in Toronto (though not at the festival). Let’s hope some critics and journalists do their duties and see it this week or next.” — Bilge Ebiri
Okay, you’re right. I’ll see it when I get back to Toronto and then run something, before the festival starts.

A powerful untamed beast of the water — a sting ray — finally nailed Australian wild-kingdom daredevil Steve Irwin, 44, and the poor guy’s dead. An Australian news service is reporting that Irwin “was killed by a stingray barb that went through his chest” during an underwater shoot in the water off Cairns, Australia.
“Irwin was swimming off the Low Isles at Port Douglas filming an underwater documentary when the tragedy occured,” the news service report reads. “The Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) was called about 11am [Australian time] and an emergency services helicopter was flown to the crew’s boat on Batt Reef, off the coast near Cairns, with a doctor and emergency services paramedic on board.
“Irwin had a puncture wound to the left side of his chest and was pronounced dead at the scene.”
It’s sad as hell to report this, but we all know Irwin’s been tempting fate by hunting, stalking and sometimes taunting dangerous wild animals for years. If there was ever a guy whose epitaph deserved to read, “He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword,” it’s Irwin. He was mainly a TV guy, but he made a reasonably successful feature with his wife, Terri, called The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course, which grossed just under $30 million domestic.

However poorly The Wicker Man performed this weekend (third place, $10 or $11 million), it’s nowhere near as bad as I’d been led to expect. I paid to see it this evening in Syracuse ($40 bucks for the back-and-forth cab ride to the Carousel Mall, $20 for two tickets, $10 or $12 for drinks and popcorn…almost $75 bucks to see The Wicker Man!) and I didn’t come out pissed. I’ve seen much, much worse.
The Wicker Man freaks out a bit and loses its cool at the finale, true, but I liked Nic Cage punching that older butchy woman along with Leelee Sobieski. I laughed, I mean. (I’m not sure that was helmer Neil LaBute‘s desired reaction or not.) And the ending wouldn’t have been nearly as painful if LaBute had just figured some way for Cage not to put on that bear suit and forgotten that epilogue scene.
Otherwise, the first 85% isn’t too bad. It’s not great or exceptional, even, but it putters along and doesn’t piss you off, and LaBute’s dialogue is sharp and aware and contentious. I kept telling myself to imagine the film as a stage performance and imagine how it would play if I were watching it live, and the experiment worked in the film’s favor. No way isMan an all-time clunker and a career embarassment for LaBute and Cage, like you’ve been reading. Most of it somewhere between passable and mildly okay, and overall it’s far from abysmal.

Naturally, Hollywood being Hollywood, there are cowards and caution freaks out there who feel that releasing Clint Eastwood‘s Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima within a couple of months of each other (the former via Paramount/DreamWorks on 10.20, the latter sometime in December via Warner Bros.) will be risky and “will be seen as a stunt” and may wind up splitting Academy votes if and when both get nominated for Best Picture.

A split vote situation could happen — I haven’t seen either film and haven’t a clue about which is better, or even if either film is Oscar quality — but we all know what will most likely occur. All of us except for the nervous nellies, that is, who are running around in circles right now going “ooh! ooh! risky! risky!” and wiping sweat beads off their brows.
Flags — a story about the American soldiers who were over-celebrated as the flag-raising heroes of Iwo Jima’s Mt. Surabachi, and about the torn feelings they experienced as a result of all the hero worship — is, naturally, obviously, the Clint Eastwood Iwo Jima film most likely to be touted as a Best Picture recipient.
And no matter how good Letters From Iwo Jima turns out to be, it’s still not a film about Americans and the American combat experience, and therefore won’t channel American feelings — boomer sentiments, patriotic stirrings, sympathy for Iraqi war veterans — the way Flags will, and will therefore be regarded by 95% of the Academy as strictly backup — a respectable support movie for Flags that will provide poignant echoes and whatever else it manages to stir up.
“Qualifying Letters for awards consideration could destroy Flags‘ Best Picture chances,” wrote one prognosticator. “Maybe WB and consultant Michelle Robertson have decided that it’s a soft field this year and they can get two nominations. But I don’t really think so. Maybe the WB team thinks they can out-hustle Terry Press and make the Japanese film the nominee.”
At least this trembling observer threw in the following words, which are obviously the bottom line: “If it turns out that Flags is the Oscar movie of 2006, all of this will be a footnote after a great deal of media hype. If it turns out that Flags is just another quality contender, the strategy could be a disaster.”