wired

Variety‘s Gabriel Snyder has written a savvy story about how tracking from the three big companies (NRG, Marketcast, OTX) sometimes varies wildly, and how “midway through the summer, the studios have become keenly aware of cracks in their crystal ball.”
Tracking, or the survey data that’s supposed to give a strong clue what films people are interested in seeing, “has become the key source of studio expectations over B.O. prospects,” Snyder writes. “But the information, once closely guarded, has gone public at the exact moment that serious questions are being raised over its reliability.”
The biggest complainer in the piece, understandably, is Universal’s co-chairman Marc Schmuger, who was irate over an item I wrote from Cannes about The Break-Up that noted that 30% of people polled had a “definite interest” in seeing the film, and only 5% said it was their “first choice” to see that weekend, which seemed to mean that “the game is pretty much over,” I wrote. (Snyder says the author was “a blogger from Hollywood-Elsewhere.com.” I guess there’s no way to stop people from calling HE a blog, but I prefer the handle of “columnist.”)
I was just repeating what I’d been told and the figures weren’t inaccurate, but the verdict wasn’t a fully considered call on my source’s part or my own, and I’ve openly admitted this and tried to learn from this episode. (Schmuger says that NRG, MarketCast and OTX “were in complete disagreement on how The Break-Up was going to perform along every step of the way…when your information is in such disagreement, you’re in complete confusion…it was a classic case where tracking was significantly off from where the performance was…it was the most frustrated I’ve ever been in my many, many years at a studio.”)
I consider myself a bit wiser about tracking as a result. I learn something new every time I sift through it. Snyder’s article points out four flaws in the surveying techniques of the three companies, and these same flaws have been pointed out to me by a Universal publicist pal, and I wrote about them myself. So let’s hope that tracking improves down the road.

M. Night Shyamalan‘s Lady in the Water did 4% less business on Saturday than it did on Friday. That’s due to word-of-mouth, of course. It might have dropped even more if it hadn’t been for the rain that hit the northeast (and especially the New York City area) on Saturday. Lady is going to end up with about $18,165,000…the weakest Shyamalan showing since he became “big.” Kevin Smith‘s Clerks 2 suffered a big Friday-to-Saturday drop also. It went from a 7.21 take of $3,967,000 to a haul of about $3,214,000 on 7.22. Sorry to be the bearer but that’s a 20% dropoff…bad. It may not even make $10 million by this evening. Ivan Reitman‘s My Super Ex-Girlfriend will finish seventh with $8.5 million…another tank.

Spider-Man 3 (Columbia, 5.4.07) will be the last one? I somehow don’t see that as a huge problem. Does anyone?

Elsa Pataky, a Spanish-born European actress who’s been doing fairly well in Spanish features and TV for the last eight or nine years, has a small role in Snakes on a Plane. Her character is called Maria, and she’s on the cover of Maxim this month. The New Line guys showed a couple of her Maxim photos at Comic-Con on Friday, and I’m trying to end this item without giving off the vibe I’m giving off. Forget it…lost cause.

Isolate all the “fuck”‘s in The Big Lebowski and cut ’em all together. Not brilliant, but pretty funny.

The Landmark River Oaks theatre in Houston is a beautiful old movie theatre, and it has one of the prettiest marquees I’ve ever seen. (I was just in Houston last April and took some pictures of it.) And now Weingarten Realty Investors, a Houston-based company that owns and manages about 300 retail properties in the southern U.S., is apparently looking to tear it down. A pox upon these heartless scumbags if they manage to do this. Old movie theatres harken back to a bygone America. They’re shrines to what used to be. Fortifiers of community soul. Part of what still makes this country beautiful and worth cherishing. And some people are incapable of understanding that.

Jake Gyllenhaal to play Lance Armstrong in a Sony-produced biopic, per Nikki Finke ‘s column. Another sports biopic…French locations…go, Lance…terrific. I feel nothing — nothing — about this.

Jack Warden, who died on 7.19 at age 85, was one of the greatest character actors of the 20th Century, and you don’t have to look any farther than his incredibly skillful and heartfelt performance as Max Corkle in Warren Beatty and Buck Henry‘s Heaven Can Wait (1978) to verify that fact.

Just chapter-flip to the scene when Corkle comes to visit billionaire Leo Farnsworth (Beatty), who’s actually died and been inhabited-reanimated by the spirit of Corkle’s old football-player pal Joe Pendleton. Corkle is confused when Farnsworth starts talking to him like they’re good buddies, but the best bit happens when Farnsworth tries to explain the rules of life, death, probabilty and outcome. Significantly, the camera stops cutting away to Beatty and stays entirely on Warden for nearly a full minute as Corkle’s discomfort increases with each new mind-blowing assertion by his host.
Warden’s first standout performance was in Sidney Lumet‘s Twelve Angry Men (1957) as the marmalade-salesman juror who can’t wait to end deliberations so he could make it to a Yankee game. His other four knockout roles were as Lester the moustachioed businessman in Hal Ashby‘s Shampoo (’74), Washington Post editor Harry M. Rosenfeld in Alan Pakula‘s All The President’s Men (’76), twin used-car salesmen Roy and Luke Fuchs in Bob Zemeckis ‘s Used Cars (’80), and Paul Newman‘s co-counsel Micky Morrisey in Lumet‘s The Verdict (’82).
Come to think of it, Warden’s Shampoo performance may be the equal of his work in Heaven Can Wait . The scene near the finale when Lester reviews the shambles of his life while sitting in the modest home of hairdresser George Roundy (Beatty) is a near-great one. As I recall, it ends with Warden saying, “God, I need a drink.”

This passage from Drew McWeeny‘s Lady in the Water AICN review got me: M. Night Shyamalan “seems to have cast himself as the Writing Messiah, a man whose words are so powerful that they will alter the very fabric of our reality. The character idea alone would be a little nauseating, but for Night to step in and play his biggest role in any film except his largely-unseen first film…and to have it be this particular role… this is what I mean when I say he invites the comments on his ego now. This would be like George Lucas insisting on playing The Emperor or Alfred Hitchcock playing Norman Bates. It’s so lunkheaded you can’t look away. God help me, I√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢m not exaggerating.” Read the whole review. It’s a mean one, but it has a thorough and perceptive examination of Night’s egoistic artist psychology.

There’s a big Miami Vice ad in Sunday’s N.Y. Times focusing mainly on David Poland ‘s MCN review, calling it “a summer movie that a lot of people have been waiting for, something for the adults to see, something that demands that you pay attention…with lots of guns and drugs…a movie that, by the third act, makes you feel like you are in the experience and not watching the experience.”
Good deal and nice going, but I have two and a half observations. One, not to slight Poland but the fact that Universal is using an MCN quote rather than, say, a quote from one of the big super-venerated print critics tells us that Universal couldn’t find a big super-venerated print critic who’s over-the-moon nutso about Vice (the big distribs always spotlight high-toned, old-pro print quotes in their lead-off ads). Two, print is receding and online is gaining — would Universal have used an online guy for their lead-off quote ad for a major film, say, five years ago? And three (i.e., the halfer), my judgments, although not quite constituting a 100% total-somersault rave, have more verve and pizazz than Poland’s jottings.
I called Michael Mann’s film “my kind of two-hour popcorn movie…an exquisitely configured, not-too-taxing thing for people who are smarter, hipper and more seasoned than the mainstream squealies who went nuts for Pirates 2.” I also said that “the fumes of Miami Vice — the aroma, the grit, the atmospheric stuff, the digital flavor of Dion Beebe’s here-and-there photography — are superb (and sometimes in a realm so special I can’t quite describe it), and this alone makes it the supreme commercial ‘ride’ movie of the summer,” and that it’s “a crime movie that roars in and does the job, but lingers on with so many different little moods and tones and accents and side-excursions that, like all first-rate films, it’s clearly up to a lot more than just ‘story’.” See what I mean? I know that I sound like a puffed-up egoistic asshole, but the writing’s more savory.

Friday’s earnings and projections: Pirates 2 beat ’em all again, pulling down $10,084,000 Friday and a projected weekend take north of $30 million. (What is that, a grand total of $320 million?) Monster House is #2 with $7,470,000 million earned Friday and $22,268,000 expected by Sunday night for a grand tally of $320 million or thereabouts. Lady in the Water managed a #3 slot despited the media buzz — $6,713,000 yesterday and $18,436,000 projected for the weekend. You, Me and Dupree was #4 with $3,965,000 Friday and a bit more than $13 million predicted for the weekend. Little Man did $3,210,000 Friday with a projected $10,427,000 by Sunday night. Kevin Smith’s Clerks 2 was sixth with a disappointing $3,097,000 on 21590 screens, and a projected weekend total of $10,100,000. My Super Ex-Girlfriend tanked with a seventh-place finish — $2,698,000 Friday, $7,300,000 predicted for Sunday night. Superman Returns is finished — earning a lousy $1,964,000 on Friday with a weekend total of about $7,102,000 expected. The Devil Wears Prada, a much smaller film aimed mainly at women, took in $2,181,000 Friday and will be at the $97 million mark by Sunday night — it’ll definitely top $100 million.