I have a question for Forbes guy Bill McCuddy, who wrote in a recent email which I posted that Rock of Ages “played like gangbusters” at the screening he attended, and that it might be a “dude-sical” (a musical that guys can not only tolerate but like) and that it looks like a hit, etc. Well, your dude-sical is floundering, homie, and you have to explain why. C’mon, right now…lay it on me.

Nikki Finke is reporting that Rock Of Ages, playing in 3,470 theaters, “is falling to earth with a thud,” having earned a lousy $5.5 million with a projected $15.5 million by Sunday night. That’s “far worse” than Mamma Mia, she notes, “which opened to $27 million with the same pedigree.”

Adam Sandler‘s That’s My Boy, which got a B-minus from CinemaScore, also grossed $5 million on Friday with a projected $15 mil weekend. How much did Jack & Jill hurt the Sandler brand?

Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips on Adam Sandler‘s That’s My Boy: The crowd at the preview screening was unusually vocal, with cries of ‘Nooo!’ and mutterings of ‘Wow’ at each new gross-out attempt. What I didn’t hear was much actual laughter.

“The Sandler character is meant to be enjoyed for his pomposity-deflating boorishness, admired for his skill with the babes, pitied for his attempts at father/son reconciliation. So what do you do if you find yourself hoping the main character will leave his own movie five minutes in?

“More so than Rock of Ages, even, That’s My Boy positions itself as an ‘I Love the ’80s’ special, with supporting roles taken by Vanilla Ice, Tony Orlando and others.

“‘I need a couple hours to fix this,’ Andy Samberg cries at one point. Perilously close to two hours in length itself, That’s My Boy leaves the world a coarser, meaner, more arrogant place than its makers found it. Bring back Jack and Jill.”

Note: I’ve met Sandler a couple of times and he’s doesn’t radiate even a hint of the low-rent commonality that his films are always about. He’s a very sharp, perceptive and even wise fellow who misses nothing. I don’t know how this squares with his being a Republican, but he gives off a good vibe.

I’ve worked as hard if not harder than Lindsay Lohan has during the making of Liz & Dick. I work my fingers to the bone for breakfast, and if you try to wake me up in the early a.m. after an especially grueling all-nighter, I’ll respond like anyone else. I’ll do a little body flinch and go, “Uhm…arrgghh…oh, God…time is it?” I won’t, trust me, be so unresponsive and corpse-like that my attempted waker-upper will call 911.

They don’t know it but some people are irresistably attracted to if not secretly in love with the idea of spiritual transcendence by way of obliteration…with taking that final sublime boat ride up the Euphrates and turning into a perfect smile. I’ll be hugely surprised if Lindsay Lohan makes it to age 30. It’s just a matter of when, where and by what “accidental” method.

If an impudent leftwing reporter had interrupted a Rose Garden press conference given by Presidents Bush ’43, Bush ’41 or Reagan, the rightwing press would have called for his/her head, at the very least demanding his/her instant banning from the White House press corps if not deportation.

Tucker Carlson, founder of the Daily Caller for which Obama heckler Neil Munro reports, said the following after yesterday’s heckling: “A reporter’s job is to ask questions and get answers. Our job is to find out what the federal government is up to. Politicians often don’t want to tell us. A good reporter gets the story. We’re proud of Neil Munro.”

Daily Caller reporter Neil Munro during his interruption of President Obama’s Rose Garden statement about a decision to ease up on young immigrants and basically leave them alone to live their lives.

Thomas Schultze of the Munich-based G + J Media Entertainment was kind enough to take me around Munich this evening, giving me the grand tour, etc. Three hours worth, scratched the surface, took some notes, etc. I was last here in ’92 — it’s a much richer, brighter and more gentrified city now and yet with pockets that are quiet, leafy and serene. Far more beautiful, historic and captivating than Berlin. The vibe feels more like Italy than Germany.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder lived on the second or third floor.

Read more

An hour ago I checked into the Acanthus hotel in Munich, and was thinking about taking a nap. Then this came in — a smart, well-honed 45-minute doc about 2001: A Space Odyssey with James Cameron, Keir Dullea, Douglas Trumbull, Dan Richter (the mime who played Moonwatcher), Elvis Mitchell, Camille Paglia, the late Arthur C. Clarke, etc. I found it here. Good stuff. I didn’t take the nap.

Here‘s a piece containing scans of my 1993 L.A. Times interview with Richter.

I’ll be in Munich by 7:15 pm. The plan is to hang with a German film industry guy who knows me from the column, and with whom I amiably chatted at Cinemacon two months ago. He asked where I’ll be staying, and I mentioned a hotel near Sendlinger Tor. “Excellent — right in the center then,” he answered.

“So what do you feel like doing?,” he asked. “Culture? Nazi history**? The Fassbinder tour (right around the corner of your hotel)? Dinner? Drinking? Shall I pick you up at 8?”

“Yeah, 8 is good,” I answered. “I don’t drink. Pretty girls?”

“Mick Jagger said Munich has the prettiest girls in the world so who’s to argue?,” he replied. “We can always go to a beer garden (they serve soft drinks and juices as well, no worries), but we don’t have to. The weather will be nice for the first time in days. The whole town will be on its feet and out and about. Should be a pretty fabulous evening.”

** HE to p.c. brownshirts: I leave it to the best among you to swat this guy down for suggesting you-know-what. You know what to do. Let him have it with both barrels.

“Woody Allen scored artistically and commercially on his European tour stops in London, Barcelona and Paris but gets a face full of linguini for his efforts on To Rome With Love,” writes Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy. “At its worst squirm- and grimace-inducing, this is an ultra-upscale touristy spin through the Eternal City as if arranged by the concierge at the Excelsior Hotel.

“Rehashing gags and motifs familiar from various previous Allen films, all of them better done the first time around, the Sony Pictures Classics release might benefit initially from the good will generated by last year’s Midnight in Paris, Allen’s biggest hit ever, but word-of-mouth will nip hopeful expectations in the bud. Having opened in Italy on April 20 only in Italian-dubbed prints, the film had its English-language version world premiere Thursday at the Los Angeles Film Festival, with limited release to begin June 22.

“All things considered, it’s a relief to learn that Allen’s next production will be set in New York and San Francisco, as he would seem to have played out his string in Europe for the moment. Although the character he portrays here is a reluctantly retired opera director who discovers a brilliant tenor, Allen the writer-director has gone tone-deaf this time around, somehow not realizing that the nonstop prattling of the less than scintillating characters almost never rings true.”

15 hours ago Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, Goldderby.com‘s Tom O’Neil and I kicked the 2012 Oscar ball around. Our consensus: Les Miserables, Beasts of the Southern Wild and Lincoln in the Best Picture lead. And yet Tom and Sasha delivered some Lincoln pushback based on two factors: (a) Daniel Day Lewis‘s Lincoln might be too quirky or extreme in some way, and (b) director Steven Spielberg might Spielberg-ize it — he might not be able to muster the discipline to “get out of the way” and just let the material play on its own terms. Here’s a stand-alone mp3 link.

Read more

I wasn’t over the moon about Lynn Shelton‘s Your Sister’s Sister (IFC Films, 6.15, theatres only) but I was moderately intrigued. It’s not bad. I thought it would get a Rotten Tomatoes rating between 70% and 80%, frankly, but it’s now at 89%. Obviously a sign of approval, but also, I think, of a “go easy” largesse that critics extend to earnest, low-key indie cheapies, especially those with a kind of John Cassevetes improvisational thing going on.

Your Sister’s Sister is one of those acting-class movies that are largely about a small cast (Mark Duplass, Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt) finding their way into emotional exposures and vulnerabilities and all-around discoveries that aren’t necessarily expressed or even explored in the script. It’s about “okay, this is the situation and here’s the basic plot…well, unless something else happens…and we all have a handle on our characters, of course, so let’s do this thing and see where it goes.”

And I was cruising along with this. Shelton and the cast are obviously trying to do “good” here, and I was rooting for them…yeah! But I ran into a character issue early on, and I couldn’t quite make it go away.

The film starts with a wake for the dead-and-buried brother of Jack (Mark Duplass ), who’s an unfocused, somewhat immature guy in his mid 30s. Various friends share gentle memories of the brother, who died a year earlier from his own hand, but Jack is pissed and unsettled about…well, a lot of things. But not about his best friend Iris (Emily Blunt). The movie tells us that (a) the closeness and trust they share is clearly based on their being strictly pals, and (b) Iris is one of the few solids in Jack’s life.

Note: the following has been divulged by critics all over so it’s not a spoiler, but there are whiners out there who will get upset anyway if I don’t say “spoiler” at this stage.

Reognizing Jack is off-balance, Iris urges him to take a break at her family’s vacation cottage on an island somewhere off the coast of Oregon or Washington, and he goes, “Yeah, okay, I guess so, whatever.” So he arrives at the cabin with his bicycle and backpack, and runs snack into Iris’s lesbian sister Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt), or knocks on the door, rather, as she’s stepping out of the shower. She’s just broken up with her girlfriend of several years and has decided to use the cabin for a little meditation time. Ah-hah, awkward moment, okay…well, here we are.

Then they decide to relax and be friendly and enjoy a little tequila. Actually, they start slamming down shots. And then a randy vibe somehow creeps in and Hannah decides to forget about being gay and tumbles into bed with Jack. Just a little one-nighter so where’s the harm, right?

This isn’t the problem I spoke of. That occurs when Iris shows up at the cabin the next day and Jack gets all nervous — panicky, almost hyperventaliting — and starts lying his ass off so she won’t know what happened with Hannah. My question was “why?” As noted there’s not a hint of even the slightest erotic wannabe current between Jack and Iris, so if their friendship is truly solid and deep-rooted and telepathic then what’s the problem with Jack telling Iris, “This is going to sound weird but your sister and I got bombed last night and…uhm, we did it.”

Only a fundamentally dishonest and out-of-touch-with-himself guy with secret designs and/or longings for his “best friend” would go into lying and dodging spasms like Jack does. It seems to me that if Iris has been secretly in love with Jack all along and would therefore be devastated if she knew he’d slept with her sister, the movie should somehow convey this to us before Jack and Hannah do the nasty, etc. And it just struck me as phony. That’s all I have to say.

Postcript: Here’s an Indiewire-hosed chat about Your Sister’s Sister between Marshall Fine and Miami Herald critic Rene Rodriguez.