A summer 2010 summary piece by Lewis Beale had been locked behind a pay wall, and now it’s free: “As far as the film industry was concerned, summer 2010 was seriously bipolar,” it begins. “The first half looked like the biz was on its last legs, at least creatively. Sure, there were some hits, but almost everyone agreed that Iron Man 2 wasn’t as good as Iron Man, Robin Hood wasn’t even close to being a great Robin Hood, and Shrek Forever After was possibly the lamest entry in the series.

“All these films (and several others) were not exactly original concepts, which seemed to confirm the notion that Hollywood was devoid of new ideas.

“Then came Inception, and all of a sudden, things changed. Love it or hate it, Christopher Nolan‘s jigsaw puzzle of a film was certainly something new, which audiences, and most critics, responded to — it has grossed over $260 million. And it was complemented by other solid entries like Despicable Me and Salt, which put a new spin on old genres, and The Expendables, an ’80s muscles and mayhem concept so old that it seemed new again.

“So, heading into the fall season, the business isn’t as bad as it looked back in early June. And as always, there were plenty of winners and losers emerging from the summer season.”

LOSERS [Note: to hell with quotation marks from here on]

1. Tom Cruise — Knight and Day opened to generally meh reviews — 55% positive on the Rottentomatoes.com scale of critical rankings — and blah business. Cruise’s last film, Valkyrie, also under-performed, which means that

until Mission: Impossible IV comes out — supposedly at the end of next year – Cruise’s once blazing hot career has cooled down to a slow burning ember. And the star’s stated intention to make a movie based around Les Grossman, the film executive character he played in Tropic Thunder, sounds like an act of desperation. How many movies based on what are essentially comedy sketches have been any good?

2. Chick Flicks — Both Eat Pray Love and Sex and the City 2 were trashed by the critics (38% and 16% positive, respectively, on the Rottentomatoes scale) and neither managed to recoup their inflated budgets at the domestic box office. The narcissism and rampant consumerism of both films turned plenty of people off, and in this era of economic downturn and joblessness, the single-minded entitlement of both films’ protagonists was like a poke in the eye with a stick. Not what folks want to see at the multiplex.

3. M. Night Shyamalan — The Last Airbender received an 8% positive on the Rotten Tomatoes scale, one of the worst ratings ever, and even though the film has grossed over $130 million (on a $150 million budget), the days when M.

Knight was considered a real talent are over, over, over. After a string of bombs including The Village, Lady In the Water and The Happening, he’s permanently joined the ranks of big budget hacks. And Hollywood already has plenty of those.

4. Jerry Bruckheimer — The mega-producer didn’t exactly have a mega-box office summer — Prince of Persia and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice underwhelmed critically and commercially. But shed no tears for Mr. Bruckheimer: a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie is in the works.

5. 3D — Avatar in 3D was great. Cats and Dogs in 3D? Who cares? Fact is, filmgoers have become more and more disenchanted with the 3D format, and are ever more reluctant to pay the extra ticket cost,

especially when, as in the case of a film like Clash of the Titans, a late switch from 2D to 3D produces lousy effects. Nearly 80% of filmgoers saw Avatar in 3D, but only 45% of the gross for the hit animated film Despicable Me came from that format. Hollywood loves to beat a trend to death: there are nearly 60 3D films due out in the next two years. How many will audiences actually shell out the extra bucks

for?

6. Jennifer Aniston — Girl can’t seem to catch a break. She’s been starring in a string of lousy movies, like The Bounty Hunter and Love Happens, both of which received Rottentomatoes ratings under 20%. Her latest, The Switch, which earned an improved, but still lousy, ranking of 52% positive, took in a pathetic $8 million on its opening weekend. And after a slew of bad love affairs, she’s even relinquished the crown of America’s Most Sympathetic Dumped-On Movie Star to Sandra Bullock. Jen needs to get into career rehab, pronto.

WINNERS

1. Adam Sandler — Grown Ups received a putrid 10% positive rating on Rottentomatoes – one critic called it “puerile and aggressively stupid” — but that didn’t seem to matter to Sandler’s fans, who turned out in droves. The film has grossed over $150 million, confirming its star’s status as easily the most critic-proof actor in the

business.

2. Stieg Larsson — He’s the Swedish author of the unstoppable Millenium Trilogy juggernaut. Not only have the three books become Godzilla-like international bestsellers, but the films based on them have hit a home run. The first, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, grossed $12 million in this country, a monster figure for a foreign-language feature. The second, The Girl Who Played With Fire, has taken in over $6 million to date. The third film, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest, is due out in October. And with an English-language version of the first book, starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara and directed by David Fincher (Zodiac) in the works, this unstoppable force will keep on keepin’ on. Too bad Larsson died in 2004, before he could enjoy this financial bounty.

3. Pixar — Toy Story 3 got rave reviews, humongous box office. What else is new? This animation house can do no wrong.

4. Christopher Nolan — First The Dark Knight. Then Inception. Writer-director Nolan makes brainy popcorn pictures that are hailed by critics and make tons of money. Right now, he’s the hottest talent in Hollywood.

5. Indie Pix — Buoyed by good reviews and the general absence of quality flicks released by the major studios, a number of independent films scored with audiences. The Kids Are All Right, Cyrus, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, Winter’s Bone, I Am Love and several other films helped reverse a long downturn in the sophisticated film market.

6. Vampires — The latest entry in the Twilight series, Eclipse, grossed nearly $300 million. A low-budget spoof, Vampires Suck, recouped its entire production budget in its first week of release. Coupled with the monster success of HBO’s vampire series True Blood, this means our national obsession with sexy bloodsuckers is either a really cool trend, or The End of Civilization As We Know It.

7. Sylvester Stallone — Sly has been recycling his greatest hits for several years now, with varying degrees of success: Rocky Balboa (2006) was a hit, Rambo (2008) wasn’t. But who would have predicted that the ’80s throwback action flick The Expendables, with its AARP-eligible cast (average age: 51.5), would open at number one, with a healthy $35 million gross? And that nearly 40% of the opening weekend audience would be composed of women? Why? Probably because filmgoers are nostalgic for the macho casts of the past, and are tired of CGI explosions, films filled with high-tech babble and male stars who look like nerdy teens (i.e., Michael Cera). No matter what, Sly sure figured out what audiences wanted with his latest production. At 64, he’s a superstar all over again.

Why doesn’t DVD Beaver’s Gary W. Tooze let his hair down and just say it? A Bluray of Jean Luc-Godard‘s Breathless (1960), which was shot on the cheap using natural light for the most part, can’t look that crisp or shimmering. It’s just a cool little landmark black-and white film, but hardly a Greg Toland masterwork. Restoring it was a good thing, but a regular Criterion DVD (which is also available) will more than suffice.

Jean Seberg in a frame capture from Criterion’s Bluray of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, an essential film to see and know and discuss with some authority, but which can’t look that good.

“Christopher Nolan proved there is always room at the multiplex, even in swimsuit season, for a smart, original story. Will Ferrell bounced back. Michael Cera fell flat. Animation was the No. 1 genre. Sorry, Sex and the City ladies: It’s over.” — N.Y. Times reporter Brooks Barnes in a summer-wrap-up piece that will appear in tomorrow morning’s print edition.

The big winner was Sony, which “owned all of its wide releases and delivered hit after hit, albeit on levels lower than most of its rivals,” Barnes reports. “Sony’s modestly budgeted remake of The Karate Kid was one of the summer’s biggest surprises, rocketing to $176 million in North America. Although Eat Pray Love was soft, the studio also scored with Grown Ups, Salt and The Other Guys.”

Yesterday’s news that Anton Corbijn and George Clooney‘s The American would out-perform Machete by a million or so was surprising enough, but now guess what? Machete has fallen to third place behind Takers and is now looking at $11 million or so for the weekend. What a tumble! I presume it’s that word-of-mouth Trejo + Rodriguez + too-much-blood-and-wanking-around factor. A major stunner for Team Rodriguez. Right now they’re all sitting around with forlorn faces and asking themselves, “What happened?”

The American is now estimated to finish with about $16.3 million, Takers (down 44% from last weekend) will snag about $11.4 million, and Machete, as noted, will earn about $11 million. Followed by The Last Exorcism ($7.6 million), Going the Distance ($6.8million), The Expendables ($6.6 million with a $92.2 milllon cume), The Other Guys ($5.4 million, $106.9 million total), Eat Pray Love ($4,850,000 with a $69 million cume) and Inception ($4,550,000 with $277 million total).

So what have we learned so far from the dual unfoldings of the Venice and Telluride film festivals? Neither has ended, of course, and there are always different perspectives and views, of course, and no one senses finality, of course, but here’s a stab:

At today’s Sunday panel at Telluride Film Festival (l. to r.): Real-life arm-slice guy Aron Ralston, 127 Hours director Danny Boyle, James Franco, moderator Annette Insdorf, The Way Back director Peter Weir, Werner Herzog. (Photo by Glenn Zoller)

(a) Darren Aronofsky‘s Black Swan may or may not be more of a favorite among impassioned dweeb critics (i.e., the Guy Lodge contingent) than a staunchly consensus-propelled Best Picture contender, but red-eyed Natalie Portman is apparently close to the front of the pack for a Best Actress nomination.

(b) Danny Boyle‘s 127 Hours is a very possible Best Picture contender, and James Franco is looking like a close-to-locked Best Actor contender…maybe. Depending on visceral reactions to the red-arm factor.

(c) Tom Hooper‘s The King’s Speech is an audience-pleaser and an awards contender. Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush are looking at possible acting award noms. “No doubt Harvey’s already got one of the ten Best Picture slots locked up for this,” Deadline’s Pete Hammond wrote yesterday.

(d) Mark Romanek‘s Never Let Me Go is apparently going to encounter divided reactions, half of them having kitten litters in the David Poland mode (“masterpiece”) and half of them saying “but why don’t they rebel or run for it?” in the Kris Tapley-Anthony Breznican-Roger Moore-ish view of things.

(e) A consensus is forming that Peter Weir‘s The Way Back, which many if not most critics admired or at least respected, needs to be at least platform-released at the end of 2010. Newmarket is reportedly planning to release the survival drama in early 2011 without any kind of minimal awards-qualifying release in late 2010. (And why, by the way, isn’t The Way Back showing at Toronto?)

(f) Sofia Coppola‘s Somewhere, generally regarded as a minor effort compared to Lost in Translation, is out of the awards game altogether (although Stephen Dorff‘s performance is the best career move he’s managed in a very long time).

(g) Errol Morris‘ Tabloid has a better-than-decent shot to finish as one of the five Best Feature Documentary nominees…maybe.

(h) Shlomi Eldar‘s Precious Life, “the agonizing story of a young Gaza woman who goes to an Israeli hospital to save the life of her five month old son Muhammad suffering from the same genetic disease that took the lives of her other two children,” may also become a Best Feature Doc contender by way of the industry factor.

(i) No one is going to pay any attention to Kelly Reichardt‘s Meek’s Cutoff, in part because Meek’s Cutoff is one of the worst movie titles ever imagined by anyone in the history of dramatic presentation. I mean, it’s worse that Winter’s Bone.

Danny Boyle‘s 127 Hours “has been expertly brought to the screen by [a] director who finds a way to put ‘urgency’ in every frame,” Deadline‘s Pete Hammond writes from Telluride, “despite the fact that the entire film is basically one man vs. the elements.”

The film is “a tour-de-force for James Franco,” he adds, noting how the 32 year-old actor “is virtually never off screen in the same way Spencer Tracy triumphed in the similarly spare The Old Man And The Sea (1958). Franco’s performance could put him in contention for a best actor Oscar nod just as Tracy’s did over 50 years ago.”

Hammond notes, however, that “Franco’s ‘farewell to arm’ scene is graphic and not for the squeamish.”

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Jay A. Fernandez reported yesterday that the real-life character played by Franco “went to the extreme to free himself from the boulder that trapped him for five days, and the climactic scene of his escape generated groans and squirming from the audience.

“At the end of the screening, paramedics were called in to assist an unidentified man” at the 127 Hours screening. “Festival press representative Shannon Mitchell told The Hollywood Reporter that she had no information on whether the man’s illness had to do with 127 Hours‘ escape scene or an unrelated medical condition.”

Indiewire‘s Anne Thompson reports that “Telluride correspondent Meredith Brody [saw] ‘somebody being taken out on a gurney from the Galaxy’ showing of 127 Hours and later that night at a second screening of the Danny Boyle film, ‘ambulances with multicolored flashing lights pulling into the Palm.'”

I attended one of the earliest L.A. screenings of The Bourne Supremacy (’04), the second Bourne film that is easily the most shaky-cammy of the three. A woman threw up on the floor about halfway into it. I was sitting on the other side of the room, and noticed a little commotion. I honestly didn’t connect this with the rapid cutting and crazy-cam photography, but a publicist with Universal publicity did. She howled and brayed and threatened me with death if I reported about the vomiting.

I’ve sat and chilled at The Bean (1st Avenue and 3rd Street) three or four times. A week and a half ago I got out the laptop and did some work there for 90 minutes. Early this morning some jackass yellow cabbie hit another car and crashed into The Bean, injuring five and seriously maiming one guy in particular.

I used to drive a cab in Boston. I can guess what that cab driver was thinking and doing.

This kind of thing happens in urban action films from time to time, usually for comic effect, but it’s a different deal when it actually happens. If I’m not mistaken, something similar to this occured in Richard Rush‘s Freeebie and the Bean (1974).

The Toronto Film Festival is offering one press screening of Darren Aronofsky‘s hotly anticipated Black Swan, which pulverized nearly all discerning critics at the Venice Film Festival. It happens on Friday, September 10th, at the Scotiabank theatre at 9:30 am — great.

But wait. Another highly anticipated film, Tom Hooper‘s The King’s Speech, which excited many viewers yesterday at the Telluride Film Festival, is also having its one and only press screening at nearly the exact same time — 9 am — on the very same morning, and at the same venue.

Each film has at least two open-to-the-public showings, but further into the festival grid and conflicting, naturally, with other important films and events. So there’s no catching both of them early, press screening-wise. It’s one or the other.

But why? Why not press-screen them on 9.10 so they don’t conflict? What could have motivated Toronto Film Festival programmers to show two films to journalists that they knew were going to be hot tickets right up against each other with no alternatives except for two subsequent, hard-to-crack public viewings each? They had to know they’d be causing problems.

If you miss a press screening of a major film in Cannes it always shows the next day at the Salle du Soixantieme. And there are always…okay, usually two or three press screening opportunities to catch a must-see at Sundance.

Filing from Telluride, Cinematical‘s Eugene Novikov says that Peter Weir‘s The Way Back “enters the canon of survival films as perhaps the most sadistically intent on making you feel as much of its subjects’ physical agony as possible. Despite its impeccable awards pedigree and prestige pic status, it may be too straight-up harrowing to get much traction, either with the Academy voters or at the box office. [But] for those with the fortitude to take the plunge, it offers an intense, morally thorny exploration of the limits of human endurance.”

HE reader Terry Woods calls it “a hugely harrowing experience. The first half is better than the second half, which covers more of the journey the escaped prisoners make, but the film is never less than totally absorbing. I’ll go so far as to say the first half is the best work that Weir has ever done in my opinion, and the second half is still better than most Hollywood product churned out today.

“Jim Sturgess is excellent here. I haven’t been a huge fan before but there’s a scene near the beginning where Sturgess doesn’t utter a word but says everything with his eyes — it took my breath away. And the cinematography is award-worthy. Really try and catch this one, Jeff. A big-scale movie for adults, although commercial prospects may be dicey due to the overall darkness in tone and unflinching portrayal of the subject matter. It needs to be released in December to gather some awards momentum.”

But apparently that’s not in the cards. I’m reading from Deadline’s Pete Hammond that Newmarket, the film’s distributor, isn’t going to open The Way Back in December…right?

A studio’s weekend projection says that by Sunday night Anton Corbijn‘s quiet, meditative and art-housey The American will triumph (very slightly) over Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis‘ Machete, a “funny” cheeseballer about blood, babes and Tex-Mex immigration politics. The George Clooney assassin-in-Italy drama will end up with $15 to $16 million, it says here, and the Danny Trejo taco-stud comedy will end up with $14 to $15 million.

I wasn’t expecting this. I thought Average Joes would run in the opposite direction from an austere Antonioni-ish minimal-action flick and flock instead to a lowbrow entertainment with a Grindhouse attitude. Instead they evenly split. My guess is that audiences thought twice about a movie starring a 67 year-old bulldog-faced Latino and figured that hanging with Clooney, even if he spends the whole movie looking like his pet pig has just been run over by a truck, might be slightly more appealing.

How else to explain it? Is it that a sizable bloc just doesn’t feel that enthused about wink-wink Rodriguez schlock? Is it…what, that Trejo has much thicker arms and bigger man-breasts than Clooney, and people are a tad uncomfortable with blatant Hispanic machismo? Did audiences just look at that orange American poster and go “Clooney, gun, cool, let’s go” without reading a single description? Or did all the glowing American reviews have an effect? I’m asking.

The third place Takers, down 59%, will end up with $14 to $15 million also. The Last Exorcism, down 76%, will come in fourth with $8.7 to $9.2 million. Going the Distance will finish with $8.5 to $9 million and a fifth=place ranking. The bottom five will be The Expendables, The Other Guys, Eat Pray Love, Inception and Nanny McPhee.

Dan Mecca‘s “The 25 Most Memorable Opening Scenes In Film” article on thefilmstage.com (which I found via Awards Daily) slightly angered me on two counts:

(1) The opening of Antichrist is not especially good. (Mecca ranks it as #23 among 25 he singled out.) The tragedy of Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg‘s young son falling out of a bedroom window to his death as they madly copulate in a nearby bathroom is simply not absorbing or believable. The child’s fall doesn’t seem accidental — it seems cinematically fake and laboriously pre-ordained. The snowfall and slow-motion only worsens the effect. It was this opening that told me I’d soon be feeling extremely irritated by Antichrist, and damned if I wasn’t.

(2) The title at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey — “The Dawn Of Man” — also foretells, in Mecca’s view, “the dawn of violence.” No, it’s not about the dawn of violence. The struggle for survival among species within a given environment and finite resources has always been fraught with conflict. The fittest will survive and the less fit will not, etc. In 2001 the violence that results when the lesser apes (i.e., the ones who were initially muscled away from the small pond of water by the meaner snarlier apes) are awakened by the monolith and soon after discover the aggressive use of animal bones is not presented as a moral lament. It is presented as a triumph, the igniting of their fate — they are now on the path to becoming homo sapiens, the dominant race. It infuriates me that anyone would interpret this section of 2001 as any kind of comment on (choke) something as mundane as mere violence.