Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon‘s expressions capture the way I tend to feel whenever I read a box-office assessment story quoting Media by Numbers president Paul Dergarabedian. A dependable, well-liked guy, but he zones people out. Not sassy or colorful enough. We need a movie stats guy who talks like Yogi Berra.
One Missed Call (opening 1.4) is tracking at 51, 27 and 6…very modest. Five films are opening on Friday 1.11. The Bucket List (opening wide) is at 74, 30 and 5. First Sunday— 43, 30 and 3. Name of the King — 31,19 and 1. The Orphanage — 18, 24 and 1. The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything: A Veggie Tales Movie — 39, 19 and 1.
3 films opening on Friday, 1.18.08: 21 Dresses — 56, 27 and 5. Cloverfield — 39.37 and 6. Mad Money — 57, 22 and 0.
4 films opening on Friday, 1.25.08: How She Move — 18, 15 and 0. Meet the Spartans — 31, 19 and 1. Rambo — 62, 23 and 5. Untracable — 22, 18 and 0..
Sorry to be this way, but there seems to be reason to not only dislike but resist Michel Gondry‘s Be Kind Rewind (New Line, 1.25). The plot is about a video-store clerk (Mos Def) and his eccentric best buddy (Jack Black) have to reshoot dozens of popular movies after Black’s accidentally erases the store’s entire inventory of VHS tapes. Uh-huh. I know…forget naturalism and just go with it like we did with Human Nature, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotlesss Mind and The Science of Sleep.
Except I’ve chosen to not go with it this time, and I don’t care if dissing it sight unseen makes me sound small-minded or whatever. The plot sounds irritating as hell and, in the words of David Mamet, I say “no” to that.
Flight-of-fancy movies are Gondry’s signature, of course, but for any present-tense film to even half-work it has to half-resemble some fundamental aspect of the real- time world, especially if has anything to do with technology, old or new. I realize how groaningly literal-minded it sounds for someone like myself to say “no one except backwater Luddites watches movies on VHS tape these days, and finding a store that stocks only VHS is next to impossible.” But these two statements happen to be true, dammit. If I could make this awareness go away for Michel Gondry’s sake by clapping my hands, I would do that. But it won’t.
This is a movie that might have worked ten years ago, maybe. It seems so fanciful-flimsy it already feels like a mosquito buzzing around my ear. Part of me has always been vaguely irritated with Gondry, and now may be the time to slap him down like a drunk needs to be shaken hard and made to sober up with green tea or black coffee. I’m not saying I intend to trash Be Kind Rewind when it plays at Sundance, which would be stupid. But I’m halfway there.
Major differences between National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets and the trailer, according to N.Y. Times technology columnist David Pogue. “Just how different can a trailer be,” he asks, “without becoming false advertising?” My standard complaint is that trailers tend to make the films they’re selling seem much dumber and more primitive than they actually are. Deliberately, of course, because they’re always aimed at the slowest folks in the room.
Does the idea of Steven Spielberg directing a movie about the Chicago 7 sound like a synch-up to anyone? Spielberg isn’t Costa-Gavras, Oliver Stone, Steven Soderbergh or Bryan Singer. He’s never had an up-the-establishment attitude about anything. His personality is essentially that of a kid looking at something exotic and glowing with his nose pressed against a window pane. Maybe he’ll bring something fresh to this dusty counter-culture saga, but it feels like a very strange fit. Like Todd Solondz looking to direct a live-action Snow White movie.
What’s happened to Spielberg’s Abraham Lincoln biopic? Why does he keep pushing this project back? Poor Liam Neeson must be going nuts.
Spielberg is essentially an aging geek who became a liberal political contributor- slash-dilletante late in life. He’s not one to grasp the political altogether except when it comes to creative control and getting paid. If Spielberg was any kind of politically astute fellow he would have thought twice about the Darfur aspect of his alliance with the Beijing Olympic Games organizers on his own without Mia Farrow having to give him pause with the “Leni Reifenstahl of the Beijing Games” taunt.
His interest in the Chicago 7 saga is perhaps an attempt to atone for being off on his own nascent-filmmaker beam and pretty much disinterested in revolutionary ’60s politics when he was in his early 20s. The whole world was on fire back then and Spielberg probably feels he missed out on some level, so the film could serve as a dialogue with the ghosts of Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and William Kunstler with Spielberg saying, “Hey, guys…I’m 62 and I get it! Forty years after the trial, okay, but I get what you were doing back then with all the political theatre and I’m with you now. Brothers at last! Wait until you see how I portray Judge Julius Hoffman! Rest assured that subtlety will not play a part.”
The only aspect of the Chicago 7 story that Spielberg might understand is Abbie Hoffman, the street prankster, personality and revolutionary Borscht-belt comic who was one of the defendants. Spielberg might have a feeling for Hoffman’s impish sense of humor, but a voice is telling me that if Hoffman (who committed suicide in ’89) was around today he might say about Spielberg what Woody Allen reportedly once said about Harvey Weinstein in the mid ’90s, which was that “he’s not my kind of Jew.”
Spielberg allegedly wants Sacha Baron Cohen to play Hoffman, but he’s about a foot too tall. Hoffman might have been 5’6″ with boots on. If you were looking for someone to play Abraham Lincoln would you cast an actor who’s just over five feet tall? Of course not, so why cast a guy who could be a basketball player to play a ’60s activist who was built much more compactly?
The only semi-interesting casting news so far says that Spielberg wants Philip Seymour Hoffman to play Kuntsler. (No resemblance whatsover, but Hoffman can nail anything.) Taye Diggs as Bobby Seale? Maybe, but please, God….not Will Smith. Kevin Spacey and Adam Arkin are said to be in consideration for other roles.
Released this morning, a genuinely final, end-of-the-Iowa-road Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll showing Hillary running third.
And a genuinely unwise endorsement of John Edwards by Michael Moore — unwise given the dead certainty that the Republican attack machine will let slip a certain troublesome dog in the extremely unlikely event that Edwards might win the nomination, so what’s the point?
One of these months, Kyle Newman‘s Fanboys — a tragic period comedy about a group of Star Wars fans who attempt to break into George Lucas‘s Skywalker Ranch so a sick friend can watch The Phantom Menace before he croaks — will open in theatres, or at least on DVD. The MGM/Weinstein Co. team was going to have it out by 1.18, but that has apparently fallen by the wayside. An Exhibitor Relations list indicates that the Weinsteiners may have dumped the film altogether. Am I missing some piece of news?
Any film starring the animal Dan Fogler is a potential problem, and any film with this storyline that doesn’t deal at least semi-honestly with the content of The Phantom Menace — a shattering spiritual and emotional comedown for thousands of Star Wars geeks the world over when it opened eight and half years ago , despite the odd fact of it having made obscene earnings — has to be reprehensible on some level. One of the last things a dying geek does is watch the screen debuts of Jake Lloyd and Jar-Jar Binks? That’s sickening.
Rob Burnett‘s Free Enterprise excepted, geek culture movies always seem to run into problems. Whatever happened to Patrick Read Johnson‘s 5.27.77, another Star Wars fanboy flick film that has been in post-production for three or four years without a release?
The famous harmonic howling sound that warriors from a certain period film make when their ship gets lost in the fog and falls off the edge of the earth. Easy to guess.
If you want to feel moderately depressed and stay that way for the next two or three days, check out Moviefone’s Best Movie Bets of 2008 list. 33 films are listed, but with the exception of Drillbit Taylor, The Pineapple Express, Wanted, Leatherheads, Hellboy II, Bond 22, The Dark Knight, Uncle Festus and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and possibly He’s Just Not That Into You, the odds seem reasonable that 24 will be punishers.
Mike Huckabee playing bass on Leno last night; talking about weight loss, the yanking of the Romney attack ad, etc.
And Hillary Clinton‘s visit to Late night with David Letterman. Dancing WGA picket girls, “Oh, well…all good things come to an end,” Letterman’s Old Man and the Sea beard (“I know what you’re thinkin’…Dave looks like a cattle-drive cook…two months and I’m finally out of rehab”), etc. Superb bad-credit advertisement at the end.
