Spider-Man 3 is being projected to earn $60,379,000 this weekend — a 60% drop. If people really liked it, it would be doing better than this. (The CinemaScore rating was only a B.) It’s now at $242 million cume, and will end up with a bit more than $300 million domestic. But it cost over $300 million to make and the marketing costs were over $100 million, and nobody but nobody who saw it did cartwheels in the lobby. A cruddy script written by three screenwriters (Raimi, Raimi’s brother and Alvin Sargent, producer Laura Ziskin‘s husband>) and populated with too many villains (i.e., three).
Worldwide and DVD revenues will put it into profit, but it’s on par with Iraqi War in terms of waste and redeeming enjoyment levels.
28 Weeks Later will end up with $10,893,000 — 2304 theatres, $4700 a print. Georgia Rules, a disaster, will finish with $5,896,000 — so much for the drawing power of Lindsay Lohan. Disturbia will earn $4,659,000 by Sunday, off 20%. Lionsgate’s
Delta Farce will end up with $3,505,000 in 1300 venues.
Fracture will make $2,962,000. The Invisibles — $2,108,000. Meet The Robinsons — $1,742,000. The Ex — $1,640,000. Hot Fuzz — $1,613,000, off 27%.

MTV News’ movie blog posted an exclusive yesterday about the biologically- inappropriate Nicolas Cage being cast to play 1920s Chicago crimelord Al Capone in Brian DePalma‘s The Untouchables: Capone Rising, which will begin shooting next October and come out sometime in late ’08. It’ll be a kind of prequel to DePalma’s The Untouchables (’87), which was about Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) and Jimmy Malone (Sean Connery) trying to bust Capone (Robert De Niro) and his henchman.

(l. to r.) Nicolas Cage, Al Capone, DeNiro-as-Capone

The really age-inappropriate aspect is that Capone Rising will be about Capone’s “early years” as a Chicago gangster, and the seeds of his relationship with Connery’s Malone character, who may be played this time around by Sean Penn or Colin Farrell. The Untouchables was also cast in an age-inappropriate way, not that DePalma or critics or general audiences gave a damn. I myself was part of that equation. DeNiro’s ferocious energy when he swung that baseball bat was quite a persuader.
And yet Al Capone was a young man in his gangster heyday. His Windy City career spanned 12 years, from his arrival in Chicago in 1919 at age 20 to his conviction for income-tax evasion in 1931 at age 32. The action in The Untouchables happens in the late 20s when Capone was the same age, and yet Capone was played by the 43 year-old DeNiro, who looked his age and a bit more.
Capone Rising will depict what Capone was supposedly up to during his first few years in Chicago, when the Real McCoy was in his early to mid 20s. And yet the “young” Capone will be played the 43 year-old Cage (i.e., born in January 1964), who also looks his age and will obviously be the same age De Niro was when he played the “older” Capone some 20 years ago.
This whole concept is flim-flammy from any kind of half-realistic vantage point, but of course we all let this slide 20 years ago because DeNiro didn’t look excessively old for the role (not that anyone knew or cared about the biological-historical particulars). But Cage is supposed to be playing a Capone who’s ten years younger than DeNiro’s “Scarface,” and yet he’s the same age and looks it. And he’ll be a good 20 years older than the real Capone was.
Many of the big-time Chicago gangsters in the Prohibition Days were flush with youth (or what passed for the stuff in the 1920s, when a lot of bad guys ate bad food and too much of it, and tended to party fairly hard). Big-time boss Dion O’Banion, born in 1892, was only 32 when he was rubbed out. Earl “Hymie” Weiss, born in 1897, was only 29 when he was killed in 1926. “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn, a key member of the Capone gang who was believed to be the principal shooter in the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, was born in ’05 and died at age 31 in 1936. Eliot Ness was only 28 when Capone was convicted of income-tax evasion in ’31.

Georgia Rule “swerves and spins, taking its predictable plot in some surprising directions,” says N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott. ” Working against its maudlin impulses with lively humor, and at the same time undercutting its laughs with some hard, ugly themes, this movie is neither a standard weepie nor a comforting dramedy. It’s an interesting, maddening mess — not a terrible movie, and by no means a dull one.”
The “incoherence” of it, Scott adds, is in fact “a sign of life, evidence of an emotional energy percolating beneath the glib ‘very special episode√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭù surface. The source of that vitality lies with the actors, and with [director] Gary Marshall√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s inclination to give them space and time to explore their characters√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢ idiosyncrasies.”
Scott may be correct in saying that costar Lindsay Lohan “has been subjected recently to the prurient, punitive gaze of an internet gossip culture that takes special delight in the humiliation of young women with shaky discipline and an appetite for fun,” but let’s remember that the brouhaha lastsummer during the shooting of Georgia Rule was not over rumors of this and that, but about Lohan’s temporary boss, Morgan Creek’s James G. Robinson, being fed up with her inability to show up on the set in the morning and do her work because of too much partying.
I would never begrudge anyone having an appetite for fun (unless their idea of fun means laughing really loudly in sports bars….”ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”) but anyone who can’t splash water in their face, change their dress shirt, grim up and conduct himself (or herself) like a pro during work hours is a slouching egoistic lame-o, and deserves every internet rumor that comes his or her way.

David Poland is “a lot more thin-skinned than Sammy Glick,” the L.A. Weekly‘s Ella Taylor observes in a just-up profile. “Like many people who make their living on the attack, he’s better at dishing it out than he is at taking it. Having regularly dumped all over L.A. Times Hollywood columnist Patrick Goldstein, he went public on the site with his distress when Goldstein hit back.

“Still, for all the bile of his well-known war with rival Hollywood blogger Jeffrey Wells — who, on Poland√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s direction, was ordered out of a carful of Poland√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s colleagues on the way to Sundance — he admits to a double-edged appreciation for his equally excitable enemy. ‘Sometimes,’ he says, ‘you just want to go to the circus.'”
Oh, I get it — there’s something broadly theatrical about reading Hollywood Elsewhere. Like listening to a carnival barker in a red coat or watching an Indian elephant stand on his forelegs. Okay, fine, but if HE is a carnival, Movie City News is….uhm…well….I can’t think of a good mean analogy just now. Any ideas?
Taylor calls Poland “a genial, self-deprecating motormouth” and opiners pretty plainly that he’s “shilling for the business on whose advertising he depends.” And yet, she adds, he’s “always an engagingly contrarian read” and
that she doesn’t ” know a critic or film journalist who doesn√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t check out Movie City News at least once a day, as much for diversion as for keeping up with trends in the business.”
Taylor reports that Poland’s Movie City News “boasts a million visitors a week,” but Deadline Hollywood Daily‘s Nikki Finke begs to differ (as well as toot her own horn) with this Alexa graph.

I sat down with 28 Weeks Later director Jean Carlos Fresnadillo last Monday afternoon — i.e., the day that my hard drive froze up and died. Fresnadillo is a quiet, meditative guy with a nicely measured European attitude and what felt to me like a very contained and settled ego. The interview is okay, nothing spectacular; the film is much better.

I would have posted the Fresnadillo thing yesterday afternoon but — no complaining, just fact — I was stopped again when the brand-new hard drive, installed only hours earlier, froze on me. Apparently the computer guy from Brooklyn either installed the wrong kind of video driver or installed the right one incorrectly, and the error caused all wsf ads on all pages to flash like lightning bolts and make the web page jitter up and down, and this caused so much stress on the system that it freaked out and collapsed.

There’s a bottom-line rationale regarding Robert Rodrguez being “in talks” to direct a Warner Bros. live-action feature version of The Jetsons for Warner Bros. Pictures. And it can be summed up in eight words: “Danger! Danger! Retreat to the family safety zone!”
With the Grindhouse financial debacle coloring Rodriguez’s industry aura (on top of the fact that most viewers outside serious gore geeks thought that Rodriguez’s Terror Planet was way, way inferior to Quentin Tarantino‘s Death Proof) and his biggest financial successes having come from directing the three Spy Kids flicks (which came out in ’01, ’02 and ’03), a Jetsons flick is a total dive-for-cover move. The producers are Denise Di Novi and Donald De Line.
The only thing I’ve really liked about Rordriguez’s films since his first and best effort, 1992’s El Mariachi, has been his tendency to cast hot women (Salma Hayek, Rose McGowan) and dress them up in hot skimpy outfits

Aida Turturro (i.e., “Janice” on The Sopranos) briefly mentioned the possibility of a Sopranos feature on Jimmy Kimmel last night with a certain hyper-bunny tone of hope and/or expectation. But whatever chances there may be of Turturro or James Gandolfini or any of the present-day cast members being in a feature version was recently thrown into question by Sopranos producer-writer David Chase.
An MTV.com report quoted Chase as saying that an idea for a Godfather, Part II-like feature — “a story about the Sopranos√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢ grandparents first coming to this country” — is “interesting to me.” Naaah, forget it. The idea is way too Coppola and will feel like a retread. I have a brilliant idea, however. How about a Sopranos feature that is actually plot-driven in the William Shakespeare/John O’Hara sense of the term (i.e., a movie in which big things happen and characters face consequences), as opposed to the HBO series which is all about mood, metaphor, minutiae and morose Garden State atmosphere?

It’s not smoking in movies per se that’s so bad, but actors who use constant smoking as a behavioral crutch. Smoking can look marginally cool depending on how skilled or preternaturally cool the actor is, but it becomes extremely tedious and off-putting when done to excess. Now the Motion Picture Association of America is stepping in for somewhat different reasons and declaring that smoking will now affect movie ratings….maybe. A few too many self-conscious lungfuls and a film may end up with…what? An R rather than a PG-13? A PG-13 rather than a PG? Something along those lines.

Variety‘s William Triplett is reporting that the MPAA, “responding to years of criticism from child advocacy groups and health organization, announced Thursday it is expanding its current consideration of teen smoking to all smoking when evaluating and assigning a movie rating.”
“‘In the past, illegal teen smoking has been a factor in the rating of films, alongside other parental concerns such as sex, violence and adult language,’ the org said in a statement. ‘Now, all smoking will be considered and depictions that glamorize smoking or movies that feature pervasive smoking outside of an historic or other mitigating context may receive a higher rating.” Higher? Economically compromising, they mean.
This is almost akin to prohibition and will probably raise a stink among who make their living playing bad guys, but anything that cuts down on a truly offensive acting tendency is okay with me, even though the MPAA’s idea is on the dopey side.
The key MPAA declaration is that smoking in movies “outside of an historic or other mitigating context” will be more closely examined. But what’s an acceptable mitigating context? Smoking is a shorthand device for characters who are meant to be seen as outlaw-ish or anti-social. But what about an actress playing a middle-aged divorcee with self-destructive or low self-esteem issues? What about a nervous 15 year-old who’s trying to look cool in front of his friends. Thee are all kinds of characters who could light up in a valid way.

The last two and half days were so awful, and then this framed photo arrived via Fed Ex this afternoon. Talk about a radical mood swing and the kindness of strangers. An HE fan whom I don’t know saw that post three or four weeks ago about that damaged print of Jack Nicholson and got inspired and threw this together with a glass cover and a classy wood frame and everything. It’s now hanging on the den wall.

Thanks so much to everyone else who sent along cleaned-up JPEGs of the Jack shot, by the way. Sorry for not saying this earlier. This whole Jack-shot episode has been really beautiful.

I always thought of Las Vegas is a cool place to visit for about 24 hours, after which it starts to get old fast. But then along came the uptown, reconfigured, Trevor Groth-approved Cinevegas Film Festival and I started to amend that view. Seeing choice movies (some fresh out of the gate) and attending parties with fairly hot women every night makes it all go down easier.
There’s still something over-electrified and soul-frying about that town, and the only thing I used to really love about the casinos — the loud metallic clatter of silver dollars falling into the tray of the big slot machines — is gone now. And Vegas is horrible for walking anywhere, and the bus service is slow as snails. But Cinevegas (June 6th to 16th) is a better-than-okay festival for the most part, and sometimes a pretty good one. And then there’s hanging with Las Vegas Review Journal critic Carol Cling, which is always time well spent.
Steven Soderbergh‘s Ocean’s 13 (which I’ll be seeing in Cannes in about a week and a half, if not sooner) and John Dahl‘s You Kill Me are the opening night and closing night attractions.
√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ö‚ÄúCineVegas is a celebration of artists who lay it all on the line, who aren√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t afraid to shatter conventions and defy expectation,” Groth says in the BWR press release. “From our world premieres of American independents and new Mexican films, which both consist of brave works by predominantly first and second-time filmmakers, the festival is a goldmine of talent waiting to be discovered.√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭù
The √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ö‚ÄúJackpot Premieres√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭù are Robert Logevall√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s All God√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s Children Can Dance (world premiere), with Joan Chen; the Peter Spears’ comedy Careless (world premiere), starring Colin Hanks, Fran Kranz, Rachel Blanchard and Tony Shalhoub; Choose Connor (world premiere), a political drama starring Steven Weber and Alex Linz, directed by Luke Eberl; The Fifth Patient (world premiere); The Living Wake (world premiere) starring Jesse Eisenberg and Mike O√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢Connell in a dark comedy from director Sol Tryon…I’ll get into the rest down the road.
Cinevegas used to pretty much stick with its own premieres, but this year it has two new sections — “Diamond Discoveries√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭù (previously premiered new films available for U.S. distribution) and √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ö‚ÄúSure Bets√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭù (upcoming films with U.S. distribution). A chance, in other words, to catch up with films one might have missed at other festivals or at regular pre-release screenings. Good move.

Doing time for 45 days is going to be the best thing that ever happened to Paris Hilton. I did a little time in L.A. County in the late ’70s for some unpaid parking tickets, and it sure as hell clears the clutter out of your head and leaves you with something that feels a lot like focus and fortitude. And if there’s anyone on the face of the planet who could use some of this more than Paris Hilton, I’d like to know who that is.
Jail is awful but if you can grim up and face it down, you come out feeling as if you’re a better and a somewhat stronger person. I only did three or four days so I don’t know about hard time. But I know enough about the sound of clanging steel doors to recognize the truth of a line that Dustin Hoffman said in Ulu Grosbard‘s Straight Time: “Outside it’s what you have in your pockets — inside it’s who you are.”
45 days in the pokey won’t be a walk in the park for a ditzoid like Paris Hilton, but if she’s smart she’ll read up about how Robert Mitchum handled his jail sentence in the late ’40s for marijuana possession. He did it quietly and didn’t squawk. He swept the floors, stayed out of trouble, took his medicine and had won everyone’s respect by the time he got out. I don’t think for a second that our very own empty- headed, barren-souled heiress has the character to “do a Mitchum,” but the most potentially profound spiritual experience of her so-far-useless life awaits nonetheless.
And there’s nothing like getting out of jail to make you feel like Jesus’ son. (Or Mary Magdelene‘s daughter.) It reminds you what a wonderful and blessed place the world outside is, and what a sublime thing trip it can be to walk around free and do whatever you want within the usual boundaries, and what a serene thing it is to be smiled at by strangers in stores and restaurants. People you wouldn’t give a second thought to suddenly seem like good samaritans because of some act of casual kindness.
Jail doesn’t just teach you about yourself but about your immediate circle. “If you want to know who your friends are,” Charles Bukowski once wrote, “get yourself a jail sentence.” Or go to a hospital. As foul and bullying as he often is, David Poland nonetheless called and left a get-well message when I had that systemic poisoning episode a few months ago. I’m just saying.