“I went to a screening of Werner Herzog‘s Rescue Dawn fighting off one of those desperately lonely, uncertain states we all find ourselves in at times. Two hours later, I came out of the theater flying, simply too in love with life to fret over some ground-level personal nonsense. Herzog’s film about torture and starvation is the feel-good movie of the summer.” –from Steven Boone‘s review on Matt Zoller Seitz‘s “House Next Door” site.
It’s official — Evan Almighty has tanked in relation to earlier box-office projections. It did around $11 million yesterday in 3600 theaters, and therefore won’t take it much more than $33 or $34 million by Sunday night, which is significantly lower than the $40 million weekend projection that Universal and other handicappers were putting out a few days ago.
Every big-timer who contributed to this film in some significant way needs to drive out to the desert and hide out for a week or two. I would if I were in their shoes. I’d be packing my stuff right friggin’ now, and I’d definitely bring along one of those khaki fisherman’s hats and a couple of pairs of Ray-Bans.
Has Ratatouille snagged the Best Animated Feature Oscar before DreamWorks’ and Jerry Seinfeld‘s Bee Movie (opening 11.2) even gets out of the gate? I’m seeing the rat movie an hour and 17 minutes from now at the Arclight, and the excitement levels are fairly high. The Hollywood Reporter‘s Gregg Kilday says Ratatouille “isn’t necessarily a shoo-in [at this stage], but by summer’s end it’s likely to have established itself as the animation front-runner.”
“When other people in the junket rooms would just nod politely, do whatever was asked of them by the studio, and play ball (myself included), Andy Jones would speak up, occasionally get thrown out, but always manage to sneak back in.
“I still don’t know what happened at the double-junket for Jeepers Creepers 2 and Cabin Fever, but after there was all this chatter going on with him finally being shown the door, he was at my roundtable fifteen minutes later asking his questions and going to town like nothing happened.” — from Mark Wheaton‘s farewell piece to Andy piece on CHUD — warm, affectionate, well-written.
And here’s a Variety obit by Diane Garrett — three wafer-thin graphs about Jones’ death and career history, and five graphs exploring how A Mighty Heart, which Jones was watching the night before last as he suffered his fatal heart attack, has stirred up more than its share of trouble and tumult. If Garrett had worked it a bit more, she could have thrown in an assessment about Angelina Jolie‘s career curve.
Seriously, the piece reads as if a Variety editor told her, “This guy Jones didn’t accomplish enough and wasn’t important enough to warrant a regular obit so make something out of the fact that his heart gave out when he was watching A Mighty Heart….that’s a catchy angle.”
“Relationships I thought were going to last didn’t last. And to tell you the truth, the past five years, the older I get the shorter the relationships get, and now it’s like a game of musical chairs. There’s nobody left. It’s sad.” — Unmarried psychologist Dave Mahony, 42, speaking to N.Y. Times writer Allen Salkin in a piece about middle-aged guys (some nudging 50) living in Fire Island house shares and cruising chicks and sipping Heineken from plastic cups at crowded parties. Mahony’s observation is poignant and well-sculpted, like something John Guare might have written for a play about older guys whose string has run out.
As of 6:15 pm today, the people running the E! website couldn’t be bothered to post even a small-type mention of the passing of Andy Jones, a guy who worked and wailed for them pretty well in his heyday. He did a fair amount of on-camera work also. Jones had issues, okay, but he deserves at least a modest farewell piece. But I guess that wouldn’t attract readers, huh? Really classy, guys. Hats off.
“Despite its $200 million-plus budget, the presence of Steve Carrel and an aggressive campaign aimed at Christians, it appears that this story of a modern day Noah will generate a weekend gross that is only in the $35 to $38 million range. I’m told that the three major tracking services have the movie at $35 million or $36 million, but one studio has the picture at $38 million and another says that it gets to $40 million tops. If this number holds, and keep in mind that it is a preliminary number, Evan Almighty will have a hard time getting to $100 million domestic. That would be a major disaster for Universal.” — Moguls columnist Steve Mason in a 6.22 posting.
A handwriting analysis of Paris Hilton’s pre-pubescent scrawl …funny. Best snicker of the day.
There was once a serious notion, believe it or not, that milk-fed Jennifer Aniston might portray Marianne Pearl in A Mighty Heart. Gold Derby’s Tom O’Neil considers this might-have-been scenario, and in the process persuades a certain bigmouth to comment as follows:
“Jennifer Aniston is not a bad actress, but she’s not right for A Mighty Heart,. No casting director in their right mind would say, ‘Let’s try Aniston in the role.’ For one thing, she’s not right physically. She’s not exotic like Angelina Jolie and she can’t pull off that French/ Italian/ north African accent. Putting Aniston in A Mighty Heart would be like casting Marlene Dietrich as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.”
Sicko director Michael Moore “has hardly been shy about sharing his political beliefs, but he has never before made a film that stated his bedrock ideological principles so clearly and accessibly,” writes N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott.
“His earlier films have been morality tales, populated by victims and villains, with himself as the dogged go-between, nodding in sympathy with the downtrodden and then marching off to beard the bad guys in their dens of power and privilege. This method can pay off in prankish comedy or emotional intensity — like any showman, Mr. Moore wants you to laugh and cry — but it can also feel manipulative and simplistic.
“In Sicko, however, he refrains from hunting down the C.E.O.√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢s of insurance companies, or from hinting at dark conspiracies against the sick. Concentrating on Americans who have insurance (after a witty, troubling acknowledgment of the millions who don√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√¢‚Äû¬¢t), Moore talks to people who have been ensnared, sometimes fatally, in a for-profit bureaucracy and also to people who have made their livings within the system.
“The testimony is poignant and also infuriating, and none of it is likely to be surprising to anyone, Republican or Democrat, who has tried to see an out-of-plan specialist or dispute a payment.”
When I mentioned yesterday that the winner of the 2007 Best Picture Oscar will most likely be one of those Iraq War/Afghanistan movies (Charlie Wilson’s War, Lions for Lambs, In The Valley of Elah), I didn’t mention three others set in that troubled area. My reasons for excluding them are mostly sound. Peter Berg‘s The Kingdom is sounding more like an out-and-out thriller. Marc Forster‘s The Kite Runner may be a bit too smallish and exotic to be considered an early Oscar favorite. And Brian DePalma‘s Redacted looks…wow, interesting as hell. But the day-and-date release scheme places it in a exposure category that handicappers tend to dismiss.
