USA Today‘s Scott Bowles is reporting that despite the Snakes on a Plane cult following, “the R-rated movie is tracking softly” and none of the 265 AMC theatres that showed the New Line thriller last night at 10 pm “sold out of [their] advance tickets…fans weren’t exactly camping out to see the first screening.”
I’ve been talking about very high tracking negatives all along (i.e., the “definitely not interested” percentage has been over 20%). I heard yesterday that the positive interest factors had actually downticked, but take this with a grain. The upside is that the movie isn’t bad.
Variety‘s Ben Fritz and Dave McNary have written that Snakes “is tracking like a normal late-summer horror film, which would indicate a bow in the high teens. But studio is hoping all the hype and buzz could translate into something much bigger, possibly as high as the 30s.” New Line is showing Snakes at 3555 situations.
One of my regulars said this morning that Snakes has been tracking like Dimension’s Pulse which opened last weekend in 2323 theatres and took in $8,203.822. (The total to date is $10,557,845.) With Snakes playing in roughly 1200 more theatres, Variety‘s forecast of a weekend total in the mid to high teens seems more likely than a Sunday-night tally in the 20s, much less the 30s.
Another guy says Snakes is doing better than Pulse. which had only teenaged girls to count on. Whereas teen aged males are seriously onto seeing Snakes, etc. I still say mid teens.
“Snakes” photos
Passage to last night’s Snakes on a Plane premiere and after-party; waiting patiently for the usual can of Red Bull at the Snakes after-party; outside Mann’s Chinese as the Snakes screening was just letting out; the El Capitan on Hollywood Blvd., more or less opposite the Mann Chinese 6.
Howell, Leydon on “Snakes”
Toronto Star critic Peter Howell lashes Snakes on a Plane with a friendly wet noodle. And Houston’s Joe Leydon doesn’t even lash it.
Derby Girl
Derby Girl
I know award-quality when I see it, and Sienna Miller‘s capturing of Edie Sedgwick — the doomed mid ’60s scenester and Andy Warhol girl who died in ’71 at age 28 — in George Hickenlooper‘s Factory Girl (Weinstein Co.) totally rates. It may be the most eerily accurate reviving of a dead person I’ve ever seen in a film. And yet Miller projects dimension and gravitas in spades — an unmistakable sadness and snap and aliveness like nothing I’ve gotten from an actress in any movie so far this year.
Sienna Miller as Edie Sedgwick in George Hickenloooper’s Factory Girl (Weinstein Co.)
If and when the Weinstein Co. puts Factory Girl into theatres before 12.31 (which may happen, I’m now hearing), Miller will be right in there against Prada‘s Meryl Streep, The Queen‘s Helen Mirren, Notes on a Scandal‘s Judi Dench and maybe Running With Scissors‘ Annette Benning. She’s playing the only tragic figure in the group — the only one who goes to her doom with mascara running down her face.
Miller isn’t just a dead ringer for the real McCoy — she gets her fluttery debutante laugh, that mixture of Warholian cool and little-girl terror, the giddy euphoria, the cracked voice. It’s more than convincing — it’s a kind of rebirthing. (I feel I can say this with some authority having seen the real Sedgwick in John Palmer and David Weisman‘s Ciao Manhattan! way back when, and having looked at her photos for years.)
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Hickenlooper’s film is a kind of rebirthing also. Most of it feels like a mid to late ’60s Paul Morrissey film. It has a grungy Manhattan, Collective for Living Cinema, 16mm street quality, like it was shot two or three years before Flesh and Lonesome Cowboys and maybe a year or two after Empire State and Blow Job.
Hickenlooper gives it discipline and tension, working from a tight script by Captain Mauzner but styling in the realm of the Warhol-Morrissey aesthetic, which could be summed up as “don’t recreate anything, just behave and let it happen.”
This is obviously a nervy approach (the person who recently informed a WWD writer that Factory Girl is “kind of a mess” has probably never seen a Warhol -Morrisey film) but with nerve comes a feeling of other-ness. For my money the raw-funk approach works without the viewer needing a NYU degree in Film Studies.
Guy Pearce as Andy Warhol
I’m not going to do a review because the disc I saw was rough and incomplete — there’s plenty of time to get into it down the line. But I should at least mention Guy Pearce‘s Warhol portrayal, which for me is much drier and colder and more delicious than Jared Harris‘s portrayal in I Shot Andy Warhol or Crispin Glover‘s in The Doors. The rumble in the jungle is that Weinstein Co. execs feels Guy’s performance is Oscar-worthy also.
And Hayden Christensen‘s performance of an obviously Bob Dylan-ish figure is, for me, the most engaging thing he’s ever done.
Here are some thoughts from a critic friend who caught Factory Girl under similar circumstances:
“Sienna Miller’s performance is a revelation on several levels — most importantly of her great solar talent; she’s riveting and charismatic in every instant, whether Edie is in meteor-mode or downfall. Hickenlooper was so right to fight for her to play the role. I’m a highly dedicated devotee of the real Edie so I began watching the film with the bar of expectation set extra-high. Well, old Sienna not only vaulted that bar, she blasted the tiles right out of the ceiling and kept going. Edie Lives.
“I’m also still marveling at Guy Pearce’s otherworldly Andy Warhol — a breathtaking creation of a man whose ghost haunts himself. I’m also deeply impressed with Hayden Christensen’s osmosis of the Mystery-Tramp-Who-Shall-Remain- Nameless. I’ve always thought highly of this young actor — he’s still developing, but his instincts are first-rate. As one who has long loved Dylan, I deeply respected where Hayden was able to fish within himself to bring that very difficult prodigy to light.
“I think of Factory Girl as a kind of female Lawrence of Arabia. I’m serious. Edie is an opaque, enigmatic figure by definition, just as T.E. Lawrence was. There is never any ‘explaining’ such a character — we can only experience them, the way anyone who loved them in life might have. That way we can love Edie. Start slow, and people will adore the rush as the film takes off, and maybe even feel a bit scared on her behalf as we lose sight of the girl she is in the film’s beginning moments.
“I feel quite highly of the energy and verve of Mauzner’s screenplay, and feel that Hickenlooker has gone one better and energized the story. Hickenlooper and Mauzner have located Edie in a kind of ‘permanent present-tense’ (as opposed to a period), and I’m willing to bet audiences will embrace her anew, and with her, the film.”
Sienna Miller, George Hickenlooper at the Spirits Awards last March
Safari Inn
One of the better-looking neon signs I’ve come across in recent weeks, belonging to a no-big-deal family-trade motel on the west side of Olive Avenue., northeast of the the Warner Bros. lot as you’re heading for downtown Burbank.
N.Y. Film Festival rundown
MCN’s “The Reeler” has the complete official N.Y. Film Festival rundown: Guillermo Del Toro‘s Pan’s Labyrinth, Sofia Coppola‘s Marie Antoinette (I’d like to hear some ripe New York boos this time instead of French ones), David Lynch‘s Inland Empire (adding the “The” is utterly ridiculous), Todd Field‘s Little Children, Johnnie To‘s Triad Election, Manoel de Oliveira‘s ,em>Belles Toujours , Warren Beatty‘s Reds, Alberto Lattuada‘s Mafioso, etc.
“Departed” poster, trailer
No film festivals, no Oscar lah-lah, probably no Film Comment tribute pieces to Martin Scorsese…just a complex hardball crime flick. Does this poster do the idea behind The Departed justice? What does it tell you? I’ll tell you what it tells me: whatever this movie is, we’re not saying. We’ve got Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon snarling and scowling and that’s all we’re saying. We know it’s not enough, but it’s all you’re getting from Warner Bros. marketing. But watch the trailer, why doncha?
Elsewhere cache issue
For those having trouble getting HE to come up on their screen, the reason is that I switched to a dedicated server this morning. This means you have to dump your cache and start anew. If your computer has any lingering cache impressions of the HE’s numerically coded jibberish address (the URL is the same, of course — it’s the pain-in-the-ass coding that’s different), you have to either clean out your cache or just refesh until it comes in.
“Prestige” vs. “Illusionist”
Neil Burger‘s The Illusionist (Yari Film Group, 8.18) is said to be a pretty good, moderately okay duelling-magician movie set in turn-of- the-century Vienna. Or at least, that was the general rumble after it showed at ’06 Sundance Film Festival. (I won’t see it until this weekend.) It stars Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti and Rufus Sewell .
On the other side of the lake is Chris Nolan‘s The Prestige (Touchstone, 10.20), a duelling magician set in turn-of-the-century London that’s said to be…well, much better . And they’re opening within two months of each other.
The Touchstone/Nolan stars Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale and Michael Caine. I’m not sure if it’s going to Toronto or not, but ti’ve been hearing all along that it’s excellent, top-notch, a tight audience movie, etc. The problem is that I can’t seem to remember the damn title. Putting the word “the” before the word “prestige” doesn’t mean anything. Every time I try to say the title, it doesn’t come.
HIstory Boys
Witness the British History Boys trailer and take note of a front- and-center hetereosexual coupling scene. (Which was in the play — it just feels a bit more pronunced here.) And no intimations of ball-fondling, although there’s a nicely rendered gay version of “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.” (Which is also in the play.) Loads of sunshine-lit photography. I for one am looking forward to not only hearing but digesting every line of dialogue, which you can never quite do from the 22nd row of the orchestra, even when you cup your ears.
Ebert in the hospital
When and if I’m ever hit with something that puts me in a hospital, I hope I can muster the stuffings to deal with it Roger Ebert-style. As in spunky, tenacious, moxie-man, life-affirming, etc.
God is my co-pilot
This Haley Joel Osment DUI /pot-possession rap is so far below the Mel Gibson shockometer it’s not funny. My first thought when I read it was, “Tough darts, kid…deal with it.” My second thought was that this might be some kind of left-field karma payback for A.I. and especially that awful Pay It Forward. That sounds unfair and silly but I always partly blamed Osment for those films.
On top of this, who cares? Former child stars always get into trouble in their teens and 20s and beyond, right? Either they get what’s happening at some point and they turn away from a wild drug-booze lifestyle, or they don’t and they end up fried or dead or whatever. Life is hard and you make your choices.
There’s nothing more venal than drunk driving, and yet it was almost routine and a subject of regular amusement among my teenage friends in Wilton, Connecticut, back in the old days. I remember them piling up their cars due to drinking and drugs all the time, and some of them turned out okay. (And some didn’t.) I knew a guy who ran his father’s XKE into a two-foot-deep swamp covered with lily pads. (This was years before Risky Business.) I knew another guy who was so shit-faced that he slammed his car into someone else’s just as he was pulling out of parking space — he didn’t get more than 10 or 15 feet. I remember joking with this same guy one night as I was about to drive home plastered, both of us saying “God is my co-pilot” and that my journey should be titled “a wing and prayer.”