In Contention

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  • SUNDAY CENTS: Wild about ‘Harry’

    Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince*All historical figures are adjusted to today’s dollars.

    To the surprise of no one, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” was the number one movie at the box office this weekend with $79.5 million. The film made an additional $80.1 million on Wednesday and Thursday, so Daniel Radcliffe and company have just under $160 million in the bank after five days. Comparisons to other Potter flicks are pointless except the previous entry since it was the only other film to debut on a Wednesday in the summer.

    “Order of the Phoenix” opened in 2007 to $80.5 million over three days and $146 million for five. This latest installment already seems a bit more front-loaded, so I think we might be looking at a total gross in the same ballpark as the $288 million for “The Prisoner of Azkaban,” which is currently the lowest earner of the franchise. But with worldwide sales, DVD and merchandise, every film in this 8-part series is worth about a billion dollars each to Warner Bros., so any scrutiny on the numbers is irrelevant.

    “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” holds on to second place for the third week in a row by dropping 36% to $17.7 million. A fourth film is already in the works where the three prehistoric friends get frozen and then thawed out in modern times for a museum exhibit. So, basically, it’s “Star Trek IV” with woolly mammoths. Where do I start the line?

    “Bruno” dropped a brutal 73% to fourth place and $8.4 million. In terms of major wide releases, only “Gigli,” “Friday the 13th,” “Star Trek: Nemesis” and George A. Romero’s “Land of the Dead” have lost more of their opening weekend audience. As I mentioned in last week’s piece, though, this was not unexpected and won’t keep Universal from making a tidy profit on their investment.

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  • How Harvey corrupted Oscar

    Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin in The PianoIt’s a little over a week old, but I only just noticed Mike Goodridge’s rather interesting column at ScreenDaily, in which he offers yet another take on the Academy’s expanded Best Picture field. (Is it even a month since the announcement? It feels like we’ve been talking about this forever.)

    Unlike many, Goodridge is wholeheartedly in favor of the move, which he sees as a potential corrective to the more cynical manipulations of Oscar campaigning. I don’t necessarily agree with that conclusion, but I found myself nodding while reading the setup for his argument, in which he traces the Academy’s motivation back to Harvey Weinstein’s earliest campaigning days.

    Though Weinstein is now regarded as the poster boy for disingenuous campaigning, Goodridge looks back to a time (one many pundits seem to have forgotten) when he was a force for good on the Oscar trail, using his unsurpassed savvy to get deserving indie underdogs into the race.

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  • Catching up with the ten

    Abbie Cornish in Bright StarIt slipped my mind to update the Oscar nomination predictions I made in early June, which were looking sorrily outdated with a scant 5 Best Picture nominees. (What a difference a month makes!)

    Anyway, if only to get with the 10-strong program, it was time for a midsummer tidy, so my updated predictions can be found here.

    Aside from doubling my Best Picture ranks, I’ve limited myself to mild tweaks elsewhere — after all, with most of the big players still unseen, I’m as clueless now as I was before. As I said back in June, I believe in having fun at this early stage in the game, so I’ve retained a few wildcard inclusions and omissions.

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  • An idle rant for a Sunday morning…

    … but one that’s been simmering inside me for some time. Who the hell are the numbskulls who select the pull quotes for DVD cover art? Do they get paid for their efforts? If so, why? And what in God’s name are they reading?

    I know it’s a trivial concern, and it’s not entirely limited to the DVD side of things: there are any number of theatrical one-sheets out there with the most mind-bogglingly (pick the relevant combination) banal/inappropriate/lazy/barely creditable selection of critical endorsements graffitied over their increasingly uninspiring designs.

    But it’s for DVD that the marketers involved produce their biggest headscratchers, going blindfolded as they select the most random possible quotes from the most unimpressive sources, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they’re actually trying to sell the movies to punters.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Toronto looming, ‘Education’ rising

    Carey Mulligan in An Education• Lots of buzz over “An Education” this week, with a new trailer and poster unveiled … and the talk isn’t only about Carey Mulligan.

    • We kicked off a new season of Tech Support with a look at the runners and riders for Best Cinematography.

    • Darwin biopic “Creation” will open this year’s Toronto fest, while “Bright Star” and “Precious” are also in the lineup.

    • Speaking of “Precious,” this week’s edition of Page to Screen examined the novel behind the Sundance sensation.

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  • R.I.P. Walter Cronkite

    It’s difficult to put words to this one.  Those more adept at such things will surely write the glowing appreciations the man deserves in the coming weeks.  But nevertheless, the most trusted man in America is gone.  And personally speaking, it’s quite ironic considering just today I finished a rewrite of a script largely about the death of journalism.  Anyway, given the upcoming anniversary (though more on that Monday), I can think of no better clip than this:

  • ‘9’ clip

  • REVIEW: “Broken Embraces” (***)

    Broken EmbracesMateo Blanco, the fictitious, sightless filmmaker who is both the ostensible hero of Pedro Almodóvar’s 17th feature film, “Broken Embraces,” and a highly refracted alter ego of Almodóvar himself, runs his career by one golden principle: “no sequels, remakes or biopics.”

    This statement, hammered home to Blanco (Lluis Homar) by his long-serving agent Judit (Blanca Portillo), could be read as a cheeky allusion to Almodóvar’s own directorial philosophy. Arguably the most defiantly trademarked of all contemporary arthouse auteurs – even the casual cinephile can identify un film de Almodóvar by its palette alone – he is nonetheless surprisingly resistant to repetition.

    As tempting as it may be for some to color his oeuvre with the same brush, there’s less common aesthetic ground between the jagged raunch of a “Kika,” the elegant humanism of a “Talk to Her,” or the icy genre play of a “Live Flesh,” than meets the eye, skewed black humor and extravagant visuals notwithstanding.

    It’s not a case of phasal development either: the remarkable creative hot streak of his last five films saw him trying on a range of tonal and structural guises, unexpectedly becoming this generation’s crossover arthouse teddy-bear in the process.

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  • Thompson to indieWIRE

    Anne ThompsonWeeks after I expected the announcement of Anne Thompson’s shift to indieWIRE to drop, it seems the formalities are finally under way.  Sharon Waxman reported the goods yesterday, but I missed it at the time.

    My thoughts are that this is a real coup for Eugene Hernandez and the indieWIRE team.  And, it’s the best fit.  Thompson was always a bit too media savvy for Variety and certainly would have been a great fixture at any of the outlets that were angling to lure her in (including The Wrap), but she’ll bring a fierce independent spirit to her new digs that I personally think will prove refreshing for her.

    So, a big congrats to Anne.  Break a leg.

  • 1976: the last hurrah of the American western

    Jack Nicholson in The Missouri BreaksThe western was not yet dead in 1976 when  four high-profile installments were released to varying degrees of success. Four years later, of course, Michael Cimino’s “Heaven’s Gate” would kill the genre for several years (and United Artists for longer), and though it has seen ups and downs in the years since, for the most part, the western remains one of the least popular genres with studios.

    In my opinion, Cimino’s film was never as bad as the critics said it was at the time.  Many of them were lying in wait for a Cimino failure, hoping to ambush him for the lies told during the press interviews for ‘The Deer Hunter,” which won the man an Oscar and was the Academy’s choice for Best Picture. He was not a Vietnam veteran, he had never seen Russian Roulette used as torture, in fact he had never been out of America until he made the “The Deer Hunter.”  This all but ruined Cimino’s reputation, which is somewhat sad because the man had a hell of an eye for detail.

    That of course was the issue with “Heaven’s Gate”; though stunning in its detail, the film is insufferably slow and ponderous, with perhaps two truly stunning sequences, the best among them the community roller skating sequence, which pulsates with energy driven by a young man, the film’s composer David Mansfield and his fiddle, as they skate around the rink, veering in and out of surrounding bodies.

    There was a time in the 1950s and 1960s when 20% of the films coming out of Hollywood were westerns. There were 26 prime time western programs on television, all popular, and John Wayne ruled as the top box office star. By the 1970s, westerns were made less frequently, and Wayne’s box office throne had been usurped by another star of the genre: Clint Eastwood.

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  • ‘Bright Star’ poster

    Where is the poster creativity these days?  This, the ghastly “Funny People” one-sheet, the rather uninspired “An Education” art work, I can’t take it anymore:

    Bright Star

    (Courtesy: Vulture)

  • Clint Mansell on growing up through film music

    Clint MansellIt’s no secret around these parts that I’m a pretty committed disciple of composer Clint Mansell.  I was absolutely beside myself — livid — when his work on Darren Aronofsky’s “The Fountain,” potentially the best score of the decade, was unceremoniously snubbed by the Academy two years ago.  So it was delightful to read through this Pete Paphides piece in The Times of London, an interview with Mansell charting his course from pop rock star to serious film music collaborator as he prepares to take to the stage at London’s Union Chapel Monday with his Los Angeles string ensemble, Sonus Quartet.  The group will be playing selections from Mansell’s film score catalog.

    Much of the article (which has sporadic, fleeting quotes, a style that drives me mad) details Mansell’s collaboration with Aronofsky.  The two met in New York over a decade ago when Aronofsky was fresh out of film school looking to produce his black-and-white mind-bender “Pi.”  But there is also finally comes around to Mansell’s collaboration with filmmaker Duncan Jones on “Moon,” which eschewed the composers typical stylistic particulars in favor of a more traditional approach (that is no less atmospheric and of a piece with the film’s expert craftsmanship).

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  • Kubrick interview

    Yesterday we celebrated the 10th anniversary of “Eyes Wide Shut.”  I wanted to put the ole’ Blu-ray in for another look.  Maybe I’ll get around to it today.  Anyway, I came across this YouTubed audio interview with Kubrick (in three parts) and thought it was worth posting.  Great insights into the man.  I feel like I’ve heard it before, but can’t place it.  Here’s part one.  Parts two, three and four after the jump:

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  • Shoddy screening rooms: a rant

    screening roomThis will be a lot of inside baseball that many of you just don’t care about.  For that, I’m sorry, but sometimes you have to get something off your chest.

    A guy like me has little to nothing to complain about when it comes to screening films in Los Angeles.  I see films early, free, in a comfortable setting and, generally, with no hassle.  But in the nearly five years I’ve been in this town, a growing frustration has set in that finally snapped the camel’s back in half yesterday: poor screening room facilities.

    Last night I settled in for a screening of Shane Acker’s “9” (which is under embargo at the moment — more from Comic-Con, I’m sure).  It was at the Sunset Screening Room over on the strip, a facility I’ve been to maybe two or three times.  Studios tend to shy away from booking there, it seems.  Early on in the first reel, it became apparent there would be an annoying sound issue.

    I’m not aural expert by any means, but it sounded to me like a channel kept dropping out, forcing an uneven quality to the film’s track throughout.  For a couple of minutes it would be a muffled, low end kind of thing with some irritating “warbling” (best way I can describe the sound) and then — BOOM! — the sound would kick back in properly and the elements were suddenly loud and invasive.

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  • 7/17 Web Round-up

    Joseph Gordon-Levitt• Judd Apatow’s risky departure from formula with “Funny People.” [Wall Street Journal]

    • Denise Martin talks to “(500) Days of Summer” star Joseph Gordon-Levitt. [Los Angeles Times]

    • PODCAST: Yours truly talks the Oscar’s move to 10, the “Let the Right One In” remake and more with John Campea et al. [The Movie Blog]

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  • A flash of ‘Fox’

    Thanks to the combined efforts of Lars von Trier and Wes Anderson, 2009 should hold a unique place in cinematic history as the year that brought us not one, but two screen depictions of talking foxes.

    The films they appear in couldn’t be any more different, though after looking at these two new stills (courtesy of Filmsactu) from Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” I find the woodland critter who pops up halfway through “Antichrist” to reassure us that “chaos reigns” less unsettling than these zombified-looking stop-motion creations.

    Fantastic Mr. Fox

    (More thoughts, and a second still, after the cut.)

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  • Fan made art of Ryan Reynolds as The Green Lantern

    I don’t usually bother with fan art because it’s always a dime a dozen, but this is pretty good.  Of course, the mask is too small/tight and the pleather look is just SO early-2000s.  And the logo should be a littler bigger (or maybe not).  But on the whole, very cool.

    Fan made art of Ryan Reynolds as The Green Lantern

    (Courtesy: /Film)

  • In honor of tonight’s screening