Spotted this on the homepage of online retailer Zavvi and had to share. Move over, Mr. Welles.
Tag: Avatar
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SUNDAY CENTS: For real this time, ‘Dragon’ ‘Back-Up’ to #1
*All historical figures cited are adjusted to today’s dollars.No photo finishes and no Monday recounts needed. “How to Train Your Dragon” has definitely topped the chart this weekend, four weeks after debuting there. The last time a film leapt back up to number one after a three week hiatus was “The Passion of the Christ,” which had the help of Easter weekend to do it. It is, quite simply, a feat that isn’t possible in today’s box office climate and Paramount should be congratulated for their efforts. The film dropped a tiny 24% to $15.0 million and is well on course to pass the $200 million mark that “Monsters vs. Aliens” couldn’t hit last year. It’s also the lowest gross for a number one film since September.
Jennifer Lopez proved she still has some of the goods by lifting “The Back-Up Plan” to second place and $12.3 million. That’s already more than “Extraordinary Measures” made total and gives CBS Films reason to keep their doors open for a few more months. I have no idea why this film did this well except that there hasn’t been an old fashioned romantic comedy since “Valentine’s Day.” I’m still also not sure why there are even hijinks or complications in this plot. The guy falls in love with her… but she’s pregnant! So?
“The Losers” became a self-fulfilling prophecy for Warner Bros., entering the chart at number four with $9.6 million. To give you some perspective, some terrible movie called “The Marine” starring a wrestler opened to $8.3 million a few years ago. That’s the calibre of performance we’re talking about. The studio might have had better luck naming the film what it actually is, “The Cocky Douchebags.”
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Got a chuckle out of me
There’s zero extras! There’s so few extras that you put it in, you push play, and the movie starts. There are no trailers, there’s no bullshit at the beginning that you have to endlessly go through. I have a deal with the studio and it goes like this: Any movie I make that makes over a billion dollars goes out without a bunch of crap trailers for your other movies.
James Cameron, discussing the DVD/Blu-ray release of “Avatar” (which drops tomorrow).
Check out the rest at Entertainment Weekly.
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Hurry, only 319 days until…
We have less than a month left until Cannes likely triggers the first mass Oscar chatter of the year. (More so if Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” is included in tomorrow’s Official Selection announcement.) These are precious days, then … enjoy them while they last.Of course, if my “precious” is your “miserable,” and you’ve spent the last five weeks suffering Oscar-talk withdrawal, the indefatigable Nathaniel Rogers over at The Film Experience has your fix. You’ll remember that Kris decided against doing year-in-advance nomination predictions this year, which makes this very thorough Oscar forecast the first of its kind I’ve seen this year.
Needless to say, a hefty pinch of salt is required at this foetal stage in the competition — Nathaniel himself headlines his predictions with the caveat “for fun and discussion.” Still, his lists raise some interesting possibilities: most notably, a Best Picture slate with a very different populist-specialist balance to last year’s ten.
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SUNDAY CENTS: ‘Dragon’ slays
*All historical figures cited are adjusted to today’s dollars.I trust your dragons have been sufficiently trained. Despite sounding like a codename for masturbation amongst middle schoolers, “How to Train Your Dragon” is the number one movie at the box office with $43.3 million smackers. Depending on how you look at things, this result could be great or okay. Considering that Paramount and DreamWorks scored $60.5 million for “Monsters vs. Aliens” last March, it may look like a disappointment. But that film came out when 3D was still a novelty and had a hook right in the title that was simply never gonna miss with kids.
Now 3D is everywhere and ticket prices rose steeply over the weekend, possibly hindering the performance. Theater owners may want to chill out a bit because as soon as going to the movies becomes a luxury that the poor can no longer afford, it will cease to be a recession-proof business. In any case, you can continue to expect one big budget computer animated title every March until the end of time.
“Alice in Wonderland” relinquished its three week hold on the throne by slipping 49% to $17.3 million. That drop is mainly due to the loss of precious 3D venues, but the film already has just a shade under $300 million total so don’t shed any tears. I’m just waiting for CNN to break the story that Tim Burton has been locked in a basement somewhere for the last fifteen years and his twin brother has been directing movies armed only with some black and white striped fabric and VHS copies of previous Tim Burton films as his filmmaking training.
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Michael Moore on ‘Hurt Locker’ politics
One of the most common lines (usually used in praise) on our newly-crowned Best Picture winner is that it’s deliberately apolitical, taking no sides in the Iraq conflict as it aims simply to present the soldier’s experience on the ground. Kathryn Bigelow herself dismissed that as something of a misconception in a recent interview with Steve Pond:I guess my feeling is that graphic portrayals of innocent children killed by bombs, and soldiers incapable of surviving catastrophic explosions … I think that’s pretty clear. And then also, to add to that, the movie opens with a quote, “The rush to battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” So it’s definitely taking a very specific position.
Blogging last night on the Oscar race, Michael Moore says much the same thing — less tacitly, of course, than Bigelow:
The truth is “The Hurt Locker” is very political. It says the war is stupid and senseless and insane. It makes us consider why we have an army where people actually volunteer to do this. That’s why the right wing has attacked the movie. They’re not stupid — they know what Kathryn Bigelow is up to. No one leaves this movie thinking, “Whoopee! Let’s keep these wars going another 7 years!”
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‘The Hurt Locker’ takes 6 Oscars, including Best Picture
Oh, let’s start with the positive. The irony of the lowest-grossing Best Picture winner of all time coming in a year when the Academy did everything it could (right down to a hopelessly baiting horror film montage) to shove the Oscar telecast toward populist appeal couldn’t be more delicious. Much of the season was deceptively tame, but a final week push from all sides (including within) to unseat the perceived frontrunner either came too late or simply didn’t work.“The Hurt Locker” claimed six trophies, including Best Picture, Best Director and best Original Screenplay. The latter became perhaps the tightest race of them all as The Weinstein Company worked aggressively to secure a prize for Quentin Tarantino, but again, it either came too late or didn’t work.
Kathryn Bigelow’s war saga wasn’t even daunted by its perceived competition as “Avatar” managed only three wins, for Best Visual Effects, Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography. Only one of those races included competition from “The Hurt Locker.”
The biggest surprise of the night, no doubt, was Geoffrey Fletcher’s Best Adapted Screenplay win for “Precious,” an award that seemed to be pre-ordained for “Up in the Air” scribes Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner. How often we forget the Academy can be as unpredictable as not. And Fletcher, by the way, is the first African American winner of a screenplay Oscar. “Precious,” meanwhile, was one of three films (along with “Crazy Heart” and “Up”) to win two Oscars, and it seemed to receive a lot of respect and admiration in the room.
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If YOU had a ballot
Tonight’s the big night, and as we close in on the final hours of the 2009-2010 film awards season, I thought I’d offer up this list (another one!), which reflects how you, the readership, would like the night’s festivities to go. These are the results of the daily polls that accompanied our Oscar Guide series during the second phase of the season. Thanks for participating.Best Picture: “The Hurt Locker”
Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker”
Best Actor: Colin Firth, “A Single Man”
Best Actress: Meryl Streep, “Julie & Julia”
Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, “Inglourious Basterds”
Best Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique, “Precious”
Best Adapted Screenplay: “Up in the Air”
Best Original Screenplay: “Inglourious Basterds” -
Ranking the categories
Ah, Oscar lists — the gift that keeps giving. I’m not going to ape Kris’s impressive ranking of all the nominated features: we’d have the same #1, for starters, and we’re agreeing on far too many things these days. So here’s something else to play with.I’ve had a number of emails asking me how I would rank the 10 Best Picture nominees, were I filling out the preferential ballot. I was happy to oblige, but then went a little crazy and applied the same process to all the other races. Hey, Oscar day comes but once a year: get your geek on. With that, my personal Oscar ballot, in full preferential order:
Best Picture
1. “The Hurt Locker”
2. “A Serious Man”
3. “An Education”
4. “District 9”
5. “Inglourious Basterds”
6. “Up in the Air”
7. “The Blind Side”
8. “Up”
9. “Avatar”
10. “Precious” -
Guy’s final Oscar predictions
And so it comes to this: more months than I care to count of watching, thinking, sweating, fretting, writing, deleting and occasionally not caring boil down to single predictions in 24 categories. There’s a lot to get through here, and I’m not going to delay things with an introduction.Well, except for this one caveat — apology, even — of sorts. As you wade through my list, you may notice that my predictions look quite similar to those of one Mr. Kris Tapley. Remarkably similar, in fact. Unhealthily similar, even.
What can I say? Short categories aside (which were subject to further research), the following predictions haven’t wavered in my mind since nomination day, over a month ago — and I see no compelling reason to go out on a limb this year. Sometimes great minds think alike. Frequently wrong, but alike nonetheless.
With that, my predictions, preferences and rationales continue, category by category, after the cut.
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Nut up or shut up: final predictions
As I look over my final predictions for tomorrow night’s Oscar ceremony, I notice that I’ve made only one change — in the Best Live Action Short category — since taking my initial stab the day of the nominations. And I haven’t made a single change since I started the Oscar Guide series.Am I that confidant in my picks? Not really. It’s a very unpredictable year all of a sudden (the AP chimes in on that here), even if conventional wisdom would have us believe much of this is a foregone conclusion. But nothing has really moved the needle during the bulk of phase two and the one controversy that popped up may not be as detrimental as some suspect. Regardless, I’m frankly bracing myself for having an off year.
And it kinda sucks because I set a pretty high bar for myself last year, a personal best, as I nailed down a web-leading 21 of the 24 categories (23 of 24 if you count alternates). That included a call for “Departures” that left me exposed to plenty of “You’re just trying to be different” heckling. Ahem.
If I even approach those numbers this time around, I’ll certainly be surprised. I frankly don’t expect to hit 21 ever again, but who knows? Many areas of this race are coming right down to the wire.
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OSCAR GUIDE: Best Picture
And here we are. With one day until the Oscar ceremony, we wrap up our Oscar Guide series with a look at the 10 nominations for Best Picture. Yes, 10. The Academy decided to pump up the intrigue by expanding its Best Picture field this year in an attempt at securing some love for more populist films with a wider audience, and it seems to have worked.But let’s face it. The most brilliant irony of the season would be, if after all of its attempts, the field expansion, spiffying up the telecast, etc., the Academy is one-upped by a film that virtually no one saw winning Best Picture. It could happen, but the highest grossing film of all time could also win. No shortage of drama here.
The nominees are:
“Avatar” (James Cameron and Jon Landau)
“The Blind Side” (Gil Netter, Andrew A. Kosove and Broderick Johnson)
“District 9” (Peter Jackson and Carolynne Cunningham)
“An Education” (Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey)
“The Hurt Locker” (Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier and Greg Shapiro)
“Inglourious Basterds” (Lawrence Bender)
“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” (Lee Daniels, Sarah Sidel-Magness and Gary Magness)
“A Serious Man” (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen)
“Up” (Jonas Rivera)
“Up in the Air” (Daniel Dubiecki, Ivan Reitman and Jason Reitman) -
FRIDAY FORECAST: ‘Alice’ super
*All historical figures cited are adjusted to today’s dollars.Hot on the heels of “Avatar” crossing the $700 million mark to way less fanfare than I would have thought that would warrant six months ago, 2010 unleashes its very first 3D blockbuster.
Everything about Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” screams smash hit and despite looking completely unappealing in every way to yours truly, it will no doubt break some box office records this weekend. Namely, the all-time biggest March debut currently held by the $78.4 million of “300.”
How much higher can it go?
Well, I think it’s safe to say that Burton’s personal best, the $92.1 million start for “Planet of the Apes,” is out of reach, but stranger things have happened. Like “Planet of the Apes” grossing $92.1 million for instance. Between the Disney brand, the 3D gimmick, Burton’s cache and Johnny Depp’s star power, every demographic is being reached and with competition non-existent, things are looking very good. I’m going to say $82 million.
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OSCAR GUIDE: Best Cinematography
Welcome to the first of two (and the only two) categories that have me pulling my hair out. The cinematography race is a strange breed this year. There isn’t the usual one or two “pretty” films that turn the Academy on at large, nothing with sweeping vistas and postcard composition, all the stuff that allows voters to stop being analytical and vote for mere aesthetic.Meanwhile, the precursor circuit has done little to clear things up. The critical favorite is over-rewarded and probably under-seen. Conventional wisdom favors a gritty film that isn’t the membership’s bag in this field, while the tech giant might be too much too soon. Meanwhile, the “prettiest” film is probably the least likely to win.
The nominees are:
“Avatar” (Mauro Fiore)
“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” (Bruno Delbonnel)
“The Hurt Locker” (Barry Ackroyd)
“Inglourious Basterds” (Robert Richardson)
“The White Ribbon” (Christian Berger) -
3/4 Oscarweb Round-up
• Elvis Mitchell bemoans the fact that the 10 didn’t leave room for a comedy. [CNN]• John Horn reminds that the “Oscar boost” isn’t all that prevalent for the films that need it the most: documentaries and foreign language films. [Los Angeles Times]
• James Cameron says he’d have been just fine with the aborted “Avatar” spoof. It still wouldn’t have made the bit any funnier. [E! Online]
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THE LONG SHOT: Happy Oscar (War Is Over)
So this is Oscar. And what have you done?Speaking for myself, lately, not a hell of a lot. In the three weeks that this column has been on hiatus – apologies to the handful of you who missed it – it’s remarkable how little the O-word has been on my mind.
Yes, I’ve been busy: a trip to the Berlinale here, a stretch of scriptwriting there, the occasional interference of an actual personal life in between. But even if I hadn’t been, and even if the estimable Nathaniel Rogers hadn’t borrowed most of my remaining awards-talk energy for his Oscar Symposium, I doubt I would have found much that was fresh or consequential to fill this space.
I’m not alone. In an awkwardly scheduled season that saw the most crucial precursors announced before Oscar nomination day, and nary a shift in the frontrunners since, Phase Two of the season has amounted to little more than a month of journalistic thumb-twiddling, while most of the nominees wearily float above it all. Remember when the Oscars took place in late March, or even April? Today’s surfeit of Oscar bloggers would have died in wait.
It’s almost enough to make you admire the brazen transparency with which the L.A. Times attempted to drum up drama in the latter stages of voting, rather like a cranky toddler, bored of behaving himself at the supermarket, throwing a tantrum in the checkout line.
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OSCAR GUIDE: Best Directing
This year’s Best Director category has stirred a media frenzy for featuring, along with Best Picture, a face-to-face duel frequently dubbed “the battle of the exes.” Unfortunately the desire to tout that headline has clouded the discussion of the films, their merits and the actual accomplishments of those at the helm. But who cares about that stuff?Seriously, though, this could be a milestone occasion for two of the filmmakers in question, a return to glory for two other former awards season players and is already the second notch on an exciting young filmmaker’s belt as he continues to make his mark on the industry. Not a bad cross-section.
The nominees are:
“Avatar” (James Cameron)
“The Hurt Locker” (Kathryn Bigelow)
“Inglourious Basterds” (Quentin Tarantino)
“Precious” (Lee Daniels)
“Up in the Air” (Jason Reitman) -
Stumping for (or against) Mauro Fiore
This year, one of the biggest trip hazards for those filling out their office Oscar pool sheets is the Best Cinematography awards. A race with four potential victors (sorry, “Harry Potter” fans) and wildly mixed signals from the precursors, there’s less consensus over this one than any of the feature categories.We’ll put the debate to you when we cover the category in our Oscar Guide series on Thursday. Vanity Fair’s Claire Walla, however, seems to think she has it sussed out, declaring Mauro Fiore’s work on “Avatar” without peer in the race, given that it “completely redefined what it means to make an image.” To this end, she discusses with Fiore the challenges of lighting a film produced mostly by technologies with which the DP was uninvolved:
“The most difficult part is marrying those two images,” Fiore said of working with a physical set that exists in a virtual world. For a scene that takes place outside a research laboratory on one of Pandora’s floating mountains, for example, the physical set consisted of two structures and scattered Pandoran shrubbery. The entire backdrop—including the light source—was represented on set only by a green screen. Fiore thus had to light the characters and structures on set according to where the sun would be had the characters actually been on Pandora and not on a soundstage in New Zealand … “It was tricky because every scene involved some sort of interactive light,” he added.