Wrapping up my perspective on the year today, a personal list of superlatives, Oscar categories and other silly nonsense.
Swing back around on Monday for the ultimate wrap-up, my list of the best films of the decade.
Best Picture
“A Serious Man” (Focus Features)
Best Director
Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, “A Serious Man”
Best Actor
Sharlto Copley, “District 9”
Best Actress
Gabourey Sidibe, “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”
Without any doubt, one of the most difficult Oscar categories to predict is Best Makeup. Like Best Visual Effects, the final three nominees are chosen from a previously announced shortlist of seven.
Very frequently, films that would seem to be sure things fail to even make the bake-off. Even so, it is possible to gauge the general sort of films which are nominated, with considerable prosthetics and aging effects being among the most cited accomplishments in this category.
This branch is one that regularly seems willing nominate dreadful films, or to eschew insularity (which is not to say they don’t have their favorites, such as Greg Cannom and Rick Baker).
I think many of the films I spoke of in September remain firmly in the running, And perhaps leading the way is Neil Blomkamp’s “District 9.” While much of the work in this was CGI, the makeup was key, not only to the main character’s transformation but also to capturing the injuries of the characters in the slums of Johannesburg. The crew has not been nominated before, but I don’t think that will be a problem.
As more films have been unleashed, the race for the visual effects Oscar now appears clearer than it did three months ago. I’m starting to feel the race for the final three will really be down to a handful of films.
As I explained in August, a shortlist of seven films will be announced in December or January. After the branch screens the films, the three nominees will be announced on the same day as all the other categories. We can expect the nominees to be big budget films – and also big hits, which is why how they perform on release is so important.
Summer titles such as “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian” and “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” strike me as highly unlikely to survive to the year’s end. Nor do I believe “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” will able to distinguish itself enough from its predecessors, only one of which was nominated here.
Spike Jonze’s “Where the Wild Things Are” did not have the reliance on visual effects that I thought would be necessary for a nomination and I frankly doubt its chances. “Watchmen,” on the other hand, has slightly more potential in my opinion but still remains almost too innovative for a berth here.
The two summer films which I do fully expect to be in the running had very different critical reception – though I’m not sure if that will determine their fate in this category. I felt significantly dumber after watching “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.” That said, the box office was nothing short of massive, as were the effects. It’s certainly still among the top contenders.
“Make me look good.” While this might seem a vain phrase, in the context of a movie, makeup cannot only make an actor “look good” but it can capture the character and transform the performer, providing invaluable assistance in reaching the “truth” in the portrayal.
The Academy Award for Best Makeup actually recognizes the individuals who perform both makeup and hairstyling duties. Like Best Visual Effects, this category has only three nominees, chosen from a list of seven finalists which are announced in a bake-off advance.
While certain names such as Greg Cannom and Rick Baker show up here with frequency, the branch has, especially in recent years, been less averse to new talent. Creation of monsters and other fantastical characters, in addition to aging, tend to be the branch’s preferred accomplishments.
The successful reboot of the “Star Trek” franchise might very well be leading the way here. Creating the numerous famous characters and, most notably, Eric Bana’s antagonist Romulan Nero, strikes me as the sort of work which this branch embraces.
Whether a film like “Watchmen” would be seriously considered by the Academy in any category is a matter of great debate. But the makeup was absolutely fantastic and critical to the success of the film. Greg Cannom was on the crew, which has me inclined to consider it seriously here.
We’re still waiting to see James Cameron’s eagerly anticipated “Avatar,” but one can’t help but wonder if the film’s CGI and performance capture technology will be doing much, if not all of the work normally reserved for makeup. And the makeup artists on the crew have yet to be widely recognized by the Academy. Regardless, one cannot deny the success Cameron’s films tend to have in the crafts categories.
“How did they do that?” Movie-goers often ask this in response to spectacular visual effects, one of few elements of a film, apart from acting, directing or story, that a studio might choose to sell a film directly on.
Not surprisingly, the Academy’s award for Best Visual Effects is definitely the most mainstream-friendly of all of all. $100 million grosses and higher are the norm.
This branch also has a somewhat unusual process for choosing the nominees. A shortlist of seven films will be announced in December or January and members of the branch will screen effects presentation reels of the films from that collective to nominate three contenders announced alongside the rest of the Oscar nominees.
Probably leading the field this year, sight unseen, is James Cameron’s “Avatar.” Cameron’s last five films have all been nominated in this category…with four of them winning! Moreover, “Avatar” seems certain to be, like most Cameron efforts, a showcase for the visual effects. Of course, the film could also be an unmitigated disaster, but barring that I would be quite surprised if it did not find itself among the nominees.
On the other hand, we have already seen several films likely to end up in the running. Michael Bay’s “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” was absolutely wretched in this viewer’s opinion. But considering its massive box office take, not to mention the nature of the effects and the success of Bay’s films in this category in the past, I feel a nomination is quite likely.
In the wake of “Watchmen,” adapted from a notoriously dense piece of popular culture and a nut some think Zack Snyder and company finally cracked this year, Scott Thill at WIRED Magazine is asking what else is out there that’s also “unfilmable.” I personally think the idea of something being “unfilmable” is bullshit. Perhaps as far as faithful adaptation goes, maybe, but cinema is a medium with nearly limitless possibilities, so if you can’t dive in and creatively bridge the gap, you have no business trying to do so in the first place. That’s my view, anyway.
The WIRED list includes a number of the usual suspects, two of them being graphic novels that I would hesitate to consider all that difficult when it comes to adapting this stuff (Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns” and, perhaps to a lesser extent, Neil Gaiman’s “The Sandman”). Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game” tops the user generated rankings, perplexingly. It’s a sci-fi heavy collective, though, so maybe fanboys are just protecting their own.
One of the choices, which gets some dedicated copy, is a challenge I’d love to see some intrepid filmmaker take on — William Gibson’s cyberpunk-birthing “Neuromancer.”
• The forthcoming release of “Julie & Julia” delays author Julie Powell’s follow-up book. [New York Observer]
• Seth Rogen takes “Entourage” (which is slowly jumping the shark this season) and its creators to task. [Movieline]
• Going to Comic-Con? Download the official iPhone app. [Apple]
At the beginning of the year, my two most anticipated films happened to feature Billy Crudup in pivotal roles. “Watchmen” came and went and is perhaps better left in the rearview, though the actor received solid notices from proponents and detractors alike. “Public Enemies,” however, still lies ahead as the summer movie season pushes forward.
The film, directed by Michael Mann, has Crudup taking the reins as J. Edgar Hoover, the former F.B.I. director who declared a war on crime and mobster John Dillinger in particular. I missed Susan King’s brief Los Angeles Times profile on the actor last week, but happily stumbled across it over the weekend.
Crudup speaks briefly about his unexpected approach to the character in the following exchange:
Crudup says that the “Public Enemies” script, by Ronan Bennett and Mann and Ann Biderman, was rich with character development — “filled with this mixture, which seemed always to be Hoover’s problem, of ego and patriotism. That was more than enough for me to tackle him.”
Mann, says Crudup, always sort of characterized Hoover as a visionary to the actor. ” ‘Visionary’ to me speaks of somebody who is attempting to change society or culture for the good,” Crudup says. “It was interesting to think of him in a somewhat positive light.”
“Public Enemies” opens nationwide July 1.
I forgot to mention this in the item below regarding that Wired piece featuring Neil Gaiman and the current goings-on in the comic world. The subject of “unfilmable” comics came up, with “Watchmen” having landed in March and Gaiman’s own “Sandman” at the top of such a list for some fans.
Regarding Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns” — which has, as always, been bandied about as a potential film project in the wake of “The Dark Knight,” some have speculated for “Watchmen” helmer Sack Snyder — Gaiman notes, in passing, a fascinating casting proposition that would frankly be kind of awesome:
I was reading photostats of Watchmen that Alan would hand me months before they hit the stands, and I would puzzle over everything, putting it all together in my head. That’s a different thing than Dark Knight Returns, where the details of the story are more malleable and simple. Batman comes out of retirement. Cute Robin arrives on the scene. Joker kills himself. Is Batman dead or not? He’s not. There’s not much to unpack. If someone cast David Bowie, as he is now, as the Joker, I think The Dark Knight Returns is doable.
Alright, someone, somewhere. Let’s make this happen. (Although Tim Curry would probably be better.)
Jackie Earle Haley’s recently resuscitated career is a textbook example of how true the banal platitude “the nomination is the reward” can sometimes be. Prior to 2006, the former child star hadn’t made a film for 13 years; one devastating performance (in Todd Field’s undervalued “Little Children”), a smattering of critics’ awards and a richly deserved Oscar nomination later, he’s a steadily working character actor with a reasonably high-profile slate of projects to his name.
Sure, “Watchmen” may not have panned out all that well, but it was a pretty amazing get for a 47 year-old non-star — and his performance is deemed by many to be the embattled film’s brightest spot. And getting to work with Scorsese in “Shutter Island” is none too shabby either, I would imagine. So when people say that awards are inconsequential, I’m sure the likes of Haley might beg to differ.
So it was with mixed feelings that I read the news that Haley is taking on the role of Freddy Krueger in New Line’s upcoming reboot of the “Nightmare on Elm Street” franchise. On the one hand, it’s nice for the thesp to get to be the centrepiece of a project for a change, and a potentially profitable one at that; on the other, surely yet another remake of an iconic horror title is good news for precisely no one else. When will this particularly lazy trend run out of steam?
I understand that an actor of Haley’s age, appearance and profile probably doesn’t have a wealth of tempting projects to choose from, but it’s a little grim that a gifted actor has to resort to this. Here’s hoping there are more Fields and Scorseses in his future yet.
Eugene (KMTR) – A man shot himself to death in a Eugene movie theater just after midnight Monday morning.
Police say about 10 patrons were in an auditorium at Regal Cinemas watching the movie “Watchmen.” About midway through the film some of the moviegoers told the manager they heard a “popping” noise like a gunshot. A 24-year-old man was found in the rear of the auditorium with a gunshot wound to the head.
Police say the man shot himself and was dead when they arrived.
“Monsters vs. Aliens” came storming out of the gate with a $58.2 million opening this weekend. That comes from an ultra-wide 4,104 theaters, the fourth-widest release ever for a non-sequel, and that’s enough to top the debuts of “Shrek,” “Madagascar” and every other DreamWorks animated non-sequel aside from “Kung Fu Panda.” It also handily beats the $45 million debut that “Horton Hears a Who!” managed during this same time period last year.
Paramount marketed the life out of this thing, and 3D in general, and it appears to have paid off. With a budget reportedly topping $150 million and at least another half of that spent on promotions, it will be a welcome sigh of relief for the studio brass to see that it caught on with families this week.
Last week I predicted low on “The Haunting in Connecticut” because I thought audiences might be tired of horror product. After all, this was the seventh horror film to go wide in the 13 weeks of 2009 so far. Silly me. Audiences came out in droves, earning the film $23 million and the ninth biggest debut in Lionsgate’s history.
Who are these people chomping at the bit to see anything even remotely scary? Is it the same group of people seeing all of them or is there a guy out there who thinks, “’The Last House on the Left’ looks lame. But ‘The Haunting in Connecticut’ looks awesome!” I’m pretty sure I can spoil the endings to all of them at once right now: You wasted your money.
Back in seventh place is “12 Rounds” with $5.3 mil. John Cena is clearly no Dwayne Johnson and he may not even be Hulk Hogan. Remember “Suburban Commando?” Of course you do. Anyway, this debut tallied less than Cena’s debut, “The Marine,” and it marks another step backward for director Renny Harlin. The man behind classics like “Cliffhanger,” “Die Hard 2” and “The Long Kiss Goodnight” saw his last film go straight to DVD, and now this. I blame Geena Davis, who left him during production of his last great epic: “Deep Blue Sea.”
I guess I should listen to the murmurs. Nicolas Cage’s sci-fi extravaganza “Knowing” took the top spot at the box office this weekend with $24.8 million. In terms of Cage’s career, it’s no “National Treasure” and can’t compete with the holy trifecta of Cage action — “The Rock,” “Face/Off” and “Con Air” — but it does help wipe away some of the bad taste left in the mouth by “Bangkok Dangerous” and “Next.”
Long story short, this guy’s career is the very definition of inconsistent. The result is doubly impressive given that Disney could only manage a similar result for their much more heavily marketed sci-fi adventure last week. I can’t imagine reviews, word of mouth or legs will be great so the big debut is a massive boost for Summit Entertainment, a company still finding its feet and identity.
Second place goes to the Apatow-less “I Love You, Man.” $18 million is pretty much the exact same amount as “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and “Role Models” debuted with and since reviews are in the same ballpark, this should do comparable overall business as well. Incidentally, I saw the film last night and found it to be pretty worthless aside from a charming performance by Paul Rudd and one inspired joke involving iTunes. If you want to see an amazing and hilarious “bromantic” comedy, wait for “Humpday” in July.
Our third and final opener is the Clive Owen/Julia Roberts caper “Duplicity.” Adult-targeted films never stand a chance against shit that blows up, so $14.4 million is a respectable enough place to start. Star power ain’t what it used to be but the pedigree of the talent in front of and behind the camera should ensure that this one sticks around for a couple of weeks. In the comedic heist sub-genre, “Out of Sight” debuted with $18.5 million in the summer of 1998 and “Bandits” did $16.6 million in 2001. Both finished around $55 million.
Sure, “Watchmen” is currently doing a 90 degree nose-dive at the domestic box office, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some goodies across the Internets for the fans who want to soak in the early-March excitement for just a little longer. So here are a few tid-bits.
For instance, what if “Watchmen” were a Saturday morning cartoon series?
And hey, LEGO seems to be bigger than ever lately. Well someone took the lead and created a custom set of “Watchmen” LEGO figures. (Anyone play the LEGO video games? Kinda fun.)
And finally, you might remember that “Dark Knight” NES conceptualization from a few months back. I really wish whoever made it had taken the time to whip up some gameplay animation, but the folks at Liquid Generation have pieced together aspects of the original “Batman” NES game, “Kung Fu,” “Street Fighter” and some “Zelda” music to come up with this little ditty. Be warned, though. Since it’s basically a running gag on Manhattan’s big blue member, I would say it’s NSFW:
EDITOR’S NOTE: Welcome to the first installment in what will be a weekly column looking at box office here at In Contention. Chad Hartigan and I attended film school together in another life. But for the last three years he’s been a box office analyst for Exhibitor Relations. He’s also tried his hand at making a feature (last year’s “Luke and Brie are on a First Date,” which played the festival circuit) and you may have enjoyed a spat or two with him in our comments section. Chad will be here every Sunday afternoon wrapping up the weekend and looking ahead to the next one. We welcome him to the IC family and look forward to his weekly take on the dollars and cents of showbiz.
Hello all. Before I dive into the first installment of Sunday Cents, two things to note: Figures discussed here are estimates and actual figures released on Monday could change things slightly, but usually not significantly.
Also, any figures I draw from the past will be adjusted for inflation. That’s just how I do things. You may argue that adjusting figures doesn’t portray an accurate comparison because of things like DVD and blah, blah, blah, but in the end, comparisons are all arbitrary anyway so it doesn’t matter.
So, with that out of the way…what happened this weekend?
Well, “Race to Witch Mountain” came out on top with a cool $25 million. That’s almost exactly the same as “The Game Plan,” which debuted at $24 million and represents the only other time Disney picked The Rock to headline one of their films. Family sci-fi is a tough sell (“The Last Mimzy,” anyone?), so on one hand it’s a good result. On the other, compared to the $41.5 million debut that “Wild Hogs” managed in March of 2007, it seems a little soft. There’s no family competition for two weeks so “Mountain” will have a chance to stretch its legs and it’ll have to make as much as possible before “Monsters vs. Aliens” comes along and obliterates it.
The second remake to open this weekend was Universal’s “The Last House on the Left.” Debuting in third with $14.7 million is pretty standard issue for this kind of film, with “The Hills Have Eyes,” “House of Wax” and “The Fog” all opening in the same ballpark. They can’t all be “Friday the 13th.”
Way back in 10th is the final new release of the week, “Miss March.” Is it too soon to start talking Razzies? Actually, to be honest, if I was forced to choose a film to see out of these three, “Miss March” gets my $10. It could use it, as the $2.4 million the film pulled couldn’t even match “Paul Blart: Mall Cop”‘s ninth week. The Kevin James comedy keeps on plugging and has amassed a ridiculous $138 million so far, by the way.
By now, “Watchmen” has been assessed and widely shat on from a large array of angles, but one voice I didn’t necessarily expect to pipe in was that of classical music critic Tom Service. Writing for the Guardian, Service praises the film’s “carefully conceived” use of existing music, particularly the heavily intertextual use of Wagner, though he complains:
A shame, then, that they go for the easy option of Mozart’s Requiem, in a poorly edited version, near the end of Watchmen, after the pseudo-apocalypse that wipes out Manhattan. Surely a bit of 80s electro would have made the point better, and saved Mozart from becoming yet more of a morbid musical cliche?
Against such familiar themes, however, Service is distinctly unimpressed by Tyler Bates’ original score for the film, and uses this as a springboard for a broader lament on the state of Hollywood scores in general. He claims composers have recently “trodden the path of the generic or the frankly redundant” — with Jonny Greenwood’s extraordinary work on “There Will Be Blood” the last notable exception.
I tend to agree with him, having found 2008 a particularly weak year for film scores in general. But we part ways when Service chooses to single out for criticism one of the few scores that actually got under my skin (and onto my iTunes) last year:
Anyone remember “The Dark Knight’s” score? Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard’s music, I thought, got mired in a single idea, an obsessively repeated minor third, that gloomy interval of impending doom, but could not generate any real tension or dramatic counterpoint with the onscreen action. It’s a pity, given the complexity of drama and ideas in both films (“Knight” and “Watchmen”), that the music didn’t add to the experience.
To each their own, I guess.
From the actor’s MySpace blog, via /Film (who uses MySpace anymore?):
Because Zack Snyder STEPPED UP, motherfuckers…[he] delivered a 2 1/2 hour, honest attempt, and broke his ass cranking out tons of free extras.
And no, the movie will not have EVERY LITTLE ELEMENT FROM THE GRAPHIC NOVEL. That’s why the graphic novel exists — you can go read it after you see the movie. Adaptation. Parallel visions. When you adapt a book, you cut things out, combine and conflate, streamline and linger.
L.A. CONFIDENTIAL stands as the best Ellroy adaptation to date, and it throws away massive chunks of the novel’s narrative. THE BLACK DAHLIA slavishly sticks to its source material and it’s almost un-watchable.
I do not invite debate.
Again, the bold is mine. And by the way, no — Oswalt has not seen “Watchmen” yet.
From a recent open letter:
The reviews are out — Some outstanding, others rankly dismissive, which can be frustrating for the people involved, (though I can only speak for myself,) because I firmly believe that WATCHMEN, the novel, must be read through more than once to even have the faintest grip on it. And I believe the film is the same.
I’ve seen it twice now, and despite having run the movie in my head thousands of times, my two viewings still don’t’ allow me to view the film with the proper distance or objectivity. Is it Apocalypse Now? Is it Blade Runner? Is it Kubrick, or Starship Troopers? I don’t know yet.
All I know is that I had a pretty amazing experience the two times I’ve seen it. And both viewings produced remarkably different experiences. The point is, I have listened for years, to complaints from true comic book fans, that “not enough movies take the source material seriously.” “Too many movies puss out,” or “They change great stories, just to be commercial.” Well, I f***ing dare you to say any one of those things about this movie.
This is a movie made by fans, for fans. Hundreds of people put in years of their lives to make this movie happen, and every one of them was insanely committed to retaining the integrity of this amazing, epic tale. This is a rare success story, bordering on the impossible, and every studio in town is watching to see if it will work. Hell, most of them own a piece of the movie.
So look, this is a note to the fanboys and fangirls. The true believers. Dedicated for life.
If the film made you think. Or argue with your friends. If it inspired a debate about the nature of man, or vigilante justice, or the horror of Nixon abolishing term limits. If you laughed at Bowie hanging with Adrian at Studio 54, or the Silhouette kissing that nurse.
Please go see the movie again next weekend.
The bold is, I feel, the problem. The rest of the letter is basically a plea to fans to see the film again and not make the inevitable steep second weekend drop a reality.