Eugene Novikov
-
When Good Directors Happen to Crappy Franchises
Filed under: Action, Horror, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Remakes and Sequels
Since damn near everything that opens in wide release these is either a sequel or a remake, and since I feel some obligation to at least sample anything that qualifies as a "cultural phenomenon," whether or not I like it, I usually find myself hoping for the best from franchises that haven't much impressed me in the past. One reason for optimism – or at least for less existential dread – about the 2010 release schedule is that a number of thus far middling-to-terrible franchises appear to have been taken over by obviously talented filmmakers who stand a chance of making this year's installments of their respective series at least tolerable. Certainly any doubts I had about whether I was going to watch these latest franchise entries disappeared once I found out who was directing them.
The franchise: Twilight. So far, Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen, Lords of Dogtown) and Chris Weitz (About a Boy, The Golden Compass) have delivered two dull-as-nails installments of this wuss-vampire franchise, though Weitz's New Moon did at least appear to pick up some steam as a teen soap opera, if not (at all) as a thriller or a horror flick.
Weekend Box Office: 'Avatar' Finally Dethroned by 'Dear John'
Filed under: New Releases, Box Office
It took a Nicholas Sparks adaptation starring Channing Tatum to finally knock Avatar from the perch it held for seven weeks. Dear John grossed an estimated $32.4 million to Avatar's $23.6 -- but Sparks/Tatum is such a potent combination that I wonder if the movie wouldn't have done non-trivially better had it not opened against the Superbowl. As it stands, it still has by far the best opening weekend for a Nicholas Sparks flick, though it's not clear what kind of legs it's going to have -- it will get some stiff competition from Garry Marshall's Valentine's Day next weekend. As for Avatar, I went for a second viewing on Friday -- more out of a desire to see it in (real) IMAX than out of any abiding love for the film. Before the movie began, someone took an impromptu poll of the sold-out crowd to find out how many had already seen it -- and I saw, oh, thirty or forty hands go up. Presumably, most if not all of them brought friends. As with Titanic, there's where a good part of those record-breaking grosses comes from. Avatar is merrily marching toward an astronomical $700 million. Saints preserve us, etc.
From Paris with Love opened in third place with a weak $8.1 million, and is a mulligan for Fox, Luc Besson and Pierre Morel. Their Taken was a surprise hit in early 2009, but I guess the novelty value of seeing Liam Neeson as a badass secret agent dominates the novelty value of seeing John Travolta as same. (Taken's elegant, simple storyline hook probably played a part too, especially as compared to the incomprehensible jumble that is From Paris with Love.)
More, and the top 10, after the jump.
Diesel, Walker, Lin Reteam for 'Fast Five'
Filed under: Action, Casting, Deals, Newsstand
It's gotten to the point where I look forward to the next Fast/Furious movie -- or at least the announcement -- just to see what they'll call it. Every title since the first one has had something to offer: nonsensical wordplay (2 Fast 2 Furious), a wonderfully goofy subtitle (The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift), bizarre and confusing minimalism (Fast & Furious). The current title of the fifth entry (which we speculated about last month, and is now official) into the now-venerable franchise combines at least the first and the third of those: the movie is currently known as Fast Five, which I guess means we have to start referring to this series as Fast and/or Furious.The three series mainstays -- Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, and director Justin Lin -- have all signed on for the fourth sequel. It's an admirably shrewd move, since none of them have a lot else going on: Walker hasn't had a non-Furious hit in at least four years, and Diesel in five, while Lin's only attempts to branch out since Better Luck Tomorrow have both flopped (though Finishing the Game is a sorely underrated little comedy). For his part, Lin seems to have used his experience on the franchise to hone his big-budget Hollywood filmmaking chops: while still not a particularly good movie, Fast & Furious was easily Lin's best directorial turn. That opening truck chase set piece was downright impressive, before things went south.
Fast & Furious, the most recent installment, was the highest-grossing of the four ($155 million domestically, nearly $350 million overseas), though also the most expensive. Fast Five will be in theaters next year to attempt to build on that momentum.
Watch This: 'Ong Bak 3' Teaser Trailer
Filed under: Action, Remakes and Sequels, Trailers and Clips
If you haven't seen Ong Bak 2, you should. Not just because of Tony Jaa's undeniable mixed-martial-arts awesomeness, though certainly for that reason, too. If you're at all interested in genre film mechanics, you should watch it for the way it dodges the usual complaints about the clunky plotting of martial arts flicks by turning its story into a barely-there abstraction. Its plot doesn't even rise to the level of a clothesline on which Jaa hangs his spectacular set pieces of kickassery, which is what would usually happen. Rather, it's the absolute minimum necessary to make the movie more than a music video. This isn't a criticism. No one else is doing quite what Jaa is doing, and I'm grateful for it.The teaser trailer for Ong Bak 3 hit over the weekend -- you can watch it over here -- and it promises more of the same: eye-popping, vicious, remarkably lucid fight scenes, often involving elephants. The Wikipedia page for the film (which hasn't, as best I can tell, even made it onto the IMDb yet), features the following lovely tidbit from one of the executive producers:
Moreover, in Ong Bak 3 Tien's legs and arms will be damaged by torture and require Jaa's character to "fight with some sort of boneless action. This is homework for [director] Panna Rittikrai and Tony Jaa to create the action for us to see what it will look like to fight in the state of boneless condition."
Indeed. Ong Bak 3 will show up in Thai theaters sometime this spring, and over here sometime later.
Weekend Box Office: 'Avatar' on Top for Seventh Week
Filed under: New Releases, Box Office
Avatar enjoyed a seventh straight week atop the box office, a streak that may come to an end next week depending on how much traction bald and crazy John Travolta gets with audiences (and also how popular Dear John, the mother of all chick flicks, turns out to be). In the meantime, though, as Monika reported earlier in the week, Avatar is now the top-grossing movie of all-time internationally. In the next couple of days it will also pass Titanic to take that title domestically. So that's pretty much the end of that.Edge of Darkness came in second, though it's an ambiguous result: you have to go back to the mid-90s to find a mainstream Mel Gibson vehicle that opened to as little as $17 million. On the other hand, it's the guy's first role in seven years -- and in a rather nondescript film noir in the middle of January at that. I wouldn't read too much into it, though the movie's $80 million budget raises some questions. The fantasy rom-com When in Rome didn't have a lot of competition for its target audience, but had to battle terrible reviews for its okay $12 million take.
Legion took the biggest hit of the holdovers, dropping over 60% to 6th place; it may have wound up on the wrong side of the ludicrous/enjoyable divide for most people. Meanwhile, Sherlock Holmes is about to eke past the $200 million mark, Alvin and the Chipmunks already has, and Nancy Meyers' It's Complicated just skated past $100 million. Those are last year's three Christmas Day releases, which appear to have been perfectly calculated to stay out of each other's way in the ensuing weeks.
The full top 10 after the jump.
Revisiting Digital IMAX and Cinemark's XD Cinemas
Filed under: Exhibition
Last year's Aziz Ansari-initiated uproar over digital IMAX versus "real" IMAX did little to stop the spread of the "poor man"'s large format. More and more theaters are charging extra for converted theaters with slightly larger screens and high-end digital projection and sound. As you may know, IMAX is no longer the only player in the game: over the past few months, Cinemark has been rolling out something it calls "XD" or "Extreme Digital Cinema" at theaters across the country. (IMAX and Cinemark have since hit each other with patent and breach of contract lawsuits.) It promises "extra large, extreme entertainment" and an "intense experience in every seat." But intense sensory experiences don't come cheap: a ticket to an XD showing will run you $3 dollars extra. Here in San Francisco, seeing a movie at the only XD theater costs $14.I went to see Edge of Darkness in XD on Friday. What struck me was how little effort was even made to pitch it as some sort of "sensory experience." Were it not for a brief, flashy intro -- the sort of AV exhibition we used to see for Dolby Digital and THX -- and the hefty price tag, I wouldn't even have known that I was watching anything special. Once the movie started, I got what I would ordinarily expect from a new, high-end movie theater: a big screen, excellent projection, and powerful sound. No one could have mistaken it for a "large format."
Weekend Box Office: 'Avatar' Creeps Up on All-Time Highs
Filed under: New Releases, Box Office
It's fun now to think back to 1997, when Titanic was portrayed not just as a box office mega-hit, but a sort of cinematic freak of nature. Its $600 million domestic total -- unthinkable at the time -- was the result not just of popularity, but of a fanatical devotion that, most people seemed to think, could never be reproduced or repeated. The papers and local news were filled with breathless, slightly bemused pop pieces about the gaggle of girls who were on their 17th viewing, etc. That -- not the movie itself -- was the phenomenon.What once seemed impossible is now inevitable. James Cameron's follow-up to Titanic will take the all-time domestic box office record -- not next weekend, probably, but surely the following. In its 6th week of release, Avatar dropped a miniscule 16%. On its face, that doesn't seem as impressive as Titanic's extraordinary staying power -- it remained at #1 for 15 weeks, and gained viewership from week to week as often as it lost it -- but Titanic also opened to $29 million, not $77.
Worldwide, Avatar now trails Titanic by, uh, $6 million. Expect that record to fall in the next day or two.
Weekend Box Office: 'Avatar' Keeps Raking It In
Filed under: New Releases, Box Office
Dropping 29% from last weekend to gross $48 million, Avatar is now: 1) the top grosser of 2009; 2) the best fourth weekend in history (beating the previous #1, Titanic, by $20 million); 3) if I'm not mistaken, the highest non-New-Year's January weekend of all time; 4) #7 all-time domestic, now only $170 million out of first-place; 5) #2 all-time worldwide, about half a billion out of first place. Titanic's records are in some jeopardy. People really ought to revolutionize filmmaking more often. Apparently it pays off.
The first three films of the new year tried to sneak in this weekend too. Lionsgate's low-budget Daybreakers scored a minor victory -- precisely the kind it needed -- with $15 million in third place; an encouraging start for the smart, interesting genre flick. Leap Year, which grossed $9 million, got bad reviews and not much traction -- something this generic really needed more star power than Amy Adams could provide. And Michael Cera's Youth in Revolt was marketed like an indie and was treated accordingly (though of course not to the extent of Cera's Paper Heart); $7 million is the weakest wide release opening for a Cera vehicle, though I think someone gave up on this one along the way.
Awards note: there are three serious contenders left in play -- Avatar, The Blind Side, and Up in the Air . These are the longest-lived flicks of Oscar season. It's Complicated, though deflated in its awards chances by bad reviews ("by sucking," one could say), is holding up well too, though the results will be middling by Nancy Meyers standards.
The top 10 after the jump.
The Subsiders: In Praise of 'Daybreakers'' Terrifying Creature Design
Filed under: Horror, New Releases
I can't believe I'm saying this, but y'all can keep the Na'vi. My pick for the most impressive recent achievement in on-screen creature design is the Subsiders -- the gross, bat-like human-turned-vampire-turned abominations featured in the Spierig Brothers' fairly terrific dystopian fantasy Daybreakers.
This photo doesn't do the Subsiders justice, and their backstory (largely spoiler-free, if you haven't yet seen the film) is actually important to what makes them so profoundly creepy. The basic idea is this: In a world ruled by a civilized breed of vampire, humans are hunted and harvested for blood. Even so, the supply of human blood is running out, and shortages become widespread. If a vampire doesn't get enough human blood, he or she slowly begins to undergo a transformation from their essentially humanoid state to the primitive, brutish, barely sentient creature you now see before you. Predictably, the blood shortages affect the poorest strata of society first and worst, creating an underclass of Subsiders that the rest of the vampire world considers a menace.
Early in the film, our protagonist -- a vampire scientist (Ethan Hawke) searching for a substitute to human blood that may permit the human species to repopulate -- has a run-in with a Subsider, in his kitchen. With the exception of one sequence in Ti West's The House of the Devil, I found this scene more unsettling than anything I saw in 2009.
Weekend Box Office: 'Avatar' Breaks More Records, Climbs All-Time Charts
Filed under: New Releases, Box Office
Avatar has grossed $352 million after three weeks of release. That in itself is nothing earth-shattering -- the movie is only third fastest to $300 million behind Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and The Dark Knight (it's second-fastest to $350 million), and is only 15th on the all-time domestic charts. Worldwide, however, things look different. There, Avatar has broken the $1 billion mark, and is sitting at number four -- which is just about $100 million out of number two. Titanic is the top worldwide grosser, of course, and its $1.8 billion number still looks tough to match, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility. Domestically, things get more interesting when you consider that Avatar's $68.3 million third weekend is the top third weekend of all time. And its 10% week-to-week drop is remarkable even considering that the top grosser over Christmas generally holds up well over the slow first weekend of the new year. (Marley & Me fell 33%; National Treasure: Book of Secrets 44%; Night at the Museum 35%.) Again, Titanic's record-holding number ($600 million on the nose) still looks very far away. But January is a notorious Hollywood dead zone, and Avatar shows few signs of slowing down.
The rest of the top 10 -- all holdovers -- also mostly did good business over the holiday weekend. Sherlock Holmes predictably took the biggest hit, but even it didn't do badly, dropping less than 40% and bringing its cume to $140 million. The Blind Side saw a 10% boost and broke $200 million (the modestly budgeted film's success is every bit as notable as Avatar's, I think). And The Princess and the Frog finally rebounded a bit after a few tough weeks, gaining business despite dropping theaters, and making a $100 million finish probable.
The full chart after the jump.
Tom Cruise and J.J. Abrams Reunite for 'Mission Impossible 4'
'Big Top Pee-Wee': The Original Benicio Del Toro Wolfman
Spin-ematical: New on DVD and Blu-ray for 2/9
Watch This: Brilliant Oscar-Nominated Short 'Logorama'
Chris Nolan to Lead 'Superman' Reboot!?
_thumbnail.jpg)
_thumbnail.jpg)
