All the Boys Love Mandy Lane Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The presence of Beyoncé Knowles plus appropriately sultry/trashy advertising scored a big hit for Screen Gems this weekend, with Obsessed raking in a cool $28.5 million between black audiences and thriller audiences. Depending on how it holds up, the airport novel of a film could compete with The Exorcism of Emily Rose for the title of highest-grossing Screen Gems release ($75 million). It's a marketing triumph and a minor April surprise.

Three more films debuted in wide release and all posted comparatively strong numbers. That's a somewhat controversial claim for The Soloist, whose $9.7 million, fourth-place finish doesn't seem too robust. It's certainly not overwhelming, but for an arty, detached film that was moved from awards season to April, it's not awful. Rogue's Fighting finished slightly ahead with $11.4 milion, beating last spring's street-brawling movie, Never Back Down. And Earth, the DisneyNature documentary that opened Wednesday, picked up $8.5 million for the weekend -- the second biggest all-time opening for a documentary -- and $14.2 million for the five days. Good for them.

Out of the top ten, the critically panned The Informers -- Senator Entertainment's first attempt at a theatrical release -- floundered with $300,000 in semi-wide release. Senator, you will recall, is the distributor that has kept All the Boys Love Mandy Lane on the shelf for approximately forever. Make of that what you will.

Last weekend's main holdovers, 17 Again and State of Play each fell around 50%. The latter is a bit of a disappointment, as I had hoped that the exceedingly entertaining film would coast at least slightly on good word-of-mouth.

The full top 10 after the jump.

I don't know about you, but I've barely warmed up this year, yet already I feel inundated with thoughts of summer, thanks to our friends the movie marketers. Bowing to the inevitable -- after all, everyone shops for board shorts and bikinis in the spring, not the summer, right? -- my attention was drawn to "Top 10 Summer Movies Guaranteed to Bomb" in Coed Magazine.

Since that site features some images that are NSFW, I'll list a few here with my comments and encourage you to check out the entire list along with their reasoning -- which, frankly, is faulty on almost every one. Their basic criteria, by the way, is that these movies "just don't jive with the summer spirit. They're too serious, too treacly, or too completely, horribly awful." Here's the bottom five:

• Dance Flick. From the Wayans family; opening against Terminator Salvation and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian; it's a comedy tailor-made for teens. Not a bomb.
• Away We Go. Sam Mendes directs and John Krasinski stars in an indie comedy. Depends entirely on critics and word of mouth. Could be a bomb.
• Final Destination: Death Trip 3D. Did My Bloody Valentine 3-D teach us nothing? Ka-ching!! Not a bomb.
• Battle for Terra. Animated and in 3-D. Might do OK against Wolverine for parents who think claw guy is too violent for their kids.
• All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (pictured). Low-budget horror usually does fine. Not a barn burner, but not a bomb.

I was expecting to see a few big-budget productions on the list -- at least one or two bomb every year -- and so I ask for your input. Are these summer movies guaranteed to bomb? Or are there other, worthier, more potentially cringe-worthy flicks that will prove to be box office poison?

1. Twiddle thumbs while waiting for bidding wars to break out -- So Senator Entertainment has already landed domestic distribution for Antoine Fuqua's cop drama, Brooklyn's Finest (they'll probably do right by it and sit it on a shelf right next to All the Boys Love Mandy Lane); now, it's just a matter of waiting for Fox Searchlight to snatch up their next sleeper in waiting, and for either Focus or Paramount Vantage to pick up the rights to something they can't quite turn a profit on *cough1* *cough2*. Modest comfort comes in the form of Searchlight already planning a late-summer release for 500 Days of Summer, and of Sony Pictures Classics reportedly calling dibs on Sam Rockwell's sci-fi drama, Moon. Keep those ears and eyes open, folks.

2. Monitor some seriously similar, sometimes simultaneous Twitter action -- For starters, there's our crew: Snider, then Davis, then Rocchi, and (lastly but not least-ly) new convert Weinberg. Then you have the Onion folks, your CHUD, the IFC one-two, the Spout reps, our HitFix homies, not to mention your /Film and your Film School Rejects and your First Showing (these fellas happen to be sharing accommodations, so expect much echo). Daily posts? Facebook status updates? Please. With a minute-by-minute play-by-play, who needs to go outdoors?

Coming up on the new year, it's interesting to see which films we had thought would've been released by this point. In the summer of 2007, I recall myself and several colleagues showing up for a press screening of Jonathan Levine's lauded slasher, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, only to discover it was canceled just that morning and the film had been sold from the Weinstein Company to Senator that afternoon. (The film has since landed at Sony, whose indie arm, Sony Classics, already saw Levine's follow-up, The Wackness, to a proper theatrical reception.)

At least the Weinsteins gave something up for a change. The oft-shuffled Killshot and Fanboys are tentative January and February releases at the moment, respectively, and I just want to see for myself if The Poughkeepsie Tapes has been worthy of its modest reputation following a BNAT '07 screening -- the same BNAT that featured the reportedly sweet Trick 'r Treat that WB continues to hoard.

A perhaps more morbid curiosity has me keeping an eye on Paramount's Case 39, just to see if it's really that bad, and who knows what similar straits Assassination of a High School President, The Accidental Husband (originally last March), and Possession (originally last February) are in following Yari Film Group's bankruptcy -- not that I have much invested in the last two, but Assassination is a perfectly release-worthy noir take-off that deserves a home.

So what do you guys and girls think? Which of these are you most dying to see? What was the longest you ever waited to catch something, and were you ultimately disappointed or satisfied by the time it came your way?

Time for a new horror series on FEARnet.com! This one's called The Dark Path Chronicles, and it comes from director Mary Lambert. And if I have to remind you that she directed the first Pet Sematary, then I question your legitimacy as a horror geek. So far they've posted two episodes and a pair of behind-the-scenes clips. All I know is that it's got vampires in it!

...and the journey of Mandy Lane continues. Screen Daily reports that Sony has acquired the video rights to all of Senator's upcoming releases, and that also includes Clock Tower, Splice, and the Bret Easton Ellis adaptation The Informers. Also from Screen Daily: News on the excellent Paranormal Activity, which is getting sold all over the planet and (yes) being remade.

Curious about that Jason Voorhees documentary you've been hearing about? Get the scoop here. Also, Twitch indicates that the sequel to the fantastic [REC] begins shooting next week. Did you miss the trailer for the next Clive Barker adaptation. Jessica covered it yesterday: Book of Blood.

And frankly there are so many random little tidbits floating around thanks to all the horror geeks' coverage of the American Film Market ... I don't even know where to begin. Instead of linking to each news niblet individually, I'll link you to the AFM ONLY pages at Dread Central, Bloody-Disgusting, and Shock. Lots of random goodness to click through there, horror nerds.

Random question for the experts: Which is the scariest video game?

As far as hustling movie producer archetypes go, I tend to prefer Joel Silver over Harvey Weinstein. Sure, Weinstein played a role in some of the great American independent films from the last decade of the twentieth century, but Silver's production credits have more spice to them -- The Matrix, Predator, 48 Hrs. -- hinting at the zany force behind their existence. The movies he has produced don't always please everyone (consider those last two Matrix movies), and sometimes his productions run into unforeseeable setbacks (Joss Whedon's troublesome Wonder Woman script). But now, Silver's trying a radical maneuver that reaffirms his maverick abilities: He's shopping around Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla, which tells the story of a drama surrounding a stolen painting and stars Gerard Butler, to other studios despite the plan to release it through Warner Bros. in October.

According to Patrick Goldstein in The Los Angeles Times, Silver said he showed the movie to Lionsgate and Sony Pictures to get some advice on how to market the film. However, when Goldstein asked Warner Bros.' top executive Alan Horn about the situation, Horn called the movie "very English," not "broadly commercial," and said the studio "might not be willing to spend the marketing money he wants us to." So it follows that Silver probably wants to sell the movie to somebody else.

This kind of thing has happened before. Jonathan Levine's teen horror flick All the Boys Love Mandy Lane was set for a release through The Weinstein Company, but when it was determined that the distributor might not provide the best home for the film, it went to the more agreeable Senator Films (although Senator has yet to release it). What troubles me is Horn's assertion that RocknRolla is "very English." Yeah ... so?

I haven't seen Jonathan Levine's The Wackness yet (I know, I know), but I have seen his long-in-limbo All the Boys Love Mandy Lane -- almost a year and a half ago now, at SXSW 2007. It's a smart, expertly made horror film that's been mistreated in a way that Levine, who now has a career despite his debut's fate, should never forgive. As Sony Classics prepares The Wackness for a nationwide release, Levine has lined up two more projects that will take him through 2009.

The first, Positive, is a thriller about a young man who visits his fiancee's family in Martha's Vineyard but winds up being seduced by the woman's sister. The second, currently (though I'm guessing not for long) titled Echelon Vendetta, will be an adaptation of David Stone's spy novel about a CIA "cleaner" (think a superspy version of Michael Clayton) who investigates the death of a friend and colleague and stumbles upon something more nefarious. Levine, who wrote the screenplay for The Wackness but not Mandy Lane, will write both projects, and direct at least Positive. More at The Hollywood Reporter.

Horror, character comedy, romantic thriller, spy actioner... That'll be quite a resume. Now if he can actually convince -- who is it now? Senator Films? -- to put All the Boys Love Mandy Lane into at least a few theaters...

Believe it or not, the fight to bring All the Boys Love Mandy Lane to the big screen isn't over yet.

Almost two years ago, I watched the story of a good girl caught on a secluded ranch while people kept dying at TIFF's Midnight Madness. It got some good buzz (here's our review), but then it went into limbo -- one that's been stretching on for so long that director Jonathan Levine has already been wowing audiences with his next film, The Wackness.

But now ShockTillYouDrop has posted the U.S. one-sheet for the film (part of it is above -- go there to see the poster in its entirety). IMDb says it's hitting screens in August, but Shock says that there's no release news to share. However, there will, at the very least, be a screening of it in Chicago, as part of Horror Con (June 28).

Will we ever see Mandy Lane again? Or can we just resign ourselves to getting a new poster, teasing us, once a year?

Known in some circles as "that movie where Sir Ben Kingsley hooks up with Mary-Kate Olsen," The Wackness premiered at this year's Sundance Film Festival where it was met with an unbelievable online reception. Just about everyone I spoke to fell in love with this quirky drug-related dramedy from director Jonathan Levine (All the Boys Love Mandy Lane). While I didn't get the chance to see it (our own Scott Weinberg did), these good vibes have me all antsy to check out The Wackness when it hits the Tribeca Film Festival later this month.

Here's a bit from the synopsis: "... Luke (Josh Peck) is a socially uncomfortable teenage pot dealer with no friends, issues with his parents, and a whopping lack of confidence with girls. He trades weed for sessions with his therapist, Dr. Squires (Sir Ben Kingsley), whose much-younger wife (Famke Janssen) is slipping away from him. Squires, a drug-addled shrink with a hairline retreating to the back of his neck and a state of mind slouching back to adolescence, is an unlikely role model-but the two of them forge a friendship based on a mutual need: neither one is getting laid."

Check out both exclusive photos (including a larger version of the image above) from the film in the gallery below. The Wackness arrives in theaters on July 3rd. (And is it me, or does Kingsley have a little Keitel going on in that pic?)

There is a very short list of filmmakers who are so perfectly in tune with my sensibilities, so completely on my wavelength, that each of their projects threatens to collapse my critical faculties and reduce me to a drooling, adoring mess. One such person is little-known Canadian director Vincenzo Natali, whose enigmatic sci-fi mind-blowers Cube and Cypher were about as far up my alley as you could go before it starts to hurt. (I haven't seen Nothing yet, but I will soon.) So I've been hungrily devouring every morsel of information about his upcoming Splice, which is about a pair of scientists (Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley) who discover a way to create new kinds of creatures in the lab by splicing DNA, and then go and introduce human genes into the experiment. My squeamishness about genetic horrors (no joke: I consider Cronenberg's The Fly to be the scariest movie I've ever seen) and my affinity for Natali's approach makes me think this one could really do a number on me.