Doc Tagged Articles at Cinematical

New releases had a tough time drawing interest this past weekend. Leonard Klady of Movie City News estimates that Bollywood comedy Heyy Babyy grossed the highest amount with a box office take averaging $4,460 per screen at 68 locations -- for a total of $300,000. This is the first full-length feature by Sajid Khan, who previously contributed a segment to the anthology film You Must Be Scared. Heyy Babyy looks like it was inspired by Three Men and a Baby; the trailer features a ton of faces being slapped, for some reason that doesn't translate without subtitles.

A handful of indies made their debuts in very limited engagements. Deep Water did the best, with Klady estimating $10,550 for each of its two screens, while Dedication took in $5,570 per screen and Hannah Takes the Stairs followed with $4,800. I checked Rotten Tomatoes for each: Deep Water scored a perfect 100%, while the others trailed far behind, with Dedication at 46% and Hannah at 55%. Cinematical's Nick Schager was highly critical of Dedication, but Jette Kernion was much more positive about Hannah. Deep Water, a doc about nine men competing in a solo boat race around the world in 1968, has a smashing trailer.

Three other new releases performed below expectations; our own Ryan Stewart saw two of them. He quite liked Right at Your Door, which he described as a manipulative but clever thriller with a good performance by Mary McCormack. On the other hand, he described Ethan Hawke's The Hottest State as "one of the most unauthentic films I've seen in a long time ... I've seen more sexual chemistry from two doorknobs." Ouch! Right at Your Door played on 20 screens but could only scare up $1,430 at each, according to Klady's estimate, while The Hottest State only pulled in $2,730 per screen (at three locations). That's still far better than family film Eye of the Dolphin, which dragged in just $290 per screen at 130 locations.

Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out, is a documentary about the punk/pop band derived from Super8 films shot by drummer Stewart Copeland. Sounds promising based on the level of access the director has to his subjects and the fact that the band broke up at the top of their game. After the break up fans were left with only their memories of a hard rocking Sting, who traded a kick-ass band for a life of Jazzy interludes on Light FM and sellout Jaguar commercials. In fact, sell out would be a kind assessment of Sting in the minds of most Police fans.

The film starts as the Police head out on their first US tour in the late seventies. This consists of long shots driving down the road and people cavorting in hotel rooms--nothing we haven't seen before. The voiceover from Copeland reveals little, and 40 minutes into the film I'm left wondering if anything will ever happen.

During all this time we're subjected to grainy, shaky video with horrible sound. It would be easy to forgive the poor quality of the video if it captured some rocking early performances, but the director/cameraman was too busy playing the drums at too many performance,s I guess.

Predictably the crowds develop from single digits to six figures, but the characters don't develop at all. The Police haven't said more than 20 lines to the camera 45 minutes into the film, and most surprisingly no one is taking drugs, fighting, or running around naked with groupies. Sting--who you would think would be an interesting person--has nothing to say.

Others on Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out: Variety's Dennis Harvey was decidedly unimpressed, calling the film "a trite, whitewashed-to-blankness vanity project."

Wow - talk about news I never, ever expected to hear: Michael J. Fox is currently in talks to star in a fourth Back to the Future. Refreshingly, the actor has said he's no longer interested in playing a time-traveling dork. Instead, he wants to play the crazy scientist role - that's right, Marty McFly has grown up and turned into Doc, the sequel. And it's not negotiable; the only only circumstance under which Fox would do the movie is if he gets to be the on-screen mentor to "a younger cast."As Fox put it, "I'm 44-years-old now and I'm not interested in running around on skateboards!" Well, thank goodness for that. 

I know the third one was awful and everything, but this series was so central to the movie-going youth of a certain (OK, my) generation, that I actually think another installment would be welcomed with open arms. Or I could be totally wrong - what do you guys think? Might it be better to just leave it alone and not risk damaging the series further?