Are films political? Do they fall into left-wing and right-wing camps? I would imagine that not all films have an agenda. Some films can be considered "great uniters," in that they bring together agreeing audiences from all over, films like the $200 million hits I Am Legend (264 screens) and National Treasure: Book of Secrets (177 screens) or a critical favorite like There Will Be Blood (339 screens) that has pleased nearly everyone who has seen it. Of course, There Will Be Blood is about a snaky, sinister, blustery oil baron willing to sacrifice his family, country and humanity for the allure of black gold, which may or may not have a little something to do with current events. (Not to mention that director Paul Thomas Anderson dropped the word "Oil" from the title of the source novel and replaced it with the word "Blood.")

In recent years it has been determined that film critics are a liberal bunch, educated, well-read men and women of letters, who can see and comprehend the human condition in films from different cultures all over the world. Or, they're sometimes known as pompous, ponderous, pretentious, conceited, snooty know-it-alls, lacking in good old-fashioned horse sense. "Why can't you just enjoy the movie," is a question very often asked of critics. Rambo (201 screens) is a fascinating case. It's impressively violent, but very grim and not much fun. Rambo debuted and reigned during the Reagan era (Rambo: First Blood Part II grossed three times the amount of the new film, even with 1985 ticket prices). Bringing him back in a decidedly different political atmosphere didn't seem to work, though the film was screened for the press and earned a few good reviews. It's now starting a downslide, and it's still shy of breaking even on its $50 million budget.

Enchanted
The yester-year of Disney animation is long in the past, and while you probably won't be getting any epic, artistically-driven Sleeping Beauty-type features any time soon, Enchanted offers those old classic scenes with characters ripped out of the cartoon world and delivered to a crazy and manic Manhattan. Amy Adams' Giselle becomes the victim of her soon-to-be stepmother-in-law's evilness and gets transported to the real world, where life isn't animated and the world is very, very different. From there, we've got cartoon Prince Charmings with James Marsden, who comes to save her, and real life beaus with McDreamy Patrick Dempsey. Oh yes, and of course -- Susan Sarandon as evil mommie dearest doing her best reincarnation of Maleficent.

This is your normal Disney DVD -- there are deleted scenes, bloopers, behind-the-scenes featurettes about the film's "cinematic wizardry," and a pop-up adventure with Pip, Giselle's little friend.

Check out Kim's Review | Buy the DVD

I don't think I'm alone when I say that I Am Legend was a little bit of a disappointment. Although there were a lot of good things going on (mainly in the performance of Will Smith), it wasn't a great film, and something was missing. Based on Richard Matheson's sci-fi classic, Smith stars as Dr. Robert Neville, a scientist who is immune to a "vampiric plague" that has wiped out humanity. Now an alternate ending to the film has been leaked to the net (thanks to Slash Film for the heads up), which you can check out above, and it gives you the chance to play 'What If?' If you haven't already seen the film, you might want to stop reading now, because I am about to give you one heck of a spoiler.

Most people have a favorite place to sit when going to the movies. Some people like the back row; some people like the centermost spot (middle seat, middle row); some people like to sit near the front so that they can stare up at the screen and let the picture fill the limits of their peripheral vision.

I figure that last preference made more sense fifty years ago, when Cinerama and CinemaScope presented vast, expansively shot epics and westerns that were made to surround our senses and engulf our whole eye-span. Nowadays, most movies are too fast-cut and often the camerawork is too shaky to really work for close viewing. Have you ever been forced to sit in the first few rows when a movie is sold out? Wasn't it hard to tell what was going on most of the time?

Personally, I like watching movies close up, when it's appropriate. Unfortunately, it rarely is. But movie theaters can't just start removing those front rows because they aren't good for the moviegoer's eyes. No, that would mean a lot fewer tickets sold, a lot fewer popcorns sold, and a lot less money going to both the theater owners and the movie distributors. So, moviemakers should go back to making movies that are more accommodating to the theatrical audience, right? Yeah, that's not going to happen.

The Golden Globes and the Oscars may be in trouble due to telecasts, strikes, and all of that turmoil, but the other award presentations are trucking on as planned. Variety reports that the Visual Effects Society has picked their nominees for their 6th awards ceremony. Thinking back on the year...who would you pick? The Academy, they picked a pretty solid 13-film shortlist that they have to somehow whittle down into 3 picks -- a list that includes the likes of Rataouille, Beowulf, and Spider-Man 3. This society is pretty in-line with that.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End unsurprisingly leads the pack with six nominations, and they're closely followed by Transformers and I Am Legend -- both of which follow with 5 nominations each. You just can't refuse a screen full of Johnny Depps. Continuing on, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, on the other hand, has to hold court with Spider-Man 3 with three nods each -- and according to Variety, both of them have fallen off the Academy list. Of course, as with the Oscars, animated films are also present with Ratatouille neck and neck in nominations with Surf's Up (both have 4 each).

Who will come away with the big, special prizes? I imagine the leading three will probably have a pretty successful sweep when the awards are held on February 10 in Hollywood. In the meantime, you can check out the full list of nominees for film after the jump.

What sounds like the more highbrow date? Going to see the artsy film I'm Not There while sitting on a couch, eating a pizza and drinking a cold beer, or going to see the mainstream blockbuster National Treasure: Book of Secrets while sitting in a VIP section with reserved, "luxury seating," eating a "sophisticated entree" and drinking an "elegant martini creation?" Both options feature wait service, great picture quality and the benefit of not having any youths around. In their own way, each is equally lowbrow and highbrow, but depending on your definition of those terms (dumb vs. intelligent; cheap vs. expensive), you might have said one or the other. To me, highbrow is intelligent and intelligent is cheap; so I pick the former, which will cost a whole lot less.

The first option was what you might have experienced this weekend at Oakland, California's Parkway Speakeasy (other movie choices were Before the Devil Knows You're Dead and American Gangster). Your movie ticket would have been a mere $6, your personal cheese pizza a fair $8.50 and your pint of Sierra Nevada only $4.50. The second choice was one of this weekend's offerings at the new Lux Level of Randolph, Massachussetts' Showcase Cinema (the other available movie was I Am Legend). The movie ticket cost $21.25 (you definitely bought it online and paid that $1 service charge), the personal cheese pizza about $8 (I don't see anything on the theater's online menu appropriately considered to be "sophisticated entrée", though other Showcase Cinema menus feature items such as "Bourbon Street Steak Medallions") and your Raspberry Mocha Tini was about $9.

It's still way too early to call it a done deal, but given the small nugget of news we just got from STYD.com, it sure looks like WB wants to make a sequel to I Am Legend. (And given the flick's massive box office numbers, that should come as no surprise whatsoever.)

No, there's nothing official just yet: No casting calls or press releases ... yet. But we do know that author Richard Matheson recently sold the sequel rights over to the studio ... which means that someone at Warner Bros. is getting the ball rolling NOW. (And good for Richard Matheson, earning an easy paycheck like that!!) As Shock so accurately points out, this would make the first cinematic follow-up to the oft-lensed source material. (Neither The Last Man on Earth nor The Omega Man earned a sequel, which would make this the first.) Curious to see how they get Will Smith to "return" for the sequel. (Let me guess: It involves cloning.)

Oh, and if you liked the new movie version, cool. Do yourself a (big) favor and read the book now.

The Klingon death blade you see Diablo Cody wielding here is what she used to slay the other box-office contenders over the weekend. Juno leapfrogged from number ten -- already respectable for such a small film -- to number five, coming in just behind Charlie Wilson's War and I Am Legend with an impressive $10.3 million. These numbers were enough to cause Fox Searchlight to press the big button -- Juno will now expand to 2,000 screens next weekend. So far, the film about a wise-ass 16 year-old who becomes pregnant and decides to carry the baby to term and give it up for adoption, has brought in a total of $25.7 million. This puts it well on track to blow Little Miss Sunshine, its equivalent from last year, totally out of the water -- LMS only brought in $59.8 million domestic total.

In other box office news, Cage continued to hold the top spot with National Treasure: Book of Secrets bringing in $35.6 million. In nine days, the film has pulled in $124 million. Meanwhile, although I Am Legend slipped down to the number three slot this weekend, it still pulled in $27.5 million and is just on the verge of breaking the $200 million mark. It will be interesting to see if National Treasure can gain ground on Big Willy over the next few weeks -- it seems to be the film with the most staying power at the moment, but Legend has a big head-start. Sweeney Todd also stayed strong this weekend, bringing in $8 million for a ninth-place finish. Atonement, on the other hand, has yet to find its audience, which will hurt its Oscar front-runner status.

It's only been three months since I began this column on theater exhibition and movie going, but already I've covered all kinds of experiences, both good and bad. And now I'd like to recap the year, concentrating on that quarter year in which The Exhibitionist existed, in order to present you with the best and the worst theatrical experiences I had in 2007. However, while this may seem like a cheap way to link back to previous writings and make an easy article out of that, I assure you that it's only a coincidence that some of my favorite and least favorite moments in exhibition happened since October. Anyway, there are plenty of moments I cite that were never mentioned in The Exhibitionist, so regular or new reader, read on:


Theatrical Experiences of 2007 Part I: The Worst


Pan's Labyrinth at Cobble Hill Cinemas, Brooklyn, NY, 01/16/07

I came away from watching Guillermo del Toro's "masterpiece" underwhelmed, thanks primarily to my inability to appreciate the Oscar-winning cinematography of Guillermo Navarro. How so? Well, the projection of the film where and when I saw it was terribly underlit. At least, I'm guessing it was. I've only seen the film partially since then, on DVD, and at that time it looked much brighter than I remembered.

At the time I saw the film theatrically, though, I just assumed the film was really that dark. Well, actually I thought it could be faulty projection, but I didn't want to get into the issue with the management. Most theaters are quite defensive when it comes to the subject of whether or not they dim the projector bulbs, and whether or not it matters. Even before I became a projectionist I knew thanks to Roger Ebert's Answer Man columns about the stupidity and annoyance of turning down the power on projector bulbs, but unfortunately not everyone else seems to know.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Will Smith and the cast and crew of I Am Legend should be tickled pink about this. The blatant knock-off is a longstanding tradition of the B-movie world, and occasionally the practice can spawn something noteworthy. Everybody's heard of Godzilla, right? Well, the Big G started life as an imitation of The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms and has since become a pop culture icon while The Beast (which sported some very cool stop-motion animation from Ray Harryhausen) is largely forgotten by the general public. Lucio Fulci's Zombie has become a gore classic, despite going so far as to call itself Zombi 2 in its native Italy in an attempt to make people think this was a sequel to George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, which had been released there as Zombi. On the other hand, Carnosaur has become little more than a footnote in monster movie history, despite its attempts to cash in on the buzz surrounding Jurassic Park.

This is the newest release from The Asylum, and its resemblance to I Am Legend, and more specifically to The Omega Man, the previous film adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel, is stupefyingly obvious. The Asylum has become the modern torch-bearer of the B-movie knock-off with the likes of Snakes on a Train, Transmorphers and AVH: Alien Vs. Hunter all hitting DVD at a time convenient enough to take advantage of the big budget publicity machine of the films they are imitating.

If you know absolutely nothing whatsoever about I Am Legend, what follows counts as a SPOILER. Otherwise, as Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth says, "Good news, everybody!" Matt Sullivan forwarded us the news that Popular Mechanics is officially debunking the chain of events in I Am Legend. Their team of scientists and technologists assert that it's all just fiction: retro-viruses causing vampirism, Serengeti-style velds growing in Times Square, gas powered generators working for years, and Manhattan mocked by the sad spectacle of the brick caissons of the Brooklyn Bridge with dangling cables hanging from it. (The upside is no more bridge and tunnel people.)

In the article, Alan Weisman of The World Without Us describes a people-free Manhattan. Dr. W. Ian Lipkin of Laboratory for Immunopathogenesis and Infectious Diseases at Columbia University Medical Center claims that a vampire plague, as described in the film, can't happen: "Viruses don't mutate and become airborne. They typically fall into a couple of different categories-respiratory, STDs and vector-borne like insects, ticks and mosquitoes. They don't change from tick-borne to pneumonic. They just don't do that." Some will be agonized that Popular Mechanics wasted their time dissecting this fantasy, but, if you have a nightmare prone child the article might bring them some comfort. Future issues promise to prove that volcano-style supervillain headquarters are impossible to build, and that a yellow brick road would be unstable and prone to fissures.

''When I started in movies, I said, 'I want to be the biggest movie star in the world.' The biggest movie stars make the biggest movies, so (my producing partner James Lassiter and I) looked at the top 10 movies of all time. At that point, they were all special-effects movies. So Independence Day -- no-brainer. Men in Black -- no-brainer. I, Robot -- no-brainer.'' -- Will Smith, Entertainment Weekly, "Hollywood's 50 Smartest," Nov. 28, 2007

And that's a fairly loaded turn of phrase, because to many movie fans, 'no-brainer' better describes the scripts and direction of Independence Day, Men in Black and I, Robot than it does the decision to star in them. And before seeing I Am Legend, a third Hollywood version of Richard Matheson's 1954 book following in the footsteps of 1964's The Last Man on Earth and 1971's The Omega Man, the specter and spectacle of Smith's track record in big-budget science fiction loomed like a dark cloud. I walked into I Am Legend cautious and underwhelmed, with Smith's past genre efforts in mind; I staggered out of I Am Legend impressed and enthused and a little wrung-out after a well-executed and perfectly pitched demonstration of brute-force big-money horror-action film making. I'm hesitant to say how well I Am Legend will endure the test of time, but while you're watching it, you're caught in an iron grip, moved and manipulated and carried away by film makers who know exactly how to make you sink into our seat with dread. I shivered and tensed throughout I Am Legend, and at the end of the credits, I was dumbstruck to learn it was PG-13; it felt far more gripping and grim and upsetting than that rating would suggest.

They're both very lonely men ...

The first three minutes (or three minutes from somewhere in the film) of I Am Legend have arrived online, courtesy of Yahoo. Get used to this whole "scenes showing up the internets" stuff, because it appears every single movie is starting to do it more and more. As far as the clip goes, I don't think it's the one PETA would've chosen to represent the film. In it, Will Smith chases down a group of fleeing deer by way of a sports car, then gets out and hunts a lone deer in an empty Times Square. I won't spoil the end for you, but it's pretty cool. We'll have our I Am Legend review first thing in the morning, but in the meantime feel free to feast on big Will as he, well, attempts to feast on some meat (yes, Peter -- meat!).

And speaking of getting to watch long, extended scenes of upcoming movies online, the opening credit sequence for Sweeney Todd has also popped up. I'm not crazy about watching credit sequences; I guess watching the name of the casting director slide across the screen in a seductive Times New Roman kind of way doesn't exactly do it for me. However, there's a reason they put the credit sequence for Sweeney Todd online -- and I believe the reason given (or the reason I'm giving) is that it's pretty damn awesome. Don't expect Johnny Depp to show up, slicing his way through through the credits, but we do get some tasty visuals and a deliciously dark mood is definitely set. Check out the credit sequence after the jump (via The Movie Blog).

As a longtime science fiction aficionado with a weakness for special effects, Francis Lawrence's I Am Legend is catnip to me. That doesn't mean I won't be watching with a critical eye, though. I've accumulated a long list of pet peeves about the way that "last man on earth" stories are told, both in print and on screen, and personal warning signs have already popped up just from watching the trailers for I Am Legend. I hope I'm proven wrong and that the film allays my concerns, carrying me away to another time and place, but I'll be on the lookout for some of the stupid things last men on earth do -- and don't do.

1. They Become Attached to Just One Pet

Uh oh, it looks like Will Smith only has one dog. That's never a good sign. He exercises with him, tells him to eat his vegetables, hunts with him, and bathes him. (Later he holds the dog's limp body in his arms; just before that, he screams "Nooooooo!!", sounding like Darth Vader, which may or may not be related to what happens to the dog.) Why do you think all those old ladies keep dozens of cats around? In case one of them dies! Now, I'm not saying Will Smith's dog dies in the movie -- I told you, I haven't seen it -- but if you're the last man on earth, you have to plan ahead. Even if your best dog friend doesn't get eaten by lions or murdered by mysterious creatures of the night, you might actually outlive your buddy, so always have multiple dogs hanging around just in case. (Don't fret too much; remember, All Dogs Go to Heaven.) Unless, of course, Will's canine pal is The Last Dog on Earth, which might be another movie entirely.

As most of us predicted, The Golden Compass took the number one spot, but didn't do nearly as well as expected. Compass was the only new release last week, so the rest of the top five was filled out by movies that have been around for a bit. Fred Claus was in its fifth week but still managed to cling to the number four spot and Enchanted still held onto second place despite having been in its third week of release. Here's the final tally:

1. The Golden Compass: $26.1 million.
2. Enchanted: $10.7 million.
3. This Christmas: $5 million.
4. Fred Claus: $4.7 million.
5. Beowulf: $4.4 million.

After a couple weeks of an anemic release schedule, we've got three films going into wide release, covering the genres of family comedy, science fiction/horror and romantic comedy.

Alvin and the Chipmunks
What's It All About: Jason Lee stars as a struggling song writer whose tunes finally become successful when sung by a trio of talking chipmunks.
Why It Might Do Well: There's definitely a market for family oriented comedy around the holidays, and yes the little buggers are really cute.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Disease riddled mutants will probably keep the chippers out of first place, but they should hit their target demographic and take home the silver.
Number of Theaters: 3,300
Prediction: $16 million

I Am Legend
What's It All About: Richard Matheson's classic horror novel is brought to the screen for the third time. This time around, Will Smith stars as Robert Neville, the last surviving human in New York City. A global plague has mutated the remainder of the population, but Neville struggles to find a cure for the plague using his own blood.
Why It Might Do Well: Smith can certainly bring them in at the box office. I suspect this will be the number one film next week.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Similarities to 28 Days Later may put some people off and some may see this as just another zombie movie. In fact, Matheson's novel served as an unofficial inspiration for Night of the Living Dead, so rather than being a Johnny Come Lately, I Am Legend is where the zombie formula began.
Number of Theaters: 3,500
Prediction: $38 million