the informers 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.

Although his books seem particularly difficult to adapt, several filmmakers have done fine work turning Brett Easton Ellis' stuff into feature films. As a matter of fact, I'd go as far as to say that ALL of the films based on Ellis' books are actually better than the source material. Certainly American Psycho, and maybe to a slightly lesser degree on Less Than Zero and The Rules of Attraction. But with the arrival of Gregor Jordan's nearly unwatchable The Informers, Ellis finally got the adaptation we haven't been waiting for.

Little more than a jumbled mass of unrelated subplots, The Informers is about a bunch of rich, spoiled, disaffected, hedonistic, obnoxious, ungrateful and gorgeous young people who simply do whatever they want and abuse / dismiss / mock anyone who gives them a second glance. Why anyone would want to spend 94 minutes with a crew this venal and hateful is anyone's guess, but combine their collective unpleasantness with a screenplay that "adapts" little and goes nowhere fast, and you're looking at a movie that's an absolute chore to sit through.

Well Cinematical is officially in Park City, Utah for the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, and to kick-start our coverage we have this exclusive clip from The Informers, which is one of (if not the) largest premiere here this year. Based on the book by Bret Easton Ellis, The Informers follows a week in the life of several seedy individuals -- movie executives, rock stars, a vampire, a kidnapper -- as they mix and mingle in 1983 Los Angeles. With an all star cast including Billy Bob Thornton, Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke, Winona Ryder, Brad Renfro, Amber Heard and more -- The Informers, directed by Gregor Jordan, looks to spread its dirty, erotic stench all over Park City this week. Check out the clip below, which features Mickey Rourke and the late Brad Renfro (in his final role).

Yesterday we shared with you the competition slate for the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, which, depending on the paper you read, was full of the dark and disturbing or the sad and melodramatic. Good to know we'll be smiling in the cold mountains of Utah come January. Today, the Sundance Institute has announced their non-competition films; this includes the Premieres section, which is usually full of studio flicks -- stuff that's set to debut in theaters the following month or so, and films that feature big stars; the big guns. Then we have the Spectrum section (with 16 dramatic films and seven docs), the Midnight section (eight films), and the Frontier section (six films).

Among the ones that stand out to me at first glance are:

• I Love You Philip Morris (Premiere), with Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor playing prison lovers.
• Adventureland - The director of Superbad follows that flick up with a comedy set in a theme park.
• The Informers (Premiere), based on the popular Bret Easton Ellis novel, and starring Billy Bob Thornton, Kim Basinger, Winona Ryder and Mickey Rourke.
• Moon (Premiere), which is that freaky space flick starring Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey.
• Manure (Premiere), starring Billy Bob Thornton as a manure salesman.
• Spread, starring Ashton Kitcher as a guy who seduces older women. (Wonder if he's right for that role?)
• Helen ( Spectrum), starring Ashley Judd as a psychiatrist who fights her own depression.
• The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle (Spectrum) -- I just love that title.
• Spring Breakdown (Midnight), starring Rachel Dratch, Amy Poehler, Parker Posey, Will Arnett, Rachel Hamilton.

As we do every year, Cinematical will be on the ground in Park City, Utah bringing you reviews, interviews and enough Sundance flavor to send a brisk mountain chill through your soul. Check out the full non-competition slate (with descriptions) after the jump.

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?

There's just something about Bret Easton Ellis' work on the big screen that I love -- the desperation mixed with a backdrop of insidiously upbeat '80s music. We've gotten Less Than Zero, American Psycho, The Rules of Attraction, and now The Informers. Word broke in May of 2007 that the interconnected collection of stories was going to be adapted, and now there's a trailer which you can see after the jump (beware of nudity and foul language).

It's the late Brad Renfro's last role, and one that should prove to be much eerier than Heath Ledger's stint as the Joker. It's got thumbsucking Lou Taylor Pucci as an entirely different sort of character, but Billy Bob Thornton steals just about every clip he's in -- and there's also the likes of Amber Heard, Winona Ryder, Mickey Rourke, Kim Basinger, Rhys Ifans, and Brandon Routh.

It looks like it could be just as good as its predecessors, but here's to hoping that the goodness is balanced with the box office this time around. Have you read the book? Do you think this trailer does it justice? And are you excited about the film?

Remember how for the longest time whenever anyone talked about Samuel L. Jackson it was usually followed by the description of Jackson as one of the hardest working actors in the business? Well, it is not like he didn't earn that reputation -- Jackson currently has one film already headed to theaters and three other films in production. Variety reports that Jackson will add the spy thriller Unthinkable to the pile.

Gregor Jordan (The Informers) has already signed to direct the story of a "major threat to the United States when the locations of three nuclear devices are shrouded in secrecy by a single terrorist. With only two days before they are deployed, a black-ops interrogator and a female FBI agent have to decide how far they will go to find them" -- knowing Jackson's flair for interrogation I can only assume he will play the interrogator in the film.

Jackson is still filming the musical comedy Soul Men with Bernie Mac, so production on Unthinkable won't start until this fall in Minneapolis. But remember, Jackson likes to keep busy, so stay tuned for those Nick Fury updates -- because let's face it, Unthinkable will likely not be the Jackson film everyone is talking about in 2009.

Brad Renfro, 25 year-old star of such films as The Client, Apt Pupil, and Bully, was found dead in his Los Angeles home early this morning, reports the Associated Press. Renfro's lawyer, Richard Kaplan, broke the tragic news. The cause of death is currently unknown, but Renfro had been drinking with friends the night before. Foul play is not suspected. Renfro led a troubled life, and there had been several run-ins with the law over the years, for drugs, DUI, and more. In May 2006, he served ten days in jail after he plead no contest to drunk driving and guilty to attempted possession of heroin. His most notable recent film appearance was opposite Adrien Brody in The Jacket, and he recently completed work on the Bret Easton Ellis adaptation The Informers.

Renfro began acting when he was only twelve years old. At twelve, he played the title role in Joel Schumacher's adaptation of John Grisham's The Client, which starred Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones. He was a terrific young actor, and since he was roughly my age, I followed his career from his younger roles in The Cure and Tom and Huck, through more mature fare like Telling Lies in America and Sleepers. My favorite roles of his were later ones: Todd in Bryan Singer's Apt Pupil, Marty in Larry Clark's highly disturbing Bully, and Josh in Terry Zwigoff's modern classic Ghost World. Kaplan tells the AP, "He was working hard on his sobriety. He was doing well. He was a nice person." We at Cinematical mourn the loss of a real talent, and our sympathies are with his family and friends.

If films could be a success based on the cast alone, I would say that The Informers was on its way to wonderful cinema. News about the project first came in May, and since then, the cast has slowly been coming together in a great, eclectic sort of way. This isn't some sort of Ocean's wonder-project of hunks, but rather a collection of randomness that looks pretty darned tasty -- the first batch had Billy Bob Thornton, Kim Basinger, Brandon Routh, Ashley Olsen, Jon Foster, Austin Nichols, and Lou Taylor Pucci, and then along came Winona Ryder and Mickey Rourke. Now The Hollywood Reporter has posted that Amber Heard and Chris Isaak have joined the cast.

Heard, who is the object of affection in the upcoming horror film All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, is said to be playing "a sexually promiscuous woman caught up in the decadence of the 1980s." This is pretty much what Ashley Olsen's character description was, so I wonder if she's become the Full House alum's replacement, or perhaps a fellow sexual cohort. As for Isaak, whose last film was John Waters' A Dirty Shame, the crooner will play "a sex-and-alcohol-obsessed father who takes his young son to Hawaii." The film is currently shooting in Los Angeles, and then it will journey to Uruguay and Buenos Aires to finish up.

Adaptations of Bret Easton Ellis' books are like smooth, tasty, cinematic butter. No matter what directorial eye tackles his prose, the unique fire remains, and even improves. First there was Less Than Zero, then came American Psycho, and finally, my favorite, The Rules of Attraction. After drug habits and Huey Lewis-led murder, the stakes were high, and Roger Avary whipped together a music-led dance of destruction. Could anything top that? I'm not sure, but I'm holding out hope that Gregor Jordan makes something great out of The Informers, which Christopher Campbell first posted about in May. Since then, they've started to compile one heck of a cast, and the list just keeps growing.

The Hollywood Reporter has posted that Winona Ryder and Mickey Rourke have joined the eclectic ensemble cast. The film is about seven interconnecting stories in 1980's LA, about a movie executive (Billy Bob Thornton), his wife (Kim Basinger), his mistress, a rock star, a kidnapper, and to strange things up some more, a vampire (Brandon Routh). Ryder is going to be a newscaster who has been dumped by the married producer she's had a long affair with, which I assume means she's Billy Bob's mistress, and Rourke is going to play Peter, a former security guard who wants to kidnap a kid to sell to an LA cult (which should make him the kidnapper). All that's left to fill is the rock star, unless that's being handled by one of the other names on the cast, like John from Cincinnati's Austin Nichols, or Thumbsucker's Lou Taylor Pucci. Production begins in October, so hopefully we'll have more Ellis goodies for you soon.