the wild Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Now here's a weird Oscar rule that you probably never knew (I sure didn't): In order for there to be five Best Animated Feature nominees, there have to be at least sixteen eligible titles. The last time this happened was in 2002, when Miyazaki's Spirited Away proved to be the year's best ieffort n animation. (According the The Academy, anyway.)

Warner's Happy Feet, Weinstein's Arthur and the Invisibles and Sony's Paprika have yet to "officially" open, but once they do it means we'll get five nominees in one of Oscars' more colorful categories. (Last year we only had three, and that wasn't as much fun.) In addition to the three mentioned above, the other eligibles are The Ant Bully, Barnyard, Cars, Curious George, Everyone's Hero, Flushed Away, Ice Age: The Meltdown, Monster House, Open Season, Over the Hedge, Renaissance, A Scanner Darkly and The Wild. (What, no Ultraviolet?)

So if you had to pick only five of those flicks (aside from the three we haven't seen yet, of course), what would be your picks as "Oscar material?" If I'm predicting the field, my five picks would be Cars, Monster House, Over the Hedge, Renaissance and A Scanner Darkly. If I'm casting a vote for my favorite: Over the Hedge. Flick made me giggle.

Over the religious -- and apparently spoof-filled -- holiday weekend, Scary Movie 4 destroyed the box office competition, taking in $41 million, more than twice that of Ice Age: The Meltdown, its nearest competition. Despite the impressive numbers, however, that total is actually down from the opening weekend of Scary Movie 3, which means that, if the returns for each film in the series decrease at a similar rate, producers will only get worried at about installment #10 (and yes, number five is already being planned). Though it stayed strong in the second spot with $20 million earned for the weekend, Ice Age 2 was down over 40% for the second week running, and looks to be starting what may be a rapid slide down the rankings. In third place this weekend was The Benchwarmers, whose $10 million meant that it just out-earned The Wild, which made a dismal $9.6 million in its opening weekend. Rounding out the top five was Take the Lead which, though down about 45% from last weekend's earnings, still took in $6.7 million.

Notable among the also-rans was the Jennifer Aniston-starrer Friends with Money, which made $805,000 on only 42 screens (an incredible $19,166/screen), which was good enough for 15th place place for the weekend, well above a slew of films with far greater exposure. Full numbers are after the jump.

Two films open wide today, one of which involves Shaq and Dr. Phil chained together (yes, someone has unearthed that old chestnut again), while the other features animals escaping from a zoo to rescue their ... wait a minute. That just sounds so familiar, I'd swear I saw it somewhere before. (Finding Nemo? No, that wasn't it, that was about fish. Toy Story 2? No. Well, sort of, actually.) In sum, a surprising number of critics don't hate Scary Movie 4, and Ty Burr pretty much sums up the reaction to The Wild when he describes it as "Technologically incredible, aesthetically pretty hideous, and narratively lumpy." Details below.

• Scary Movie 4: As there is between our own Scott and Rob, a fair amount of disagreement over this one exists among critics. While no one is really saying its very good, there are some who enjoy the movie for what it is, and feel that its gags succeed more often than their fail. In the other camp, however, are those who think it's a tired, pathetic excuse for a spoof film, and that the series really should have curled up and died a few installments to go. Both groups like Anna Faris, though -- that's something.

• The Wild: Most critics agree that this is just another in the long line of painfully average animated films (and, yes, they all mention its uncanny resemblance to Madagascar) that have hit theaters recently. If you look hard enough, however, you can find a couple of positive reviews (it has a good message, apparently), but they're few and far between.
  

Mad Cow Disease -- which changed its name from Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) when it got famous in the late 1990's -- is a fatal neurodegenerative disease in cattle, spread by the host consuming animal by-products infected by this protein mutation. The disease is zoonotic -- meaning it can be transmitted to humans (and vice versa) -- so this forced cannibalism resulted in the deaths of over 150 Europeans through 2004 who had consumed tainted beef. While only five BSE-infected cattle were identified in the U.S. through 2005 (due to their largely soy diet), the panic was enough to cause widespread bans on U.S. beef.
 

A good parody is hard to spin beyond the here and now. Take "Weird Al" Yankovic, for example. The pop-music jokester has put out 11 regular albums since 1983, when the accordian-playing nice guy's spoof of The Knack's "My Sharona" (titled "My Bologna" and recorded in the men's room of his college radio station) started his career as a musician, comedic icon and food fetishist when it blew up on The Dr. Demento Show. However, every hilarious and unforgettable cut like "Eat It", "Like A Surgeon" and "Smells Like Nirvana" that hit was matched by fade-away tracks like the New Kids jape "The White Stuff" (an ode to Oreos), the Rocky III goof "Theme From Rocky XIII (The Rye Or The Kaiser)" or the misjudgment "Taco Grande" (a riff on Latin rough-boy Gerardo's only hit, "Rico Suave"). The secret to a successful parody is complex, involving a careful balance of picking a song that is big enough, worthy of a good-natured dressing down and most important, funny. The same is true with movies, and the latest in the popular Scary Movie series is a great example of what can go right and wrong with such an attempt.
 

As carefully detailed by Disney-watcher Jim Hill, that company has a strong, long-standing relationship with Toys 'R' Us. Radio Disney and the retailer are close partners, and Disney reportedly helped design some of the very successful Toys 'R' Us feature shops, areas within Toys 'R' Us stores that spotlight specific Disney characters or releases.

Because of these strong retail ties, it's no surprise to hear that Disney approached the company about creating and selling at least one The Wild tie-in, specifically a doll of the character named Bridget, a (somewhat grumpy, I assume -- she's played by Janeane Garofalo, after all) giraffe. And, if loyalty and the chance to work with the lovely people at Disney wasn't enough, the animators had also thrown in a huge corporate shout-out to their toy-selling homies: there's a scene in the film of the animals passing the Times Square Toys 'R' Us store, and Bridget gazing up with wonder at the giant giraffe she sees (who also just happens to be the Toys 'R' Us mascot). Irresistible, right? Wrong.

After seeing an unfinished rough cut of The Wild several months ago, Toys 'R' Us executives politely declined to participate in merchandising for the movie, essentially because they think it's going to tank, and won't help sell any merchandise. The funny/sad thing (depending on your perspective) is that, according to Hill's report, Target, Hasbro, Mattel, and Wal-Mart all said exactly the same thing. Ouch. And oh dear.

As you may have heard, Disney's The Wild is a movie about a bunch of zoo animals who find themselves running free in New York City. A lion and a giraffe lead the crew, and they're on the loose in a desperate effort to save one of their friends, who was cruelly taken from the zoo. Ha, great concept! No, no - wait a minute. It actually sounds very familiar...it'll come to you, give it a second. Yes, that's right: you already saw this movie, back when it was called Madagascar. And, according to a Cinematical spy, the similarity isn't an accident - it was understood among those who worked on The Wild that, early in their developments, The Wild and Madagascar (which was made first, not just released quickly) were actually based on the very same script. Hollywood? Out of ideas? Naw.

So, yeah, the trailer - which was previously released on some sort of temporary Disney site, but has now been unleashed on the wider internet world - is still just like Madagascar, except for a couple of small factors. The first difference is the presence of Eddie Izzard, who voices a koala bear. Putting aside the fact that there aren't any koala bears from Britain, he's hilarious, and brings a bit of dignity to a production that otherwise seems average at best. The second difference - one that comes down very firmly in Madagascar's favor - is an incredibly uncomfortable scene involving a sexually suggestive squirrel. I mean, honestly. Who at Disney thought it was a good idea to include a squirrel slapping his own ass and talking about riding pigeons "bareback"? The realistic flesh-slapping noise is downright creepy.

Disney's latest animated effort, The Wild, now has a trailer online for all of you to bow down and pray to. Directed by Steve "Spaz" Williams (I'm sure the name Spaz will help him get tons of work), story revolves around a young lion accidentally removed from the New York Zoo and shipped to South Africa. Now, it's up to a band of rowdy animals to head out into the city and attempt a wild rescue.

Due out April 14th, The Wild stars Eddie Izzard, Kiefer Sutherland and Jonathan Kimmel. Ooohh, Kimmel was head writer on the Andy Milonakis Show - he must be brilliant AND hilarious. Now that we've tackled animals at the zoo, I'm wondering which species will be next? We've had fish, robots, monsters, toys, ants, bears, penguins, lions, mice...and that's just off the top of my head. Will we run out of bankable animals soon? Maybe Disney can put out something about crocodiles and call it A Croc's Tale. Get it - tale/tail? Man, I crack myself up. Someone get Kimmel on the phone, stat!