weinstein co. Tagged Articles at Cinematical

With the film industry so busy that even the art houses are having trouble finding room for the indies they want to show, some execs are starting to look at more creative ways of getting their movies seen. That's why the Weinstein Co. is handing over one of its products to IFC Films, which will release it later this year in theaters and -- on the same day -- through Video-on-Demand, right into people's homes.

The movie is Elite Squad, a Brazilian drama about police corruption that won the top prize at Berlin in February and comes from a great pedigree: it was directed by José Padilha, who made the fantastic documentary Bus 174, and co-written by Bráulio Mantovani, who wrote City of God. (Cinematical's Scott Weinberg reviewed it mostly favorably at Tribeca.) It's the kind of foreign film that would normally do pretty well on the U.S. art house circuit, if the art houses weren't already overcrowded at the moment.

So the Weinsteins -- who actually helped produce the film, rather than merely buying the finished product at a festival -- have made a deal (with unspecified terms) with IFC Films. IFC will release it in a few theaters at the same time that it becomes available through IFC's Video-on-Demand service. Our Christopher Campbell wrote an excellent summary of this practice, known as "day-and-date," in April. Basically, day-and-date helps non-blockbuster films get seen by more people.

Morgan Spurlock is at it again with another spellbinding documentary. This time it has nothing to do with feeding on heart-stopping foods like in Super Size Me, but with the continued search for one of the most famous men in the world, Osama bin Laden. The doc apparently details the hunt for Bin Laden, and Spurlock is currently rushing back and forth from the Middle East to capture completion footage in time for the Toronto Film Festival.

The film is already greatly anticipated and its rights were purchased (by The Weinstein Co.) during the Berlin fest -- few details have been released to date, however. Spurlock's lips, along with anyone working on the project, are tightly sealed. Here's one detail -- the director of photography, Daniel Marracino, told Variety, "Visually, this film is going to be gorgeous."

Spurlock's body of work often puts him right in the middle of the danger zone. In Super Size Me his doctor pleaded for him to quit the diet for fear of severe liver damage, and in his FX series 30 Days he put himself in jail for a number of weeks in an attempt to document the experience. The passion and ferocity in his filmmaking may help us gain some new understanding in the seemingly anti-climactic search for the world's leading terrorist. So when can we expect to see the film? As of June 5, Spurlock stated he was 95% finished, and the opening date for the Toronto Film Festival is September 6. Good luck Spurlock, see you in September!

It's looking like next week's big watercooler subject in Hollywood will be the surprising failure of Grindhouse at the box office. Tracked to bring in about $25 million in its opening weekend, the uber-hyped Tarantino and Rodriguez double feature will almost certainly limp into Monday with a much smaller take; it opened Friday with a paltry $5 million, a total that puts it squarely in fourth-place, behind Will Ferrell's skating movie Blades of Glory, Meet the Robinsons (whatever that is -- sorry, I just can't tell kids movies apart anymore) and the most recent Ice Cube crapfest, Are We Done Yet?, which had already been playing since Wednesday. In fact, it did only marginally better than The Reaping, which opened on Thursday and is so bad that it was called "unreleasable" by many. Let's leave aside for the moment the implications of Grindhouse's flaccid opening for the fledgling Weinstein Co.; I think it's worth considering what kind of ripples this might send through Hollywood.

For a while now, America has been holding Hollywood by the ears and screaming in its face that it only wants completely pointless, souless, painless, recycled comedy and kiddie fare at the box office, and Hollywood has happily bent over backwards to comply, turning out more and more nothing-movies each year and fast-tracking the careers of nothing-directors like Brian Robbins, who can be relied on to turn in 'critic proof' garbage with a smile. Pointless sequels to pointless originals continue to climb higher and higher into the box-office record books, bringing us ever closer to the day when an objectively worthless film that's been scientifically engineered to meet all 'quadrants' will probably crack the top spot. Meanwhile, senile industry butterflies like Peter Bart snark that it's in fact the critics who need to get with it and start praising the crap in order to stay 'relevant.'

I don't have any conclusions here, other than the one offered in my headline. It seems that the prospects for talented filmmakers who take some chances and try to create quality films that also appeal to the mainstream movie-going audience are going downhill faster than Chevy Chase on that sled in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. How long before quality films of any stripe simply become a bad investment? Obviously I'm a little worked up over this, so you'll have to allow me a little exaggeration.

Damn, those Weinstein boys have been busy lately, huh? Not only are they putting together an interesting assortment of films to say the least but, in the process, they appear to be spanning the entire globe. First, they stopped in Japan and announced a re-make of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, hoping to prove that a touch of CGI will help people forget there ever was an original. Next, they traveled to China and unveiled plans to produce a live-action version of Mulan featuring Zhang Ziyi, who apparently got drunk one night and signed a three-picture deal with the ex-Miramax studs, er, really hot guys from the Planet Fugly.

Now, tapped out of ideas in the Far East, the Weinstein Co. is heading to England after hiring director Paul McGuigan to direct Four Knights. Pic, which is loosely based on the play Four Knights in Knaresboro, tells the story of four foul-mouthed knights who, in an attempt to make peace with the popular Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Beckett, wind up killing him instead. This forces the knights to hide in a remote castle while fending off an entire country out for blood.

Contrary to what you wish were true, Four Knights is not a sequel to Four Brothers or The Four Feathers, however, I imagine it's not far off from The Four Musketeers, though nothing like Four Rooms ... thank God. If I were a betting man (which I'm not because I suck at anything that involves guessing), I'd say this film will not mark the third to star Zhang Ziyi, for obvious reasons. I mean, these knights are all dudes, right?