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Foxy Box Office. Trade Roughage 10/20/08

By Christopher Campbell posted 1 year ago

Fox was the bread in a Chihuahua sandwich this weekend, as estimates place the studio’s two new releases at #1 and #3 on the box office chart. 20th Century Fox’s Max Payne made $18 million while Fox Searchlight’s The Secret Life of Bees earned just over $11 million, which was very, very close to Beverly Hills Chihuahua’s second-placing $11.2 million. Coming in fourth place, which in terms of the sandwich metaphor makes it a pickle, was Oliver Stone’s W. with a close $10.6 million. The discarded turkey, meanwhile, was Sex Drive, which placed ninth with only $3.6 million.
Not enough of a turkey, however, that the Sex Drive writing-directing team of John Morris and Sean Anders couldn’t make a deal for their next project, a college comedy about an accidental father.
Citing creative differences, Hugh Grant has exited the movie biz-set romantic comedy Lost for Words, which would have seen him play opposite Ziyi Zhang as an actor who falls for his director despite a language barrier. Now hopes of a life-imitates-art romance between Grant and Danish director Susanne Bier have been shattered.
Killer Films is producing a movie involving the 1944 meeting of Beat poets Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Jack Keroac. Too bad David Cross, who hilariously portrayed Ginsberg in Killer’s I’m Not There is probably too old to reprise the role.
I’m still waiting for the day a remake of Troop Beverly Hills is announced, but for now the similar-sounding Tough Cookies will just have to suffice. The family film will be about a deadbeat dad who leads an unconventional group of girl scouts, who compete against snobbish rivals at the National Scout Rally.

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Hollywood

Spielberg and Smurfs. Trade Roughage 06/10/08

By Karina Longworth posted 1 year ago

Dreamworks is coming back, baby! All Steven Spielberg needs is a new distribution partner…and one billion dollars in outside financing…and an early exit from his Paramount contract…and an assurance that Jeffrey Katzenberg will take his side if there’s a battle over the Dreamworks name…
Sony Animation is producing an Alvin and the Chipmunks-inspired live action/CGI Smurfs feature. Insert tasteless joke about random partying starlet turning blue as research for a role …. here.
Madonna has canceled a screening of her Malawi doc I Am Because We Are at the Glastonbury music festival, because she’s afraid that not enough people are going to show up.
Hugh Grant and Ziyi Zhang are in talks to star in Lost For Words, a romantic comedy directed by Suzanne Bier. The plot will cleverly circumvent the problem of Ziyi being unable to speak English.

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Hollywood

Love on the decline

By posted 2 years ago

As a follow-up to my Love and Movies post, a related article that was published earlier this week in the LA Times. The article, titled “Not in the Mood for Love,” looks into the decline of romantic comedies and what might be to blame for that decline. Maybe our penchant for humiliation? Or our generally lowered standards of entertainment? As Rachel Abramowitz, the article’s author, writes:

Some blame the decline of the romance on the cultural climate. One of America’s favorite pastimes these days is ritual humiliation–a penchant for shame that can zap even the sturdiest lovers.

Or maybe it’s just more difficult to string out a good love story in the wake of the sexual revolution of the 1960s:

As film historian Molly Haskell notes, “Sex is so easy you can’t pretend that it’s the holy grail. The condition that made for the sparkle and sexiness of the old films was the fact that there wasn’t any sex. You could easily keep two people apart for an hour and a half. Now the ways of keeping them apart are increasingly strained.”

Abramowitz looks into other possible causes, too. Give “Not in the Mood for Love” a read and let me know which theory you buy.

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Hollywood