Following Nikki Finke’s report that pre-production on Halloween 3-D has been halted and therefore the film has been delayed, much of the discussion focused on whether or not it had something to do with The Weinstein Co.’s money troubles and/or possibility of a takeover by Summit Entertainment.
All I could think of, though, was maybe the 3-D threequel can now actually be appropriately released around the time of its namesake holiday rather than in a summer month. The report did after all note that TWC/Dimension is properly re-releasing Halloween II, which underperformed when it opened late last month, on the weekend of October 31st — at least for midnight shows, anyway.
It was actually a bad summer for wrongly released holiday-titled films, as Nia Vardalos’ I Hate Valentine’s Day did poor business in a few theaters when IFC debuted the romantic comedy in July. So what if it has a title that’s anti Valentine’s Day? It should still have been released in February.
And movies in the Halloween franchise should be released in October. I don’t care if horror is supposed to do well in August or if all four installments since Dimension acquired the rights to the series have come out earlier than October. Thankfully I’m not the only person who thinks it’s been stupid of them to put these films out in the summer.
Check out what other film blogs think of the Halloween 3-D delay after the jump:
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It hasn’t been terribly uncommon since the late ’60s for musicians to get behind the camera, whether for a straight concert film, a tour documentary or some kind of silly narrative focused on themselves and their bands. Jerry Garcia co-directed The Grateful Dead, Frank Zappa co-directed 200 Motels, The Beatles collectively co-directed The Magical Mystery Tour and separately John, Paul and Ringo has each taken the helm on a film project, some more artsy (John and Yoko’s cinematic collaborations, like Up Your Legs Forever) or less self-focused (Ringo’s Marc Bolan doc, Born to Boogie) than others.
Now it’s a little more common for musicians to become directors of fictional films that aren’t so reflexive. Many don’t even have anything to do with music at all. And many are so awful that it’s safe to say the filmmaker should stick to music making. This week, IFC releases the directorial debut of Madonna (Filth and Wisdom), and Beastie Boy Adam Yauch has a new basketball documentary (Gunnin’ for That #1 Spot) hitting stores, so we’d like to celebrate by looking at some other musicians who turned filmmaker, for better or worse.
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Today’s the hump day between the Telluride and Toronto film festivals. We’ll be rolling out some final coverage of the former as the day progresses, before moving on to a burst of coverage of the latter tomorrow. First, here’s a look at some of the trade news from the past few days that we missed over the long weekend in Colorado:
Variety’s Pamela McClintock says a super summer for the studios is bad news for smaller/artsier films. “[W]ith the debut of one successful studio pic after the next this summer, indie distribs and studio specialty arms had trouble drawing attention to their pics and keeping even the most successful ones in theaters. How much this pattern will affect future release strategies remains to be seen.” But she has a prescription: “the box office success of horror titles this summer reinforces the notion that studio specialty arms and indie production companies need to balance out their slates with more commercial genre titles.”- In Telluride, people seemed to either love or hate Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, but Todd McCarthy offers the only lukewarm review I’ve seen. McCarthy says Cate Blanchett’s performance is “electrifying,” but the later section starring Richard Gere “is poorly conceived on every level, as it dramatizes and contributes nothing.” The critic’s assessment of the film’s cross-over appeal is pretty dismal: “In the end, it’s a specialists’ event.”
- A theatrical “spoof” of Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps will hit Broadway this fall.
- Sacha Baron Cohen has finally confirmed a rumor that’s been going around for a year: he’s following up Borat with Bruno, based on the fashion correspondent character from The Ali G Show.
- It’s old news by now, but in light of the recent “horror is dead!” hand-wringing, it’s significant: Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake broke box office records over Labor Day weekend, earning $30.6 million over four days.
- The SXSW Film Festival is still 6+ months off, but Matt Dentler and his team have already announced conversations with two special guests: documentary filmmaker Stanley Nelson, and composer/source cue generator/tea impresario Moby.
- Spike Lee will judge entries in the upcoming Babelgum Online Film Festival. The fest will award about $130,000 in prizes to six short filmmakers.
With Comic-con running through the weekend and finally wrapping yesterday, you probably opened your RSS reader this morning to find a seemingly endless backlogue of live blogs, Flickr streams and breathless “exclusives”. Me too — and after three hours of skimming, I’ve gleaned the following five takeaways:
1. There’s gonna be a lot of Black Sabbath in Iron Man
2. Rob Zombie might his Halloween remake a “re-imagining”, but he apparently had no interest in re-imagining the dumb-as-rails horror heroine.
3. Sorry, Robert DeNiro: you might have been forgiven for Rocky and Bullwinkle, but we will never, ever forget.
4. Beowulf could be the most Razzie-worth pile of crap since I Know Who Killed Me (more on that later today), but 100 percent of the world’s male film writers (and about 50 percent of the gals) will still give it a pass, and all because of the naked Angelina Jolie.
5. Jenna Jameson knows her way around a pun (scroll down to the part about Scarlett Johansson and “ins and outs”).
Count on 
