Here is my follow-up to last month’s question of what mainstream movie will feature on the most top ten movie lists. And the winner is … Ratatouille. Oh wait, didn’t I disqualify that one for being too obvious? No? Well, I should have. Yes, according to Movie City News’ Big Ass Chart (aka Scorecard) of critics’ top tens, the Pixar movie made it on to 51 best-of lists, making it the best-grossing best movie of the year. But maybe it wasn’t the most mainstream, if you define mainstream as studio-produced fare. Under that qualification Zodiacwas the best mainstream movie of 2007, having been made jointly by Warner Bros. and Paramount and showing up on 70 best-of lists. Other Warner successes include Michael Clayton, which featured on 54 lists, Sweeney Todd, which received 44 mentions, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which showed up on one list, and Letters From Iwo Jima, which showed up a little late on one list.
As far as those mainstream movies I predicted would feature heavily, Knocked Up(34 lists) ended up defeating Superbad(25 lists) — meanwhile, the third Judd Apatow movie of the year, Walk Hard, managed to get on one critic’s list — though both were actually behind The Bourne Ultimatum(28 lists), when it came to “average vote” (average numerical placement on the list). If we’re going by mainstream appeal (and if Karina is correct in her view of the film), then Junowas the best mainstream comedy of the year with 63 lists. Hairspray(13 lists) beat out its crappy musical siblings Across the Universe(7 lists) and Enchanted(8 lists). In addition to showing up on Richard Corliss’ list, Beowulfmanaged 3 other mentions. And Transformersnot only showed up on a top ten list, it featured on 3! Of course, it’s more surprising that Spider-Man 3made it on 4 lists. The greatest thing to happen, of course, was Manohla Dargis listingThe Kingdomas one of her favorites. Joining her is Don Payne. If I had made a top ten list (instead of this thing), the film could very well have beaten Transformers. Oh well, at least nobody put the shocking blockbuster Alvin and the Chipmunkson their list … yet.
At the Kansas City Star, Robert W. Butler brings up an issue that I’ve been thinking about a lot: with music minimized in the massive TV campaign behind Sweeney Todd (see a totally music-free spot above), aren’t they worried that that millions of Jack Sparrow fans will swarm the theaters, only march out angrily when the star breaks into song? According to Butler, we’d be naive to expect anything else:
Today’s kids are crazy about Johnny Depp and horror, and the Warner marketing folk have played to those strengths, emphasizing that in the R-rated Sweeney Todd Depp plays a bleakly amusing killer, a nut job with a straight razor. At the same time the ads de-emphasize the film’s musical origins…Lest I come off as terribly cynical about this, let me state right now that I approve of the Warner ad campaign. That’s because I think Sweeney Todd is a brilliant accomplishment that deserves to be seen by as many people as possible. And if you’ve got to con the kiddies into buying a ticket, that’s fine with me.
“Con the kiddies,” huh? Without even broaching the topic of a studio blatantly trying to sell an R-rated film to the under 17s (not to mention Butler’s presumption of knowledge about “today’s kids”), the real dishonesty here goes beyond the fact that the distributors are not being totally forthcoming about the fact that 90 percent of this story is told in song. The real lie: Sweeney Todd is not just a musical. It’s very literally your parents’ musical. …Read more
The MPAA has rejected a proposed one-sheet poster for Alex Gibney’s documentary Taxi to the Dark Side. The original design incorporated an image from a news photo, of a hooded detainee flanked by two soldiers. The MPAA says since they won’t allow hoods on posters for torture porn, they can’t allow similar imagery to promote a torture doc. Distributor ThinkFilm plans to appeal.
Brad Pitt is in talks to replace Heath Ledger, who was previously cast opposite Sean Penn, in Terrence Malick’s upcoming drama, Tree of Life. There are still few details to report about the project itself, although I guess we can reasonably deduce that whatever character Ledger was going to play has suddenly become about 14 years older.
Midwestern exhibition chain Marcus Theaters has declined to bookSweeney Todd on any of its 49 screens, on the grounds that Paramount is asking for too much money for the prints. This seems like a late-game decision, considering the film is scheduled to open semi-wide on Friday, but Paramount says the release will be unaffected.
Nancy Buirski is stepping down from her role as head of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, in order to create and manage “a fund to incubate and produce independent docus and fiction films.”
Much has been made of the gore in Tim Burton’s film version of Sweeney Todd, which seems to me to be a bit hysteric. If you’ve seen one contemporary cinematic blood bath, you’ve seen them all, and if you produced mathematical proof that there’s more blood here per minute of running time than in, say, Hostel II (from which Burton, actually rather worryingly, borrows the device of spurting corpse-as-shower), I’d be surprised. In fact, blood doesn’t make an appearance until fairly far into the film, and at least initially, the focus is not on the wounds of the victim, but on the assailant’s rage.
Like Atonement, this season’s other high-profile adaptation of a highbrow contemporary text once thought to be unadaptable, Burton’s crack at Sweeney Todd works best when it serves to support the inherent perversity of its source. The director’s mashup of Steven Sondheim’s musical with his own, patented, teenage Goth sketchbook aesthetic may play like German Expressionists-do-Torture Porn, but the brutality is mostly farce. As in Sondheim, Burton’s Sweeney Todd is most disturbing when it’s talking about love.
In spite of writers forcing primetime repeats as most of the country settles into winter (I recommend knitting as an alternative), the public seems to be siding against “The Corporations.” How American.
Marketing guru behind Sweeney Todd–Tim Burton’s musical about a serial killing barber–struggles with “many niche audiences that need to be dealt with.” Solution: Promote it as Saw meets Dreamgirls.
Lady Wakasa makes a strong case in defense of Lust, Caution. “It’s true that there are elements in the story that won’t be clear to some Western audiences…There are universalities that can be picked up: about the effects of environment and upbringing, about the nature of love, about what in relationships is and isn’t an act, how war is hell with a twist. But these universalities are filtered through a Chinese lens. As such, I think it’s up to the Westerners to go the extra mile and fill in blanks they find. The shoe on the other foot, to a certain degree.”
The Shamus thought Contempt was “about nothing more than the pneumatic perfection of Brigitte Bardot’s ass,” but a later Godard film went over much better. “Masculin-Feminin strikes me as a Warhol-esque montage of the ’60s as we wanted them to truly be, with more going on under the surface than we might want to admit.”
A holdover from the heady days immediately following Dumbledore’s outing … you know, last week: Joe Leydon writes that he’s “occasionally had students ask me — earnestly, not snickeringly — if certain movie characters are intended to be interpreted as gay…The two names that pop up most often during these “Is he or isn’t he?” queries: Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten) of Citizen Kane and Cosmo Brown (Donald O’Connor) of Singin’ in the Rain.”
For the record, I would like to note that I recorded my segment of this week’s episode of Film Couch, about actresses who have played Joan of Arc, way back on Tuesday. At the time, I had no idea Jeff Wells would use multiple Saint Joan references to mock Tom O’Neill’s unflappable faith that Sweeney Todd has a chance in hell of winning multiple Oscars.
Dreamworks and Paramount have decided to open Tim Burton’s Sweeney Toddwide on Christmas weekend. The original plan was to open on a couple of screens December 21 and then go wide three weeks later, but the studios, apparently convinced that Johnny Depp’s demon barber could have the appeal of a singing, cannibalistic Captain Jack, think Burton’s Sondheim adaptation has holiday weekend written all over it.
“Owen Wilson’s emergency hospitalization and recovery are throwing a major monkeywrench into production of two movies and causing marketing headaches for two more,” writes Variety’s Tatiana Siegel. It seems like a fair thing to speculate, but the only studio rep who would go on the record dismisses the line of inquiry as “totally inappropriate at this time.”
Some movies are violent, some are disturbing, and others are just plain wrong. Paul W. S. Anderson’s Death Race is a fun ride with some gnarly crashes, but it can’t hold a candle to its demented predecessor, Roger Corman’s Death Race 2000 (1975).
Cinema’s favorite weirdo, Cripsin Glover, is taking his film across the country, personally [...]
Here is my follow-up to 
The MPAA has rejected
Lady Wakasa
