Black Friday is a scary time for shoppers in any given year. The crowds, the lines, the difficulty finding parking — all these and more are common annoyances on the day after Thanksgiving, as millions upon millions of Americans begin the Christmas season by making a run for the shopping malls and department stores in hopes of finding the best bargains. This year, of course, the economic downturn will make the day even worse than usual. The stores may be desperately holding the biggest sales we’ll ever witness, but lowest prices aren’t quite low enough for those who are broke or bankrupt.
So, you may stay home this Friday. Perhaps you’ll at least make some minor online purchases, because you’re a patriotic, consuming American and it’s kind of like an unofficial holiday in our capitalist democracy. But don’t not go out to the mall simply because of the craziness potentially happening on its many floors of fashion and furnishings. You mustn’t be frightened of the crowds. Just recall any or all of the following ten movie scenes and by comparison you’ll think your Black Friday errands are like a stroll in the park.
With Halloween less than a month away, it’s time to start thinking about what to go as. That is, if you haven’t already. A good costume-loving cinephile typically knows well in advance what he or she will dress up as for Halloween (and Comic-Con, too). But if you’re one to wait until the last minute, and also one who likes to be a lot more contemporary than, say, dressing up as a Ghostbuster or Edward Scissorhands, I’ve got some suggestions for you for costumes based on recent films.
A few record openings happened over the weekend, though unfortunately some came too late. As the Coen brothers experienced their greatest ever debut with Burn After Reading (or, as I call it, “Forget After Watching”), which also gave Focus Features its biggest opening ever, the same was true for Picturehouse, which saw its best bow with its final release, The Women. Meanwhile, newbie distributor Overture Films had its best debut with its fifth release, Righteous Kill, and Warner Independent opened its own final feature, Towelhead, to the weekend’s best per-screen average ($13,250).
Despite his latest box office failure, Vin Diesel is getting another another chance. The actor will reunite with director Rob Cohen for a third xXx movie after having skipped the first sequel. It would seem to be Diesel’s acknowledgment of career misdirection had he not already recently signed on for the fourth Fast and the Furious installment, too.
Speaking of things that came too late: where was Framelight Productions when Alan Moore began his naive relationship with the movie biz? According to The Hollywood Reporter, this new company’s goal is to work very closely with creators every step of the way in its adaptations of their comics, video games and toys.
And finally, for the too soon department: Jeffrey Katzenberg is still pimping 3-D, this time via a live 3-D broadcast and talking of a time when all movies are 3-D, all viewing formats are 3-D (including computers and handheld devices) and everyone fashionably wears their 3-D glasses at all times.
According to Variety, four new films are competing for the attention of adult moviegoers this weekend, with The Women attracting the +25 ladies and Righteous Kill, Burn After Reading and Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys attracting the men, I guess. The prediction is that Perry’s film will win the box office, because it will attract the black audience while Righteous and Burn are expected to split their (white?) demo. And, well, women don’t actually go to the movies. Right?
Universal and Focus have made a deal to invest in and co-produce the latest from Oldboy director Chan-wook Park. The new film, a risque vampire pic titled Thirst, is apparently the first Korean production financed and picked up for distribution by a U.S. studio prior to its being completed and released locally.
In case you want to know more about the Gore Verbinski-Johnny Depp motion capture film, Rango, Variety has a short follow-up, which spotlights the involvement of ILM. Though it doesn’t really add much to the original news, I’m a little more intrigued now about the future of animated features and whether or not mo-cap companies like ILM, Sony Pictures Imageworks and Animal Logic (none of which, it’s noted, develop their own projects) could soon give Pixar and DreamWorks a run for their money.
September is often used as a dumping ground for movies, but this year it also appears to be a dumping ground for once-great or once-promising talents who’ve lost their way. I’ve taken note of at least 10 individuals (actors, actresses and a couple filmmakers) who have new films out this month (I’m counting the Labor Day weekend, too) who are due for a visit from the Ghost of Movies Past.
More specifically, these people need to backtrack to the ‘90s, which is when most of them did their last truly great work. Perhaps they need to take a look at that earlier work and remember what it was they used to do. Or perhaps they just need to get advice from the Coen brothers, who similarly hit a slump in the new millennium, but who are now back on track with a few more Oscars in hand and a new comedy, Burn After Reading, which looks to be more in line with their ‘90s classic The Big Lebowski than their 2000s missteps Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers.
It could be argued that Cage made just as many worthless movies in the ‘90s as he has in the ‘00s. Also, considering his box office success with Ghost Rider and the National Treasure movies, plus his excellent Oscar-nominated dual role in Adaptation, it’s debatable that he’s “lost his way.” But it’s clear to me, at least, that he currently lacks any concern for the quality of his work, as evidenced by this month’s Bangkok Dangerous, which makes even Con Air look well crafted by comparison. In the ‘90s, Cage was doing much greater work for Scorsese, Lynch and even Michael Bay, and he won an Oscar for Best Actor, too. Unless he starts caring about the roles he chooses, he’s more likely to one day receive lifetime recognition by the Razzies than a lifetime achievement award from the Academy. Who he needs to work with again to get it back: the Coens; Uncle Francis (Ford Coppola); Scorsese; even Michael Bay would be good.
Two quotes just popped out of my feed reader and clubbed me over the head; when I came to, I recalled a couple of other soundbites from my week in LAFF that sort of seem related. First, from David Poland’s eye-roll at “Tom & Jerry On Crack cartoon” Wanted:
Wanted is more like the last of big budget porn, throwing around endless style along with massive fake boobs and enough smoke to choke a Scott. Guys still get off on it - guys can get off on anything that tells them it wants to get them off - but one simply has to wonder, “Doesn’t anyone just f*** anymore?”
__Cukor’s original, released in 1939 and based on Clare Boothe Luce’s hit play, was basically a melodrama cranked up to the tempo of screwball; the performances today play as camp, but even the comedy is underlined with some kind of emotional truth. This new trailer plays broad, broad, broad throughout. The whole idea of the text is that it offers a glimpse into the way women behave when together in uncomfortably intimate spaces; going too big with the punchlines and the delivery seems like a tonal mistake.
–Where the original film had an ultimately cynical view of female friendships, depicting them as nuanced and unstable and constantly flipping between fingers-crossed faux sympathy, outright hostility and tentative trust, thisThe Women seems to be surrounding Meg Ryan’s Mary with a Sex and the City-like cadre of demographically varied Bestest Friends. The Annette Benning character, who I think is a stand-in for Rosalind Russell in the original film, seems annoying, but hardly the busy-body back-stabber that Russell made classic.
ThinkFilm has announced their acquisition of Azazel Jacobs’ Momma’s Man, for theatrical release after its New York premiere at New Directors/New Films next month. We reviewed the film (which I love) when it premiered at Sundance, and also interviewed Azazel.
Joan Cusack is playing Isla Fisher’s mom in a romantic comedy about a New York magazine journalist with a lot of credit card debt (ah, romance). Before you ask, “Wait, does that even make mathematical sense?”––yes, it does. If Joan gave birth when she was 14. Eight years before playing a teenager in Sixteen Candles.
Speaking of fuzzy math, I don’t understand these figures at all. Turner Broadcasting (TBS, TNT, etc) has picked up broadcast rights to a number of films that will theoretically be released by New Line and Picturehouse later this year. Variety says, “The coin involved in Turner’s purchase…[comes] in at a high end of about 11% of the eventual domestic box office gross of the four New Line pictures.” How do you calculate eventual gross on films that have not only not opened, but which lie in limbo because their ostensible distributor no longer really exists? According to this story, Warners execs have just started screening films on New Line’s leftovers, and questions like “What pictures will ultimately make it to the slate, and when will they be released?” have yet to be answered. Isn’t the eventual gross of, say, The Women remake heavily dependent on whether or not Warner Brothers gives it the full push as if it were one of its own, or, conversely, dumps it in September when all their “real” fall films are opening at Toronto?
The Rome Film Festival is shaping up to be quite the Coppola family reunion. Francis Ford has long been scheduled to unveil his long-awaited Youth Without Youth at the event; now Variety reports that his wife, Eleanor Coppola, will debut a new documentary there, a follow-up to Hearts of Darkness calledCoda: Thirty Years Later. With mom and dad already on the bill, fest organizers are apparently “hope to get the whole Coppola family, including children Sofia and Roman, onstage” as well.
IFC First Take has acquired two, semi-high-profile projects: Savage Grace, starring Julianne Moore; and Finishing the Game, a “Bruce Lee mocumentary” by Better Luck Tomorrow director Justin Lin. “Because each film sports bankable actors,” writes The Hollywood Reporter’s Gregg Goldstein, “IFC might test whether exhibitors resistant to day-and-date releases will book films also available on VOD.”
Vague “schedule” problems have led Disney to postpone the production and release of their third Narnia movie. Luckily, something called G-Force was standing on the sidelines, waiting to take over the May 1, 2009 release date.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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ThinkFilm has announced 
The Rome Film Festival is shaping up to be quite the Coppola family reunion. Francis Ford has 
