Archive: July 2009 (1-10 of 30)

Jul 30 2009 03:29 PM ET

'Up' and Pixar: Who's afraid of animated movies?

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Categories: Commentary, Misc., Pixar, Up!

What do Up, Coraline, Waltz with Bashir, Persepolis, and WALL-E have in common? Here’s a count of three:

1. They’re some of the most thrilling films of the past few years, titles I enthusiastically recommend to anyone in search of the good stuff.

2.They’re all made using techniques of animation.

3. At some point they’re each likely to provoke the reaction,  ’Oh, I don’t like animated movies.’ Or, ‘my husband won’t go to an animated movie.’ (I heard this one again just the other day.) Or, ‘I thought it was for kids.’

So then I go, ‘No no no, these are deep, engrossing movies with important ideas and characters to care about!’ I cite The Simpsons as one of the late 20th century’s greatest cultural achievements. I talk up the technological sophistication and visual grandeur of the medium. I urge the dubious husband to man up and try Up.

Then I despair, go home, and watch South Park, The Simpsons, and SpongeBob SquarePants.

Do you know anyone among the anti-animation population? Are you one of the animation resistant? Will you please explain why? While you think up a good excuse, here’s a classic– one of the pithiest, funniest short animations from the prehistoric pre-Pixar days of 1963:

Jul 30 2009 02:06 PM ET

Box office preview: 'Funny People' likely to top charts

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Categories: Box Office

Funny-People_lJudd Apatow has become a household name thanks to his past two outings: Knocked Up and The 40-Year Old Virgin. But where both comedies went on to become $100 million+ box office successes, his latest endeavor, Funny People, is much more of a wild card. The R-rated flick still features some of Apatow’s unique brand of comedy, but hidden within is the downer story of a sad clown battling a fatal disease. The upshot: Adam Sandler is the star. The film’s sure to open at No. 1. How it holds on will be anyone’s guess.

1. Funny People: $35 million

While Virgin bowed to $21 million with an unknown Steve Carrell at the center and Knocked Up pulled in $30 million with newcomer Seth Rogen, Funny People has giant movie star Adam Sandler leading the charge. But the comedy pro is leaving his PG comfort zone and the results when he does so are never certain. Prognosticators have this film opening all over the map. I’m going with $35 million. Sandler and Apatow could prove to be a very formidable combination, even with a close to 2 1/2 hour run time.

2. G-Force: $17 million

Those covert guinea pigs proved to be a box office hit this last weekend at the movies. While Fox’s Aliens in the Attic will take away some of its power in round two, the movie’s unlikely to fall more than 50% for the frame. Pretty impressive that animated guinea pigs will cross $50 million after less than ten days of release.

3. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: $15 million

Potter bows on IMAX theaters this frame, which will surely help cushion its drop in its third weekend. The movie has already grossed $221 million, more than its predecessor at the same time in its release pattern. If it maintains its momentum, Half-Blood Prince could hit $300 million by the end of its domestic run.

4. The Ugly Truth: $13.5

This Katherine Heigl-Gerard Butler update on the age-old conundrum of man/woman incompatibility surprised everyone last weekend with its opening take of $27.6 million. Turns out moviegoers like and want more romantic comedies, especially the R-rated ones. Expect a drop of around 50%, which would be quite a feat considering how critics hated the film.

5. Aliens in the Attic: $13 million

This PG-rated low-budget comedy originally titled They Came From Upstairs should open decently. From director John Schultz (The Honeymooners), the movie centers on a group of teenagers, including Ashley Tisdale, who must protect their vacation home from aliens residing in the attic. Kevin Nealon, Doris Roberts, and Tim Meadows co-star.

Jul 30 2009 08:35 AM ET

"We went too far!": 'Project Greenlight' graduate Marcus Dunstan on his incendiary new horror movie 'The Collector'

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Categories: Comic-Con, Film

the-collector-20091Writer-director Marcus Dunstan loves to set himself on fire for the camera. Well, perhaps “loves” isn’t quite the right word. But he sure does it a lot. Dunstan roasted his own flesh on three separate occasions while making student films and he did it again for home invasion horror-thriller The Collector, his directorial debut which opens tomorrow. “There’s a scene where we needed to have a zippo lighter burn a character’s hand” says Dunstan, 34. “I didn’t want to hurt the actor and I didn’t have a good enough fake hand, so we burned mine. You’ll see the hairs curl up and you’ll the skin start to smoke. And that’s me!”

Dunstan’s introduction to Hollywood was, appropriately, enough a trial-by-fire. His script Feast, which he penned with writing partner Patrick Melton, was turned into a movie on the third season of the throw-a-bunch-of-people-together-and-see-if-they-can-make-a film reality show Project Greenlight. ”I was working at a retirement home during the day and then at Blockbuster until two in the morning” he says of his pre-Greenlight life. “All of a sudden, you get a phone call: ‘Hey, remember that horror script? We’re gonna make it!’ The negative part is you do sign a document that allows them to portray you in a way that’s not necessarily how things go all the time. But it was really a golden ticket story.”

the-collector_lIndeed, Dunstan and Melton have since written two Feast sequels and three Saw movies as well as the hyper-violent Collector, a home invasion horror movie with a twist. “There’s a young man named Arkin (Josh Stewart) who befriends families moving to country homes.” explains Dunstan. “His true intention is to case the home and then, on the first weekend the family is gone, rob them. On this night, he discovers, to his horror, that the family never made it out of town. They’re chained up in the basement and they’re being hurt and killed by a predator far more vicious than himself. It culminates in a brutal war. It’s primal. We just hope people can make it through.”

Not everyone has. The writer-director says at the recent Comic-Con one couple fled a screening after just ten minutes: ”The girlfriend was crying and saying, ‘I just can’t! I just can’t!’  It was in her best interest to go. Because that was when the movie was at a three. 40 minutes in we jack it up to nine. And it ultimately finishes somewhere at about 19.” Dunstan says it took four visits to the MPAA to secure an R-rating but that, in the end, their notes proved beneficial to the final result. “I think we went too far” he admits. “The MPAA brought us back to a point where it maintains all of the impact,  and now it lands even more real. The gore we ended up cutting out only amounted to about seven seconds. But it was frames here and there that really went beyond the realm of good taste.”

Jul 29 2009 07:01 PM ET

'The Hurt Locker' and its secret weapon: The return of John Wayne

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Categories: Jeremy Renner, John Wayne, The Hurt Locker

“Is that you, John Wayne?”

So smirks Matthew Modine’s Private Joker in Full Metal Jacket, Stanley Kubrick’s great Vietnam film — and the movie that, more than any other (at least, in its combat-centered second half), casts a stylistic shadow over the hair-trigger raggedy-existential look and mood of Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker. Bigelow, like Kubrick, unfurls her potent and gripping war movie in a desolate trashed landscape of urban detritus, full of jagged zooms and off-kilter angles, where nothing — not God or fate, not your fellow soldiers — can ever truly protect you. In Full Metal Jacket, Joker mocked the very notion of “John Wayne,” because what Wayne represented was the kind of solid, white-bread American heroism that Vietnam had exposed as an anachronism — a Big Lie. The chaos of Vietnam, the movie implied, didn’t breed any more John Waynes. It bred terror and madness: borderline sociopaths dressed as soldiers. READ FULL STORY »

Jul 28 2009 05:29 PM ET

'The Ugly Truth': Katherine Heigl and women behaving badly

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Categories: Misc.

Yes, Owen reviewed the movie and shared his thoughts about chick flicks in this space just the other day. But indulge me: How many women did it take to coarsen The Ugly Truth, a soul-crushing mainstream romantic comedy in which Katherine Heigl plays an adult who is competent enough to work as a television producer but utterly incompetent at being a single woman who enjoys the success she’s earned?

Well, for starters, the slate of producers includes Heigl and her mother, Nancy Heigl: Mother and daughter were apparently fine with the long, embarrassing scene in which the star, as an uptight, controlling lonely lady named Abby, wears novelty panties equipped with a vibrator operated by remote control. Seated at an important work-related dinner with her bosses when the joystick falls into the hands of an oinky boy at the next table (he doesn’t know what the buttons do, just that they need to be pushed), Abby’s involuntary, jerking sexual spasms become the source of great, smutty hilarity.

Both Heigls obviously signed off on the notion that although Abby keeps a checklist of what she thinks she wants in a classy man, the guy who really knows how to untwist her knickers is a graduate of the guys-just-want-to-get-laid school of cartoon manliness; he teaches her to be a better woman! And the concept obviously passed muster among the three women credited as screenwriters, as well as the women in charge of film editing, production design, casting, costumes, make-up, and set decoration.

The depressing reality is, The Ugly Truth wouldn’t have gotten made without the say-so of  the influential woman who heads the major studio that released it.

If this rare critical mass of  female talent and power can’t — or won’t — come up with a more intelligent, self-respecting, appealing mass-market romantic comedy that reflects life as reasonable men and women really know it, then I don’t know that even a wise Latina woman like Sonia Sotomayor can help despairing feminists like me.

I think I’ll go watch Humpday again–an indie comedy that’s actually sexy, raunchy,  funny, feminist, and wise. True, Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler are nowhere around on screen to draw a crowd. But neither is the feeling that I, as a moviegoer, am being treated like a sucker.

Jul 27 2009 03:18 PM ET

Comic-Con: Peter Jackson's rebel sell

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Categories: Comic-Con, Peter Jackson

It would be hard to conceive of an entertainment event more fervently, unabashedly mainstream than Comic-Con. The once-marginal, now-supersize confab of giant movies, giant television shows, and giant comic books features appearances by some of the hottest movie stars on the planet, as well as several of the most popular and generationally revered filmmakers. So I thought it was an ironic moment, to put it mildly — at once deeply sincere and fascinatingly shrewd — when one of those supernova directors, Peter Jackson, got up on Friday afternoon and told a crowd of 6,500 fans, “I wish you could just take the amount of energy in here, bottle it, and give it to Hollywood executives to drink.”

Man, those stodgy Hollywood executives! Those party poopers! If only they would get on board the Comic-Con love train!!

Casting the suits of Tinseltown as uptight bad guys who need an energy-drink boost of enthusiasm is rarely, if ever, an unpopular thing to do. Especially if, in the same breath, you’re giving props to all the T-shirted fanboys and fangirls in the room, casting their enthusiasm as a kind of cool maverick spirit-of-the-people insurrectionary fervor. It’s a fans’ world, you see — the executives just live in it, or (as Jackson implied) stand in the way of it.

The reality, however, is that if you had to choose one single group of people who have been responsible, more than any other, for the transformation of Hollywood into a fantasy-mad, action-jammed, special-effects-dominated comic-book dream factory — the sort of place, in other words, where Comic-Con can be what it is, and where Comic-Con royalty like Peter Jackson and James Cameron can reign…well, that group would have to be the executives who designed and rule the movie industry in the blockbuster age. Those executives purchased a lifetime supply of that fantasy-mania energy drink a long time ago, and they have never, ever stopped imbibing it. And that makes it a flattering notion indeed that the happy hordes who gather at Comic-Con are engaged not just in a collective act of enthusiasm, but a ritual of rebellion.

Jul 26 2009 01:04 PM ET

Box office Report: 'G-Force' beats 'Ugly Truth' and 'Potter' with $32.2 million

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Categories: Box Office, Movie Biz

g-force_lNeither the magic of Harry Potter nor the combined star power of Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler was enough to keep a crew of wise-cracking guinea pigs from scurrying to the top of the box office this weekend. Disney’s family comedy G-Force, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and featuring the voices of Nicolas Cage, Will Arnett, and Penelope Cruz as a team of world-saving rodents, made an estimated $32.2 million in its debut. Despite opening hot on the heels of the one-week old Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the animation/live action hybrid pic was a hit with young audiences, pulling 55 percent of its viewers from the under-18 crowd.

But Potter’s box office magic hasn’t worn off just yet: The series’ sixth installment landed in the number two spot its second weekend with $30 million, bringing its total to $221.8 million. After just 12 days in theaters, Half-Blood is already the fifth biggest hit of the year domestically, not to mention overseas, where the powerhouse has raked in an additional $236 million.

There was plenty for adults to enjoy at the box office, too. The Ugly Truth, a raunchy R-rated rom-com that pits Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler in a battle of the sexes, scored an impressive $27 million bow, a career best for both Heigl and director Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde).

The weekend’s other wide release, Warner Bros’ creepy Orphan — starring Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga — pulled in $12.8 million from an audience that was 55 percent female.

Lower down on the chart, Fox Searchlight’s (500) Days of Summer (at number 11 with $3 million) is still building momentum. The quirky rom-com posted a hefty $19,176 per-site average and a 95 percent increase over its debut last weekend.

More box office news:
‘G-Force’ wins Friday box office with $11.5 million
Box office preview: ‘Harry Potter’ likely to hold off newcomers
Harry Potter’s ‘Half-Blood Prince’ becomes box office king

Jul 25 2009 02:46 PM ET

'G-Force' wins Friday box office with $11.5 million

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Categories: Box Office, Movie Biz

Never doubt Jerry Bruckheimer’s Midas touch at the box office. After all, G-Force — his 3-D kiddie film about guinea pigs (that’s right, guinea pigs!) — earned the top spot at the box office on Friday with $11.5 million, beating the predicted winner Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The boy wizard was also one-upped by the Katherine Heigl rom-com The Ugly Truth, which snagged $10.8 million. On the bright side, Potter‘s $9.3 million third-place finish for the day managed to push it past the $200 million mark, finishing at $201.1. It is the fifth film to surpass that milestone this year. Be sure to check back tomorrow for full weekend results.

Jul 25 2009 01:29 PM ET

Chick flicks: What do women really want from them?

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Categories: Chick Flicks, The Ugly Truth

It’s a movie conversation I’ve had dozens, if not hundreds, of times, quite often in the halls of EW. A woman will ask me if I’ve seen the chick flick that’s about to come out that weekend; I’ll say yes. She’ll ask me what I thought of it, and I’ll say, I didn’t care for it much. (I don’t always say that, of course; I’ve been known to enjoy a few chick flicks in my time. But more often than not, I’ll probably cough up some variation on…not very good.) And then, almost inevitably, she’ll respond with a conspiratorial smile and a variation on the line: “Well, that movie isn’t really for you!”

For a long time, I confess I bristled at that response. I’d think, “Come on! Do you really believe a man can’t like a romantic comedy?” But of course, I wasn’t getting it — I really wasn’t. It took me years to figure out what my female questioner was really saying. Which was: This movie isn’t for you not because men don’t like romantic comedies, but because they don’t like bad romantic comedies.

And women — let’s be honest — do. In fact, I’d wager to say that the cheese factor in a romantic comedy is quite often its secret ingredient. It’s part of what makes romcoms such munchy, fun, guilty-pleasure comfort food.

Take The Ugly Truth. It got horrible reviews (most of them a bit too harsh, if you ask me), but on Friday it racked up $10.7 million at the box office, on the way to a potential weekend gross of roughly $30 million, making it the umpteenth example of a chick flick that woos its core audience a lot more effectively than it does reviewers. Yet right now I’m not so interested in the usual, boring fan/critic audience/elitist disconnect. What I want to know is: How many women went to see The Ugly Truth because they expected it to be terrific? And how many went expecting it to be the cheesy-tacky, horndog-caveman-meets-classy-Barbie cartoon it is, yet almost welcoming the mediocrity?

As that chick-flick goddess Carrie Bradshaw might put it: Are chick flicks good because they’re not good for you? Is the key to what makes a chick flick good…that it’s sort of bad?

Jul 24 2009 08:03 PM ET

Exclusive: Robert Downey Jr. signs on opposite Zach Galifianakis in Warner Bros. comedy 'Due Date'

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Categories: Film, Movie Biz

The Hangover director Todd Phillips has just signed Robert Downey Jr. to star opposite his Hangover scene-stealer Zach Galifianakis in the comedy Due Date, which could begin filming as early as the fall. While the film has not yet been greenlit by Warner Bros., the studio is close to pulling the trigger, and bringing Downey on board will certainly accelerate the pace. The project centers on an expectant dad, to be played by Downey, and his unlikely travel companion (Galifianakis), who race cross-country in hopes of making it home in time for the birth of his first child. (Think Planes, Trains and Automobiles with Downey in the straight-man Steve Martin role.) Due Date was written by Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland, with a revision by Adam Sztykiel. Warners would ideally like to release the film next summer, taking a similar box office route to The Hangover, which has now grossed more than $240 million.

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