Plant a hood ornament and a car just may sprout from the ground.
Runtime: 30 sec
Archive for May, 2007
Mercury: Tree
Tuesday, May 29th, 2007Strokes – First Impressions of Earth
Tuesday, May 29th, 2007Weekend box office: Depp charge
Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
"I don't like to put too much emphasis on what the opening weekend means." -- Buena Vista senior vice president/general sales manager Chris LeRoy, on "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End"
I love this quote. The only time you will ever -- I mean ever -- hear such words issue from the lips of a Hollywood studio VP is when a movie hasn't performed up to expectations. So what were the expectations for "POTC: AWE"? At 11,000+ screens in 4,362 theaters over the four-day Memorial Day weekend, nothing short of galactic domination.
Instead, the movie made "only" $142 million -- the best Memorial Day opening ever, and one in which one movie took 55% of all ticket sales. Make that $156 million if you factor in the Thursday night preview showings, but $115 million if you're counting only the traditional Friday/Saturday/Sunday weekend.
That three-day take, interestingly, is a good deal less than the $137 million that "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" made in the same span last year, and less than "Spider-Man 3" and "Shrek the Third" made this year. It's possible there are studio suits this morning who are feeling abject failures for having engineered merely the fourth highest three-day opening of all time. Look at it this way, fellas -- you matched the 2006 gross domestic product of the Marshall Islands. There's no place to go but up.
Also bereft this weekend: Teenage girls hoping Elizabeth would somehow end up with Jack Sparrow, Orlando Bloom enthusiasts expecting Will to come through without a scratch, and those looking for narrative continuity. Anyone who understands what freeing Calypso actually accomplished, please send me an e-mail. I tried explaining to my editor but ended up more confused than ever.
Why didn't "POTC: AWE" perform better? (And, again, let's stress that this thing printed money all weekend.) A number of factors; pick the one you like best. Three-quel fatigue after Spidey and Shrek. Pretty good weather over the long weekend (well, not on the Franconia Ridge trail where I was on Sunday when it dumped all over me and the family... but you're not interested in that). A 168-minute runtime that cut into the number of times the film could be shown. And (here's the one I favor) a sense that this series had peaked commercially and zeitgeist-wise with #2, and that #3 would be more (or less) of the same.
Still, add in the international box office for the new "Pirates" and the total through Sunday is $335 million. That brings us up almost to the 2006 GDP levels of Vanuatu.
In other box-office news, "Bug" opened to $3.3 million. Ashley, we hardly knew ye. "Waitress" expanded to 500 theaters and got a nice bump up for a nice little movie. The wonderful Irish musical drama "Once" played well at 20 frames. (Note obscure pun.) And, for pity's sake, the middle-aged-biker comedy "Wild Hogs" washed up at the No. 10 spot like a whale carcass at a beach party. Isn't that thing on DVD already?
More box office whittling at Box Office Mojo and Leonard Klady.
P.S. In my Friday review of "Once," I described Glen Hansard's character as a subway busker. I goofed: Dublin does not have a subway. Now please stop sending me e-mails.
Director Mike Figgis Detained for Threatening to “Shoot a Pilot”
Tuesday, May 29th, 2007Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy, Newsstand
I'm not exactly sure how the word "pilot" came to mean "initial episode of a TV show," but it's definitely a part of the general lexicon by now. "Did you watch that new series called People on an Island?" is what I might ask you, and your response very well could be "Yeah, I watched the pilot but I couldn't get into it." So you understand the word "pilot" in this context, right? Good. Maybe you should get a job at Los Angeles International Airport.It's funny because I'm kind of surprised it hasn't happened before: Director Mike Figgis was going through security at LAX when he was asked the reason for his visit. "I'm here to shoot a pilot," was his response. Obviously he meant "I'm here to shoot the first episode of a TV series that may or may not be picked up for broadcast distribution," but what the immigration official thought he meant was "I'm here to shoot an airplane pilot with a gun." Yikes! The director of Leaving Las Vegas, Timecode and Internal Affairs was then detained for about five hours until immigration officials could get online and figure out that, yep, "pilot" has more than one meaning.
Good thing the immigration officers didn't ask him about his body of work. Figgis' answer might have been "I recently made a huge bomb."Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
PetPunk’s Spring Reel
Tuesday, May 29th, 2007 
PetPunk’s recently updated spring reel is chop full of interesting work. The most evident aspect of it though is the obvious lack of color. This nontraditional approach to a showreel forces the viewer to be more aware of different things, like composition and pattern, instead of being drawn to popping colors. But does their decision to make the reel black and white work, or does it make the original work less interesting?
On a side note, not sure if this is old news or not, but they seemed to have set up some streaming webcams up on their site, one actually giving us a view of the men at work. No picking your noses gentlemen, the world is watching.
Skittles: Chop
Tuesday, May 29th, 2007
A seemingly scrawny school kid manages to split the world in two.
Runtime: 31 sec
Vitus – Trailer
Tuesday, May 29th, 2007 | Vitus - Trailer Director Fredi M. Murer’s moving film VITUS was Switzerland’s official 2006 Academy Awards entry for Best Foreign Language Film and was one of the most successful Swiss films of 2006. VITUS introduces us to an incredibly talented young pianist and actor, Teo Gheorghiu. The film also stars the renowned Bruno Ganz, Julika Jenkins and Urs Jucker. By the age of 12, Vitus (played by real-life piano prodigy Teo Gheorghiu) is a highly gifted musician whose parents have high hopes for him in a career as a classical pianist. The daily pressure of hours of musical practice, his over-protective but well-meaning mother (Julika Jenkins) and his father’s (Urs Jucker) precarious financial situation lead the boy to seek refuge at his eccentric grandfather’s (Bruno Ganz) house. Directed by: Fredi M. Murer Starring: Teo Gheorghiu, Bruno Ganz, Julika Jenkins, Urs Jucker |
Megunica Trailer is up!
Monday, May 28th, 2007Screenwriters’ dinner
Monday, May 28th, 2007Last week, I attended the First Annual WGAw Screenwriters’ Dinner. I’m not sure one should call a first-ever event “annual,” but it was successful enough that it merits a repeat in 52 weeks.
Since screenwriters tend to work alone, there’s not a lot of water-cooler talk on a daily basis. Message boards help to some degree, but WGA events are often the only venues for catching up in person. For example, it had been 23 months since I’d last seen Simon Kinberg. I know because our kids were born the same week.
The event also gave me a chance to meet a lot of writers I’d only known by name — Billy Ray and Jeff Nathanson, to pick two tablemates. Seeing my nametag, Iris Yamashita said she’d just pitched a project as being “Big Fish meets Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” which was flattering. I wanted to point out that she has the Oscar nomination, but we were already being urged to take our seats. I introduced Jessica Bendinger to Robert Towne, even though I didn’t really know Mr. Towne. It felt like the kind of event you could get away with that.
I got roped into recording an interview for a video podcast. If it ever hits the inter-waves, you might notice my hands shaking. I had just arrived, and was incredibly hungry. The mini-pizzas hadn’t made their way over yet.
Cannes Winners
Monday, May 28th, 2007The national cinema of choice right now? Romania. Following the success of Cristi Piui's "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu," Cristian Mungiu's “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” won the Palme d'Or, which was not a shock. What was surprising was Konstantin Lavronenko's being voted best actor for his performance in “The Banishment,” a Russian film directed by Andrei Zviagintsev. “The Mourning Forest” by the Japanese director Naomi Kawase won the Camera d'Or, which is like the second place award.
Best actress went to Jeon Do-yeon for her work in the Korean film “Secret Sunshine,” directed by Lee Chang-dong. Meanwhile, Asia Argento, who appeared to be the toast of the festival, appearing, somewhat notoriously, in three movie's, one of which (Abel Ferrara's "Go Go Tales") has her French kissing a dog. She might be the most fearless woman in the movies.
Julian Schnabel won the directing prize for "The Diving Bell and Butterfly."
The jury this year was an interesting as usual: Maggie Cheung, Sarah Polley, Toni Collette, Maria de Medeiros, Michel Piccoli, Orhan Pamuk, Mario Bellochio, Abderrahmane Sissako, with Stephen Frears presiding. Those deliberations would make an awesome reality show.
