It’s nice to see a movie like JACKASS 2 do so well at the box office.
I am one not usually given to the examination of what numbers ultimately mean for what movie, only when do I think that the discussion of how bad the box office numbers are for this year and what that means to whether the sky is falling do I really give a fig one way or the other, but I am emboldended for the numbers on this movie because I think it represents something more than just men behaving badly.
People will pay to see the funny.
I look at the middling reviews for SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS and compare it to the kind of money it made, for those wondering it didn’t do all that well, coming in behind two Ashton Kutcher flicks and said dudes who embrace homosocialism in a way unseen since the days of Shakespeare, and I feel good that people can pick crap out in a line-up and not show up for it. This isn’t to say that the collective isn’t wrong from time to time. In fact, I can honestly say that I feel good when I’m amazed when pap is allowed to stay atop the box office, anyone remember BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE, but it’s nice when a movie like JACKASS can best the offerings of a Billy Bob and actually can claim to have reaped in more money than any other film in the top 10 with the exception of LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE.
It’s comforting to see that. You can’t always predict which way people are going to go from one weekend to the next, some talking heads would have you believe that predictive modeling is a science, I liken it to the kind of mo-tards that take up my time on newscasts who tell me what the weather is going to be from one day to the next only to have their “predictions” seem about as accurate as me taking a home pregancy test and have it tell me I’m positive.
There is no accuracy in this game. You can predict that some movies will open fairly large, some will open fairly well and some, when you start hearing the bad buzz, will be lucky to crack the top 25.
I know just looking at some who talk about the box office are amazed by the business that OPEN SEASON did and are at a loss to explain how it came in at number one last weekend. I don’t consider myself a Kreskin of any kind, nor am I playing Monday Morning Quarterback, but when you don’t really have anything you can punt your little anklebiters into for an hour and a half for many weeks and then a movie like this comes along I am loathe to say it but you can bet dollars to doughnuts that releasing OPEN SEASON into the waters was like tossing a saltine to a dying prisoner; it was just bound to be consumed rabidly by families.
Further, there is an excellent article written by the New York Times on the not-so-perfect state of animated adventures in the movieplex as of late. It’s informative as it is a cautionary tale about how one should never set the bar too high with kids. I mean, God almighty, I have a 3 year-old who vascillates somewhere picky and downright unagreeable. There’s a certain fiscal threshold where studios shouldn’t be risking any more lucre than they have to in order to ensure big returns. There’s a formula out there for kid flicks for a reason and it has everything to do with the fact that instead of the immovable object and the irresistable force at play you have the adult guardian’s wad-o-cash versus a child’s tantrum tossing begging.
So, it sucks that Kutcher can lay claim to the top two movies, just one more sign of the approaching apocalypse, but, damn, it feels good knowing people will help a movie like JACKASS 2 stay where it belongs. There isn’t much pleasure to be taken out of raw numbers from one week to the next but it’s just nice, however brief, to have a comeuppance.
That all said, I’m in the mood to give away some shit for no other reason than I feel like rewarding some lucky sod who can work a keyboard.
Halloween is coming upon us and I’d like to be the purveyor of good tidings for some person’s holiday of all things spooky and cavity-licious. There really isn’t any other reason why I am giving away a copy of the 25th Anniversary Edition of HALLOWEEN, Mick Garris’ QUICK SILVER HIGHWAY, Robert Hall’s LIGHTNING BUG and Dario Argento’s OPERA. These are sure to pep up any paltry party where horror is necessitated in mass quantities.
You lazy mo-fos don’t have to do anything else other than send in an email with CONTEST in the subject line. This contest is worth entering soley based on the HALLOWEEN DVD as it’s just has a really nice suite of extras that’s surely worth a free email.
Anyway, consider this contest open to whoever and whatever decides to email me at Christopher_Stipp@yahoo.com. Good luck to everyone who enters…
SLEEPING DOG LIE (2006)
Director: Bob Goldthwait
Cast: Melinda Page Hamilton, Bryce Hamilton
Release: September 29, 2006 (Limited)
Synopsis: An impulsive sexual encounter from her past haunts Amy, an otherwise seemingly normal young woman with a bright future and nice-guy fiancé. But her fiancé has suggested that the couple be completely honest and tell each other everything! When Amy finally relents, encouraged to tell the truth by her coworker and mother (neither of whom really knows what she has to disclose), and reveals her secret, all hell breaks loose.
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Prognosis: Positive. Not really counting the Eddie Murphy LP (?!) I bought as a lad when all you could buy were cassettes and vinyl I remember purchasing Bob Goldthwait’s “Meat Bob†on tape and being absolutely mesmerized by the man’s comedy.
I don’t think a lot of people gave Bob the kind of credit he deserved for being wickedly sharp on deconstructing his own public persona and using it to great comedic effect. I still listen to the performance, it’s now on CD, and delight in listening to the kind of funny that gets to me even after all these years. SHAKES THE CLOWN certainly didn’t help his career any, and there was all that disappearing from the public for years, but I’m glad that he’s back to push more buttons even when he could again be pummeled back into obscurity.
I was ready to rail against this trailer, though.
How could you not want to smack people with the “shock and awe†that comes with having a movie that reveals one woman’s predilection for sex with dogs right from the get go?
I sat on my hands. I tried to understand what was at work by going nearly a third of the way through this without saying a Goddamn word about this chick’s propensity for humping canines.
Then I got it. You want people to pay to see this. Ah, yes. So, the first third of this trailer slowly builds people confidences in having them buy into what this woman’s whole deal is about talking honestly within the parameters of a relationship. Everyone would say “Hell yeah, reveal it all to the one you love†only to snap the rug with terrible strength right underneath their presuppositions.
And, to this trailer’s credit, we’re not really told exactly what went down between the dog and this woman. We’re not really shown, either. This is what makes a trailer about dog fucking so PG: you hint to the point of having people connect the dots on their own. Smart. Having an interloper listen in on the private conversation where this admission finally comes out adds a certain stress to what happens next in this couple’s courtship.
Now, while some dudes would have a problem with their girlfriends admitting a brief dalliance with bestiality I see this as one of the best fictions that one could ever drop two people into.
If I did have any issue at all with the trailer here it would be that at the end, at the very end, this film touts its entries into Sundance and Toronto. For a movie like this, and some know about how passionate I am about this thing, it’s downright egregious for Bobcat and Co. not to just come out and put this at the very beginning. This isn’t about pride or boasting or anything else like that but it is a very necessary element to marketing of a film that has to compete with every damn dollar out there. It deserves to pimp itself as a step above its peers and by putting it all the way at the end of the trailer it really does the film a disservice that could be fixed with a “Cut†and “Paste.â€
A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS (2006)
Director: Dito Montiel
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Shia LaBeouf, Chazz Palminteri, Dianne Wiest, Channing Tatumh
Release: September 29, 2006 (Limited)
Synopsis: Dito is a successful writer living in Los Angeles, who is summoned home to Astoria after a 15-year absence when his father becomes seriously ill. Memories of his youth come flooding back as he revisits the old neighborhood, attempts to rebuild a relationship with his father and encounters his ‘saints’–Dito’s few childhood friends who aren’t in prison or dead. As Dito finds himself whisked back into the youthful events that shaped him, an unforgettable cast of characters unfolds to the sweltering heat of summer 1986. These include Laurie, Dito’s childhood sweetheart; Mike O’Shea, a transplanted Scot with an Irish name who dreams of becoming a punk rock musician; Giuseppe, a reckless, destructive and possibly insane member of Dito’s street posse; and the unforgettable Antonio, Dito’s cocky and volatile best friend grappling with an abusive father.
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Prognosis: I’m Interested. Is it manly to admit I’ve got Even Stevens at the top of my Season Pass list on the TiVo?
Perhaps. Perhaps not but I can tell you that there is really something about the abilities of Shia LaBeouf to take pap tween material and mold it into entertaining television. I’m not so sure I’ve seen how he can take adult material, though, and make something out of it. HOLES was good, CHARLIE’S ANGELS was, well, CHARLIE’S ANGELS, and his various other projects haven’t really put him on the map anywhere.
This, though, looks like it could define what he is truly capable of.
Now, while I am not really so sure that leading off the trailer with a pimp review from the New York Times, while it being awfully solid, is such a grand idea when people should at least be exposed to a sliver of footage I think that having Robert Downey Jr., a real sack of potential when he isn’t hitting the sauce or mainlining said sauce, voiceover the beginning moments actually pulls me in. The bass line is pumping, the camera delicately flashes on the multiple faces of those who Downey, ostensibly, grew up with on the street and there is an understanding, immediately, what we’re seeing.
Yes, it does have flashes of adolescent angst of someone who suffers, terribly, at the hands of hoods who love nothing more than to take a baseball bat to someone’s torso for no reason other than the bastardized notions of “face†and “cred†but I am sucked into Shia’s world. A white kid steeped heavily in a minority stew, the trailer effortlessly cuts through exposition and gets to the point: the kid wants to get the hell out of Dodge in a hurry.
“You want to go to Puerto Rico? Go uptown, there’s Puerto Ricans everywhere…â€
The tenant of escape, of getting far away from the problems of urban life, gets summed up effortlessly with a gun blast and a cowering Shia in a shower stall. I get it and we are effortlessly a third of the way through things. With the quick drop that this movie won Best Director at Sundance, excellently stating why someone should care about a movie that hasn’t really been talked about in the mainstream media, this is as good a place as any to transition to Downey Jr. and his role in this movie.
The set-up of Chaz playing the role of the sick father and Robert’s eventual return to the “old neighborhood†isn’t spectacularly original but the montage at the end really sells this movie in terms of its understandability. I’m not confused as to what this movie is dealing with or what I should expect but I’m not so sure I am compelled to pay money to see it. I mean, Shia leaves the city, doesn’t come back, there’s a problem that pulls him back, he has to deal with the people who are still living within the confines of that area, there is a little tension between son and father because of it and, in the end, I guess it’s all going to be a philosophical treatise on the relationships we leave behind and then what happens when we try to reconnect with them.
Not particularly energizing my wallet out of my pants but it seems like a well-crafted flick.
THE QUEEN (2006)
Director: Stephen Frears
Cast: Helen Mirren, Michael Sheen, James Cromwell, Sylvia Syms
Release: October 10, 2006 (Limited)
Synopsis: “The Queen,” an intimate, revealing, often humourous portrait of the British Royal family immediately following the death of Princess Diana, stars Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II, James Cromwell as Prince Phillip, and Michael Sheen as Tony Blair. The film is written by award-winner Peter Morgan and produced by Andy Harries, Christine Langan, and Tracey Seward, and executive produced by Francois Ivernel, Cameron McCracken, and Scott Rudin.
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Prognosis: Negative. What is with our collective fascination of the royals?
I speak not of the crew that took their 1985 team to World Series victory over the Cardinals of St. Louis but of that other crew of characters that consist of wanton infidelity, blissful ignorance of the real world, pale skin and even worse teeth. I mean I was at the Queen’s Jubilee in 2001, right in the heart of London, where you could walk down the main thoroughfares of that city because all the roads were congested with human traffic. It was insane. I could best describe it to people here like it was Disneyland but without the rides and smiling rodents; it was resplendent with tchotchkeys of all varieties, overpriced amenities for those wanting a part of the action and parades like you wouldn’t believe, however.
I still couldn’t understand, though, what the deal is with the exaltation of a governmental body, superficial as it is, that would just as soon subjugate those that think these blue bloods have been ordained by God and I don’t get why I should care about this movie when we start off with the dramatization of Princess Diana’s death. Is this Primetime Live or a reason to spend my money on something worthwhile?
What’s kind of confusing to start things off is that we get the first see some Range Rovers just hanging out in the great wide expanse of English countryside. The same Rover-like cars are then shown driving away from a large manse that is without question in the possession of the old prune in question. Now, when we actually start our narrative the same cars are heading towards the mansion in the middle of the night. This really is a “what the fuck†moment where I question what one had to do with the other. The answer is nothing and it’s confusing to then put together what’s happening when we get real file footage of Princess Diana with some wag waking the Queen up from her pruney slumber to the news she’s dead.
I don’t know why but seeing James Cromwell come out of the Queen’s bedroom is funnier than anything I’ve seen in a long time. I almost expected to hear the theme to the Benny Hill show when he comes out of her highness’ bedroom, trying off his robe; probably in an effort to hide some late night wood.
“Will someone please save these people from themselves…â€
Now, we’re shown that Diana is dead, the people have responded with their public displays of grief, but (collective gasp!) it’s stated that there is a story has yet to be told. I know it’s all very dramatic and serious but it doesn’t feel that way, it doesn’t have the sheen of a movie that cost some company a few million to make. Lifetime Network quality, sure, but when the main thrust of the trailer is trying to get my buy-in it does a woeful job of it because it’s operating at a macro level. There’s no intimacy with what is going to make this story so unique.
Further, by the time we are 2/3rds of the way through this all we have to show for it is that Di is dead, the Queen is acting like a miserable old twat and that the public is at a near frenzy because the shrew won’t make any public statement about the “tragedy.â€
The trailer essentially exits on a whimper, the music feeling forced to be cut off because they are running too long, without so much as a single reason of why this deserves anyone’s attention beyond the sycophants who gladly eat up this governmental window dressing in tabloidal portions.
Director: Marc Foster
Cast: Will Ferrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Queen Latifah, Emma Thompson
Release: November 10, 2006
Synopsis: In STRANGER THAN FICTION, Will Ferrell plays Harold Crick, an IRS Agent whose world is turned upside-down when he begins to hear his life being chronicled by a narrator only he can hear. The Narrator, Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson), a nearly forgotten author of tragic novels, is struggling to complete her latest and best book, unaware that her protagonist is alive and uncontrollably guided by her words. Fiction and reality collide when the bewildered and hilariously resistant Harold hears the Narrator say that events have been set in motion that will lead to his imminent death.
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Prognosis: I think I’d like it but…the rest of America? Not so sure about that.
I am pretty sure that having Will Ferrell run around in his Fruit of the Looms asking for the divine help of Tom Cruise in any kind of situation is worth something. There’s got to be a dollar amount you can put on antics like that.
I am also pretty sure of what happens when you put Will in a serious movie like MELINDA AND MELINDA and WINTER PASSING: money stops flowing like virginal wine out of a spigot.
So, it’s with great difficulty that I’m saying that while having a marquee like Will is wunderbar, after seeing this trailer I am really eager to see this movie which can only spell doom if the studio is hoping for a financial windfall.
Firstly, though, it’s so splendid to just see Emma Thompson kick things off properly in this trailer. She’s been visually absent from films that all it takes is a simple prompting by Queen Latifah who I’m surprised to see as I thought her time is too taken up to tell me to “Gather ’round the good stuff” as it pertains to Pizza Hut pizzas.
The premise is quirky to begin with, don’t think the irony of having Tony Hale from Arrested Development pop up in this comedy is lost to me, but Emma’s voiceover jives with the idea that she is a writer who is working out her book, with the prescience of determining her character’s fate, and having it actually happen to a real man.
“I don’t know how to kill Harold Crickâ€
Almost like ALL OF ME but having tinges of something Charlie Kaufman would write the trailer effectively takes a pretty warped concept and makes it tangible. Will doesn’t seem to be operating from his usual slapsticky comfort zone and I am not sure if this is where people could start to become skittish.
In fact, I would assert that what we are shown of how this situation starts to take control of Will’s life is not that funny in a conventional sense, per se. He becomes wrapped up in this woman’s narrative and it is the story that is being told within the confines of his mind that starts a great “What If†that I don’t believe a lot of people will gravitate toward with their money.
The one segment of the trailer where Will does raise his voice in the way that he’s best known for doing it’s not done out of humor but of genuine frustration that he doesn’t know who or what is going on with him. I think it’s a stretch to assume that this is where the real funny lies but Will’s visit to Dustin Hoffman, a psychologist of sorts, who tells him to keep track of plot details to see if he’s living a comedy or drama is wicked funny.
This is where the trailer really gains momentum going forward to the end of this thing.
Harold begins to take charge of his situation, he studies the moments he hears in his head to see what’s going to happen to him and when we finally get to Emma’s pronouncement that Harold is now caught in a series of events that will lead to his demise it’s this statement, backed up with another Will Ferrell yell to the heavens, that makes you afraid of what comes next.
Will taking the lead in contacting the woman who he finally figures out is the person writing it all, communicating with her, wondering whether she will take him seriously or vise-versa, is one of the more strange and compelling “What ifâ€s that’s been put out there in a while.
The Pretenders’ “Stop Your Sobbing†is a radical choice for a trailer background track but kudos for the person behind this decision. In a time when trailer music ranges from Top 40 to music that peaked on Casey Kasem’s radio show decades ago it’s nice to be challenged with unconventional musical selections.
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