Month: June 2010 (Page 16 of 17)

“Shrek Forever After” to live up to its name?

Shrek Forever After Quite possibly, if three weeks constitutes “forever.” The final installment of the CGI animation series was considered a fairly major disappointment in its first week, earning a relatively anemic amount just under $71 million, tens of millions less than prior entries. However,  “Shrek Forever After” has shown decent staying power, indicating that the relatively strong reviews this time around might be reflective of something that actually matters to audiences. If we are to believe jolly Carl DiOrio, it is once again the probable box office champion. Indeed, DiOrio expects the grosses to be between $25 and $30 million, which could easily double almost all of the four, count ’em, four major new releases coming out this week, assuming his lowish guesses for the other films are right.

To a lesser extent, the second week of the widely hated “Sex and the City 2” is also a contender for third place according to DiOrio — in his video, he doesn’t mention it in writing — but the Numbers see things quite a bit differently. I’d personally expect a bigger than average drop-off from it’s unimpressive debut simply because I get the feeling that hardly anyone liked it much, perhaps not even the franchise’s biggest fans.

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Met Them at the Greek — a press day chat with Russell Brand, Jonah Hill, Rose Byrne and Nicholas Stoller of “Get Him to the Greek”

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If you saw “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” — and I hope you have as its one of the stronger comedies to be made over the last several years — you’ll likely have noticed the strong comic chemistry between British comedy sensation Russell Brand as three-quarters insane, recovering addict rock star Aldous Snow and Jonah Hill (“Superbad“) as a resort waiter and somewhat overly devoted fan of Snow’s. Well, you’re not the only one, and so we have the somewhat slapdash, sometimes brilliant, and ultimately winning new comedy, “Get Him to the Greek,” which once again brings us Brand as Aldous Snow, who, since the events of “Sarah Marshall” has suffered a failed marriage to rocker Jackie Q (Rose Byrne), had a seven-year old son, and removed the “recovering” from his addiction — kind of impressive since “Sarah Marshall” was only two years ago.

Nevertheless, having fallen headlong off the wagon, Snow needs help arriving on-time and semi-cognizant for an important TV appearance, a sound check, and a special comeback performance at L.A.’s Greek Theater. The task falls to ambitious young record company assistant Aaron Green (Hill, playing a different character than in “Sarah Marshall”), a huge fan of Snow’s in a sweet but rocky relationship with his improbably adorable doctor girlfriend (Elizabeth Moss of “Mad Men“). Frequently vomit-stained hijinks ensue as Green and Snow barely survive a number of unfortunate events, including a nearly apocalyptic visit to the set of “The Today Show,” one of the most truly mad Las Vegas sequences in film history, and the kind of freaky three-ways that would make most porn producers blanch. It’s all wrapped up with the sort of good-hearted traditional morality which reminds us that the producer is the Walt Disney of male-centric, R-rated comedies, Judd Apatow.

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RIP William A. Fraker

Via Anne Thompson comes word of the passing of director of photography William A. Fraker. Fraker wasn’t one of the biggest names in cinematography of the later 20th century, but he had a definite knack for atmosphere and direct storytelling, and wasn’t afraid to take on highly diverse and unusual projects. His CV included everything from “Tombstone,” “Vegas Vacation” and “War Games” to such ultra-culty projects as Ralph Bakshi’s “Coonskin,” Theodore Flicker’s spy-satire “The President’s Analyst,” Curtis Harrington’s “Games,” and the underrated musical biopic “American Hot Wax.”  Of course, he also worked on a couple of bonafide sixties mega-blockbusters, the ur-action cop movie, “Bullitt,” and the horror masterpiece that still reverberates whether any of us likes it or not, “Rosemary’s Baby.”

Below are some clips which show what a versatile director of photography like Mr. Fraker can do, starting with the obvious, which really shows that Fraker knew his way around shadows.

More after the flip.

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“Yes, yes I remember, I had lasagna.”

It’s never been a secret that the Zucker-Abraham-Zucker parody classic, “Airplane!,” was largely inspired by a not-that-frequently seen 1957 disaster flick called “Zero Hour!.”  Audiences were, however, familiar with countless other similar films that combined possibly immanent death with various types of melodrama. The definitely included the then-recent series of hugely successful airborne movie suspense-soaps that started with 1970’s “Airport.” It may have helped that “Zero Hour!” had been co-written by Arthur Hailey and “Airport” was based on a best-seller by Hailey.

Still, having never seen “Zero Hour!,” I had no idea just how close the two movies could be until I saw the following. Shirley Surely, you’ll see the resemblance.

Great work, someone. A huge h/t to /Film.

We interrupt this movie news blog…

For a day of trailers and suchlike frivolity. My excuse reason is that, other than the unveiling of the movie costume for Captain America at AICN, or Anne Thompson noting that James Cameron has put in his two-cents on undersea robotic technology re: the Gulf of Mexico oil spill (how could the feds keep him away?), it’s looking like a pretty damn slow movie news day. Also, I’m got some other stuff to catch up on that I think some of you might like. Watch this space.

So, courtesy of Latino Review, here’s one of this week’s upcoming new releases. Produced by the recently self-disenhobbited Guillermo del Toro, directed by Canada’s Vincenzo Natili (“Cube”), and starring a more grown-up looking and therefore more beautiful than ever Sarah Polley and Adrien Brody, this buzz on “Splice” has been good. It sure looks to be a clever little science-fiction and horror spin on the Frankenstein model.  This extreme-gore-phobe who nevertheless loves a good horror flick is happy to note that its MPAA R-rating, is for “disturbing elements including strong sexuality, nudity, sci-fi violence and language.”  Those are a few of my favorite things. I mean who can resist “language.” Anyhow, take a look.

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