Author: Bob Westal (Page 120 of 265)

Writer guy Bob Westal was literally born in Hollywood and has commented on the worlds of movies, popular culture, politics, and food ever since. His interest in cocktails is more recent, but he made up for lost time with hundreds of “Drink of the Week” blog posts for Bullz-Eye. In addition to writing and editing, Bob also talks a lot.

Midweek movie news

Regular readers might have noticed that I’ve taken a couple of days off, and with the TCM Film Festival kicking off tomorrow night, and some other things possibly brewing, I might not be following my exact usual schedule for the next several days, though I’m sure I’ll be posting stuff, but we’ll have to see.  In the meantime, there’s plenty going on and I’m sure I’ve missed something.

Chloe Moretz smashes face* We eventually did get a clear, but narrow, victor in the weekend box-office battle, but nobody’s too excited about the performance of “Kick-Ass.” The film will make money, $19.8 million is not bad for a $30-40 million dollar movie, and it should help everyone’s career, but I wouldn’t bet on a sequel unless it holds really extremely well and also cleans up in home video. Also, it should be noted that the superhero comedy had a slightly unfair advantage because of its late Thursday night opening getting included in the take — at least I think it was. Steven Zeitchik, who thought the film would break out in a major way, offers a post-not-quite-mortem.

* James Cameron‘s new interview with the L.A. Times will annoy conservative anti-environmentalists and climate deniers as well as fans of contemporary written science fiction. (It’s too complicated and self-referential to make a movie out of, Cameron states, apparently unafraid of the sweeping generalization.) However, “Avatar” fans will be delighted to know that two more movies appear to be in the offing along with that extended August 3-D/Imax re-release. Cameron’s cast and crew will be, I imagine, much less happy to learn that “Avatar 2” will involve water, and lots of it. What is it with this guy and moisture? (H/t the Playlist.)

Titanic 1996

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Who says a trailer has to explain a movie?

For some reason, most of the people who make trailers these days think they have to give you a detailed summary of the film. They’re wrong. A case in point, “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” which I mention in the post below, did extremely well in its limited, eight-theater release this weekend. My curiosity is peaked, but I really don’t have much idea what the film’s about from this trailer, and I like it that way.

This other trailer tells you almost nothing about the actual plot of the movie in question, though it tells you something. The movie did okay.

Family friendly “Dragon” grazes the keister of “Kick-Ass”

We have another apparent photo-finish at the box office this weekend. Despite my confidence Thursday night that “Kick-Ass” would be the top film this weekend and probably come out in the middle-to-high end of the $20-30 million range suggested by all the prognosticators, the film appears to have come just shy of doing either.  For now.
Aaron Johnson and Chloe Moretz in
The “actuals” that will come out sometime tomorrow could change this. However, with an estimate of $19.75 million, the somewhat controversial hyperviolent “hard R” superhero action-black-comedy  is currently within $250,000 of being beaten by the $20 million estimate for the crowd-pleasing, PG-rated 3-D family film “How to Train Your Dragon”. That’s actually still good, if  you can ignore the expectations game.

However much the schadenfreude brigade plays up the gap between expectations and box office reality, the $30 million film from director Matthew Vaughn (a producer earlier in his career) is clearly going to be very profitable for Lionsgate. The man who started his career as Guy Ritchie’s producer and who since has proven himself to be, in my estimation, the vastly better filmmaker (I haven’t seen “Kick-Ass” yet), should be applauded for bringing an action film like this on what is, by Hollywood standards, a very low budget for an action film. I think that is especially so in the home video long haul as the “Kick-Ass” cult will undoubtedly grow, at least among fanboys of all ages. It’ll also be interesting to see if the film develops legs or sinks-like a stone theatrically, as many genre films do. Next weekend will tell that tale.

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