I’ve been staying up late a lot lately trying to finish various projects before the holiday lull. I wish I could be as energetic right now at 1:30 a.m. as Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O’Connor were in 1953’s “Singin’ in the Rain.” Of course, they’d just decided to make a musical. More people should do that.
Author: Bob Westal (Page 165 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.
I have to keep this fairly short tonight, but suffice to say that things are going to be very busy over this long Christmas holiday weekend and just how it will shake out is anyone’s guess. I’m certainly not going to try, though I think it’s safe to say the battle for the #1 spot will be between the second weekend of the Fox-released “Avatar” and Guy Ritchie’s action/comedy oriented “Sherlock Holmes” starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law as Holmes and Dr. Watson. It’s getting pretty decent reviews as well, though the Rotten Tomatoes “Top Critics” are split down the middle. Not that that’s likely to mean one less dollar in Warner Brothers’ coffers.
There is another strong commercial contender, it actually opened today, and it’s reviews are anything but decent. I speak of “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel” from Fox, which was excoriated by our own David Medsker and 75% of critics in general. Still, La Finke reports that online sales are unusually strong and one should never underestimate the power of kiddie appeal. At the same time, it goes a lot better when parents don’t leave the theater angry and making a mental note to keep up with their birth control regimen — and Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog” is still relatively fresh and it seems a lot more parent-friendly.
Also, there’s plenty of action in grown-up/awards-movie-ville. Nancy Myers’ rom-com, “It’s Complicated” with Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin, might get a boost from older moviegoers, particularly women, happy to see folks their own age actually still having sex and stuff in movies. However, the Golden Globe nominations it garnered may be a flash in the pan as the critics are not especially impressed. This looks like a case of the Globes living up to their rep and being notably star-struck.
In somewhat fewer theaters, major Oscar contender “Up in the Air,” finally goes into the releasing big leagues for Paramount, expanding into 1,895 theaters according to Box Office Mojo. The Rob Marshall-directed “Nine” is going into 1,412 theaters. The flashy Broadway musical adaptation with a cast that includes Daniel Day Lewis, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Kate Hudson, Nicole Kidman, the eternal sex goddess/great actress Sophia Loren and, for all I know, the reanimated corpses of Greta Garbo and Clara Bow, has long been touted as an Oscar contender but, looking at the disappointed reviews, I seriously have to wonder. A poorly reviewed musical hasn’t been a hit at the Oscars since the badly bloated “Oliver!” and “Hello Dolly!” were released in 1968 and 1969. “Nine” might do okay because of its sexy/smart ad campaign and star power, but it’s hard to imagine a critically unloved Fellini-derived musical having any kind of staying power at the box office and even harder to imagine it having a more than token showing at the Oscars — but then I’m forgetting those ten best picture slots.
Fashion designer Tom Ford’s directorial debut, “A Single Man” starring Colin Firth, has been racking up a lot of acclaim and awards heat, and is opening in 46 theaters. It’s a probable art house hit, and Firth is one of those actors who just keeps getting more interesting.
Finally, Box Office Mojo isn’t saying how many theaters it’s opening in, but Terry Gilliam’s semi-surrealist fantasy, “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus,” is coming out this Friday; it’s the film Heath Ledger was midway through production on when he died suddenly in early 2008, but which was completed by casting the late actor’s friends Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell to play aspects of his character. My review of it is forthcoming so I’ll keep my opinion to myself for now, though it has scored an RT rating of 62%. I understand it’s done okay in Europe, but my strong hunch is that commercially it’s a non-factor here.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/sherlock_holmes_2009/?critic=creamcr
Politically speaking, the aughts have been one long, strange trip. Just think about what we’ve seen this decade: a disputed presidential election in 2000, the largest terrorist attack in world history occurring on U.S. soil in 2001, followed by two wars, the partial erasure of New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast, a congressional changing of the guard, the election of the first African-American president as well as the first with a foreign-sounding name, and the probable passage of a health care package which, depending on your point of view, is either historic, a mystery, a bit of a sham, or the first step on the road to a Stalinist U.S. of A.
Bubbling beneath all of this has been a series of remarkable changes in the world of media — television, movies, radio, and this thing we call the Internet — that have had a fairly profound impact on politics and, therefore, on real life. What follows are my choices for the ten most interesting and/or influential figures in the realm of political media. To try and slightly compensate for my obvious liberal bias (my side is far more facty, I tell ya!), I’ve got five spots each for conservative and liberal media figures respectively and I’ll be alternating and counting down from the bottom.
#5 Conservative
Trey Parker and Matt Stone — It’s possible that most regular viewers of “South Park” have little idea that Parker and Stone are self-described Republicans and I’m sure most of you don’t think of it as that much of a political show, even though rather subtle and often quite penetrating and/or infuriating thoughts about politics run through many, if not most, episodes. That’s because, like all great satirists, they are just as good at poking holes in the pretensions of their own side as that of the opposition, and their social liberalism puts them so at odds with the increasingly extremist faction that now controls much of the Republican party that some could easily mistake them for liberals. Actually, right now it’s easy to imagine them ditching the party indefinitely, along with any number of smart fellow conservatives who have already done so publicly.
Still, conservative and/or anti-liberal messages are often found on episodes of “South Park,” including attacks on such personal friends of the pair as George Clooney. Indeed, as early as 2001, famed blogger Andrew Sullivan described himself as a “South Park Republican.” (Sullivan is now one of those smart conservative ex-Republicans I mentioned above.) And, of course, there was no stronger, and certainly no funnier, attack on the antiwar efforts of the American left than “Team America: World Police” which had marionette versions of Michael Moore, Alec Baldwin, Matt Damon, and Janeane Garofalo working in tandem with North Korean madman Kim Jong-il in his plans to destroy Western civilization.
Since the film’s release in 2004, more doctrinaire conservatives have tried to follow suit with such liberal-bashing comedies as “An American Carol” and “The 1/2 Hour News Hour,” a truly wretched attempt to craft a conservative alternative to “The Daily Show,” but only Parker and Stone have been able to bash liberals and their ideas and make targets like Alec Baldwin love it.
She doesn’t put it quite that way, but so wonders Devindra Hardawar for /Film, where I snagged this trailer for the new remake/reboot/re-something of “The Karate Kid” with Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith. I have to say, I agree with her that, the whole Japanese/Chinese martial arts issue aside, this looks like it might be a nice little movie. Or, maybe, it’s just a nice little trailer. See for yourself.
Confession time: I’ve never seen the original film, I never really had an interest. I’ve always liked Pat Morita, but movies about martial arts where no one is likely to get killed…I dunno. Sort of feels like low stakes. I might make an exception for Mr. Chan, however. The action looks convincing and Jaden Smith seems a lot funnier than Ralph Macchio.
Oh, it’s really not so bad, but I’ve been working the big post below this all day and there’s still a bit more work ahead, so let’s get started and make it snappy.
* Domestic ticket sales for movies this year are expected to top a whopping $10 billion, I guess proving the old adage that the relatively cheap entertainment of movies is a good business to be in tough economic times. If a studio exec takes you to lunch, you have my permission to order an appetizer.
* The Wall Street Journal has anecdotal reports of kids asking Santa for items like socks, school shoes, and eyeglasses. The recession affects everyone. So, out goes the glitz, in comes the chic intimate soirees for Hollywood awards promotion which still sound bloody expensive to me. But, note the item above. Also, it’s not like all that money would go to charity if they weren’t having the parties. It keeps caterers and bartenders working.
* In a move that could impact both the cable TV and movie business in a fairly big way, highly lauded former HBO head Chris Albrecht is joining Starz TV and will oversee new original content there. Nikki Finke has the (self-confirmed) scoop. Albrecht, who had been at HBO for 22 years, lost his job in 2007 when he was arrested after a violent public incident with his girlfriend, which he blamed on a relapse in his recovery as an alcoholic. La Finke says his personal problems are behind him; I’m certain the Starz folks think that’s true.
* “X-Men” movie fans will want to check out this interview with Bryan Singer. After seeing “Avatar,” he’s contemplating whether or not to do his “Jack, the Giant Killer” in 3-D.
* Anne Thompson has some interesting, if somewhat in-the-weeds, details on the fall out of the Dreamworks/Paramount divorce.
* There’s an old joke along that lines of “that movie wasn’t released, it escaped!” Well, apparently the new Kevin Costner supernatural thriller is being given a token release that’s practically a state secret. So says the Playlist. I’m not convinced he’s washed up, though I suppose his leading man days could be more or less behind him and his character actor days ahead of him — but another old joke, updated: the four stages of an actor’s career. “Who’s Kevin Costner?” “Get me Kevin Costner!” “Get me a young Kevin Costner! “Who’s Kevin Costner?”
For a contrasting, somewhat NSFW, point of view, see below.
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