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 wonder if that estimated $37.5 million would have been any less, or more, if “Inglourious Basterds” included a scene like the one below tfrom 1977’s “Soldier of Orange,” a fact-based tale about the impact of World War II on a group of promising Dutch students. And, no, it’s not “Brokeback Nazis” or anything of the kind…or at least that’s not how I remember the breakthrough film from Holland’s Paul Verhoeven who certainly wouldn’t be afraid of a little gay subtext or text, so who knows. It’s been awhile.
Verhoeven, of course, eventually moved stateside and went on to have one of the more interesting Hollywood careers we’ve seen (except for “Robocop,” I’m not a fan, not at all…but that could change; I still haven’t seen “Showgirls”!). Sorry, no subtitles you’ll just have to figure the content of the discussion between a very young Rutger Hauer and Derek de Lint.
Either the Weinstein Company did an extremely good job of managing expectations or box office prognosticators simply underestimated the potential of a director/brand name with a strong suit for entertaining a large swath of the moviegoing public, a premise with fairly proven guy appeal (revenge + WWII), and the additional gravy of an A-lister in a juicy, semi-lead role. In any case, for the second time in as many weeks, a very well-reviewed genre film has significantly over-performed and “Inglourious Basterds” has raked in an exceedingly healthy $37.6 million, say the box office estimates promulgated by THR, Nikki Finke, Variety, Box Office Mojo, etc.
Concerns which I brought up last time that the latest from Quentin Tarantino might be too cinema-esoteric for mainstream audiences have apparently proven to be a non-issue, at least for weekend #1. It’s outstanding foreign performance totaling $27.5 million is no surprise at all, especially given the subject matter and Tarantino’s choice — which almost certainly made his job harder — to film the movie in several different languages rather than opting for the traditional mid-Atlantic or vaguely nation-specific accents we usually see in American-shot international tales. These are both, by the way, significant financial personal bests for Tarantino. Of course, that’s not “Transformers” numbers, but people will actually still likely be watching this one twenty years from now and probably longer, which means it will be making money for the putatively on-the-edge Harvey Weinstein and Universal for that time as well. The same is also probably true in re: Tristar and Sony for this week’s #2 performer and that other transnational “well reviewed genre film” I mentioned above, “District 9.” The South Africa-set, politically charged violent sci-fi action piece brought in $18.9 million for a drop of just under 50% from last week, as there proves to be a market for combining a certain amount of brains with violent brawn. That’s even more impressive given the stiff competition from “Basterds” for largely the same audience.
Another clip inspired by “Inglourious Basterds.” This brief sequence from “Casablanca” is one of my favorite scenes from any movie. Here is World War II in microcosm as the Paul Henreid’s heroic Victor Laszlo and the employees and customers of Rick’s Cafe Americain take on Conrad Veidt’s Nazi Colonel Strasse and Claude Rains’ Vichy-regime opportunist, Captain Renault, the only way they can.
One thing to consider about just why this scene remains so powerful is that very many of the actors here, including the German-born Veidt, whose first wife was Jewish, were themselves refugees from World War II-era persecution.
A series of clips inspired by guess which movie, starting with my favorite sixties war flick, Robert Aldrich’s brilliant, deeply cynical “The Dirty Dozen.” Here, mega-man-among-men Lee Marvin gets his first look at his new charges and shows John Cassavettes a little tough love.
A few last minute items as the the inglourious weekend gets seriously underway.
* If the movie world had a “Friday news dump” the way they do in D.C., the news that Martin Scorsese’s Dennis Lehane adaptation, “Shutter Island,” has been moved from November of ’09 to February of ’10 might be so handled. No such luck for Paramount as Nikki Finke, Anne Thompson and Screenrant and pretty much every two-bit blogger on the ‘net, including me, has something to say. This is not the first promising film to be so switched. “The Wolf Man” was also shunted by Universal from the traditionally good-movie rich fall to the less auspicious late winter.
Finances are obviously at the root, but speculation is rife on how the move might have been influenced by the Academy’s recent switch to ten awards annually. In any case, I tend to buy at least two of Nikki Finke’s reasons — a simple delay to spread out the financial cost of marketing the film around during tough economic times (perhaps with the hope of a better 2010) and the fact that star Leonardo DiCaprio wouldn’t have been able to promote the film this autumn. Considering they had people already fairly worked about the film, it’s a definite sign of some fragility, I’d say.
* Will the Twitter effect make movies better? Is it even real? Michael Sragow has a decent, yet frustrating, article on the ongoing topic. (H/t Anne Thompson.)
* After making one deal to direct an extremely ill-advised possible “Battlestar Galatica” re-reboot, Bryan Singer has also signed on to do a remake of John Boorman’s King Arthur epic, “Excalibur.” I love John Boorman’s work in general and also tales of chivalry and swordplay, yet I kind of hate (or at least can’t sit through) the original film, which many love but I find unspeakably turgid. So, I guess I’m open-minded about what Singer will do with it. Can almost only be an improvement for me. Of course, neither of these films may ever actually happen. Bryan Singer’s next film is expected to be “Jack, the Giant Killer.”
An interesting note about the 1962 movie version of the fairy tale (one no one ever bothered to tell me…I always thought it was another name for “Jack and the Beanstalk”). Many musicals have had their songs removed to be released in non-musical versions over the years, this is one of the very few where a producer attempted to turn it into a musical after the fact.
* And because everyone else is giving it to you, I might as well also serve up the trailer for Michael Moore’s new “Capitalism: A Love Story.” It made me laugh but of Christopher Campbell, whose favorite words lately seem to be “dated” and “derivative” (but not “delightful” or “delovely”) and his crew of usual suspects mostly think it disappoints. Do these guys ever like anything? Campbell never seems to. In comments, JoblessInTampa has some choice words for the Eastern film geek elites on the issue of being out-of-step.
