I’ve been pretty negative about the prospect of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Biutiful” in the past — and it’s still not a movie I’m particularly excited about seeing, even with a supposedly amazing performance by Javiar Bardem — but this official trailer is extremely well done.
No doubt we’ll be hearing a bit about this movie at Oscar time at least in regards to Bardem, whether I like it or not. I just wish I could type “Iñárritu” without copying and pasting it from somewhere else.
Back on Thursday night, we were talking about a possible $30 million or more for the latest from the usual gang of self-declared prankster-daredevil idiots, “Jackass 3D.” Well, one quick look at the Box Office Mojo’s chart will show you that it turned out to be an estimated $50 million. Considering the film only cost $20 million, that’s a pretty great start, even with a rather large possible second week attendance crash.
No doubt a lot of “Jackass”-generated cash for Paramount — a new record for this time period, though with constant inflation of movie tickets, even in a stagnant economy, I’m never too impressed by these constantly broken records — comes directly from the 3D bump. It seems clear that the format can still make a big difference for the right movie, and this is obviously a special case. Regular readers know I was born without the gene that makes people enjoy the feeling of being grossed out, but even I get that if seeing something, or someone, squirt out of an orifice in 2D is hilarious, then watching it/him practically fly into your lap in 3D must be completely hysterical. The only fly in the stinky ointment here is that inevitable R-rating. I can only imagine how many younger, mostly male, teenagers and tweens are trying to figure out how they can scam their way into a theater (and the correct glasses) or begging older relatives and/or paying neighborhood winos to take them.
Another scene honoring an inductee into Bullz-Eye’s Director’s Hall of Fame, Class of 2010, this time looking at my one of my choices for Stanley Kubrick‘s greatest films, 1957’s “Paths of Glory.” One of the greatest visceral depictions of the horror of war ever made.
A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later. — Stanley Kubrick
In honor of the new class of fine filmmakers selected by the film writers of our mothership site, we start with a scene from the movie my colleague, Jason Zingale, accurately selected as Quentin Tarantino‘s most underrated.
Be forewarned that, typically enough for Mr. Tarantino, this scene — which features a brief appearance by the late Tony Curtis via TV — contains lots of NSFW language. In particular, Samuel L. Jackson as murderous arms dealer Ordell Robbie uses enough n-words here that some took umbrage — perhaps because it showed he hadn’t been dissuaded when Denzel Washington gave him a talking to about using the word on the set of 1995’s “Crimson Tide.” One difference: in Tarantino’s earlier films, he has low-life white criminals using the word, possibly accurate but definitely on the edge of acceptability in mainstream films, here he has low-life African-American crooks using the word, more or less de rigeur in the nineties. Personally, I doubt I could justify changing a single word here in any case.
Come to think of it, I don’t think there’s been a single n-word in a Tarantino film since 97’s “Jackie Brown.” Denzel Washington, however, did use the word repeatedly (though with an “a” instead of an “er” on the end) as an unsavory copper, and won an Oscar for it, in 2001’s “Training Day.”
