Freddie Mercury of Queen very sadly passed on back in 1991. On the plus side, that meant he never had got to miss the second “Star Wars” trilogy. Ironically, however, some very talented but so far nameless musical types have married Mercury’s most famous composition to those misbegotten prequels. The result is, needless to say, a lot more entertaining than their source material.
H/t Pajiba.
I could have gone in a lot of different and rather obvious directions for the last entry in this series of clips from work-related movies, “Office Space” and “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” being but two of the more obvious possibilities. However, when it comes to productions that really capture the feeling of struggling to get a job in the real world, and then keeping it and balancing it with other commitments, Steven Soderbergh’s deceptively modest “Erin Brockovich” is one of the very few that really seems to get it.
I would have edited this series of clips a lot differently, but it does give a feeling for the movie. (If you remember “Erin Brockovich” at all you’ll know this is NSFW. Actually, if you put up a camera in most offices and then ran it on YouTube, it would probably be NSFW.)
A bonus and a bit more commentary after the flip.
Another Labor Day inspired clip.
It’s rare that a movie about something you’ve personally experienced actually gets something right, but then one thing a lot (but by no means all) filmmakers know well is the movie business. I never worked for directly anyone quite as powerful or as mean-spirited as Buddy Ackerman, but what I did experience was close enough. This (ironically NSFW) scene from George Huang’s “Swimming with Sharks” definitely brings up the old unpleasant goosebumps. Feel free to skip to 00:20.
Yeah, sure, Kevin Spacey is great at this sort of thing, but I tell you that no actor in the world does scared better than Frank “Check Out the Big Brain on Brad” Whaley.
Another Labor Day weekend inspired video clip.
Remember, any job is easy if you have the right tools.
Hey, we’ve got ourselves a modest surprise that diverges substantially from what I wrote back on Thursday night. Though the weekend is still ongoing, apparently, a lot of people didn’t get the memo that “The American” is a rather dry if eye-filling European-set arthouse style thriller, rather than the intelligent but plot-heavy action film a la the original “Day of the Jackal” they might have felt like seeing. That’s what the dreadful D- Cinemascore rating Nikki Finke is reporting would seem to indicate, in any case. Also, George Clooney‘s star power still counts for something. Even La Finke has stopped her bitter attacks on him.
Box Office Mojo reports that the “one last job” thriller about an assassin and gun-maker earned an estimated take of nearly $13 million. Finke has her estimated numbers a bit larger than that, and her guesses about the film’s total take including Labor Day and it’s early opening reflect that. (The estimate she has has the film making a total of 19.2 million.) Assuming all that’s true, it’s just possible that the adult-oriented thriller could outgross the roughly $32 million “Vampires Suck” has made so far, perhaps there is a movie God, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
All of this is not to say that this weekend’s tongue-in-cheek Mexploitation geek fave starring the very cool Danny Trejo, “Machete,” did at all badly on this somewhat underwhelming weekend. It was outgrossed slightly by this weekend’s predicted #1 film, “Takers,” which netted an estimated $11.45 million in its second weekend. It’s $11.3 million really isn’t that bad, however even if it is ranked at #3. I don’t have a budget for the film, but Nikki Finke’s argumentative commenters were throwing around a $25 million figure — a bit high for Robert Rodriguez but quite cheap for a movie with this kind of all-star supporting cast, including Jessica Alba and Robert DeNiro. Considering the way movies like this tend to have a long and healthy life on DVD, that strikes me as a very good start. And that’s not counting the inevitable New Beverly Cinema double-bill with “Black Dynamite.”
“The Last Exorcism,” as predicted, suffered a large 62.5% drop in its second weekend, perhaps largely due to an ending most audience members hated, with an estimate of over $7.6 million. I’m convinced it was the vagueness of the premise that did in this week’s week’s third wide new release, “Going the Distance.” The raunch-infused rom-com came about Justin Long and Drew Barrymore having a long-distance relationship, I guess, wheezed across the finish line at the #5 spot with an estimate of slightly under $6.9 million. Yeah, I know, I wrote “6.9.” Grow up already.
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