There is truly no end to the number of routes to Zombieville and I’ve got two vague teasers to prove it. First, courtesy of Dread Central, an Israeli zombie flick. As if the Middle East didn’t have enough intractable problems.
And here’s an amusing behind-the-scenes trailer via Cinematical featuring Penn Jillette for the first movie I’ve heard of with, yes, cannibal zombie little people, though you won’t see any actual ravenous small folk in it.
Judd Apatow produces with his “Freaks and Geeks” cohort, Paul Feig, directing. The ever-controversial Kristen Wiig stars and cowrites with actress Annie Mumolo.
Regular readers know that I’m a fan of Apatow. I’m also generally well disposed toward most of the cast, Wiig included. (Though I find the quality of the vast majority of the writing on SNL these days kind of appalling, and she’s involved with that.) However, based on this trailer, despite precisely two funny moments, my reaction to the thought of seeing this movie is in line with Jon Hamm’s reaction to the thought of attending that wedding.
Remakes are in the movie news as usual. There’s not much more to say than a new iteration of John Woo’s classic international breakthrough, “The Killer,” and the fun but entirely non-classic caper flick “Gambit” are on the way.
The news on the latter is that this time the players are, in a switch from usual remake practice, a bit more mature than in the original. Cameron Diaz, who really needs to shine in something, and habitual award nominee Colin Firth, who’s doing just fine, will star. The twisty-turny tale is going forward with a years-old screenplay by the Coen Brothers, no less.
The setting has also been switched from Hong Kong to Texas and everyone will presumably be playing more or less their own ethnicity. The original had the very Anglo Shirley MacLaine playing a Eurasian woman of mystery and even more Anglo, as in actually British, character actor Herbert Lom as an Indian gazillionaire; Michael Caine who gets mentioned here on what seems like a daily basis, actually played an Englishman in it.
Regarding “The Killer,” before you Woo fans (and I’m certainly one) decry a crime against cinema, be aware that Woo himself is producing with his usual partner, Terrance Chang. Korean superstar Jung-Woo Sung will be making his English language debut with Korean-American helmer John H. Lee (the Korean-language love story, “A Moment to Remember”) directing and a screenplay by the previously unknown Josh Campbell. Oh, it’ll be in 3D.
I’ve written many times that I think complaints about remakes of classics are somewhat silly. If they’re bad or mediocre, they’ll be quickly forgotten. If they’re good, someone will complain about the remake of that one. Regardless, the originals aren’t going away any time soon. Below the flip are two samples of those originals. Try to see them both before the new versions come out for maximum compare-and-contrast fun.
As if to give me an excuse to simply mention the name “Charlie Sheen” in the hopes of increasing our web-sters or googleties or whatever they’re called, along comes this trailer for “Elektra Luxx.” It’s a comedy about the porn business with a rather remarkable cast — Carla Gugino, Malin Ackerman, Timothy Olyphant and Joseph Gordon-Levitt for starters — and, though it’s just possible this might not be a masterpiece, this trailer gave me one or two of best laughs I’ve had in a week or so.
That Gordon-Levitt guy is such a card.
Anyhow, “Elektra Luxx” is actually a sequel to a Pedro Almodovar-esque looking movie called “Women in Trouble” from writer-director Sebastian Gutierrez, and it played at SXSW almost a year back. If you want to catch up before this comes out in March, and I sort of want to, the first film is available on Netflix streaming, so I just might be checking it out some lazy day.
Semi h/t (their version wasn’t embeddable): JoBlo.
One benefit of waiting until Monday night to write up the weekend’s results is that the Box Office Mojo results I have are not estimates but “actuals.” It’s nice not to have to stick in the word “estimated” before every number for a change but, I fear, that’s about the most exciting news I have to report today.
As predicted back on Thursday night, the PG-13 exercise in exorcist hi-jinks, “The Rite,” lead the weekend and gave Warner Brothers #1 bragging rights. It was not the prettiest victory, however. With roughly $13.8 million in grosses, it was either at the low end or even slightly below the numbers that were trumpeted before, with some estimates going up to $20 million. Also,of course, in actual business terms being #1 is pretty meaningless except for the next weekend’s advertising.
The #2 movie was last week’s topper from Paramount, “No Strings Attached.” It earned $13.4 million, falling a significantly better than average 31.8% in its second week, indicating good worth of mouth. (Which, since I kind of hated the movie, kind of annoys me. Why are you people saying good things about it?) The attempt at raunchy but adult romantic comedy will be breaking $40 million total by tomorrow, which is pretty decent considering that veteran director Ivan Reitman kept the budget to a modest $25 million.
“The Mechanic,” which I’ve been covering here and at our sister site, performed not-horribly for the revived CBS Films with $11.4 million and change. It’s very reasonable budget for an action film, $40 million, means that it’s another modest success for star Jason Statham. I nevertheless agree with Bullz-Eye reviewer David Medsker that Statham deserves better. The original 1971 version of the film also deserved better, though even I have a hard time arguing that an action-inflected meditation on the nature of modern day evil like the original would do any better. Still, I wish they had cut the budget by half and kept it closer to the blunt spirit of that film or, failing that, increased it by one-third and just made a silly action-movie that was fun. Instead, it’s kind of a neither fish-nor-fowl situation.
“The King’s Speech,” which expanded significantly in terms of theater count this weekend, failed to generate the surprise some said might be in the offing. It did pretty much exactly the kind of solid and stately business one would expect from a figurehead and came in at a very solid and respectable $11 million or so. It was in 5th place just barely behind “The Green Hornet” which, at about $78 million so far, still has a ways to go to match its $120 million budget.
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