Category: News (Page 193 of 401)

Remembering McNamara and “The Fog of War”

July 6, 2009 /

I ordinarily wouldn’t be writing here about the death of a highly controversial former Secretary of Defense, no matter how crucial his role in history. However, the death of Robert S. McNamara is very much worth a brief post even in a mostly lighthearted entertainment blog because of his involvement in one of Errol Morris’s best documentarys, 2004’s “The Fog of War.” Here’s a clip that might be a bit of a bummer for a Monday after a holiday weekend, but it raises more important questions in four minutes than I could write in a month of really serious posts.

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In a really creepy bit of timing, The House Next Door has just posted a lengthy (I’ve only read about half, so far) but I’d say very worthwhile consideration of documentarian Morris’s entire film career by Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard, including an appropriately skeptical consideration of McNamara’s attempts at self-rehabilitation in this film. You can also see if I was one of those critics Ed and Jason mention who took him at face value in my review from late 2003.

Documentaries, External Entertainment, External Movies, Movies, News

Robots and ancient critters fight to a draw

July 5, 2009 /

Let’s see if we can’t keep it simple. After a bit of seesawing over the weekend, it looks like we have a straight tie for domestic box office in the battle of the colon-ized sequels, at least in the domestic estimates. “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” and “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” both yielded a very healthy estimated $42.5 million. ” So says both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. Of course, the tie will be broken when the b.o. “actuals” will yield a winner, Franken v. Coleman style, tomorrow night, however.

“Transformers” also continued its strong performance overseas and is nearing the $300 million mark for its cumulative total. As Nikki Finke points out, however, the $215 million that “Ice Age” took sets a new international record for an animated film. So everyone’s going to have no problem getting a good table at the restaurant of their choice this week.

Johnny Depp and Marion CotillardReturning to the domestic market, the strong numbers also continued in the #3 spot, with “Public Enemies” netting an estimated $26.2 million over the weekend and $41 million for the five days since it’s Wednesday opening. That assuages some of the fears about the film and proves that some adults will still leave the house to turn out for a movie with a bit of heft into it, even in the face of somewhat mixed reviews. Meanwhile “The Hangover” (which I really need to go see now), crossed the $200 million mark, proving that making audiences laugh will never hurt you, assuming they’re supposed to laugh.

In smaller release news, Kathryn Bigelow’s extremely well reviewed Iraq-set bomb disposal thriller, “The Hurt Locker,” really is starting to look like the possible break-out film among limited releases. It’s generating good word of mouth in my actual real life from actual real people and netting the best per-screen average of any film two weeks running. That’s in a minuscule nine theaters — about 4,223 fewer screens than “Transformers” — so we’ll see how it does when it expands to non-mega-metropolises.

Action Movies, External Entertainment, External Movies, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, Movies, News, Reviews, Sci-Fi Movies

Before the fireworks

July 3, 2009 /

A few odds and ends as we head into the big holiday weekend…

* It’s not really about the reviews (neither film was liked by critics), but as a human being who likes to watch movies about human beings (and anthropomorphic animals, too), I find it somewhat reassuring to report that, according to Variety and everyone else, “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” edged out “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” $13.8 to $10.9 million.

Christian Bale in In other mildly good news for movies that at least attempt to tell actual stories, “Public Enemies” came in an unsurprising third, but performed somewhat above expectations with $8.2 million on its first day. I’ll give you more definitive box office info on Sunday, as usual.

* The Hollywood Reporter says that the very old video game, “Asteroids,” is being turned into a movie. I guess “Pong: The Movie” was already taken. (That joke can’t be original, can it?) Begging the question: Why?????????!!!!!!! I’m not saying it couldn’t turn out to be a fun movie — miracles happen. However, in a world where we have thousand of science fiction novels, comics, and TV shows of all levels of quality to adapt, why use a game only old guys like me remember as an excuse to make a silly sci-fi flick? I don’t see even a small marketing advantage here.

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Action Movies, External Entertainment, External Movies, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, Movies, News, Sci-Fi Movies

RIP Karl Malden (updated)

July 1, 2009 /

Like all character actors, Karl Malden never got quite the same level of attention as costars like Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh, Steve McQueen, Anthony Perkins, Montgomery Clift, Michael Caine, and George C. Scott. Even the seventies TV series he starred in, “The Streets of San Francisco” found him being overshadowed in the eyes of the teenybopper set by his young punk of a male ingenue costar, Michael Douglas. That was largely because Malden was the kind of performer who understood that acting is a team sport. His best scenes were like great duets with near perfect communication between him and his scene partners. The exception were American Express travelers’ checks; those, he wiped off the screen.

Karl Malden died today at age 97, having been more or less fully retired since appearing in a 2000 episode of “The West Wing.” While he was never precisely an A-lister, he was a go-to actor for secondary leads, president of the Motion Picture Academy, and as far as I can tell a universally respected figure among actors and everyone else associated with the movie industry. He was also married to the same woman for seventy years, a rare enough Holllywood achievement to merit it’s own special Oscar. Not a bad life.

Below the fold is a video tribute I found that, from the misspellings, I gather may come from Serbia. (Malden, whose real name was Mladen Sekulovich, was the son of a Serbian father and a Czechoslovak mother.) The image quality could be better and some of the clips are a little too brief, but it does give you an excellent overview of his truly diverse film career, which included work with some of the greatest Hollywood directors including Elia Kazan, John Frankenheimer, and Alfred Hitchcock. It also includes some interesting moments from two oddball spy films, “Murderer’s Row,” which I haven’t seen, and the underrated “Billion Dollar Brain,” which included some pretty amazing scenes between Malden and Michael Caine as his old spy buddy, Harry Palmer, as well as Françoise Dorléac as his treacherous spy girlfriend (though he’s pretty tricky himself).

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Actors, External Entertainment, External Movies, External TV, Movie Dramas, Movies, News, TV Action

Will “Transformers” make “Dinosaurs” of us all?

July 1, 2009 /

With the ongoing box office behemoth that is “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” seemingly devouring everything in its path, the studios are nevertheless allowing two potentially vulnerable major productions to venture out of the nest a couple of days ahead of the big July 4th holiday weekend.

For the family trade, we have a 3-D CGI animated sequel, “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs,” which will be showing on a record number of 3-D screens. (Which I guess means that if you haven’t seen “Up” in 3-D by now, which I finally managed just last night, you may be SOL until at least such time as we start seeing 3-D retrospectives.) In a saner world, this would be the #1 movie this week because of family appeal, I think it’s safe to say. Carl DiOrio of The Hollywood Reporter is calling it at between $45 and $50 million for Friday through Sunday (not counting weekdays), which he thinks will be somewhat below the “Transformers” take based on a very modest 50% drop-off.

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Action Movies, Actors, External Entertainment, External Movies, Movie Comedies, Movie Dramas, Movies, News, Reviews

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