This film starring Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Connelly and Ewan McGregor looks interesting. It’s set in 1968 as a hardworking man, who’s been a staple in his quaint community for years, watches his seemingly perfect middle class life fall apart as his daughter’s new radical political affiliation threatens to destroy their family.
Tag: Ewan McGregor (Page 1 of 2)
Everything pretty much is working out at this weekend’s box office as was predicted Thursday night. The exception being that, as a whole, the post-Thanksgiving Day letdown may be slightly bigger than expected. To be specific, as prognosticators prognosticated, Disney’s “Tangled” led the box office derby.
Showing the usual strength of well-received family-animated comedies, the film formerly known as “Rapunzel” earned an estimated $21.5 million over the weekend. The less than thrilling news here is that, as calculated by Box Office Mojo‘s indispensable weekend chart, it suffered a rather larger than usual second weekend drop for its genre of 55.9%. Still, I’m guessing we can attribute some of that to the post-holiday doldrums.
On the sunny side of the equation, the musical action comedy is already very close to the $100 million in its second weekend, and that’s never bad. On the other hand, the typically enormous CGI animation budget of $260 million makes that kind of number seem a hair less impressive. On the other other hand, when you consider not only the the worldwide box office, but the licensing, I think it’s fair to say that “Tangled” will be another profitable feather in the ever-more-humongous Disney cap.
Yep, though there is only one new major release, the real action this weekend is going to be between the two very strong holdovers: the third week of Warner’s “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One” and week #2 of “Tangled,” which may be well on its way to reviving Disney’s supposedly endangered princess brand. Figuring out which will emerge on top i’s really a matter of how much the respective films drop off and, as jolly Carl DiOrio wisely admits, involves a big guess. Still, he and Ben Fritz seem to agree that power-haired Rapunzel has some slight edge over horcrux-seeking Harry.
Both films did roughly equivalent business last weekend, though the Potter juggernaut earning extremely well over the entire Thanksgiving period. Still, family animated comedies traditionally have great holds, while the madness of the Potter fans generally makes for huge openings with huge drop-offs to follow. Fritz expects about $18 million for the Potter film and about a 50% drop off for “Tangled,” which I guess would mean roughly $23-25 million or so. I wouldn’t be surprised if the drop-off were small, though post-holiday doldrums could also hamper overall box office this weekend.
This week’s one major new release, a martial arts fantasy shot in New Zealand but set in a sort of Never-Never land version of the American West, “The Warrior’s Way,” is opening in a relatively very modest 1600 theaters. That’s probably a good thing because the film, which was made independently but is being distributed by upstartish Relativity Media, doesn’t appear to be generating any excitement. It’s been in the can for some time, though it boasts an interesting cast including Geoffrey Rush and Danny Huston in supporting roles as well as Kate Bosworth and talented Korean superstar Jang Dong-gun (“Typhoon“), whose been compared to Johnny Depp, as the butt-kicking super-swordsman lead.
In an attempt to square the marketing circle, members of the press were shown clips from the film, wined and dined (in this case saki’d and sushi’d as the post-not-screening reception was held at an apparently very good Japanese restaurant) and allowed to interview some of the stars — including, in my case, Tony Cox of “Bad Santa” and “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnussus.” We’ll see how well the approach works. Ben Fritz is extremely pessimistic about its chances, jolly Carl is more jolly, but even he admits it’ll be somewhat lucky to break $10 million. This one’s best hope might be in the international market, but the refusal to show the film in its entirety to the press should be a tell to wary audiences.
There’s more because, as awards season heats up, several very interesting films are opening in limited release. Among them is “I Love You Phillip Morris.” It’s the long delayed but well-regarded same-sex romantic comedy and true-crime tale with Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor as lovers on the run. Also opening in a relatively aggressive 18 theaters is a very likely Oscar contender and already one of the most discussed genre-blending films of the year, “Black Swan.” It’s being described frequently as Powell and Pressberger’s “The Red Shoes” meets Polanski’s “Repulsion” and that’s good enough for me. More about that to come, for sure.
It’s looking like those of us who gay panicked their way into an excuse to avoid “Brokeback Mountain” will have a new quality film to miss for no good reason, and this film, which recently escaped from a distribution limbo, appears to be very funny indeed. If you dare — or if you’re a woman or an actual person with teh gay — check out this trailer that features some very funny and relatively explicit sexuality and language between stars Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor. This could easily be one of the year’s more memorable films. Man up or miss out. Also, if you absolutely need to focus on a hetero thought, Leslie Mann (a woman, also Mrs. Judd Apatow) is actually kind of insanely adorable in this trailer as Carrey’s Christian ex-wife.
Oh, and before I saw this trailer, I somehow figured that the corporation best known for its tobacco products would somehow figure in the story. It’s still kind of an odd name for Ewan McGregor’s character, though.
H/t Screencrave.
Where to begin…
* Could the ultimate case of movie development hell finally be unraveling? We’re told that Ewan McGregor will star in Terry Gilliam’s “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.”
* Lionsgate may be on the block with all kinds of possible ramifications for hardworking and often underpaid workers there. However, just in case you were worried, they’ve got $16 million set aside for five executive golden parachutes if Carl Icahn’s attempt is successful. Whew!
* Anne Thompson discusses the people who didn’t show up at Cannes. Somehow, she overlooked my absence.
* One of the people who isn’t showing up is living cinema legend/bad boy Jean-Luc Godard, who is citing the chaos in Greece as his reason. Yeah, I have only the vaguest possible idea what he means by that myself. Meanwhile, the Playlist’s Christopher Bell reviews a new documentary about the severed friendship between Godard and Francois Truffuat, who were respectively the Rolling Stones and the Beatles of midcentury French New Wave cinema and, alas, finds it lacking.
* Marina Zenovich, the woman whose documentary many credit/blame with restarting the Roman Polanski mess — and, yes, that’s the “evil profligate dwarf” himself next to Godard, Truffaut as well as Claude Lelouche and Louis Malle in the picture above — will next be doing the film version of Mark Harris’s widely acclaimed book, Pictures at a Revolution, which looks at the remarkable five best picture nominees from 1968.
* Speaking of Polanski, Oy vey, Woody. (Via FilmDrunk whose headline repeats the obvious, but still hilarious, joke here.)
* Armando Iannucci, co-writer and director of the outstanding comedy about tragedy, “In the Loop,” has a new film with a preposition and a noun in the title set up.
* Cameron Crowe, who was on an amazing run of movies like “Say Anything” and “Almost Famous” until suddenly, he wasn’t, is getting back on the horse with a fact-based tale that involves all kinds of animals, possibly including horses. It does sound like a heck of a story.
* Nikki Finke thinks James Robinson should pay up before showing his face at Cannes.
It’s late. I’m tired and I want my turkey burger and an Old Fashioned. More to come later.
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