That seems to be the trend in Hollywood conventional wisdom this busy March weekend, at least as reflected by my only source for such matters right now, the thoughts of jolly Carl DiOrio and Greg Kilday of The Hollywood Reporter. It certainly seems fairly impossible to argue that “Alice in Wonderland” won’t continue to enjoy its ride at the top of the box office for another week, with the aid of all those extra-pricey 3-D tickets. If it makes less than $30 million or so, I’m thinking it would be a rude shock for Disney.
As for the #2 spot, the appeal of Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler seems to be working, as per the mysteries of “tracking,” for “The Bounty Hunter.” The film aroused some serious vitriol, however, from our own David Medsker, who has lost all patience with Ms. Aniston. It’s not doing much better with critics as a whole. Scott Tobias of the A.V. Club opines that:
Based on the onscreen evidence, not a single person in front of or behind the camera cared a whit about how The Bounty Hunter turned out…Some movies are passion projects; The Bounty Hunter is an inertia project.
That’s actually mild compared to the zinger Tobias ends his review with. As you might guess, it’s Rotten Tomatoes rating as of this writing is pretty bad, a very lowly 8%.
Still, audience members may be lured by the film’s effective advertising. Its effective advertising promises a lively ride as a sort of two-fisted spin on “It Happened One Night,” though the PG-13 “Bounty Hunter” is apparently more of an attempt at a light-hearted actioner than the action-packed rom-com you’d expect from the marketing.
DiOrio and Kilday are guesstimating $20-23 million for Sony. Sounds doable to me, though the second weekend might have a huge drop if the film is as much of a creative misfire as it sounds.
Next up is Fox’s PG-rated “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” based on a popular series of young adult “novels in cartoon.” (My pet peeve: why can’t we just call them comics?) I have to say that I hope the movie is much better than the trailer, which I found completely unfunny — just a collection of pale sub-“Wonder Years” jokes. The reviews seem to promise something at least a little better, with “Kid” dividing critics somewhat, though no one seems all that excited in either direction.
It seems that barely two weeks ever go by without some ambitious neophyte filmmaker doing something kind of amazing when it comes to recreating or outdoing something we see in the movies. Via Keith Phipps and the Onion A.V. Club, below is a super-sweding of the opening musical number from Disney’s 1995’s “A Goofy Movie,” which not only have I never seen, I’ve forgotten even existed. It kind of takes the term “live action cartoon” to a new level.
Ted Sowards of Arizona, you’ve accomplished something. And for those who ask “why,” I say, “why does a man recreate a mountain?”
And, speaking of live-action recreations of scenes from nineties cartoon musicals, well, let’ s just say you never know what you’re going to come up with on YouTube and, courtesy of some talented folks from the Berklee College of Music, we have a very different recreation from a very different cartoon musical comedy.
The writers of Bullz-Eye – and, by extension, Premium Hollywood – have never been afraid to throw their love behind television series that aren’t necessarily embraced by the general viewing public, and it’s no surprise that AMC’s “Breaking Bad” falls into that category. Certainly, it gets a great deal of love from the nation’s TV critics, but in fairness, it does have the sort of premise that doesn’t necessarily lend itself to mass consumption: a high school chemistry teacher with a pregnant wife and a teenage son with cerebral palsy is diagnosed with stage-three terminal lung cancer and, in order to provide for his family, decides to start making meth.
Bryan Cranston, previously known primarily for his work as Hal, the patriarch on “Malcolm in the Middle,” took the role of Walter White – the aforementioned meth-maker – and ran with it. Indeed, we’re pretty sure that the only times he has stopped running since the premiere of “Breaking Bad” have been to accept his back-to-back Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series.
Although Cranston is the only member of the ensemble to win thus far, he’s not the only one to have been nominated. His co-star, Aaron Paul, pulled in his first nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 2009 for his work as Jesse Pinkman, Walt’s partner in crime, and it would not surprise us in the least if 2010 found Anna Gunn in the running for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series. (Season 3 is, we have been reliably informed, somewhat Skyler-centric.)
Now, if you haven’t been following “Breaking Bad” but you’ve heard good things and have been wondering if there’s way you can possibly catch up in time to watch the premiere of Season 3 without feeling completely lost, you’re in luck: AMC has managed to successfully distill the first two seasons of the show into one reeeeeeeally intense six-minute video. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go back and watch Season 1 and Season 2 in their entirety when you have the chance, but this will definitely put you in a position to sit comfortably in front of the TV with the rest of us on Sunday night.
Yes, we realize that’s a lot of information to take in before the premiere, but at least you can’t say we don’t provide you with a great deal of preparatory material…including this sneak preview of what you can expect on Sunday night:
Season 3 of “Breaking Bad” premieres on Sunday, March 21, at 10 PM EST/PST.
(Be sure to meet back here after the season premiere – and every episode thereafter, for that matter – to check out our blog!)
I’m going to be taking a day off from the blogging grind, but there’s plenty going on this late evening in the world’s cinema capital. Starting with…
* Team Coco, the movie! Okay, it’s a documentary about Conan O’Brien’s upcoming live tour and it’s still only in the “early talks” stage according to Mike Fleming’s exclusive. It’s apparently in compliance with his severance deal, even though most people will probably end up watching it on television sets anyhow.
* Speaking of documentaries and comedy, A.J. Schnack rounds up some of the SXSW reaction to James Franco’s SNL documentary.
* At the risk certainty of being repetitious, speaking of comedies connected to SNL, Pete Sciretta rounds up the SXSW reaction to”MacGruber.” We also have reaction direct from Jason Zingale at the big Austin fest just a few posts below.
* In the wake of the sale of Miramax, go-to producer Scott Rudin is negotiating to leave Disney, writes Claudia Eller.
* Okay, even if I might not be a fan of all the movies, I confess to enjoying the idea of having the stars of past Marvel films recreate their roles in the long-discussed “Avengers” film and Edward Nortonappears possibly willing to play along by returning as the Hulk, maybe. Whatever else may be true, Norton is a very interesting guy.
* Does a serious version of the Black Knight sequence from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” sound like your kind of film? If so, Anne Thompson thinks you might like “Centurion.”
* I think all the entertainment reporters should just take the month off and let Mike Fleming do all the reporting of stories like the one that Jeremy Renner may be joining Paul Thomas Anderson’s not-about-Scientology movie which will star Philip Seymour Hoffman as not-L. Ron Hubbard. Though it’s relatively modest $35 million budget may be a bit high for the finance folks at Universal, other backers may have been found.
And one two more from Mr. Fleming…If you think Spike Lee has been working as much as he should after the success of “Inside Man” and his acclaimed Katrina documentary, you’re apparently not alone. He’s switched agencies.
* Jeffrey Welles is nutso for “Hot Tub Time Machine,” for what it’s worth.
* I often say that the best movies these days are long-form television. So why shouldn’t Martin Scorsese be getting involved? However, does everything crime and Scorsese oriented have to have Rolling Stones music in the background? Unless I’m misidentifying that anachronistic music in the “Boardwalk Empire,” trailer, I guess it really does. Still, yeah, it is Steve Buscemi’s time to play a big bad boss.
* If it’s not news that Jason Segal will be costarring with muppets, why are we talking about it? Still, based on his obvious love for puppetry as portrayed in the rather brilliant “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” I think it may turn out okay.
“24” pulls out an oldie but a goodie this week, as the IRK bad guys – who are remarkably well funded and well connected, even on foreign soil – set up Princess Jasmine to “escape” to CTU…and bring a massive EMP with her. Boom boom pow. Dark is the night for all. Can’t find my way home, etc.
Now, let’s put aside the probability, and even the predictability, of it all for just a second. The cutting back and forth between Jack trying to reach Chloe and the utter chaos at CTU was the most action-packed moment of the season. I mean, they are seriously fucked right now. The radiation sensors are down, and they have no way of getting in touch with, well, anyone. It’s a hell of an ending to the first half of the season.
But is anyone else just a little tired of seeing how easily compromised our nation’s counter-terrorist unit is? First bombs, then nerve gas, and now an EMP. (The previous EMP was set off at McLennan and Forster’s office, thus causing Go-Betweens fans around the world to giggle to themselves.) Honestly, CTU deserves to fail if they can’t come up with fail-safe measures to prevent this sort of thing from happening. Is there really unsecured access to directly below the building? You may as well leave a trail of gasoline, and supply the bad guys with a match.
Likewise, you have to just smile to yourself at the precision timing of Jasmine’s arrival in relation to the gigantic ticking clock in the back seat, that she wasn’t delayed by traffic (hey, even at four in the morning, it can happen in New York), or one of those mad squeegee guys, or simply got lost. That whole watch-your-daughter-die thing couldn’t have been cheap or easy to set up, especially when it is nothing but a smoke screen. Deep breath, Med, deep breath. It’s a TV show. It’s a TV show that asks us to believe that everything happens at the top of the hour. Let it go.
“I used to own this town. I was Jimmy James, Macho Business Donkey Wrestler, damn it.”
Same with tracking cell phone signals. They use it only when it suits them. Of course, while I was wondering why they didn’t try tracking Jasmine using her cell as tonight’s stuff was going on, the truth is that Slumdog President doesn’t have that ability, and CTU didn’t know she was missing, so I guess they’re covered on that one.
And then there’s Starbuck, who’s doing a Katherine Heigl happy dance (see “The Ugly Truth” if you want to get that reference, or better yet, don’t) now that an EMP just granted her a stay of execution. My prediction for her is that she performs a couple selfless, game-changing acts…and dies protecting the ones she loves. I think we all know she’s not coming back for another season – assuming there is another season, and there is rampant speculation that this may indeed be “24’s” final hour, at least on the small screen – so why not let her go with grace? She gets the sendoff her past-life BSG character deserves, and Cole receives the comfort of knowing that while Dana had secrets, he wasn’t wrong about what kind of person she was.
Which brings us to Jimmy James, Capitalist Liontamer. Last week I was terrified that he was using the parole officer thing as a ruse to continue the con in the event that Kevin failed, but on the surface, it looks as though that he’s a legit good guy…or possibly the ballsiest con man in the history of the world. He said he had a friend on the force, but all of the evidence that he hit Starbuck with – the phone calls, the storage locker break-in, the mangled cop – could very easily have been provided by Kevin and his wacko friend before they were killed, and Jimmy is just bluffing that Starbuck won’t question the authenticity of whatever that paper he presented her with that demanded access to the security feeds. If he’s a con, then he’s the craziest con ever, because even the good ones stay the hell away from the authorities if they can help it. Doesn’t he know that they have facial recognition software…or at least that they did until Princess Jasmine blew the electronics sky-high? This character might turn out to be my litmus test for “24” going forward. If he turns out to be a con, then I will officially never believe a single thing I see on this show, unless it’s Jack doing it.
Twelve hours down, which means, to use another musical reference, twelve stops and home. (The Feeling. Twelve Stops and Home. All Anglophiles should head to iTunes at once.) New York has not been good to CTU so far, and that’s been while the city was sleeping. It will be very curious to see if the surly commuters are any more accomodating. Considering my brief experience with said people. the answer is a defiant ‘no,’ but who knows, maybe they’ve mellowed out since then. (*Stifles chuckle*)
Tonight’s blog title comes from Naked Eyes’ third Top 40 single – yes, they had more than two hits, and in fact had one more before all was said and done – and even more curiously, this song does not appear on any of the band’s hits compilations. This has always baffled me, as it’s easily one of their best songs, hence the decision to release it as a single. Maybe it was the midgets in the video that embarrass them to this day, who knows. All I know is that I like the song.
That seems to be the trend in Hollywood conventional wisdom this busy March weekend, at least as reflected by my only source for such matters right now, the thoughts of jolly Carl DiOrio and Greg Kilday of The Hollywood Reporter. It certainly seems fairly impossible to argue that “Alice in Wonderland” won’t continue to enjoy its ride at the top of the box office for another week, with the aid of all those extra-pricey 3-D tickets. If it makes less than $30 million or so, I’m thinking it would be a rude shock for Disney.
