A glammed up Natalie Portman stars in the upcoming “Vox Lox” opposite Jude Law showing a side of her we haven’t see since her role in “Black Swan.” Matthew Jacobs takes a look back at Natalie’s movie career as we get ready to enjoy this new performance.
Tag: Jude Law (Page 1 of 2)
When a movie makes as much money as “Sherlock Holmes” did at the box office (certainly not “Avatar”-sized numbers, but still respectable for its budget), you expect the studio to reward its audience with some cool DVD bonus features. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case here, as Warner Brothers has only included a 14-minute making-of featurette called “Sherlock Holmes: Revisited” that, although not as shallow as the typical EPK, doesn’t go into nearly enough detail for being the only extra on the disc.
Among the topics discussed include how this rendition of Holmes is actually closer to Arthur Conan Doyle’s original vision; Guy Ritchie’s originally plans to cast an actor in his late 20s to play the title character before meeting Robert Downey Jr.; and why Jude Law’s Watson is unlike any other we’ve seen before. In other words, it’s information that anyone following the film would have already read about, rendering the featurette fundamentally pointless. It’s a real shame, too, because there had to be some other bonus material (like bloopers or deleted scenes) sitting around in the vault that fans would have liked to have seen. Though the Blu-ray edition gets the added incentive of WB’s awesome Maximum Movie Mode, even that seems a bit light for such a major release. The history behind Holmes is simply too rich to receive such a lackluster treatment, and though I’ve never been a very big proponent of studio double dips, this time around, it’s almost necessary to make up for such a major blunder.
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.
There are any number of interesting movie stories circulating about right now, but time constraints just won’t permit me to tell them today…and tomorrow is weekend preview, so some might just have to wait. Instead, however, we’ve got two interesting and violent red-band preview.
The first excites me quite a bit as it features the great Michael Caine and is the beneficiary of some very good buzz. Caine is an actor I’ve always kind of loved, but after being assigned to look at some of his lesser known films and doing some research writing up his bio, the admiration I’ve always had kind of turned into awe. I could go and on about that, and kind of did in the bio. Anyhow, “Harry Brown” appears to be an intelligent spin on the vigilante film, and that’s probably enough of an intro. Check it out, courtesy of Rope of Silicon.
And, not to be confused with the 1984 cult classic, “Repo Man” we have “Repo Men,” cowritten by Eric Garcia, who also wrote its basis, the science fiction novel, The Repossession Mambo, and wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where that could be the movie’s title. And, like I alluded to in the name of this post, this one is red-banded for its fairly matter of fact portrayal of organ removal as perpetrated by Jude Law and Forest Whitaker. As a gore phobe, and organ removal I suppose is the definition of gore, I’m still trying to figure out why this doesn’t bother me more.
If you’ve been following the horse-race over at Nikki Finke’s place, you’ll know it’s been a very long holiday weekend of box office ups and down. However, for those of us who can wait a day or two for the results, it’s actually somewhat simple.
James Cameron‘s super-expensive 3-D extravaganza for Fox, “Avatar,” emerged as the victor of a three-way battle for the top prize with an outstanding second-weekend estimated take of $75 million and an absolutely minuscule drop from it’s first weekend of 2.6%, according to Box-Office Mojo. The Hollywood conventional wisdom has it that most science fiction films drop by at least 50% on their second weekend. Clearly, this is not most science fiction films and the fact that people are waiting to see this one in 3D and paying extra for the privilege is not hurting. So, as I’ve alluded to often enough, the word of mouth on this thing is something else. However, as always, I await the backlash as some folks plunk down their extra-heavy 3D ticket price and fail to have a religious experience.
Second place, of course, was Guy Ritchie’s unorthodox action-comedy take on probably the oldest genre franchise in the biz, “Sherlock Holmes.” The Robert Downey, Jr./Jude Law team-up loosely drawn from the late 19th/early 20th century works of Arthur Conan Doyle defeated “Avatar” and all-comers on its record setting Christmas opening. It then fell a bit and earned a still whopping estimated $65.38 for Warner Brothers, a company that certainly has some experience with franchises. Better yet, this one is in the public domain, which means fewer folks get a share in the wealth.
Fox’s “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel” actually beat “Avatar” by a couple of million on its early opening day last Wednesday, but fell sharply on Christmas Eve and rebounded the rest of the weekend, for a very healthy estimated third place showing of $50.2 million. Critics may detest it; parents may barely tolerate it, but, to paraphrase the old blues song, the little kids understand (or don’t know any better). The film’s total estimated take starting from its early opening is just a tad over $77 million.
Considering it’s a Golden Globe-nominated sex comedy presumably aimed at a very grown-up audience — not only because of the average age of its stars but also because it’s R-rated, Universal’s “It’s Complicated” has generated the critical equivalent of a shrug, with our own David Medsker coming down on the very much negative side. That doesn’t bode extremely well for this sort of movie, which can use all the critical and awards help it can get.
Still, this weekend’s rising tide managed to lift this boat to the tune of an estimated $22 million or so, which is really not bad for this kind of film. Or, it wouldn’t be because Nikki Finke claims the budget was $80 million, which is way high for this kind of movie and suggests to me that it’s possible stars Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin let their agents negotiate extra-hard for a big pay-day because they were perhaps less than wowed by the film artistically. Universal just doesn’t seem to be cutting itself any breaks lately.
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