Thompson On Hollywood

Holiday Round-Up

The year-end results are in, from ten best lists to holiday openings (here's Pam McClintock's b.o. wrap). So what does it all mean?

Well, we still have marquee movie stars. Will Smith proved yet again that he's invincible at the box-office; I Am Legend has already grossed over $200 million in North America alone.

The robust success of the National Treasure sequel means that the often weird Nic Cage is still a star. It also means that Disney marketing chief-turned-production prexy Orin Aviv (who came up with the original idea for National Treasure) can rest on his laurels for a while. Disney's family-brand strategy is paying off big-time. Enchanted passed the $100-million mark over the holidays; it's at $113 million. And the third-ranked studio in market share (Paramount/DreamWorks was number one) also earned membership in the studios' $1-billion club for 2007.

Twentieth Century Fox won holiday bragging rights for making an ancient high-concept--Alvin and the singing helium-squeaked chipmunks--relevant again for all audience quadrants. While Fox marketed the family pic effectively, Alvin and the Chipmunks obviously played well, too. (Family fare, it seems, is good.)

Judd Apatow's amazing golden year (Knocked Up, Superbad) ended with the disappointing Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which has earned just $12 million after ten days. Luckily, Apatow has a rash of 2008 movies, from Drill-Bit Taylor, starring Owen Wilson, to Seth Rogen's Pineapple Express, to restart his winning streak. And John C. Reilly can make up some lost ground in the Apatow-produced Step Brothers in July, co-starring Will Ferrell. While a smart satire of the musical biopic genre was never going to boast mass-market appeal, Sony's ad campaign featuring a bare-chested Reilly didn't help. It grabbed your attention, but it was a turn-off.

On the Oscar-contender field, Denzel Washington's late-breaking The Debaters earned a respectable $16 million in eight days. And Mike Nichols' genial Charlie Wilson's War built support from both critics and adult audiences; it has earned $43 million. But is it in the Oscar race? Buzz is building for both supporting actor Philip Seymour Hoffman and writer Aaron Sorkin.

Tim Burton's macabre Johnny Depp musical Sweeney Todd has managed a respectable $30 million since its December 21 opening--on just 1200 screens. (It goes wide January 11.) While the movie boasts equally ardent admirers and attackers, it will factor in the Oscar race, in many categories. Best Picture? It's possible. Remarkably, critics' fave No Country for Old Men, which leads national critics' ten-best lists, passed the $40-million mark. And based on their holiday stats, Atonement, Juno and There Will Be Blood are steady as they go. In other words, they also have forward momentum: a very good thing, where Oscar is concerned.

(Here's my annual look at the Oscar race for Premiere.)

SAG Nominees Go Indie

The Screen Actors Guild nominees took some surprising directions. (Here's Variety's story.) They reflect a few things about SAG, and may not predict Academy voting behavior. The two groups often share noms but also go their separate ways.

Actors LOVE Sean Penn, whose Into the Wild grabbed four noms. Hal Holbrook is still the most likely Oscar nom for this film, but Emile Hirsch and Catherine Keener get a leg up. Remember, actors adore Penn, but the rest of the Academy voters may not.

I hope the attention SAG voters gave Lars and the Real Girl's Ryan Gosling, Eastern Promises' Viggo Mortensen and A Mighty Heart's Angelina Jolie will inspire Academy voters to watch those three films.

Actors love Cate Blanchett. Like the Golden Globes, she grabbed two noms, for best actress for Elizabeth: The Golden Age and supporting actress for I'm Not There. I doubt the Oscar actors will go for Elizabeth.

SAG voters are somewhat more mainstream than the Academy actors. They steered away from such late-breaking high-brow Academy contenders as Sweeney Todd and Atonement. No Johnny Depp, James McAvoy, Keira Knightley, Saorise Ronan. They went for There Will be Blood's Daniel Day Lewis, but not Paul Dano. Michael Clayton's George Clooney, Tilda Swinton and Tom Wilkinson continue to gain traction for Academy Oscar slots. SAG voters skipped such foreign-language fare as The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and The Kite Runner, but came through for Marion Cotillard in La Vie en Rose, which was a hit here. It makes sense that they embraced the great ensemble acting in the hugely entertaining 3:10 to Yuma, American Gangster, Hairspray and No Country for Old Men (both Tommy Lee Jones and Javier Bardem got supporting actor noms).

American Gangster won a best ensemble nod and Ruby Dee is a supporting actress nominee, but Denzel Washington got nothing, not for American Gangster nor The Great Debaters, which some SAG voters may not have had a chance to see. While American Gangster seems to be losing momentum (it has fallen out of the LAT's Buzzmeter poll's top five for best picture) my sense is that many Academy voters like it a lot. Charlie Wilson's War, on the other hand, which opens this weekend, hasn't got a pulse.

The full SAG nominations list is on the jump:

Sweeney and Charlie Q & As

Johnny Depp and Tim Burton talk to New York Magazine about the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. And Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman talk to Time about Charlie Wilson's War.

[Photos: Hoffman, Roberts and Hanks for Time; Depp and Burton for New York]

Oscar Parties: Clooney Talks Clayton, Burton Talks Todd

'Tis the time of year for industry/Oscar parties. It's about trying to remind the press of who they should be rooting for the in the Oscar race, basically.

Tuesday night Warner Bros. hosted the press at El Cielo on Burton Way to meet and greet the Michael Clayton gang: George Clooney, Tilda Swinton (man, she's tall), Tony Gilroy and Tom Wilkinson. Clooney, clutching a tall clear drink that he didn't sip once, recalled that on the very first day of filming Tony Gilroy stuck him in a jail cell to film Tom Wilkinson's opening tour-de-force monologue. That knocked him for a loop, Clooney said. Wilkinson had thought it would just be done in voiceover, but they actually filmed the scene---and then looped the whole thing over afterwards anyway.

Clooney is heading over to Dubai, where he shot Syriana, to do a Film Festival panel about Darfur--he said the moderate countries like Dubai and Egypt are the ones that can have an impact on what's going on in Darfur--more than America.

Why were films like Syriana and Good Night and Good Luck embraced by audiences while the more recent rash of political films have not been? "People like ambiguity," Clooney suggested, admitting that he had not seen all the films. "They don't want to be told what they should think."

That's as good an answer as any.

Wednesday night on the Paramount lot, Sweeney Todd wowed the industry crowd. Steven Spielberg, Stacey Snider, David Geffen, Walter Parkes, Dick Zanuck, Tim Burton, Sasha Baron Cohen, John Logan and a fedoraed Johnny Depp were all on hand. Geffen brought Rita Wilson over to talk to Depp, who gamely hung out and posed for photos until well past 11 PM, and kneeled down for a shot with wheel-chaired actress Rose Marie (Sally Rogers on the Dick Van Dyke Show). The throng also included Ron Meyer, Harry Dean Stanton, Gary Shandling, Martin Short, Joe Drake, Jon Feltheimer, Joel Silver, Gary Ross, Wesley Strick, and Arianna Huffington. Paramount exec Rob Moore, who is getting a promotion soon, beat a hasty retreat after the screening. Director Michael Mann, who will direct Depp in his next as Chicago thug John Dillinger, was also there. The Envelope's Tom O'Neill snapped photos and posts a podcast.

Most folks liked the movie while at the same time many refrained from eating the miniature creme brulees that were being offered around--they looked like pies. Burton said he timed the movie instinctively, adding more music but cutting back the opening Sweeney Todd chorus, which they recorded but never shot, because it just didn't feel right. What I like best about the movie is that it is utterly Burton's. No one messed with it, he confirmed: no testing, no rejiggering for any reason. It's just the movie I wanted to make, he said.

Charlie Wilson's War: Early Review

I couldn't make any of the Charlie Wilson's War, Golden Compass or Sweeney Todd screenings this week due to various scheduling conflicts. Safe to say early reactions are more positive for Sweeney, especially for Depp, than Charlie's, although Variety's Todd McCarthy is in the same camp as Time's Richard Corliss: Charlie is fun for adults. Philip Seymour Hoffman seems to be the film's serious Oscar contender, along with writer Aaron Sorkin. Here's McCarthy's nut graph:

"Charlie Wilson's War" is that rare Hollywood commodity these days: a smart, sophisticated entertainment for grownups. Based on the late George Crile's sensational bestseller about how an unlikely trio of influential and colorful characters conspired to generate covert financial and weapons support for the Afghan Mujahideen to defeat the Russians in the 1980s -- and armed America's future enemies in the process -- Mike Nichols' film is snappy, amusing and ruefully ironic. But not even the stellar talent on both sides of the camera may be enough to make these qualities alluring to general audiences or those much under 40, making B.O. prospects a mid-range thing.

Oscar Watch: Seeking Consensus

While I admire Kris Tapley's attempt to make some sense out of the blizzard of Oscar predictions out there, I remain convinced that until the prognosticators see Charlie Wilson's War and Sweeney Todd, the two films that many of us got invited to see Monday, none of these lists make much sense. Richard Corliss in Time suggests that "audiences will have a great time watching" Charlie Wilson's War, which seemed to play for Oprah Winfrey's Chicago audience. Oprah raved about Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance, as guests Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts (who tried to get out of shooting a bikini scene while four weeks pregnant) nodded politely. My hunch is that Hoffman won't get nommed for best actor for The Savages or Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, but will get a supporting nom for Charlie Wilson's War.

Clearly, the non-pro fans on Movie City News and Awards Daily are voting with their youthful hearts and not thinking much about the Academy's tastes. Into the Wild is a popular movie that has a chance at some noms, especially for Hal Holbrook, but because of the way the movie was written, shot and performed, the different branches of the Academy may not take it seriously enough. It's shot doc-style on location, it looks like it was performed on the fly. I suspect the editor has a better shot than Penn as director or writer, Emile Hirsch as actor, or the cinematography. The Academy admires fakery, sets, costumes and literature. As an organic whole, Into the Wild is an entertaining, thought-provoking emotionally rewarding movie. But it's a long-shot as an Academy contender.

David Fincher's Zodiac is another movie that isn't gaining Oscar momentum. It was well-reviewed last summer March, and many critics will include it on their ten-bests. But its time has come and gone. It was an expensive big-budget studio failure. It's indulgently long, and Fincher's insistence on verisimilitude meant not giving viewers a satisfying narrative arc. The movie has its merits--hell, it will be on my ten best list---but an Oscar contender needs to have enthusiastic supporters, few detractors and a passionate push behind it. It needs confidence. Zodiac has too many deficits. Paramount is already gearing up to make a major Oscar push for Fincher's next, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett as star-crossed lovers twisted by time, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

I got into a heated debate with someone in the office yesterday about Enchanted, the animated/live action comedy that brilliantly spoofs Disney's classic animated musicals. This movie is just what the doctor ordered: entertaining, witty, engaging, delirious fun. It's a three-quadrant accessible family musical that will grow and grow and grow through the holidays. Whatever it opens at Wednesday, it will keep building: the movie could wind up one of the year's biggest grossers. Men will initially resist the chick flick's charms, but they should eventually get pulled into Enchanted's vortex. Amy Adams gives a full-blown star breakout performance (on Oprah, a clip of her from Charlie Wilson's War caused both Hanks and Roberts to chime, "Amy Adams," naming her the It Girl of the moment). Adams could land, Julie Andrews-style, a nomination for best actress. (Why Disney isn't thumping the movie harder, I don't know. Most of us media folks didn't see it until last week. UPDATE: And yet again, the Academy screening committee in its wisdom has scheduled Alvin and the Chipmunks during its prime December viewing season, and not Enchanted.)

But Enchanted is not your standard-issue Oscar movie. Director Kevin Lima (Tarzan, 102 Dalmations) has made a successful crossover from animation. Bill Kelly's script is witty and smart and should land a nomination. But will it? Let's be honest about the Academy. They are SNOBS! They are high-minded, nose-in-the-air, classists. The more literary, historic, and pretentious the better. (EW's Mark Harris explains the Oscar predicting game.) The last animated film to make it to Best Picture was Beauty and the Beast (for which Lima did character animation), before there was an animation category. Sure, I'd also like to see the best-reviewed movie of the year, Pixar's fabulous Ratatouille, score screenplay, director and picture. It deserves it. But it won't necessarily happen.

The trick with Oscar predicting is feeling where the momentum is going and looking into the future, down the line. The best prognosticators have seen the movies, one. And two, they're not rooting for their favorites. They're staying ruthlessly objective. Do I have some pics I'm rooting for? Sure. But I have to take that into account and remain clear-eyed. The year I let emotions get the better of me and predicted that Beauty and the Beast would win, I was so wrong.

As for the Academy docs short list of 15, they are the the best-known and best-reviewed: the full list is on the jump.

First Look: E.T. does Charlie Wilson's War

One of the last movies to break in this year's list of Oscar wannabes--it's certainly the one I know least about-- is Mike Nichols' Charlie Wilson's War, which looks to be a comic-toned black comedy based on a true story about a boozing womanizing Texas Congressman's 80s rush to arm the Afghan tribes in their fight against the Soviets. E.T. is promising a first look Tuesday. This footage showcases star Tom Hanks in a hot tub, plus a blonde Julia Roberts in a bikini--I suspect that the marketing of this film will avoid the pic's political content in favor of its two stars. Here's E.W.'s fall preview.

Charlie Wilson's War offers yet another (supporting) role for Philip Seymour Hoffman, who gives strong lead perfs in Tamara Jenkins' The Savages as well as Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.