Thompson On Hollywood

Hiding Eddie Murphy

Hold your horses everybody. Patrick Goldstein and Stu Van Airsdale pile on Murphy after the disastrous $5 million opening of Meet Dave, which was stupidly marketed; Fox should have kept the title Starship Dave. But the studio's problem with this $75-million comedy was insurmountable: They were selling a movie starring Eddie Murphy playing Eddie Murphy.

All the guy has to do to have a hit comedy is play someone else. Eddie Murphy works best in movies like Shrek and Norbit when you can't see his face.

It's that simple, and that's the reason why the star has enjoyed a much longer career (26 years) than most comedians in Hollywood. He's a chameleon shape-shifter. You love him as the fat guy in Nutty Professor, not the thin one. Even in Dreamgirls, Murphy was playing someone utterly different from himself. And grabbed an Oscar nom for it. And he will surely do well playing all the characters (under makeup) in the upcoming Fantasy Island. But any studio that has an Eddie Murphy project that involves no disguising makeup (like Beverly Hills Cop IV) or isn't animated had better think twice.

Or you could meet another Dave or Pluto Nash.

Marx Brothers Thank You

My father raised me on the Marx brothers; thanks to Jeff Wells for tantalizing me with with this too-short clip of the infamous State Room sequence from A Night at the Opera, probably their best film.

Here's another sample of their greatness: Thank Yaw! Thank Yaw!

Love Guru's Myers Losing PR Wars

Mike Myers has a problem. It's been five years since his last picture, the over-the-top bomb Cat in the Hat, which sent me fleeing from the theater (something I rarely do). Myers has scored in the Shrek movies, but that's not going to keep him in the $20-million zone to which he has become accustomed. This weekend The Love Guru, which is projected to open behind Get Smart, will prove whether or not Myers still has a love connection with moviegoers. As of Friday, Rotten Tomatoes is ranking Get Smart at 54% fresh with film critics, while The Love Guru is at 14 % rotten.

There's a theory in Hollywood that karma really does follow you around, no matter who you are. While it's true that the studios tend to reward bad behavior like indulgent parents, especially with talent---he who shouts loudest tends to get his way--things do have a way of coming around. When the world turned against former CAA czar Mike Ovitz, there weren't a lot of people coming to his defense. His Disney nemesis Michael Eisner has never inspired warm and fuzzy feelings either. Meanwhile the schadenfreude is thick around Warners producer Joel Silver, who is having a run of bad luck at the boxoffice.

EW goes after Myers' reputation for being difficult in this cover profile:

Still, the fact is, within Hollywood, not everyone is cheering for Myers to succeed. Since early in his career the actor has been tagged with a reputation for being difficult to work with: moody, controlling, and arrogant. That description could, of course, fit many actors and filmmakers, but the degree of enmity directed toward Myers by some who've worked with him — even years after the fact — is rare. Says one executive who has had a rocky relationship with Myers: ''I honestly root against him.'' Penelope Spheeris, who directed Myers in his first film, the 1992 smash Wayne's World, says she has shared war stories with others who've worked with the actor. ''Maybe he could open, like, a children's hospital to clean up his rep,'' she jokes darkly. ''He's got to do something pretty quick.''

Here's Variety's review, which basically recommends the movie as dumb comedy for 13-year-old boys. UPDATE: My column this week explores how hard it is for stars like Myers to stay in The Fluke Zone. Biting reviews like this one by John Anderson won't help:

Mike Myers isn't the Antichrist, exactly. But he is anti-comedy -- if one believes comedy ought to be smart, new, surprising, or, yes, funny. This isn't an accusation. It's been Myers's shtick for a long, long time: Jokes that don't work, bad jokes, lame jokes, jokes that are 40 years old and jokes told by characters we should be feeling sorry for -- the chronically adolescent hero of "Wayne's World," for instance, or the deluded hipster of "Austin Powers." Losers lacking Chaplinesque pathos. Misshapen social cogs without the virtue of an interesting angle.

In short, Mike Myers's oeuvre is about sympathy laughs, although it's not his on-screen persona we're feeling sorry for in "The Love Guru." It is, at long last, Myers himself.

Myers has been doing the PR rounds, with often delightful results. Here's his Barbra Streisand story on Shootout:

The Love Guru, he says, was inspired by Deepak Chopra: "It's a comedy. The best delivery system for ideas is silliness."

UPDATE: He was more uncomfortable on Jon Stewart Thursday night:

Gervais Directs Comedy with Pilkington

Ricky Gervais cast Brit chum Karl Pilkington in his new caveman "high concept" comedy This Side of the Truth. Pilkington suspects Gervais wants him around to keep him amused. Judging from this hilarious on-set podcast, he may be right.

[Hat Tip: Underwire].

Trailer Watch: The Women

Diane English's long-awaited remake of The Women looks quite close to the 1939 original, with Eva Mendes in the Joan Crawford role. And there are absolutely no men in it. And Candice Bergen is in it too, natch.

Colin Firth: Mr. Darcy vs. Mr. Big

Colin Firth not only leads my My Fair Lady poll on who should play Henry Higgins opposite Keira Knightley--by a huge margin--but he is also Jane Austen fans' fave Mr. Darcy. (Is he a model for Mr. Big?) Lead by Firth's sexy performance, the BCC's 1995 Pride and Prejudice continues to dominate all other entrants in the Austen field. I watched it again recently, and Firth does even better than Sir Laurence Olivier (in the 1940 film) at capturing Fitzwilliam Darcy's darkness and light. And Firth scored again in a Darcy-inspired role in Bridget Jones' Diary and its sequel.

I told an interviewer writing yet another story about women's pics in the wake of Sex and the City (here's Rachel Abramowitz's latest) that Jane Austen invented the romantic comedy formula that Hollywood has long relied on. Women are hardwired to believe that a good marriage leads to happily ever after, no matter what their brain tells them. No one has played on the wedding fantasy better than Austen. And Hollywood can steal her stories forever, as far as I'm concerned.

There's a reason romantic movies keep coming back to Firth, from Richard Curtis's Love Actually and Helen Hunt's Then She Found Me to the upcoming movie musical Mamma Mia! (Here's the trailer.) I'm there.

Get Smart: Early Review and Tracking

John Anderson does not love Get Smart. I like the line about not picking up a shoe any time soon.

Get Smart is going head to head with Love Guru next weekend, which makes no sense. Steve Mason has some early tracking info, which judging from the evidence so far this summer, probably means nothing. But I will bet that Get Smart, starring comedy star on-the-rise Steve Carrell, will do better than Love Guru, because Get Smart looks funny. Love Guru, on the other hand, starring comedy star on-the-decline Mike Myers, does not look funny at all. Get Smart has some femme appeal, while my resistance to Love Guru is high.

What Just Happened? Will Go Out Via Magnolia

Finally, 2929 Entertainment has made the call to release its scathing Tinseltown satire What Just Happened? through its own Magnolia Pictures on October 3. Here's my interview with director Barry Levinson and producer-writer Art Linson in Cannes, where What Just Happened? closed the fest out of competition.

2929 owners Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner had hoped to land a domestic distributor for the $20-million Hollywood comedy starring Robert DeNiro at the Sundance Film Festival in January. What Just Happened? scored favorable reviews but the financeers were not able to close a distrib deal that they could live with.

So 2929 will just do it for themselves.

Magnolia has hired marketing-exec-turned-consultant Russell Schwartz, the former marketing prexy of New Line Cinema, to supervise the film’s release campaign. (He also works with National Geographic on such films as U23D.) At Cannes, Schwartz supplied marketing materials for What Just Happened? featuring the tag line, “In Hollywood, everyone can hear you scream.”

What Just Happened? was adapted by Linson from his own vitriolic Hollywood memoir. Studding the movie’s cast are Catherine Keener, Stanley Tucci, Robin Wright Penn, John Turturro, Michael Wincott, Bruce Willis, Sean Penn and Kristen Stewart. 2929 Productions and Linson produced with De Niro and Jane Rosenthal’s Tribeca Productions.

Trailer Watch: Bill Maher's Doc Religulous

Religulous has always seemed potentially hilarious to me: Bill Maher takes a doc crew around the world to talk about religion. He starts out promisingly by entering a church and saying, "Bless me father, for I have sinned. It has been 40 years since my last confession."

Here's the trailer:

Weekend Boxoffice: Sex and the City Messes with Zohan and Kung Fu Panda

Kung Fu Panda will hit solidly with families. (It's pretty damned good.) Panda scored great reviews Friday, with an 85% fresh Rotten Tomatoes score, while Adam Sandler's You Don't Mess with the Zohan nabbed a piddly 37 % rotten. It should reach a few of the poor neglected males out there.

Sex and the City should hold well based on good word-of-mouth and may even pull in a few men. (Is it a one-shot anomaly? Or can Hollywood continue to harness the femmes?) Others have weighed in: The Women's Media Center, The Philly Inquirer, Newsweek, EW Popwatch and Cinematical. [Hat Tip: Women and Hollywood.]

Here are Variety's Zohan and Panda reviews, and our weekend boxoffice report.

Fandango's ticket sales (as of 6/6/08 10:00 a.m. PT) are:

Movie Fandango User Rating % Fandango Sales

Sex and the City “Must Go” 52%

Kung Fu Panda “Go” 23%

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull “Go” 8%

You Don’t Mess with the Zohan “Go” 8%

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian “Go” 2%

Trailer Watch: Pitt and Clooney Star in Coens' Burn After Reading

One of the high points of the recent Cannes Film Fest was talking to Brad Pitt at the afterparty for Clint Eastwood's Changeling, where we enjoyed some friendly cocktail banter over the appropriate length for The Assassination of Jesse James. Let's just say that we each held our own.

Pitt's antics in the trailer for the Coens' next, the CIA spoof Burn After Reading, made me laugh out loud. (The movie opens the Venice Film Festival this August.) Pitt's a movie star--and can be very funny--look at the Oceans films and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Clooney has mined a rich comedy vein in his films for the Coens, and clearly does so here, along with Tilda Swinton and Fran McDormand:

Weekend Boxoffice: Sex and the City Takes Off

Won't it be amusing if after Warners cuts back New Line Cinema, the label scores a raft of hits? Sex and the City, which appeals largely to women, is expected to score off the charts this weekend for a movie with virtually no allure for men. UPDATE: It may gross $20 million on its opening day, reports Pamela McClintock.

Nora and I will be going to an early Saturday screening, as most prime-time evening slots are pre-sold-out, according to online ticket sites MovieTickets.com (which reports that Sex and the City is now ranked number 19 10 on its list of top pre-sale films of all time) and Fandango, which states that as of Thursday morning, "the movie represents 92% of Fandango’s daily ticket sales, the highest daily percentage for any film so far this summer."

In anticipation of a big-titted hit, DreamWorks has clinched a first-look deal for Sex and the City's writer-director-producer, Michael Patrick King, writes Variety.

Metacritic ranks the film at a mid-range 54%. The NYT's Manohla Dargis does not like the film at all:

A little Botox goes a long way in “Sex and the City,” but a little decent writing would have gone even further. A dumpy big-screen makeover of that much-adored small-screen delight, the movie was written and directed by Michael Patrick King, one of the guiding lights and bright wits of the original series, based on Candace Bushnell’s newspaper columns and subsequent book. Once again, Sarah Jessica Parker has stepped into the dizzyingly high heels of Carrie Bradshaw, that postmodern Lorelei Lee — a hardly working New York writer with a passion for men and Manolos — but this time she’s taken a terrible tumble.

While in New York Magazine, David Edelstein gives Sex and the City thumbs up:

Has there ever been a TV series more polarizing than Sex and the City? It polarized me: First it drove me crazy (like itching powder), now I’m madly in love with it. It’s hard to feel halfway about these women and their unabashed materialism, overprivilege, and self-indulgence, their overdependence on and objectification of men. But what a hoot it is to see babes, for once, doing the objectifying—and talking dirty and sleeping around and measuring their fantasies against the sobering truth of male emotional insufficiency. If the core friendship of Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte is the biggest fantasy of all—they complement one another perfectly; they’re never too competitive—it’s a moving design for living: existential haute couture.

And at The Huffington Post, Us Magazine critic Thelma Adams blogs that the movie is no longer in tune with the times: "Sex and the City jumps the shark."

Cannes Wrap: Best of Fest

1. Paolo Sorrentino's Il divo (Italy): concise, focused, accessible, fascinating and entertaining despite arcane Italian political setting, this portrait of Giulio Andreotti won the jury prize. I can't wait to see Sorrentino's next. (Il divo has no stateside distributor.)

2. Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York (USA): utterly disciplined, Kaufman did what he set out to do, brilliantly, with humor. (Still for sale in North America; Sidney Kimmel may not make back his $20 million.)

3. Steve McQueen's Hunger (UK): this masterful directorial debut deservedly won the Camera d'Or and pushes Michael Fassbender toward stardom. (IFC will distribute.)

4. Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir (Israel): authentic and emotional, this hybrid docu-drama shows that there's a future beyond Persepolis for stylized animation in service of powerful story-telling. (SPC will release.)

5. James Gray's Two Lovers (USA): this director-on-the-rise is back on track and elicits one of Joaquin Phoenix's best perfs. (If 2929 Entertainment doesn't get the deal it's seeking, its own distrib Magnolia will release.)

6. Clint Eastwood's Changeling (USA): the only potential best picture Oscar contender at Cannes this year (among many likely foreign film candidates); Angelina Jolie should land a nom. (Universal will likely take it on the fall fest circuit.)

7. Kim Jee-Woon's The Good, The Bad and the Weird (Korea): this stunning Oriental Western homage to Eastwood and Leone boasts high-speed action like you've never seen before: think Stagecoach meets Jackie Chan meets The Road Warrior. This broad action comedy could be hugely commercial.

8. Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona (USA): thanks to Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz's entertaining hijinks, this is Allen's best film since 1997's Deconstructing Harry. With Harvey at her back, Cruz is on her way to a supporting Oscar nod.

9. James Toback's Tyson (USA): this psychologically intimate interview with an iconic figure who is not all that he seems is not just for fight fans. (SPC will release.)

10. Atom Egoyan's Adoration (Canada): yet again, brainy auteur Egoyan explores the faulty fiction of family, history and memory. (SPC picked it up before Cannes.)

11. Barry Levinson's What Just Happened? (USA): as expected, this edgy Hollywood comedy showcasing Robert DeNiro's best role in ages (channeling writer-producer Art Linson) played better in Cannes, where it should have debuted all along. (2929's own Magnolia will most likely distribute.)

Mainstream commercial triumphs:
Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (USA): Spielberg and Co. took the gamble that the movie would score at Cannes and sure enough, it did.
John Stevenson and Mark Osborne's Kung Fu Panda (USA): DreamWorks and Paramount launched yet another global animation juggernaut out of the Cannes fest, which loves Jolie and Jack Black.

Noble Failure?
Steven Soderbergh's Che (Spain): there's a potential masterpiece buried within this sprawling, unfinished bio-epic (in which Benicio del Toro delivers a subtle, non-showy performance which was rightly rewarded with the best actor Prix). Whether Soderbergh will try to find it is another question. At this point HBO would be best suited to handle the film at its current four-hour, 18-minute length.

Summer Begins: Iron Man, Speed Racer, and Superheroes

Let the summer games begin. The LAT's Ken Turan takes on summer blockbuster syndrome, while The Huffington Post addresses summer superheroes.

The summer starts off with Thursday night's opening of Iron Man, which earned 95% fresh reviews on Rotten Tomatoes so far. The NYT's A.O. Scott calls it "an unusually good superhero picture." The New Yorker's David Denby calls it a "whooshing junk pile." Everybody likes Robert Downey. (Variety reviews the Iron Man viedeogame.)

The movie is expected to open well, between $65 and $100 million, depending on how seriously you take the tracking that shows young women are not interested in seeing the picture--only 19% first choice-- which makes it a "three quadrant" movie for starters. The biggest blockbusters, like Narnia, wind up pulling everybody. Young men under 25 have 95% awareness of Iron Man, 65% definite interest and 35% first choice. Women over 25 are more interested in Downey and Gwenyth Paltrow; they will spread the word that Downey is fun and Paltrow actually has a decent role. So the picture could hold well.

Luckily for Paramount, next weekend's Speed Racer (well-reviewed by Variety) is not pulling strong advance tracking numbers, so that might give Iron Man some room to breathe before they open Indiana Jones on May 22. Here's the weekend forecast from Fantasy Moguls and Variety.

I wasn't sure what to expect from Speed Racer from the advance marketing, so I was pleasantly surprised. First, it's really a little kids' movie, more like Pixar's Cars than anything else. Second, the Wachowskis have a solid story with a strong moral theme to hang their gorgeous stylized pyrotechnics on. I don't particularly care about car racing, but I cared about the characters and the family led by John Goodman and Susan Sarandon at the film's center. Speed Racer Emile Hirsch and gal pal Christina Ricci are fine (utterly sexless couples are a theme of the summer so far). And I was dazzled by the Wachowski's eye candy. You can read the movie as a parable of the filmmakers' experience in Hollywood--they're rooting for creative innocence and pure instinct over the corrupt vagaries of the marketplace.

The other movie opening this weekend that roots for innocent indie filmmaking over the compromises of the star system is Son of Rambow, a hit at Sundance 2007 that was fought over; Paramount Vantage grabbed it for $8 million. But the film was delayed by various rights legalities (having to do with Carolco's Rambo) and finally arrives late on the scene with its momentum lost. (It is a hit in the U.K.) And it follows in the wake of the similar Be Kind Rewind, which died at the boxoffice.

In this delightful and expertly executed 80s-set British comedy from Hammer and Tongs (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), two unlikely schoolmate-collaborators pool their resources to shoot a short and suddenly find themselves hugely popular at school. One soaks up the attention, the other doesn't. Here's Variety's Speed Racer Blockbuster Page, with review, clips, trailers and a cool feature on VFX whiz John Gaeta.

The movie has played 27 fests since its Sundance debut, and Vantage hopes that means it has built up some good WOM. It opens in NY and LA this weekend, moves to 30-35 screens in the top 12 markets May 9, and expands to 70-80 screens in the top 25 markets on May 16. By the 23rd of May it should be on 200 screens in the top 60-65 markets. UPDATE: Rotten Tomatoes reviews so far are at 77%; I'm surprised they aren't even better. The genre seems to confuse people. That is, it's a smart movie set in the 80s about kids that's for adults.

Coens' Burn After Reading to Open Venice

As expected, the Coens' next film, the CIA comedy Burn After Reading (starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney), which was not going to be ready in time for Cannes, will open the Venice Fest this year.

Weekend Boxoffice: Harold and Kumar vs. Baby Mama

Amazingly, the dumb-male stoner comedy sequel Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay and Tina Fey's smart female comedy Baby Mama are earning equivalently middling reviews. Harold and Kumar is 53% Rotten on the Tomatometer, and so is Baby Mama. Here are Variety's reviews of Baby Mama and Harold and Kumar. At a Variety conference table meeting last week, one guy asked, "who wants to see Baby Mama?", clearly expecting universal agreement that it was a must-to-avoid. Several women, including me, instantly chimed up, "we do!"

The potboiler Deception, on the other hand, is in the Rotten Tomato doghouse, with a 9 % rotten critics rating.

Here's Variety's weekend forecast. UPDATE: Baby Mama is soundly beating Harold and Kumar.

Fandango Five – Ticket Sales (as of 4/25/08 7:00 a.m. PT)

Movie Fandango User Rating % Fandango Sales

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay “Go” 18%

Iron Man “Go” 12%

Forgetting Sarah Marshall “Go” 11%

Baby Mama “Go” 8%

The Forbidden Kingdom “Go” 6%

Forgetting Sarah Marshall: Lunkhead Romance

Just look at the movie. One of my pet peeves is box-office prognosticating based solely on tracking the opening weekend numbers. I don't care how Forgetting Sarah Marshall opens April 18. I know, based on my own experience, that it's funny enough to do well at the boxoffice. If they laugh, they will come.

They did not laugh at Judd Apatow factory duds Walk Hard or Drillbit Taylor. And this relationship comedy, while told from the male POV--writer-actor Jason Segal loses the love of his life (Kristen Bell) and can't stop crying, both in and out of the nude--plays for both men and women.

At the Hollywood and Highland premiere last week, it was fun to see producer Apatow presiding over his merry band of miscreants--Segal, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Paul Rudd, Christopher Mintz-Plasse (McLovin) and Brit newcomer Russell Brand, who steals the movie and was the after-party cock of the walk in his rock star finery and teased bouffant. Sure enough, Apatow admits, Sarah Marshall director Nicholas Stoller and Hill are cooking up a movie for Brand to star in.

The LAT has a rogue's gallery of boys in the buff. My all-time full-frontal fave? Ewan McGregor. No contest.

Weekend Boxoffice: Leatherheads vs. Nim's Island

At the weekend boxoffice, George Clooney's period screwball comedy Leatherleads (54% rotten on Rotten Tomatoes) dukes it out with family film Nim's Island, starring Jodie Foster (46 %). Here's Variety's boxoffice forecast.

The one to see, especially if you appreciate Martin Scorsese's mise-en-scene and the Rolling Stones in performance, is Shine a Light, which earned 86% fresh on the Tomatometer. (Here's Stephen Schaefer's report of the Stones' NYC press conference.) I will be catching up with Stop-Loss (62%) while it is still in theaters.

Fandango Five – Ticket Sales (as of 4/4/08 10:00 a.m. PT)

Movie Fandango User Rating % Fandango Sales

Nim’s Island “Go” 15%

Leatherheads “Go” 12%

Shine a Light “Go” 12%

21 “Go” 7%

Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! “Go” 7%

Fandango Weekly Poll (as of 4/4/08 10:00 a.m. PT)

George Clooney's Leatherheads opens this week. Of the movies below, which one is your favorite Clooney flick?

Ocean's Eleven 43%

O Brother, Where Art Thou? 31%

Michael Clayton 10%

Three Kings 7%

Out of Sight 6%

Syriana 3%

Gray Lady Airs Tom Cruise's Open Secret

(Posted by Peter Debruge)

In today's NYTimes, Michael Cieply recounts a Tuesday night industry screening of "Tropic Thunder" in which Tom Cruise "brought down the house with his surprise portrayal of a bald, hairy-chested, foulmouthed, dirty-dancing movie mogul of the kind who is only too happy to throw an actor to the wolves when his popularity cools."

Sure sounds funny. Can we assume Cieply caught this screening? Or was the whole "rapturous reaction" fed to him by the person described in this line?

Mr. Stiller, who played Mr. Cruise's obsessive stunt double in a popular Web video (and who is expected to co-star with him in "Hardy Men"), first talked with Mr. Cruise, his friend, about taking a role more than a year ago, according to a person who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid conflict with the film's promotion."

The whole story reads like the kind of "news" you'd expect to encounter on the Web (which got there first back in November), not in the pages of the Gray Lady. And that popular Web video? Cieply's referring to a televised sketch Stiller and Cruise made for the 2000 MTV Movie Awards. Here's a refresher:

Weekend Boxoffice: Horton Holds, Perry Performs, Drillbit Dies

Dr. Seuss's Horton Hears a Who! landed atop the boxoffice charts again, while Tyler Perry's latest opened well and Judd Apatow's badly-reviewed Owen Wilson comedy Drillbit Taylor did not. That's two Apatow-produced disappointments now, after Walk Hard. But the next three---Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Pineapple Express and Step Brothers-- look strong.

Time's Richard Corliss profiles Perry while Richard Schickel divebombs Drillbit Taylor.

[Photo courtesy Time Magazine]

Holiday Weekend Update: Good and Plenty

There's plenty to see in theaters this weekend.

While it's ingeniously improvised by likable actors at a real poker tournament, The Grand is not as funny as the last mock doc by writer-director Zak Penn, The Incident at Loch Ness. The wily Werner Herzog is the funniest thing in both movies.

My recent Judd Apatow poll shows Pineapple Express leading in want-to-see over his three other comedies, including this weekend's well-advertised opener, Drillbit Taylor. Pineapple Express's director, the usually darkly dramatic David Gordon Green, has in release Snow Angels, which played at Sundance 2007. It's well worth seeing before it disappears. So is Gus Van Sant's brilliant, stark Cannes entry Paranoid Park.

The moody period noir thriller Married Life is marred by miscasting: the estimable Chris Cooper and Pierce Brosnan are both in love with the 20-something femme fatale Rachel McAdams. Excellent actors all. But yucky. I preferred AMC's similar but more stylish Mad Men.

Among the Oscar-season holdovers, Oscar-winner The Counterfeiters and animation nominee Persepolis are hanging in with great WOM. I caught The Band's Visit last weekend, a small gem which was ineligible as Israel's Oscar entry because its Egyptians and Israelis communicate in English.

And of course, the delightful The Bank Job is showing legs.

[Photos: Snow Angels, Paranoid Park, The Counterfeiters, Persepolis]

Weekend Boxoffice: Holdover Horton vs. Perry and Madea

So this weekend I will be catching up with new openers The Grand (on screener DVD) and Drillbit Taylor (at a screening).

Otherwise, I will be watching my cache of DVDs and saved TiVo stuff, including HBO's John Adams. (I love it, the marriage especially; it's too dark, but it feels real to me.)

If I were going to a theater I would also see Horton Hears a Who! which actually scored good reviews. Here's the Variety weekend forecast. Tyler Perry anyone? Well, I have yet to check him out, something I hate to admit. It's about time I did.

Judd Apatow Alert: Four Comedies Coming

We all know producer Judd Apatow has four movies coming up in 2008. But which ones will work at the boxoffice? By my guess, all of them. It's just a case of how high is high.

I forecast correctly that the musical biopic parody Walk Hard would fail. It was a smart comedy satire of narrow interest to a wide audience, and asked folks to spend entirely too much screen time with John C. Reilly, who is the original definition of a great actor who has to be cast in the right (co-starring) role.

Here's USA Today's interview with Apatow. And my column on Apatow before Knocked Up and Superbad opened last year.

Sight unseen, based on marketing materials and ShoWest reaction, I'm predicting the following:

BOFFO HOME RUN
Step Brothers R (dumb male comedy starring Will Ferrell and Reilly; trailer (below) is hilarious)

SMASH
Drillbit Taylor PG-13 (Owen Wilson star power, may have family appeal)UPDATE: Boy was I wrong! Maybe Apatow and Wilson work best in the R-rated universe; also this was a familiar old plot. Bad reviews and poor opening.
Pineapple Express R (stoner comedy)

DOUBLE
Forgetting Sarah Marshall R (relationship comedy, may have femme appeal)

Which Judd Apatow comedy do you most want to see?
	Drillbit Taylor
	Forgetting Sarah Marshall
	Step Brothers
	Pineapple Express
pollcode.com free polls

ShoWest: Summer Preview

Every year ShoWest screens an honor reel of movies that grossed over $100-million the year before. Which of the 2008 ShoWest promo pics will be on next year's reel?

Based on what I saw and reactions gleaned, here's my best guess:

Movie that could pass $300 million: the sequel The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, which will likely improve on its predecessor with more action and more mature protagonists.

Movies that could go well past $200 million: sequels The Dark Knight, starring Christian Bale and Heath Ledger, Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, starring Harrison Ford and Shia LeBeouf, Rob Cohen's China-shot Mummy 3: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, starring Brendan Fraser, Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh, and Guillermo del Toro's epic-scale actioner Hellboy II: The Golden Army; plus non-sequels Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman as assassins training rookie James McAvoy, the invulnerable Will Smith as a homeless hero in Hancock, Judd Apatow's dumb male comedy Step Brothers, starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, Marvel's Iron Man, which boasts femme appeal via Robert Downey Jr. and co-star Gwenyth Paltrow, and animated family originals Kung Fu Panda (DreamWorks Animation) and Wall-E (Disney/Pixar).

Movies that could break $100 million: a remake of Marvel's The Incredible Hulk, starring Edward Norton as a thinking man's Bruce Banner; for the femme audience, a remake of the HBO classic Sex and the City, a remake of the boomer TV show Get Smart, starring Steve Carell and Ann Hathaway, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler's surrogate nightmare comedy Baby Mama, and a movie version of the Broadway musical Mamma Mia (also for musical fans); Judd Apatow factory comedies Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Pineapple Express; Ben Stiller's starry R-rated action comedy Tropic Thunder, starring Stiller, Downey, Jack Black and Steve Coogan; the frere Wachowski's adaptation of the anime classic Speed Racer, starring Emile Hirsch and Christina Ricci; and George Lucas's animated sequel Star Wars: The Clone Wars. (Am I the only one who feels a shock that the film is going out through Warners? Even though Lucasfilm controls and markets the movies and collects the lions' share of the take, I feel like all Star Wars movies are supposed to have the Fox fanfare in front of them.)

ShoWest: Stiller and Downey Star in Tropic Thunder

Actor-director-writer-producer Ben Stiller and star Robert Downey, Jr. hit the Vegas strip's Planet Hollywood to promote their new summer comedy Tropic Thunder. Downey is about to enjoy the summer of his life, with two films book-ending the summer, Iron Man, his first major starring role in a summer action hero tentpole, and Tropic Thunder, in which he plays an actor who ingests some chemicals to help him become a black man.

In Tropic Thunder, a group of actors, under the direction of wild and crazy Steve Coogan, is in the jungle shooting a war movie when they are attacked, for real. The footage from the R-rated comedy was profane and hilarious. Jack Black plays a star who is coming down from heroin and asks to be tied to a tree as he withdraws. Black also could have enjoyed a good ShoWest, having voiced the title role in Kung Fu Panda, if he had showed up, pointed out Stiller and Downey during some affectionate competitive banter. "Fuck him."

Word is the DreamWorks movie, which looks expensive with its mega-watt cast, action mayhem and jungle locations, may have cost over $100 million. (Paramount claims far less.) It opens August 15. The first trailer will be out next week, Paramount said.

ShoWest: The $100 Million-Plus Honor Reel

ShoWest started off Tuesday with the annual Honor Reel of films that made over $100 million, 28 last year, starring Peter Parker, Harry Potter and Jack Sparrow, among others, with two from the Judd Apatow comedy factory, several big FX and comics flicks, musicals (Enchanted, Hairspray, and Alvin and the Chipmunks), and big animation titles like Ratatouille (which stuck out amid all the other stuff as a Quality Film) and The Simpsons. (Every one of the $100-million-plus club had some digital playdates as well.) There were seven $200-million-plus pics, and four that grossed over $300 million.

While these films may have grossed a lot, they didn't all return pots of money, because some, like Evan Almighty and Blades of Glory, were very expensive. Rush Hour 3 ended up making up for its lackluster b.o. on DVD. I was also struck by how many movies appealed to adults as well as kids. (One Sony exec explained that the current Vantage Point did as well as it did by playing to the boomer crowd.)

And there are a few stars left in the Hollywood firmament, it seems: Depp, Cage (with two biggies), Willis and Smith among them, and in the comedy world, Carrell and Sandler.

300 reminded me that we should expect a rash of imitators to turn up soon.