Can Blu fly past the Captain?

Rio 2 and Captain America: The Winter Soldier will both vie for the top slot at the box office this Friday-Sunday. The former is one of the weekend’s new major releases and the follow-up to the popular Rio, an animated kids’ film about a pair of endangered macaws (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg and Anne Hathaway).  When it opened in spring of 2011, Rio grossed almost $40 million. Its successor is currently tracking in the high-$30-to-low-$40-millions range, prompting many pundits to speculate it should match, possibly even better, the original. If either proves to be the case, Rio 2 will give holdover Captain America: The Winter Soldier a run for its sky-high pile of dough. Given positive critical reviews and smiling word-of-mouth, The Winter Soldier is expected to hold well. However, comic book movies often plummet their second weekend in theatres – Iron Man 3 dipped 58 percent, for example – so the title of Weekend’s Top Earner is really up for grabs.

Beginning today and with a slightly smaller platform than Rio 2, which opens in 3,948 locations, the latest sports film to star Kevin Costner, Draft Day, will screen in 2,781 theatres. The movie gives a fictionalized behind-the-scenes look at the unpublicized maneuvering that takes place in the lead-up to the NFL draft. Costner is firmly ensconced in familiar territory here, playing the American underdog everyman fighting for good amidst the corrupt milieu of an American sports industry. Field of Dreams, Bull Durham and Tin Cup are among Costner’s best-loved movies, and Draft Day looks to repeat the old-fashioned though nonetheless satisfying story arc characteristic of those films. Will audiences go for Costner’s brand of comfort? Reviews for Draft Day aren’t great, and recent sports movies haven’t opened very strong: Moneyball, which is basically the baseball version of Day, had great buzz going for it and still only managed to rake in $19.5 million over its opening weekend. Distributor Lionsgate believes Draft Day will gross in the low teens.

The last new major release to open this weekend is also the first horror offering since January’s Devil’s Due. Oculus will screen in 2,648 theatres. The flick has producer Jason Blum (the Paranormal Activity movies) behind it, and has been pretty well reviewed, though box-office expectations are modest. Returns around $11 or $12 million would be considered solid.

Finally, the specialty realm has two new offerings of its own in Joe, starring Nicolas Cage and directed by cult favorite David Gordon Green, and Cuban Fury, a salsa comedy starring Nick Frost and Rashida Jones. The latter is playing in 79 theatres while the former will start off its B.O. run in 48 locations.

Anne Hathaway dreams a dream in 'Les Misérables'

Universal has high hopes for Les Misérables, which they've set for a December release. The studio just released a trailer for the musical, which will likely play before the distributor's release of Snow White and the Huntsman this Friday. Perhaps trying to reel in female fans who wanted to see Snow White for Kristen Stewart, the trailer focuses on Anne Hathaway as Fantine, a downtrodden single mother.

At my first pass on the trailer, Hathaway's voice sounded raw, with audible breathes between phrases, which is usually a no-no for singers. However, Hathaway has a history of nailing live performances, including on the Oscars and in this tribute to Meryl Streep. She also sang (a cover of Queen's "Somebody to Love," why?)in Ella Enchanted, which had a full soundtrack. She's not a bad singer. So why does she sound this way? Director Tom Hooper (The King's Speech) reportedly had his actors sing live on set, which produces the less polished feel. Given how over-autotuned most songs are, especially ones sung by actors who aren't the greatest singers, I appreciate that Hooper went for live-style singing. Oddly, having more authentic, oh-so slightly flawed singing will make the experience feel more like one is part of an audience watching a live performance.

 

Hathaway's singing is the star of the trailer, but there are a few other glimpses of the impoverished sections of early 19th-century Paris that serves as the backdrop to the epic tale. The comically evil Thénardier couple, which will be played by Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter, are nowhere to be found, but I kind of hope they remain out of the trailers and serve as a surprise for ticket-buyers.  Les Misérables is an ensemble piece, with Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, and Amanda Seyfried in the leading roles, but this first trailer makes it seem like Hathaway is the film's true star.

 

Anne Hathaway cast in 'Les Miserables'

By Sarah Sluis

I have a special fondness for the musical Les Misrables, which my high-school French teacher used to instruct us in the vagaries of the French language. Singing along with my fifteen-year-old classmates to Cosette's innocent rendition of "There is a Castle on a Cloud" in French ("Mon Prince est en Chemin")? Priceless. Universal Pictures has moved incredibly fast with its film adaptation of Les Misrables, casting the main roles shortly after announcing the project. The musical, based on Victor Hugo's 1862 novel, was first staged in London in 1985, so it's odd that the studio is now moving with so much speed. They've already set a release date: Dec. 7, 2012.

Anne Hathaway will play Fantine, a poor working-class woman whose condition is made worse by her chronic illness and her status as a single mom. She joins Russell Crowe, who will play Javert, the police inspector who makes the lives of Fantine and Jean Valjean miserable. Valjean, a criminal turned wealthy factory owner, will be played by Hugh Jackman. Most encouragingly, the production will be helmed by newly minted Oscar winner Tom Hooper. Last year, he received the Best Director award for the critical and commercial success The King's Speech.

The stage version of Les Misrables is sung all the way through. The question of how to blend the songs with dialogue (presumably spoken, not sung) will shape whether the movie ends up being a success or a failure. Musicals are no longer the pariahs they once were, but success is still something of a gamble. Who would have thought the poppy songs in Mamma Mia! would appear to effortlessly blend onscreen, leading to a global success? With its prestige December release date, Universal is undoubtedly hoping the movie will end up more like director Rob Marshall's adaptation of Chicago ($300+ million) and less like his adaptation of Nine ($50 million). Hooper has shown he can sensitively adapt history with The King's Speech and "John Adams," but will he be suited for a musical historical epic? In little more than a year we'll find out.

83rd Academy Awards recap: The Oscars court the next generation

By Sarah Sluis

The best way to watch any awards show is with a DVR. But it's worth noting that for this year's Oscar broadcast, I mainly used my fast forward button for the commercials, not the show. I was most impressed with Anne Hathaway as a host--she has amazing confidence, sparkles, and possesses that chipper attitude that helps move things along. I suspect James Franco was supposed to be her laid-back, wryly humorous counterpart, but it didn't seem to work out that way. He wasn't a straight man, he was a dead fish. She hosted the show herself, and I enjoyed it. Mark me as one of those "next-generation people" the Oscars successfully won over, I'm guilty as charged.

The broadcast itself held few surprises. Most of the categories were a lock. The King's Speech was supposed to win Best Picture (along with Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor for Colin Firth), and it did. In fact, Tom Hooper even won Best Director over The Social Network's David Fincher, who has a greater body of work to support his talent. I now suspect Fincher will join the ranks of the groundbreaking directors whose work is rewarded on much, much later films: Alfred Hitchcock, who only won an honorary award, or Martin Scorsese, who was nominated six times before he won on his seventh nomination.

When The King's Speech finally won Best Picture, it seemed anticlimactic. As the producers thanked Harvey Weinstein, they cut to a shot of him with the biggest, grimacing sourpuss expression I've ever seen from someone whose movie just won something. Not even a chuckle, a smile? This year, the battle between The King's Speech and The Social Network served as a symbol of the Academy's conservative voting methods. Oscar prognosticators suspected that the Anglophile, feel-good story of a king would beat a movie about the motormouth underdog who founded Facebook, and they were right. Maybe if they make a movie in 2070 about the founding of Facebook, it will win.

Though most winners managed to throw in something clever, there were few tears or breakdowns this year. The award for best speech (watch it here) goes to Luke Matheny, a recent NYU grad who won for Best Live Action Short Film. In his acceptance speech, his filmmaking experience sounded like the reminiscences of an old, successful director. His mom did craft services! He forgot to get a haircut! His girlfriend composed the music! Turns out Matheny's film was rejected by Sundance and Slamdance, but now he's got the last laugh--and an Oscar.

The losing actresses didn't give convincing "happy" performances. Even though Natalie Portman was considered the strongest contender for Best Actress, Annette Bening looked disappointed when she lost. She deserves an Oscar! In the supporting actress category, Amy Adams looked sad when fellow actress Melissa Leo claimed the statuette, and her eyes betrayed a hint of moisture when she presented the short film awards later in the evening. Don't worry, Amy! You'll get your chance. As for Bening--quick, line up another awards film. Maybe the fifth nomination will be the charm?

Social shout-outs. I did in fact "two-screen" the Oscars, but only to IMDB Lena Horne and read her obituary (after Halle Berry mentioned the trailblazing actress). And play spider solitaire during slow moments. Turns out James Franco was tweeting the whole time (maybe that's why he was so stone-faced--distraction?). Besides extra content offered online at ABC, a million other websites liveblogged the Oscars.

The broadcast itself drew heavily from YouTube. The Auto-tune the News people turned Harry Potter and Twilight dialogue into ballads, and the P.S. 22 choir, a product of YouTube viral fame, sang "Over the Rainbow." A note for next year: continue to replace montages with zeitgeisty moments like these.

For those that are now in withdrawal, rest assured. Some sites are already predicting the Oscar nominees for the broadcast in 2012.

Forbes list of 'Most bang for your buck' actors doesn't really mean anything

By Sarah Sluis

I'm all about cute statistics, but Forbes' list of actors that deliver that most bang for their buck doesn't really say much. It uses the ratio (actor's salary: total gross of movie) to determine what stars deliver the most money for their performance. If only it were that simple. First, the low-hanging fruit: correlation does not imply causation.

Take the topper on that list, Shia LaBeouf. He was in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. A movie directed by Steven Spielberg starring Harrison Ford and one of the most famous franchises out there. Of course his salary was low compared to the movie's total gross! He wasn't the main draw in the movie. He wasn't paid that much because he didn't matter that much.

LaBeouf also starred in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Another news flash: no one cared about LaBeouf, they cared about seeing those toys turned into giant heroes and villains in the most confusing, terrible movie to make over $800 million (I'm still bitter about the two hours I lost because of that movie).

What would show the star power of an actor would be a performance in a star-driven vehicle, like a generic action movie or romantic comedy. You would have to exclude performances in huge franchises, control for the effect of having co-stars that were bigger than them, or a huge director. But it's kind of hard to find such movies.

Anne Hathaway, who placed second on the list, comes close to a "star power" movie with Bride Wars, a so-so flick that she starred in with Kate Hudson. The real reason that Hathway placed second, though, was because of a supporting role in Alice in Wonderland, where she played the White Queen. Actor Johnny Depp was a bigger draw, and her influence is somewhat lost in the 3D-driven spectacle adaptation directed by Tim Burton. She contributed to the movie's success, she didn't cause it.

The third-place finisher, Daniel Radcliffe, is also third mainly because he's cast in the behemoth franchise Harry Potter.

It's only when you go lower down the list that actor performances actually start to come into play. Although Iron Man 2 is a comic book franchise, Robert Downey Jr. helped sell tickets, as did his performance in Sherlock Holmes (another adaptation of a well-known property).

Whether an actor is a "value" depends on a lot more than salary and total gross of the movie. If anything, this list confirms that being part of a franchise or known property gives a greater probability for success than an original film. Yet another reason there are so few Inceptions out there and so many Transformer 2s. Also, a note to actors: if you want to game the system, land some supporting roles in really big films, and your fractional salary will boost your ratio and lead everyone to believe you're a great value.

Trailer Roundup: 'Love and Other Drugs' and 'How Do You Know'

By Sarah Sluis

As the summer winds down, I take a look at the two recently released trailers for the fall/winter movie season.

'Love and Other Drugs'

Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal (who were briefly paired together in Brokeback Mountain) star in Love and Other Drugs, which I had pegged as a romance with some dark comedy thrown in. Based on a memoir by a Viagra pharmaceutical rep, it led me to expect something with a little bit of The Insider in it. After all, pharma salespeople are rather morally ambiguous characters, since their job is to persuade doctors to prescribe more of their drug, regardless of what is the best medical decision for the patient

Enter the trailer:

Do I like Love and Other Drugs more or less after seeing the trailer? Less. Why? The trailer makes the movie sound too much like a typical romantic comedy. Worse, it gives away moments that must take place towards the end of the movie, including crying (presumably after a break-up) and Gyllenhaal's character trying to catch up with the Hathaway character on a bus (which is usually the scene right before they kiss and go to closing credits). It's possible that the movie's premise has just been sanitized for a public that's presumably skittish about anything out of the ordinary, and the strongest sign that this is true is one striking omission. Hathaway's character has Parkinson's Disease, a plot point that never makes its way into the trailer. Maybe audiences would find that too depressing? This movie is still on my to-see list when it comes out November 24th, but now it needs to redeem itself to fall in line with my initial expectations. Another good sign? It's releasing over Thanksgiving, a prime slot that implies the studio thinks it's got a good movie on its hands.

'How Do You Know'

The latest from James L. Brooks (who last directed Spanglish and As Good As It Gets), How Do You Know places Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson and Paul Rudd in a love triangle, and also features Jack Nicholson--a cast full of great actors. It centers on a female softball player (Witherspoon) torn between her baseball pitcher boyfriend (Wilson) and a down-on-his luck corporate guy (Rudd).

Enter the trailer:

Do I like How Do You Know more of less after seeing the trailer? More. Most of all, this trailer seems thoughtful, not gimmicky. The trailer brings to mind a Cameron Crowe movie (perhaps Jerry Maguire?) but that's not a bad thing as far as I'm concerned. We learn less about plot points, which are for the most part elided, and more about the characters' states of mind. In As Good As It Gets, so much of the movie was about Jack Nicholson's character, which enriched the relationship he had with Helen Hunt. I really feel that Brooks will be able to pull off a similarly meaningful character transformation here. I also can't decide if this line of Witherspoon's dialogue is interesting or trite: "Most girls' plan is to meet a guy, fall in love, have a baby. But I don't know if I have what it takes for everybody's regular plan." It's pretty common in romantic comedies for women to say they don't want the standard package only to end up with all of the above in the end. However, if Brooks and Witherspoon can make us believe this about Witherspoon's character, I'll be right on board for this movie. It's also eyeing a high-traffic release date on December 17th, where I'm sure it will attract large audiences.

Anne Hathaway over the rainbow for Judy Garland biopic 'Get Happy'

By Sarah Sluis

Call it The Bad and the Beautiful meets The Valley of the Dolls, with a little bit of Walk the Line thrown in. Anne Hathaway will play Judy Garland in both a film and a stage adaptation of Get Happy, a



production based on the biography of the star penned by Gerard Clark. The Weinstein Company, which has recently been dipping into Broadway for film adaptations (upcoming Nine and August: Osage County) will produce. Apparently Hathaway's "impromptu" singing during the Oscars reminded viewers that she can in fact carry a tune, and has contributed songs in the past for her children's movies Ella Enchanted and Hoodwinked.

Judy Garland's life seems to be an exercise in contrasts: she was an incredibly talented performer, starring in dozens of movies, including a few that regularly show up on "Top 100" lists: The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis, and A Star is Born. Behind the scenes, she had the multiple marriages that seem to characterize female Hollywood stars, was cheated and manipulated by those who worked with her, and struggled with an addiction to amphetamines unscrupulously supplied by the studio. For those who grew up with images of Garland as Dorothy Gale or singing in wholesome Midwestern musical Meet Me in St. Louis, reconciling those images can be difficult. There's a chance that the Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

aspect of Judy Garland will take over in the adaptation, overshadowing her great contributions to film history as a performer. Since the project has yet to attach a writer or director to lend a vision to the project, it's difficult to know how it will be approached creatively. What interests me is the idea of using songs originally sung by her within the context of her personal life, an approximation of the repurposing in Mamma Mia!. While I can't think of an appropriate place for "The Trolley Song," I'm looking forward to the inevitable inclusion of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." With Hathaway booked for at least three films, it will be at least 2011 before the project comes to fruition. With the expense of a stage production much less than a film production, I expect that the Garland story would open on Broadway and be tweaked before it moves into a film adaptation

Why 'Bride Wars' misjudges the female audience

By Sarah Sluis

The MTV Movie Blog, perhaps because of their preview/commercial show "Spoiler," frequently posts
"EXCLUSIVE" clips from upcoming films.  They recently posted clips from Bride Wars and Bedtime Stories.  Despite my lifelong residence in the "young female" quadrant, the Bride Wars clip drove me nuts (trailer here), to the point that I found the pet hamster "young male" humor of Adam Sandler's Bedtime Stories vastly more entertaining and less offensive than Bride Wars, which seems to view the crazed female stereotype as one grounded in reality.

I love romantic comedies, but I now have very, very low expectations for Bride Wars.  For a female-oriented film, they are entirely off base: by making the psycho brides (bridezillas) initially plausible types, they insult their female audience.  Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson play seemingly normal best friends who come undone when a scheduling error leaves only one open spot for their weddings.  The women are petty and conniving without any good reason other than those "bridal hormones" floating around.  Ever the optimist, I'm willing to say that perhaps my impression comes from a discrepancy between the marketing and the film itself.  Maybe the movie will present Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson as over-the-top, unrealistic stock characters (see Elle Woods reference below), who have no other option than to use the appalling backstabbing techniques played for laughs, but I'm not getting my hopes up.  Both actresses generally play genuine, fresh-faced characters (not stock villains or mean girls), and I just can't imagine why these sensible, normal women couldn't just resolve matters through a double wedding or another corny compromise in the first place.

Compare this treatment of women-gone-wrong to some other comedies that poke fun at female stereotypes without condescending to them: Legally Blonde (2001) for example, trots out every
poofy-blonde stereotype imaginable, but because Reese Witherspoon's performance is such a clear caricature, her behavior is entertaining, not offensive.  Entirely oblivious to how her pink wardrobe (a.k.a. her heightened femininity) precludes her from full participation in the professional world, WItherspoon's Elle Woods ends up trouncing all those who underestimate her
for the way she looks.  A few waves of feminism later, Elle's Barbie-inspired wardrobe seems a modern permutation of Katharine Hepburn's androgynous, for the time, clothing: both present women who dress and act in counterpoint to convention, but end up succeeding anyway.

As for Bride Wars, if I want to watch two women fight with each other, I'll watch some reality television instead--at least that genre knows to present its characters as exaggerated, unbelievable stereotypes,
self-contradicting and petty, and (despite the misleading name) totally unreal.  The fresh-faced, good girl personas of Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson just don't work in this situation.

With Bride Wars off my must-see list (except out of fascination to see if the film can redeem itself from
the marketing campaign), I have a couple other options.  Ridiculous shopping addict Isla Fisher takes a cue from Reese Witherspoon in her caricature performance in Confessions of a Shopaholic (the novel an engaging few hours) and, of course, I might pay to see the hamster jokes (side benefit: better comedic timing and editing) in Bedtime Stories.