'Gran Torino,' revving up, but 'Day the Earth Stood Still' should conquer box office

By Sarah Sluis

Alien-takeover remake The Day the Earth Stood Still will invade the box office this weekend, playing on 3,560 screens and ensuring at least some people will opt to enter one of those hourly multiplex showings.  Keanu Reeves does his blank-faced best as Klaatu.  Like The Matrix, the movie appears to be heavy with religious symbolism, with Reeves once again playing a Christ figure who raises people from the dead and walks on water.  The 1951 version used the national fear over the atom bomb to great effect; the remake replaces bombs with our environmental problems, but falls short, leading our Daniel Eagan to conclude that director Scott Derrickson "didn't find a way to make The Day the Earth Stood
Still
meaningful for a modern-day audience."  If you've worn out your copies of those alien disaster movies of the past twelve years--Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, or The War of the Worlds--you'll probably get more of the same-old here.

Gran Torino releases today in 6 theatres, joining The Reader, which opened Wednesday on 8 screens.  The movie has garnered some positive reviews, with critics assenting that it's a good Eastwood film-- our Rex Roberts notes the director has "the singular ability to turn bombast into poignancy."  But, like Changeling, the film is certainly not Clint's best work.  Eastwood plays a racist holdout in an ethnically diverse neighborhood, who befriends a young Hmong neighbor after the boy is bullied into playing out Grand Auto Theft with Eastwood's prized car.  Taking a note from those teen actresses that parlay their popularity into recording deals, Eastwood sings a song over the credits.  Of course, given that it's Clint, there's considerably more dignity involved.

The Debra Messing/John LeGuizamo-starrer Nothing Like The Holidays will open on 1,671 screens.  A serviceable, "clich-ridden story," its execution and attention to detail redeem the home-for-the-holidays plot.  Our David Noh praised the script for details like Messing's "desperate assimilating attempts to speak Spanish with a torturously 'correct' accent."  Much of Beverly Hills Chihuahua's heat came from Hispanic viewers, but whether Overture Films will be able to successfully mobilize this demographic for the movie will have to wait until Monday.

Animated fairy tale Delgo (2,160 screens), a multi-millionaire's pet project, opens today, and I sincerely hope audiences avoid this debacle.  Didn't someone tell the millionaire that your anthromorphized
characters are supposed to look cute?   Featuring the ugliest dinosaur-esque creatures, rendered in "videogame-quality CGI," according to Frank Lovece, the film seems terribly wishy-washy, ending with a climax that "flogs the verity of compassion, touting it as a good and important thing...and then shows how you're an idiot for being compassionate."  The film's ten-year gestation film is also apparent through its casting choices.  Erstwhile teen stars Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt no longer have the same draw they did back in 1997's I Know What You Did Last Summer, and the memorable actress Anne Bancroft passed away before the film's completion.  I wouldn't even pick up the film in a $4.99 DVD bargain bin, because then I would have to look at those awful dinosaur things.

'Gran Torino' revs up for December release

By Sarah Sluis

Clint Eastwood's Changeling releases this Friday, and Warner Bros. has confirmed that his second
2008 film, Gran Torino, will release December 17th.  While the week (and month) is crowded with A-list stars and action pictures, as well as the studios' Oscar contenders, mediocre reviews and last-minute juggling of release dates (i.e. The Reader) may thin the ranks and give Gran Torino a better chance at the gold statue.  However, studios are also cutting back on their Oscar promotional budgets this year, as mentioned by Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart in his blog.  He faults the economy, as well as a lack of enthusiasm for projects (doubtful), as the reason for his presumable poor Oscar-related ad sales to date.

In development news, Warner Bros. has enlisted McG to direct spy thriller Dead Spy Running.  The Charlie's Angels director is currently finishing up action sequel Terminator Salvation.  The material comes from an as-yet unpublished book by Jon Stock, a British author and journalist who spent time as a foreign correspondent.  I see two positive forces at work here:  Stock's experience reporting abroad will certainly enhance the book's authenticity, and with Terminator Salvation McG will accumulate another action credential, presumably one that will take the over-the-top, humorous action of the Charlie's Angels films in another direction.

On a bit of a roll, Warner Bros. also bought an action pitch for a film version of last year's rescue of fifteen hostages from the Colombian jungle.   The rescue was the culmination of five years of effort after three Americans were captured in 2003.  Their employer, defense and aerospace company Northrup Grumman, (who knows why they were in Colombia in the first place...) hired McLarty Associates to consult on the rescue.  Interestingly, this same consulting firm will actually produce the film through their spin-off company, McLarty Media.  I find this an odd mix.  While no more biased than an autobiography, what company would want to hire a consulting firm knowing that any juicy story might be considered for a movie pitch?  Moreover, will the company consider the film a chance to airbrush less attractive parts of the story?  New York Times foreign correspondent Peter Landesman, who recently wrote an adaptation of a Deep Throat biography, will script the project, so perhaps those questions will fall to him instead of the producers.