The VFX battle that the 'Jaws' music drowned out

It was a little weird that Jaws music interrupted the speech by the Best Visual Effects winners for Life of Pi at the Oscars on Sunday, later cutting off their microphone, but most people didn't think much of it. It was early in the evening, and many likely wrote it off as an unusually aggressive policy on the length of acceptance speeches. While the orchestra may have been hewing to the Academy's strict standards (the winners were cut off after a minute, and nominees are usually told to wrap it up within 45 seconds), this graph from the 2011 Oscars shows that the rule is inconsistently applied, with music only sometimes playing once they reach that mark. It does seem uncharacteristically severe to play music (and an ominous tune at that), and then follow up by cutting off a microphone.

What the music covered up was a speech that intended to recognize that there were visual effects protesters outside who were upset over being squeezed in an industry that has unionized protection for most of its workers, including writers (WGA) and actors (SAG), but not the VFX houses. I get that political speeches about off-topic subjects, while a part of Oscar history, are often in poor taste. But this seemed like the industry closing ranks to exclude members of its own. Rhythm + Hues, which did the VFX for Life of Pi, is in fact in bankruptcy, along with the U.K. office of Hugo VFX house Pixomondo, which many are using as proof that the current model is unsustainable. Big studios like Disney, which just bought Lucasfilm and thus effects house ILM, gain efficiencies by doing their visual effects in-house. Outside those models, it seems that the savings comes from forcing workers to do unpaid overtime and other less-than-savory employment practices.

I do think that it's unfair that in an industry that gives profit participation to many members of the cast and crew, something as pivotal as visual effects doesn't pass muster. When you realize just how many shots use green screens, the scope of visual effects is stunning. People expect there to be visual effects in a movie like The Avengers; what's surprising is that TV shows and movies use them for scenes when people are walking down the street, to fill in the windows behind a house, or to show someone gazing as they walk through Times Square. Audiences don't know to look for these type of set extensions or replacements, so they don't see them. Plus, they look that good. VFX companies and artists likely have a difficult battle in front of them, but gaining the support of the public will be an important first step.

 

 

'Killing Them Softly' and 'The Collection' add R-rated movies to holiday mix

If you missed any of the great releases in the past few weeks, now is the time to catch up. For the past decade, movie studios have avoided releasing any film they want to open big the weekend after Thanksgiving. The two movies opening today, both with R ratings, appeal to niche and frequent moviegoers. The Collection will satisfy horror fans while Killing Them Softly will play to adult connoisseurs of mobster and gunplay movies. Neither of these movies should inch up far past the $10 million mark, if they even get that far. The Collection, in particular, may only tally up a few million.

The lead spot this weekend will likely go to The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2. Even with free-fall drops, the supernatural romance started off high enough that it could end up with just under $20 million three weeks after its blockbuster $141 million opening. In the follow-up weekend after Thanksgiving, that may be enough to boast a number-one finish. The rest of the top five should be filled with broader-playing, quality fare, including Lincoln, Life of Pi, and Skyfall, which is staying aloft thanks to great word-of-mouth. I've heard more buzz about Skyfall from friends who are infrequent moviegoers than I have for any other movie this year.

Rise of the Guardians should also play somewhere north of $10 million in its second weekend,
though it will be interesting to see how much of a lead it can maintain over its much more successful animated competitor. Wreck-It Ralph has been playing just two spots below Guardians during the weekdays despite releasing three weeks earlier. 

Killing Them Softly (2,424 theatres) should open in the bottom half of the top ten, but not because it's a bad movie. Instead, the tale of a hit man (Brad Pitt) who is hired to take down a trio who robbed a mob card game, making the entire criminal world insolvent, serves as commentary on the collapse of American banks and offers the insight "that all this bottom-feeder jockeying
for position is the funhouse mirror of American politics and
business," according to critic Maitland McDonagh. As
"black comedy as its most stygian," it may alienate some viewers, but McDonagh is giving this one her endorsement thanks to its "razor-sharp edge."

An "exercise in gratuitous sadism and gore," The Collection (1,403 theatres), a sequel to the horror movie The Collector, has enough "carnage to satisfy hardcore horror fans," according to THR's Frank Scheck. Though there are moments of "tension" and successful scenes involving tarantulas and a person forced to
break their own arm, don't check this one out unless you unequivocally say yes to all things torture porn.

The Bollywood movie Talaash will open in 172 theatres, and it could ring up some big business. Two weeks ago, the Yash Chopra-directed Jab Tak Hai Jaan, with a similarly small release, opened in the top ten with $1.2 million, and has now earned $3 million. Critic Daniel Eagan predicts the "polished and seductive" noir should "do extremely well at
the box office." The mystery covers topics seen less frequently in Indian movies, and Eagan gives it a nod for its "sympathetic but realistic view of sex workers."

On Monday, we'll see which of the Thanksgiving releases held on to their audiences, and if Killing Them Softly and The Collection were able to draw new viewers who weren't already stuffed from the holiday offerings.

Leftovers rule as 'Breaking Dawn,' 'Skyfall' and 'Lincoln' lead Thanksgiving box office

Despite three new wide releases, it was the returning films that led the Thanksgiving box office. The long holiday period still gave plenty of extra cushion to all the movies in theatres, which enjoyed five days of weekend-level returns. A thin offering  of new movies this coming weekend will allow the current releases plenty of time to run through their potential viewers.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn--Part 2 led for a second week with $43 million Friday to Sunday, giving it a total to date of $226 million. The event picture, which was the finale for the franchise, plummeted 70% from its first-week total. It will likely continue its decline next week.

In second place, Skyfall leveled its descent with $36 million, just a 12% decrease from last week. Over the five-day period, its receipts totaled $51 million. The James Bond film's three-week total is
$221 million, just behind Twilight. By next week, Bond will rise above the vampire romance and stay there. It's also the best-performing Bond movie of all time, well ahead of Quantum of Solace's $164 million total. Time to shake up a martini for Daniel Craig and director Sam Mendes.

Lincoln went up 19% from the previous week to post a $25 million weekend. Continued strength in its week-to-week performance should bring this historical picture above $100 million. That's great for a talky movie many considered a tough sell.

Rise of the Guardians had the best opening of any of the new releases, earning $24 million over the weekend and a five-day total of $32.6 million. That's on the low side of projections for
the CG-animated release. In comparison, Disney's Wreck-It Ralph earned $16.9 million while falling just 9% from the previous week. Wreck-It Ralph has much better reviews, and comes from a trusted brand name. That definitely hurt the debut of Guardians.

Life of Pi opened to $22 million, right on target for the Ang Lee-directed picture. Audiences turned out to see it in 3D, too, with two-thirds of ticket sales for glasses-wearing audiences. While the literary adaptation has received mixed reviews from critics, audiences gave it an "A-" in exit polls, a sign that the mildly spiritual picture will do well in word-of-mouth.

Red Dawn rallied from the three-year delay in its release to gross $14.6 million, a number that
rose to $22 million over the five-day period. FilmDistrict reported the South and military areas had the best turnout for the invasion-themed picture. However, with many other offerings in weeks to come, Red Dawn will have a quick sunset.

Specialty pictures big and small did well over the holiday. Silver Linings Playbook, expanding into 367 locations, earned a spot in the top ten, posting a $4.6 million weekend and an applause-worthy per-screen average of $12,500. Hitchcock, which centers on the making of Psycho, debuted to $301,000, and had an even higher per-screen average of $17,700. The awards hopeful Rust and Bone averaged $15,000 per screen at two
locations. The documentary The Central Park Five had a lower per-screen
average but a higher total, earning $11,300 per screen at three
locations.

This Friday, violence rules at the box office. The horror movie The Collection will go up against Killing Them Softly, which stars Brad Pitt as an enforcer tracking down a trio who robbed a Mafia-run card game.

'Rise of the Guardians' and 'Life of Pi' centerpieces of holiday movie feast

Three wide releases open today in anticipation of the long weekend after Thanksgiving tomorrow. With many generations coming together, this is the time for family-friendly movies to shine.

Rise of the Guardians (3,653 theatres) will be the leading pick for families with the youngest members. A kind of Avengers for childhood characters, the movie groups together Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny on the same mission. Critic Frank Lovece was disappointed. "I
want to love this
film," he laments, but it "just misses being magical." Although he predicts kids will "take to this like a toy on Christmas morning," Lovece is "left with the feeling that my own inner child would rather play
with the box it came in." Rise of the Guardians will have a tough time competing with the second weekend of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, which could earn $50 million even if it drops by two-thirds. Last year, The Muppets opened to $41 million over the five-day period, and Rise of the Guardians should be near that target. The opening may not matter quite as much, because the presence of the bearded man in the red suit should have this movie playing strong until Christmas morning.

The PG-rated Life of Pi (2,902 theatres) will be a great choice for families with older kids,
parents, and grandparents. The story of a boy floating on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger is a "superb, visually enthralling technical achievement," according to critic David Noh, but it doesn't quite overcome the "monotony" of having the characters be adrift for a long period of time. Fox is also betting that the spirituality of the work will bring together both coastal and Heartland audiences. Its opening should be half that of Rise of the Guardians, somewhere in the $20 million range. Along with Rise of the Guardians, Pi will release in the new sound format Dolby Atmos in select theatres.

Instead of Russians, North Koreans invade the U.S. in the remake of Red Dawn (2,679 theatres). The action flick is something of an individualists' dream: a high schooler, his Marine older brother, and his father help stave off the invaders from a rural outpost in Washington state. In contrast to the 1984 movie, the new one is "polished to a high
Hollywood gloss and stripped of nuance and moral ambiguity," says our critic Maitland McDonagh. Red Dawn and Life of Pi will both be landing in the $20 million range, though Life of Pi is likely to have a much more profitable run in weeks to come.

On Friday, Hitchcock (17 theatres) will makes its debut. Anthony Hopkins stars as Alfred Hitchcock in "a diverting movie nostalgia trip full of Hollywood period
atmosphere," which centers
on the director's making of Psycho. Although Hitchcock had some well-known flaws, this portrait is "more mischievous than accusatory, allowing audiences to
overlook the director’s many peccadillos and still relish this
larger-than-life figure," observes critic Kevin Lally. It also highlights the role his wife, Alma Reville, played in his success. Hitchcock will go up against a number of specialty pictures already in release, including Silver Linings Playbook, which is making an expansion to 367 theatres.

Also releasing on Friday is Rust and Bone, a melancholy French romance that does the impossible, turning the "unlikeliest of wormy subjects, characters and milieus into cinematic silk," praises critic Doris Toumarkine. A documentary sure to provoke outrage, The Central Park Five (3 theatres), will also roll out in theatres. The Ken Burns-led tale reveals the story of the five teens who were wrongly imprisoned for the rape of the Central Park jogger, a crime that turned into a lightning rod for a host of other issues plaguing New York City at the time.

On Monday, we'll see which of the movies paired best with Thanksgiving leftovers, and which releases have the strongest prospects during the frenetic period from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

'Life of Pi' trailer looks (too) dreamy

Yann Martel's novel Life of Pi was published in 2003, and it became a bestseller and book club phenomenon shortly after. The story of a boy's survival on a life raft after a shipwreck had a haunting and inspiring narrative that resonated with readers. Unlike, say, The Hunger Games, I have always been doubtful that the book would make a good movie. The storyteller is an unreliable narrator. What he sees is not always reality, and audiences tend to chafe at any plotlines that end with the reveal "it was all a dream." That's a rough approximation of the ending of the book, which relies heavily on a final Sixth Sense-like twist that changes the entire 300 pages before it. The trailer for director Ang Lee's feature adaptation, which is set for a prime Thanksgiving release, just hit the Internet. The sets look like surreal compositions created on a nearby soundstage, a little too dreamy for my taste.

The scenes with the lifeboat marooned in glassy, motionless water feel the most artificial to me. I was a little reminded of director Peter Jackson's adaptation of another bestseller, The Lovely Bones. That drama was also told through the lens of a unique narrator, a murdered child. The ephemeral dreaminess of her narrative wasn't captured successfully on film. To compensate, there were scenes set in heaven that were there more for purposes of tone, not narrative, and those were the biggest red flags for me.

 

 

I certainly hope I'll be proved wrong, but I can think of very few movies that successfully show a narrator's altered reality and then follow it up with another version of reality. Even in short dream sequences, audiences often feel cheated. That explains why Oliver Stone's Savages (which has multiple endings) got a terrible C+ rating in exit polls. Or why horror movies sometimes follow up the "it was all a dream" section with another one that reveals, in fact, the monsters or whatever is plaguing the victim are in fact real. "People with distorted perspective" movies like Taxi Driver and The Shining have sometimes worked, and the dream concept is also popular in sci-fi movies like The Matrix and Inception (which at least gave a reason for their altered realities). With its stunning visual images and literary roots, Life of Pi is clearly Oscar bait. But will critics and audiences bite?

New life for 'Pi' with Ang Lee

By Sarah Sluis

Ang Lee, director of action and romance, will take a crack at developing Life of Pi, a book acquired back in its bestseller days and subsequently developed into a couple of screenplays. Fox 2000 has

never gotten the project off the ground. The property is a challenge: it involves a Sixth Sense-type realignment in the last pages of the book, but doesn't commit to the change, leaving the ending open in a way that Hollywood would usually close.

Not surprisingly, M. Night Shyamalan himself has written a screenplay for the work, along with Dean Georgaris (The Manchurian Candidate, What Happens in Vegas). Whether the project moves beyond talks will probably depend on the director's take on the work (and what to do with that ending). Fox 2000, the rights holder, is currently looking for another writer to make a third go-around on the screenplay, tailoring it to Lee's vision.

The project poses an additional challenge beyond its twisty ending: animals. Most of the book takes place on a lifeboat (a third problem), where a boy is stranded with a zebra, hyena, orangutan, and tiger. Would Lee use real ones, or CGI creations? The boy also communicates with the animals--will they speak or will it be an internal thought?

There are certainly precedents for these types of dilemmas. Who can forget the monologues Tom Hanks conducted with a volleyball in Cast Away? Alfred Hitchcock set a whole movie on a lifeboat (and included a cameo of himself via a newspaper) in 1944's Lifeboat. There's also the countless dog, cat, and horse movies where you can sense the bond not only between the animals but also between the owner and the animal.

The most intriguing, and not immediately cinematic, part of Yann Martel's book is that all of our information comes from the boy, but he himself is not necessarily a reliable witness (thus the Sixth Sense comparison--although there we have the young boy present to give us clues that Bruce Willis is not as he seems). Just as I am curious to see the equally challenging adaptation of The Road this spring, I would love to see what Ang Lee could do with as introspective, animal-oriented a book as Life of Pi.