‘The Lego Movie’ to tower over ‘Monuments Men’

Remember when people thought The Lego Movie was a bad idea? All the sniping and Internet eye-rolling that accompanied Warner Bros.’ decision to release a film based on the popular kids toy brand has been all but forgotten today, as positive reviews for the animated flick continue to pour in. Opening wide in 3,775 locations, The Lego Movie is poised to enjoy a boffo opening.  According to Fandango, Lego is on track to rake in the highest pre-sales figures since Toy Story 3, a feat that would place it ahead of blockbusters Despicable Me 2, Monsters University, and box-office darling Frozen.  Each of the aforementioned films debuted to $67 million or more, which certainly bodes well for Emmet, Wyldstyle, and the rest of Lego’s funny, earnest and “special” cast.

The Monuments Men’s box-office performance, on the other hand, is more uncertain. Writer-director-producer George Clooney’s WWII dramedy could also be called funny and earnest, but critics are seeing something much less special in the combination. An old-fashioned war movie, which our critic Kevin Lally called “A film set in the 1940s that feels like it was made in the 1960s,” and to which NY Mag critic David Edelstein suggested the alternate title The Tasteful Dozen, The Monuments Men has received underwhelming reviews.  The draw of such a stellar, A-list cast (Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, John Goodman) will still likely help Men land at No. 2 this weekend, but expectations are tempered. Some pundits predict returns around $25 million. Others, like Sony, have less faith in the pedigreed caper: The film’s distributor believes receipts will tally out in the high teens.

The third and final new film opening today, Vampire Academy, is expected to fall behind Ride Along and possibly even Frozen to clock in at No. 4 or 5.  There hasn’t been much of a marketing push behind this new(ish) spin on the tired blood-sucker trope, although it does have Mean Girls and Freaky Friday director Mark Waters to recommend it. The teen romp will probably be funny enough – which, in all likelihood, will still not be enough to make an impact at the box office. Expect Academy to earn $6 or $7 million.

'Elysium' footage sneak peek: 5 things to know about the follow-up from 'District 9' director Neill Blomkamp

Yesterday, Sony previewed several minutes of footage from Elysium, the Matt Damon-led sci-fi movie that's coming out on August 9. The imaginative project looks like it's on track to be a huge hit like Inception. In a market saturated by derivative content, Elysium is a rare beast: a big-budget
movie derived from a completely original concept. Previously, all that was known about the movie was that Matt Damon and countless other poor people live on a ravaged Earth, while the rich live in a space station free of violence, poverty, and disease. The preview gave some more savory details about the feature, which comes courtesy of District 9 director Neill Blomkamp.

1. On Elysium, they can cure cancer. The clip showed a woman sunbathing, then going into what looks a cross between a tanning bed and the robot surgery machine in Prometheus. "Detecting trace amounts of cancer," the machine chirps. "Cancer cells--cleared!" This comes in handy later, because Damon's character gets exposed to radiation in a workplace accident and has just five days to live unless he can get into one of those cure-all machines.

2. Elysium is about a dystopia, with strong parallels to current social issues. Back to that "workplace accident." Damon is told by his boss that he will lose his job unless he goes into some dangeous machinery to fix a jammed door. He's on parole, making him already barely employable, and received a warning from his boss after his arm was broken by a robot roughing him up. He goes in to fix the problem, but it ends up nearly killing him. Surely, nothing like that ever happens in America...

3. Data can be downloaded from the brain. Hacking into someone's brain appears to be a very of-the-moment sci-fi concept. The first time I recall it happening was in The Matrix, and Inception explored the same concept in a more ethereal way. In Elysium, the plot hinges on Damon's crew downloading brain data from an important official from the space station. The information gives them details about how to break down their system and gain access to the fortress-like utopia.

4. Damon turns into a cyborg to get to Elysium. If you want to fight robots, you have to be part robot, right? Since he only has days to live anyway, Damon consents to having his body robot-ized so he can take on the robots that protect Elysium's residents and keep the Earthlings in place. POV shots show that it turns his vision into a video game, locking him into targets and flashing "reload" in the corner of his vision.

5. Paradise looks like a terrarium. Earth looks like--Detroit? The shots of the space station Elysium show a lush, verdant area with amazing views. Some opening shots of Earth show skyscrapers with crapshoot appendages sticking out the sides (I wouldn't want to live in one of those) that recall skyscraper cities in any number of sci-fi films, including Blade Runner. What's more interesting are flat, rundown warehouse-y areas that are similar to the slums in Blomkamp's District 9. The preview didn't connect the urban and suburban places together, but that will likely be clarified in the film itself.

Despite the sneak peeks, the preview left some of the biggest questions unanswered. How exactly does Damon gain access to the space station? How do the people in Elysium and Earth react to the insurrection? And how did things get so unequal to begin with?

Trailer for 'We Bought a Zoo' surprisingly sappy

By Sarah Sluis

Director Cameron Crowe hasn't made a feature film in six years. 2005's Elizabethtown fell flat on its face, a huge disappointment for those looking for another one of his memorable movies with heart, like Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous, or Say Anything... The trailer for his next movie, We Bought a Zoo, just released, but the movie footage portends a filmi that's more tears-and-hugs than anything else he's done before. Think Marley & Me, but with zoo animals instead of a pet dog. For that reason, I actually think this movie may be a commercial success on par with Jerry Maguire, though for different reasons. 20th Century Fox certainly seems to think so, too, giving the movie a prime Dec. 23 release date, the more perfect to capture intergenerational audiences in search of warm-fuzzies around the holidays.

Matt Damon plays a widower with two children. He buys a house that comes with a backyard menagerie addition. Scarlett Johansson appears to be his love interest, who may have come on initially to help out with the zoo animals. Elle Fanning is a sympathetic next-door neighbor and Thomas Haden Church Damon's father.

The trailer serves us classic Crowe-esque elements. Damon quits his job in a public way, a la Jerry Maguire. His father, giving Damon advice--"Attempt to start over. Sunlight. Joy"--reflects the spare, affected dialogue that Crowe has always done so well. Where the movie gives me pause is during this voice-over from Damon: "You don't even need a lot of special knowledge to run a zoo. What you need is a lot of heart." Okay, Crowe is a sensitive filmmaker who specializes in poignancy, but that crosses the line into cheesy. In general, I wasn't totally happy with the pacing of the trailer, especially when it came to the beats between jokes. As a big fan of Crowe's films, I hope that the trailer was overplaying the sensitive and the actual movie will be hiding more nuanced emotional content.

Two Matt Damon trailers in one day

By Sarah Sluis

Two trailers of movies starring Matt Damon in one day? And just after I wrote about him yesterday? I guess there's a reason I consider Matt Damon one of my favorite actors. Oddly enough, his highly lauded Bourne movies leave me cold, but his memorable roles in the Ocean's series, Good Will Hunting, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and The Departed, among others, always make me eagerly anticipate his films, even more uneven ones like the recent The Informant!

The first trailer is for Invictus, which releases on December 11. It's a feel-good, based-on-a-true-story kind of tale that appeals to Oscar voters. Damon plays a rugby captain who is enlisted by South African President Nelson Mandela to win the 1995 World Cup. Mandela hopes the economic and racial divisions within the country can be mediated by national pride. The trailer has some heartbreaking looks at the Johannesburg slums, last seen in District 9 (albeit in a sci-fi context).

Next up is The Green Zone, which was pushed back and is now set for a March 12, 2010 release. Paul Greengrass, who helmed the Bourne movies, directs. It shows all signs of being your typical action thriller, but distinguishes itself with its hyperreal historical setting. Damon plays a CIA agent who has been tasked with finding the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. When they don't show up, he tries to find the misleading source and get to the bottom of the intrigue.

Currently, Damon's filming The Adjustment Bureau. They've been shooting in New York City's West Village, with trailers set up on Greenwich Avenue a couple weeks ago. From Darren Aronofsky, the movie centers on a politician (Damon) and the mysterious ballerina he falls in love with (Emily Blunt). I seriously hope there is an element of Vertigo or Ghost in here--who doesn't love a good romantic mystery?

Casting underway for Coen Bros.' 'True Grit'

By Sarah Sluis

The Coen Bros.' remake of True Grit, a classic Western follow-up to their modern Western hit, No Country for Old Men, has lined up two more actors. Matt Damon is in talks to take on the Texas Ranger role, and Josh Brolin is in talks to play the hunted man. In the movie, a fourteen-year-old girl (who has not been cast) enlists the ranger and a U.S. Marshal to help her track down her father's killer. The role of the marshal, an Oscar-winning role for John Wayne in the 1969 original, will be taken on by Jeff Bridges (The Dude in The Big Lebowski). With top producers Scott Rudin and Steven Spielberg behind the film, and a fast-track from Paramount, this movie is scheduled to head into production this spring, for a release the following year.

Why has the 40-year-old film, based on the novel by Charles Portis, interested the filmmaking duo? Let's consult the archives.

1. Weird, affected dialogue. In Roger Ebert's review of the original, he notes that "Portis wrote his dialog in a formal, enchantingly archaic style that has been retained in Marguerite Roberts' screenplay." The Coen Bros. are known for utilizing accents and unusual speech, which is already present in the original work.

2. The Eye Patch. George Clooney has his pomade in O Brother, Where Art Thou? Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men has his bowl cut hairstyle. The Dude has his bathrobe and his white Russian in The Big Lebowski. This irresistible bit of costuming (working in tandem with Wayne's star image) just amplifies the characterization of Wayne as an "unwashed, sandpapered, roughshod, fat old rascal with a heart of gold well-covered by a hide of leather" (from Ebert's review).

3. Cash, Crime, Cover-ups and Complications. The U.S. Marshal and the Texas Ranger are both in it for the money. According to Ebert's review, the ranger "claims he has a reward for the killer (who also, it appears, plugged a state senator in Texas)." Sounds like an ulterior motive could come in play--a complication--in Coens' treatment.

Many of the Coen Bros.' films include journeys to either find the booty or hide it (the baby in Raising Arizona, the buried treasure in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the kidnapping/money in Fargo, the money in No Country for Old Men). Inevitably, things do not go according to plan, and Coen Bros. take pleasure in piling on the complications and twists to make things interesting.

The Challenge: According to many reviews, John Wayne makes the movie. The absence of Wayne's star presence could be a problem. In fact, both Roger Ebert and the Variety review use the same word, "tower," to describe Wayne's presence. Ebert notes that "one of the glories of True Grit is that it recognizes Wayne's special presence...He is not playing the same Western role he always plays. Instead, he

can play Rooster because of all the Western roles he has played. " He also mentions a parodic scene that works because of Wayne's star image. Making this movie without Wayne will require screenwriting and directing magic.