'Saw 3D' to carve piece of Halloween box office from 'Paranormal Activity 2'

By Sarah Sluis

Halloween falls on a Sunday this year, giving festive audiences two extra days to get in the mood with Saw 3D (2,808 theatres). Though holiday parties may cut into ticket sales, this year Halloween arrives after the profitable Friday and Saturday evenings, which should lift grosses beyond where they were the last two years. The total box office for Saw movies actually peaked with the second installment, but has remained profitable, and the added premium for 3D screens could push this film into the $20 million range. However, since Paranormal Activity 2 premiered to $40 million last week, a 50% decline could still put it ahead of Saw 3D.

For specialty audiences, the third installment of the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, will unspool in 123 theatres. Critic Maitland McDonagh was glad the series was over. "It's great to see Lisbeth [the heroine] vindicated (and no, that's not a spoiler), but getting there is a long, tedious slog." The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has currently amassed $10 million stateside, and its sequel $7.5 million, so this suspense thriller should continue the successful streak for the Swedish-language trilogy.

Hilary Swank's turn as a determined woman trying to win her brother's freedom in Conviction will expand to 565 theatres in its third week. The true-life drama has been struggling to find a hold at the box office, so this expansion will either lift it slightly or confirm it as Swank's second miss in a row, after last year's Amelia.

Indie audiences can check out Monsters (2 theatres), which "accomplishes the not-insignificant task of creating a believable alternate reality for [director Gareth Edwards'] low-budget, low-key science-fiction story," according to critic Ethan Alter. While he felt the director succeeded in making a world that felt "lived-in," the two lead actors left him cold. "Had Edwards taken as much care crafting these characters as he did the world they exist in, Monsters may have been a cult classic in the making instead of a mildly interesting missed opportunity," he speculated.

The top-notch cast of James Gandolfini, Melissa Leo and Twilight-er Kristen Stewart assemble for Welcome to the Rileys (10 theatres). Gandolfini plays a grief-stricken man who befriends a young prostitute (Stewart) in New Orleans, a bold move that lifts his wife (Leo) out of agoraphobia.

On Monday, the 2010 Halloween box office will be weighed against the spooky nights of years past, and I'll see if any of the specialty releases were able to break out of the pack.

At last, it's official: 'Avatar' will be a trilogy

By Sarah Sluis

Avatar could be the next Star Wars. The blockbuster success of Avatar led to widespread speculation that there would be a sequel (or two), especially since director James Cameron expressed interest in the idea. Now, after lengthy negotiations, it appears that Cameron will start scripting the next installment in the series early 2011, with production to start later that year and a release date aiming for December 2014. The third installment would be released in December 2015.

I did some Internet digging, and discovered a clue to the second film's plot: it will be set in Pandora's oceans . I had imagined the second film would involve humans trying yet again to mine the land of Pandora, using the same backdrop, but changing the locale makes the premise more intriguing. Perhaps humans do try to go back to Pandora, but choose a more secretive location: the ocean. This would involve the Na'vi and ocean creatures banding together to fight off humans once more. Whatever the conflict, the ocean location means that the second film will have lots more "wow" moments like the floating islands in the first film.

I imagine the sequels will play out something like Star Wars�you can keep adding ice planets (Hoth) and Ewoks to keep the audience entertained, but as the series progresses audiences get a lot more fulfillment from seeing the characters change and from personal revelations. (Darth Vader is my father!?) I think the Avatar sequels present an opportunity to build on such characters and become a satisfying trilogy.

Movie sequels today tend to be derivative, while television allows writers more leeway to create engaging characters that change and, ironically, provide film-level entertainment. Under James Cameron's directing eye and with Jon Landau as a producer, I predict Avatar will be a trilogy with enduring power, with the ability to produce many, many editions of home entertainment "special edition" box sets.

DOC NYC Fest: Werner Herzog's 3D doc 'Cave of Forgotten Dreams'

By Sarah Sluis

Werner Herzog returns to the documentary format in Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a 3D look at the recently discovered caves in Chauvet, France, which is open only to researchers. The film will be one of the gala presentations at the DOC NYC Fest. The Nov. 3, 7pm screening has already sold out--not surprising since it will include a Q&A with Herzog--but persistent viewers can always try standby.

First off: The 3D. Herzog's crew filmed in 3D, and the results are mixed. For the scenes within the cave, the 3D works effectively, adding a sense of hyper-reality and contours to the drawings. In other spots, it looks terrible--3D and shaky camera movements do not mix.

In his narration, Herzog lets us know what his crew was up against: just four of his crew could enter at one time, and cold panel lights were all that could be used to illuminate the paintings. The crew was restricted to a metal walkway, so as not to disturb the cave bear prints, bones, and other artifacts lying on the ground. While the limited access can be frustrating, in one case it works in the movie's favor. On a stalactite, a drawing of a woman's legs and pubic area is married with that of a buffalo, revealing a primordial sense of mythology that lingers today: the half animal, half person. However, the crew can barely access the area, giving us just a glimpse. Later, they return to get a better view with a camera attached to a pole, although it captures just slightly more detail. The sequence recreates the same feeling of unlocking a puzzle that the researchers themselves must feel. As we look with Herzog about the rest of the vast and remote chamber, which cannot be extensively explored because of the high levels of carbon dioxide, the audience senses the possibility of the unknown. It's not a "Cave of Forgotten Dreams," but of fleeting ones, with understanding and access just beyond our grasp.

Herzog seizes on these mystical aspects. At one point, he asks everyone in the cave to be quiet, leaving us with the sound of dripping water, echoes, and a heartbeat. This Herzog touch elevates the movie a step above documentaries of its type, but at times it can feel forced, as when he asks an interviewee rather contrived questions about his dreams concerning the cave.

Herzog's ambitious look at the Chauvet caves does not entirely deliver, but it's a worthy diversion that offers a peek into a little-seen artifact of human history.

DOC NYC Fest: Director Errol Morris' 'Tabloid'

By Sarah Sluis

Documentary director Errol Morris' Tabloid will be one of two gala presentations during the DOC NYC Fest, which runs from Nov. 3 through Nov. 9. Preceding its premiere at NYU's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts on Nov. 7 at 7pm, several of Morris' other films will be shown on the big screen, including The Thin Blue Line, A Brief History of Time, and Gates of Heaven are also scheduled for screening. However, maybe the festival should have done it the other way around, because Tabloid is so good it will make you want to revisit all of Morris' previous films.

Tabloid combines a sensational story (the "too good to be true" kind) with the narrative sensibilities of a master. A taste of the plot: In the 1970s, an ex-beauty queen, Joyce McKinney, goes to England to win back her "boyfriend," who she thinks has been brainwashed by a cult (Or is he just a Mormon on his mission?). She kidnaps him and chains him to a bed (leading to London tabloids screaming "Bondage!" and other salacious headlines), and more. Despite plans to marry (according McKinney), the Mormon disappears after their return to London, and she's arrested soon after on a host of tabloid-worthy charges.

Though the "Manacled Mormon" refuses to aopear on camera, McKinney is a star interviewee. A charismatic speaker, she reportedly has a genius-level IQ (she claims it's 160) and convincingly tells stories that Morris casts doubt on in other segments of the film. Indeed, as the publicity around the case reaches its height, all kinds of weird information about McKinney comes out of the woodwork. To top it all off, McKinney's story has a bizarre third act, which picks up some twenty years after the original story.

Under Morris' hand, Tabloid has moments that are laugh-out-loud funny and jaw-dropping incredible. Entire minutes can be spent with a jaw hanging open in disbelief. He sometimes uses incongruous stock footage to illustrate a situation, an excellent technique, and flashes words on the screen for a moment during interviews (Someone says "What word am I looking for?" and he flashes it on the screen instead of supplying it off-camera). He likes to suddenly introduce an entirely different angle of the story, so that watching the documentary becomes a kind of roller-coaster experience.

Tabloid has been making the rounds at film festivals. Though no distributor has picked it up, I predict it will be hitting theatres sometime soon. The story's just so good it's true.

Audiences return in force for 'Paranormal Activity 2'

By Sarah Sluis

Bowing the week before Halloween, Paranormal Activity 2 debuted at $40.6 million, an exceptional open that proved it was not like Blair Witch 2, which flamed out in its second incarnation. With numbers like these, it's virtually assured there will be a third installment in the series. Who knows, Paranormal could be the next Saw. The majority of the movie's traction, however, came from midnight screenings late Thursday night and Friday, which comprised almost half of the weekend's total--a sign that this movie will fall quickly. The sequel to Paranormal Activity combined a heavy marketing campaign with a reported $3 million production budget, so Paramount will see a hefty return on its investment.

Jackass 3D, which exceeded the success of Paranormal 2 in its opening weekend, fell 57% in its second weekend. That still gives the movie $21.3 million, as well as a near-guarantee that it will top the $100 million mark within the next couple weeks.

Clint Eastwood's take on the supernatural, Hereafter, mixed adrenaline-filled action scenes (tsunami!) with tear-jerking moments (a boy loses his twin!). The formula earned $12 million in its first week of wide expansion. While that number was under some of Eastwood's more successful films, 80% of the audience was over 30, indicating that that film will have some staying power, since teens, not thirty-pluses, tend to turn out opening weekend.

Conviction, which expanded to just 55 theatres, went up 196%, giving it a two-week total of $444,000. Higher up on the list of specialty releases, Waiting for "Superman" kept steady, earning three-quarters of a million dollars for the second week in a row, for a five-week total of $3.7 million.

Financial crisis documentary Inside Job went up 98% to $170,000 as it more than doubled the number of theatres in its release. The Robert De Niro and Edward Norton drama Stone pulled in $361,000, a 57% increase from the previous week.

This Friday, Saw 3D will draw in Halloween audiences, Monsters will lure indie scare-seekers, and the Swedish-language The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest will begin a limited rollout.

Midnight screenings foreshadow solid weekend for 'Paranormal Activity 2'

By Sarah Sluis

A year after Paranormal Activity had audiences "demanding" the horror sensation come to their theatre, Paranormal Activity 2 will shoot into everyone's town, 3,216 to be exact. The sequel will face the same set of heightened expectations that left audiences disappointed with Blair Witch 2. FJI critic Ethan Alter was among those underwhelmed. By using an "enlarged canvas," he notes, the filmmakers took away some of the creepiness. For example, he points out that "the multiple-camera approach cuts down on the anticipatory tension created by the single point-of-view in the original." Still, the tremendous buzz and cachet of the original should drive viewers to the cinema. Indeed, the midnight screenings last night, totaling $6.3 million, breaking a record for an R-rated midnight opening. Let's see if the movie can carry that through the rest of the weekend.

After a promising opening weekend on just a few screens, Hereafter, which centers on more benevolent afterlife spirits, will expand to 2,181 theatres. Clint Eastwood's film will be the most fresh adult-oriented film in theatres this weekend, giving it an edge. Conviction, the true-life story of a woman who helped free her brother from prison, had a modest debut last week, but will expand to 55 locations.

A few specialty releases dot the schedule this weekend. WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) showcases one of its stars, Paul "Big Show" Wight, in Knucklehead (6 theatres), a "witless exercise" about a "big doofus who enters the fight game," according to Hollywood Reporter critic Frank Scheck. Critic David Noh, on the other hand, generally liked Inhale (NY/LA), "that rare thriller with a mind and purpose." The suspenseful tale centers on a father trying to buy his daughter a lung in Mexico for transplanting in the United States, a process that involves him in criminal activity with numerous unsavory people.

On Monday, we'll see if Paranormal Activity 2 was able to keep up the pace it set with midnight screenings and unseat Jackass 3D, if Clint Eastwood will have another hit with Hereafter, and if any knuckleheads checked out their eponymous comedy.

"The Office" writers add their two cents to 'The Game'

By Sarah Sluis

I guess it's no surprise that the sensationally titled The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists has been picked up for adaptation as a movie. As the title suggests, the book centers on the author, who infiltrates himself into a posse of women-gaming men and moonlights as a PUA (pickup artist...it appears that the tribe is keen on acronyms). In fact, besides its intriguing subject matter, the Fox Searchlight project taps into a number of development trends in Hollywood.

1) The self-help book turned feature movie. The romantic comedy He's Just Not That Into You is the perfect example, offering fictionalized relationships drawn from a nonfiction book. Little-known fact: Mean Girls was based on a Queen Bees and Wannabees, a guidebook for parents and kids dealing with the friend drama that occurs to girls from middle to high school. There is no way the dated self-help book Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus would be lifted from its grave had it not been for the success of self-help-inspired movies.

2) The male-centered romantic comedy. Romantic comedies about career women finding love are booooring. The best work has come from male-centered takes on romance, be it Judd Apatow movies or (500) Days of Summer. Even among non-quirky movies, the mainstream Hitch (domestic box-office: $179 million), starring Will Smith, also centered on someone receiving help in the dating department. These movies are successful because they are enjoyed by both men and women.

Which raises a curious inconsistency: The Game is a guy book, but one with a decidedly misogynist attitude. The studio will have to temper the author's jaw-dropping objectification of women (well, this IS a book on pickup artists), or else go the way of adaptation a la the very offensive book by Tucker Max, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (domestic box-office: $1.4 million).

Currently, The Game is getting a reworking from "The Office" writers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky. The duo also scripted the Universal misfire Year One, the upcoming comedy Bad Teacher, starring Cameron Diaz, and are working on Ghostbusters 3--not a bad slate of films. They seem the ideal partners to give the material the once-over that makes "The Office" appeal to the masses, offending without alienating.