'Argo' leads in soft weekend for new releases

Argo may not have opened at number one, but in its third weekend, it finally rose to the top. Despite four new wide releases, it was the Ben Affleck-directed and led thriller that grabbed the first-place position with a $12.3 million finish. Although Argo's 25% drop was larger than last week's 15% dip, that's still an extremely strong hold. By next week, the movie should be tracking ahead of Affleck's previous picture, The Town, which opened higher but had larger week-to-week

falls.

Cloud Atlas led the group of new releases, finishing with $9.4 million, right below Hotel Transylvania's $9.5 million. The literary adaptation reportedly cost over $100 million, so that part doesn't bode well for the career trajectory of the Wachowski siblings, who directed the picture along with Tom Tykwer. It's possible the actual total could be even lower, since many NYC theatres shut down in early evening, when public transit in the city also ground to a halt in preparation for the storm. This appeared to be a film choice for an older, arthouse-leaning crowd. 77% of ticket-buyers were over the age of 25. 12% of the totals came from IMAX screens, indicating this was an "event" film for certain fans.

The horror sequel Silent Hill: Revelation 3D opened to $8 million. The original opened to $20 million in 2006, indicating that this adaptation of a video game franchise has lost almost all momentum. Any plans for a Silent Hill 3 are likely dead and buried.

The teen comedy Fun Size failed to ignite, and barely squeaked into the top ten with just $4
million. Teen girls, likely fans of "iCarly" star Victoria Justice, did show up: 67% of attendees were female and 73% under the age of 25. But not enough of them showed up, so the opening ended up below even other Nickelodeon-produced flops like Hey Arnold! The Movie, which had a similarly lackluster opening of $5.7 million back in 2002.

Chasing Mavericks had an extremely disappointing debut of just $2.2 million, giving it a thirteenth-place finish. Why release a surfing movie in the fall? Spring or summer would be a better choice for the release, just the time of year when people are anticipating or enjoying beach vacations. It's also the second bomb for a Fox/Walden Media release. Won't Back Down recently debuted to a figure almost as low, $2.6 million.

The specialty front was also quiet. The Loneliest Planet opened to a $10,000 per screen average at two locations. On Rotten Tomatoes, critics liked it, giving it a 76% positive rating. Rotten Tomatoes users were less happy, with only 46% coming out in favor of the tale of a couple's relationship, which is tested while traveling in the remote Caucasus mountains. That indicates the feature may not do as well in coming weeks. Compare that to The Sessions. In its second week, the heartwarming romance-drama went from four to twenty screens and reaped the rewards. The $11,000 per-screen average was the highest of any release this weekend, and gave the John Hawkes-led picture a total of $231,000. The ratings on Rotten Tomatoes show the difference: the 96% positive critics ratings are matched by an 86% positive audience rating.

This Friday, the CG-animated Wreck-It Ralph will likely steal the thunder from kid-friendly competitor Hotel Transylvania. The well-reviewed Flight will also open in theatres along with The Man with the Iron Fists.

'Argo' should stay ahead of four new wide releases

Four new wide releases are hitting theatres this weekend, but none are expected to surpass the $4-12 million range. That means that Argo has a good chance of spending a second week at number one. Last week, the '70s suspenser based on the Iranian hostage crisis dipped just 15%, a record hold for a wide action release. A similar hold would put the movie around $13 million, slightly ahead of projections for the four new wide releases.

Cloud Atlas (2,008 theatres) has been billing itself as a cineaste's film, a must-see for those who admire the work of the directors, the Wachowski siblings and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run).
The "incredibly ambitious undertaking," as described by critic Maitland McDonagh, may have trouble recruiting mainstream audiences, with
its six separate storylines interweaving over 172 minutes.. But the "consistently entertaining
and surprisingly effective" movie is "the shortest three hours
most moviegoers will ever spend in a theatre…and that's no small
recommendation," McDonagh assesses, though she notes that in tying together so many disparate storylines, the filmmakers must go for the lowest common denominator, "greeting-card platitudes rather than genuinely provocative
notions," along the lines of "we are all connected" and "no man is an island." The hard sell of a movie may end up with less than $10 million.

Looking for a throwback to the teen comedies of my youth, I checked out Fun Size (3,014 theatres). The rather obvious movie is also genuinely funny, with some slapstick moments and goofy cariactures (eccentric hippie lesbian parents) that connect. There are also plenty of slo-mo
moments of the hunky teen boy driving his car away while the crushed look on. It is a teen comedy, after all. The Nickelodeon-produced movie, which is full of TV stars young (Victoria Justice of "iCarly") and old (Chelsea Handler of "Chelsea Lately"), is also directed by "The OC"'s Josh Schwartz. The teen comedy is also projected to hit around the $10 million mark.

Silent Hill: Revelation 3D (2,933 theatres) should top $10 million, in part because horror-tinged releases tend to perform best their first weekend. Early Rotten Tomatoes reviews
have 20% of critics liking the horror sequel and 86% of audiences
voting it "fresh." However, the popularity of the video game franchise
the series is based on has waned in recent years, which could spell
trouble for the movie's performance at the box office.

Fans of the great surf movies like Riding Giants and The Endless Summer will be in store for more great surfing shots in Chasing Mavericks (2,002 theatres), a fictional film based on the story of a real surfer who tackled Mavericks, those formidable waves off the coast of California. The "true stars of the film are the waves themselves, awesome liquid mountains that rear up magnificently
and resoundingly crash, thrillingly recorded by the sensational cinematography of Oliver Euclid and Bill Pope," critic David Noh notes. But that's all they'll get, thanks to the "unmitigated corn of a hopelessly mawkish screenplay." The question is whether one would be better off watching YouTube surf videos instead of sitting through a bad story.

Also opening this week is the well-reviewed The Loneliest Planet (2 theatres), "a nuanced story about a couple’s wilderness hiking trip through the Caucasus Mountains" shot with "accomplished simplicity," according to our critic Maria Garcia. The remake of Nicholas Winding Refn's Pusher (15 theatres) also opens. According to THR's Deborah Young, the crime movie "struggles to rise above standard drug
dealer/gangster fare and succeeds, but only in part," a lukewarm endorsement.

On Monday, we'll see where the four new wide releases settled in the top ten, and if Argo was able to keep its spot at number one.

Today in highly anticipated films: Venice Film Festival and 'Cloud Atlas'

Today brought news of the lineup for the Venice Film Festival, and the five-minute trailer for Cloud Atlas. The best films in the Venice Film Festival probably won't arrive in U.S. theatres until next year, but Cloud Atlas is coming soon--October 28th in fact. That's on the early side for any Oscar-aspiring films, but the extremely ambitious trailer has excited many commenters.

First up, the Venice Film Festival. There are three films in particular that I'll be closely watching for critical response. Perhaps the most anticipated selection of the bunch still hasn't been confirmed or announced. Still, most people expect that Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, a profile of a fictional enigmatic leader (Philip Seymour Hoffman) some have compared to Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, will also be in competition.

Beyond, that I'm curious how an adaptation of the compelling, scathing book The Reluctant Fundamentalist will play. I remember the book reading more like a speech, with little narrative, so I think the adaptation will have to take a number of liberties. Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding) directed, and the cast includes Kate Hudson in one of her first non-rom-com roles in some time. I bet critics will be wary of her performance, since Hudson has become synonymous with terrible rom-coms.

Director Terrence Malick's To The Wonder will be another top pick. Plus, it comes just two years after his previous film--a record. Like The Tree of Life, the movie also has spiritual themes. The story centers on a couple's unraveling after they return from their pilgrimage to a holy site in Italy. Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams and Javier Bardem star.

Finally, Cloud Atlas will beat the rush of high-caliber films with an October, not Thanksgiving or Christmas, release. The very fact that the trailer needed to last five minutes to even put together a semblance of the story means something. If you can't explain a movie in a thirty-second TV spot these days, it's tough to get a project greenlit. Perhaps the pull of the directors, Matrix creators Lana and Andy Wachowski and Run Lola Run's Tom Tykwer, gave Warner Bros. faith in the project. The sweeping sci-fi-spiritual-drama is an adaptation of an extremely ambitious book that weaves together six stories set in different times: think 18th Century schooners and futuristic dystopias, all in one film.

The casting of Tom Hanks, who gives the voiceover in the trailer, feels familiar and safe, and helps ground the out-there work. After all, Hanks is the one who told his life story on a bus stop bench in Forrest Gump, so it makes sense that he can tell stories about his multiple, reincarnated lives across time.

At first, the images don't even look like a typical Wachowski film, until pretty impressive sci-fi sets start overtaking the schooners. The fact that all these images and stories live together in one place has turned off some commenters, but more are intrigued. Plus, there's a two-hour, 44-minute running time to help sort everything out. Releasing in just three months, Cloud Atlas will be one of the first end-of-the-year films vying for an epic, must-see status.

More details emerge about 'Cloud Atlas'

By Sarah Sluis

When I first wrote about Cloud Atlas in April, the project seemed so ambitious, I wasn't sure it could be pulled off. After all, the book the movie is based on follows six seemingly unrelated people across centuries, with each story written using different genre conventions (journal, hard-boiled thriller, sci-fi dystopia). However, the movie, which has a budget rumored to be up to $100 million, will start filming this September in Germany. The project is a collaboration between The Wachowskis (Matrix trilogy) and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run). The directors plan to divide up the sequences and shoot them in parallel. Having two directors is extremely rare, and even then they tend to be sibling teams. To pair up a sibling team with a third party may be the rarest breed of them all. I'm sure the Directors Guild freaked out a bit figuring out how the credits would work. I also think that having three directors on a project is a rare show of humility. Cloud Atlas takes place over centuries, and the idea of tackling both period sequences and futuristic ones is daunting. The Hollywood Reporter suggested that Tykwerwould shoot the period sequences while the Wachowskis would take charge of the futuristic ones.

Since the casting of Tom Hanks as one of the leads, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Susan Sarandon, Ben Whishaw and Jim Broadbent have joined the cast. I suspect that each of these six actors will be the lead in their story's respective era, since four of the leads are male and two are female. The cast is stellar to be sure, but only three out of these six actors have cachet among mainstream global audiences. (Berry, Sarandon, Hanks). I also don't think Hanks, who was the first to sign on, counts as A-List the same way Leonardo Di Caprio did in Inception. He's not a young dramatic star anymore, and his showing in Larry Crowne this summer really drove that home. Warner Bros., which handled Inception, will release the film stateside here. I definitely think the two movies will be compared with each other, because they both combine disparate surroundings into the same film. Cloud Atlas is planned for a summer 2012 release, and it could be the cerebral popcorn movie that draws in action lovers as well as those who like substance paired with their chase scenes.

A talented crowd gathers for 'Cloud Atlas'

By Sarah Sluis

If Cloud Atlas can be pulled off, it will be a big hit. That much I'll acknowledge. Tom Hanks will star. And an unusual trio of writers/directors will tackle the job together: Andy and Lana Wachowski of the Matrix series, as well as Tom Tykwer, whose memorable breakthrough film, Run Lola Run, has a spot among my all-time favorites. All three are set to co-write and co-direct.

Cloud Atlas is based on a book by David Mitchell that features six interlocking stories with different main characters. Variety calls it "the fantastical story of humankind, told through the past, present and future as one soul is shaped from a murderer into a savior and a single act of kindness ripples out for centuries" [emphasis mine]. Did this description just give away the ending--is the "one soul" what ties all these six stories together?

Amazon.com offers the following excerpt from Publishers Weekly:

"Each of the narratives is set in a different time and place, each is written in a different prose style, each is broken off mid-action and brought to conclusion in the second half of the book. Among the volume's most engaging story lines is a witty 1930s-era chronicle, via letters, of a young musician's effort to become an amanuensis for a renowned, blind composer and a hilarious account of a modern-day vanity publisher who is institutionalized by a stroke and plans a madcap escape in order to return to his literary empire."

Wow. The scope of this movie is astonishing--I really can't imagine six interlocking stories that are fully fleshed out. I can't imagine the script not omitting or condensing some of the storylines. But the subject matter hits the sweet spot of both the Wachowskis and Tykwer. Tykwer's Run Lola Run repeated the action three times, varying the characters' fate to immensely satisfying results. And, of course, who can forget The Matrix, with its labyrinthine worlds created by a few swipes of computer code. There's also been a trend in both drama and romantic comedies to go for multiple storylines that support one overarching theme--Crash, Valentine's Day, Mother and Child, and Amores Perros all fit the bill.

In the project's favor, the movie already has a production start date: September. This is one movie that won't be languishing in development. Warner Bros. (the studio that gambled successfully on Inception) will distribute stateside. Focus will handle international sales. IMDB lists Halle Berry and James McAvoy as other rumored cast members. Who knows--this movie could be the next Inception, and it might actually make more sense.