Weekend Roundup: Back to Bee-siness

By Katey Rich

There may in fact be second acts in America, but there are rarely second acts in the American box office. But Bee Movie pulled it off this weekend, pulling a surprise #1 spot for the weekend by inching just $2 million past last week's top movie, American Gangster. Bee Movie dropped only 31% from last weekend to bring in $26 million, while Gangster stuck close behind with $24.3 million.

The holdover success of these titles is due largely to limp openings from the two big releases of the weekend, Fred Claus and Lions for Lambs. The family-friendly Claus snuck into third place with $19 million; while that's reportedly below studio expectations, Warner Bros. insisted to The Hollywood Reporter that Christmas movies are "a marathon and not a sprint." Lambs fell well below hopes for a $10 million draw, ranking in fourth place for the weekend with $6.7 million; negative reviews and constant media reports of "war movie fatigue" couldn't have helped the project.

The other wide release of the weekend, horror movie P2, fell into eighth place with a $2.2 million take. It remained overshadowed by fellow horror draw Saw IV, which was at #6 with $5 million, and came in just ahead of 30 Days of Night, coming in at #9 with $2 million. Other holdovers included the steady Dan in Real Life at #5 ($5.8 million), the unstoppable The Game Plan at #7 ($2.4 million in its seventh week!) and Martian Child, threatening to drop out of the top 10 after only its second weekend with a dismal $1.7 million take.

Falling outside the top ten at #15, but with a spectacular per-theatre average of $42,928, was No Country for Old Men, by far the best-reviewed release of the weekend. I saw this one at 10 p.m. on a Saturday night in a packed house, and wouldn't be surprised if it continues drawing such high numbers before it goes wide at the end of the month (everyone I saw it with is ready to go again).

After the jump are the full results from Box Office Mojo. Note that Gone Baby Gone, Across the Universe and The Darjeeling Limited are all quickly shedding screens, and the bonus #21 inclusion of Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, which continues to boost its audience in moderately limited release (122 screens).

TW	LW	Title (click to view)	Studio	Weekend Gross	% Change	Theater Count / Change		Average	Total Gross	Budget*	Week #
1	2	Bee Movie	P/DW	$26,000,000	-31.6%	3,944	+16	$6,592	$72,214,000	$150	2
2	1	American Gangster	Uni.	$24,319,000	-44.2%	3,059	+5	$7,949	$80,679,000	$100	2
3	N	Fred Claus	WB	$19,225,000	-	3,603	-	$5,335	$19,225,000	-	1
4	N	Lions for Lambs	UA	$6,710,000	-	2,215	-	$3,029	$6,710,000	-	1
5	4	Dan in Real Life	BV	$5,872,000	-25.4%	1,941	+16	$3,025	$30,678,000	-	3
6	3	Saw IV	LGF	$5,010,000	-51.6%	2,904	-279	$1,725	$58,086,000	-	3
7	5	The Game Plan	BV	$2,410,000	-38.7%	2,161	-683	$1,115	$85,414,000	-	7
8	N	P2	Sum.	$2,200,000	-	2,131	-	$1,032	$2,200,000	-	1
9	6	30 Days of Night	Sony	$2,100,000	-43.9%	1,696	-931	$1,238	$37,358,000	$30	4
10	7	Martian Child	NL	$1,750,000	-48.2%	2,020	-	$866	$6,013,000	-	2
11	8	Michael Clayton	WB	$1,660,000	-40.4%	1,150	-957	$1,443	$35,594,000	-	6
12	9	Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married	LGF	$1,610,000	-38.2%	908	-495	$1,773	$53,295,000	-	5
13	10	Gone Baby Gone	Mira.	$1,510,000	-32.5%	957	-660	$1,577	$17,110,000	-	4
14	N	Om Shanti Om	Eros	$1,500,000	-	114	-	$13,157	$1,500,000	-	1
15	N	No Country for Old Men	Mira.	$1,202,000	-	28	-	$42,928	$1,202,000	-	1
16	14	Into the Wild	ParV	$1,113,000	-13.7%	590	-70	$1,886	$12,546,000	-	8
17	17	Bella	RAtt.	$1,006,000	-6.8%	276	+90	$3,644	$3,871,000	-	3
18	11	Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas in Disney Digital 3-D (2007 re-issue)	BV	$854,000	-44.0%	473	-89	$1,805	$14,093,000	-	4
19	16	Across the Universe	SonR	$850,000	-29.6%	582	-240	$1,460	$22,353,000	-	9
20	15	The Darjeeling Limited	FoxS	$825,000	-32.4%	386	-229	$2,137	$9,308,000	-	7
21	23	Before the Devil Knows You're Dead	Think	$690,000	+86.2%	122	+79	$5,655	$1,308,000	-	3

Beowulf Makes Animated Cut, Pixar Less-Than-Pleased

By Katey Rich

There's been a fascinating debate going on since the Academy announced the thirteen films eligible for the Best Animated Feature category, tossing the motion-capture Beowulf right in there with the more traditionally CGI Ratatouille and Bee Movie and even the good old-fashioned cel-animated The Simpsons Movie and Persepolis (though both probably have some CGI in there somewhere-- anyone know for sure?). John Lasseter, head of Ratatouille's production company Pixar, reportedly was against Beowulf's inclusion, arguing that motion-capture is a separate category from animation entirely. Now at Jeffrey Wells' Hollywood Elsewhere, Beowulf producer Roger Avary has struck back, and it's getting ugly:

"Lasseter, who is a master filmmaker, shouldn't allow himself to feel threatened by the future. Perhaps he's insecure and feels that his films can't hold their own against live-action films in a single, merged 'Best Film' category that is inclusive of all movies [...] To segregate animation in this day and age to its own separate award category is to ghettoize it. But then, maybe that's what Lasseter wants. Maybe he feels that a smaller field will increase his potential to reach a goal. We're not intimidated like that."

Wow. It almost makes me dread the moment when the actual nominations are announced-- if Ratatouille (a shoo-in) and Beowulf (not so sure about that one) both make the cut, will there be fisticuffs during the nominee photo-ops? Part of me wonders if this argument is just silly because Persepolis is going to swoop in and steal the award from all of them, but Wells raises an important point in his post: this isn't the last time we'll see this kind of debate. When it comes to blending animation and live-action, we probably haven't even fathomed what they're going to come up with.

Using live humans as templates for animation has been a technique since the earliest days of the form, when "rotoscoping," or literally tracing human action, was part of early experimental shorts. Even Snow White and the Prince were partially rotoscoped in 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, though there's no telling how much of the rotoscoping went into the final product. After a while, though, animation started moving away from what human actors could accomplish into the realm of the impossible, which brought us things like singing pigs, gun-toting rabbits, and Wile E. Coyote running in mid-air.

CGI has been bringing animation back to a standard of realism for a while now, giving a clownfish a voice while placing him in a strikingly beautiful ocean environment. Humans have always been the great challenge, though, and it seems that motion-capture animation will both overcome this hurdle and put the genre in an entirely new dilemma. What, then, is animation? It's a question best left to the genre theorists, surely, but thanks to the Academy's Best Animated Feature category, they must debate it too, and hear from plenty of irate movie bloggers who think they have a thing or two to say about it.

There's no doubt that the motion-capture technology Zemeckis has championed can be used to striking effect-- Wells calls Beowulf "an eye-filling mind-blower"--and even if Remy the chef and Beowulf the monster-slayer can make nice for now, this issue is bound to come up again, probably the next time Zemeckis flexes his technology muscles. I personally don't mind Avary's suggestion of putting animated films back in competition with everybody else, if only to put to rest this kind of squabbling at the expense of giving Marjane Satrapi an Oscar for her brilliant Persepolis. That won't solve the issue, but it will render it a curiosity, not a fiery studio back-and-forth. As much as Remy deserves his turn walking the red carpet, he doesn't deserve the indignity of having to fight on his way there.

Weekend Outlook: Santa's Coming To Town With Lions and Old Men

By Katey Rich

After last weekend buoyed the fall season with the first really successful box office run since Labor Day, can it be replicated? There's nothing on remotely the same mammoth scale as Bee Movie, and nothing opening as wide with the same critical success as American Gangster. Still, a handful of solid contenders are coming out to play, and American Gangster and Bee Movie will likely continue their successful runs this time around. And it's been three weeks since the last wide-release horror movie, which obviously means it's time for another, though this one seems to have come completely out of nowhere. All in all the weekend looks a little mediocre, save a few limited-release gems. But don't be surprised if the box office suggests otherwise.

FRED CLAUS. The first Christmas-themed release of the season (occupying the same release slot that Elf did in 2003) stars Vince Vaughn as Santa's slacker older brother, making a living as a repo man in Chicago while saintly Nick (Paul Giamatti) works up in the North Pole. When Fred finds himself in dire financial straits, Nick brings him to the North Pole to earn some cash in the workshop. At the same time an efficiency expert (Kevin Spacey) shows up threatening to shut the whole place down if the elves don't work on improving the bottom line. Hijinks ensue, brotherly bonding occurs, Christmas is threatened but, yes, eventually saved. Miranda Richardson also stars as Mrs. Claus, with Rachel Weisz as Fred's girlfriend Wanda, Elizabeth Banks as Santa's sexy helper, and John Michael Higgins as a romantically frustrated elf.

I never thought Christmas could come too early, but Fred Claus seems to have made grinches out of a lot of us. "Like getting that Christmas toy that looked so exciting in the commercials but then really wasn't fun after you unwrapped it and started playing with it," wrote our always-hilarious Frank Lovece. I pretty much agreed in a review I wrote for CinemaBlend.com: "If there were a way to fall for Fred Claus, I would have found it." (I'm a sucker for Christmas movies, OK?) Lisa Schwarzbaum at Entertainment Weekly is wonderfully pithy in her C-graded review (and a woman after my own heart): "Doled out with little confidence about what adults want from a jingle-bell comedy (we want Elf!), and even less about what engages a kid (they want Elf!)" Kirk Honeycutt at The Hollywood Reporter aptly points out that the movie is waaay too long (115 minutes!) and even calls the whole thing "misanthropic." Not exactly what anyone has in mind to get them in the Christmas spirit.

LIONS FOR LAMBS. The first film released by United Artists since Tom Cruise took over the studio, Lions for Lambs is director Robert Redford's first film in seven years, since the critically-lambasted The Legend of Bagger Vance. Redford is tackling politics here, using three interconnected stories to examine the Iraq War. Meryl Streep plays a veteran journalist interviewing a cocky, pro-war senator (Tom Cruise), Derek Luke and Michael Pea are soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan, and out in California, a college professor (Redford) holds court with a student (Andrew Garfield) in a discussion about the war. Redford is a notorious Hollywood leftie, so you can pretty much guess where the political sympathies here lie.

Believe it or not, Lions for Lambs has an even lower Rotten Tomatoes rating than Fred Claus does, 30% compared to Fred's 37%. "Never takes a genuine stand for or against anything, except to fall back on the same platitudes politicians spout," writes our Daniel Eagan, a particular "ouch" considering the film's tagline: "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." Anthony Lane, in classic New Yorker form, manages to work two highbrow references into a single sentence: "Sadly, unless you are Jean-Luc Godard, the sight of your characters discussing the political ethics of their own actions is unlikely to ravish the eye, and Lions for Lambs is most charitably described as Ibsen with helicopters." Call me crazy, but doesn't "Ibsen with helicopters" sound a lot cooler than Lane means it to be?

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. Opening on only 23 screens this weekend, and expanding out later this month, No Country is still easily the most talked-about release of the week. The latest from Joel and Ethan Coen is an adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, a grim crime thriller set in desolate West Texas. Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is an ordinary man who comes across a briefcase packed with cash at a crime scene, and makes off with it. Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is a soulless hit man on Moss' every move, and Sheriff Ed Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) tries to take Moss under legal protection while shaking his head at the sinister doings. Woody Harrellson also appears on Moss' tail, and Kelly MacDonald plays Moss' wife, who goes into hiding whem Moss goes on the run. 

The remarkable thing about No Country is not who's praising it but who's not. Nearly all the major critics have spoken since the film screened at the New York Film Festival last month, and the general consensus is "Wow." Sasha Stone at AwardsDaily.com made a great point the other day about the reviews coming forward for this one: "It is inspiring some of the freshest, [most] beautifully written reviews I've seen from critics in a good, long while. It takes a special film to bring it out.  When you have to write about  so many films all year long, it takes a good one to lift them out of their groove." A.O. Scott's review in the New York Times epitomizes that great writing (it's really worth it to read the whole thing, but here's an excerpt): "No Country for Old Men leaves behind the jangled, stunned sensation of having witnessed a ruthless application of craft." Rex Reed quibbles with the ending before issuing the rave, "Without question, the best movie ever made by the eccentric Coen brothers [...] Yes, I guess I have to admit it's a masterpiece." Our Lewis Beale had a few qualms of his own but nothing but praise for Bardem: "The performance is so malevolently fine-tuned that one sequence in particular [...]  seems destined to join Robert De Niro's "You talkin' to me?" scene in the creepazoid hall of fame." Peter Travers at Rolling Stone has nothing but unreserved praise: "An indisputably great movie, at this point the year's very best." Andrew Sarris at the New Y ork Observer is a notable exception to the praise (Anthony Lane being the other); Sarris readily admits that he's in the minority, but still likens No Country to "a quick in-and-out visit to hell."

I wrote about No Country a while back during the New York Film Festival and also showered it with praise, but the more I think about it, the more it might be my favorite film of the year. The much-discussed ending, which is definitely unlike any other cat-and-mouse thriller, doesn't detract at all from the spectacular tension that's built up before it. And Javier Bardem's performance simply remains one of the best I've ever seen, unrelentingly chilling and malicious, mesmerizing throughout. I've been captivated by the discussion of No Country's Oscar chances, and while I believe that the film's violence may repel some viewers, this deserves to finally be the Coens' chance for the big prize.

P2. This is a movie that wasn't remotely on my radar until literally a week ago, but it now seems to be contending for the audience that's already seen Saw IV and is ready for the next horror challenge. It's a simple story about a woman (Rachel Nichols) leaving her office late on Christmas Eve who is stalked and threatened by a parking attendant (Wes Bentley). Pretty straightforward stuff, but hey, aren't the best horror movies the simplest?

Unfortunately it doesn't seem P2 quite reaches those lofty horror ranks. Critics seem a little split on whether this one is dumb and fun or just dumb, but most settle on the latter. Kirk Honeycutt at the The Hollywood Reporter takes issue with the parking garage setting: "In this dull and static setting, they struggle to introduce action and novelty." The Chicago Tribune calls it misogynistic, and adds "Mostly we just want the whole thing to end." Elsewhere in Chicago, though, Roger Ebert credits P2 as part of an outstanding season for movies: "It's such a good season that even the slashers are superior." And Horror.com apparently found exactly what they were looking for: "There's also a welcome touch of black humor, and buckets of blood and guts." Perhaps Andrew Sarris' "quick in-and-out visit to hell" description of No Country would be more apt here?

Studios Back Innovative Anti-Piracy Plan for China

By Katey Rich

Transformers and Shrek the Third were the first DVDs released in China under the new plan.

After years of struggling against fleet-footed DVD pirates in China, three major Hollywood studios are taking a huge step to fight back. Warner, Paramount and DreamWorks have joined under the label CAV Warner Home Entertainment to distribute their product on DVD in China as little as two months after the U.S. release, and for the crazy-low price of $2.95. The idea is to compete with the cheapie DVD knockoffs that show up on the streets hours after a movie first screens-- they're prevalent in China, but you can find pretty much anything you want on the streets of Chinatown here in New York.

Piracy is such a hard issue to get a hold on, with such a nebulous network of pirates globally and content that's difficult to put a lid on. Still, this step seems like the most logical one I've heard of in a long time, indicating a willingness on the part of the major studios to think creatively about solutions rather than stamping down their foot and insisting "This is illegal, and it must stop!" The fact is that DVDs are insanely cheap to produce, and are sold at a huge markup at $20 or more in the U.S. The studios obviously can't sell all of their titles for $3, but for so many of these titles that's $3 they simply weren't going to get otherwise. Not that many people are itching to shell out $20 for a copy of Catch and Release, I promise.

This move probably won't stop the flow of pirated content coming out of China, but it may curb the popularity of those copied DVDs in the country. Variety reports that an astonishing 90% of DVDs in China are pirated, losing Hollywood an estimated $244 million each year. That's the budget of Transformers 2, people! But seriously, what Hollywood is fighting against is not just some wily criminals, but an entire cultural state of mind, in which pirated DVDs are not just acceptable but preferred. They need to be winning hearts and minds over there, convincing Chinese consumers that a higher-quality print with special features and whatnot is worth the extra money. Now, with the price difference only a few dollars, that argument will probably be a lot easier to make.

Michael Eisner Calls Writers' Strike "Insanity" and "Stupid"

By Katey Rich

We've been reading about the creative chants the striking writers are coming up with (it is their job, after all), so don't be surprised if you start hearing some choice words paired with "Eisner." The former chairman of Disney apparently has nothing to lose these days, and mouthed off during a Dow Jones/Nielsen Media and Money conference about how the strike is "insanity."

"For a writer to give up today's money for a nonexistent piece of the future -- they should do it in three years, shouldn't be doing it now -- they are misguided they should not have gone on the strike. I've seen stupid strikes, I've seen less stupid strikes, and this strike is just a stupid strike."

Wow. I'm sure that's been going through many a studio executive's head in the last few days, but leave it to Michael Eisner to come out and call the strike "stupid." I think it's fallacious to say there is no money being made by the studios from the Internet these days, but an interesting point that, in a few years, the entire landscape of Internet revenue will likely have changed. The biggest hurdle, offering movies for legal and fast download, still hasn't really been crossed. As bandwidth increases, computers get faster and consumers get wiser, though, who knows what might happen?

At the same time, how can the writers sit back and watch their content bring in money from Internet distribution for the next several years without seeing any benefit from it? The residuals policy and contract re-negotiation are both far too complicated for me to figure out at this point, but Eisner's suggestion seems more like sleight-of-hand, "Wait! Look over there!" trickery than an actual solution. Also, quite simply, I do not like his tone. "Studios are there because they have to be there. They don't want to be in the transportation business and telling people they should be in the train business -- god forbid they should miss yet another track." First of all I have no idea what he's trying to say here, but second, that "god forbid" seems awfully testy. Strikers should check the bushes by the studio gates to make sure Eisner isn't preparing to lob rotten eggs at them.

A Little Late for 'High Noon'

By Katey Rich

When I bemoaned the upcoming remake of the Hitchcock classic The Birds a few weeks ago, I didn't exactly think it would be the last retooling of a cinema classic to come down the pipeline. But did the next one really have to arrive so quickly? The Hollywood Reporter announced that the rights to the 1952 Gary Cooper classic High Noon were picked up at the American Film Market on Monday, which means that a new Marshal Will Kane will be silently stalking the streets of a desolate town.

The weirdest detail in all of this is that actor Christopher Mitchum, son of '40s Hollywood bad boy Robert Mitchum, acquired the rights, along with producers Mark Headley and Toni Covington. Mitchum has done essentially nothing but B-movies over the course of his career, though he did appear in Tombstone and the late John Wayne western Big Jake. He told the Reporter that he has wanted to remake High Noon for years, though the article doesn't suggest that he'll be acting in it.

Honestly, I think the only way I could handle a High Noon remake would be as a B-movie, so incomparably bad as to not even resemble the original. What concerns me isn't so much what they would do to the story-- it's a great, simple plot, and hard to ruin-- but what a film like High Noon would mean today.

Back in 1952, Will Kane was a solitary figure standing up for what was right, ignoring conventional wisdom and the fear of his community to fight back against the bad guys who escaped jail to come after him and him alone. Even though he'd married a pacifist Quaker (Grace Kelly) who was prepared to leave him on his wedding day if he fought this battle, even though a church full of his neighbors and friends said they wouldn't help him, he walked out into the street to face his fate, knowing the record would show he had done the right thing. Screenwriter Carl Foreman wrote it as an allegory for the Hollywood blacklist, as a paean to those who stood up against the witch-hunting of McCarthyism.

John Wayne told Playboy that High Noon was "the most un-American thing I've ever seen in my life," but there aren't too many people who would agree with him today. High Noon has been shown in the White House more than any other film, most recently in late September 2001. As J. Hoberman pointed out in a 2004 New York Times article, the current President has embraced the film, and probably not just because of its striking cinematography and Cooper's Oscar-winning performance.

Given the way things have gone even since Hoberman wrote his article three and a half years ago, is there anyone who can stomach a movie about a man going it alone into battle? The notion of sticking up for what you believe in the face of adversity remains a powerful American ideal, but it seems almost insulting to present a country mired in one man's war with a film venerating that kind of decision-making. We all know Will Kane was right, and most of us know George W. Bush was wrong, but won't we all want to side with the townspeople in that church anyway, unwilling to risk their necks for what's essentially a grudge match?

As my former professor Richard Slotkin taught me well, westerns are made in response to the time and place in which they're made, refracting back something about their society through the prism of men on horseback. High Noon said something brilliant about the 1950s, but its message might be better left there. I'm all for recent attempts to revive the Western, and even reworking the myths that have been handed down to us throughout history. But before we remake an entire story, especially one so specific to its time, we have to question how its meaning may have changed.

Connelly Brings Earth to a Standstill

By Katey Rich

It's a slow week for movie news, given that most of the major studios are busy trying to get that pesky swarm of striking writers off their lots. Yes, there's been plenty of gloating about how they've stockpiled enough projects to, I don't know, fill the Hollywood Bowl with celluloid, but there seems to a be little breath-holding, at least in the trade papers, while the picket lines march on.

Still, there's at least one major(ish) announcement for today. Jennifer Connelly will be joining Keanu Reeves in the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, the 1951 sci-fi movie that might embody what everyone thinks of when it comes to sci-fi of that era: silver spacesuits, theremins on the soundtrack, laser guns and all the rest. Reeves will play the alien Klaatu, who arrives on Earth to demand the end of all warfare, or else the Earth will be destroyed. Connelly plays a scientist who is the first person to make contact with the alien.

The casting for both parts seems almost so perfect as to be typecasting-- Reeves was pretty much born to play a cold space alien, and Connelly is getting good at playing a woman who's tangentially part of action mostly created by men (Hulk, Blood Diamond). The Day the Earth Stood Still is set for release next December, a short turnaround for a film that will presumably be effects-heavy (the Earth, after all, has to stand still) and an odd time for a sci-fi movie in general. The closest model for this release strategy is I Am Legend, a sci-fi adaptation set for release in mid-December this year. If Legend succeeds as holiday fare, we can probably count on Earth being only the first of a series of big-budget sci-fi releases during that time. And since it's almost impossible to imagine Legend flopping at this point, well, welcome to Christmas, Keanu!