Choose heavenly 'Up,' or 'Drag Me to Hell'

By Sarah Sluis

The must-see movie of this weekend is Pixar's Up (3,700 screens). The opening night selection at Cannes, the PG-rated film will appeal to all ages, and rack up box-office dollars from audiences of every demographic. Pixar usually keeps its plots mysterious--our Executive Editor Kevin Lally points out that "the subject matter...might seem a dubious bet until you see what's been rendered on-screen," so I'll be sparing with the exposition. Ellie and Carl meet each other play-acting adventurers in an old house, reminiscent of the one in It's A Wonderful Life. They fall in love, marry, fix up the house, and, in a touching montage, share life's joys and disappointments, namely their inability to have children or visit Paradise Falls, where they planned on following the footsteps of famous adventurer Charles F. Muntz. Ellie dies (a fact whispered in clarification to a younger sister during the screening I attended), and as you wipe your eyes from under your 3D glasses you realize that the beautiful house they've fixed up is now surrounded by high rises, in an image first drawn in The Little House (a Caldecott winner by famous children's book author Virginia Lee Burton).

While it's taken me a paragraph to explain the moments leading up to Carl's balloon-aided escape from urbanism, Up astounds with its economy: it trusts its (young) audience, and isn't afraid to give them quiet moments. The moments it returns to and repeats, like peeks in the scrapbook Ellie kept of her life, are raps, not hammering reminders. Its creatures (especially the talking dogs) are humorous, and the eight-year-old Wilderness Explorer stowaway, a non-acting child that director Pete Docter said they would tickle or ask to do jumping jacks before reciting his lines, to coax out the best reading, is a charming complement to Carl's stodgy shtick. Up will almost certainly win opening weekend, and make strong showings at the box office weeks after its release.

Sam Raimi, who launched his career with the Evil Dead series and revived it by helming three Spider-Man films, has returned to horror with Drag Me To Hell (2,400 screens), which has received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics, who tend to recoil from the genre. The "diabolically entertaining" film, according to critic Michael Rechtshaffen, contains an allusion to the mortgage crisis. Alison Lohman plays a bank officer who denies a loan extension to a woman, who in turn places a curse on her. As she tries to avoid being dragged off to hell, she enlists the help of her boyfriend, Justin Long. With "old-school puppetry and prosthetic makeup combined with some judiciously used CGI," Raimi appears to have created a horror film with broad appeal, that will provide counterprogramming to those who'd rather not go Up.

On the specialty side, the film to check out is Departures, the Japanese-language picture that won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Our critic Maggie Lee called it a "popular gem�thematically respectable, technically hard to fault, and artfully scripted to entertain and touch audiences." The movie follows an unemployed cellist who signs up to be a "journey assistant," preparing dead bodies for their funerals. Delving into the world of death reminds him of his opposite: "The scene of him wolfing down fried chicken suggests his appetite for life is eventually whetted by confronting mortality daily�a reconnection with nature's cycle."

On Monday, I'll check up on just how high-flying Up was at the box office, and how much money Drag Me to Hell could scare up, so circle back as summer movie season moves into full swing.

Like Terminators and vampires, a good franchise never dies

By Sarah Sluis

Today, the blogosphere is alight with Joss Whedon fans, whose gut reaction over the relaunch of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer franchise, sans fan icon Whedon, is overwhelmingly negative. While it may seem a bit early to remake a film from the 1990's, the popularity of vampire titles such as Twilight and "True Blood" prompted the rightsholding couple Fran Rubel Kuzui and Kaz Kuzui (the originally credited producer) to reboot the film. It's a bit of a paradox in Hollywood that the most valuable ideas aren't the original ones, but the proven ones.

The proposed relaunch of the franchise, so far without Whedon or original stars Kristy Swanson (film version) or Sarah Michelle Gellar (television version), is the rule, not the exception. Terminator Salvation, for example, just opened to $53 million without its lead star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, since he's no longer an action performer but the governor of California.

How the fourth Terminator, Terminator Salvation, came about was the subject an LA Times story on producers Derek Anderson and Victor Kubicek, who bought the rights to the franchise for $25 million, while brushing off lawsuits before, after, and during the entire process. The duo learned of the "for sale" during a business lunch, and did a gutsy blind, you-have-24-hours-to-take-$25 million-or-leave-it deal--the kind that evokes Hollywood action films. The story gives unusual access into that funny world of intellectual property, where the ideas in a movie become a legal abstraction.

How were they able to pull it off? A few choice quotes lend some insight into the process:

Credentials: "...their entire producing experience consisted of one low-budget comedy that never made it into theaters." (The Cook-Off, a mockumentary)

Connections: "The pair were tipped off by Graves at their fateful lunch because they believed they had access to millions of dollars of financing from Dubai." (which never materialized)

Deal-making: "..on Super Bowl Sunday in February 2007 [they] got a commitment from Santa Barbara hedge fund Pacificor...even though his firm had never before, and hasn't since, invested in entertainment." (It doesn't say whether the deal was done in some nice box seats at the game)

Collegiality: "Borman [a producer], in the suit, accused them of "egregious fraud"..." (He will be credited in future films but not allowed to do anything)

While the LA Times seems to imply that the wake of lawsuits couldn't have occurred without reason, Anderson and Kubicek view their legal problems as a byproduct of their business. They've also locked up the current talent: director McG for one sequel and Christian Bale for two. While Terminator Salvation hasn't performed quite as well as expected, so far, just wait for the T1-T4 boxed sets to come out. As for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I hope the project is either stalled or propelled forward by the script. The franchise was surprising because the television series changed significantly from the movie, but still succeeded. With a vision to make a "darker, event-sized movie that would, of course, have franchise potential," and the idea that the movie might feature an offspring or heir of Buffy's slayer duties, the relaunch just might be able to offer a compelling new take on the fantastically rich premise of Buffy.

Audiences prefer a 'Night at the Museum' to 'Terminator Salvation'

By Sarah Sluis

In the box office battle this weekend, family-friendly history won out over a bleak future with people-hunting machines. On Friday, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian barely edged out Terminator Salvation, earning $15.3 million to T4's $14.9 million, but the matinee crowds on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday chose Night at the Museum, propelling the comedy to a $70 million gross. Despite the fact that the sequel is billed as a family comedy, only half the audience fit the description, with the film proving especially popular among under 25's who needed a break from all the big action films that have dominated the box office. Still, Terminator Salvation's performance, while not that of a break-out hit like Star Trek, was director McG's best opening to date, and has strong prospects overseas. Because the film opened on Thursday, its cumulative is $67 million, only $3 million shy of Night at the Museum's four-day total.

Dance Flick also benefited from being a fresh and comedy-focused offering. The Wayans Brothers' film did best in urban markets, and racked up a pleasing $13.1 million gross over the four-day weekend. At the number five spot, it squeezed in above X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which brought in $10.1 million to bring its cumulative to $165 million, and below Star Trek and Angels & Demons. Star Trek's stats are the most impressive in the top ten: a cumulative of $191 million, a four-day gross of $29.4 million, and only a 31% drop in business. The Spock-Kirk adventure will likely cross the $200 million mark this week. Angels & Demons also held on, dropping 40% to earn an almost-comparable $27.7 million, and also looks likely to cross the $100 million mark this week.

On the specialty side, Summit's The Brothers Bloom continued to do well in limited release, averaging $10,000 on each of its 52 screens. Easy Virtue debuted even better, with a $14,600 average on each of its ten screens. The Girlfriend Experience, despite a blanket of publicity, did more so-so from a box-office perspective, with just a $6,667 average at 30 locations. IFC released the film on-demand a month ago, which some suspect dipped into the theatrical gross.

Next week, another two films will join the top ten. Pixar's Up and horror flick Drag Me to Hell will bump two more films off the top ten list. While I can't think of a more unlikely pair, both have strong advance reviews and are currently tracking at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

This Memorial Day, it's Museums vs. Machines

By Sarah Sluis

Terminator Salvation and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian will go head to head this weekend, though they're targeting much different demographics. Terminator Salvation earned an estimated $3 million last night from midnight screenings, which bodes well for the action flick. The "highly efficient action showcase," according to our Executive Editor Kevin Lally, lacks "the fun quotient of the Schwarzenegger films," diminishing its crossover appeal. Still, it's virtually guaranteed at least $70 million over the weekend, and will likely go above that number.

Rising up against Terminator, Fox is opening Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian 500 screens wider than Salvation, in 4,096 theatres. The original Night at the Museum grossed a modest $30 million in its opening weekend, but by the following weekend has upped its cumulative gross to an astounding $115 million, thanks to high weekday grosses during schools' week off between Christmas and New Year's. Even that number proved to be less than half its final gross of $250 million, proof of the long legs of family films. With most children still in school, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian's success won't be measured as much by its opening weekend, but its performance over the next few weeks--and throughout the entire summer. However, because there hasn't been a live-action family film since Race to Witch Mountain, pent-up demand will likely drive up box-office grosses even higher. Plus, Night at the Museum has the above-average box office on its side, as well as a couple hundred IMAX screens, which will pad the weekend's grosses.

The Wayans Brothers' Dance Flick opens on 2,450 screens, offering an alternative to Terminator and Night at the Museum. If I were a teen boy, however, I'd choose Terminator over Dance Flick, hands down, despite our critic's tepid endorsement that the film's "not a perfect 10, but the Wayans crew hit their mark more than they miss."

The most high-profile of specialty releases is Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience. Sacha Grey, a 21-year-old porn star, plays a high-priced call girl turning tricks as the country slips into a recession. Our reviewer applauds how Soderbergh "convey[s] a view of American culture at once outrageous and non-judgmental," while NY Times' A.O. Scott pondered how the film will sit with audiences once "the turmoil of the last 12 months has receded...and this strange, numb cinematic experience may seem fresh, shocking and poignant rather than merely and depressingly true."

Wes Anderson-style caper film The Brothers Bloom, directed by Rian Johnson, expands this week to 52 theatres after an impressive first week out. Jessica Biel, who stars as the scandalous new wife in an established British family in Easy Virtue, can be seen in New York and Los Angeles.

We'll be back on Tuesday to recap the weekend and crown the winner of this holiday box office.

Project Roundup: 'MLK,' 'Swingles'

By Sarah Sluis

It seems like most of the troubles with a biopic aren't the creative aspects, like, say, figuring out how to condense a life into two hours, but the legal drama required to gain the "life rights" of a person. That's the case with the recent announcement that Steven Spielberg will helm a biopic of civil rights visionary Martin Luther King, Jr. Earlier this week, DreamWorks said it was able to secure the life rights and intellectual property rights (i.e. the "I Have a Dream" speech) to MLK's life from his son, Dexter King, but now it seems that the other two siblings (Bernice and MLK III) are contesting the decision, stating they had no say in the matter when they deserved one. This kind of fighting could potentially put brakes on the project, as it did to an earlier book deal about Coretta Scott King. I'm not sure if this argument is about money or about control of the MLK legacy. Certainly, Spielberg has one of the most stellar track records in Hollywood, and has a history of directing projects that resonate strongly with social justice: Amistad, Schindler's List, and The Color Purple are the most obvious examples, but his characters often display strong senses of morality, which are often highlighted through a conflict with a person or group who is far less scrupulous. Since DreamWorks doesn't want the negative publicity generated by a sibling dispute, it's possible the movie will be shelved until the studio can reach a solid agreement. However, it would be nice to see Scorsese's biopic of Frank Sinatra (which also took years of legal wrangling to clear) go head to head with Spielberg's biopic of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Zach Braff joins Diaz in Swingles

While I've expressed my distaste for the romantic comedy project Swingles since it was announced, the attachment of Zach Braff to the project changed my tune. The project was pitched as a Cameron Diaz star vehicle. She would play a hired replacement for a wingman who abandoned his friend--a "wingwoman" if you will. Because Braff does well with "sad sap" characters, I'm guessing the leading man will look less like an uber-man who needs to learn to be more considerate (i.e. Gerard Butler in upcoming The Ugly Truth), but rather an unassertive moper who needs to develop some "game." If the male character is played as someone empathetic, the whole project becomes slightly more endearing. Braff will star, co-write, and direct the project, which I'm officially upgrading from "ick" to "maybe."

'Terminator Salvation' keeps the action, loses its resonance

By Sarah Sluis

The new Terminator Salvation has all the action you would expect from a franchise that once starred Arnold Schwarzenegger. Filmmaker McG is incredibly comfortable directing car chases, planning for CGI-created monster machines, and making machine-to-human combat look fresh and engaging. Unlike in many action movies I've seen, you never get worn out by the fighting and chases. The characters' interactions with each other are believable, necessary, and real. You better believe that Christian Bale, as evidenced by his on-set outburst, was taking his job seriously.

It's also worth noting the performance of John Connor's opposite, Marcus Wright, who is played by newbie Australian actor Sam Worthington. His performance is a preview of what audiences can expect with Avatar, the action film directed by original Terminator director James Cameron, which releases later this year. Worthington plays a death-row criminal resurrected as something else, and he gives his character just the right attitude: redemptive without beating himself up over his never-explained crime. There's a moment where he realizes that he's not who he thinks he is, and watching him act through it is one of the most satisfying moments of the film. He's also forced into a Matrix-like scene where information is downloaded into his head. He makes the moment feel original and fresh, but the scene symbolized my main problem with Terminator Salvation: the sci-fi world of post-apocalypse Skynet seems tired, and little has been done to refresh it.

I prefer my action films to have some kind of soul, and for their battles to be proxy for some greater cultural anxiety (I loved The Matrix). The earlier Terminator films play on that Frankenstein fear, the idea of our creations taking over us. There's also the popular trope of malignant, devious corporations (Skynet) that pursue profits against the common good. Added to mix is the allure of seeing what a world looks like post-apocalypse, and, of course, time travel. All of these struggles seem global, epic, and resonate with the times. But McG doesn't seem interested in syncing up Terminator with today's sci-fi fears.

In this Terminator, the characters display little interest in their predicament. Even Marcus Wright, who woke up in 2018 after being executed in 2003, doesn't show any surprise at the great change in humanity's fortune. And devious corporations going rogue? That certainly could have been stressed more, to great effect. The one thematic glimmer is the tension between members of the resistance and people who merely try to survive, avoiding the Terminators where they can and not bothering to fight. Because it's an action film, we're on board with the fighting side, but the few scenes with the gaunt refugees who preferred avoidance to confrontation stayed with me. Odd, I know, but they piqued my interest in seeing the upcoming adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which follows a father and son on a path to survival--with only people, not machines, to fight.

The buzz after the Terminator Salvation screening, as everyone gathered their cell phones (which were checked into zip-loc baggies for security reasons) was "not as good as Star Trek." I'll add in myself that I found the film to be better than Angels & Demons. I expect the box office for Terminator Salvation will stack up somewhere between the two films, and wouldn't be surprised if we see a Terminator 5.

'Trek' in hot pursuit of 'Angels & Demons'

By Sarah Sluis

Angels & Demons made the usual sequel dip, earning $48 million this weekend, only 62% of The Da Vinci Code's opening weekend. Because the book Angels & Demons wasn't nearly as popular as The Da Vinci Code, which had a Mona Lisa plotline that captivated readers' imaginations, the studio had expected a smaller opening. The popularity of Star Trek, however, likely prevented the opening weekend from crossing the $50 million mark, as did the film's older-skewing audience, which isn't as keen on turning out to see a film the first weekend.

In its second week, Star Trek earned nearly as much as Angels & Demons, pulling in $43 million, a mere 42% drop from last week. Wolverine, by comparison, dropped 69% in its second week, and another 44% this week. Because of Trek's below-average drop for a tentpole film, as well as its strong weekday earnings, it's now just $4 million shy of Wolverine's $151 million total. Its marketing efforts overseas have paid off too, as international audiences have finally taken notice of the franchise. Based on the success of Star Trek, expect Paramount to arc out the story across multiple sequels.

The rest of the top ten, combined, earned only about $20 million, each dropping minimally from the week before. With Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian releasing this Friday, family films like PG-rated Monsters vs. Aliens, which dropped only 8% this week, and G-rated Earth will likely fall to the bottom of the top ten or out altogether.

By contrast, female-oriented films Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and Obsessed, which came in at number four and five this week, earning $6.8 and $4.5 million, won't see any competition for quite some time. It's another month until romantic comedy The Proposal, which has seen strong advance word, will open widely.

This Memorial Day weekend will please adults and families alike. Adventure comedy Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian has already blitzed kids and parents with advertising, and the addition of Amy Adams adds female appeal to a film whose first outing was toplined by males. R-rated Terminator Salvation, which parents will hopefully avoid bringing their kids to, will also attempt to re-launch and re-center a franchise that lost some of its resonance through projects like television show "The Sarah Connor Chronicles." I'll be weighing in on Terminator Salvation's attempt to live up to its iconic catchphrase "I'll be back" later this week, so surf back later in a few days.