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Showing posts with label Rango. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rango. Show all posts

SHOWBUZZDAILY OSCAR WATCH: THE WINNERS

1:40 AM | Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,




It's a measure of how desperately this year's Oscar needed some kind of surprise that the closest thing to a thrill all evening was Meryl Streep's win as Best Actress.  Streep has been winning Academy Awards since 1979, and she'd been touted for her performance as Margaret Thatcher since months before THE IRON LADY even opened.  By virtually every measure, she'd been a close 2d to Viola Davis as favorite all along.  One could even make the argument that choosing Streep over Davis was actually the more conservative move in the category.  (And a bittersweet one, because although Streep--despite her protestations--will almost certainly have more chances at the prize before she's done, it might not be so easy for Davis to climb that hill again.)  And yet, when Streep's name was announced, it was the night's only jolt of electricity:  Something Finally Happened!


Streep's victory also underscored, for anyone who doubted, that Harvey Weinstein is the master of his era's (maybe any era's) Oscar gamesmanship.  Streep had been a strong contender for THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA and for JULIE AND JULIA, and both times she'd been denied.  Iron Lady was the least successful, least-seen and least-liked of Streep's recent vehicles, but Weinstein's absolutely unapologetic willingness to play the card of "winning 29 years ago is like not winning at all," stressed in every Streep-for-Best-Actress ad, did the trick.  

Weinstein was also behind another surprise, the victory of UNDEFEATED for Best Feature Documentary over the favored PINA and PARADISE LOST 3.  (He can't claim the night's below-the-line shocker when THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO took Best Editing.)  And of course, he was the architect of the night's most inevitable set of victories, as THE ARTIST marched to the podium every time it really counted.

Apart from the Weinstein brigade, the Oscars were mostly widely scattered, as THE DESCENDANTS, THE HELP and MIDNIGHT IN PARIS each won a single award, Christopher Plummer took his unofficial lifetime achievement prize, and HUGO went home with all the awards no one cares about.

Ironically, 2012 will probably be the wrong year to be Harvey Weinstein's touted entry for Best Picture:  after THE KING'S SPEECH and The Artist in consecutive years, the Academy may go out of its way to show its independence from his hegemony.  But if there's any certainty in the Oscar universe, it's that he'll be back.

Here's your complete set of Oscar winners:

BEST PICTURE:  THE ARTIST

BEST DIRECTOR:  MICHEL HAZANAVICIUS, "THE ARTIST"

BEST ACTOR:  JEAN DUJARDIN, "THE ARTIST"

BEST ACTRESS:  MERYL STREEP, "THE IRON LADY"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:  CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER, "BEGINNERS"

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:  OCTAVIA SPENCER, "THE HELP"

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:  WOODY ALLEN, "MIDNIGHT IN PARIS"

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:  ALEXANDER PAYNE, JIM RASH and NAT FAXON, "THE DESCENDANTS"

BEST ANIMATED FILM:  "RANGO"

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM:  "A SEPARATION"

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE:  "UNDEFEATED" 

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY:  "HUGO"

BEST FILM EDITING:  "THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO"

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE:  "THE ARTIST"

BEST ORIGINAL SONG:  MAN OR MUPPET, "THE MUPPETS"

BEST ART DIRECTION:  "HUGO"

BEST COSTUME DESIGN:  "THE ARTIST"

BEST MAKE-UP:  "THE IRON LADY"

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS:  "HUGO"

BEST SOUND EDITING:  "HUGO"

BEST SOUND MIXING:  "HUGO"

BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT:  "THE SHORE"

BEST ANIMATED SHORT:  "THE FANTASTIC FLYING BOOKS OF MR. MORRIS LESSMORE"

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT:  "SAVING FACE"
 


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SHOWBUZZDAILY 2011 IN REVIEW: THE TOP 10 FILMS

4:11 PM | Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,



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As a movie year, 2011 felt, more than anything else, like a reflection of an art and a business in disarray.  Economically, it was a down year and for the major studios, a frightening one:  beyond the special case of the Harry Potter  finale, virtually every Hollywood franchise slipped from prior success in the US, saved from barrels of red ink only because overseas audiences embraced them in record-breaking numbers.  Even the technology of "film" was and continues to be in flux:  more and more motion pictures are shot and distributed on high-definition video that's increasingly difficult for viewers to tell from traditional film stock; US audiences are growing tired, for the most part, of inferior 3D; and the dispute over whether motion-capture performance (like Andy Serkis's Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes) constitutes award-worthy "acting" is growing hotter.  Creatively, too, it seemed like the movies were in a holding pattern, waiting to find out what the next exciting wave would be.  Despite all this, there continued to be films worth seeing and commemorating, and here were the best 10 of them:

1.MARGIN CALL:  A group of affluent men (and one woman) sit in conference rooms in the middle of a deserted Wall Street night talking about money in hushed tones, and it's all somehow post-apocalyptic.  Which is accurate, because they’re watching their economic universe, overnight, go poof--and as in any post-apocalyptic story, the real question is who will survive.  J.C. Chandor’s film, as cunningly structured as a thriller, was the writing/directing debut of the year--not a David Mamet retread or a mere financial meltdown docudrama, but a humane, eloquent and ruthlessly smart story about modern capitalism and the way it reflects human nature.  The fact that the Screen Actors Guild didn’t even nominate the actors, headed by Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons and producer Zachary Quinto, for Best Ensemble tells you all you’ll ever need to know about the SAG Awards.  

2. SHAME:  Steve McQueen’s NC-17 drama revolved around a sex addict, and certainly wasn’t for everyone.  But  beneath the (unerotic) sex was the story of a brother and sister being torn apart by their own private demons.  McQueen, in complete mastery of the art form, refused to provide easy explanations or a therapeutic happy ending, and Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan supplied 2 of the most savagely wrenching performances of the decade. 

3. EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE:  Unaccountably, the most controversial and divisive movie of the year, apparently because it dared to touch, in its apolitical and fictional way, on what turned out to be the third rail of American popular culture:   9/11.  Stephen Daldry’s filmmaking and Eric Roth's script (adapted from Jonathan Safran Foer's novel) superbly balanced sentimentality, quirkiness and profound heartbreak, and the first-time actor Thomas Horn managed to dominate a supporting cast that included Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock and the extraordinary Max Von Sydow., whose silent performance outshone anything in the insanely overrated The Artist

4. CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE:  Hollywood's most pleasant surprise of the year, a romantic comedy drama that was actually romantic, comic and dramatic—sometimes even all at once.  Glenn Ficarra and John Fuqua nimbly tapdanced the shifting tones of Dan Fogelman’s marvelous script (which also had the year’s best third-act surprise), and the letter-perfect ensemble included Steve Carell, Julianne Moore, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Marisa Tomei and Analeigh Tipton.

5. WIN WIN:  Tom McCarthy writes and directs movies about ordinary human beings with the grace, understanding and complexity of a great American novelist.  Win Win, about the ethical struggles of a high school wrestling coach, was smarter, tougher and yards more perceptive than The Descendants, but since both are distributed by the same studio (Fox Searchlight, also responsible for burying the very fine Margaret), McCarthy's script and the beautiful performances by Paul Giamatti and Amy Ryan (who should be forced—bodily, if necessary—to play a couple at least once every couple of years) are being ignored

6. RANGO:  A strange and wonderful animated movie from director Gore Verbinski, writer John Logan and star/muse Johnny Depp that was like Pixar on acid:  deranged, inspired comedy about spaghetti westerns, heroism, Chinatown, existentialism, the meaning of identity if you're an actual chameleon, and a half-dozen other topics, all populated by crazy-looking reptiles on gorgeous landscapes.

7. MONEYBALL:  Michael Lewis’s book about abstract theories of how a low-spending baseball team remade the rules of drafting and trading for players had no business even being a movie.  But with master screenwriters Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, director Bennett Miller and a cast headed by the year's most unlikely comedy team, Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, the result was funny, bracingly intelligent, and often dramatically thrilling.

8. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO:  Even though audiences were thoroughly familiar with Stieg Larsson's pageturning potboiler and the solid Swedish film adaptation, David Fincher made it his gripping own, with the help of screenwriter Zaillian (again), a breakout performance by Rooney Mara, excellent support from Daniel Craig, Stellan Skarsgard and the rest of the cast, and a fabulously gifted technical crew that included cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth and composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

9.  MIDNIGHT IN PARIS:  Never, ever count Woody Allen out.  At the age of 75, after more than 40 feature films and widely believed to have outlasted his boxoffice prime, he came back with, if not one of his very best, a richly entertaining and even wise bauble that became the biggest hit of his career (if you don’t adjust for inflation), as breezy and charming as it was clever.

10.  THE HELP:  Tate Taylor’s adaptation of the best-selling novel was no triumph of the filmmaking art, and it’s perfectly fair to criticize the movie's oversimplifications and unapologetic sentimentality.  But months later, it still stands as one of the most engrossing and narratively satisfying dramas of the year , and its cast headed by Viola Davis, Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard and Jessica Chastain couldn’t have been better.

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THE BIJOU: International Footnote

10:53 PM | Labels: , , , , , , ,

There's been quite a bit written in the last few years about the phenomenon of US films doing much better business overseas than domestically, sometimes more than making up for American disappointment or failure--and rightly so, as a glance at Mitch Metcalf's chart today confirms.  Indications are that the latest Harry Potter and Transformers sagas may end up doubling their US boxoffice overseas, Kung Fu Panda 2 has done even better than that, and the international results from Pirates 4 make up an incredible 76% of its worldwide total.  

Just as striking, though, are the different results once beyond the Top 10.  The "bonus" foreign grosses on the Top 10 films over their US boxoffice may ultimately exceed $2B, making foreign distribution look like hitting the lottery.  But the discrepancy is incredibly top-heavy:  after those gigantic animated and fantasy-action franchises are cleared away (7 of the Top 10 are in 3D), things are quite different.  Not one of the films ranked 11-20 on the SHOWBUZZDAILY chart has grossed more than $35M higher internationally than its total in the US.  A few of those, to be sure (Captain America is the most obvious) are still very early in their foreign runs.  But most of them, like Green Hornet, Just Go With It, Rango, and Battle:  Los Angeles are pretty much exhausted worldwide, and none did a tremendous amount more overseas than they had at home.  Even Bridesmaids and Super 8 have now played in more than half the world, with results that are currently below their respective US grosses.

All this suggests that studios hoping for international bonanzas to bail them out of soft US boxoffice are taking a big risk:  while foreign audiences respond to the "event" status of a few mega-movies--fulfilling studio dreams by seemingly having little regard for their quality--that charity doesn't extend to the lower, or even the middle, parts of the release schedule.  Most movies that look like frogs on their US release don't transform into princes just because they've been kissed overseas.

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WEEKEND STUDIO ESTIMATES: A Little Better Than Expected

4:24 PM | Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Based on Saturday numbers, the weekend is coming in a bit stronger than projected yesterday but still lagging behind the same weekend average for the last four years.  The top 12 films should total $104.5 million for the weekend, down 3% from the last few years. 

The relatively small size of this decline indicates the "slump" is more in a holding pattern than back in full force (as it looked yesterday).  However, the box office is going to need to start to show some consistent increases to erase the severe declines in the first six weeks of the year.

Limitless (Relativity) is now looking like a somewhat stronger #1 with $19.0 million and headed for a domestic ultimate of $59 million (63rd percentile).  Lincoln Lawyer (Lionsgate) should open at #4 with $13.4 million, on track for $46 million (56th percentile).  Paul (Universal) should follow at a close #5 with $13.2 million, headed for $43 million (56th percentile).

Holdovers                   This Weekend    Domestic Ultimate
Rango (Paramount)           #2 -32% $15.3   $138 (88th %ile) 
Battle: Los Angeles (Sony)  #3 -59% $14.6   $91  (77th %ile) 
Red Riding Hood (WB)        #6 -48% $7.25   $39  (49th %ile)
The Adjustment Bureau (Uni) #7 -49% $5.9    $67  (69th %ile)
Mars Needs Moms (Disney)    #8 -23% $5.3    $28  (35th %ile)

--Mitch Metcalf

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THURSDAY NUMBERS: Rango Edges Back Into First Place

2:14 PM | Labels: , , , , ,

Battle: Los Angeles fell to a very close #2 with $2.02 million Thursday, declining a steep 14% from Wednesday (well below the average 3.5% increase for March films in day seven).  Red Riding Hood dropped 10% to $1.01 million, staying in the #3 position.  Mars Needs Moms fell 6% to $0.72 million, holding the #5 spot.

Rango edged into the #1 position by dropping less than Battle did (down 7.5% from Wednesday) to $2.05 million (still below the 4% average increase for March films in day 14).  The Adjustment Bureau declined a steep 15% to $0.90 million, holding the #4 spot.

All in all, a pretty uneventful mid-week period with no film setting up for an especially strong second or third weekend performance.  Tomorrow should more interesting with three new films in wide release and the possible answer to the question of whether the slump is ending (see Slump post below).

--Mitch Metcalf
2:00 pm PT

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