The Hot Button by David Poland

Friday, 29 May 1998

WEEKEND PREVIEW
Here lee-zard, lee-zard, lee-zard!!! Jurassic Park: The Lost World dropped 53 percent from its record-breaking Memorial Day weekend run last year. I would expect Godzilla to do about the same. Friday through Sunday, Godzilla pulled in $44.7 million, so look for about $22 million as this weekend's number. The big question is, will Hope Floats open forcefully enough to pass that figure up? I'm betting no. This is not to say that Hope Floats can't be an $80 million movie. Just that it will have to earn that over time. Eighteen million dollars and second place for Hope Floats is my expectation. The rest of the new pictures look like they shall dwell at the bottom of the Top 10. The Horse Whisperer looks to pass Deep Impact to take the third spot, pushing Deep Impact to fourth. Week two of Bulworth should hold its own to take fifth place.
The second five is not an extremely pretty picture. In just their second weeks, box office car-wrecks The Quest For Camelot and Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas will have to fight to stay ahead of week 23 of Titanic, which is still floating along. Plus, City of Angels still hangs on to life support. Also in the fight for these slots will be newcomers I Got the Hook Up, the long-delayed (and apparently for good reason) Almost Heroes and Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco. Of the three, The Last Days of Disco will probably find the most loving viewers, but keep in mind that Stillman's first film, Metropolitan, made only $2.9 million domestic and Barcelona managed only $7.3 million. So, for all the positive attention, a $20 million gross through the film's run would have to be considered a victory. Personally, I enjoyed the film, finally cuddling up to Stillman's unique verbal style. It's as unique as any Mamet screenplay. But as I warned before, if you are shy about dropping $8, rent one of the other film's first and see if you enjoy it. If you like them, you will love this one.
THE GOOD: Carol Cling, a movie reviewer from the Las Vegas Review-Journal has some strong opinions on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. She also has a good conversation with director Terry Gilliam. Let me know if you agree with Carol.
THE BAD: Kate Beckinsale, one of the stars of The Last Days of Disco, had a profound effect on me in person. She was more beautiful, witty, clever and charming in real life than she has ever been on film. She plays a brittle East Coaster in this, her latest film, and does a great job. She's a woman you love to hate. But she was meant to be the object of desire in Much Ado About Nothing and Haunted. She was lovely in those, but the right film hasn't come along yet to give her a chance to really shine. And that's bad.
THE UGLY: Let's hope the stench of Almost Heroes won't taint the careers of some terrific people. The idea that Chris Farley will be remembered by way of this long-shelved flick is ugly indeed. Director Christopher Guest is, in my opinion, one of the true comic geniuses alive today. But, he hasn't had much output in his career and I hope that people will be too busy laughing at their rental video of Waiting For Guffman to even notice his name in these credits. And Matthew Perry. Well, he's on "Friends."
THE CONTEST: Welcome to the last week of The Hot Button Box Office challenge. Lots of good stuff up for grabs. Whoever wins will get a chance to tell me what they want out of a lot of cool summer stuff. Next week, a new box office guessing contest begins, and it should be a lot of fun with even bigger prizes. But I'll tell you about that next week. Oh yeah! Bigger prizes! Next week, another one of my contests begins. It'll run all summer long. Have you read my feature on the summer races? Well, this will be your chance to place your bets. The odds will change every week, and the winner of the summer-long races will get their very own DVD player. I kid you not. More on that next week, too.
TWO MEDIA PRODUCTS EQUAL: This one was sent in by a reader. Don't look now, but it's Krillian again. He's having a good week. I don't think it was meant for this section, but I laughed, so here it is: "City of Angels + 'Touched By An Angel' = Stalked by An Angel. Nic Cage stalks Meg Ryan, watching her take baths, make love and pretty much whatever turns him on, all the while staying invisible to her. By the end of the film, Nic discovers the incredible cost of dry cleaning a floor length suede coat and that love hurts, especially when Meg tries to cut off his hand with a cleaver. With Della Reese as the voice of God.
JUST WONDERING: Did anyone else notice that City of Angels did something pretty old-fashioned with its soundtrack? It has a variation of the '60s answer songs, where a male group would sing a song and then a female group would do a response song (or vice versa). In this case, it's Alanis Morissette singing for the female lead, Meg Ryan, with "Univited," which expresses her feelings about Nic Cage's character. Then, Goo Goo Dolls cover for Nic Cage with "Iris," which expresses his feelings about becoming human. Kinda cool, huh?
READER OF THE DAY: There were far too many great letters about Godzilla to print here. I know that some of you are sick of reading about it. But if you are not, please check out Dave's Green Room amongst the discussion forums. Some of this stuff is just great, including Krillian's List and his latest additions. (Don't be insulted if you didn't get posted -- some of you are regulars, some of you had very short letters and some of you just got lost in the HUGE number of e-mails this on-going saga has generated.) And more importantly, signing up for chat access will now make it easier for you to join me live at The X-Files premiere in a couple of weeks. You like that, huh?
And now for something completely different from Ryan D: "I know this is mostly unrelated to the rest of this Godzilla crap (still haven't seen it), but I did see Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I loved it. In fact, I saw it twice over the weekend. I enjoyed it thoroughly both times. I'm probably going to take my girlfriend to see it on Thursday if it hasn't left theaters yet. Why has this movie been slammed upon so damn much? It is, visually, some of Gilliam's most interesting work. (It's the first of his films where the lens doesn't look like it's been smeared with Vaseline -- a real stretch for him.) People complain that it wasn't about anything, but hey, neither was the book. I really like to think of it less as a movie and more as a companion for the book. Read the book, watch the movie, and together you will have a generally more fulfilling experience of both. This is a film that has a real strong chance of becoming a cult favorite -- people sitting around doing bong rips and sipping on Robitussin, watching Johnny Depp swat at invisible bats. At least that's what I'll be doing when it hits video."

E ME: You know the drill. Give me a thrill!