Friday, 2 February 2001

WEEKEND PREVIEW

This weekend isn't much of a handicapping challenge. It's U-571, U-571 and U-571. With nothing from last weekend's Top Ten likely to gross more than $7 million, the door is wide open. Normally, that's not such a good thing for a submarine. But this weekend, it means that the first summer movie--even if it's still April--is sure to triple the gross of its next best grossing competitor at a minimum. Last year, Universal kicked off summer with The Mummy and grossed $43.4 million in its first weekend for their trouble. Anything close to that will have the Universal team dancing in the streets. And as far as repeat business goes, I've got to tell you, this is a better movie. It's not the effects extravaganza, but I have yet to hear one person say an unkind word about this movie, no matter the age or the sex.

Warner Bros. opens Gossip and while they aren't keeping it secret, their advertising budget doesn't suggest that they are overly enthused about the film's prospects. I haven't seen it--and not because WB didn't invite press, they did--but I was told today by a source I trust that it's pretty much a travelogue of fashions, styles and attitudes of this moment. That was the good thing. New Line also has a film, Love & Basketball. And though the studio took the movie to ShoWest and seems to believe that they have a good one here, they also seem to be acknowledging that the audience may be limited.

Given my insane schedule (I'll be writing the weekend column from St. Louis. Don't ask.) and the clear winner this weekend, I'm not going to do Box Office Extra this week. But I will predict a $30 million-plus start for U-571, a $6 million start for Gossip and a $5 million start for Love & Basketball.

THE GOOD: Rex Reed is a free man. The Manhattan Criminal Court has put him on double secret probation for six months and if he doesn't get cau…if he doesn't steal anything during that time, the case will be dismissed and his record cleared. Reed agreed to the deal, which doesn't find Reed innocent, as he has claimed, but told The New York Post, "I just wanted to get on with my work. This is affecting my brain!" Oh! That's what it is.

THE BAD: As the world pushes forward with technology and the movie business follows, you know you are going to get some gamesmanship pretending to be future thinking. And so it is with Playboy, which announced this week that they had completed production on "the first interactive erotic feature film." What does that mean? Well, when they play the movie on the Playboy Channel, audience members will be able to vote on the direction of the film five different times. Woo hoo! Sounds like a half-a**ed version of I'm Your Man, the interactive movie from Bob Bejan, starring MTV escapee Kevin Seal. Oh yes, it's the first "sensual" interactive film. That means progress. Puh-leeze!

THE UGLY: Oh those Frenchies. After being the King of Cannes for decades, Gilles Jacob decides to step down and handpicks Olivier Barrot to take his place on top of the film festival mountain. (Photos of Barrot wrestling Sundance's Geoff Gilmore for the title are at the Foto-Mat.) And just a few weeks before his first Cannes kicks off, what does Barrot do? He quits. There are all kinds of rumors about what went wrong. None seem logical. However, I am fascinated by all the buzz around the perceived slight against Hollywood in the films chosen to compete this year. It seems to confirm my sense that the festival is losing its way, because how many films are coming from what country seems like a complete non-issue to me. The point is quality, right? Riiiight.

NY TIMES QUOTE OF THE WEEK: I don't have a quote from the New York Times for you, but rather Andrew Sarris' New York Observer review of Black and White. Sarris and I frequently disagree, but I respect him enormously and, in this case, I maintain my respect even though we agree completely.

Black Against White

"James Toback's Black and White talks the talk, but doesn't walk the walk, as a supposedly cutting-edge exploration of the Great Divide between blacks and whites in post-millennial Manhattan, its boroughs and burbs, at least on the fringes of anything we can identify as sociological reality. This is to say that Black and White is mostly talk, with very little action beyond a steady stream of tentative flirting, foreplay and dissing with attitude, mostly from black gangsta-rap types semi-intelligibly lecturing their upscale white groupies of all ages, genders and sexual orientations. It is not therefore surprising that Black and White is not shaping up as a crossover attraction on even the Spike Lee level. Only black viewers know when to laugh at the right places. We're not talking Richard Pryor, Godfrey Cambridge, Redd Foxx, Dick Gregory, Eddie Murphy or even Chris Rock. They've never kidded us as to who was really on top. In Black and White, Mr. Toback himself plays a beleaguered music company executive throwing up his hands in helpless oy vay fashion as he is yelled at by a relay team of gangsta rappers. Robert Downey Jr. plays a homosexual movie producer who comes on to Mike Tyson, no less, and is nearly strangled for his impudence. There is something inescapably thrilling and Pirandellian in the celebrity casting of two tabloid jailbirds as fictional antagonists.

There is one brief spasm of storytelling involving an undercover cop, played by Ben Stiller, and a college basketball player, acted respectably by New York Knicks shooting star Allan Houston. We are asked to believe that the cop would offer the player $50,000 to shave the points or even dump the game. The last basketball scandals I can remember involved the champion City College and Kentucky teams, and at the time everyone marveled at how little money tainted players received for their cheating, though there was a lot of sex-for-free life-style inducements added to the package. What the cop really wants is to get the player to rat on his rapper friend in order to avoid a jail sentence. What happens next is even less believable than what has gone before.

Still, I was told by a French movie journalist that Black and White was a fascinating revelation of race relations in America, and many of my esteemed colleagues have found much to praise in the movie. I'm not sorry I saw it. Mr. Toback's oeuvre has never been less than provocative. On balance, however, I feel that Black and White is overloaded with ultimately condescending white liberal guilt and masochism. Also, having Brooke Shields parading everywhere with a camcorder and a documentary film sound crew makes the performers seem even more self-conscious than they are encouraged to be. It strikes me that Black and White would have been more entertainingly instructive if it had been made as a full-fledged musical. As it is, the prose passages are prosaic and the rap doggerel is merely tedious.

We have come a long way since the late 50's and early 60's when Joan Fontaine received reams of hate mail for merely holding hands with Harry Belafonte in Island in the Sun (1957). By contrast, no one seemed to mind Dorothy Dandridge's having hot sex with British actor John Justin in the same movie. On television a musical number in which Petula Clark held hands with poor Mr. Belafonte again was banned in the South. Yes, we have come a long way, but not as far as Black and White media anchor teams seem to suggest."

READER OF THE DAY: This from The Other D.P.: "I usually enjoy your column immensely and read it Monday through Saturday. I hate to be negative but I have to admit that your reports from Bermuda have not been interesting. Please come back and report on the goings on in America. Will you also be covering the Butte, Montana International Film Festival? How about the Spokane, Washington Film Fest? Any buzz from the Bakersfield, CA International Film Fest while you're at it?"

And this came from Ms. Over the Hill: "I think Silver's decision to re-make Logan's Run is very timely. In our current 20-year-old Internet billionaire society, 30 is seen by many as equaling death. Read this week's New York magazine feature. It's really scary."

E ME: Would you support Rex Reed's ascension to being the new King of Cannes if it would get him out of the states???