Monday, 14 May 2001

WEEKEND REVIEW

He will, he will, do okay… do okay. 

Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as the original, huh?  A Knight’s Tale is already being touted by Sony as an $80 million domestic grosser when all is said and done.   That may be.  Generally, $17 million doesn’t lead to $80 million, but if the film holds up well for Memorial Day weekend, it’s possible.  Sony is quoting the film’s price tag at $40 million, but what is being left out is that they have spent at least $35 million in P&A for this film already.   So you have to believe that an estimated $17 million start is not making anyone in Culver City too happy. 

True, $17 million looks pretty good against last year’s $11.5 million Battlefield Earth start the weekend after Gladiator.  But then again, think about that…

Done? 

For the sake of historical perspective, the year before last, there was no wide release from a major in the correlating weekend, following The Mummy.  The year before, The Horse Whisperer opened to $13.7 million after Deep Impact’s $41.2 million start the weekend before.   That was really the start of the “first weekend of May” summer launch strategy.

The Mummy Returns lost an estimated 53 percent from it’s opening, estimating a $32.2 million weekend.   And though drops like that aren’t unusual after such massive starts, given that A Knight’s Tale underperformed, Universal probably would have like to do a little better in weekend two.  Thought next weekend’s Angel Eyes probably won’t appeal to The Mummy Returns’ core audience, Shrek most certainly will.  Of course, Gladiator’s mark of $187 million is well within reach and Universal is looking for it to pass $200 million.

In other news, Spy Kids has now passed the $100 million mark.  Congratulations to Miramax.  And Memento, despite some buzz about the film not playing in Middle America, jumped into the Top Ten with an estimated $1.2 million on 446 screens to pass the $10 million mark.  For perspective, that puts the film on track to more than double last year’s “found” sensation, Croupier, which totaled out at $6.2 million domestic.  Fore more perspective, the major distributor released film will do more business than such heavily hyped Miramax releases as Get Over It, East is East, Holy Smoke, Hamlet, Malena, Teaching Mrs. Tingle, Outside Providence, Little Voice, A Walk on the Moon, Happy, Texas and on and on.  In fact, Memento would be the seventh highest grosser for Miramax over the last two years, behind only Chocolat, Bridget Jones’s Diary, All The Pretty Horses, The Cider House Rules, Bounce and Down to You.  And it may well pass All The Pretty Horses.   The box office giveth, the box office taketh away.

THE GOOD:  I saw Shrek again on Saturday and it was quite the revelation.  Not because I didn’t already know that it was quite good.   I was shocked because in the months since I first saw the film at ShoWest, I had forgetting the remarkable correlation between it and A Knight’s Tale.  DreamWorks would never use this quote, but Shrek is the movie that A Knight’s Tale wanted to be.  Everything that Brian Helgeland & Co. threw at the audience, hoping for a reaction, works to perfection in Shrek.  There is lots of anachronistic music, seemingly discordant historic references, a bullet-time action beat, a female lead who is tougher than she is dainty, a naked irritating sidekick and lots of action. 

It’s really quite remarkable.  And it should stand as a warning to the critics who kind of bent to the meager charms of A Knight’s Tale, I think, out of a sense that it was better and better intended than a lot of the other crap we’ve been sitting through lately.  But in my mind’s eye, film criticism is not a comparative activity.  Good is good and bad is bad.  Yes, it is all opinion in the end.  But that opinion should be the opinion of the critic, not a relativist analysis based on the quality of the other films in the market.  If someone asks, “Is there anything worth seeing?,” I could see saying to some, “You might like  A Knight’s Tale.”  But if I were a real friend, I’d say, “Wait a week… Shrek is coming.”

THE BAD:  Fox is in a kind of awkward position on Moulin Rouge.  Most of the world’s major critics have seen the film at Cannes and a pretty much free to write about it.   On the flip side, most of them will wait to write about it until the film is released at home.    Richard Corliss of Time Magazine went on the record early enough to be quoted in the Sunday papers.  Roger Ebert didn’t review the film, but he says in his column, “The movie struck just the right note to kick off this 54th festival. The post-screening buzz, confirmed by most of the reviews Thursday morning, was that Moulin Rouge hit a home run.”

On the other hand, those of us stuck at home are being asked to hold any comments on the film until Tuesday, at the earliest.  This is all just a standard control mechanism, but still… there is something strange about holding one’s mouth after something is already out there… and in such a public way.  Sigh…

THE PERSPECTIVE:  Bernie Weinraub of the New York Times has a story out today that returns to the exits at The Hollywood Reporter over the George Christy clash.  Weinraub finds a new angle, remembering Hollywood past and how Christy’s offenses used to be standard operating procedure.  In fact, Christy’s behavior seems mild in perspective.  He also talks to Anita Busch, who explains her rules for returning studio gifts… and how, according to Weinraub, even some of the writers living under her rules sneak around them.  A very good piece.  (Click here to see it, if you have a free NYT on-line subscription.)

GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY:  So, has Memento wet your appetite to see Christopher Nolan’s first feature,  Following, as it has mine?  Well, Zeitgeist Films is re-releasing the film in selected cities in the months before it arrives on video and DVD this summer.  Next weekend, Seattle and Sacramento.  (Sorry, Chicago… if you missed it this weekend, it’s gone.)  It seems that they only have two prints running and there are no plans to bring the film back to L.A., so it looks like I’ll be waiting for the DVD.  But you can check out the official site for more info by clicking here.

BIG LIST O’ QUOTES:  I’ve been pretty lazy about updating the Big List.  Why?  Well, part of it is that even I get sick of wallowing in the ugliness of it all.  And I sometimes have mixed feelings about connecting a guy like Roger Ebert with someone like Maria Salas, linked though they are in Sunday’s Angel Eyes ads.  Then there is Shrek, which has been available for screenings for three months and has scored Newsweek’s David Ansen, Premiere’s Glenn Kenny and Joel Siegel.  Somehow that feels different.  Though, as I said when we switched from the Quote Whore Scoreboard to The Big List that the idea was to leave the judgment to you.  And so, a new list will emerge on Friday.  Promise.

JUST WONDERING:  Why am I so blasé’ about seeing Pearl Harbor?   It’s not that I have a negative feeling… I just find myself uncaring.  I mean, how excited can I get about a film that will be compared primarily with Mission: Impossible 2? 

READER OF THE DAY:  Eggs writes:  "I agree with your observations on the British at Cannes and indeed, would incline towards Mr. Gilliam's estimation that "maybe they¹re crap." Whenever the British strike a home run, they coo and crow about it as though they were setting the world to right. The situation has taken a turn for the surreal in recent years as they have gone to claim such films as The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love and even American Beauty as British. The English Patient I can forgive. Minghella and Scott-Thomas and Fiennes all helped tip the perception in that direction. But if anything, one of the themes of the film was the rejection of nationalism of any sort. Shakespeare in Love was American financed and had a plethora of American stars over and above its British cast (even the Antepodean Geoffrey Rush came in ahead of Dame Judy Dench). But as for American Beauty, the claim was that it took a Brit (Mendes) to show the Americans up for what they were.

Which leads me to my final point. You mentioned Neil Jordan. Talented and an Oscar winner though he is, he is not British but rather Irish."

E ME:  Do you feel summer coming?  Is it getting harder to get excited about the non-stop action of the season?