WEEKEND REVIEW

Sony had their best opening since Charlie’s Angels, seventeen months ago, with Panic Room.  That may turn out not to be true, if the estimated $30.2 million turns out to be less than American Sweethearts’ $30.18 million from last July.  Still, it’s been a long time.  Given that this is the third consecutive weekend with a $30+ million start, you has to wonder; will Panic Room be like Ice Age, off by 35 percent and then 38 percent or like Blade II, which was off 59 percent in this, its second weekend or will Panic Room be like Sony’s earlier March release, Resident Evil, which was off 62 percent in its first weekend and over 50 percent in this, its third weekend.  My guess is somewhere in between… maybe 42 percent off next weekend.  The word of mouth seems soft, but not horrible. 

The weekend wasn’t nearly as kind to the three other new releases.  Amazingly, the estimated hauls of The Rookie, Clockstoppers and Death to Smoochy totaled $30.2 million… the same as the estimate for Panic Room.  Sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence… 

If Clockstoppers gets to $25 or $30 million, it should be moderately profitable for Paramount.  Death to Smoochy may turn out to be the most critically divisive film of the year, but profitable it will not be, unless it breaks some records in France.  The Rookie is the movie to keep an eye on.  The film seems to have gotten nearly universally positive reviews and the question will be whether audiences catch on to its charms.  The film to which it is most often compared, quite favorably, is Remember The Titans, which had a leggy run in 2000.  However, that film started with $20.9 million on it’s way to $115 million.  This time, if the film does well, $75 million seems like the high target.  But that would be a real pleasure for Disney and for the career of Dennis Quaid, which has been a little iffy as of late. 

JUST WONDERING:  Where are all those “R rated movies don’t sell” folks after two R rated movies opened to over $30 million in the last two weekends?  Maybe there will be a feature in the L.A. Times about how R rated movies are the new thing… everybody aboard!!!

LINKS YOU SHOULD FOLLOW:  There are two terrific pieces that I ran into over the weekend.  First, you should check out the Culturebox Oscar exchange between Slate critic David Edelstein and producer Lynda Obst, author of the Top Ten of All Time Hollywood book, Hello, He Lied.  (Click here - - for the first of 16 e-mails.)

And from The New York Times, Barry Sonnenfeld obsesses all over Dr. Strangelove… great, great stuff.  If only I was as comfortable looking forward to Big Trouble.  Click here - if you have your free NYT registration.  Of not, register at nytimes.com and get to it…

LESS BEAUTIFUL:  Opening the Monday morning L.A. Times, I found out about an omission in A Beautiful Mind that was far more disturbing to me than any of the anti-Semetic or gay stuff.  Alicia Nash is Salvadoran… not from Connecticut.    I managed to avoid the 60 Minutes interview with Nash, as I suffered mightily from bitch-n-moan fatigue, but according to this opinion piece, Mrs. Nash still speaks with a distinct accent.   

What bothers me about this is not so much that Jennifer Lopez lost a job.  The scene at the window, in which Alicia poses her will on some noisy workers and by extension, John Nash, would have been much more difficult to shoot had Lopez’s Alicia had to somehow expose the profile of her butt to get the workers to stop drilling by making them think of drilling.   

The problem is that we in the media, caught up in all the hyperactive angst over the factual actions of a schizophrenic, didn’t care about this particular missed fact.  Maybe Drudgista.com covered this part of the story, but with all the “journalists” scouring the biography for more “news,” this never came up.  Why?  Because Spanish-speaking Americans can’t even agree on what they want to be called (Latino, Hispanic, Spanish???), much less stir up the media.  Yet, in Los Angeles and many other U.S. cities, Spanish-language broadcasting dominates the ratings.   

Just wait.  You’ll be hearing about it if George Lopez’ sitcom takes off.  The “journalists” will tell you that it’s all about the growing Spanish-speaking demographic. It won’t be.  It will be because Lopez is funny and accessible.  But we’re always looking for the hook that will get us the most attention.  And “George Lopez” is funny is not as good a story as “Spanish-speaking Americans are taking over,” anymore than “Alicia Nash has been whitewashed” is as good a story as “John Nash is a gay anti-Semite.” 

(Read the opinion piece by clicking here.

JUST NOTICING:  I was flipping around the cable channels and saw Inga Swanson, formerly of CNN, on Fox Sports Net.   Now SHE has had some serious work done on her face, but unlike Ms. Van Susteren, she actually does look ten years younger and significantly better – though she was fine the way she was.  Funny how Andrea Thompson leaving CNN didn’t get 10 percent of the coverage that her hire did. 

FOLLOWING THE ROCK:  With The Rock making his debut as a leading man in feature films in a couple of weeks, the WWF may be marking the start of another Hollywood trend.  After Vince McMahon’s company acquired its two major competitors, Turner’s WCW franchise and the ECW, things seem to have gotten a little blurry.  In a business in which people tuned in to see stars - just like movies – McMahon had too much talent and a limited ability to differentiate between his products (his shows).  And so, McMahon has created his own competition, essentially recreating the rivalry between WWF and WCW, splitting the talent pool between the two new groups and creating more distinct marketing opportunities.  Presumably, the groups will have somewhat different styles, again, building marketing positions. 

Right now, with all the mergers in the film business, studios have lost identity.  The only two clear franchises lately have been Disney’s animation block and Paramount’s old-fashioned programmers (the John Travolta/Sam Jackson thrillers).  But now, DreamWorks and Fox have both imposed themselves on Disney’s seat of power and studios like Fox are imposing on Paramount’s “turf” with their Ashley Judd/Morgan Freeman knockoff, High Crimes (which for the moment, I will simply say is a big excrement sandwich on decade old matzo). 

People made fun of Fox for being a Black TV network, then a grotesque TV network… but it worked.  It was distinct.  And the growth of WB rode a raft of very targeted demographics to its current prominence.  It works… until you grow up and decide to go after the whole audience and all that money.  But the concept needs to evolve.  After years of success, writers have suddenly decided that NBC’s success was based on an urban hook with Seinfeld and Friends and ER and Frasier… but that’s retrospect.  Friends could easily be set in L.A., so long as the show, as so many do, did not become about L.A.  Frasier could be in Chicago.  ER could be in Detroit or Washington, D.C.  And Seinfeld has already been moved to Santa Monica… it’s called Curb Your Enthusiasm now. 

Anyway, my point is that there is success to be had at the studios by building company branding more effectively.  It wasn’t long ago that people went to movies, making choices based on studios. You knew what a Fox movie would be like or a Paramount movie or a Disney movie.  And it can happen again.  It is not impossible.  And it would be a real way of cutting back on the cost of marketing.  We’ll see if anyone out there is as smart (and as willing to take a folding chair across the back) as Vince McMahon.

READER OF THE DAY:  Harvest Scoon writes:  “Don't think that there won't be lots of folks disappointed by PANIC ROOM this weekend. Despite my self-imposed rule of not seeing movies on opening weekend (that whole attendance/gross = quality really bugs me), I relented because the trailer looked so good (rule #2 broken: never watch a trailer more than once or be prepared to be disappointed).

It'll make money and people like my sister-in-law will be properly spooked and creeped out, but what a let-down. The third act especially was a re-tread of every old warhorse slasher movie cliché including (edited out for your viewing pleasure).   C'mon? Let's not even get into WHAT LIES BENEATH.

The ****** **** ******* was the only real surprise in this dud, though the opening credits were pretty cool.

Perhaps I shouldn't expect elements from Fincher's previous films to dictate content in all of them. I was expecting and hoping for something darker, less conventional. I knew it wasn't going to be another FIGHT CLUB, but the hope was there.

Or maybe it was the asshole behind me who kept yelling, "She better fucking hurry," whenever Jodie was being chased -- when he wasn't busy answering his cell phone or kicking my seat (see above rule #1).”

And this came in from The Thing In The Clip:  “As far as Panic Room, well, I liked it a lot.  I agree with a number of your points: The house IS under-utilized; The movie COULD have been made without CG; Fincher SHOULD be making more challenging material.  Yet, I can't imagine what more of the house COULD have been used - actually, I bet if Fincher/Koepp/et al had gone out of their way to use every single room, it would have only strained credibility more; the CG was integrated seamlessly for me; Fincher found more notes in this particular piece of music than a lot of directors might have, from the doomed lighting scheme, framing, performances (his crooks are believably dumb, and all of them are given moments to realize it), and even his subversion of our expectations of traditional opening and closing scenes. 

The opening credits are stunning, mocking the superfluousness of 'city-skyline-montage' credit sequences and yet spooking out the audience; and the closing image in Central Park mocks the traditional denouement with a simple camera trick that tells us this isn't a 'happy' ending.  Sure, I've got questions about Foster's 'claustrophobia', but beyond I bought it lock, stock, and sledge hammer.    

The Billy Wilder aspect of PR is this: Wilder made 60 films in his career.  That'll never happen again.  But if it did, I bet overall reception of PR would be more favorable.  We'd know that Fincher had another movie coming out this fall, or in less than a year, and no one would feel robbed that Panic Room doesn't measure up to Fight Club.  Heck, Hitchcock made a comparable number of pictures, and not all of them were  Vertigo. 

And that's the rub, nowadays.  Everyone is under too much film-by-film pressure to strike gold every single time, when striking silver ought to be enough every now and again.  Fight Club was Fincher's Vertigo.

Panic Room is his Dial M for Murder, and I'll take it.”

E ME:  It struck me more as his version of Andy Davis’ version of Dial M For Murder.  And while I agree that filmmakers are in a bad place when judged for one film… especially when one can see an entire career like Fincher’s playing out over decades.  That said, I think that something happened on Panic Room… probably at the studio level… to make it less than what Fincher would expect from Fincher.  (And certainly less than Darius Khondi expected… what happened there?)  So here is the question for y’all… when should we judge directors and on what scale?