Duh!

Yesterday, I wrote about Road to Perdition's attempting to be the first film to open under $30 million to hit $100 million.  But this very day, The Bourne Identity will be doing just that, passing the $100 million mark after a $27.1 million start.  Last year, Spy Kids, Dr. Dolittle 2, The Princess Diaries and Vanilla Sky all turned the trick with starts lower than Bourne.  And, not surprisingly, these films had four of the five lowest totals amongst $100 million domestic grossers.  (The fifth was Black Hawk Down, which opened in exclusive runs in 2001 and expanded in 2002, avoiding Lord of the Rings and delivering quite well, thank you.)

Bourne will be the ninth movie to hit $100 million, soon to be followed by Mr. Deeds.  Last year at this time, only eight films had been released that would hit $100 million domestic and six of them had already passed the mark.  The current count on Spidey/Clones vs. Mummy2/Pearl?   $695.8 million against $382.7 million. 

There are only a few sure-bet $100 million movies still coming this summer: Goldmember, Signs and XXX.  In the have-a-real-shot club are Spy Kids 2, Stuart Little 2 and K-19.  In the have-a-prayer club are Eight Legged Freaks, Country Bears and Blue Crush.  With just five more real opening weekends this summer, that’s nine films in serious contention for serious dollars.  Plus Steven Soderbergh’s Full Frontal.  Not a boring summer. 

SPEAKING OF FULL FRONTAL:  The publicity campaign for the film is already heating up.  On Monday, there was a Neil Travis placement of a story that let the ladies out there know that they will have the opportunity to size up David Duchovny’s erect penis in Full Frontal… even if it is under a sheet… and even if ladies aren’t the only ones who will be breaking out the eyeball yardsticks.  What’s next?

SPEAKING OF NUDITY:  I ran into a story about NY Post reporter Bridget Harrison’s bosses trying to keep male staffers (forgive the pun) from spending all day looking at her nude photos on the internet.  The first link took me to the photos Then I got curious about whether The Post had run a story.  And indeed, I found two.  The first was from Sunday, July 7 and was already in the pay archives.  The second ran on Monday and is a very funny piece about Harrison’s choice and the man who seems to have decided to stop flirting after she sent him a link to her photos.  (That’s story is still free and right here.)

We should probably take a second to think about this, not just about how great Ms. Harrison looks… a grown woman with actual curves and – Dear God! – pubic hair.  These are not aggressive photos, but they are quite lovely, if not a little clichéd.  It reminds me about the contention that The Bourne Identity needed a sex scene, or that one needs to be crass to sell a movie or TV show.  Why, this is so low key one might expect that Ms. Harrison is about to be signed up by the New York Times, not the hot-dogging NY Post. 

P.S.:  This thing also begs the question of if entertainment reporters, print division, would be well served by doing nude photos.  I can tell you that I can’t think of a single guy who would be well served by the decision… though Bob Welkos has a 70s-Burt-Reynolds-in-Cosmo thing going and you get the feeling that Mike Wilmington might have done a porn film or two in his youth. 

SHE’S BACK!!!:  Anita Busch was bylined in the L.A. Times today..  My guess is that she came out of seclusion to attend the very glammy Lew Wasserman memorial.  My invite was lost in the mail.  Having lived a full life until his death last month at 89 years of age, Wasserman outlived the invasion of the Japanese and the French… twice.

GOOD DEAL:  Kevin Smith shows his wit and self-awareness in his first Jersey Girl diary entry on his new movie site, MoviePoopShoot.com.  (You know what that site needs?  One more movie columnist… hmmm….) The punch line of the story, which Smith managed to keep a secret until his piece ran, is that Vilmos Zsigmond will D.P. his new film.  Zsigmond hasn’t worked a lot in this country since a hot streak in the mid-90s.  Glad to see he’s back and that he’s got a top writer by his side.  

CHARADING:  A reader wrote in over the weekend with some doubts about Mark Wahlberg and the Jon Demme remake of Charade, due in October.  So I asked a friend of the film to speak to the issue and what came back, I thought, was worth printing: 

“Regarding CHARLIE:  The thing is, it's mistaken to say that Wahlberg is playing the "Cary Grant role."  CHARLIE is, unashamedly, an affectionate updating of "Charade," but Demme made some fundamental alterations right from the get-go:  Grant was 59 to Hepburn's 34 when they shot "Charade." Wahlberg and Newton are within a year of each other.  Their dynamic wasn't ever intended to faithfully re-create the June/September romance in the original.  

Also, the entire central relationship has been inverted:  Netwon's Regina Lambert is now a more active, driven part of the action, with Wahlberg's Joshua Peters often chasing after, in pursuit of her.   The whole thing is grittier and edgier than "Charade," but still a lot of fun and boasts typical old-school Demme flourishes:  great music, energetic direction, interesting secondary and tertiary characters played by "where'd they find HIM/HER" people . . .”

Just to add my two cents, The Truth About Charlie is another film with a delayed release date, an issue discussed in the next story.  However, like The Bourne Identity, the delay was really about the filmmaker getting the movie finished the way he wanted it finished.  There was some pissy writing around Bourne and that has turned out to be one of the summer’s biggest critical and commercial success stories.   In many ways, Doug Liman has a chance to become his generation’s Jon Demme.  And Demme himself is, like Gus Van Sant and Barbet Schroeder, a filmmaker who makes the most commercial projects interesting.  (If he had only cut 20 minutes out of the very underrated Beloved)  So I am hoping for – and expecting- the best.

THE NY TIMES SECTION:  There was a lot of great movie coverage in the NY Times on Monday… who knows why?  But get your free subscription if you haven’t already signed up. 

Rick Lyman does an interesting story on the connection between National Geographic and K19. 

Michael Cieply does a story on the long and winding road to the release of Pluto Nash and the idea that the internet has a real influence on these things.  Of course the story, which is well reported, spins a lot of bullshit.  It is amazing to me that papers like the New York Times continues to print the wasn’t-my-fault finger pointing of execs with have crappy product who want to blame the web.  Pluto Nash has been sitting in the can for more than a year-and-a-half and it has nothing to do with the web. 

In the story, Cieply stumbles onto one real issue… when Ain’t It Cool ran one test screening review, what freaked Warner Bros. wasn’t the test screening review, but the fact that Time Magazine made reference to the review in their pages.  As far as I’m concerned, that’s malfeasance of duty by Time’s editors.  But they can’t be called out on that, because they are Time.  So, the finger points at Harry. 

The simple fact is that the web’s effect on print press and industry types is what has an effect.  Web sites lie about their numbers.  There is not a single movie website in which any one story reaches as many at 500,000 people.  And in terms of the “buzz” sites, there is not one that has an audience of as many as 250,000 readers.  

Cieply even points out that Warner Bros, isn’t reacting to internet buzz, including some from E! Online, one of the majors.  Why?  Because it doesn’t matter.  Either they can open the movie with advertising and Eddie Murphy’s name or they can’t.  If the web has a $500,000 effect on opening weekend, that would be a lot.  If The New York Times’ critics had a $250,000 effect on opening weekend, that would be a lot.  It’s not a criticism of anyone… it’s the reality of a business that is now driven every weekend by tens of millions of dollars in advertising. 

Other examples that Cieply cites are also off the mark.  Universal dumped Detox aka Eye See You without any help from the internet, thanks.    The only web writer who gave more than a passing comment on Town & Country was Jeff Wells.  Knockaround Guys is desperately hoping that XXX can allow them to ride Vin Diesel’s wake.  Killing Me Softly is a victim of a company in transition… again.  Save The Last Dance succeeded because… holy mokes!… it was a good movie!  (Or at least, it was a really good TV movie, feeding a starving teen audience.)  And Gangs of New York?!?!  That film took its beating in print, not the web.  No one calls in Pat Kingsley to fight the web battle.  They brought her in to bury what started in the NY Observer and was set to continue in the New York Times Magazine.

And the biggest red herring of all is the suggestion that Eddie Murphy is avoiding doing publicity for Pluto Nash because of negative web buzz.  Cieply calls Murphy, “customarily stingy with publicity.”  Uh, no.  He’s far more than stingy.  Eddie Murphy has not done a real interview for any movie he’s done since his little incident on Santa Monica Blvd.  He does E.P.K.s… period.  He didn’t do press for Shrek.  He didn’t do press for Nutty Professor II.  He didn’t do press for Dr. Dolittle 2.  And he won’t do press for Pluto Nash.  He’s not “sitting this one out.”  He sits them ALL out. 

Pluto Nash is on its own.  Either Warners’ team can sell it or they can’t.  The web is irrelevant.  The negative buzz on any film that is delayed for more than a year is deserved.  The reason delayed films tend to bomb is because they stink.  Or do they think that no one noticed that Windtalkers was scheduled for last summer and actually had standees in theaters… or that Rollerball was pushed twice BEFORE is was pushed out of summer last year after John McTiernan made a desperate effort to turn around MGM’s attitude by flying Harry in to get some positive buzz rolling.  (Obviously, it didn’t work.  Harry was honest and shredded what he saw.  But the film was already in trouble or Harry wouldn’t have been brought in by McTiernan.) 

Road to Perdition was delayed.  But the studio clearly believed in it and negativity was avoided, on and off the net.  Titanic was delayed, but the movie made up for it.  The Sopranos is going more than a year between seasons.  The more interesting story might be movies that should have been delayed because the filmmakers were rushed into a release date by desperate studios.  The Godfather III is the most obvious example.  Men in Black II could have used a couple more months of screenings.  Goldmember is probably a little premature.  And Signs and XXX are both right up against their lock dates.

And Mike…. Lost Souls was released by New Line… doesn’t the NY Times have fact checkers?

But I digress…

David Carr delivers a great story on the devaluation of celebrity magazine covers.  Read it.

P.S.:  I’m sorry to get so mean about the Cieply piece.  We all make mistakes.  But what drives me the most crazy is when major outlets with major resources and good ideas allow themselves to be lazy and to sell the legend and not the reality.  Where is the story about Scooby Doo’s opening weekend being hurt by Harry Knowles’ relentless attacks on the film?  Where is the story about the great opening weekend generated by the loving praise for Reign of Fire?  And I’m not kicking Harry.  He knows the score.  So why doesn’t the NY Times?  It’s inexcusable. 

MEANWHILE:  The first great story on Jeff Kwatinetz is done by The Washington Post’s Sharon Waxman.  No one else has really gotten to him or really gotten him.  Sharon gets the goods.  Why?  Because she’s a real reporter who happens to be stuck on the movie beat for the moment.  I fully expect her to be sent onto a real beat again before she withers away in all this idiocy.  Her story is here.

READER OF THE DAY:  Lots of great mail over the weekend and on Monday.  DK NOT  NY adds to the Reign of Fire print ad question:  “Less vital than the misrepresentation of the scope of the airpower in the Reign of Fire advertising, the television ads clearly say "In 2084," while the movie clearly marks the year as "2020."  Obviously, the year it takes place is irrelevant, and no one is going to make the decision to see or not see it based on that, but it does mark a general sloppiness.”

And WELLS UNDERPATH goes on the rampage over both Minority Report and Road to Perdition… COMPLETE WITH SPOILERS!

SPOILERS!

HERE WE GO!!!

“Regarding the Halo Hallucination theory in yesterday’s ROTD:  “Hmmm. Where's the evidence? I would *love* to learn that there is a good argument for this, because I find everything after Anderton gets "haloed" to be severely implausible.

1) First, we are to believe that among the items the boss returns to Anderton's wife, he includes EYEBALLS AND A GUN? For someone trying to ensure his own safety and cover up his own crime, you'd think he would make those two things disappear.

2) Can Anderton's wife really just walk into the place where criminals are kept in suspension, hold a gun to Tim Blake Nelson's head, and free her husband... all in the five or ten minutes it takes Max Von Sydow to stroll to his press conference?

3) This is a widespread complaint about the film: Does she get access to the prison using Anderton's eyes? Have they STILL not canceled the clearance code on those eyes?

4) Anderton, once out of his cell, can comfortably don his old hooded black sweatshirt (where did he get that?) and walk undetected into the building of the press conference? He can challenge Von Sydow there without anybody trying to interfere?

5) Anderton's buddy happily risks his job and channel's Anderton's footage straight to viewscreens at a prestige press conference without getting any kind of permission?

6) Anderton will take a good deal of his precious time to explain Von Sydow's crime to him, step by step?

7) Agatha the Pre-Cog, once she is freed and cozy in her new home, will sit reading a book, while holding in her hand a chip that constantly replays footage of her mother being drowned? Wow... what a warm-feeling THAT must give her!

I'll stop there.  But please, TELL ME THIS STUFF IS A DREAM.”

And on the “flawless” Road to Perdition:

“- Flawless, except for the redundant soundtrack.

- Flawless, except that we never get to know Jennifer Jason Leigh's character at all, and thus we do not feel the weight of Sullivan's loss like we should.

- Flawless, except that the boy's prologue and epilogue are full of wishy-washy "My dad was... well... my dad" sentiment.

- Flawless except that Catholic iconography is strewn throughout the film without any exploration of what those symbols mean, and what significance they have outside of underlining what we learned in first minute of the film... that Sullivan is violent AND (supposedly) religious. (But where do we see that religion have any kind of an active part of in his thoughts or life? Any discussion of Catholicism in the film seems only to view redemption as something you EARN, like on a point system, which is directly contradictory to Catholic doctrine.)

- Flawless, except that the film's token weirdo (Jude Law) has the same hobby as "American Beauty's" token weirdo... he gets strange pleasure out of photography and looking voyeuristically at dead people without respect for how those deaths are impacting those around him.

- Flawless, except that, as Katrina Onstad writes in the National Post, "I think I'm right that Mendes values cool above truth, because he's easier on a father who makes his living as a murderer than he was on a dad who works in a drab suburban office." It's okay for Sullivan to kill a lot of fellow mobsters (who probably love their sons and their families just as much) as long as he saves his son. The movie leads us to think he is noble for doing so. When the bad guys gun people down, we see the damage and the blood in heavy slow motion, which accentuates the "badness". When Sullivan mows down the baddies (and Rooney too), the camera spares us from seeing the consequences.

To put it another way, as Sean Burns writes in the Philadelphia Weekly: "Michael Sullivan is always careful enough to execute people just slightly off-camera, and even that happens only when they really deserve it. See, he's the "Good Hitman." The "Bad Hitman" is played by Jude Law, and right away we can tell he's a nasty bugger because he's balding, has rotted teeth, and whenever he kills someone Mendes actually forces us to watch them die, instead of tactfully cutting away to the curtains like when Mike shoots 'em."

So, yeah, it's flawless if you disregard all of that stuff.”

E ME:  Anyone want to go toe-to-toe with The Basher?!?!?  Do you buy magazines for the stars in the covers?  Will you pay to see the Duchovny endowment?  And will you ever look at Bridget’s copy the same way again?