May 12, 2003

Every once in a while, swinging for the fences works… not this time…

X2 dropped almost exactly as I expected. But Daddy Day Care stayed right in Eddie Murphy’s kid territory and managed “only” an estimated $27.2 million. The bad news for people who want to bash Murphy’s kids films efforts is that both Dr. Dolittle and Dr. Dolittle 2 did more than four times their opening weekends. As the only kids movie for the next two weekends before Finding Nemo, I still expect Daddy Day Care to break the $100 million tape by the end of Memorial Day Weekend.

The film that paid most dearly for Daddy Day Care’s success was The Lizzie Maguire Movie. But the tears are crocodilian in nature… the film will end up with more than $35 million domestic before it disappears into the ether. I’d say that’s a lot for The Lizzie Maguire Movie.

Even more joyous are the makers of two programmers, Identity and Holes, which will both be highly profitable and help re-launch the sluggish careers of the two filmmakers involved, James Mangold and Andrew Davis.

MATRIX: I feel a little like I am in The Matrix myself. Late Friday, I agreed to hold my review of The Matrix Reloaded for yet another 48 hours. Why? Insanity. Why would Warner Bros. want to keep the voices of discussion about this film limited? It is inexplicable.

But the truth is, there is a lot of pressure inside of the studio and I had to ask myself, is their insanity about 48 hours any worse than my insanity if, given that you can’t see the film anywhere until Wednesday night, I insist on reviewing the film 48 hours before they are comfortable? It is, in the end, a movie. And as much as I want to start having this discussion, we will have all summer to chat about Reloaded.

It is possible that I might go tomorrow, depending on how many outlets have reviews in print by the end of business today. But you gotta know when to hold `em, know when to fold `em…

HULK: If you are wondering why I hold out such hope for The Hulk, you should read James Schamus’ piece about the film from Sunday’s NY Times. It’s not the world’s greatest geek piece, since he is not showing all of his cards. But his thoughtfulness is as fresh and original as I hope the film will be.

MIKE & HARVEY SITTING IN A TREE: Matt Drudge is reporting that Harvey Weinstein will finance Michael Moore’s next doc, the Bush-bashing Fahrenheit 911. I am happy that Moore will be able to do his next film. But man, what a combo they will be. If Martin Scorsese was the passive participant in Harvey’s visions of grandeur, just imagine the bloodshed when the reigning king of filmmaking arrogance tussles with the Miramax front man. Now, THAT’s a doc I would pay twice to see.

READER OF THE DAY: NOT THE SUPER FROM ONE DAY AT A TIME writes: “what's up dave? I just read "Wile Coyote"s two cents, which ran on friday. what he had to say forced a response out of me. in his meandering passage, wile appears to make the following five points:

1. sites such as ain't it cool have ruined movies in general by existing to leak secrets and spoilers, and as a result, the controversial early Reloaded non-review shouldn't be faulted, as it's done nothing that these fan/movie news sites don't do on an even more regular basis.

Response 1 - there is a huge difference between the function of sites like ain't it cool and that of, say, TIME magazine. first off, fan sites are run by just that--fans. these are people who love movies and, as he notes, want to be involved with them from stage one until completion. while they get some of the privileges that the official press also gets, they still do things like post rumors and fill their reviews with ridiculous, expletive-laced hyperbole. these last two aspects of the job are not necessarily ones in which a professional journalist at a magazine with an enormous circulation and influence should engage, especially when their demographic is decidedly different from that of a movie news site. the same goes for writing two-week-early, spoiler-ridden "non-reviews" for highly-anticipated sequels such as RELOADED. this isn't a "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" deal. we're dealing with two completely distinct levels of reporting. if you're an established professional writer, act like it.

second, every potential movie goer in this country has the right to find out as much as he wants to about a movie he's considering seeing. if he wants to know every twist and turn in the plot, the set-up of every pivotal fight scene, or exactly how much screen time his favorite supporting cast member is going to get--well, then if that information is out there, he has every right to look at it. but just because it's out there doesn't mean that you or I or anyone else HAVE TO read it and thus kill any possibility of tension or suspense that a movie could possibly create. in fact, it's completely unfair to blame websites for "giving away too much" because of the fact that everything that contains spoilers is clearly-labeled with that warning, which is way more of a guarantee than readers can get if they're flipping through TIME or any other more "legitimate" journalistic entity. from years of readings his reviews, I guarantee you that you can find out just as many critical plot elements about a movie in a Robert Ebert review as you could from an "ain't it cool" one. so if Wile wants to exclusively blame online sites for breaking things too early and thus ruining the movie-going experience, I think he should take a look at traditional journalistic practices first and ask how different they really are--despite how different they SHOULD be.

2. Movies in general have devolved in almost every genre, with the exception of a few shining examples.

Response 2 – maybe it's true, maybe it's not. what does this have to do with RELOADED and the TIME review? unless it's a subtle shot at the MATRIX'S potential, I don't know what relevance it has here. although Wile could just be lamenting the supposed downfall of the modern cinema. which implicitly leads us to point three and the question of:

3. the fact that the average American citizen (regardless of his age) knows how much bank a given flick made at the box office over the weekend represents a sad state of affairs.

Response 3 - why? why is it wrong for people to care about or collect information on how a movie's doing at the box office? the only sense that I can make out of this point's inclusion is that he's trying to argue that people care way more about financial returns than artistry and quality, and that (going back to 2.) the overall quality of the american movie landscape is suffering as a result. which leads us to:

4. People go to see movies based on how much they make at the box office. A movie that scores big its opening weekend will draw in thousands of more viewers simply because of the fact that these viewers pay attention only to numbers and not quality.

Response 4 - a completely uninformed assumption. trash movies with big budgets don't come through financially. period. how'd TREASURE PLANET do at the box office? the fact of the matter is that regardless of how much money is spent on a movie, there still has to be something for the audience to connect with if it's going to be a hit. people can't connect with a big budget alone, and neither can they connect with big returns. an audience has to find something genuinely redeemable or enjoyable about a movie in order to give it legs, whether it cost $15 mil or $150 mil. for example, something like THE SIXTH SENSE with only a moderate budget can clean up at the box office based on the fact that it's a quality movie directed intelligently and complemented by solid performances and a come-back-a-second-time-to-see-if-it-all-makes-sense ending. if everyone who paid to see it on its opening weekend hated it, that fact would be reflected in the following weekend's totals. on the flip-side, did big time opening weekend returns propel MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING over the $100 mil mark? no. word of mouth and post-release buzz did. I'm not saying that that movie is a masterpiece of American cinema--far, far from it (ugh)--but it does prove that a movie doesn't need a big budget and huge opening numbers in order to reach a wide audience and make a lot of jack.

my main point is this: the movie-going public is not a mob of zombies with a thirst for dollar signs. mega-budget shit is still shit. people can detect it no matter how much paper a studio tries to wrap it in. it's true that some big-studio productions that I don't see anything in can roll out huge, but just because Wile and I don't see anything in them doesn't mean that there isn't anything there for a ton of other people. personally, I'm absolutely sick and tired of movie fans propagating the idea that anything with a budget over ten million dollars and some stars attached is automatically worthless, and that if you see it, you're throwing more gasoline on the flaming disaster that is the twenty-first century. the opposite argument--that all, or at least most, flicks with a dirt cheap budget not originally made under the banner of a studio, major or minor, is under-appreciated artistic genius--irks me in the same way. editorials and reviews that include these kinds of generalizations and the disrespect they heave onto the movie-going public are just that--generalizations. as such, they prove nothing other than that whoever's spouting them doesn't want to step back and analyze what's really going on. regardless of budget, movies can be great, horrible, and everything in between. the amount of money spent does not guarantee the end result, qualitatively or quantitatively.

5. You the viewer ultimately decide what matters about a movie, and you have no right to "obsess" about it until you've paid your ten bucks and sat through it.

Response 5 - I'm not even going to address it other than to say that if it were the case that people shouldn't be allowed to "obsess" about or anticipate something that they haven't yet experienced, no one would care about sex. on a more directly applicable level, there also wouldn't be such a thing as buzz, and no one movie would have any more fanfare attached to it at the beginning than any other. this has not happened since the "golden age" of cinema, and will not every happen again. in my opinion, this is not a bad thing. if a movie has attributes that warrant anticipation and even obsession, I think that they deserve to get their reward for those attributes.

right or wrong, that's my take.”

E ME: Right or wrong?