April 27, 2004

Yesterday's column was so delayed that it isn't arriving until today…

The final numbers for the weekend separated The Man from the Little Girl Who Suddenly Has To Worry About Bikini Waxing. Man on Fire's final went up around $100,000 while 13 Going On 30 dropped $1 million from its Sunday estimate, leaving the final separation $1.7 million. Both films have a real shot at maintaining pretty well given the crop of movies due out this weekend.

On the other hand, after getting a fast start out of the gate with the third biggest April opening in history, Kill Bill, Volume 2 dropped harder in its second weekend than any of the other 20 best April openings of all time, just under 60%. Numbers are numbers, but the key stat is that Volume 2 opened 14 percent better than Volume 1 and after ten days is now behind by almost $250,000. Still, the big parade of DVDs, combined with Miramax's brilliant strategy of couching most of Volume 2's ad budget in the Volume 1 DVD ad budget, much as Warner Bros. did for Matrix Revolutions (on a much bigger scale).

The Punisher also fell hard, though will get to at least $25 million domestic. We might need to start considering what a "bomb" is these days. Jersey Girl was written off, but will pass $25 million. The Ladykillers will pass $40 million. Ella Enchanted and The Prince and Me will both be over $25 million, while Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen will pass $30 million. They are disappointments all. But are they "bombs?"

ALL SHOOK UP: Every indication is that Elvis Mitchell did, in fact, exit the New York Times last week and will be looking for a home elsewhere. The failure of the paper (or Tony Scott or Stephen Holden or anyone else) to deny Mitchell had quit after a week of public speculation serves as strong confirmation of the fact. It took The Chicago Tribune's Jim Warren less than six hours to openly deny rumors that Mitchell would replace Michael Wilmington at the Trib. Keeping speculation alive is Mitchell's notorious unavailability, as a wide range of people who do have personal access to the contrarian critic have tried and failed to get Elvis to answer the phone.

The Times has been The Paper of Wreck-ord on the arts side lately. There have some very strong, even bold, moves made by upper management. But the results have been mixed, to say the least. Jodi Kantor, hired by the previous regime, has brought along a sensibility befitting her age. But Arts & Leisure continues to slip as a must-read. Laura Holson's assignment to the movie beat and the hire of hard-charging Sharon Waxman have given the paper perhaps the most journalistically sound 1-2 punch in the daily business. But there have been many unacceptable factual errors (often ones that are terribly easy to fact check), accusations of misquoting, a sense that many of the stories are determined to be tough regardless of where the truth might be, and growing industry resentment in an area of the news that is overwhelmingly relationship driven.

The third, and perhaps most visible, arm of the Times movie coverage is criticism. The three-headed monster approach has pretty much been a disaster. There is just no way to answer the question, "What does The Times think?" when there are three critics there with distinctly different preferences and styles. (The same problem exists at the L.A. Times, but the differences between Turan, Dargis and Thomas are even more pronounced, so it is a little less of an issue.) So, if the reports that Elvis' exit was based on a decision by the paper to name a lead critic, I must register pleasure at the idea of cleaning things up.

On the other hand, the decision that A.O. Scott should be that lead critic is perplexing. Scott has improved in the role of film critic, for the most part getting away from a painful early tendency to write about movies as though they were books. But if this is the decision, it arguably means that two of the three most powerful film critics in America are men with less than five years experience covering, much less criticizing cinema.

And Dave Kehr is still freelancing.

ONE VERY SPECIAL SHEET: Between the time I left town and yesterday, when I got back, Fox found its 1-sheet hook for The Day After Tomorrow… and it is just about perfect, seems to me. There is no exploding White House, as Roland Emmerich benefited from in ID4. But the sight of the Statue of Liberty, just breaking through a wave, is clear and clean. It is a little derivative of Planet of the Apes and A.I., but whqt can you do?

On the flip side, Warner Bros.' Troy outdoor is beautiful, but I'm not sure that it really gets the message across.

Ad strategy at this moment of the year is fascinating, as studios are desperately anxious to get traction on their big - and I'm not sure that there has ever been as expensive a summer - movies, yet they don't want to empty their guns prematurely, losing value by going against the barrage for Van Helsing, Troy and Shrek 2 that we are about to endure.

$100 MILLION JAPANESE STYLE: The trades report in today's editions that Japanese theatrical and home entertainment rights to DreamWorks films have been sold, along with partial studio ownership, to Kadokawa Holdings for $100 million.

And I'm not quite sure what it means.

Hopefully, I'll have a stronger perspective tomorrow.

BTW: I just saw last week's American Idol… America is clearly as racist as ever. And that's all I have to say about that.

READER OF THE DAY: LITTLE RED BREAST writes: "Last Tuesday you wrote that "Cinerama Adventure leaves you hungry for a real Cinerama experience." I can count myself among the lucky few born after its day to have such an experience.

I don't know if the documentary mentions this or not, but Cinerama played here in Dayton, Ohio at the Neon Movies theater for a year or so in the late 90s. We saw prints of "This is Cinerama," "Seven Wonders of the World," "How the West Was Won," and a faded-to-pink Eastmancolor print of "Cinerama Holiday." Quite the mind blowing experience, especially if you sat so the screen wrapped around your field of vision. Not quite as heralded but almost as impressive was Cinerama's sound, which was amazingly sharp, clear and detailed, particularly for something developed 50 years ago.

The theater drew a number of celebrity viewers, including Leonard Maltin (who wrote about the story thus: www.leonardmaltin.com/02-09-23/cinerama.htm) and some guy named...oh, someone who's been, shall we say, heavily discussed the past few days. Some fella named Quentin.

(Wasn't lucky enough to meet Tarantino, but I did meet Maltin--was quite wild to be in a theater with him when he saw an old classic for the first time.)"

E ME: What does the DreamWorks deal mean to you? And what constitutes a "flop" these days?