Above: Rainn Wilson lets his hair down for The Rocker.
Fans of Rainn Wilson's offbeat, hilarious and strangely endearing performance as Dwight Schrute on NBC's The Officemight expect him to transition into film work with straightforward comedy, and The Rockerconfirms that suspicion. However, they might not realize the serious professional motives behind his choice. In the movie, directed by Peter Cattaneo (The Full Grown Monty), Wilson plays a grown-up dolt named Fish with a scary fixation on classic rock. Abandoned by the band Vesuvius in his teens -- before they became a commercial phenomenon -- Fish spends the next twenty years working deadbeat jobs and wishing things happened differently. Naturally, he gets a second chance: When the opportunity rolls around to drum for his nephew's high school, Fish goes for it. Ageism and slapstick humor ensue.
While not exactly a classic, The Rocker proves Wilson has the charisma to carry a movie. The script could use some polishing, but Wilson manages to play a completely dysfunctional human being without ever becoming an annoyance. It's a testament to his skill as an actor with calculated timing. The humor emerges from the naturalism of his performances, which make you believe in the outlandish characters he portrays. In a conversation with Cinematical recently, Wilson elaborated on his particular strategies as his career advances, reminisced about his days as a New York theater actor, and shed some light on a few upcoming projects.
(We're re-posting our CineVegas review of The Rocker to coincide with the film's theatrical release today)
I like the premise of The Rocker so much -- middle-aged wannabe rock star insinuates himself into his teenage nephew's band -- that I'm inclined to go easy on it solely out of good will. It's likable enough, a lightweight rock 'n' roll comedy punctuated by several belly laughs -- but those laughs are all in response to the one-liners, and mostly from one minor character (more on that later). The story, the central personalities, and the uninspired slapstick are bland.
The title wannabe is Robert "Fish" Fishman, played by Rainn Wilson (of TV's The Office) in his first major film role. Fish was the drummer for Vesuvius, a mid-'80s heavy-metal band, but was kicked out on the eve of the group's success. Now, two decades later, Vesuvius is huge and Fish is a bitter has-been (or, rather, never-was).
If you're one of the many moviegoers who loved Mamma Mia!, perhaps you thought the only thing missing from the experience was the shrill sound of your fellow audience members screaming the lyrics of "Dancing Queen" along with Meryl Streep and her lady friends. Well, Universal Pictures has read your mind, and Mamma Mia!: The Sing-Along Edition will open on Aug. 29 in select theaters. It'll be the same movie, only with all the musical numbers subtitled and audience members encouraged to join in on the vocals.
All we have so far is a press release from Universal, which doesn't say how many theaters the sing-along edition will be in. You are encouraged to visit the Mamma Mia!website for updates, however. These will be regular screenings at regular movie theaters for the regular prices; all that's different is that the lyrics will be on the screen, karaoke-style. And the best part is, even if you're a terrible singer, you can take comfort in knowing you're still better than Pierce Brosnan.
ABBA's music is famous for being catchy, and as a result many people overlook the actual words. This sing-along event will be an opportunity to really notice and pay attention to the subtle complexities of lines like this, from "Money, Money, Money":
In my dreams I have a plan If I got me a wealthy man I wouldn't have to work at all I'd fool around and have a ball
It's a slow week, packed mainly with television box sets, but there are a few little-known films you might want to check out.
Please Vote for Me This was a film that I was dying to see at TIFF last year, but scheduling conflicts kept me from it. Luckily, the highly praised Please Vote for Me is now hitting DVD shelves.
Imagine a group of third-grade students putting Tracy Flick to shame as they hold a democratic election for school monitor. In my day (man, that phrase makes me feel old...), school elections boiled down to some crappy posters and speeches, all resulting in a popularity contest. These Chinese students, however, have taken a cue from the political bigwigs. We're talking political consultants, polling, and exploitation -- basically a real election full of tiny tots.
Unfortunately, the only extra on this release is a theatrical trailer, but considering the reviews and how purely awesome this film sounds, I bet it's still worth it.
In a weekend glutted with new releases battling the aftershocks of The Dark Knight earthquake, Tropic Thunder debuted below expectations -- but well enough to steal the top spot from The Dark Knight in that film's 5th weekend. The R-rated comedy's $26 million weekend and $37 million 5-day was roughly on par with Pineapple Express' performance the previous weekend, but I think Tropic Thunder was predicted to have broader appeal. In retrospect, the advertising may have emphasized the film's inside-baseball aspects a bit too much.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars did okay in third place with $15 million -- weak for a purported Star Wars film, but not bad for a Saturday morning cartoon. The woeful Mirrors took in a relatively paltry $11 million, a wuss-out signaled by the 11th hour press screening cancellation. Contrast The Strangers, the summer's other major R-rated, non-Shyamalan horror film, which debuted to almost twice as much despite not having as nifty a high-concept.
The Dark Knight, meanwhile, continues to edge toward $500 million. Its 5-weekend total stands at $471 million, enough to top Star Wars' unadjusted numbers. Titanic still looks out of reach, even setting aside the apples-and-oranges aspect of comparing a 1997 release to a 2008 one.
Pineapple Express fell 57% in its second weekend, putting $100 million out of reach. On the other hand, Mamma Mia!continues to be popular, suffering drops of around 20% each week thanks to good word-of-mouth and likely repeat viewings.
Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona came in at #10, with $3.7 million on 700 screens, Woody's second-best opening ever. Two spots below that, the poorly-reviewed 3-D spectacle Fly Me to the Moon made $2 million on 450 screens.
With Fall Festival season about to kick off, this week The Rocchi Review features James chatting with Cinematical's Film Festivals Editor Kim Voynar about the strange splendor of the Telluride Film Festival, what the most-anticipated movies will be at this year's Toronto Film Festival and much, much more. Will Zack and Miri Make a Porno make a splash? Will Rachel Getting Marriedget Anne Hathaway some respect? And does one of the most-anticipated films for Toronto really star Jean-Claude Van Damme? Cinematical's podcast is now available through iTunes; you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:
As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.
For all you Harry Potter fans who are also devoted to a certain series of teen-vampire romance novels, here's something that should help you deal with Thursday's devastating news about Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince being pushed back to next summer. Summit Entertainment announced today that with Harry having vacated the November 21 spot, they're going to fill it with Twilight, bumping it up a full three weeks from its original date of December 12.
While some fans wondered, irrationally, if the Harry Potter move was to get away from Twilight, Summit's CEO says Twilight never had any delusions of being more powerful than the boy wizard at the box office. "With a giant franchise like Harry Potter in the market, we had to stay clear of it," Rob Friedman told Variety -- hence the original date well away from Half-Blood Prince. "Their move created an opportunity to bring the movie to fans three weeks earlier."
Once November 21 opened up, the move was really a no-brainer. As a press release from Summit points out, movie theaters get very crowded around the holidays, and Twilight will be able to open on far more screens on November 21 than it could have on December 12. Now it'll be opening the Friday before Thanksgiving, too, which is nearly always a plus. Its only competition will be Disney's animated Bolt. The only loser here is Entertainment Weekly, whose Fall Movie Preview is now wrong again, before most readers have even seen it. (Or, from another point of view, now that issue is even more of a collector's item.)
What do you say? Are you excited about getting Twilight sooner? To those of you who have been sending Warner Bros. wrathful messages about the Harry Potter move, does this quell your anger somewhat? Will you at least be able to live and function and carry on?
It's too bad that more movies don't have the courage to explore faith and spirituality in a direct way; studios are usually too worried about appealing to all religions -- and all pocketbooks -- to be very specific about the subject. The other reason is that it's difficult for Hollywood movies to wrap up their neat, bow-tie happy endings with everything resolved, since the idea of faith is based on lack of proof, lack of finality. One of my favorite movies is Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc, which uses an unconventional, off-kilter visual scheme to document some exciting, endlessly fascinating arguments: which side is God on and what does He really want with us? The new Henry Poole Is Here bucks the trend with the appearance of a "miracle" in the life of its ordinary, everyday character. Does it raise any interesting, life-changing questions? Sadly, no. The film is too bored and lackadaisical with its subject to change much of anything. It's too uninspired to be inspirational.
Henry Poole (Luke Wilson) is a man with "movie disease." This means that he's going to die, and he'll have absolutely no symptoms until he does. Sometimes "movie disease" comes with a cough, but not this time. Sometimes "movie disease" has a name, like "brain cloud," but not this time. In preparation for the dark day, Henry buys a house in his old neighborhood, loads up on booze, doughnuts and pizza and waits. Meanwhile, his nosy neighbor Esperanza (Oscar nominee Adriana Barraza, from Babel) brings him tamales and pokes around his backyard. (Her late boyfriend used to live in the same house.) She notices that a badly done stucco job has produced a water stain, and that the water stain looks a bit like a familiar guy with a beard. The picture even produces a drop of blood.
This is the cover of the new Entertainment Weekly, which hit newsstands today, approximately 24 hours after its top story became outdated. As you've heard by now, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is no longer the most-anticipated movie of the fall; it's now the most-anticipated movie of July 17, 2009. Whoops.
This bit of unfortunate timing is particularly cruel given that Entertainment Weekly and Harry Potter distributor Warner Bros. are both owned by Time Warner Inc. As EW's Jeff Giles writes in a must-read entry on the magazine's blog, "EW and Warner Bros. share a parent company, but they clearly do not share, you know, important friggin' information." (For the record, Cinematical is owned by Weblogs Inc., which is owned by AOL, which is also owned by Time Warner. But if Entertainment Weekly isn't in the loop on major corporate decisions, you can imagine how out of it we are. We're like the distant hillbilly cousins who show up at the family reunion, have no idea who anyone is, and gorge ourselves on pie.)
Considering EW is Time Warner's flagship entertainment magazine, you'd think someone at corporate would have given them a heads-up before their Fall Movie Preview went to press. While the announcement about the date change wasn't made until Thursday, surely the execs at Warners didn't just wake up that morning and say, "Hey, let's move Harry Potter today!" Surely the decision was at least a few days in the making.
On the other hand, it did seem to happen pretty suddenly. Giles points out that Half-Blood Prince's teaser trailer (complete with the November release date) is attached to Star Wars: The Clone Wars, in theaters today. If Warners had made the decision in time, they'd have nipped that in the bud, too. So either the decision really wasn't made until yesterday, or else some family members are too good at keeping secrets from one another.
With Toy Story (1995), a studio called Pixar blew the lid off of animated movies as we knew them. Thirteen years later, the other studios have yet to even approach that early level of excellence, let alone match the advancements Pixar has made since. Oddly similar to the most recent clunker Space Chimps, the new Fly Me to the Moon looked infinitely more promising in that it was based on an actual idea: the 1969 Apollo 11 mission as seen through the eyes of three stowaway flies -- in 3D! But sadly it proves itself as technically dull and as creatively stifled as Space Chimps as well as nearly every other non-Pixar movie.
After a totally useless, noisy black-and-white prologue, we get a very cool establishing shot. The camera flows smoothly through the back lots behind Cape Canaveral in Florida. It swoops into a patch of dirt and a tangle of weeds, through some bits of discarded junk, to the world where our little flies live (like humans, in little dollhouses). During this and other traveling sequences, the 3D works beautifully, engulfing us comfortably in this tiny world. But as soon as we meet the characters, the movie starts to sputter. In real life, houseflies can zip across the kitchen pretty darn fast relative to their size, but these flies drift lethargically from place to place, and the movie bogs down in their lackadaisical pace.
When a film called Mirrors opens with a man fleeing desperately from said objects, it doesn't bode all that well. When that individual soon falls victim to a grisly demise at the sight of them, well, there's something to be said for the fact that there is ultimately nothing to see in Mirrors that is worth grabbing something sharp over. Unfortunately, there is also nothing that you probably haven't seen before in The Ring, The Grudge, or any number of exhaustingly similar American remakes of Asian spook stories.
And what a shame that we find ourselves having to associate the likes of Alexandre Aja with lackluster horror. Well, to be more accurate, luster is just about all he has to offer here, a slick sheen on a stale story. It's nice to have a legitimately menacing score in between shameless jolts!, and if we're to be treated to the same 'gotcha!' shots with depressing frequency, at least the lighting and lensing bring an equal amount of polish to the proceedings. Who knows: With enough technical prowess at play, maybe Aja can get someone to mistake this film for Shinola after all.
A few bright spots aside, the August calendar of wide releases is generally pretty grim. (Do not speak to me of Clone Wars.) Luckily, there are always a few worthwhile flicks playing at the art houses, and the Indie Spotlight is here to tell you about them. We have the lowdown on what's opening "in select cities" this weekend, and if your city wasn't selected, at least you can file a mental note and keep an eye out for the film later.
Alphabetically, this week's new indie releases are: Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer, Bachna Ae Haseeno, A Girl Cut in Two, Henry Poole Is Here, and Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer. Note that all of those titles fit in the first half of the alphabet, and three of the five contain people's full names. Fascinating! My OCD is fascinating! Here's the scoop on each of them.
Henry Poole Is Here What it is: A gentle drama (with comedic elements) about a forlorn man (Luke Wilson) whose house develops a water stain that some people think is a sign from Jesus. What they're saying: It's always noteworthy when a movie takes a pro-religion, pro-faith-in-God point of view -- and even rarer that such a film debuts at Sundance -- but this one doesn't seem to have done it very well. The critics are split down the middle at Rotten Tomatoes, while Cinematical's Jeffrey M. Anderson calls it "lackadaisical" and "too uninspired to be inspirational." (I've seen it, and I say amen to that.) Where it's playing: Pretty much everywhere -- it's opening on 500 screens. So keep the faith, indie filmmakers! It could happen to you! Official site: OMG you guys, it has a MySpace page!
If Star Wars: The Clone Warswere a simple board game stacked up in a toy store aisle, the side of the box would read: "Ages 7 through Check Your Star Wars Ego at the Door." While the recent onslaught of superhero movies have brought us darker, more complex (and adult) storylines, one of our most beloved franchises has decided to travel in the opposite direction. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing; it's actually somewhat comforting to find a film with the word 'Wars' mentioned twice in the title alone and know that it's suitable for all ages. When I first watched a Star Wars film on the big screen, my feet could barely touch the sticky theater floor -- and so if a fun-filled, action-packed animated adventure story helps usher in a whole new legion of fans -- subsequently turning younger kids on to three live-action movies that came out, like, a billion years ago -- then right friggin' on!
Almost immediately we're clued into the fact that this big-screen Star Wars flick was gift-wrapped by another department store. That classic, drum-hoppin' 20th Century Fox intro is replaced with a much more subdued Warner Bros. logo, and the film's title swings into frame accompanied by different music. In replace of the classic story scroll, we get a newsreel-esque voiceover bringing us up to date on the main characters and their current mission. No one's trying to trick us here -- this is Star Wars for the need-it-now generation, and whereas previous films seemed to spend too much time rolling around in political-speak, Clone Wars is all about the action, the battles and the cheesy one-liners.
Thanksgiving just got a lot less magical. Warner Bros. has announced that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, originally scheduled for release on Nov. 21, has been pushed back to July 17. As in 2009. As in ELEVEN MONTHS AWAY! It's enough to make you utter an unforgivable curse, such as "Avada Kedavra!" or "What the f***?!"
A film's release date being moved back is usually a sign that the production is in trouble, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. For one thing, the production on Half-Blood Prince is pretty much finished already, and it's not like the director, producers, or actors were inexperienced screw-ups. No, the date change in this case seems to be purely strategic. Said top WB honcho Alan Horn in a press release:
"Our reasons for shifting Half-Blood Prince to summer are twofold: We know the summer season is an ideal window for a family tent-pole release.... Additionally, like every other studio, we are still feeling the repercussions of the writers' strike, which impacted the readiness of scripts for other films, changing the competitive landscape for 2009 and offering new windows of opportunity that we wanted to take advantage of.... [Half-Blood Prince] perfectly fills the gap for a major tent-pole release for mid-summer."
There are two ways of reading that. One is that WB won't have anything else PG-13 and family-friendly ready for mid-summer, so Half-Blood Prince has been called in to save the day. The other is that WB is well aware that the other studios' summer plans were screwed up by the strike, so they've moved Harry Potter into position to take full advantage of that weakness. Both are probably at least partially true, and it's a pretty savvy move in either case.
As far as hustling movie producer archetypes go, I tend to prefer Joel Silver over Harvey Weinstein. Sure, Weinstein played a role in some of the great American independent films from the last decade of the twentieth century, but Silver's production credits have more spice to them -- The Matrix, Predator,48 Hrs. -- hinting at the zany force behind their existence. The movies he has produced don't always please everyone (consider those last two Matrix movies), and sometimes his productions run into unforeseeable setbacks (Joss Whedon's troublesome Wonder Woman script). But now, Silver's trying a radical maneuver that reaffirms his maverick abilities: He's shopping around Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla, which tells the story of a drama surrounding a stolen painting and stars Gerard Butler, to other studios despite the plan to release it through Warner Bros. in October.
According to Patrick Goldstein in The Los Angeles Times, Silver said he showed the movie to Lionsgate and Sony Pictures to get some advice on how to market the film. However, when Goldstein asked Warner Bros.' top executive Alan Horn about the situation, Horn called the movie "very English," not "broadly commercial," and said the studio "might not be willing to spend the marketing money he wants us to." So it follows that Silver probably wants to sell the movie to somebody else.
This kind of thing has happened before. Jonathan Levine's teen horror flick All the Boys Love Mandy Lane was set for a release through The Weinstein Company, but when it was determined that the distributor might not provide the best home for the film, it went to the more agreeable Senator Films (although Senator has yet to release it). What troubles me is Horn's assertion that RocknRolla is "very English." Yeah ... so?
If you're one of the many moviegoers who loved 
In a weekend glutted with new releases battling the aftershocks of 
This is the cover of the new Entertainment Weekly, which hit newsstands today, approximately 24 hours after its top story became outdated. As you've 
A few bright spots aside, the August calendar of wide releases is generally pretty grim. (Do not speak to me of Clone Wars.) Luckily, there are always a few worthwhile flicks playing at the art houses, and the Indie Spotlight is here to tell you about them. We have the lowdown on what's opening "in select cities" this weekend, and if your city wasn't selected, at least you can file a mental note and keep an eye out for the film later. .jpg)
As far as hustling movie producer archetypes go, I tend to prefer 
