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Box Office Report: The Final Results!

Welcome to the new (and hopefully improved) Wag the Film!

Gibson vs. Rome: Box Office Prediction for 1/28/'10

Box Office Round-Up: The Final Results!

Ludacris vs. Mike Judge: The Final Results!

Ludacris vs. Mike Judge: Box Office Prediction for 9/4/'09

Michael Myers vs. Hippies: The Final Results

Michael Myers vs. Hippies: Box Office Predictions for 8/28/'09

The Jew Hunter vs. The Wishing Rock: The Final Results!

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Box Office Report: The Final Results!

May 17th 2010 12:35

In news that shocked no one, Iron Man 2 continued to maintain its hot spot at number one in the box office for a second week in a row despite a drop of almost sixty percent, which still turns out to be 52,000,000. While same may argue that this was the same amount of money the original Iron Man made in its second week, it should also be said that it also didn't have the fifth-highest opening weekend of all time.

What could attribute for such a drop? Bad word of mouth, which was one of the key components the success of the first. Whatever the reason, I doubt the producers are losing much sleep over it, considering how the movie has now totalled around $212,160,000.

In other non-shocking news, Robin Hood floundered at the box office delivering a good-not-great amount of $37,114,000. It's not a terrible amount given the competition it had this weekend, but when you find that the budget is somewhere are two-hundred million, and the big stars involved (Ridley Scott/Russell Crowe, who were desperately trying to bring back that Gladiator success the had ten years ago), it's hard not to be dissapointed.

Hood's weekend can easily be attributed to the reception it has received from critics and audiences everywhere. Many attack the film for it's self-serious attitude. grimy/unpleasant atmoshphere, overlength, and a geniune lack of respect of the Robin Hood mythology. With notices like that, it won't be surprising if, next week, the film drops a good fifty-sixty percent from it's original opening gross. It's doubtful the movie will even reach the eighty-million-dollar mark.

The film's underperformance also solidifies the fact that Universal Studios, all ready suffering from duds like Leap Year, The Wolfman, and Green Zone, is having a pretty crappy year.

In the other news, two new releases were able to crack into the top-five this week. Both of them romantic comedies. The first, Letters to Juliet, made $13,750,000 (the most anyone could expect from an Amanda Seyfried flick). The other, a Queen Latifah-vehicle with rapper/actor Common, Just Wright, was able to make a decent $8,500,000. Both received middle-of-the-road reviews. In fifth spot is How to Train Your Dragon, which was finally able to break the two-hundred-million spot with a current gross of $207,764,000

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"WTF?!" Movie News Report: Law, Order, Wachowski, and Joaquin

May 16th 2010 16:53

WTF!: They Cancelled Law & Order
Sad but true, the classic show that has been on NBC for a whole twenty years has finally been put to sleep by the powers that be. While the announcement isn't too shocking, the show has been struggling with failing ratings, bad time slots, budget cuts, and previous near-cancellations, it's still hard to imagine a primetime lineup without the legal drama. Especially considering how the show was only a season remains until is was able to beat Gunsmoke's record as the longest-running live-action primetime show.

That being said, you really can't say Law & Order is gone for good: spin-off SVU is still going strong on the same network, while Criminal Intent has gotten a good jolt thanks to Jeff Goldblum on USA. The news of the cancellation comes right after the announcement that NBC will be picking up, along with a slew of other new shows in an attempt to resuscitate their low, Jay Leno-induced ratings, a bread new spinoff, Law & Order: Los Angeles. Obviously, the new show will two things: make the old-age televison franchise relevent, and to save the network's ass after cancelling the critically-acclaimed Southland.

That being said, it'll be sad to see an entire generation of television swept away. But look on the bright side: there'll always be TNT.

In other television-related news, NBC also decided to put Heroes out of its misery, cancelling along with other shows, Mercy and Trauma. This news shouldn't be a surprise to anybody: for the past three seasons, the series has been dealing with terrible plotlines and had been suffering worser ratings in the process. Despite ending in a cliffhanger (a desperate attempt to keep a show alive) and rumors of a truncated fifth season meant to wrap things up, NBC realized it was simply better to end the show right here and now, making one of the many other shows (Twin Peaks, Lois & Clark) to have unresolved-endings.

R.I.P. Heroes, 2006-2010: Gone, but Never Remembered...

WTF!: Wachowski's to Make Gay Iraq War Movie
While they haven't given an interview since '99, those Wachowski Boys (?) sure love to keep throw out the most bizarre pieces of news. Ever since the anti-success of Speed Racer two years back, it's been a question of many as to what they will be up to next. A few months back, news started to stream out from Liberal blogger Arianna Huffington's twitter account, where she stated that she was working on a new project with the Wachowski's, along with a few photos (even some featuring a newly-sex-changed Lana Wachowski, which was in of itself crazy news). Things only got crazier when Jesse Ventura appeared Howard Stern and said how he was also working with them, and said he had little idea what the film was to be about, only that he has something to do with the Iraq war set in the future.

Fast forward to present, where more on the project is starting to leak out, including some kind of idea of the film's plot. Turns out the movie involves a gay love story between an soldier in the Iraq war and an Iraqi, which is set in current times and in the future.

Once the news broke, the web was filled with question marks and enough homophobic slurs to make GLAAD turn purple. Is this really going to be the Wachowski's follow-up picture after making a PG-rated anime adaptation. If you look back on their filmography, it isn't too strange for them. Remember, the Wachowski's are the same people who made Bound, a thriller which involved a lesbian couple stealing money from the mob. Add to the rather-alternative lifestlyes of Larry/Lana, and you got yourself some kind of explanation.

Other questions, however, still remain: will something like this return the Wachowski's back to critically darlings after missteps like Racer and Ninja Assassin (which they only produced, but that's no excuse)? Is there anybody ready to see something like this? Is there anybody there ready to fund this, considering how all the Wachowski's have is finished script and test footage? Is this project actually real, or just some weird rumor started from some misinformation? Knowking Wachowski, we won't know the answer to this anytime soon.

WTF!: Phoenix Documentary is Real
In news that seems to be a bad attempt to make Joaquin Phoenix look sane, word leaked out that documentary detailing his new "rap career" is very much real, not just the pot of b.s. we previously thought. Even better, the doc's director, Casey "Ben's Little Brother" Affleck has been showing of his new movie, titled I'm Still Here: The Lost Year of Joaquin Phoenix, to potential buyers.

Apparently this unsuspecting souls were subjected through a film which involved "more male frontal nudity than you'd find in some gay porn films and a stomach-turning sequence in which someone feuding with Phoenix defecates on the actor while he's asleep... (Phoenix) snorting cocaine, ordering call girls, having oral sex with a publicist, and treating his assistants abusively."

Probably the biggest "WTF" thing in this whole report this that these two clowns, Phoenix and Affleck (both well-respected, Oscar-nominated actors), think anyone would want to see any of this? Turns out, they don't. These screenings seem to have had the power to have Phoenix commited rather than paying even a dime for the distribution rights.

The good news from this is that we can finally close the book on the whole Joaquin debacle. Whether or not he's serious about a rap career, it's now painfully obvious that whatever his intentions are, it is nothing than a silly publicity stunt from a talented guy with too much time on his hands and should really know better.

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Crossing Over (2009)

March 28th 2010 14:10

How to start off the new review section of Wag the Film? Lawrence of Arabia? Citizen Kane? Nope, that's way too easy. Instead, I'll look back on the near-straight-to-dvd flop Crossing Over, starring Harrrison Ford, written/directed by Wayne Kramer (The Cooler), and brought to you from the good folks over at the Weinstein Company.

Whenever you have to judge the overall quality of a film, it's sometimes a smart idea to look at it's production details as a good indicator. Crossing Over is a fine example: shot all the way back in '07, this film didn't see a theatrical release until the Febraury '09, where it was unleased into enough theaters for it not to be considered a straight-to-video release when it hit into DVD stands (needless to say its box office receipts were unimpressive). Read even further into its production and you will find even worse indicators. Turns out there was a post-production over in film between director and producers. Spoiler alert: the producers won in the end and a good twenty minutes were ripped out. When an entire subplot involving a character played by Sean Penn is chopped out, you know there's a big stink bomb of a movie waiting around the corner.

With all this talk on the film, you're probably wondering what this whole mess is all about. Simple: take the movie Crash and cross out the work racism with illegal immigration and you've pretty much got Crossing Over (they even drag Crash Mark Isham into this mess). Want a little more? Sure. Like Crash, this subject over illegal immigration is told through multiple storylines.

The first deals with immigration officer Max Brogan (Harrison Ford). During a routine reid on a sweatshop, he runs across an Mexican immigrant (Alice Braga, good in movies like City of God and Redbelt, completely wasted here). Before she is deported, she begs him to look after her son. At first he refuses, but later sympathesizes with her, finds her boy, and sends him to his grandparents in Mexico, only to find out that his mother has tried to cross the border again to find him. What should have been the emotional crux of the story, this storyline is later ignore by the first-half-hour of the film, only to be replace with a more trashy (re: commericial) subplot of a murder that involves Brogan's partner (Cliff Curtis, a strong character actor who is too-often wasted in these kind of roles).

Ford, day dreaming about the size of the paycheck after he finishes this piece of crap

Another subplot (and easily the most exploitive, which is saying a lot for this film), involves the plight of an Australian immigrant (Alice Eve, who has the gift of having a great ass with little screen presence), with big dreams of celebrity superstardom, but needs to get legal first. With all of her options falling to the ground, she is resorted to becoming the sex slave of a horny immigration worker (Ray Liotta, who looks like he just took a shot of botox before the cameras started to roll).

This, for obvious reasons, doesn't sit well with her boyfriend (Jim Sturgess), a wannabe-muscision also on a quest to get legal. How does he go about this? Simple, pretending to be a jewish rabbi despite the fact that he is an atheist, in a storyline so silly it should've ended up in an Adam Sandler movie (hey, at least it'd be better than You Don't Mess with the Zohan). Nor should this sit well for his wife, an immigration defense attorney (Ashley Judd), but she's too busy trying to stop some Muslim girl from deportation to really give a shit.

It's not too hard to understand the problems of this film. First off, too many storylines, none of which are particularily interesting (the fact that I completely forgot to mention another subplot involving a Korean immigrant getting mixed up in crime tells how pointless it is to the plot). All the acting is decent, with the expection of Ford. If anyone was always curious as to what it means to be "sleepwalking through a performance," you need not look no further, with Ford mumbling through all his dialouge with a clear expression of how little he gives a shit about what is going on around him, an expression we've seen too much on him in films this decade without the word Indiana in it.

Director Kramer himself turns out to be a problem. While his heart seems to be in the right place (being an immigrant himself), but he lacks any subtlely to make the story work. Whether this comes out visually (how do we know that Ashley Judd cares deeply for orphans and immigrants? She carries around a big-ass neckless of the African continent everywhere she goes), or through storytelling, with the dialouge ranging from melodramatic to downright preachy. It also doesn't help that Kramer seems piticularily clueless as to how to make any of the story connect together, an essential quality when it comes to these multi-layered films. Good example? A main character stumbles into some grocery store in Koreatown for no other reason than to have a shoot-out with another main character. That's just bad writing, Mr. Kramer.

Throw in other laps of logic (one character writes a high school paper that sympathesizes with the 9/11 hijackers, only to have to nerve to be shocked when she is hated by her schoolmates and as the FBI knocking at her door), and Crossing Over becomes the defination of a well-intentioned mess. That being said, the movie isn't entirely hopeless. The score from Isham and the visuals of DoP James Whitaker are both solid, and and I'd be lying to you if this film didn't have my full intention throughout it's runtime. Unfortunately, Crossing Over is exactly the kind of film that you'd expect from its production history.

[Side Note: Is it just me or is Wayne Kramer a Lost-fan? I mean the hints range from small (subplot involving Koreans, interwining storylines, self-indulgent attitude) to large (the aussie hottie is named Claire Shepherd). Maybe I'm just reading into things, but its seems like Kramer had some Lost marathon on DVD while churning out the first draft]

[Another Side Note: Look out for other strong character actors Michael Cudlitz (TV's Southland) and Lizzy Caplan (Cloverfield) in brief appearances]

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Welcome to the new (and hopefully improved) Wag the Film!

March 28th 2010 12:47

Before I start my monolouge about the new design and the soon-to-be content of the site, I should probably clear a few things up first

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Gibson vs. Rome: Box Office Prediction for 1/28/'10

January 28th 2010 22:12

With Avatar officially becoming the highest grossing film of all time, there is little reason to doubt that it won't be staying at the number one spot for the seventh week in a row. It also makes it hard to generate that much interest when it comes to the two new films coming out this friday, the first a generic action flick and the second a generic romantic-comedy.

Edge of Darkness
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Box Office Round-Up: The Final Results!

November 1st 2009 19:09

Despite massive expectations (some even believed it was going to make 250,000,000 opening weekend) and critical-praise, Michael Jackson's This is It opened with 21,300,000 dollars. While not exactly chump change, espicially for a concert film on a usually-slow Halloween weekend, it's clearly not the box office juggarnaut people claimed it would be (there's even a could chance it won't top Miley Cyrus' Best of Both Worlds as the highest-grossing concert film). Obvioiusly, most of the audience are waiting for the DVD/Blu-ray release coming in January.

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Ludacris vs. Mike Judge: The Final Results!

September 6th 2009 18:16

In the slow week at the box office known as Labor Day weekend, The Final Destination was able to the new releases to stay on top for a second week in a row.

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Ludacris vs. Mike Judge: Box Office Prediction for 9/4/'09

September 2nd 2009 12:25

After a Summer season filled with flops, hits, and dissapointments, we know head in to easily the least interesting, if not the worst, week of the year. Labor Day Weekend. At this time (including the whole month of September) is dumping ground films that quite simply didn't make the cut.

Gamer
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Michael Myers vs. Hippies: The Final Results

August 30th 2009 17:28

The weekend, The Final Destination was triumphant while Halloween 2 floundered at the box office

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Michael Myers vs. Hippies: Box Office Predictions for 8/28/'09

August 26th 2009 01:35

A brand new batch of films, ranging from horror to indie flicks, go up against Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, the unexpected smash hit, in the final week of the Summer season.

Halloween II
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