I've got those whirling clanking gear-spinning metallic vibration noises clogging my brain today. Thanks a lot Greg P. Russell! ;) The 14 time Oscar nominated mixer had another epic job to perform with Transformers Dark of the Moon and how. Will he finally win the Oscar? Stay tuned.
Yes, readers I did see the latest Michael Bay spectacle. After that shot of glossy violent shot of testosterone I watched Far From Heaven and The Lady Eve back to back as schizophrenic counter-balance. What did you see this weekend?
06 LARRY CROWNE $5.9 (cum. $26.1) 07 SUPER 8 $4.8 [thoughts] (cum. $118) 08 MONTE CARLO $3.8 (cum. $16.1) 09 GREEN LANTERN $3.1 [review] (cum. $109.7) 09 MR POPPER'S PENGUINS $3.1 (cum. $58)
Number two, bitch.Talking Points: Transformers is now the top US hit of 2011, outgrossing The Hangover Part 2 and Pirates of the Caribbean Part Another One. Worldwide grosses paint a different surprising picture of the film year with Pirates way out front of everything having grossed a billion dollars and Fast Five the second biggest hit of the year with over half a billion. I did not know this. Everyone loves action movies starring cars I guess. But regardless of how you count beans it's a sequel world out there. It's shocking when anything original breaks through.
Meanwhile Bridesmaids and Midnight in Paris, which had both been hanging on to the top ten despite being two months old (the box office equivalent of senior citizens) finally slipped out. Even though they're losing theaters each week they still have tinier percentile drops than any other pictures indicating that word of mouth continues to draw in the curious... or maybe repeat visitors?
Forbes released a list of the highest paid actresses a few days ago, tallying earnings between last summer and this one. Have you stopped to think it over? As usual there's not much in the way of specifics as to how they earned the money but it's usually a combo of residuals, new movie deals, and commercial endorsements and the numbers are pre-tax and pre-overhead -- their agents and managers get a chunk of this as does the government. (But you know how kind the government is to millionaires so don't worry for their bank accounts! Millionaires aren't expected to help so the ones with true altruism -- hi Angie! -- are even more lauded for it.)
I used to love all lists as I once interpreted all of them as "people love lists as much as I do!" but now of course it only means "crank up the page views!" . Forbes is especially shameless as you actually have to hit arrows and whatnot an incredible 34 times to read every word of the article! Page View Trickery. I'll save you the trouble. The list is as follows:
ANGELINA JOLIE - $30 million
SARAH JESSICA PARKER - $30 million
JENNIFER ANISTON - $28 million
REESE WITHERSPOON -$28 million
JULIA ROBERTS - $20 million
KRISTEN STEWART -$20 million
KATHARINE HEIGL - $19 million
CAMERON DIAZ - $18 million
SANDRA BULLOCK - $15 million
MERYL STREEP - $10 million
On first glance it might seem like a boring list of ubiquitous names but if you stop to consider it offers up a few different career trajectories. You've got your TV stars who leveraged that into massive global fame and then steady film careers (SJP, HEIGL, ANISTON), you've got a woman who became synonymous with Great Acting (STREEP) early in her career and just refused to vacate her throne, you've got an Otherworldly Movie Queen who seems to belong to the entire world less for her movies than for her celebrity and outreach (JOLIE), you've got the RomCom Queens of the 1990s (ROBERTS, BULLOCK) and their natural successor (WITHERSPOON) who all won Oscars as career honors. [Theory: it's much easier to win an Oscar after RomCom riches than to just win an Oscar due to your dramatic gifts. Discuss!]
And then you've got DIAZ who is sort of in the Roberts/Bullock/Witherspoon school but maybe closer to a Meg Ryan in terms of Hollywood's lack of interest in rewarding her for it (other than monetarily). Finally, you've got a new rock star like franchise queen (STEWART). Will Stewart be able to convert her Twilight fame into a career beyond celibacy-advocate vampirism?
You can't just have a gazillion corporate endorsement print campaigns like Scarlett Johannson or Julianne Moore to name two quick examples, you need to get paid a lot to make the movies that you do make.
Two things are certain about making it to the top ten.
You need to have long hair.
If you're not a true original (Streep) and if you haven't slept with Brad Pitt (Aniston and Jolie) it's absolutely crucial to headline romantic blockbusters and/or a single blockbuster franchise. (SJP, Witherspoon, Bullock, Roberts, Diaz, Stewart).
That covers everyone but Katharine Heigl but maybe you'll have better luck explaining her in the comments.
I skipped Transformers: Dark of the Moon this weekend -- too much going on chez moi -- but that didn't stop me from thinking about robots or transformations.
01 TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON new$97.8 (cum. $162.6) 02 CARS 2 $26.2 (cum. $117.2) 03 BAD TEACHER $14.5 (cum. $59.9) 04 LARRY CROWNE new$13 06 MONTE CARLO new$7.4 07 SUPER 8 $7.9 [thoughts] (cum. $108.4) 07 GREEN LANTERN $6.5 [review] (cum. $102.2) 08 MR POPPER'S PENGUINS $5.5 (cum. $50.5) 09 BRIDESMAIDS $3.6 (cum. $153) ♥ 10 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS $3.5 (cum. $33.7) [podcast]
"I also have an announcement."Related box office news: Bridesmaids is now the highest grossing film from the Apatow school of filmmaking, having knocked Knocked Up from its perch. X-Men First Class [review] recently passed The Incredible Hulk (2008) to become the 19th highest grossing live action superhero flick though it's sadly the lowest grosser in the X-franchise. (So the question is: Did Last Stand and Wolverine, both high grossers despite anger about their quality, kill off the interest in this franchise or was this summer just too full of superheroics?) Finally, you may have heard that Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides [review] passed the billion dollar mark worldwide (sigh) indicating that 3 more sequels was a smart studio gamble despite the fact that the franchise has literally never demonstrated any reason for existing. The first film is excellent, yes, but one film does not a franchise make and it's been all weak xeroxing ever since.
What did you see this weekend? Which household items do you wish would transform for you? Did you enjoy the long weekend?
The Lost Boy Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams is just a few days away from joining the top gro$$ing documentaries club. JobMob check out what some celebrity acting resumes look like Sociological Images Some off flick backstory on that DDT spray scene in The Tree of Life. I wanted to soak in that scene, didn't you? Tom ShoneTerminator 2 turns 20 years old this week. What a stroke of genius casting Robert Patrick was. Old Hollywood great my-how-time-changes-things quote from Kim Novak on the initial failure of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. Movie|Line Remember those omnibus films celebrating Paris and New York. It's official: Sydney, I Love You plans to move ahead in early 2012 The Wrap looks at the reasons that the superhero crop of 2011 isn't really delivering as expected at the box office.The last sentence, though, is an unintentionally hilarious negation of the 'there's too many of these' thesis statement. It goes like so...
The good news for the box office: New installments of Batman and Spider-Man are due out next summer, with fresh incarnations of Superman and Iron Man following soon after.
off cinema The Daily Beast backstage at Men's Fashion Week Low Resolution ranking the hotness of Wimbledon men Slant reviews Björk's new single "Crystalline". I love this bit:
Bjork's most esoteric album to date, 2004's Medúlla, is also among her best, and so my policy is to indulge Mrs. Matthew Barney in all pretensions so long as the music works.
We won't waste too much time on the American box office today as it's the usual stories: an animated film tops the charts (don't make me say the name), Bridesmaid barely dipped and Midnight in Paris is zooming up the "all time Woody Allen lists". On this last bit I wish we had "adjusted for inflation" charts at the ready. Those inevitable stories about it passing Hannah and Her Sisters at the box office are going to be annoying because $40 million in 1986 is a helluva lot more ticket-buying action than $41 million in 2011, you know? I'm guessing that Annie Hall, which really captured mainstream attention, would reign supreme if you adjusted for inflation. [updated: yep, ANNIE HALL is #1]
And yes I normally do a new drawing for the box office but I hate drawing cars and the only picture I'd like to conjure in that realm is Cars 2's "Mater" squished flat in a compactor.
01 CARS 2 new$66.1 02 BAD TEACHER new$31.6 03 GREEN LANTERN $18 [review] (cum. $88.9) 04 SUPER 8 $12 [thoughts] (cum. $95.1) 05 MR POPPER'S PENGUINS $10.1 (cum. $39.2) the rest of the top twelve are now losing screens... X-MEN FIRST CLASS $6.6 [review, top ten X] THE HANGOVER PT II $5.5, BRIDESMAIDS $5.2, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES $4.9 [review], KUNG FU PANDA 2 $4.1, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS $4.1 [podcast] and TREE OF LIFE $1.3 [overheard & thoughts]
Worldwide Action It's all about the 4th Pirates film worldwide unfortunately, reminding us that the US hardly has the strangehold on lemming-like sequel culture. Johnny Depp on loop nears another 1 billion gross. Crazine$$.
But let's talk about movies that never get any attention on movie blogs! I looked at the global charts at box office mojo and thought it was worth sharing. Here are the top grossers that aren't Hollywood for 2011 (Please note: Bollywood does not give figures to B.O.M. so who knows with those films)
2011's Top Grossers (Non-English Language)
01 Hankyu densha This Japanese film is based on a best-selling novel about intersecting lives (it uses a public transport line as connecting backdrop). Starring Miki Nakatani and Erika Toda. It's nearly as big a hit as, say, Rango across the ocean but it's Japan only thus far. [Trailer] 02 Rien à déclarer (Nothing to Declare) Directed and written by and stars (whew) Dany Boon who you might remember as the lead actor from last year's chaotic farce Mic-Macs (which was from Amélie's director). It's a comedy about customs officers during the elimination of the French-Belgium border in the 1990s. This is a bigger hit than True Grit or No Strings Attached overseas and has distributors in various markets but nothing for the US as far as I can tell. 03 Che bella giornata (What a Beautiful Day) A very complicated sounding comedy starring Checco Zalone (who also co-wrote the movie) as a security officer in Italy who gets mixed up with an Arabic girl posing as a French woman. Italy only thus far. [Official Site]
04 Kokowääh German star Til Schweiger (Inglourious Basterds) co-wrote this family comedy and co-stars with his daughter. Warner Bros handled the very very successful German release. Will we see it... or some English language remake here? 05 SP The Motion Picture Japanese film about Security Police that's based on a TV series. 06 Gantz A genre film about two teenagers played by Ken'ichi Matsuyama and Kazunari Ninomiya hunting and killing aliens. This one has distributors in some European countries in addition to Asia but the only US plans (at the moment) is a spot in the New York Asian Film Festival which is just about to start (July 1st).
Here's the trailer for the festival as a whole (cute). If you're in NYC are you seeing anything?
After that in the global charts when its not Hollywood films it's mostly Asian films (they have their own strong markets) but there's one film in particular that our actress-loving heart is thumping for longingly. That's Les Femmes du 6ème étage (Service Entrance) which is a French film about Spanish maids from director Jean-Philippe LeGuay. The Spanish cast includes Carmen Maura and Lola Dueñas (Volver reunion alert!) as the help and Fabrice Luchini and Sandrine Kiberlain as conservative wealthy French employers.
Service Entrance
Strand Releasing has US distribution rights but given that the film is the 79th most popular overseas for 2011 with a $15 million gross (thus far), we hope it gets a hearty US push.
Do you like hearing about foreign hits or did your eyes just glaze over?
Monday, July 11, 2011 at 12:00PM 
Number two, bitch.Talking Points: Transformers is now the top US hit of 2011, outgrossing The Hangover Part 2 and Pirates of the Caribbean Part Another One. Worldwide grosses paint a different surprising picture of the film year with Pirates way out front of everything having grossed a billion dollars and Fast Five the second biggest hit of the year with over half a billion. I did not know this. Everyone loves action movies starring cars I guess. But regardless of how you count beans it's a sequel world out there. It's shocking when anything original breaks through.
