Box Office Blather: Rango, Poetry, Gods/Men, Robbers

Bereft of inspiration today, Nathaniel turns to box office, the thing everyone else talks about elsewhere on the interwebs. Endure it! I have questions.

Top Ten
01 new RANGO $38
02 new THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU $21.1
03 new BEASTLY $9.8
04 HALL PASS $8.8 (cumulative: $26.8)
05 GNOMEO & JULIET $7.2 (cumulative: $84)
06 UNKNOWN $6.5 (cumulative: $53)
07 JUST GO WITH IT $6.4 (cumulative: $88.1)
08 THE KING'S SPEECH $6.2 (cumulative: $123.5)
09 I AM NUMBER FOUR $5.7 (cumulative: $46.4)
10 JUSTIN BIEBER: NEVER SAY NEVER $4.2 (cumulative: $68.8)

Because I am finally free of Oscar season time constraints, I'll let you choose which new release from this week and next I should watch next to remount the "right now" movie horse. Obviously I need no push to get to JANE EYRE (Fassy! Mia!) so I left it off the list. Which other one should I write about?

poll by twiigs.com

Also how sad is it that a movie no one seems to like at all (Just Go With It) will now be one of Nicole Kidman's highest grossers in many years? The world -- and by world I mean movie theaters. Duh! -- would be an infinitely better place if this and Rabbit Hole ($2 million) switched cumulative grosses. Imagine the ripples in Hollywood moviemaking if female-led dramas with tremendous performances won default ticket purchases and sexist lazy comedies had to earn Oscar nominations to win any attention at all! Heh.

Other new releases: Take Me Home Tonight ($3 million), Happythankyoumoreplease ($35,000) and Uncle Boonmee reviewed ($27,800) which had a great first weekend take for a difficult movie that waited 10 months to capitalize on its Cannes hoopla. It should easily outgross Apichatpong Weerathesakul's biggest US market hit which was Tropical Malady (2005) which didn't earn that much until its fifth week in theaters.

Top 10 Foreign Films This Year (Thus Far)
01 BIUTIFUL w/ Javier Bardem $4,200,000+
02 YAMLA PAGLA DEEWANA  $993,000+
03 OF GODS AND MEN $818,000+
04 DHOBI GHAT (MUMBAI DIAIRIES) $576,000+
05 7 KHOOM MAAF $268,000+
06 EVEN THE RAIN w/ Gael García Bernal $230,000+
07 IP MAN 2 $182,000+
08 WHAT WOMEN WANT w/ Gong Li and Andy Lau $123,000+
09 THE HOUSEMAID $117,000 +
10 POETRY $114,000+ don't miss it!

Asian hits of 2011

So happy that people are noticing South Korean's actressy cinema (#9 & #10) post Mother (2009).

At the subtitled speciatly box office we continue to see that if you want to make any money at all it helps to be a Bollywood feature (even with zero media attention you can earn money. See: #2,4,5). The second easiest way to sell tickets is to have a beloved star in the lead role.

Of Gods and Men's terrific opening and Even the Rain's pretty solid one suggests -- at least to this foreign film Oscar enthusiast -- that they should not have waited for a nomination for release. If there was this much interest despite snubs, imagine how much extra sympathy press they would have gotten had they already had "hit" status and then got snubbed. Of Gods and Men obviously didn't need the Oscar buzz to sell tickets and Even the Rain always had Gael García Bernal and instant recognition factor (Christopher Columbus related) going for it... Meanwhile, below this top ten lay the remains of other Oscar snubbees who waited to see how the Academy would treat them before sticking a toe in the US market: Argentina's Carancho ($39,000) German's When We Leave ($19,000) and Romania's If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle ($12,000). The biggest foreign flop this year has to be Ong Bak 3 right? The first film in this Tony Jaa muay thai trilogy was a major art house hit earning nearly  $5 million stateside and $20 million worldwide but the novelty wore out fast and/or they waited way too long to capitalize on interest and/or the sequels weren't very good? For the record I suspect it was a lethal combo of all of the above. I enjoyed the first one a lot and couldn't stomach the second which flopped in the US but it surprised me how long it took for them to make a sequel. For a year there in the mid Aughts I totally thought Tony Jaa was going to be the next international action star but then... crickets.

Heartbeats cast: Dolan, Schneider and ChokriIn other news, just because I like the film quite a lot, Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats has earned $18,000 to date but is still in theaters and available on demand. I feel like this would have done much better had his debut film I Killed My Mother had a real release in the States to build awareness of the new auteur. (I still read conflicting reports about whether or not it actually ever opened in the US and if it's that hard to know...).

On the subject of teeny tiny grosses, Germany's crime drama The Robber, which I didn't particularly "like" but which was unquestionably exciting and well-made on a technical level, has earned $5,000. It's already lined up for an English language remake (possibly with Andrew Garfield) and while I can see them trumping the film on an emotional engagement level, I think they'll be hardpressed to duplicate this one's technical virtuosity and cumulative white knuckle effect. It is scary intense.

Here's the trailer for The Robber which actually does a good job of not giving the movie's best moments / surprises away.

Review: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Editor's Note: This review was originally published last year. Uncle Boonmee is now in theaters, ready to capitalize on its big win at Cannes... uh...10 months ago; way to strike while the iron is hot, distributors! If you're just getting a chance to see it for the first time, The Film Experience would love to hear any reactions.

Uncle Boonmee can recall his past lives. My memory is hardly as uncanny. Recalling or describing Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, the Cannes Palme D'Or winner and Thailand's 2010 Oscar submission, even a few days after the screening is mysteriously challenging. Even your notes won't help you.

This is not to say that the movie isn't memorable, rather that its most memorable images and stories refuse direct interpretation or cloud the edges of your vision, making it as hazy as the lovely cinematography. You can recall the skeletal story these images drift towards like moths and you can try to get to know the opaque characters that see them with you but these efforts have a low return on investment. What's important is the seeing.

What's wrong with my eyes? They are open but I can't see a thing.

Most synopses of the movie will only embellish on the film's title. And while Uncle Boonmee does reflect on past lives, he only does so directly in the pre-title sequence as we follow him in ox form through an attempted escape from his farmer master, who will eventually rope him back in. The bulk of the film is not a recollection -- at least not from Boonmee himself, but a slow march towards his death while he meditates on life and the film meditates on animal and human relations. His nephew and sister in law, who objects to his immigrant nurse, visit him. So too does his dead wife and another ghostly visitor on the same night, in a bravura early sequence that as incongruously relaxed as it is eery and startling.

The film peaks well before its wrap with the story of a scarred princess and a lustful talking catfish and then we begin the march towards Boonmee's death, perhaps the most literal moment in the movie. And then curiously, the movie continues on once he's gone. If it loses much of its potency after Boonmee has departed, there are still a few fascinating images to scratch your head over when he's gone.

The bifurcated structure that Weerathesakul has employed in the past is less prevalent this time.  Uncle Boonmee plays out not so much like two mysteriously reflective halves (see the haunting Tropical Malady which I find less accessible but actually stronger), but rather like a series of short films that all belong to the same continuous chronological movie, give or take that gifted horny catfish.

Surely a google search, press notes, academic analysis or listening to the celebrated director Apichatpong "Joe" Weerathesakul speak (as I did after the screening) would and can provide direct meaning to indirect cinema. But what's important is the seeing.

Vision is frequently mentioned and referenced in Uncle Boonmee, whether it's mechanical as in a preoccupation with photography or organic. But like the ghost monkey with glowing red eyes (the film's signature image) says to Uncle Boonmee early in the film, "I can't see well in the bright light." It's the one exchange in the film that I wholly related to and understood. I'm not sure I need or even want to understand, to attach specific meaning to these confounding stories and images. That's too limiting. I only want to see them. Weerasethakul's movie is best experienced in the dark, with the images as spiritual guides. They fall around you like mosquito netting as you walk slowly through the Thai jungle. B+

Now Playing: Demonic Tony, Cancerous Javi, Brave Sibel

A brief snapshot of new releases (links go to trailers) because even though I always pretend the cinematic year doesn't begin until after the Oscars, the studios don't agree. 

 WIDE

The Rite ~ is there any legendary name actor more in need of a career makeover than Sir Anthony Hopkins these days?  Another character who the marketing department can pretend is Hannibal Lecter for the ads. That was 20 YEARS AGO! Move on. This one is about demonic possession because that horror trope never gets old. True story: during the trailer I was like "cat alert!" as I love my cats in the movie but then the trailer implies that cats are of the devil so I can't be having this movie.

poll by twiigs.com

The Mechanic - In which Jason Statham is too cool to look at explosions (twice in the trailer alone!) and Ben Foster tags along for the assassin-laced ride. Ben actually does look at an explosion in the trailer; Jason has much to teach him.

LIMITED 

Biutiful - You can now see what all the fuss is about. This film is nominated for Best Actor and Best Foreign Film and Bardem plays a Job... I mean Uxbal. He has cancer but what else can go wrong in his life? Alejandro González Iñárritu, Master of Miserabilism™, needs more than disease to bring a man down! He is a merciless god.

From Prada to Nada - a Latina spin on Sense & Sensibility.

Ip Man 2 - in case you saw Ip Man 1. I didn't. I'm saving myself for the Tony Leung Chiu Wai version of this same story which is still filming I believe. This version about the martial arts guru stars Donnie Yen.

Kaboom -Indie auteur Gregg Araki returns with another pansexual trippy oddity. Will Thomas Dekker be Araki's new James Duval or Jonathan Schaech? Araki hasn't settled on new muses in quite some time. He's been muse-hopping for the past few efforts (Mysterious Skin, Smiley Face and now this.)

When We Leave - Germany's Oscar submission from this past fall is also getting a micro release. The fine actress Sibel Kekilli (Head On) returns to US theaters in this story of a Turkish Muslim woman who breaks from tradition, leaving her abusive husband, to raise their child alone. Quite horrifically, her own family sides with the husband. Much heartbreak ensues. Sibel is predictably strong and won the German Oscar but my god this movie is sad.

Sibel Kekilli loves her family in When We Leave. They don't love her back.

OSCAR-SEEKING EXPANSIONS
127 Hours rehydrated by those six Oscar nominations adds over 800 theaters, in its last ditch attempt to be the breakout hit people initially thought it might be. The King's Speech, gaining confidence from a very impressive gross and a very impressive nomination tally, adds over 800 screens too. Blue Valentine, which is better than either of those films but only managed a Best Actress nod, adds 400 screens. A warning to those who are eager to see it: you will be very angry that Ryan Gosling wasn't nominated for Best Actor.

LAST CHANCE!
The Season of the Witch and Another Narnia Movie lost about half their screens this week so... if you've been dying to see the latest scraggly Cage weave or the latest in leonine CGI, have at it.

What will you be seeing this weekend?
Besides the SAG Awards on Sunday. Yes, we'll live blog it. 

5 Days 'til Nominations: FOREIGN FILM FINALISTS

Actually 5 days and 19ish hours but who is counting?

Gael García Bernal in "Even the Rain"

Today's Topic: Foreign Films
One has to wonder why Oscar has a finalist round that's only announced one week before the nominations. Like the visual effects nominations finalists, which get narrowed down to practically the shortlist before the official announcement, it seems unneccessarily sadistic like "omg you're going to be nominated. NOPE!" But for now 9 countries remain from the original 65*. They are....

• ALGERIA (Outside the Law) prev record: 4 nominations, 1 win.
• CANADA (Incendies) prev record: 4 nominations, 1 win.
• DENMARK (In a Better World) prev record: 7 nominations, 2 wins
• GREECE (Dogtooth) prev record: 5 nominations. Greece has yet to win.
• JAPAN (Confessions) prev record: 12 nominations, 1 win. Japan won Honorary Oscars before the category became a regular institution.
• MEXICO (Biutiful) prev record: 7 nominations. Mexico has yet to win.
• SOUTH AFRICA (Life Above All) prev record: 2 nominations, 1 win.
• SPAIN (Even the Rain) prev record: 19 nominations, 4 wins.
• SWEDEN (Simple Simon) prev record: 14 nominations, 3 wins.

So, no country will get to be a first time nominee this year.

Ulrich Thomsen and screen son in Golden Globe winner "In a Better World"

Star Power. Spaniard Javier Bardem and Mexican Gael Garcia Bernal (who have flip-flopped countries here) are both regular fixtures in this category, frequently starring in submissions and on Hollywood's red carpet. Danish star Ulrich Thomsen, is less globally famous, but he's a very familiar face in movies subtitled and otherwise.

TRAILERS TO ALL FINALISTS AND MORE INFO

Click to read more ...

Y los nominados son...

Jose here. The nominations for the 25th Annual Goya Awards have been announced and leading the pack is none other than The Last Circus, Alex De La Iglesia's killer clown allegory which not only earned him a Best Director award at last year's Venice Film Festival but also picked up some of the worst reviews of any movie in any festival during 2010.

 

Best Film

• Buried (yes, the Ryan Reynolds coffin thriller)
  
• Even The Rain (Spain's Oscar Submission)
• The Last Circus
• Pa Negre

The bad reviews didn't seem to deter the Spanish Film Academy which showered the film with nods (a whopping 15! More than any other movie this year) including Breakthrough Actress for the appropriately named Carolin Bang and of course Best Picture and Best Director. Interestingly enough, de la Iglesia is also the Academy's president. But before we scream nepotism we have to take into consideration that Spain makes fewer movies than many countries with film awards and will, well, sometimes nominate anything.

Best Actor Nominees: Javi & Ryan

Speaking of which, Ryan Reynolds is nominated for Best Actor for his work in Buried (which was made by a Spaniard, Rodrigo Cortés, and is therefore eligible). It's not that Reynolds' work isn't good or maybe better than he had any right to be or better than anything anyone ever expected from him, but when you see he's nominated next to Javier Bardem (for Biutiful) things just seem odd, huh?

Best Actor

• Javier Bardem -Biutiful
• Ryan Reynolds -Buried
• Luis Tosar -Even the Rain
• Antonio de la Torre -The Last Circus

The lovely Elena Anaya (pictured left) is up for Best Actress for her work in Room in Rome (read my review here) we'll see her next in Pedro Almodóvar's new film! Rome also won nominations for Breakthrough Actress and Best Song (I wonder where its nomination for Best Use of Google Maps is...)

Best Actress

• Elena Anaya -Room in Rome
• Nora Navas -Pa Negre
  
• Belén Rueda -Julia's Eyes
• Emma Suárez -The Mosquito

The actress category looks unimpressive when you remember that last year the nominees were Lola Dueñas, Rachel Weisz, Maribel Verdú and Pe! 

Considering that most of the films selected for the Goyas rarely get release dates in our continent let's head over to see international categories.

Best Latin American Film

• Undertow - Perú (Oscar submission and TFE Honorable Mention)
• The Man Next Door - Argentina 
• Hell - Mexico 
• The Life of Fish - Chile (Oscar submission)

Best European Film

• The King's Speech - England
• The Ghost Writer - France (just discussed right here)
• The White Ribbon - Germany
• A Prophet - France (just discussed right here)

Don't you just hate when last year's releases compete with this year's releases for awards? Let's all dream of a day when EVERY movie will be released around the world at the same time. It would make for some exciting global unity sort of thing huh?

So, dear readers in Europe, you're probably more equated with these films: Anyone you're rooting for? Anything we should be looking forward to when it's released here?

[More categories at the Goya Awards Official Site]