WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Escape 2 the Bank

Wow. I totally missed this one. I knew the Dreamworks MADAGASCAR sequel would do well, that it would be the king of the forest, or desert or wild kingdom or whatever the African animals preside over but I did not see this much money coming its way. MADAGASCAR: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA outpaced the original right out of the cage, I mean gate, on Friday with $17 million. It then went on to crush every competitor out there, with its mammoth $63.5 million haul (compared to a first weekend of $47 million for the first outing) but audiences showed up in meerkat or lemur or lemming or “whatever that thing that likes to move it, move it is” size numbers for many other titles as well, making this a huge early jump to the holiday season.


Another title that surpassed expectations this week, hold its own very well against the family friends toon, was ROLE MODELS. The comedy, starring Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott, skews slightly older but does certainly have a kid-friendly appeal to it, making its near $20 million take pretty impressive considering the competition. Rudd, who incidentally also co-wrote the screenplay, does not usually place himself in lead roles but this success will certainly make that more likely in the future. Meanwhile, Scott got some much needed love that has been lacking for him with recent misses like THE PROMOTION or MR. WOODCOCK.


The only other Top 10 debut this week was an unfortunate misfire for Bernie Mac’s last screen work before his death earlier this fall, SOUL MEN. This film opened in sixth place, thanks to strong holds for CHANGELING and ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO that shut it out of the Top 5. This title is a sure fire rental hit so audiences will get their chance to see Mac’s last show before this title drifts into obscurity but it would have been nice for his memory to be honoured in a larger fashion.


Below the Top, this week’s biggest success story was THE BOY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS. The WWII story about two boys, one on each side of a fence to a concentration camp, pulled in $15K per screen for the second highest per screen average of any film this week, behind the MADAGASCAR sequel. The most unlikely of art house heroes, Jean Claude van Damme saw a promising start for his self-referential fictionalized account of his current life, JCVD. The film opened to $11K per screen on just two locations. I’VE LOVED YOU SO LONG, SYNECDOCHE NEW YORK and NOAH’S ARC: JUMPING THE BROOM continued to pull in averages just below $10K. And, the wedding of the year, RACHEL GETTING MARRIED, added another 258 screens, bringing it ever so closer to the Top 10 with a 133% increase. If you haven’t RSVP’d to this one already, you should get on that. You wouldn’t want to miss this dessert table.


NEXT WEEK: Huge week! Only one major mass market release and one art house release worth noting. What? That doesn’t seem huge? Well, you haven‘t considered the titles we’re talking about here. For the art crowd, the audience winner at this year’s TIFF, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, from Danny Boyle. And for the masses, Bond, James Bond, in QUANTUM OF SOLACE. They didn’t even try to counter program. Welcome back, Mr. Bond.

BEING CHARLIE KAUFMAN

There is no question that Charlie Kaufman is a complicated genius. His screenplays twist in and out of the conscious world and the depths of our understanding. He makes no claim to understand any better than we do at any time. He is merely telling the story as he sees it, presenting it to us to do with as we will. I feel that if I had the chance to ask Kaufman what it all means, his guess would be as good as mine. He has been nominated three times for screenwriting Oscars (once he even shared the credit with a fictitious twin brother) and this month marks his first attempt at directing with the highly anticipated, SYNECDOCHE NEW YORK. First, Black Sheep looks back at the screenplays and movies that grew from such enigmatic beginnings to become the fascinating experience of being Charlie Kaufman.


Before his screenplay for 1999’s BEING JOHN MALKOVICH fell into the hands of Francis Ford Coppola (who passed it on to his daughter, Sofia, who then passed it on to then husband, Spike Jonze, who went on to direct the film and score an Oscar nomination in a particularly fierce year), Kaufman dragged his talent through the mud writing for television shows as forgettable as, wait … I forget. You can’t keep brilliance like this down forever though. BEING JOHN MALKOVICH made both Kaufman’s and Jonze’s careers when it hit theatres. People had never seen anything remotely like this. It was nearly incomprehensible. Let’s see if I can make sense of the whole thing. Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) is a starving puppeteer. His animal loving wife, Lotte (Cameron Diaz), convinces him to get a real job, y’know, just until the puppet thing takes off. The world beyond his puppet stage makes no sense to him as he has no control outside his safe haven. Outside, the company that hires him operates on the 7 ½ floor, has a secretary with a hearing problem who insists that everyone she encounters has a speech impediment and, oh yeah, his office has a tiny, hidden door that is essentially a portal into John Malkovich’s head. That barely makes sense to me for that matter but this is in itself no matter when the whole thing is so entirely engaging.


Making sense is not what concerns Kaufman. He is concerned with what it all means. BEING JOHN MALKOVICH is a fascinating exploration of what it means to be our selves, the connection between the soul and the body and the governing laws of attraction and success. It leaves a great number of questions unanswered but at no time do you feel like the writer is writing above you or that these unanswered questions have gone forgotten, rendering the experience unfulfilling. If anything, Kaufman has provided a platform from which you can spring forward to challenge your own securities with what it means to be inside your own skin.


The pairing of Kaufman and Jonze was so successful that it was thrilling to hear that the two would work again on Kaufman’s follow-up, ADAPTATION, based on Susan Orlean’s “The Orchid Thief”. Never has the word, “adaptation” been used so loosely. When Kaufman was asked to adapt Orlean’s beautiful and simple novel about flowers, he jumped at the challenge. Kaufman wanted to push himself to do something he had not done before. He didn’t believe that he should just coast along writing what he already knew. Somewhere along the way though, he got lost and ADAPTATION became something about oh so much more than just flowers. Kaufman’s struggle with adapting the source material became the screenplay itself. Before he knew it, he was the protagonist of this film that was supposed to be about flowers. One could call this act self-indulgent or narcissistic but these words, although powerful, cannot fully convey the extent to which Kaufman’s self-obsession reaches. Not only does he write himself into the screenplay but he wrote his twin brother, Donald, in as well. In fact, he called upon Donald to help him write the screenplay and the identical twins went on to earn a shared Oscar nomination for writing. It would have been interesting to see them win though seeing as how Donald is an entirely fictional extension of Kaufman’s own neurosis. (They lost to Ronald Harwood for THE PIANIST).


Charlie (played by Nicolas Cage) is neurotic and believes in artistic value above all else. Donald (funny enough, also played by Cage in an Oscar nominated turn) is trying his hand at writing too but is sticking to conventional Hollywood “wisdom”. They are two opposing forces that make up one complete whole and Cage is a delight as the bridge between them. ADAPTATION becomes a work about adapting – about adapting a book into a screenplay, about humanity’s ability to adapt through the ages and about one man’s struggle with adapting to his own life changes. The cast is completed by more award winning turns by Meryl Streep as Susan Orlean and Chris Cooper as the main subject of her book. Of course, many liberties are taken with Orlean’s source material but you will never see flowers the same way after watching this brilliant work that is perhaps better described as an interpretation than anything else.


Then came the masterpiece. I’ve heard people here and there say that they could not connect with this film but for me ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND is an unforgettable experience that dares to tackle one of life’s greatest questions – is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all? Joel (Jim Carrey in an underrated performance) sits in a diner. He has called in sick to the job he could care less about and hopped a train into Montauk but he has no idea why. Something inside of him just compelled him to make this uncharacteristically spontaneous move. Clementine (the always charming, Kate Winslet) sits in another booth and Joel is drawn to her. She acknowledges him with a small wave and he asks himself, “Why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention?” That one questions tells us everything we need to know about Joel. He is lonely and has been for some time. He is a hopeless romantic but also a cynical non-believer. Most of all, he wants to be saved. “Too many guys think I'm a concept, or I complete them, or I'm gonna make them alive. But I'm just a fucked-up girl who's lookin' for my own peace of mind; don't assign me yours,” Clementine says to Joel shortly afterward. And so it would seem the problems are about to begin but in fact they have already begun ages before and run their course.


Exploring a theme he only touched on in BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, Kaufman goes deep into the human mind, the conscious and the subconscious parts in ETERNAL SUNSHINE. Clementine has undergone an experimental procedure to have Joel erased from her mind and her life. Who hasn’t wondered if they wouldn’t be better off if they had never met that person who inspired such great passion but also brought about such horrifying turmoil? And when Joel learns that Clementine has done this, he too wants the procedure. Only in the midst of it, he realizes that he doesn’t want this at all. And so he and Clementine revisit every significant moment of their relationship in hopes of finding a place where they can hide until morning when Joel will wake up and Clementine will still be there. Under the sometimes hallucinatory direction of Michel Gondry, ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND is Kaufman’s most accomplished work and most accessible because of its universal appeal. Even the man who claims not to get humanity clearly gets more than he knows.


Suffice it to say, Kaufman spends an awful lot of time in his head. Up until now, he has managed to take the mess in his mind and make some form of sense on it on paper. He has also been fortunate enough to work with directors that have not only understood his logic but also connected with it in a way that makes it possible for us to do the same. With SYNECDOCHE NEW YORK, Kaufman has cut out the middle man. Now we will see exactly what he does and this will bring us one step closer to taking a trip down a portal into his mind. What remains to be seen is whether we can handle being there any better than he can.

ROCKNROLLA

Written and Directed by Guy Ritchie
Starring Gerard Butler, Tom Wilkinson, Thandie Newton, Mark Strong and Jeremy Piven


(I would ordinarily list a quote from the film that struck me at this point but damned if I could understand half of what the rock n rollas were spouting on about half the time.)

Boys will be boys, even when they’re men who haven’t been boys for a very long time. They like to get their guns out and smack ‘em around in the other boys’ faces, all in an effort to prove who the baddest boy on the playground is. It doesn’t matter to them that the playground has progressed into the entire city or that the guns have gone from plastic toys to the real deal. The game may have gotten heavier and plenty more serious, and the boys may have grown into the more rugged bodies of men, but they’re still bumbling little boys at heart, too scared to do right and even more so to be a failure. This particular London playground that embodies all this manliness plays home to the modern gangster movie, ROCKNROLLA, and the boy at the top of the mountain is none other than Guy Ritchie.


Ritchie has had a rough go at establishing himself as one of today’s big boys as of late. He burst on to the scene in 1998 with LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS. The fast moving action and even faster dialogue grabbed a lot of men by their own sensitive boys, squeezed hard and made them feel like bigger men. (Personally, I couldn’t make out a single word being said and lost track about 20 minutes in so I never made it that far.) Ritchie’s momentum grew into a Hollywood step with his follow-up, SNATCH, but his favour quickly faded after his critical disaster, SWEPT AWAY. I mean, it wasn’t great but critics went in with their own guns blazing. You simply don’t make a vanity project outside of your genre with your superstar wife, especially when that wife (or soon to be ex-wife) is Madonna, one of the most critically panned actresses of all time. No one even noticed his last release, REVOLVER, but now Ritchie is back. The problem is he isn’t really better than ever; he’s just back where he left off before everything was, well, swept away.


Lucky for Ritchie, he’s got a great group of mates along for this ride. ROCKNROLLA’s cast is top notch no matter what Ritchie’s expansive script calls for. Whether you’re watching Gerard Butler dance entirely out of step with Thandie Newton at a party while exchanging brief quips about a heist job or Tom Wilkinson being a right bastard (which he does so well) as the man who runs the streets or Butler dancing yet again, this time in a close embrace with good pal, Handsome Bob (Tom Hardy), before he is shipped off to prison, there is always a sense of playfulness that never loses sight of purpose. The purpose on the other hand is a little too far out of reach. There are bad guys and good guys who are essentially bad guys themselves and they are all involved in some sort of construction zoning law shakedown that touches the junkies of the world as well as the Russian mafia and pivots around this one missing lucky painting, which, with a quick nod to the mysterious contents of a certain briefcase in the modern gangster classic, PULP FICTION, is never seen on screen.


Complicated? Yes. Overly so? Maybe, only time will tell there. A good, fun time? For sure. Ritchie is sharp and has a keen eye for style. He hasn’t quite mastered the balance between sleek and simple yet, as his simpler bits are rendered somewhat puny in comparison with his flare. Still, you can tell he’s having a great time piecing it all together. There are the dirty, dark sets, the driving pulse of the often-obscure soundtrack choices (no more cheeky early Madonna pop tracks to be found here) and the sexy voice-over (a clearly spoken narration that was my personal saviour at times) to provide constant entertainment. My hopes for Ritchie though are that ROCKNROLLA does not amount to he himself being a “Rock n Rolla” – a boy pretending to be living large instead of actually living it. Next time out, I want to see Ritchie one step closer to being a real man.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: High School Trick or Treaters

I happened to be out on Halloween night on a way to a friend’s place for some good eats and leftover candy. I couldn’t help but notice the obscene amount of teenagers parading around in costumes. When was Halloween taken away from the kids? Oblivious selfishness aside, the high number of teenage trick or treaters certainly explains why HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3 placed fifth on Friday, plummeting nearly 90% week on week. Still, all those teenagers went home that night, overdosed on candy and bounced their way back to the theatres throughout the rest of the weekend, sending the Disney juggernaut back to the top of a mild frame.

HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3 fended off ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO this weekend to remain on top despite an overall drop of 64%. The front-heavy title was expected to drop off drastically and the numbers it posted Friday led many to believe it would lose its place as king of the prom. By the end of the weekend though, ZACK AND MIRI, its closest competitor, missed by nearly $5 million. The R-rated Kevin Smith directed pic only managed a third place finish on Friday and finished with a modest $10 million, when prognosticators were expecting closer to the high teens. On average, it performed below HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL as well so its lower turnout cannot be simply chalked up to a lesser theatre count or its R-rating. Maybe had Smith made an actual porno, he would have a fared better.


The film that opened better than ZACK AND MIRI on Friday was the unexpected CHANGELING. The first of two Clint Eastwood films expected this year stars Angelina Jolie and drew in big adult crowds despite the critical split on the film’s merits. CHANGELING pulled in the highest per screen average of any film in the Top 10 but saw its returns dwindle throughout the course of the weekend so this latest Jolie Oscar bait looks to be going the same route as last summer’s A MIGHTY HEART.


Not surprisingly, the number one movie on Halloween was SAW V. This would mark the first time a SAW film climbed to number one in its second frame. Overall though, it still dropped off a frightening 66% and is trailing SAW 4 by about 10%. In fact, this is definitely the least successful SAW since the inaugural gorefest. Meanwhile, SAW VI is currently in development.


Below the Top 10, a number of arthouse pictures performed to varying results. The most notable was Guy Ritchie’s ROCKNROLLA expansion. The film was playing to diminishing results in limited release and added 807 screens this week to find itself with a poor take of $1.75 million. It’s $2K average was a far cry from a number of other limited runs. RACHEL GETTING MARRIED dropped off less than 2% in its fourth frame. The Jonathan Demme Oscar contender has grossed a total of $3.8 million so far. Mike Leigh’s HAPPY-GO-LUCKY added another 41 screens and saw its gross increase by another 65% over last weekend. Kristen Scott Thomas’s performance is I’VE LOVED YOU SO LONG is getting rave reviews and those reviews are driving in the audiences. The film added another 11 screens this week and saw it’s gross improve by 110%. Still, higher averages can be found for the Charlie Kaufman film, SYNECHDOCHE NEW YORK ($11K) and surprisingly, NOAH’S ARC: JUMPING THE BROOM ($14K).

NEXT WEEK: Opening on nearly 4000 screens, there will be no match for MADAGASCAR 2. Two other comedies will compete for different male demographics – the white bred ROLE MODELS, starring Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott and the urban skewed SOUL MEN, starring Samuel L. Jackson and the late Bernie Mac.

CHANGELING

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Starring Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Jeffrey Donovan and Colm Feore


Captain J. J. Jones: Yours is a story with a happy ending, Mrs. Collins. People love a happy ending.

The truth is a tricky construct. Words are uttered and, depending on who says them, they are afforded a certain level of belief. Sometimes the truth is so entirely outlandish that believing it is a struggle. And sometimes that struggle is worth it because the truth has the potential to enlighten and call for change. The truth in a movie is almost inherently a falsehood. The intention of telling the truth may be genuine but film requires reconstruction and subjectivity in order for its message to be told. So when Clint Eastwood’s latest directorial effort, CHANGELING, announces at its very start that what we are about to bear witness to is a true story, a certain weight is lent while a certain caution is exercised. The truth here is that a boy by the name of Walter Collins was abducted in 1928 and the boy that was returned to his mother, Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie), five months later was not her son, but rather a boy claiming to be her son. The thought that no one believed her truthful claims is a wide stretch to begin with and Eastwood, despite setting a complete scene, did not ultimately convince me that any of this actually happened.


Of course, to some extent, much of the story did happen. In the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, Los Angeles played home to an atrocious set of serial murders known then as the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders. Walter Collins was said to be a victim of these horrible crimes, in which a man by the name of Gordon Northcott (played in the film by Jason Butler Harner), would lure young boys back to his run down ranch, lock them up in chicken coops and torture them before ultimately killing them like helpless animals and burying their bodies in his backyard. At the same time, a boy by the name of Arthur Hutchens Jr. claimed to be the missing Collins boy in order to get a free ride from Iowa to California. When Christine Collins told the police that this was not her son – something Jolie says repeatedly in the film like a beautiful but busted record – they tried to convince her that she was mistaken and confused. She pushed and was eventually incarcerated in the psychiatric ward of the L.A. county hospital for her supposed delusions. She was released ten days later when Hutchens finally admitted he was not Walter Collins.


The facts are what they are but yet somehow, when Eastwood tells the story, it seems ridiculous and CHANGELING becomes a disappointing experience because you want for it to be better than it is. Cinematographer, Tom Stern, shoots Patrick M. Sullivan Jr.’s delicate and detailed art direction with a soft sensitivity that births an encompassing sense of nostalgia for a time I never knew. And it always surprises me just how breathtaking Jolie is. As the single mother at the center of this controversy, she is composed and determined one moment and fragile and frightened the next. Sometimes, she is all of these things and more at the same time. Unfortunately for Jolie, she seems to keep picking prestige projects where she outshines the material itself. J. Michael Straczynski’s script is overly facile as it chalks up all of Collins’ difficulties to her being a woman, that ever-emotional creature that cannot possibly function with reason. And Eastwood has all of her male aggressors adopt that same mentality. So when a doctor tells Christine Collins that of course it is possible that her boy shrunk three inches after this ordeal and that she cannot see this because she is a woman and has no objectivity, we chuckle at how ludicrous this is instead of recoil at the horror.


Throughout CHANGELING, you can feel Eastwood’s sense of accomplishment. There he is behind the lens, standing up straight and proud. He is the champion of women’s rights, exposing injustices and not afraid be the man that does so. What he doesn’t see on the other side of his smug sense of accomplishment is that he is actually detracting from Christine Collins’ plight by oversimplifying the whole affair. The specific details can never truly be exposed but this truly happened and by trying to tell his limited take on the truth, Eastwood has turned the truth into a bad joke.

ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO

Written and Directed by Kevin Smith
Starring Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks, Jason Mewes, Craig Robinson and Ricky Mabe


Zack Brown: Everybody wants to see anybody fuck. I hate Rosie O’Donnell but if somebody said, “I got a tape of Rosie O’Donnell getting fucked stupid,” I’d be like, “Why the fuck aren’t we watching that right now?”

Just in time for Halloween, one of the original independent filmmakers, Kevin Smith, gives us something truly frightening … Seth Rogen in a porno. No offence to Seth; I think he’s cuddly and all but porn material, I think not. Or maybe I’ve just been out of the straight porn-watching world for so long that this is what porn has come to. That said, I doubt I’ll be making a trip to my local video shop later to catch up on everything I’ve missed. What’s that? I don’t have to leave my home for this sort of fare anymore? It is all readily available online at the click of my mouse? And what? I’m supposed to be talking about Smith’s latest mild chuckle fest, ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO? I thought we were discussing film worth leaving the house for. ZACK AND MIRI is not that film. Maybe you could download it, I guess.


Zack and Miri may be making a porno but it is Kevin Smith making another lazy film that we should be focusing on. See, Smith is hoping that his sensational premise is enough to get you laughing ecstatically. He is primarily hoping for this because this way he can pass off his tired characters and simple jokes as something brand new, something no one has ever tackled in film before. Actually, that is giving him too much credit. The truth of the matter is that Kevin Smith is one of the most overrated filmmakers making movies today. He’d probably be the first to agree with me. This is because Smith doesn’t really care about his work and you can feel it in every cliché his characters exist and every joke he sets up. How else can you explain married couple characters who yell at each other incessantly and complain even more so about how horrific and sexless marriage is? Or a party sequence where the camera doesn’t move while we jump cut from one dancing fool to the next in full frame? And how can anyone these days justify using the word “faggot” as a meaningless insult, tossed around irresponsibly? Limited is the first word that comes to my mind.


Getting back to Zack and Miri (Rogen and the luminous Elizabeth Banks), they are the most enjoyable and charismatic things about this film. Zack and Miri have been friends forever and never have they crossed that scary line and stepped into the realm of sex between friends. They live together, if you want to call their situation living. They’re months behind on their rent; their electricity and water have been shut off; and neither one has a job that can actually get them out of this mess they’ve found themselves in. Naturally, they turn to the world of pornography for salvation. After all, they just found out that they have access to hundreds of contacts on their high school alumni mailing list that will no doubt jump at the chance to see this infamously platonic twosome finally get it on. I don’t know about you but if I was so down on my luck that I needed to make porn to bail myself, I’m pretty positive that the high school acquaintances that teased and taunted me at my most fragile moments would not be the first people I would be peddling my wares to. In fact, they would be right up there with my mom.


The irony of ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO is that Kevin Smith should feel right at home with the kinds of lower production values pornography calls for. In fact, I think I may have seen amateur porn that is subtler and more original than this film. It is not without its charm or its laughs but ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO is as forgettable as most of Smith’s work and not nearly as intriguing as actual porn.

DVD Review: TIM BURTON'S THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS

Written by Tim Burton, Michael McDowell and Caroline Thompson
Words and Music by Danny Elfman
Directed by Henry Selick
Voices by Danny Elfman, Catherine O'Hara, Chris Sarandon and Paul Reubens


I’ve never been able to pin down what exactly is the target audience for TIM BURTON’S THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. It’s a holiday tale seemingly too dark to be a Christmas classic and too warm to be a Halloween fright. It’s animated so that eliminates a good chunk of close-minded adults yet it’s far too scary for younger kids (unless you consider Santa Claus being tortured to be good wholesome fun). It’s a musical too so there go all the adolescents outside of the drama club. That doesn’t leave many but those who do count themselves as part of this film’s loyal following know how lucky they are. Sure, it’s an altogether bizarre amalgamation of two seemingly opposite holidays but it is also incredibly clever, darkly romantic and one of the most underrated and satisfying musicals of our time.


THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS originated in Burton’s mind in the early 80’s, while he was working at Disney. Not so surprisingly, the dark story was not the kind of film Disney was looking to make at the time and so it was left behind. Burton left Disney behind as well but went back years later to get his original concept drawings that would become the cast of countless cookey characters that have, since its original 1993 bow, spawned an incredibly successful merchandising line. The first and foremost of these characters is Jack Skellington, the pumpkin king who presides over Halloween Town. The citizens and denizens of Halloween Town aren’t bad people, er, creatures. No, rather they are simply carrying out what they were born to do – bring chills and thrills to the boys and girls of the world on the last day of October. Only after more years than he can count, Jack feels like something now is missing. His emptiness is only exacerbated by a fateful visit to Christmas Town. Jack is overtaken by this indescribable warmth and joy that exudes throughout this place that he’s never known before and suddenly, the world is full of possibilities again.


Walt Disney has been toying with us for years. The film has only been allowed out of that pesky vault once a year, finding what seemed like a new home in 3D theatres in time for Halloween. Finally, the mouse house has let Jack and friends back into our homes in a 2-disc special edition. “Special” would be putting it mildly. Not only is the film impeccably restored but the extras feel so rare that you truly feel as if you are being treated to a genuinely thorough backstage look at this artistic triumph. Deleted and extended scenes are raw and unfinished, giving them a silent film era look. Actor, Christopher Lee reads Burton’s original poem that the film is based on against illustrations inspired by Burton’s original concept art. Even the teaser trailer is interesting in a time capsule fashion and how often can you say that? It only goes deeper from there. The “Making of” is broken down into each part of production and we are introduced to the delicate intricacies of stop-motion animation. Hundreds of puppets, meticulously detailed sets and unique camera mechanics are only three incredibly fascinating parts of this immense three-year long project. And still, I am only skimming the surface here of what other options are included in this package. Burton’s short film’s VINCENT (the story of an impossibly melodramatic seven-year-old boy descending into the madness of his mind) and FRANKENWEENIE (a mad scientist boy brings his dead pooch back from the dead in this precursor to EDWARD SCISSORHANDS and homage to Frankenstein) are a particularly extraordinary inclusion. And finally, a brand new commentary track was recorded with Burton as well as the two other unsung heroes – director, Henry Selick and composer and lyricist, Danny Elfman (who also contributes Jack’s singing voice). They have plenty to say but oddly, they’re all saying it at different times, having recorded their commentaries seperately. Despite not recording together, they are all on the same page when it comes to their genuine appreciate and pride for this project.


There is not enough space here for me to convey just how unique THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS is. Burton, Selick and Elfman, along with the hundreds of other animators and contributors, drew inspiration from such Christmas classics as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”, turned them inside out and somehow managed to come up with a contemporary version that will remain now forever listed amongst these original classics as a masterpiece all its own. Suffice it to say, it needs to be seen and if you find yourself loving it, then this collector’s edition is a must have.

FILM & DVD

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: SAW Gets Schooled - Musical Style!

For years now, it wouldn’t be Halloween if it wasn’t SAW to begin with. The consistent Lionsgate moneymaker would come out on or around Halloween, rake in the quick dough and get out before Thanksgiving came creeping. They’ve always opened at number one and have somehow managed to hold on to their core audience each year despite each installment being less interesting than the last. There was some concern the franchise was losing its edge on the market but no one would have guessed last year, it would be outdone by a bunch of squeaky clean teens singing and dancing it up at the prom.


After the record breaking cable success and subsequent soundtrack success of the first two HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL installments, Disney got the bright idea to launch the latest in the series in theatres. Clearly, there was money to be made exploiting these attractive young people and their limited singing and dancing talents. And money they did make. HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3: SENIOR YEAR opened to $42 million, the third biggest October opening in history, behind SCARY MOVIE 3 ($48 million) and SHARK TALE ($47 million). When the film opened to $14 million on Friday, it seemed as though the film would easily surpass these two hits but Friday accounted for 33% of the full weekend take while people expected the kid friendly pic to soar even higher on Saturday. Still, it was an impressive haul and it won’t be long before we start hearing about “Community College Musical”.


The SAW folks don’t have anything to cry about. With an estimated budget of just over $10 million, who cares if your $30 million take is slightly less than SAW 4’s opening weekend? This sequel continues to perform year on year but its legs get shorter and shorter in the long term, and not because they were hacked off. It also wouldn’t be Halloween it seems if it weren’t for TIM BURTON’S THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. The film was re-issued yet again this year in 3D and in many cases with brand new digital projections. The film was also recently released on DVD though so this year’s ritual only mustered an average of $1,310 per screen for a total of $372K.


The Top 10’s only other debut was PRIDE & GLORY, starring Edward Norton and Colin Farrell as boys in blue. The unoriginal premise wasn’t fooling anyone and the film played to a mediocre take of just over $6 million. Audiences were more interested in holdovers like BEVERLY HILLS CHIHUAHUA and EAGLE EYE, which saw their declines hold solidly.

The art house scene was all a bustle this weekend. Fall is like the art house’s summer. The most notable debut was Clint Eastwood’s CHANGELING, starring Angelina Jolie in a role that might finally nab her another Oscar nomination. Playing on a mere 15 screens, the film pulled in half a million dollars, for a stellar per screen average of over $33K. The next highest average of any film playing is a bit surprising. Adapted from the popular Logo series, NOAH’S ARC: JUMPING THE BROOM appealed to gay audiences desperate for fare. On just five screens across the nation, the film collected $32K per screen. Meanwhile, Charlie Kaufman’s first time at bat as a director, SYNECDOCHE NEW YORK, was unleashed on 9 screens worth of unsuspecting people, for an average of $19K. The film has been getting mixed reviews so the future is as unpredictable as well, a Charlie Kaufman film.


NEXT WEEK: ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO. The title says it all folks and they do it on over 3000 screens. THE HAUNTING OF MOLLY HARTLEY will try to scare audiences away from SAW V. Guy Ritchie’s ROCKNROLLA has been struggling in limited release but hopes wider audiences will go for his supposed return to form. And Angelina and Clint go wide (from 15 to over 1800 screens) with CHANGELING.

Black Sheep Previews: ZACK & MIRI MAKE A PORNO

Seriously people ... who among you has not been there before? Your heat just got shut off; you're two months behind on the rent; and you're ten years out of high school and still selling coffee to loads of people doing way better than you. You've got to get out of this horrible hole! And then it hits you. What can you do that requires very little talent, will be loads of fun and has a built-in audience guaranteed to make you the big money? That's right, baby! You too can make porn! You can make porn, sell it on the internet and solve all your troubles. Let me tell you, if Zack and Miri can do it, so can you.

ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO is the latest chef d'oeuvre from everyone's favorite amateur filmmaker working in the big boys' world, Kevin Smith. It stars unlikely Hollywood it-boy, Seth Rogen and Mrs. Laura Bush herself, Elizabeth Banks. The twosome play roommates in some horrifically freezing American city who pretty much fall into the rut I described above. Now, Smith has never been known for his tact or restraint so give him the freedom to explore the good, clean world of pornographic filmmaking and you can almost certainly expect a multitude of moments that'll get your jaw dropping. This also marks a departure for Rogen. Up until now, the man has been firmly attached to Judd Apatow produced projects whenever he's been a leading man. Now, it's time to let another boy in a man's body take control apparently.


ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO made its debut at this year's Toronto International Film Festival and delighted audiences. The rest of us regular folk will get the chance to see it when it goes nationwide on October 31. Click HERE for more information.

What to rent, what to rent ...

Too cold to go outside? Week too long to bother with company? Sounds like a rental weekend to me. You can just pop some corn and open a bottle, slide into your slippers and enjoy your couch. All you have to do first is drag your lazy butt to the video store. This is where I come in. Let me make the daunting task of scanning shelf after shelf a little easier to make it all go a little faster. The video store is a place where all movies, big and small, come to live forever. It is my mission to make sure that some of the small don’t get lost amidst the masses. The following are not to be missed …

THE VISITOR

When I saw this film in theatres, I was taken with just how well it navigated between the quiet of lonely spaces, the ambiance created by people making music and the deafening inner turmoil of love being torn apart. Seeing it again in my living room, showed me sides I hadn’t seen the first time out. Richard Jenkins is superbly subtle as Walter Vale, a university professor who has been sleep walking through his life ever since the death of his wife. He wants to wake up; he wants to be present, participating in the same moments of life as the people he sees him passing him bay every day. Only, Walter’s life is without inspiration. It isn’t until he begrudgingly travels from Connecticut to a New York City apartment he rarely uses and finds that a couple have been living there for two months without his knowledge, that he wakes up. All Walter needed was something real and that is precisely what he gets with Tarek and Zainab (Haaz Sleiman and Danai Gurira), two immigrants trying to make a life for themselves in a foreign land. This may not be their original home but it is Walter who is visiting the land where they live.

MONGOL

Everyone has to start somewhere. Even emperors can have humble beginnings. And so the great Genghis Khan, emperor of the Mongol Empire in the 12th century, was once a boy whose name was Temudgin. Great leaders and warriors don’t just become these things though. The values and strengths that make them great can be seen at a very young age and Temudgin definitely had what was needed all along. Russian director, Sergei Bodrov’s epic, MONGOL, follows Temudgin as he grows from a precocious child to an honourable master and does so with as much calculated structure and beauty as the Mongolians had regulation to follow.

North American art house audiences flocked to see MONGOL when it was released domestically following its Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language film. The stunning battle sequences satisfied those who wanted to see Khan (played in the film as an adult by Tadanobu Asano) as a warrior and a conqueror while the respectful and dedicated romance between Temudgin and the bride he chose when he was just 9, Borte (Khulan Chuluun) showed a civil side to Khan. The duality of the film is most suitable considering historians are divided on the kind of man Khan was. Ultimately though, Bodrov sides with those who believed Khan to be a fair leader, a reverential husband and father and a great man whose accomplishments earned him a rightful place in the history of the world.

THE STRANGERS

I don’t usually do scary. It keeps me up at night; it makes me jumpy in the middle of the day. I don’t see any actual need to put myself through this sort of torture. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed this seemingly conventional fright flick called THE STRANGERS. Written and directed by first-timer, Bryan Bertino, THE STRANGERS gets you right where it counts, at home. This is all the more reason to bring this one home with you – so that you can wonder what that noise was you heard in the kitchen. Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman play a couple on the verge of either getting engaged or breaking up. While this is never a good place to be, it is a much better place than his family’s country house. The couple has come up for the night after a wedding and is subsequently terrorized by a threesome of psychopaths. Bertino is having such a blast playing with time, space and sound, you won’t know what is coming or from where most of the time. The whole thing doesn’t amount to very much nor does it have anything distinct to say about senseless violence but it sure scared the crap out of me and ‘tis the season after all.

GRADES

THE VISITOR: B+
MONGOL: B
THE STRANGERS: B

And thus concluded my first WHAT TO RENT feature. Should you need any advice on what to rent, feel free to write me anytime. You can ask about specific titles or for recommendations … I’m here for you.

Black Sheep ♥ Family Guy!

Yes, Black Sheep loves Family Guy. Black Sheep also loves free stuff. So when the good folks at 20th Century Fox offered to give Black Sheep a free copy of season six on DVD, Black Sheep thought ... sweet!

Now, I know I don't ordinarily talk about TV shows but as I've already established, there was free stuff involved, so I will be looking the other way this time. Family Guy's sixth season is now available to own on DVD. Family Guy, as you likely already know, owes a great deal to DVD as its phenomenal sales for its first couple of seasons led to Fox rescinding their previous cancellation of the show and putting it back on the air. Don't quote me on this but I think that was pretty much unheard of.

The sixth season is a short one. Family Guy was hit early on by the writer's guild strike last winter. Show creator, Seth MacFarlane is one of the main writers for the show and he is also the voice of Peter, Brian and Stewie. So, when the writers went on strike, he didn't wait around to continue recording his voice parts. Subsequently, the sixth season contains only 12 episodes but it makes up for this with tons of extras. There are commentaries galore, a crazy crapload of deleted scenes and plenty of behind the scenes footage surrounding the show's momentous 100th episode, "Stewie Kills Lois". Here is a clip about how the 100th episode came together ...

One of the great special features in the Family Guy season six release, for me anyway, is a featurette showcasing the entire cast's appearance at the Montreal Just for Laughs festival to do the show live. I happened to catch that performance. Now, let me tell you, I usually laugh pretty hard when I'm watching the show at home but I practically peed watching them do the show live. Just to see the vast talent of all the cast members come to life on stage ... it was incredible! MacFarlane going back and forth between Stewie, Brian and Peter is priceless.

The only disappointing thing about this set is that it does not include "The Blue Harvest", the side-splitting Family Guy send-up of the first STAR WARS movie ... the first, first one. Mind you, that one is already available to own separately so I guess I could just go out and buy it ... unless the good people at 20th Century Fox wanna hook me up ... I'm just sayin'.

So get out there and pick up Family Guy season six on DVD today and you too can laugh over and over again at such great classics as "McStroke", where Peter saves a burger restaurant manager from a fire and gets free burgers for life, eats too many in one sitting, has a stroke, is paralyzed on one half of his body, sues the burger restaurant for damages as if it was all their fault and spends most of the episode drooling. It's priceless. I'll leave you with one last clip from the DVD. Enjoy!

Beyond the Wall

An interview with ADAM’S WALL director, Michael Mackenzie


Keep walking up past the downtown core, past the Latin Quarter, even past the plateau and you will reach a neighborhood Montrealer’s affectionately call Mile End. This trendy stretch plays home to just as many artists as it does professionals and families. It encompasses a wide range of ethnic backgrounds and religious practices. It is known for its untapped restaurants, signature style shopping and cozy vibe. I think there are a number of watering holes too.

Now, everything that makes Mile End one of Montreal’s most liked neighborhoods, has been captured in Michael Mackenzie’s latest film, ADAM’S WALL. The film can be summed up as a modern day “Romeo and Juliet” but that would be a total oversimplification considering the Romeo is a young Jewish boy and the Juliet is a young Lebanese girl. What stands between them and the love they deserve to have with each is no simple family feud but rather a conflict that has always been heavy and violent and is now reaching catastrophic heights. As if that weren’t enough, Adam has a wall all his own waiting to keep love at bay in case the Israeli conflict were not enough to begin with.

Michael Mackenzie, a Mile End resident himself, may be a playwright by nature but his forays into film are proving to him to be an altogether distinct form of expression. After the critical success of his first feature, THE BARONESS AND THE PIG, which incidentally was based on his own play of the same name, Mackenzie took his time searching for his next project. The search may not have been frantic but when he wasn’t looking, he ran into ADAM’S WALL.


Joseph Belanger: Congratulations on your film. I caught a screening at the Festival Nouveau Cinema just the other day and the response seemed to be overwhelmingly positive.
Michael Mackenzie: The festival response was great. That was where the premiere was. The response was particularly gratifying because it was not just festival filmgoers at the screening but also members of both communities the film depicts. And they really liked it.

JB: Now, this is not your original story but you did co-write the screenplay.
MM: Yes, Dana Schoel, I have to give him all the credit for the original story. He came to me with the script about five years ago. The subsidiary program that was supporting his writing insisted that he have some sort of mentor to be eligible for the assistance. He had seen my first movie and had liked that so he asked me to be his mentor. We met and talked about the story and I was very drawn to it. I also really wanted to make a movie about Montreal. I think it is a beautiful city and I had never really seen Montreal reflected in a movie with the things that I love about the city. It’s such a great city with such wonderful visual paradoxes.

JB: And you are a Montreal resident, right?
MM: Yes, I have lived in Mile End now for many, many years. I actually live in what I am told is apparently the most diverse ethnic neighborhood in all of Canada. I’ve always been very interested in the issues that are raised in ADAM’S WALL. As an immigrant myself, well a less profile immigrant anyway, I’ve always been interested in the communities. I’ve always been very aware of the diversity in the neighborhood and I’ve also been aware of the tensions that arise sometimes. That was something I really wanted to investigate.

JB: And as this is your second feature, as you mentioned, what was easier this second time out?
MM: Uh, well, I think … everything. That’s the quick answer. Having worked in theatre, I’ve always known how important it is to be able to work with actors and I’ve always had a great relationship with actors. This is a real big plus. It was a lot easier because putting a movie together, well the only way to get it is on the job training. There’s no way you can read anything or see anything or hear anything that is going to get you doing it until you’ve actually done it. I can say the second one was easier because I understood this process that was unbelievably complex.


JB: There is this great balance in ADAM’S WALL between this omnipresent Middle Eastern conflict that is on the characters’ minds, mostly with the older characters, often driving their motivations and thinking. Underneath all of that is this simple love story. How difficult was it to balance these two opposites when the film was being put together?
MM: The film was in development for such a long time and we had to work hard and long to raise all the money necessary so it meant that we could have absolute preparation and fully understand what the challenges would be before we started shooting. I understood that this was always going to be a big issue in the material. It isn’t just a balance between those two things. Those two element do affect each other but when you look at the elements of the love story itself, the biggest challenge was to make that love story credible. I think we really pulled that off and I have to say it has everything to do with our two lead actors, Jesse Aaron Dwyre and Flavia Bechara. They were exquisite in their performances but we also really had to set the right tone for them be comfortable with each other.

JB: There is something distinctly generational about ADAM’S WALL. As you said, your two younger leads were very strong – they had a very simple language between them that exhibited a hesitation but also a strong pull. In contrast though, some of the older characters just seem to be holding on to so much anger. What are your feeling about what the film is saying about letting go and healing?
MM: Letting go is a great way to put it for the older generation. We didn’t want to pull any punches in this movie. We didn’t want to make nice. There is enormous anger surrounding this conflict. In Montreal, it is resurrected here, but of course, it originates in the Middle East. This is incredible anger on both sides and it would have been a copout on our parts to try to resolve that in the film. Dana and I always agreed that this film would not have any of these copouts, that there would be no “walking into the sunset” happy ending. At the same time though, we didn’t want a movie without any vestige of hope in it.

JB: I’d read in your production notes that your view on ADAM’S WALL is that it doesn’t propose any solutions to these conflicts but rather chooses to focus on the little miracles that take place within this conflict. What is it that you ultimately hope people will take home from ADAM’S WALL.
MM: Well, a bunch of things. On a very non-controversial level, I hope people take away what a beautiful city Montreal is. That is very important to me and I think we’ve done very well with that.


JB: Yes, I would say that is a guarantee.
MM: One of the most fascinating things about showing and promoting this film is that I’ve done Jewish press and Lebanese and Arabic press. I’ve had conversations on both sides now where how potentially controversial the film is but the Jewish press is always pointing out what they think the Lebanese community will find offensive and the Lebanese press is pointing out what will upset the Jewish community. There’s something very sweet about this response. The important thing about a movie like this is to try to get people to see other people they have seen previously but as nothing more than objects and get them to see them as human beings.

JB: There is certainly a strong fairness about ADAM’S WALL. By focusing on the love story in the context it finds itself, the film doesn’t take any sides.
MM: The fact is that there is no immediate solution to any of these conflicts but it’s important to feel that small things can help. A grain of sand can one day become a heap.

ADAM’S WALL is so much more than a grain of sand and after having seen it, I’ve no doubt it has the potential become it’s own heap. It is currently playing in Montreal and looks to expand across Canada in the weeks to come.