$00000007
Sunday, November 11, 2012 at 6:15PM Double Os aren't enough any more for Bond, James Bond. You need seven 0s at this point, 8 if you count the already astounding international grosses ($4288 million to date outside of the US). My review will be posted tomorrow night and there's a few more Bond pieces coming before we say goodbye until 2014 or whenever.
3 Bond Girls. 2 ½ Sex Scenes. 2 Villains. 500 million dollars
Box Office Top Ten
01 SKYFALL $87.8 *NEW*
02 WRECK-IT RALPH $33 (cum. $93.6)
03 FLIGHT $15.1 (cum. $47.7)
04 ARGO $6.7 (cum. $85.7)
05 TAKEN 2 $4 *NEW* (cum $131.2)
06 HERE COMES THE BOOM $2.5 (cum. $39)
07 CLOUD ATLAS $2.5 (cum. $22.7)
08 PITCH PERFECT $2.5 (cum $59)
09 THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS $2.4 (cum $12.7)
10 HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA $2.3 (cum $140.9)
Pitch Perfect just keeps humming, huh? Flight and Argo are benefiting from Oscar buzz and word of mouth and both are going to enjoy long runs. Which movies did you see this weekend? I went to Holy Motors and Lincoln (which opens wide next week but earned almost a million from very limited screens this weekend). More on both soon.
Skyfall, box office
Reader Comments (23)
I saw Dans la maison. I think you'll love it.
Saw AMOUR, BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD and WRECK-IT RALPH. Loved all three of them, surprisingly my favorite is the animated one.
Caught THE MASTER which finally opened in Aus. I very much enjoyed the performances and thought the material about cults was fascinating. PSH was particularly commanding. I thought JP was all tics and mannerisms at first, but then was completely sold by his commitment to the role. Great to AA playing steely - I wanted more of her!
I'd gotten the impression from early reviews that it was a very complex film and the kind of film you'd need to see more than once to fully comprehend. I thought it was quite straightforward in terms of themes and plot, though lots to chew on and discuss afterwards. But I admired more than loved it, so I couldn't really imagine sitting through it again.
I watched Wreck-It Ralph again. It was even more enjoyable the second time around because I don't have to worry about the plot that I can really take in everything Disney's done to build that world. I even enjoyed Paperman a lot more too.
Two villains? Which two? In the world of James Bond, one usually distinguishes between main villain and right-hand man, the former being frequently refered to simply as the villain and the latter as the henchman (even though almost all Bond villains usually have many other henchmen beyond the right-hand man). Whatever, there already were movies with two main villains, but when it comes to Skyfall, then Silva is the villain and Patrice is the henchman. Unless of course, "two villains" refers refers to the producers, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. Then we've got two indeed.
Argo.
Loved it.
"Unless of course, "two villains" refers to the producers, Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. Then we've got two indeed."
Haha, I liked it. :P It's true. Bond is dead and never was as dead as this year (he may earn a lot of money but he's no longer as cool as he was for the last 50 years - and that's the result of B. Broccoli's and M. G. Wilson's decisions to "humanize" him too much).
willy -- my goodness nitpicking! it's true. I'm referring to one villain and two henchmen.
someone -- i so disagree. Daniel Craig is so great as Bond and he's hardly so humanized that we know that much about him. Besides each generation makes adjustments to fit iconic characters to their needs
Steve, sitting through The Master was quite the ordeal. For me, it was a pretentious borefest that traded characterization, narrative and storytelling for ponderous, mind-numbing self-importance. An unqualified disaster for Anderson.
Finally got to see Cloud Atlas. There are parts of it that are utterly average, but there were sequences (MANY of them) where the various storylines really came together that were the most thrilling pieces of filmmaking I've seen all year, and maybe even going back so far as Avatar. Things I was not expecting: A huge emotional payoff near the end, how queer the whole thing was, and Hugh Grant giving Matthew McConaughey a run for his money in the "re-inventing himself as talented character actor" sweepstakes. I didn't even check my watch until about ten minutes from the end, and my man said he happily would have sat through as much as an hour more (and he usually hates anything over two hours). I wouldn't call it a great film by any stretch (a bit too uneven for that), but if more mega-budget Hollywood spectacle had half this much vision and bravery, the world would be a much better place.
Nat: Exactly. Batman is malleable (films have run the gamut from Batman & Robin at the goofiest end to The Dark Knight at the most serious). James Bond is malleable (Moonraker or Die Another Day at the goofy end, Casino Royale at the most serious). Jason Bourne is not malleable. Superman is not malleable. (I hate that the next Superman adaptation is going to be stuffed with Nolanisms, frankly. I also wonder what's the point if they're not going to adapt new villains. Where's Braniac? Mongul? Bizarro? Mr. Mxyzptlk? Livewire? Parasite? All good choices. Only ONE has ties to Krypton and NONE have Luthor as an aspect of their comic book origin. (On Livewire, though, her original, animated series origin is MUCH more interesting. Animated Series: A shock jock who thinks Superman is one big fraud, gets hit by the aftershock of lightning that struck Superman, turning her into a being made of electricity. In the comic: Has the same job...and slight lightning control powers. She gets angry after getting fired, heads to the radio station rooftop and absorbs a lightning bolt. In the animated series origin, she has an actual reason to hate Superman beyond thinking he's a fake. He turned her into a Drej, after all. In the comic, it sounds like she starts out as an irrational and uninteresting ball of hatred.)
I was going to post something about seeing Cloud Atlas this weekend, but denny already articulate much of what I was going to say. I'm glad I read the book first as I probably would have been kind of lost (especially with the sequences set far in the future with a new, not-quite-English language) and some things didn't work, but overall it was entertaining, surprisingly moving and I didn't even get tired of Tom Hanks! (I'm not anti-Hanks, but I was worried I was going to be after spending almost 3 hours with him.)
I'm just grateful that we live in a world where David Mitchell was able to get his ambitious novel published and there are enough people in Hollywood who managed to adapt it into this movie. Give me a flawed explosion of creativity over mediocre safe choices any day.
I saw Flight. Really interesting film. This isn't Zemeckis' flashiest film, but given the flaws in the script I think its actually one of his more impressive efforts - thanks also in large part to Denzel's outstanding performance. Between the two of them they just barely make the script's weak dialogue, saggy second act, wild tonal swings and half assed pseudo-redemptive ending work.
Roark, you read my mind. Just saw Flight, and I think your remarks are spot-on. Without Denzel's remarkable expressiveness, the film would crash, pardon the pun.
I ended up seeing a film called STARRY STARRY NIGHT as apart of the SD Asian Film Festival's closing night (since REMINGTON AND THE CURSE OF THE ZOMBADINGS sold out) and I really enjoyed it. Such a great film about loneliness and love.
I think I'd rank it as my favorite out of the films I saw at the festival, followed by I AM A GHOST and then ACE ATTORNEY.
Roark, you read my mind. Just saw Flight, and your remarks are spot-on. The film is very flawed for the reasons you mention, but I think it's Denzel's expressive, intense performance that holds the film together.
Nat, you're not the right one to criticize other people for nitpicking. Personally, I'm not even sure if there is such a thing as nitpicking, cause I firmly believe that we always should look as closely as possible. Additionally, you can't expect us all to go the Deborah route of suddenly acting as if we'd never seen a Bond film before. For that reason, I'd like to mention that I'm not criticizing the humanization thing - which feels more like kitchen sink psychology to me anyway - but the removal and/or "reinvention" of exactly the elements that have made Bond to Bond for decades. We're not talking about "adjustments" here, we're talking about the Wilson-Broccoli-Craig triumvirate's systematic attempt to turn the exception into the rule. You might love Craig as Bond, but he's a major - and rather obvious - departure from what the filmmakers themselves have established as Bond and what has made me a fan in the first place. Be that as it may, the true crime for me is indeed the direction of the change. When I take a look at the Craig trilogy, then it instantly reminds me of the old Raimi-Maguire Spider-Man trilogy and the Nolan Batman films: the heroes just can't stop finding themselves. But what might be acceptable for Batman and not so much for Spider-Man unfortunately wreaks havoc on Bond, at least as far as I'm concerned and particularly since it also affects virtually every other element of the Bond formula.
I saw "Flight" which yes is a good Oscar bait vehicle for Denzel but can not survive the shaky script- it never recovers from the exciting crash sequence- (SPOILER ALERTS) a lot of scenes lead no where- what was the point of the visit to the porno shoot?! The Goodman character seemed to cartoonish .
Finally saw Argo and loved it.
Saw Holy Motors at AFI Fest. I see how critics like it, it has every movie inside of it.
Willy -- it's true. I myself am a nitpicker so you got me there. But I do find it strange that you insist on believing that everyone who likes the Daniel Craig Bond movies has no memory or respect for the Bond formula when many of those same people quite obviously do. with all due respect I've met no one in my life that knows the Bond films as well as Deborah. for instance but you also think she doesn't know them. Could it simply be that the new films don't work for you and you've extrapolated that into "everyone else is crazy?" 'To each their own' is a much easier and saner position to defend. And beyond near universal love for Sean Connery don't opinions vary wildly on the Bond franchise's many iterations?
All that nitpicking behind me, I do readily and sadly agree with you that Nolan's Batman and the self seriousness of modern franchises is a problem and I said as much in my review... an agreement between us that you seem to have entirely and weirdly missed when reading it.
Jaragon -- the porn shoot is just that self conscious naughtiness i was talking about in the review. Skyfall has that problem with having too many disparate films inside of it. Focus, Zemeckis, focus! It loses its way when Denzel isn't controlling it.
nathaniel - Craig is great, that's true, but it would be awesome if he was more of a character that people loved for the half of the century than this James Bond of the new era that doesn't give a damn about the kind of martini he is drinking.
To be honest I prefer to rewatch Connery's, Moore's or Brosnan's Bonds for the 100th time than Craig's Bond's for the 5th time. Simply the older parts (not all, obviously, but the great majority of them) were (much) more fun.
I do believe that Deborah knows the films and I even like Casino Royale, but I honestly don't understand why almost everyone feels the need to link the Bond formula to the Craig films. People who insist that the Craig movies would work within the confines of the formula can be shown up with ease, and that's why Deborah's review upset me so much more than yours. She should know it better. Skyfall may be many things, but it's certainly not "Bond is back".
I did notice your point about self-seriousness and I generally agree with it, but in the case of a Craig Bond, I'd probably say that it's the correct decision to tone the humor down, because, well, you know, the quips don't come too easily to Daniel.