Box Office: Rise of the Change-Up of the Apes

The relaunch or prequel or whatever you'd like to call it to the 43 year old Planet of the Apes franchise was buoyed by... well, we're not sure what it was buoyed by exactly. The film is unexpectly good but given that neither reviews nor "quality" generally factor in to first weekend grosses, it must be the familiar brand appeal. Perhaps enough time has passed since Tim Burton's awful remake that people were interested again? Expect the prequel to hold really well next weekend. Second weekends are when quality or perceptions thereof are much more influential. Word of Mouth, you know. I'll demonstrate: Go see it!

box office top ten (actual grosses)
01 RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES new $54.8
02 THE SMURFS $20.7 (cum $75.9)
03 COWBOYS AND ALIENS $15.7 (cum $67.3)
04 THE CHANGE-UP new $13.5
05 CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER [review] $13 (cumulative $143.2)
06 HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART TWO [review] $12.4 (cum $343)
07 CRAZY STUPID LOVE [your take]  $12 (cum $42.1)
08 FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS $4.6 (cum $48.5)
09 HORRIBLE BOSSES $4.5 (cum $105.1)
10 TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON $3 (cum $344.2)

Discussables: The Smurfs held fairly well reminding us once again that parents just don't read reviews and leave it up to the kids. That 56% drop for Cowboys & Aliens, though not uncommon for a film's second week, is not good news for a film that was supposed to be a very big deal this summer. The huge budget, nearly double the size of say Planet of the Ape's is more weight on its shoulders. (Here's some theorizing on what went wrong.) Crazy Stupid Love had the best legs of the top ten, barely taking a hit with only a 35% drop. In other words: people like the film. Ryan Reynolds continues to have a lackluster summer. Green Lantern underperformed and The Change-Up wasn't really packing them in either on opening weekend. That said, those two openings are still better than what he usually gets out of the gate, when it's his name as the principal draw. Not that he's actually been the principle player all that often. Time for a reteaming with Sandra Bullock, right?

Among this week's limited release big market happenings transgendered drama Gun Hill Road had the fullest houses with the reportedly epically misogynistic Bellflower just behind. Miranda July's The Future and Dominic Cooper objectification-fest The Devil's Double both added several theaters to their count. Are they open near you? I don't know why I haven't seen them yet but I keep falling further and further behind. Must spend entire day in theater soon.

What did you see this weekend?

Take Three: Judy Davis

Craig here, from Dark Eye Socket, with Take Three. Today: Judy Davis

Judy Davis as "Joan Lee" and Judy Davis as "Joan Frost" in NAKED LUNCH

Take One: Naked Lunch (1991)
The early nineties were extra literary times for Davis. She appeared in an adaptation of E.M. Forster’s Where Angels Fear to Tread, played novelist George Sand in Impromptu, supported John Mahoney’s Faulkner-esque Southern writer in Barton Fink and performed dual role duties in David Cronenberg’s controversial adaptation of William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. Initially, as Joan Lee, she instigates a curious urgency within Peter Weller’s Burroughs avatar William Lee. She gets a “very literary high – a Kafka high” in a 1950s NY flophouse by injecting bug powder into her right boob. As you do. Then, as Joan Frost, the wife of eloping novelist Ian Holm, she flits and flirts around a North African port town, futilely arousing Weller to stray from his budding homosexual leanings.

Davis’ roles could be entirely different entities or the very same woman or some weirdly unfeasible concoction of both. The sarcastic boredom she expresses as junk-plugged Joan #1 couldn’t be further from the deliciously fruity joie de vivre she exudes as Joan #2; the ever-present look on this Joan’s face suggests she’s either just remembered or recently repeated a particularly saucy joke  -- maybe the kind of thing she feverishly typed in Arabic on her bug-morphed, Burroughs-voiced typewrite? She's all darting eyes and red-lipped pouting under falsely prim attire. Davis lets slip enough sly telling hints that she knows who she is and isn’t playing: do we want one Joan or two? she’s inferring. Whether she’s fingering a fleshy writing implement, re-enacting her doomed part in one of two “William Tell routines” or taking notes on some Interzone agents “feeding” from a mass of strung-up jism-dispensing mugwumps (as you do), Davis yields exemplary acting and exterminates all rational thought.

Take Two: The Ref (1994)
Her comic work doesn’t always get the acclaim it deserves but when she broadens her comic scope even slightly, it’s a treat. 

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Ask Nathaniel...

I await your questions in the comments for a future Q&A post. I am one w' my internetz. 

we're going to need a bigger link.

La Daily Musto Jane Fonda aging like fine wine. Damn, girl! (Now if only someone in the movies would write her a rich role again.)
Boston Globe Wesley Morris notates that sex has left the Hollywood movie, even in a movie about a sexaholic (Crazy Stupid Love). He blames Harry & Sally and that time that they met.
Vogue Italia has a four minute video reel with Ludivine Sagnier, looking luscious as usual.
Acidemic on Marlon Brando as a tortured homo in Reflections of a Golden Eye (1967)
Socialite Life Maddox Jolie-Pitt is 10 years old already. Christ, time is flying by. The family celebrated with "Wicked" the musical.
Just Jared Nicole Kidman and Matthew McConaughey on the set of Paperboy.
IndieWire surveys the up and comers in indie film for 2011 

Finally... have you seen this Peanuts/Jaws mashup?

Ryan Murphy's "Normal Heart"

Looks like it'll be television giant Ryan Murphy (Nip/Tuck, Glee) in the directing chair for the first film version of Larry Kramer's AIDS drama The Normal Heart. That righteously angry 80s play, which has long flummoxed would be adapters (most famously Barbra Streisand), was all the rage on Broadway this past season during its revival (I was less impressed than most but boy did the Tonys love it).

According to Playbill Murphy is planning on going with Mark Ruffalo in the lead role of Ned Weeks and wants his Eat Pray Love diva Julia Roberts in the awards-magnet supporting part of "Doctor Death". That part won Ellen Barkin the Tony and throat pains (we're guessing. It's very shouty!) but apparently not enough renewed career heat to get her an offer for the film version. Between this role and "Barbara" the eldest daughter in August: Osage County Julia seems to cornered the market on famously angry/exhausted stage-to-screen female roles. 

But before we scream "Oscars all around in February 2013!", it's wise to remember (always) that that stage-to-screen teleportation magic is an eternally difficult trick to master. Murphy is enjoying great success with Glee but both of his films thus far, Eat Pray Love (2010) or Running With Scissors (2006), have had mixed results critically and at the box office. One of the dangers of success is that artists get spread very thin and that could obviously be a problem here with Glee still going strong despite its own occasional  "spread to thin" feel.

on the set of Eat Pray Love

But we wish him good luck. He was once the president of a Meryl Streep fan club ferchrissakes. And though I couldn't find the copy that interview that Playbill is quoting he supposedly recently expressed regret that he had to turn down writing the Annie remake meant for Willow Smith, saying: 

So now she's got Emma Thompson who is 50 million times better than me. LOVE HER.

So, see? Murphy really loves actresses and musicals. The Film Experience officially has no choice but to root for him.