Box Office Notes: Pacific Rim & Sandra Bullock

giant fucking robots, the multi-franchise franchiseThis week's box office results are an example of why we can't have nice things. The top two films are both sequels. Audiences didn't get super worked up about the "original" opener, Guillermo del Toro's monster movie Pacific Rim. Yet the people decrying the general moviegoing public for "rejecting originality" -- a claim I keep hearing on twitter and on blogs -- have failed to admit that Pacific Rim looks JUST like Transformers Meets Godzilla in its advertisements. Which is not, you know a hallmark of the truly original, to look like a mashup of two excessively familiar things. Now, before I'm stomped by giant metallic or clawed kaiju feet, please note that though I haven't seen it I'm sure that Pacific Rim doesn't play like a Transformers sequel since one can't really mistake the filmmaking style of del Toro for Michael Bayisms. But audiences don't buy tickets based on how a movie is but how its perceived to be.

This wasn't a rejection of true originality. It was just a third place finish indicating half-interest in something that looked familiar but didn't sound familiar. Maybe they should have just called it Pacific Rim 2? Wouldn't it be awesome if some new franchise hopeful did just that, skipping the first film and testing the public's Pavlovian response to titles that end in numerals?

TOP O' THE CHARTS
01 DESPICABLE ME 2 $44.7 (cum. $229.2)
02 GROWN UPS 2 $42.5 *NEW*
03 PACIFIC RIM $38.3 *NEW*
04 THE HEAT $14 (cum. $112.3) Review
05 THE LONE RANGER $11.1 (cum. $71.1) Review

Of Note:  Fruitvale Station, which eerily opened on the weekend of the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin fiasco, opened to a big per screen averages but given the timid amount of screens it didn't make the top fifteen of the box office. If they're aggressive in expansion you'll undoubtedly see a lot of editorial attention in the media.

And Finally...
We'd just like to say "congratulations" to Sandra Bullock who has her umpteenth $100 million hit with The Heat. No, she didn't deserve an Oscar to commemorate her career but applause she does deserve in an industry that's notoriously resistant to appreciating its actresses. You have to hand it to her: she's been a draw for 20 years now and that's true staying power. Here, courtesy of box office mojo are her biggest hits (adjusted for inflation)

SANDRA'S TOP TEN
01 THE BLIND SIDE (2009) $264 
02 SPEED (1994) $230
03 A TIME TO KILL (1996) $195
04 THE PROPOSAL (2009) $174 
05 MISS CONGENIALITY (2000) $151 
06 WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING (1995) $147 
07 TWO WEEKS NOTICE (2002)  $124 
08 * new entry * THE HEAT (2013)  $112
09 DEMOLITION MAN (1993) $111 
10 HOPE FLOATS (1998) $101

What did you spend your money on this weekend?

Let us now praise Japanese monsters

Hi everybody, it’s Tim, using the impending release of Pacific Rim as a bald-faced excuse to talk about one of the greatest guilty pleasures in the whole of cinema: THE GIANT MONSTER MOVIE.

Guillermo del Toro’s extravagant, costly tentpole picture is, of course, a well-publicized love letter to the Japanese genre known as kaiju eiga: the giant monster movies born from the iconic 1954 Godzilla. These quickly descended from the relative sincerity and social messaging of that film (or the contemporaneous American production Them!) into trashy action films that further descended into silly matinee pictures, borne on the wings of the legendarily awful Baby Godzilla, and his soullessly googly eyes. [more...]

Click to read more ...

The Link Is Not Yet Rated

Vulture features a fascinating memoir about a troubled 70s childhood and the not-optimistic catharsis of TV's 70s superhero show The Incredible Hulk
Awards Daily Sasha never misses a beat with director David Fincher and his new muse Rooney Mara. Have you seen their Calvin Klein ad? What's most shocking about the ad (to me) is that Rooney SMILES in it. Can you imagine? Not the smiling sort at the cinema, you know.
Variety Halle Berry developing an indie comedy called Mother. Her frequent producer is directing but his filmography is suspect!

Zap2It "Giant Colin Firth statue emerges from lake in London's Hyde Park" a most clickable headline, don't you agree?
Awards Circuit wonders where we're not looking for Oscar contenders for this year's race. Any under the radar guesses?
Salon's description of US Weekly in this article about their "zoom-in" interactivity with paparazzi photos of Angelina Jolie's cleavage made me LOL
My New Plaid Pants "do, dump or marry" with the men of Pacific Rim: Idris Elba, Charlie Hunnan and Rob Kazinsky
Salon speaks about and to Guillermo del Toro as Pacific Rim, his first film in 5 years if you can believe it given how ubiquitous his name has been in that time frame, nears release

Finally have you heard that Los Angeles banned this Project Runway ad from appearing on billboards? I don't get it.

This nudity is so safe. This is only side cheek nudity. The models aren't even in sexually suggestive poses. But hey, Project Runway has got to do something to get people talking now that it's 12 seasons old. (I hated "TEAMS" so much, I can't even. It really turned me against the show). I think this would have been a much braver funnier and more successful ad if they had all of the new contestants naked and worshipping the hosts. It would have also been more controversial since imperfect regular-person bodies really alarm people. Partially because you don't see them in the media very often. But, tell me, why was this ad banned? I've seen much worse on public display. I didn't even feel the need to hide it "after the jump". But sex, like violence, is a terribly inconsistent thing when it comes to public policy and censorship. TV has adopted film's extremely forgiving and casual relationship with violence now (they'll regularly show things you couldn't see in an anything other than an R rated movie just a couple of decades ago) and I can't any longer get a hold on what you can or can't say in terms of profanity on the small screen. But sex -- it's always sex -- still manages to get people flustered and "that's obscene!" even when it isn't. A few nights ago while channel surfing I chanced upon some sort of reality show wherein the contestants were dropped naked onto deserted islands - like an "Extreme!" riff on Survivor. They even had "Naked"  in the title. And the nakedness was blurred out.