News & Notes Inside the Week in Film

Putting the Hurt On

The Green Zone and The Hurt Locker are in an unusual semantic battle; the more financially successful of the two is the one that Hollywood views as a flop.  Something isn’t right here.

by Chris Neumer

The first trailer for director Kathryn Bigelow’s latest project, Zero Dark Thirty, was released recently.  While reading some stories about the movie and Bigelow’s work on it I began to notice an interesting trend: The Hurt Locker was often mentioned in conjunction/comparison with director Paul Greengrass’s Green Zone.  Insomuch as both projects are about the Iraq War, it made some sense.  However, what stood out was the fact that The Hurt Locker was commonly spoken of and written about as if it were a huge box office hit and Green Zone was a completely and total flop.

I found this quite interesting because, in spite of The Hurt Locker’s immense critical acclaim and near sweep of awards season statues, it only grossed $14.7 million at the box office.  It was, as many commentators pointed out, the smallest grossing Best Picture winner ever.  Nonetheless, The Hurt Locker has been trumpeted as an enormous success.

Greengrass’s Green Zone pulled in $14.5 million it’s first weekend at the box office on its way to a $35 million haul.  Nonetheless, it has been hailed as an enormous flop.

It’s a weird distinction for me.  Yes, the budget of Green Zone was substantially higher than that of The Hurt Locker and it did open in considerably more theaters too, but Green Zone also opened in March, an historically awful time to release films, while The Hurt Locker opened in June.  Green Zone also made more money in three days—on a non-holiday weekend in March, mind you—than the Academy Award winning The Hurt Locker did in 185.

To me, that’s a fairly admirable statistic, particularly for a film like Green Zone that is more about intelligence than action and more interested in asking tough questions about a flawed war strategy than glamorizing its on-screen violence.

Maybe I’m tired, maybe I’m looking at this from the wrong perspective, but it’s hard to see how Green Zone can be talked of as the new Ishtar when it’s a pretty solid bit of filmmaking that has well out-performed every other film in its genre.

Universal can’t be happy with the fact that they signed off on Green Zone’s $100+ million budget, but to call Greengrass’ movie a flop seems extremely short-sighted to say the least.  More to the point, why are more people not up in arms that The Hurt Locker won a Best Picture Oscar and earned roughly half as much as Ernest Goes to Jail?

 

The Question of the Month

Can police commandeer vehicles when chasing a suspect?

by Chris Neumer

THE QUESTION: Can police and federal agents really commandeer vehicles the way they do in the movies?  It seems reasonable if you’re chasing after a criminal and crash your car but with as litigious of a society as we live in, I can’t believe someone hasn’t sued the pants off a police department for this yet.
– Vincent R. via e-mail

THE ANSWER: We’ve all seen it on screen dozens of times. A cop, in hot pursuit of his main suspect, steps into oncoming traffic, stops a car, flashes his badge and informs the driver of said car that he needs to commander the vehicle. Harrison Ford did it with a bike in Hollywood Homicide; Leslie Nielsen memorably did it with a student driver in The Naked Gun; Kiefer Sutherland did it once or twice a week in 24. But what is the legal status of that maneuver?

Prior to doing any kind of research on this matter, I would have thought that the answer was resoundingly in the negative; this would merely be another in a long line of Hollywood police practices that don’t come close to existing in the real world. However, the exact opposite turned out to be true… yet another reason why actually doing the leg work is still necessary.

After placing a few phone calls, I finally spoke with Pat Camden, the closest thing that the Chicago Police Department has to a press officer. He laughed at the question and said, “It’s hypothetically possible, but probably more Hollywood than reality.” At first I thought this was a ‘no’. Then Camden qualified his comment and I realized that it was, in fact, a ‘yes’.

The biggest issue about a member of the police force or FBI commandeering a vehicle is the liability of the situation, since the municipality (or government) would have to pay for any damage to the commandeered vehicle and, possibly, caused by it as well. “If you’re trying to catch a person who has just killed fifteen people and is escaping, the liability in case of damage might be more justifiable,” Camden said in way of closing.

Next, I spoke to the Felony Review Attorney in the State Attorney’s Office, Fabio Valentini. Valentini agreed with Camden’s assessment of the matter. He also noted that during his thirteen year tenure at the State Attorney’s Office had never seen or heard of anyone commandeering a vehicle. Valentini did raise another good point though: “Even if the citizen/vehicle owner voluntarily and/or readily loans their car for police use,” he began, “there is still the chance that they might sue [the police] for damages caused.”

I then called an old friend and attorney who specializes in automobile related issues, Michael Demo. Demo pondered Valentini’s last statement and said, “Standard negligence would still apply to the situation… Although it makes sense that the criminal should be liable for damages caused during his apprehension.” Demo went on to say that he didn’t believe that there was any kind of legal precedent for this scenario.

So, technically, the police can commandeer vehicles whenever they damn well choose. It is a legal course of action for them. However, they rarely if ever pursue this option because of the months and possibly years of legal headaches, paperwork and insurance issues that they’d have to deal with once the chase has concluded.  And that’s something I can believe to be true.

If you have any questions you want answered, email Chris Neumer at chris@stumpedmagazine.com

 

This Week In: Wait, This is News?

John Legend has the Flu, courtesy of E! Online

by Chris Neumer

With print advertising dollars down and online revenues up, the quickest way for a publication to get more ad views and, thus, more money, is to offer as many stories as humanly possible to their readers.  The best way to legally accomplish this is to write about non-news stories as if it were actually news.  Here, we highlight the best of these non-news stories from around the web:

Singer John Legend had the flu this week.  After flying to New York City on an international flight, Legend didn’t feel so well, so he went to the hospital to get checked out.  Now he’s fine.

Keep your fingers crossed, maybe next week Brad Pitt will have a cold.

And thus concludes this week in: “Wait, This is News?”

 

The Photo of the Week

Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay

 

The 5 Things I Learned This Week

Fascinatingly true things to broaden your mind

 

1) There is a mainstream DVD review site called www.dvdbeaver.com

2) Patrick Ewing played his prep school basketball in Boston.

3) There is such a thing as ‘organ fat’ as well as ‘skeletal fat’

4) When I press the ‘mute’ button on my new car radio, the volume goes down to “2”.

5) The Chinese version of Twitter is called “Sina”.

 

 

This Week’s Stories

New Releases

Breathless

THE PLAYERS: Starring Gina Gershon, Ray Liotta, and Val Kilmer; written and directed by Jesse Baget.  Released by Anchor Bay. Rated R.

THE PLOT: A trailer park wife (Gina Gerhson) gets in way over her head when she accidentally kills her husband (Val Kilmer) and tries to hide his body and illegally obtained money from the authorities.

THE SKINNY:
– Val Kilmer has had an interesting career.  And by ‘interesting’, I mean kind of weird.  And not in a good way.  Kilmer started out incredibly hot as Iceman in Top Gun.  He continued that with a streak of a dozen years as a legitimate leading man; he was even tabbed as Batman once!  Since about 1997 though, Kilmer has done nothing but gain weight and appear in low-budget trash, with the one notable exception of Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang.  Sadly, Breathless is not a second divergence from this path.
– As an indie crime movie featuring Gina Gershon and Kilmer, this film really feels like something that should have been made in, well, 1995.  Somehow it’s surprising that Treat Williams wasn’t involved in some way.
– There is no cinematic convention that bothers me more than the accidental killing that isn’t reported to the police.  I’d rather listen to the music of Korn than hear a character attempt to explain that he can’t call the cops because they’ll think he had something to do with it.  CSIs on, uh, CSI can tell whether the tears you’re crying are because your sad or not… and you’re worried that a genuine accident will look like murder?  Gah!

YES, IT’S TRUE: The best way to dispose of a body is to shave it’s head, pull out it’s teeth, grind it into small pieces, and feed it to 16 or more hungry pigs. (Source:  Brick Top from Snatch).

Hick

THE PLAYERS: Starring Chloe Grace Moretz, Blake Lively, and Rory Culkin; written by Andrea Portes; directed by Derick Martini. Released by Phase 4 Films. Rated R.

THE PLOT: A Nebraska teenager finds trouble when she sets out for Las Vegas.  Thankfully, she packed a revolver.

THE SKINNY:
+ At first, some people were offended by this film’s title… then they realized it involved guns, pickup trucks and underaged women.
+ Star Chloe Grace Moretz is quickly turning into the kind of on-screen ass-kicker that The Hunger Games’ Jennifer Lawrence dreams of.  Moretz turned (and chopped off) heads in Kick-Ass and does more of the same here.  She’s like the anti-Sandusky.
+ While writing this Skinny, I just came up with a great idea for a movie: a group of abused boys team together to start attacking pedophiles.  Think Dexter meets Ocean’s Eleven, in high school…
+ Holy shit!  A Culkin is still working?  Say hello to Rory Culkin.
+ With Juliette Lewis, Alec Baldwin and Blake Lively providing support for Moretz, Hick has an absolutely outstanding cast.  So good, as a matter of fact, it kind of makes me wonder whether Hick’s director, Derick Martini, has some incriminating photos of them.

YES, IT’S TRUE: The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word hick as ‘an unsophisticated provincial person’.  The first known usage was in 1669.  Some synonyms include bumpkin, chawbacon, churl, clodhopper, cornball, countryman, hayseed, hillbilly, provincial, rube, rustic, and yokel.

The Hunger Games

THE PLAYERS: Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, and Liam Hemsworth; written by Gary Ross, Suzanne Collins, and Billy Ray; directed by Gary Ross. Released by Lionsgate.  Rated PG-13.

THE PLOT: Set in a future America where the Capitol is supreme, young children are chosen to represent their respective districts in fights to the death on live television.

THE SKINNY:
+ At this point in time, I’m willing to support any movie that gets kids to stop talking about Twilight.
– I don’t know why, but I have had a thorough and complete ass full of any and all Hemsworths.
– Teenaged Running Man?  Sure…  And for coming up with this particular idea, author Suzanne Collins has more money than Sean Combs, Alfonso Soriano and Donald Trump combined.
+ When the kids in The Hunger Games explain that they’ll die if something happens or that someone is killing them, they’re not being melodramatic.
+ Director Gary Ross is the Daniel Day-Lewis of the behind-the-camera set.  He has made three films in the last 15 years: Pleasantville, Seabiscuit and The Hunger Games.  You’re going to have a tough time finding a better trio of films than that.

YES, IT’S TRUE: The oldest known arrowheads date to about 64,000 years ago in South Africa; the oldest bows were discovered in Denmark and date to 9,000 BCE.

Sophie and Sheba

THE PLAYERS:  Starring Brittany Bristow, Erica Durance, and Thure Riefenstein; written by Djordie Milicevic and Leif Bristow; directed by Leif Bristow.  Released by Screen Media Films.  Rated PG.

THE PLOT: Raised in a zoo, a young girl gives up her dream of becoming a ballerina to rescue the elephant her parents sold to pay for her ballet school.

THE SKINNY:
– William Sydney Porter accomplished the same concept in a quarter of the time when he wrote The Gift of the Magi.
+ You can pick this movie up along with director Gus Van Sant’s Elephant for a lovely family double feature.
– The above plus is categorically untrue.
+ Writing about this movie gives us a reason to link to great youtube clips like this: Cute Baby Elephant’s First Steps.
+ Allows for us to make jokes like this:
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Brittany Bristow.
Brittany Bristow who?
– Seriously, this movie is terrible.

YES, IT’S TRUE: Elephants spend about 16 hours a day eating and can consume up to 495 pounds of food in a day.

The New Releases were written by Chris Neumer and Kevin Withers