News & Notes Inside the Week in Film

You Just Can’t See These Things Coming: The Lindsay Lohan Hooker Edition

Lindsay Lohan is now dabbling as a high-class escort.  Seriously.

by Chris Neumer

I suppose it was inevitable that allegations of actress Lindsay Lohan dabbling in escorting would come out; frankly, a part of me is surprised that they haven’t surfaced sooner.  And, of course, when the escorting allegations did arrive, it shouldn’t have surprised anyone that they came courtesy of one of Lohan’s family members (ahem, her dad, Michael).  When Star Magazine reported this information, I nodded and realized that, sadly, it followed the Lohan trajectory of the last eight years to a ‘T’.  Just when you think that there’s no way Lohan can get any lower, she somehow manages to find a way.  I’m not sure how much further she can sink though, because, let’s be honest here, even doing porn could arguably be a step up for her at this point in time.

Star quotes Lohan’s father as stating that Lindsay is “getting paid to date rich men.  [Her mother] is pimping her out.  It’s disgusting.”

The elder Lohan quickly denied making the above statement… and in denying it, made a pretty convincing case that he had, in fact, made the very statement that he was denying making.  Michael Lohan spoke to TMZ and said, “By absolutely no means did I ever make such a statement, ever.  Sure, Lindsay… [makes] personal appearances and [gets] paid for it!  Sure, she… [gets] paid to go to birthday parties and other occasions.  But for sex?  Are you kidding me?  I would never say that.”

In this one paragraph response, Michael Lohan has shined an interesting light on a field that probably isn’t interested in having any type of light shined upon it: paid celebrity personal appearances.

It would come a quite a shock to many Americans to learn about how much money big name Hollywood celebrities receive for A) making foreign commercials and B) doing personal appearances.

In the case of the former, George Clooney has reportedly pulled in more than $10 million over the last few years as a spokesman for Nespresso.  Leonardo DiCaprio got $5 million for shooting a single, two-minute long cell phone commercial for Oppo (that was then broken into many small pieces).  If you’re curious why you haven’t seen these commercials in America (or what the hell Nespresso or Oppo are), it’s because the commercials (and companies) are foreign and the actors in question put clauses into their contracts that the ads not be shown in the United States.  And to say that the actors are serious about this is something of an understatement.  DiCaprio went so far as to send a cease-and-desist letter to websites that uploaded his commercials.

In the case of the latter, celebrities often make great keynote speakers where they deliver prepared remarks for 20 minutes or so… for up to $250,000 a pop.  The Kardashians pull in about $125,000 for simply showing up at different events; Charlie Sheen is reported to get $250,000 for the same thing.  (The real money in these situations goes to musicians.  Beyonce got about $2 million for a private concert and, not to be outdone, Mariah Carey once performed four songs for an even million dollars).

What Lohan seems to have done with her latest attempt to crawl out of financial distress is to blur the lines between a personal appearance and a date.  For $100,000 she’ll make a personal appearance… for one wealthy man.  This is, when you think about it, exactly the type of thing an escort would say to convince someone that she isn’t a prostitute.  I’d argue that the only thing separating Lohan from this is that she has yet to say, “He’s just paying me for my time.  Anything else that happens is just between two consenting adults!”   However, even that line of reasoning fell apart when I realized that this is precisely what her father had gone on record as saying in his clarification.  Sure Lindsay gets paid to go out with these guys, but she’s not getting paid to have sex with them!

The most entertaining part of the entire saga comes courtesy of one of Lohan’s friends.  Said anonymous friend is quoted by the Star as stating, “[Lindsay is] totally broke and in serious debt.  No one will hire her.  Being an escort is just an easy way for her to stay above water.  She says she’s an actress and won’t turn down getting paid good money to act a certain way.”

Yup, not only does Lohan look at escorting as an acting gig, but she’s given tens of thousands of hookers out there a perfect out: “I’m not a prostitute!  I’m just researching a part!”

Oh, Lindsay Lohan, what will you come up with next?

 

And You Thought Your Job Had High Standards!

Twentieth Century Fox’s 2012 releases earned 31 Oscar nominations… and they fired the head of their studio.

by Chris Neumer

Twentieth Century Fox had a banner day when the Academy Award nominations were announced.  Its films received a whopping 31 nominations.  This was far and away the most nominations that one company received.  Sony Pictures came in second with 24 nominations and, Disney, the Weinstein Company and Universal tied for third most with 17 nominations a piece.

It was a proud day for Fox; 31 nominations is an extremely large number and one that should make the head of the studio who gave the greenlight to the nominated films, watched them throughout their production and then championed the final results extremely happy.  And it probably would if the man in question, Tom Rothman, hadn’t been let go by Fox less than 10 days before the announcements were made.

Rothman was not a loved man in Hollywood or, according to Nikki Finke, at Fox itself.  However, his track record of hits and the 31 Oscar nominations that the studio received for 2012 seem like they might have held some sway… but such was not the case.  Hollywood’s a tough business, that’s for sure.

 

UPDATE ON:
Tomorrow’s News Today

Last week it was reported that the movie Mama nosedived this weekend.  About that…

by Chris Neumer

Last week, I wrote about the way that news outlets are now reporting on things that have yet to happen.  Boxofficemojo.com reported that Jessica Chastain had the numbers of the other actors on Thursday, before any movies had been released and EW.com then reported that the movie Mama had won the three-day weekend box office on Saturday morning.  In the interest of fairness, it should be pointed out that Mama did go on to win the weekend.   What I also found interesting was that in Ew.com’s weekend recap (written well before the weekend was actually over), they reported what Mama would do the next weekend as well.  They wrote: “Mama will nosedive from here.  It may perform in the same range as last October’s Paranormal Activity 4.”  Now that the next weekend has actually happened, I wanted to update the story.

Paranormal Activity 4 opened in October of 2012 with a $29 million weekend take.  Its box office then went on to drop almost 71% in its second weekend to $8.5 million.  Mama opened with a $28.5 million box office and, as ew.com reported before the fact, went on to nosedive, very similarly to Paranormal Activity 4.  Except Mama again defied the pre-reporting, taking in roughly $13 million its second weekend with an overall box office drop of just 54.7%.  That seems pretty much in line with every other non-Oscar nominated picture to open in January.  Broken City dropped 51.4% its second weekend, Gangster Squad 50% and A Haunted House 54.9%.  With every major release seeing its second weekend about half its first weekend, there was nothing unusual about Mama’s second week.  If anything nosedived, it was The Last Stand which saw a drop off of 66.6% from week one to two or Texas Chainsaw 3D which had a whopping drop off of 75.7%.

So, recapping what actually happened: writing a story about the weekend box office before the weekend had ended last weekend, Ew.com concluded Mama took the crown and went on to report that Mama would nosedive the next weekend, which it did not.

When the predictions are wrong and the reporting that’s done anywhere from two to seven days ahead of time is also wrong, maybe, just maybe it’s time to investigate that whole reporting on things that haven’t happened yet.

 

This Week In: How the Hell Is This News?

A teenager visits the ATM…

by Chris Neumer

A member of the boy band, One Direction, hit an ATM this week and took out cash.

 

The Photo of the Week

Steve Carell in Get Smart

 

The 5 Things I Learned This Week

Fascinatingly true things to broaden your mind

 

1) Robert Redford’s first name is actually ‘Charles’. ‘Robert’ is his middle name.

2) Former NBA ref Tim Donaghy is out of jail. Interestingly, I learned this while reading an article about how he is going back into jail.

3) There is an actor named Speed Weed.

4) John Debney wrote the scores for both The Passion of the Christ and Bruce Almighty.

5) Nicolas Sarkozy is 5’5″.

 

 

This Week’s Stories

New Releases

The Awakening

THE PLAYERS: Starring Rebecca Hall, Dominic West, and Imelda Staunton; written by Stephen Volk and Nick Murphy; directed by Nick Murphy. Released by Universal. Rated R.

THE PLOT: A skeptic visits a boarding school to investigate sightings of the ghost of a child.

THE SKINNY:
– Stop me if this plot sounds familiar: a skeptic who makes a point in not believing in ghosts/demons faces a situation where she learns that, gasp, they are real! The Awakening gets bonus points for having this take place in a lonely, old school with creepy housekeepers roaming about. I think I just described everything from The Exorcist to Ghostbusters to The Rite and several in between.
– A number of years ago, I began wondering if/when all combinations of musical notes would be used up and all songs would be copies or unknown remakes of one another. Given the dust up between Coldplay and Joe Satriani over just this issue, the answer was apparently 2004. I am now at a similar point in regards to horror movies: it seems like every horror movie hook, twist or surprise has been used before and the reviews ultimately end up comparing the horror film at hand to the other movies it borrowed elements from. At least they haven’t made a movie about how the ‘delete’ key on someone’s laptop is possessed, though the title Delete and Die with a tagline of “Now YOU are deleted” seems entirely too plausible.
+ The Wire’s Jimmy McNulty (read: actor Dominic West) continues to get some kind of, sort of, not really lead work in film.

YES, IT’S TRUE: Since 1913, this is the tenth film to be titled The Awakening.

The Cold Light of Day

THE PLAYERS: Starring Henry Cavill, Bruce Willis, and Sigourney Weaver; written by Scott Wiper and John Petro; directed by Mabrouk El Mechri. Released by Summit Entertainment. Rated PG-13.

THE PLOT: A man’s family is kidnapped by a criminal organization that is after a briefcase his father took from them.

THE SKINNY:
– No movie shot in this millennium should ever shoot day-for-night. We can tell and we don’t like it.
+ The film’s lead, Henry Cavill, delivers a performance that at times seems stilted, awkward, over-the-top and as though he knows he doesn’t need to be worried because he knows what scene is going to happen next. Why is this a plus? Because it suggests great things for his upcoming performance as Superman in Man of Steel.
– This film’s title is horrible. Is this a movie a period piece about the Coors family’s intent to package their beer in aluminum cans? A movie about a woman with agoraphobia? A movie about a man with a sensitivity to the sun? Nope. It’s about a CIA assassin who goes on vacation with his family and is tracked down by other CIA employees who want a magical briefcase that the assassin stole. Yawn.
– This is the action movie equivalent of The Awakening: you’ve seen every bit of it before and probably done better in other previous movies. High praise indeed.
– STUDIO EXECUTIVE #1: Hey, what if we make a movie like Taken where, instead of taking the daughter, everyone else is taken and we call it Kidnapped?

STUDIO EXECUTIVE #2: That’s terrible! It’s bad enough that everyone is now making movies about CIA operatives whose families have been taken, but to have a movie like that where the lead is just a part of the family and doesn’t have the training or special skills that his father does? I’m sorry that just won’t work. We need to have some integrity.

STUDIO EXECUTIVE #1: What if we don’t call it Kidnapped, but rather The Cold Light of Day?

STUDIO EXECUTIVE #2: Now you’re talking!

YES, IT’S TRUE: Sigourney Weaver’s salary for Alien: Resurrection was more than the entire cost of the original Alien film.

Hotel Transylvania

THE PLAYERS: Starring Adam Sandler, Kevin James, and Andy Samberg; written by Peter Baynham and Robert Smigel; directed by Genndy Tartakovsky. Released by Sony Pictures. Rated PG.

THE PLOT: A boy falls in love with Dracula’s daughter after he inadvertently discovers a hotel meant only for monsters.

THE SKINNY:
– It brings to mind that horrible Eagles song, “Hotel California”. God, do I hate that song. And yes, I’ve had it stuck in my head, complete with the word ‘Transylvania’ in place of ‘California’ for the last ten minutes.
+/- It’s like the mid-90s Saturday Night Live had a cast reunion during the voice casting of this film. Complete with Adam Sandler, Molly Shannon, David Spade, Jon Lovitz, Chris Parnell and Robert Smigel, it’s kind of surprise that Melanie Hutsell wasn’t involved somewhere.
+ Hotel Transylvania is a genuinely sweet story and one that follows the principles of an early Adam Sandler film: it’s warm, occasionally raunchy, funny, has no problem going for the low-hanging comedy fruit and ends with people (or in this case, monsters) learning to be more accepting and loving.
– Andy Samberg is 34 and voices the role of a supposedly naïve 21-year old here. It does not work. With Selena Gomez voicing the role of the (legal) teen here, it seems like a pairing with another former Disney star might have done better and attracted a bigger audience for the film.
+ On the other side of things, Sandler does a delightful job as the voice of Dracula. It seems like it’d be a hard feat to make the character of Dracula likeable and relatable, but Sandler proves to be up to the task.

YES, IT’S TRUE: In Latin, Transylvania literally translates to “beyond the wood.”

Seven Psychopaths

THE PLAYERS: Starring Colin Farrell, Christopher Walken, and Sam Rockwell; written and directed by Martin McDonagh. Released by CBS Films. Rated R.

THE PLOT: A troubled writer unintentionally becomes a target after his friends kidnap the shih-tzu of a crime boss.

THE SKINNY:
+ Seven Psychopaths is written and directed by Martin McDonagh. McDonagh is a British filmmaker (and playwright) with a knack for crisp, biting and humorous dialogue and unusual relationships that crackle on screen. He burst onto the scene in 2008’s gloriously with In Bruges, and returns here with Seven Psychopaths.
– The downside to McDonagh’s material is that it feels a little hollow and soulless; it’s hard to truly get into a movie when it’s you can’t sympathize with or connect with any of the lead characters.
– I’d like to meet the marketing guy who came up with the tagline “They Won’t Take Any Shih Tzu” and have a few words with him.
+ This film stars a veritable who’s who of overlooked, talented actors like Sam Rockwell (the poster child of this group), Colin Farrell, Woody Harrelson and Christopher Walken. I guarantee you, after seeing this film, you will be hard pressed to come up with a single reason why the aforementioned four don’t get substantially more work.

YES, IT’S TRUE: Christopher Walken was George Lucas’ second choice to play Han Solo in Star Wars.

The New Releases were written by Chris Neumer and Kevin Withers