News & Notes Inside the Week in Film


Down is up, cats are chasing dogs and hamburgers are eating people!

Go back ten years in your mind and ask yourself, did you ever see a scenario where a critically acclaimed Ben Affleck movie would beat the pants off a $100 million Wachowski siblings movie starring Tom Hanks?

by Chris Neumer

A weekend ago, the Wachowski’s latest $100 million plus film, Cloud Atlas, opened in more than 2,000 theaters across the United States. Based upon a popular and supremely critically acclaimed novel of the same name, Cloud Atlas stars Tom Hanks and Halle Berry. And it flopped and flopped hard. It didn’t even take in $10 million. It got lukewarm reviews and was almost beaten out by Hotel Transylvania, an animated film that has been in theaters for five weeks. A mere $170,000 separated the two for the weekend.

The box office champ? A $45 million, period piece thriller starring Ben Affleck that critics are tripping over themselves to praise (96% fresh on Rottentomatoes.com).

The funny thing is that, after Argo, the media has completely changed Affleck’s narrative, in much the same way Lebron James’ did after he won his first championship in June. Suddenly all of Affleck and James’ flaws are in the rear view mirror. Interestingly, while James will continue to be a champion and an all-time great from here on forward, Affleck is guaranteed no such similar treatment.

When Affleck started out his career winning an Oscar for writing Good Will Hunting, the media championed his burgeoning acting resume and propped him (and Damon) up atop the headlines. People genuinely liked the two men and wanted to read more about them. As Affleck chose to star in more and more poorly received and generic action movies (Reindeer Games, Changing Lanes, Paycheck, Gigli and The Sum of All Fears), the press labeled him a bust and looked at every new Affleck vehicle as an opportunity to reminisce about what might have been.

When Affleck decided to get behind the camera and directed Gone Baby Gone and The Town, two solid pieces of cinema that didn’t reinvent the wheel, the media began to laud Affleck’s ability as an auteur. With Argo reaching a near critical apex for a film—it will get nominated for a Best Picture Oscar and has garnered an almost unanimous set of raves amongst critics—the question now becomes what happens when Affleck’s next project isn’t as well received as Argo? Since the media loves building people up and then tearing them down so that they can build them up again, it’s an interesting question to ponder. For Affleck’s sake—he is a genuinely nice guy—I’m hoping that the media doesn’t anoint him the next Spielberg and then act surprised when, guess what, he turns out not to be.

Besides, if the media did do this, that would mean that they had somehow managed to build him up to tear him down to build him up to tear him down to build him up to tear him down. Nobody needs that.

 


Against all odds, Phil Collins doesn’t feel a groovy kind of love in the air tonight and doesn’t want one more night or another day in paradise

When it comes to celebrity divorces, no one does it better than singer Phil Collins

by Chris Neumer

I was reading a story on the Chicago Tribune website recently when I spied a link to another article at the bottom of the page with a headline that gave me pause: “Phil Collins Still Frugal Against All Odds”. I am torn about my feelings toward Collins; I like him as a man and find his interviews and lifestyle interesting. However, I can’t stand his music. “I Wish It Would Rain Down” is about the only song he has sung that I can tolerate. And there is an extreme footnote next to that statement: I only like that song because of the positive memories I have of listening to it while making out with my high school girlfriend in the basement of her parents’ house. I feel certain that if we had been playing the sounds of nails on a chalkboard or cats being tortured at the time that I’d have rosy feelings towards them too.

One of the things I find most intriguing about Collins is his attitude towards marriage (the fact that he believes he was at the Alamo in a previous life is also pretty damn unique). He has been married and divorced three times. And Collins didn’t just divorce his wives, he paid handsomely for the right to do so.  His divorces cost more money than Lebron James, Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh and Alex Rodriguez earned this year… combined. Over the course of the last 32 years, Collins has paid out some $84 million in divorce settlements. Unlike most high-priced celebrity divorces like Tiger Woods’, Michael Jordan’s or Steven Spielberg’s, this was not a one-and-done deal. Collins had multiple divorces that each cost substantially more than the preceding one. Charlie Sheen paid $25,000 a night to be with women. Collins? He paid $84 million not to be with women. (You and I got the same thing for free!)

Say what you will about the man, but spending $84 million over 32 years is not anything that I would consider frugal. I frowned at my screen and wondered, “Do these people have any idea what Collins spends his money on? Do they have any idea who they’re dealing with?” And the answer, of course, is no. If only they’d take a look at him now.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: When Phil Collins knows what he doesn’t want, he goes and gets it.

 


FLASHBACK TO 2009: Third Time is Not the Charm with Marriage.

Oscar winning composer Phil Collins is getting divorced.  Again.  Well, again, again, again.

by Chris Neumer

This was originally going to be one of the things that I learned this week, but I’ve thought about it to such a degree and mentioned it to so many people that I’ve decided to upgrade it to ‘blurb’ status even though it doesn’t really have anything to do with the movie industry per se. Musician Phil Collins is paying more than $46 million to divorce his third wife, Orianne Cevey.

I’ve had friends who have hated the girls they were dating or couldn’t stand the women they had married who pressed forth in their relationships determined that counseling would help things along or that they had to stay together for the sake of the children. Not Mr. Collins. How much did Collins want to get away from his wife? He paid more than $46 million for the right not to be with her… and is thought to be leaving his two young children with her to boot.

When you start thinking of these enormous sums of money that celebrities are paying in divorce settlements as a sort of reverse dowry, it really puts things in perspective. You might not like that girl you’re dating, but would you pay 20% of your of your estimated net worth to get away from her? Collins did.

Maybe Cevey and Paul McCartney’s ex-wife, Heather Mills, won’t have many problems finding suitors in the future—they each have about $45 million to their names, that can’t be a negative—but I’m not so sure I’d want to date a woman who so infuriated an ex that he paid almost $50 million to get away from her. That’s got to be a red flag of some sort.

The thing that puts Collins’ divorce situation into its own league though is that Cevey is not the first wife whom Collins has divorced to whom he’s paid a very substantial amount of money. He paid out $34 million to his second wife when he divorced her thirteen years ago and a lesser total when he divorced his first wife in . All totaled, Collins has spent $84 million in his lifetime in order to NOT be with women.

I’ll say this for him, when Collins sees what he doesn’t want, he goes and gets it.

The Photo of the Week


Jenny McCarthy in Dirty Love

 


The 5 Things I Learned This Week

Fascinatingly true things to broaden your mind

 

1) An entire role of toilet paper can be sucked up by a flushing airplane toilet in less than three seconds.

2) There is an institution of higher learning called Wilburforce University.

3) In Japan, The Fast and the Furious series was called Wild Speed.  There was Wild Speed, Wild Speed X2, Wild Speed X3: Toyko Drift and, my favorite, Wild Speed Max.

4) Ben Affleck once directed a short film called I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney.  Yes, that Ben Affleck.

5) Affleck also co-starred in the film School Ties playing a character named Chesty Smith.

 

 

This Week’s Stories

New Releases

Arthur Christmas

THE PLAYERS: Starring James McAvoy, Jim Broadbent, and Bill Nighy; written by Sarah Smith and Peter Baynham; directed by Sarah Smith and Barry Cook;  Released by Sony Pictures. Rated PG.

THE PLOT: Arthur Christmas uses Santa’s old Sleigh to deliver a lost gift to a child before Christmas morning.

THE SKINNY:
+ This is the way a Christmas movie release should be handled! Arthur Christmas hit theaters on November 23, 2011, and now the DVD is hitting shelves in November as well.  You can’t properly enjoy a Christmas DVD when it’s released in June.
+/- Very, very, very British. How British? It’s rated PG for “some mild rude humor”. How British? It stars the voice talents of James McAvoy, Hugh Laurie, Bill Nighy, Jim Broadbent, Imelda Staunton, Andy Serkis and Robbie Coltrane. How British? The Blu-rays come with an ultraviolet set of tea and crumpets.
+ This film was produced by Aardman Animation, the stop-motion geniuses behind the fantastic Wallace & Gromit series…
– … but Nick Park, Peter Lord nor David Sproxton are not credited with having worked on this film.
– How does Santa Claus deliver all those presents in just one night? Well, funny you should ask. He has a high tech command center that puts the Pentagon’s command centers to shame that monitor all of the delivery vehicles around the world and communicates with the enormous flying ship (shaped like a sled) that leads the charge. I suppose it was only a matter of time before Santa went corporate.
+ The design of the Arthur Christmas one-sheet is great. All of the characters in the film are standing on one another’s shoulders to create the outline of a Christmas tree.

YES, IT’S TRUE: Christmas generates $435 billion dollars worth of economic activity In the US every year.

Fire with Fire

THE PLAYERS: Starring Bruce Willis, Josh Duhamel, and Rosario Dawson; written by  Tom O’Connor; directed by David Barrett. Released by Lionsgate. Rated R.

THE PLOT: A man in the witness protection program is forced to take drastic measures to protect himself and his loved ones.

THE SKINNY:
– I’m not sold on this title at all. I’d call Fire with Fire extremely boring, generic and artless if I thought that description was going anywhere near far enough. I’m not saying that it’s easy to come up with interesting and thoughtful titles, but Fire with Fire? It’s got nothing to it.
– Thanks to one of the country’s most generous film tax breaks, Louisiana has rocketed up the charts as a hot destination for productions to shoot. It now stands behind only California and New York in terms of popularity. And I am getting sick of it. New Orleans is a beautiful city with an interesting history, but there aren’t enough different ways to shoot it to make it consistently and constantly appealing on screen. The city has too much unique architecture to have it double as another city too, the way Toronto can serve as New York, Philadelphia or Chicago or Los Angeles can be New York or Paris. The end result is that New Orleans starts becoming a character in its movies and one that I’m not a huge fan of.
– I’m also not sold on the concept of Josh Duhamel as a leading man or as an action star. Watching him, I’m well aware that I’m watching an actor doing something.
+ Vincent D’Onofrio plays a sociopath here and no one puts his own stink on something the way D’Onofrio does on sociopaths.

YES, IT’S TRUE: The flame of a candle averages about 1,830 °F.

The Amazing Spider-Man

THE PLAYERS: Starring Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, and Rhys Ifans; written by James Vanderbilt; directed by Marc Webb. Released by Sony Pictures.  Rated PG-13.

THE PLOT: Peter Parker balances fighting crime as the masked super-hero and pursuing his relationship with Gwen Stacy.

THE SKINNY:
+ This is a well-made film about an interesting action hero that is directed by a supremely talented and competent director, Marc Webb.
– …That is a remake of a film that is 12 years old that’s story everyone is patently aware of.
+ I want you to imagine this scenario: It’s 2010. You’re walking on the street and someone comes up to you and tells you that in two years, Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone and Rhys Ifans will be anchoring the cast of a $260 million box office hit. What are the odds that you would have believed him? Zero? Less than zero?
+ The shots of Spider-Man swinging through the city are still spectacular. The POV shots of this are beyond spectacular.
– I’m still not quite sure how I feel about superheroes whipping off their masks to reveal their true identities to people. Is this now a thing?

YES, IT’S TRUE: Andrew Garfield admits he cried when he first put the Spider-Man suit on.

Your Sister’s Sister

THE PLAYERS:  Starring Mark Duplass, Emily Blunt, and Rosemarie DeWitt; written and directed by Lynn Shelton.  Released by IFC Films.  Rated R.

THE PLOT: After losing his brother a man falls in love with his friend’s sister while staying at her father’s cabin.

THE SKINNY:
– Ah, a return to the indie’s indie. Back in the late nineties, it seemed like the grand majority of independent films were about twenty or thirtysomethings discussing their relationship issues, experiencing tragedies, laughing with friends, crying with friends and learning about themselves in the process. Since the budgets for these projects were so small, having stuff happen wasn’t exactly an option, so people sat around and talked about everything.

It all grew somewhat tedious because completely and totally self-involved people who keep talking about themselves don’t always make for the best leads. (And I have just a few problems with characters and people who think that their own troubles are bigger or worse than everyone else’s).

This type of film faded away during the aughts but now, courtesy of the Duplass crew and filmmakers across the Pacific Northwest, seems to be making a comeback. It’s not that this is bad filmmaking or poorly acted, it’s just that it’s—what’s the word?—boring. I am friends with a fair number of people who can be very engaged in watching other people sit around and talk; I am just not one of them.

First the return of the popped collar and now this… Sigh.

YES, IT’S TRUE: This film was shot in only twelve days.

The New Releases were written by Chris Neumer and Kevin Withers