In Contention

Tag: Knowing

  • Roger Ebert’s top 10 list(s)

    Crazy HeartRoger Ebert has been alive like never before in his work as of late.  So I’ve been greatly anticipating his views on the year’s best.

    Unfortunately, he’s divided his list into mainstream and independent films, so it’s a top 20, and neither in any order.

    Maybe keeping things simple like that and not so authoritative with painstaking rankings is the way to go.  I’ve been considering it for a long time.

    Anyway, the most interesting inclusions on his mainstream list are “The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” “Crazy Heart” and “Knowing.” On the indie side, “Departures,” “Goodbye Solo” and “Trucker.”

    Check out the rest at the Chicago Sun-Times.

  • Hollywood focused on the end of the world as we know it

    Denzel Washington in The Book of EliI’ve been meaning to write this piece for a while now, but I never got around to it.  Paul Harris at The Guardian beat me to the punch, so I’ll run his thoughts instead.

    The recent wave of post-apocalyptic films flooding and being prepared for the marketplace is intriguing indeed.  Fads always pop up in Hollywood output, whether it’s the one-two punch of “Volcano” and “Dante’s Peak” in 1997, “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact” a year later, “The Truman Show” and “EdTV,” etc., studios know when something is hot and when to strike.  But it’s usually two or three projects and then on to the next thing.

    But this year and next, we have Alex Proyas’s “Knowing,” the Cormac McCarthy adaptation “The Road,” Roland Emmerich’s “2012,” Shane Acker’s “9,” Ruben Fleischer’s “Zombieland,” The Hughes brothers’ “The Book of Eli,” television’s “The Colony” and a new “Terminator” installment, all productions either depicting a post-apocalyptic environment or the end of days in some manner or another.  It all perhaps started with the Will Smith vehicle “I Am Legend” in 2007.  The trend even extends to animated films, as our commenters shrewdly note “WALL-E” as an example.

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  • Put this in your pipe and smoke it

    Rod Taylor in The Time MachineI love watching the end of the world unfold on screen.  It’s just something I enjoy.  And sue me if I was a little bummed at a certain caution on the part of Hollywood to offer up the apocalyptic imagery it had serviced to the masses in the action-packed summers of the 1990s following 9/11.

    Go back and take a look at “Armageddon,” for instance.  Hardly great cinema but I got a kick out of it just as I did “Independence Day” or anything comparable.  The shot of the Chrysler Building being sheered in half by meteorites as people plummet to their death — the imagery is obviously prickly in the post-9/11 environment.  And everything from “War of the Worlds” to “The Dark Knight” has gone out of its way to comment toward the disasters of that year, to put forth the sense that a thought process is being injected into blockbuster entertainment, that the mayhem actually means something on an artistic level.  And I’m all for that.  But I prefer not to be held hostage by it, either.

    I remember talking with a colleague in New York last month who was bemoaning the failure of Alex Proyas’s “Knowing.”  I had not seen the film yet at the time (though I have sense, and it’s certainly a…lesser accomplishment, shall we say, but it also deals with interesting ideas that really should be in mainstream Hollywood cinema).  I rebutted with the notion that maybe a good, spectacle, end-of-the-world trip to the movies is just what Hollywood needs to shake out all the cobwebs.

    When my list of the year’s most anticipated films hit on New Year’s Day, more than a few people raised an eyebrow at the inclusion of Roland Emmerich’s “2012.”  I should come clean with the admission that Emmerich’s films, more often than not, work for me on some primitive, Neanderthal level.  But I have to also admit to being fascinated with all of the speculation over the year 2012, which I wrote about nearly a year ago.

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  • SUNDAY CENTS: ‘Monsters’ ball

    Monsters vs. Aliens“Monsters vs. Aliens” came storming out of the gate with a $58.2 million opening this weekend. That comes from an ultra-wide 4,104 theaters, the fourth-widest release ever for a non-sequel, and that’s enough to top the debuts of “Shrek,” “Madagascar” and every other DreamWorks animated non-sequel aside from “Kung Fu Panda.” It also handily beats the $45 million debut that “Horton Hears a Who!” managed during this same time period last year.

    Paramount marketed the life out of this thing, and 3D in general, and it appears to have paid off. With a budget reportedly topping $150 million and at least another half of that spent on promotions, it will be a welcome sigh of relief for the studio brass to see that it caught on with families this week.

    Last week I predicted low on “The Haunting in Connecticut” because I thought audiences might be tired of horror product. After all, this was the seventh horror film to go wide in the 13 weeks of 2009 so far. Silly me. Audiences came out in droves, earning the film $23 million and the ninth biggest debut in Lionsgate’s history.

    Who are these people chomping at the bit to see anything even remotely scary? Is it the same group of people seeing all of them or is there a guy out there who thinks, “’The Last House on the Left’ looks lame. But ‘The Haunting in Connecticut’ looks awesome!” I’m pretty sure I can spoil the endings to all of them at once right now: You wasted your money.

    Back in seventh place is “12 Rounds” with $5.3 mil. John Cena is clearly no Dwayne Johnson and he may not even be Hulk Hogan. Remember “Suburban Commando?” Of course you do. Anyway, this debut tallied less than Cena’s debut, “The Marine,” and it marks another step backward for director Renny Harlin. The man behind classics like “Cliffhanger,” “Die Hard 2” and “The Long Kiss Goodnight” saw his last film go straight to DVD, and now this. I blame Geena Davis, who left him during production of his last great epic: “Deep Blue Sea.”

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  • Ebert ‘Knowing’ rave

    From the big guy’s four-star review of the film, right at the top:

    “Knowing” is among the best science-fiction films I’ve seen — frightening, suspenseful, intelligent and, when it needs to be, rather awesome. In its very different way, it is comparable to the great “Dark City,” by the same director, Alex Proyas. That film was about the hidden nature of the world men think they inhabit, and so is this one.

    I have no comment yet.  Still haven’t bothered to see it.  But I admit to this weird sense deep inside that all the belly-aching might actually be knee-jerk and that there’s a good movie out there with Nicolas Cage and the end of the world waiting for me.  Maybe it’s just my contrarian style.  After all, my senior yearbook quote was right out of Mamet: “I subscribe to the law of contrary public opinion.  If everyone thinks one thing I say bet the other way.”

  • POLL: What did you think of ‘Knowing?’

    I guess I’ll leave it with an updated poll before heading out.

    The weekend’s box office champ was the Nicolas Cage starrer “Knowing,” from director Alex Proyas.  Even though a mere handful of you said you’d be seeing it this weekend, I figured I’d ask anyway: what did you think?  I have a hard time believing it to be this awful disaster given that Proyas is generally a guy who busies himself with sci-fi that could hardly be called brainless, but given the reviews and some brief assessments I’ve heard, maybe this really is the clunker of 2009 so far.

    So tell us your thoughts in the sidebar poll.

  • SUNDAY CENTS: Strong showing for “Knowing”

    KnowingI guess I should listen to the murmurs. Nicolas Cage’s sci-fi extravaganza “Knowing” took the top spot at the box office this weekend with $24.8 million. In terms of Cage’s career, it’s no “National Treasure” and can’t compete with the holy trifecta of Cage action — “The Rock,” “Face/Off” and “Con Air” — but it does help wipe away some of the bad taste left in the mouth by “Bangkok Dangerous” and “Next.”

    Long story short, this guy’s career is the very definition of inconsistent. The result is doubly impressive given that Disney could only manage a similar result for their much more heavily marketed sci-fi adventure last week. I can’t imagine reviews, word of mouth or legs will be great so the big debut is a massive boost for Summit Entertainment, a company still finding its feet and identity.

    Second place goes to the Apatow-less “I Love You, Man.”  $18 million is pretty much the exact same amount as “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and “Role Models” debuted with and since reviews are in the same ballpark, this should do comparable overall business as well. Incidentally, I saw the film last night and found it to be pretty worthless aside from a charming performance by Paul Rudd and one inspired joke involving iTunes. If you want to see an amazing and hilarious “bromantic” comedy, wait for “Humpday” in July.

    Our third and final opener is the Clive Owen/Julia Roberts caper “Duplicity.”  Adult-targeted films never stand a chance against shit that blows up, so $14.4 million is a respectable enough place to start.  Star power ain’t what it used to be but the pedigree of the talent in front of and behind the camera should ensure that this one sticks around for a couple of weeks. In the comedic heist sub-genre, “Out of Sight” debuted with $18.5 million in the summer of 1998 and “Bandits” did $16.6 million in 2001. Both finished around $55 million.

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  • POLL: What are you seeing this weekend?

    I figure it’s time for a new poll since everyone has spoken on “Watchmen” by now.  Since there’s an interestingly diverse slate of films set to open this weekend, I figured I’d ask the old stand-by: What are you going to see?

    I’m strangely looking forward to “Knowing,” more because of Alex Proyas than anything else (which, by the way, finally caught up with that “Dark City” director’s cut I wrote about earlier in the week — MUCH better experience than the theatrical version, I’d say).  Then again, “I Love You, Man” is frankly looking like the right antidote lately, while the reviews of “Duplicity” have piqued my interest in Tony Gilroy’s latest.

    There are also a couple of limited releases in play this weekend, most notably Steve McQueen’s “Hunger” (which you all know was one of my favorite films of last year when it played the festival circuit).  But maybe you’d rather see “Watchmen” again, or something else that’s still kicking around the marketplace.  Whatever the case, let us know in the sidebar poll and feel free to expand on your pick in the comments section below.  We’ll find out what the masses decided when Chad writes up the weekend’s box office Sunday.

  • Alex Proyas guest blogs for /Film

    Alex ProyasI don’t know if everyone has read up on director Alex Proyas’s sporadic guest blog postings at /Film, but I’ve been getting a kick out of his unfiltered take.  Obviously it’s a nice PR move for his upcoming film “Knowing,” which would look like derivative sci-fi trifle if not for Proyas’s involvement at the helm.

    It also reminds me that I need to pick up the Blu-ray Director’s Cut of “Dark City,” which Proyas gleefully put together a decade after studio pressure forced him to “dumb down” the theatrical cut (which I never fully enjoyed).

    Anyway, here are some highlights from his guest blogging stint…

    On his latest film:

    KNOWING is an original and thought-provoking story, and I believe it has a unique & compelling idea at its heart. It’s about a man looking for meaning in his life, in a universe he believes to be meaningless, as he comes to understand the part he has to play in his own destiny. In many ways the story is about confronting fate and the inevitable, but it offers great hope and maps a path to the hero’s (Nic’s) own spiritual transcendence.

    This story offers some challenging philosophical ideas but it’s a journey with deep emotional resonance. It’s about the cycle of life & death, and the hope we hand down to our children. As well as all that, I think the movie is a great thriller; but it’s the best kind of genre movie because it is about something meaningful.

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  • SUNDAY CENTS: ‘Witch Mountain’ takes the crown, ‘Watchmen’ falls hard

    Race to Witch MountainEDITOR’S NOTE: Welcome to the first installment in what will be a weekly column looking at box office here at In Contention.  Chad Hartigan and I attended film school together in another life.  But for the last three years he’s been a box office analyst for Exhibitor Relations.  He’s also tried his hand at making a feature (last year’s “Luke and Brie are on a First Date,” which played the festival circuit) and you may have enjoyed a spat or two with him in our comments section.  Chad will be here every Sunday afternoon wrapping up the weekend and looking ahead to the next one.  We welcome him to the IC family and look forward to his weekly take on the dollars and cents of showbiz.

    Hello all.  Before I dive into the first installment of Sunday Cents, two things to note: Figures discussed here are estimates and actual figures released on Monday could change things slightly, but usually not significantly.

    Also, any figures I draw from the past will be adjusted for inflation. That’s just how I do things. You may argue that adjusting figures doesn’t portray an accurate comparison because of things like DVD and blah, blah, blah, but in the end, comparisons are all arbitrary anyway so it doesn’t matter.

    So, with that out of the way…what happened this weekend?

    Well, “Race to Witch Mountain” came out on top with a cool $25 million. That’s almost exactly the same as “The Game Plan,” which debuted at $24 million and represents the only other time Disney picked The Rock to headline one of their films. Family sci-fi is a tough sell (“The Last Mimzy,” anyone?), so on one hand it’s a good result. On the other, compared to the $41.5 million debut that “Wild Hogs” managed in March of 2007, it seems a little soft.  There’s no family competition for two weeks so “Mountain” will have a chance to stretch its legs and it’ll have to make as much as possible before “Monsters vs. Aliens” comes along and obliterates it.

    The second remake to open this weekend was Universal’s “The Last House on the Left.”  Debuting in third with $14.7 million is pretty standard issue for this kind of film, with “The Hills Have Eyes,” “House of Wax” and “The Fog” all opening in the same ballpark.  They can’t all be “Friday the 13th.”

    Way back in 10th is the final new release of the week, “Miss March.”  Is it too soon to start talking Razzies? Actually, to be honest, if I was forced to choose a film to see out of these three, “Miss March” gets my $10. It could use it, as the $2.4 million the film pulled couldn’t even match “Paul Blart: Mall Cop”‘s ninth week. The Kevin James comedy keeps on plugging and has amassed a ridiculous $138 million so far, by the way.

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