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I had seen this floating around over the last few days but avoided watching it for some reason until today. Now, I'm sorry I waited because I'm blown away by the comparison. Seriously...watch this. It's worth it:
Aaron, I say this with all the love, admiration, and respect in the world.
Tina Fey's latest film, Baby Mama, starring Amy Poehler, made $18.3 million in its opening weekend to place at #1.
Aaron Sorkin's latest project, Charlie Wilson's War, starring some people named Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, and getting promoted on some show called Oprah... opened to $15.9 million in a four-day-holiday weekend, behind some chipmunks.
Hoo boy... Tina's still got the quote of the (last) year: "I hear Aaron Sorkin is in Los Angeles wearing the same dress - but longer, and not funny."
It seems like just yesterday when I assessed that Hancock might be Will Smith's first true box office disappointment (I'm ignoring Wild Wild West for some reason), but this was based on the trailers that I had seen up to that point.
The karmic nature of the universe is obviously getting even as a new trailer was released, and (whoa!) this is a whole different ball of kick ass. It starts out pretty much the same, but then by fleshing out the story more (he goes to jail as part of a publicity stunt to repair his image), and then a 3rd act where he doesn't even know how to be a stereotypical comic book hero (even though he's trying too hard), they hooked me.
Suddenly, I went from "meh" to "holycrapican'twait!!!"
But I'm fickle like that.
I don't love Noah's writing, but his Summer Movie Preview is pretty complete, if nothing else. I find myself looking forward to Iron Man, Speed Racer, Indiana Jones, Get Smart (why open this on the same day as another huge comedy, The Love Guru?), Wall-E, Wanted, Hancock (could be Will Smith's first misfire in some time), The Dark Knight, Step Brothers, The X-Files sequel, Choke, Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, The International, Towelhead, Hamlet 2, and finally, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (no, not really). Unfortunately, I couldn't have been less impressed by the new teaser for The Spirit. The visuals don't seem to bring anything new to the table, using what seems to be exactly the same technology that Sin City used, and the music... well, didn't anyone else see The Untouchables?
I mean, I understand that movie is now (gasp) over 20 years old, but as someone who has seen it no less than a dozen times throughout my life, that music absolutely cannot be used anywhere else. And in this trailer, it was incredibly distracting, to say the least.
How is this not a headline from The Onion? How soon can I move to Canada?
Everyone has blogged about this already, but I felt bad not having done so given how perfect it is. This satirizes so many aspects of the movie and Internet community, I don't even know where to start...
Did you hear? They're gonna make a movie based on that cool Iron Man trailer? Wow, I sure hope those studio suits don't screw this up...
Wildly Popular 'Iron Man' Trailer To Be Adapted Into Full-Length Film
As you may have heard, there's lots of fear excitement in various entertainment industries about the fact that the film Iron Man is opening the same weekend that the video game Grand Theft Auto IV is released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
Nikki Finke says that the video game will hurt Iron Man's ticket sales, and Variety is reporting that GTA IV may pull in as much as $400 million in its opening week. Nikki also brings in a 3rd party to discuss whether video games are bigger than movies. He basically says that the numbers are bigger in video games, but that's because the games are almost 10 times more expensive. I say, "money is money." If studios could sell movie tickets for $60 a pop, they would. But yes, there are fewer people buying video games than movie tickets - tell it to the shareholders.
There were similar rumblings a few months ago, when Halo 3 supposedly hurt the box office take of Ben Stiller's The Heartbreak Kid, but I still believe that (oh, I don't know) the movie wasn't really interesting to anyone and was destined to fail anyway. Besides, is the core Halo 3 audience really the same people going to a Ben Stiller romantic comedy? I'm just sayin'.
You know what I predict for that weekend? With a huge comic book movie and a giant video game being released? Well, just look at the title...
Hey, guess what? Movie studios don't put women in lead roles!
There were about 110 movies with a male lead and 5 with a female lead. Of the second-billed females, nearly all are written as love interests of the first-billed man. There were over sixty movies in the sample with two male stars top-billed. The only movies with two top-billed female roles, on the other hand, were The Devil Wears Prada and Scary Movie 4.
Just a few links to enjoy:
I'm pretty sure I wrote about this about 27 years ago, and that's usually a bad sign. Nevertheless, after seeing the trailer today, I still desperately want me some more of this "definitely not a sequel to Grosse Pointe Blank, nope, never."
