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Saturday: today, tonight are crucial for the new releases of the week.
So far, “Furiosa” is making everyone nervosa. The “Mad Max” story has made just $10.5 million from previews through last night. It’s actually following the path of the most recent new release, “If.” It’s hoped that “Furiosa” will add $20 million on Saturday and Sunday.
The return of “Garfield” the cat for family viewing is also scratching the furniture. We need some purring. “Garfield” has grossed $8.4 million over the two day opening. Its claws could be sharper After all those mixed metaphors, let’s hope it doesn’t cough up a hairball. Are families too complacent at home?
It does look like a historically low Memorial Day weekend is coming to the box office. If only “Hit Man” were reporting numbers, we’d have something exciting to report. But it’s not playing anywhere. Thanks, Netflix. This is no help.
There are plenty of seats today at the Paris Theater, by the way. No surprise, everyone’s away for the weekend. What a mess.
Will Smith’s “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” is getting a worldwide promotional tour.
So far Will and Martin Lawrence have been in Riyadh, Saudia Arabia, Mexico, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Miami.
The film opens June 7th but so far Sony has kept Smith away from any real press in the US, especially Los Angeles and New York. I’m told some outlets in Los Angeles pulled out of a junket because they were told not to ask about “the slap.”
That’s right. Will Smith’s famous live slap or punch of Chris Rock on the stage of the Oscars is being avoided at all costs. Smith was punished with a 10 year ejection by the Academy. He immediately lost work. Smith has been mostly persona non grata in Hollywood for the two years since the slap.
So, of course, now he’s back, starring in a big studio film. Has Hollywood forgiven and forgotten? Can you really attack someone on live TV in front of a worldwide audience and get away with it?
Maybe you can.
So far no entertainment reporter has been brave enough to ask a single question about the Slap. Will Will Smith get away with it? And what about Martin Lawrence? I’m hearing odd things about his appearance from those who’ve talked to him. He didn’t look well at the Emmy Awards back in January. Everyone is rooting for him, whatever is wrong.
We’ll see how the Slap figures into all this on June 6th, when “Bad Boys” plays previews.
A judge in Santa Fe has dismissed Baldwin’s motion to end his involuntary manslaughter case in the “Rust” case.
In October 2022, Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer of Baldwin’s indie movie, “Rust,” was killed, and the director wounded when a prop gun discharged on the New Mexico set.
The armorer on the set, Hannah Gutierrez, has already been found guilty on involuntary manslaughter. She was given the maximum sentence of 18 months.
Baldwin, who had the gun in his hand, and was also producer of the movie, has been charged by the state after several moves back and forth. A grand jury finally decided there was sufficient evidence that he acted negligently by pointing a loaded gun at Hutchins without first checking the weapon. If found guilty Baldwin also faces 18 months in jail.
Baldwin thought by reaching settlements with Hutchins’ husband, and others on the set, he’d escaped this situation. But the Santa Fe DA’s office is determined to prove they can beat a Hollywood star and his lawyers — even if it doesn’t make sense.
Baldwin’s lawyers said in the motion that prosecutors were bending over backwards to prove a shaky case. But New Mexico First Judicial District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said she didn’t see prosecutorial misconduct. So the trial goes forward in mid summer. Stay tuned…
You can now count one degree of separation between the Upside Down and Bon Jovi, the rock band.
Millie Bobby Brown, just age 20, has married Jake Bon Jovi, 22, son of of rocker Jon. According to The Sun, the small surprise wedding took place last weekend.
Millie is the star of “Stranger Things,” in which she plays a character named Eleven. So now Eleven is Two.
Congrats to the couple! Can these two crazy kids make it in the modern world? At least they won’t have to worry about money. She’s already made a pile from the Netflix series, and will always have work as an actress. Brown is currently shooting the fifth and final season of “Stranger Things.”
The groom is a model, and not exactly livin’ on a prayer.
Getting married so young with no college degree? That’s the way they do it now, you know.
Either Jennifer Lopez is in total denial, or she doesn’t care.
JLo is having a very bad year, that’s for sure.
First of all, it does seem that her marriage to Ben Affleck is in trouble after less than two years.
Now comes her new film, “Atlas,” on Netflix. Apparently it’s unwatchable. The Rotten Tomatoes rating is 10%. That may be the lowest ever for her.
Just a couple of months ago, Lopez released a new album called “This is Me…Now,” which was dead on arrival. A longform video went with it, called “The Greatest Romance Never Told,” and is also flopped like a sea lion at the Central Park Zoo.
“Atlas” is futuristic, I guess, and has something to do with artificial intelligence. How about some genuine intelligence? JLo should send up an SOS soon before all hope is lost.
Mick Jagger is the 8th wonder of the world, that much we saw last night at Met Life Stadium in New Jersey.
Two months shy of 81, Jagger remains remains remarkably lithe, trim, and agile. Still fronting the Rolling Stones after 60 years, he not only runs the width of the stadium back and forth, skipping sometimes, but then prances down a runway stage into the middle of the audience with wild abandon and precision. The whole thing is quite mad.
The Rolling Stones put on a two hour show last night that is both economical and textured. It’s like a military exercise it’s so well planned, but it also seems off the cuff and improvised. That’s the beauty of it. But when you have three front men — Jagger, Keith Richards, and Ronnie Wood — whose total ages are over 300, there’s no room for error. Plus, they’ve been playing these songs for six decades.
The set list of greatest hits (mixing in a couple of songs from the very good new “Hackney Diamonds” album) varies a little from city to city, but last night the New York-New Jersey crowd got “Shattered,” because it’s got local references. “Miss You,” also a New York song, took off slowly and then built into an incantation. Every single entry including Richards’ two solo bits — “You Got the Silver” and “Little T and A” — had surprises. (Richards joked about the latter song, “I wrote it but I don’t remember what it’s about!” Oh, he does.)
Jagger gave the obligatory “Welcome to (blank city)” salutations a couple of times. But he finally got a little cheeky. “New York — I know you have your trials and tribulations,” he said, emphasizing trial. “I was worried about the weather,” he joked, “I thought we were going to get a little Stormy Daniels!”
The Jagger-Richards canon of songs never ceases to amaze after all these years. Numbers like “Paint it Black,” “Gimme Shelter,” and “Sympathy for the Devil” remain as sinister as they were originally. “Tumbling Dice” and “Wild Horses” are R&B classics. Richards, Wood, and co made “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Honky Tonk Woman,” to mention, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” into dizzying jams of blues and rock.
Jagger’s voice is equal to his physical presence. How can he still be singing like that? He had some falsetto runs last night that were spine chilling. It can’t just be lots and lots of sex and yoga, can it? His face has grown into a chiseled replica of his former visage. When he spreads his arms wide while dancing, he lifts into the air. You can see the ballet moves. He’s Nureyev and Tina Turner rolled into one.
Kudos to the band, plus Chanel Haynes with her blistering vocals on “Gimme Shelter” (a tribute to the original, Merry Clayton). Haynes was playing Tina Turner in the West End of London when got this job and was immediately fired by the production. She gets the last laugh here– touring with the Stones, playing to 100,000 people a night, and ripping the paint off the metal girders.
Is this the last Stones tour? I don’t think so. I really believe we’ll see them back in two years. Impossible but likely. Richards, who’s seen a lifetime of indulgence and health issues, never looked stronger than last night. While Jagger never sits nor barely pauses for water, Richards briefly — like two seconds — took a breather. But then he was up quickly, not missing a beat.
The Stones return to Met Life for a second show on Sunday. I’m too tired to be there, but they’ll be back as a life force.
“Knives Out” director is about to start production on the third installment of his mystery series.
This one will be called “Wake Up Dead Man.” It stars Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc and we’ll see it in 2025 via Netflix.
Johnson says: “We’re about to go into production on the 3rd one, and I’m very, very excited to share the title, which gives a little hint of where it’s going.”
He adds: “I love everything about whodunnits, but one of the things I love most is how malleable the genre is. There’s a whole tonal spectrum from Carr to Christie, and getting to explore that range is one of the most exciting things about making Benoit Blanc movies.”
I hope he learned a lesson from “Glass Onion.” More is more, as they say. The low-fi charms of the first movie were lost in the second one, which was over the top and repetitive. “Glass Onion” was also more about the set, and the logo. Now there’s a new onion like egg object below. Please, don’t over do it!
The next Benoit Blanc mystery, the follow-up to Knives Out and Glass Onion, is called Wake Up Dead Man. pic.twitter.com/pdDXRDmwcI
This is going to be a tough Memorial Day weekend at the box office.
Two movies that everyone was counting on for big openings had slow starts last night.
“Mad Mad Furiosa” came in at $3.5 million. “Garfield” took in $1.9 million. Both these was predicted to be a huge hit. But at this rate, their five day take — Thursday through Monday — will each be less than $50 million. Probably more like $45 million.
This is a dismal prediction for theater owners. They can’t sit around waiting for “Deadpool and Wolverine.” And it’s not like “Furiosa” hasn’t had a lot of attention. But where were the marketers with a “Fur-iosa” kind of “Barbenheimer” like promotion? It’s so obvious!
Meanwhile the best movie this weekend is Richard Linklater’s “Hit Man” starring Glen Powell. Hilarious and sexy, “Hit Man” is worth going to a theater to see. You will not be disappointed. Search for local shows. It’s a date movie, too.
I am really sorry to hear about Morgan Spurlock passing away at age 53. According to his brother he died from cancer.
“Morgan gave so much through his art, ideas, and generosity,” his brother, Craig Spurlock, said in a statement. “The world has lost a true creative genius and a special man.”
I met Morgan in Sundance in 2004 when his film, “Super Size Me,” caused a sensation. Morgan’s first person account of eating McDonald’s food day and night, then tracing how was it made, where it came from, and how sick it made him.
Suddenly, Morgan was the rare thing: a star documentary filmmaker. He parlayed it into more films, like “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?” all the way through “Super Size Me 2: Chicken.” According to the imdb he was planning on directing a movie about late great Hollywood talent age Sue Mengers, with Jennifer Lawrence.
But in 2017, when the #Metoo movement suddenly gripped the business, Spurlock revealed that he’d once been accused of rape during his college years, and had other accusations of sexual misconduct. He essentially torpedoed his own career, and not had been heard from since then. (Amazingly, he’d left it up on line all these years as some form of self-flagellation.)
What a shame. Spurlock was indeed a great creative mind, brimming with enthusiasm and good will. That he missed the last seven years was bad enough, but now we’ll never get to see what other clever things he might have come up with. Condolences to his family.
A week ago — yes, it’s been a week — Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” premiered in Cannes to decidedly mixed reactions.
After one week, there is still no US distributor. The unusual movie has sold in a bunch of countries where the incredible images from the film and the huge cast of stars may attract audiences who don’t speak English and may just ignore the story. No kidding.
But beyond the screenplay there’s a bigger question about “Megalopolis.” At the few screenings so far, a live actor walks onto the stage of the theater, or down into the aisle, and speaks to a character on the screen. It’s as if Woody Allen’s “Purple Rose of Cairo” were real! I’m told the picture on the screen changes, too, as it highlights the one dimensional person addressing the live actor.
Will this happen in every theater at every showing? The French distributor says they’re open to giving it a try in 22 iMAX theaters. But France is the size of Texas. It’s hard to imagine this going on three times a day in 2,000 US venues. Will the ushers be enlisted? (That would be fun.) A scaliwag friend of mine suggests, “They’ll just pull people in off the street and offer them free popcorn!”
This could be one reason why, after a week, there’s still no answer about who will be in charge of bringing “Megalopolis” to the movie going audience.
