A couple things that absolutely required my attention before we part ways for the weekend:
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I figured I might as well go forth with some box office predictions. The big question this week is if Collateral will make enough to take over #1 from The Village. The latter film is in more theaters, but I don’t think word-of-mouth has been so hot on it, and DreamWorks has been promoting the hell out of grey-haired Tommy boy. I’m guessing $42 Million for Collateral with The Village holding on at #2 with a pretty steep drop down to about $22 Million. I’m going to give Little Black Book the benefit of the doubt because it really has no competition for the romantic comedy market right now. It should grab # 3 with $18 Million. The Village gave The Bourne Supremacy a big 54% decline last weekend, but I think that may slow-up a bit, and I see Bourne dropping to #4 with about $14 Million. I, Robot should hit #5 with about $7 Million, finally pushing Spider-Man 2 out of the top 5. Don’t feel too sorry for Peter Parker though. His film will have passed $350-Million before this weekend is up (if it hasn’t done so already.)
UPDATED: I’m having some very weird trouble reading these days. I keep saying the wrong date with the day of the week (such as Monday 8/10, when Monday will be the 9th) and now I’m just missing movie titles. Such as The Manchurian Candidate: The New Class. Obviously, I, Robot is plummeting south of #5, because that’s where Denzel will be hanging when Jonathan Demme’s second straight attempt at remaking a classic film will be pulling in somewhere around $12-Million. -
Sitting down at my desk today, I saw that Variety had one of those full-page advertisement covers. What for, you ask? Elektra. That would be the Daredevil spin-prequel featuring Jennifer Garner’s character who (yeah, I’m going to ruin it for you) dies in the original film. I’m a bit intrigued by this sequel because one of the credited writers is Henry Bean whose work is almost always at least interesting. On the other hand, he’s one of four writers listed on IMDb right now. And you know, Daredevil kind of sucked. Like, really hard. It was released in February which is a notoriously less-competitive month and a bit of a dumping ground for all the films that weren’t bad enough for a January release but definitely aren’t good enough to hold their own in March. When’s Elektra coming out, per this cover ad on Variety? January 14, 2005. Oh yeah, it’s gonna rock.
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Providing a wonderful sign of how much business the RNC is bringing to New York, two Broadway shows – Frozen and the Tony Kushner musical Caroline, or Change – will close on 8/22 and 8/29 respectively. According to a Caroline producer, “The Republicans will be in the convention hall, and people who aren’t Republican won’t be coming to town that week.” And a Frozen producer added that were it not for the RNC, “we probably would have gone until labor day.” Like the rest of us know, and reported on last night’s The Daily Show, all the delegates will be spending their free time at strip clubs and dungeons.
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And just when you thought Flash Gordon couldn’t get any cornier than the cult-hit from 1980, audiences will be subjected to an even flashier Flash with even less character – a veritable black whole of substance or supernova of cliché – all thanks to the awful stylings of sir Stephen Sommers who plans to adapt a new feature which I’m sure will have a very high budget, lots of special effects and be very flashy. Sommers makes films that people with IQs in the low-40s could poke holes through and laugh at, rather than with. I’m so glad people keep giving him money to make movies. But that’s what happens when even crap like Van Helsing makes over $100-Million domestically.
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And this just in … uhm … last night. Bill Clinton will be on The Daily Show on Monday. Possible best ep evs? Thankfully, we have the whole weekend to look forward to it. Have a good one.
Out of Focus 