Black Sheep @ The Oscars: BEST ACTRESS

This was a tough one. The nomination competition was fierce enough on its own without Kate Winslet contending for a spot for two standout performances. Sally Hawkins won the Golden Globe and a number of critics’ accolades for her performance in HAPPY-GO-LUCKY but missed her shot here. Kristen Scott Thomas hoped for a spot for her performance in I’VE LOVED YOU SO LONG but that little seen film left little impression. Michelle Williams had hoped that her stark performance in WENDY AND LUCY would earn her a second nod but it was too bare to register. Even Cate Blanchett, an Oscar regular, couldn’t get swept up in the Benjamin Button bonanza. And so with one slot inevitably going to Winslet, who else managed to squeak past the stiff competition?

Anne Hathaway in RACHEL GETTING MARRIED

When you first meet Kym in Jonathan Demme’s "love it or hate it" family drama, RACHEL GETTING MARRIED, she is a lot to take. She talks to fill the silence and she does so very defensively in order to close the doors before they are even opened. She doesn’t want anyone to see what lies behind those doors, not ever herself. Hathaway infuses Kym with a nervous likeability that makes her both compelling and repelling. It is certainly the kind of performance that gave everyone pause and had everyone wondering if there was more to this princess than anyone had ever imagined.


Hathaway was considered to be an early favorite in this category when the film debuted to rave reviews at the Venice and Toronto film fests. Still, the film has proven to be more of a critical darling than anything else and, quite sadly as this critic loved it, this is the film’s only nomination, indicating that overall support may be thin.

Angelina Jolie in CHANGELING

Christine Collins is always a lady. She is always properly made up and appropriately composed. This would prove to be her downfall as all assume that she will just sit quietly and take all that is thrown at her but they did not take into account what a mother would do for her missing son. Jolie delivers another understated performance here and is just as captivating for her fragility and endurance as for her beauty.

CHANGELING is also not a widely regarded film. Jolie missed the nomination in this category last year for her role in A MIGHTY HEART and so some might want to reward her for both as a means of making up for the past but she does already have an Oscar at home for her earlier performance in GIRL, INTERRUPTED. Jolie is not considered a threat in this category and I doubt that will change.

Melissa Leo in FROZEN RIVER

To be fair, I still have not seen this film. It only comes out next week on DVD and I can’t even remember it playing in theatres here in Montreal, which is odd considering the story takes place party in Quebec. I can tell you Leo plays Ray Eddy, a single mother drawn into the world of border smuggling. Aside from that, I got nothing.


Leo is certainly the dark horse in this category. The nomination alone has made people take notice of the film and, along with its nod for original screenplay, it could build some last minute momentum. Leo has been nominated for a number of awards already, including the National Board of Review, the Independent Spirit Awards and the Screen Actors Guild. There is certainly good reason to consider her the underdog contender but keep in mind, the SAG nominated her but she did not ultimately win. No, that honour went to …

Meryl Streep in DOUBT

You may never know a scarier screen nun after Streep’s Sister Aloysius Beauvier. The way that she leers at the children in the playground, just waiting for them to step out of line so that she can assume her duties as disciplinarian and well, discipline them. She almost seems to get some perverse joy out of it. She scours the world for all its evils and when she sets her eyes on her parish priest, you know he’s in big trouble because even God will be too scared to not side with the sister.

How many times does someone need to be nominated in their lifetime? Streep holds the records for most Oscar nods with 15 in total. She does have two wins but her last was for SOPHIE’S CHOICE in 1982. She is definitely due and many are saying that this will be her year. DOUBT did not play well outside of the acting categories, which denotes a certain apathy toward the film but Streep did take home the SAG award for this intense performance. The trouble is, so did …

Kate Winslet in THE READER

Hanna Schmitz is one of Winslet’s most complex characters. We meet her under the same circumstances as the young boy she ends up taking to bed. She seems nice enough, if not perhaps just a bit cold and guarded. Still, you would never imagine that she was personally responsible for countless deaths as an SS officer in the Second World War. Furthermore, it is unfathomable that she is actually able to rationalize her actions as entirely reasonable.


Winslet was expected to earn a nomination here for REVOLUTIONARY ROAD. In fact, after her double win at the Golden Globes opened the possibility of an Oscar repeat. Her role in THE READER was touted as a supporting performance but as she has the most screen time of any character in the film, that was a hard sell that was eventually rejected by the academy. The SAG rewarded Winslet in the supporting category and now both SAG honoured actresses find themselves going head to head at the Oscars. It could get ugly.

I would say though that even though Winslet did not get the nod for REVOLUTIONARY ROAD, no one will forget the force with which she delivered in both films. And so, Black Sheep predicts Kate Winslet for Best Actress in THE READER.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Escape 2 the Bank

Wow. I totally missed this one. I knew the Dreamworks MADAGASCAR sequel would do well, that it would be the king of the forest, or desert or wild kingdom or whatever the African animals preside over but I did not see this much money coming its way. MADAGASCAR: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA outpaced the original right out of the cage, I mean gate, on Friday with $17 million. It then went on to crush every competitor out there, with its mammoth $63.5 million haul (compared to a first weekend of $47 million for the first outing) but audiences showed up in meerkat or lemur or lemming or “whatever that thing that likes to move it, move it is” size numbers for many other titles as well, making this a huge early jump to the holiday season.


Another title that surpassed expectations this week, hold its own very well against the family friends toon, was ROLE MODELS. The comedy, starring Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott, skews slightly older but does certainly have a kid-friendly appeal to it, making its near $20 million take pretty impressive considering the competition. Rudd, who incidentally also co-wrote the screenplay, does not usually place himself in lead roles but this success will certainly make that more likely in the future. Meanwhile, Scott got some much needed love that has been lacking for him with recent misses like THE PROMOTION or MR. WOODCOCK.


The only other Top 10 debut this week was an unfortunate misfire for Bernie Mac’s last screen work before his death earlier this fall, SOUL MEN. This film opened in sixth place, thanks to strong holds for CHANGELING and ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO that shut it out of the Top 5. This title is a sure fire rental hit so audiences will get their chance to see Mac’s last show before this title drifts into obscurity but it would have been nice for his memory to be honoured in a larger fashion.


Below the Top, this week’s biggest success story was THE BOY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS. The WWII story about two boys, one on each side of a fence to a concentration camp, pulled in $15K per screen for the second highest per screen average of any film this week, behind the MADAGASCAR sequel. The most unlikely of art house heroes, Jean Claude van Damme saw a promising start for his self-referential fictionalized account of his current life, JCVD. The film opened to $11K per screen on just two locations. I’VE LOVED YOU SO LONG, SYNECDOCHE NEW YORK and NOAH’S ARC: JUMPING THE BROOM continued to pull in averages just below $10K. And, the wedding of the year, RACHEL GETTING MARRIED, added another 258 screens, bringing it ever so closer to the Top 10 with a 133% increase. If you haven’t RSVP’d to this one already, you should get on that. You wouldn’t want to miss this dessert table.


NEXT WEEK: Huge week! Only one major mass market release and one art house release worth noting. What? That doesn’t seem huge? Well, you haven‘t considered the titles we’re talking about here. For the art crowd, the audience winner at this year’s TIFF, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, from Danny Boyle. And for the masses, Bond, James Bond, in QUANTUM OF SOLACE. They didn’t even try to counter program. Welcome back, Mr. Bond.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: High School Trick or Treaters

I happened to be out on Halloween night on a way to a friend’s place for some good eats and leftover candy. I couldn’t help but notice the obscene amount of teenagers parading around in costumes. When was Halloween taken away from the kids? Oblivious selfishness aside, the high number of teenage trick or treaters certainly explains why HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3 placed fifth on Friday, plummeting nearly 90% week on week. Still, all those teenagers went home that night, overdosed on candy and bounced their way back to the theatres throughout the rest of the weekend, sending the Disney juggernaut back to the top of a mild frame.

HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3 fended off ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO this weekend to remain on top despite an overall drop of 64%. The front-heavy title was expected to drop off drastically and the numbers it posted Friday led many to believe it would lose its place as king of the prom. By the end of the weekend though, ZACK AND MIRI, its closest competitor, missed by nearly $5 million. The R-rated Kevin Smith directed pic only managed a third place finish on Friday and finished with a modest $10 million, when prognosticators were expecting closer to the high teens. On average, it performed below HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL as well so its lower turnout cannot be simply chalked up to a lesser theatre count or its R-rating. Maybe had Smith made an actual porno, he would have a fared better.


The film that opened better than ZACK AND MIRI on Friday was the unexpected CHANGELING. The first of two Clint Eastwood films expected this year stars Angelina Jolie and drew in big adult crowds despite the critical split on the film’s merits. CHANGELING pulled in the highest per screen average of any film in the Top 10 but saw its returns dwindle throughout the course of the weekend so this latest Jolie Oscar bait looks to be going the same route as last summer’s A MIGHTY HEART.


Not surprisingly, the number one movie on Halloween was SAW V. This would mark the first time a SAW film climbed to number one in its second frame. Overall though, it still dropped off a frightening 66% and is trailing SAW 4 by about 10%. In fact, this is definitely the least successful SAW since the inaugural gorefest. Meanwhile, SAW VI is currently in development.


Below the Top 10, a number of arthouse pictures performed to varying results. The most notable was Guy Ritchie’s ROCKNROLLA expansion. The film was playing to diminishing results in limited release and added 807 screens this week to find itself with a poor take of $1.75 million. It’s $2K average was a far cry from a number of other limited runs. RACHEL GETTING MARRIED dropped off less than 2% in its fourth frame. The Jonathan Demme Oscar contender has grossed a total of $3.8 million so far. Mike Leigh’s HAPPY-GO-LUCKY added another 41 screens and saw its gross increase by another 65% over last weekend. Kristen Scott Thomas’s performance is I’VE LOVED YOU SO LONG is getting rave reviews and those reviews are driving in the audiences. The film added another 11 screens this week and saw it’s gross improve by 110%. Still, higher averages can be found for the Charlie Kaufman film, SYNECHDOCHE NEW YORK ($11K) and surprisingly, NOAH’S ARC: JUMPING THE BROOM ($14K).

NEXT WEEK: Opening on nearly 4000 screens, there will be no match for MADAGASCAR 2. Two other comedies will compete for different male demographics – the white bred ROLE MODELS, starring Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott and the urban skewed SOUL MEN, starring Samuel L. Jackson and the late Bernie Mac.

CHANGELING

Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Starring Angelina Jolie, John Malkovich, Jeffrey Donovan and Colm Feore


Captain J. J. Jones: Yours is a story with a happy ending, Mrs. Collins. People love a happy ending.

The truth is a tricky construct. Words are uttered and, depending on who says them, they are afforded a certain level of belief. Sometimes the truth is so entirely outlandish that believing it is a struggle. And sometimes that struggle is worth it because the truth has the potential to enlighten and call for change. The truth in a movie is almost inherently a falsehood. The intention of telling the truth may be genuine but film requires reconstruction and subjectivity in order for its message to be told. So when Clint Eastwood’s latest directorial effort, CHANGELING, announces at its very start that what we are about to bear witness to is a true story, a certain weight is lent while a certain caution is exercised. The truth here is that a boy by the name of Walter Collins was abducted in 1928 and the boy that was returned to his mother, Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie), five months later was not her son, but rather a boy claiming to be her son. The thought that no one believed her truthful claims is a wide stretch to begin with and Eastwood, despite setting a complete scene, did not ultimately convince me that any of this actually happened.


Of course, to some extent, much of the story did happen. In the late 1920’s and early 1930’s, Los Angeles played home to an atrocious set of serial murders known then as the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders. Walter Collins was said to be a victim of these horrible crimes, in which a man by the name of Gordon Northcott (played in the film by Jason Butler Harner), would lure young boys back to his run down ranch, lock them up in chicken coops and torture them before ultimately killing them like helpless animals and burying their bodies in his backyard. At the same time, a boy by the name of Arthur Hutchens Jr. claimed to be the missing Collins boy in order to get a free ride from Iowa to California. When Christine Collins told the police that this was not her son – something Jolie says repeatedly in the film like a beautiful but busted record – they tried to convince her that she was mistaken and confused. She pushed and was eventually incarcerated in the psychiatric ward of the L.A. county hospital for her supposed delusions. She was released ten days later when Hutchens finally admitted he was not Walter Collins.


The facts are what they are but yet somehow, when Eastwood tells the story, it seems ridiculous and CHANGELING becomes a disappointing experience because you want for it to be better than it is. Cinematographer, Tom Stern, shoots Patrick M. Sullivan Jr.’s delicate and detailed art direction with a soft sensitivity that births an encompassing sense of nostalgia for a time I never knew. And it always surprises me just how breathtaking Jolie is. As the single mother at the center of this controversy, she is composed and determined one moment and fragile and frightened the next. Sometimes, she is all of these things and more at the same time. Unfortunately for Jolie, she seems to keep picking prestige projects where she outshines the material itself. J. Michael Straczynski’s script is overly facile as it chalks up all of Collins’ difficulties to her being a woman, that ever-emotional creature that cannot possibly function with reason. And Eastwood has all of her male aggressors adopt that same mentality. So when a doctor tells Christine Collins that of course it is possible that her boy shrunk three inches after this ordeal and that she cannot see this because she is a woman and has no objectivity, we chuckle at how ludicrous this is instead of recoil at the horror.


Throughout CHANGELING, you can feel Eastwood’s sense of accomplishment. There he is behind the lens, standing up straight and proud. He is the champion of women’s rights, exposing injustices and not afraid be the man that does so. What he doesn’t see on the other side of his smug sense of accomplishment is that he is actually detracting from Christine Collins’ plight by oversimplifying the whole affair. The specific details can never truly be exposed but this truly happened and by trying to tell his limited take on the truth, Eastwood has turned the truth into a bad joke.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: SAW Gets Schooled - Musical Style!

For years now, it wouldn’t be Halloween if it wasn’t SAW to begin with. The consistent Lionsgate moneymaker would come out on or around Halloween, rake in the quick dough and get out before Thanksgiving came creeping. They’ve always opened at number one and have somehow managed to hold on to their core audience each year despite each installment being less interesting than the last. There was some concern the franchise was losing its edge on the market but no one would have guessed last year, it would be outdone by a bunch of squeaky clean teens singing and dancing it up at the prom.


After the record breaking cable success and subsequent soundtrack success of the first two HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL installments, Disney got the bright idea to launch the latest in the series in theatres. Clearly, there was money to be made exploiting these attractive young people and their limited singing and dancing talents. And money they did make. HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3: SENIOR YEAR opened to $42 million, the third biggest October opening in history, behind SCARY MOVIE 3 ($48 million) and SHARK TALE ($47 million). When the film opened to $14 million on Friday, it seemed as though the film would easily surpass these two hits but Friday accounted for 33% of the full weekend take while people expected the kid friendly pic to soar even higher on Saturday. Still, it was an impressive haul and it won’t be long before we start hearing about “Community College Musical”.


The SAW folks don’t have anything to cry about. With an estimated budget of just over $10 million, who cares if your $30 million take is slightly less than SAW 4’s opening weekend? This sequel continues to perform year on year but its legs get shorter and shorter in the long term, and not because they were hacked off. It also wouldn’t be Halloween it seems if it weren’t for TIM BURTON’S THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. The film was re-issued yet again this year in 3D and in many cases with brand new digital projections. The film was also recently released on DVD though so this year’s ritual only mustered an average of $1,310 per screen for a total of $372K.


The Top 10’s only other debut was PRIDE & GLORY, starring Edward Norton and Colin Farrell as boys in blue. The unoriginal premise wasn’t fooling anyone and the film played to a mediocre take of just over $6 million. Audiences were more interested in holdovers like BEVERLY HILLS CHIHUAHUA and EAGLE EYE, which saw their declines hold solidly.

The art house scene was all a bustle this weekend. Fall is like the art house’s summer. The most notable debut was Clint Eastwood’s CHANGELING, starring Angelina Jolie in a role that might finally nab her another Oscar nomination. Playing on a mere 15 screens, the film pulled in half a million dollars, for a stellar per screen average of over $33K. The next highest average of any film playing is a bit surprising. Adapted from the popular Logo series, NOAH’S ARC: JUMPING THE BROOM appealed to gay audiences desperate for fare. On just five screens across the nation, the film collected $32K per screen. Meanwhile, Charlie Kaufman’s first time at bat as a director, SYNECDOCHE NEW YORK, was unleashed on 9 screens worth of unsuspecting people, for an average of $19K. The film has been getting mixed reviews so the future is as unpredictable as well, a Charlie Kaufman film.


NEXT WEEK: ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO. The title says it all folks and they do it on over 3000 screens. THE HAUNTING OF MOLLY HARTLEY will try to scare audiences away from SAW V. Guy Ritchie’s ROCKNROLLA has been struggling in limited release but hopes wider audiences will go for his supposed return to form. And Angelina and Clint go wide (from 15 to over 1800 screens) with CHANGELING.