WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Eagle Eye Candy

A few years back, a little known actor with a squeaky clean face headlined a remake of Hitchcock’s REAR WINDOW for the MTV generation. The film was called DISTURBIA and it opened past all expectations to debut at number one and then stayed there for three consecutive weeks. Now, we all know how rare that is. The kid whose face drove hordes of young ladies into the theatres was Shia LaBeouf and before Steven Spielberg made LaBeouf his personal pet project, Dreamworks fast tracked another LaBeouf collaboration with DISTURBIA director, DJ Caruso. That movie was EAGLE EYE and it has finally made it to theatres. Only now LaBeouf is Hollywood’s hottest young actor so the question wasn’t whether they would be able to repeat the business DISTURBIA did. The question was how far it would beat it.


Just like DISTURBIA, EAGLE EYE surpassed expectations, surging to almost $30 million in its opening weekend, very high numbers for September standards. Reviews have been poor but since when did reviews stop anyone from enjoying their favorite eye candy. Longevity will prove LaBeouf’s staying power with this picture but a robust $8300 per screen average on 3500 screens is a great starting point.


Richard Gere and Diane Lane reteamed for the third time and proved that romantic audiences still crave more from this attractive, older couple. Adapted from the Nicholas Sparks novel, NIGHTS IN RODANTHE may have pulled in less than half of what EAGLE EYE did but it held its own and found its audience. Whether that audience was able to find its way out of the auditorium with the tears in their eyes clouding their vision is another question altogether.


Here’s a question for you. What the heck is FIREPROOF? This little movie starring 80’s sitcom idol turned born again Christian, Kirk Cameron, not only managed to open on 800+ screens but it opened in third place on Friday to finish fourth for the weekend. It almost managed a higher per screen average than EAGLE EYE. Perhaps I’m a pretty ignorant but I never even heard of this movie before Friday. Given the poor reception it has received from critics and audiences alike, I probably won’t be hearing about it for much longer but a $6 million opening weekend for a movie that cost half a million to make is certainly commendable.

The week’s only other Top 10 debut was a disappointment for auteur director, Spike Lee. His WWII drama, MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA opened to under $3K per screen and lacks the critical praise that would encourage growth in the coming weeks. That’s what you get for making a bad movie, Spike. Seriously, it’s bad. It's got to hurt too that FIREPROOF did so much better on even less screens. Ouch. Sorry, O paid $40 to see this at the Toronto festival so I'm a little bitter.


On the artier side of the street, THE DUCHESS scored an excellent expansion. The Keira Knightly star vehicle added 48 screens and saw its business jump over 200%. APPALOOSA held up well in its second week with a solid $10K per screen but no screens were added yet so its gross still dipped. Things are sure to pick up next week when it goes wide. Two other high profile indie releases debuted to disappointing results. Well, one was disappointing; the other was disastrous. CHOKE, the Fox Searchlight hopeful starring Sam Rockwell, earned just over $3K per screen to debut outside the Top 10. And proving once again that American audiences are still not willing to face films about their war, THE LUCKY ONES, in which three soldiers take a road trip while on leave, made under $500 per screen on 425 screens.

NEXT WEEK: Holy crap, what isn’t coming out next weekend? To name just a few, BLINDNESS goes wide, FLASH OF GENIUS opens on 1000+, HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND ALIENATE PEOPLE will try to get people to like Simon Pegg and NICK AND NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST finds Nick & Norah falling in love with each other while we fall in love with them. Oh wait, I almost forgot … the Bill Maher religion mockery, RELIGULOUS opens on Wednesday and goes wide on Friday, APPALOOSA takes the West to the masses and the Jonathan Demme masterpiece, RACHEL GETTING MARRIED dips its toes into 8 shallow pools.

MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA

Written by James McBride
Directed by Spike Lee
Starring Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonso, Omar Benson Miller and Valentina Cervi


2nd Staff Sergeant Aubrey Stamps: I know, I’m the only one left who knows.

I know this is too easy even for me but the true miracle at the center of Spike Lee’s latest joint, MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA, is that I was able to sit through it without screaming out of sheer frustration over how hollow the whole affair was. I don’t feel so bad about taking that oversimplified stance, seeing as how Lee himself didn’t seem to have any concerns about dumbing down this important history lesson. Lee is an accomplished filmmaker and MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA is an ambitious project, even for him. He prides himself, as well he should, on telling stories from an African-American perspective that is rarely taken in mainstream film. In this case, he chose to shed some much needed light on the soldiers known as the Buffalo Soldiers, all black regiments in the U.S. army. He wanted to give the world a fresh take on the World War II epic by using an unfamiliar voice but all he accomplished was minimizing their plight by weighing down his film in tired convention and never committing to any one point of view.


I don’t mind long movies when the story warrants the time spent. MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA opens in 1983. A postal worker (Derek Luke) has just shot and murdered a man who bought a stamp off of him for no apparent reason. A statue head, one with incredible value both financially and historically, has been found tucked away at the bottom of his closet. News of the statue’s recovery spreads across the globe and an investigative journalist (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is determined to understand why a seemingly law-abiding citizen would commit such a random act of brutality. This goes on for about thirty or forty minutes until the postal worker finally agrees to tell his story. It all started in Italy during the second world war. My question is, if it all started then, why did Lee waste so much time with a pointless excuse to get to the actual story when the story in question needed no excuse to be told? This all too tired Hollywood convention needs to cease. People need to start getting to the point.


The story, adapted from James McBride’s novel of the same name by McBride himself, follows a foursome of Buffalo soldiers who survive a German attack, find a young Italian boy in need of medical attention and eventually set up camp in a small village while they wait for reinforcement. During their stay, the soldiers make friends and enemies with the townspeople, which challenges the inherent racism of all involved. It isn’t a bad story; it is just written in such a false and incredible fashion that undermines the film’s credibility. There is no time for one liners when you are being attacked on all sides by the German army but yet somehow McBride felt that quips between gunfire would alleviate the intensity, as if that were necessary. There is also apparently no time for real character development. Bringing an untold story to light means putting faces to characters that had none before. Without development, these soldiers are nothing but black soldiers instead of real people. Somehow, by forcing us to face the colour of their skin, Lee made it so that is all we end up seeing.


Spike Lee makes important movies but sometimes, he makes them with the knowledge of just how important they truly are. MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA is at times horrifying and at others, beautiful. Mostly though, it is tedious and disappointing. It is not so much disappointing that Lee wasn’t able to pull off such a huge endeavor but more so that if anyone could have done it the justice it deserved, it would have been him. Now, the story has been told but the point was never made.

Fall Foliage: September

BLACK SHEEP'S FALL FILM PREVIEW


Summertime. Who doesn’t love it? Countless hours roasting at the beach, just swirling your tongue around a chocolate covered waffle cone, making sure that every last bite of that sweet, soft vanilla ice cream makes it into your hot mouth. And if your imagination happens to be running wild under the influence of a mild heat stroke, you can always seek shelter in a cool, dark auditorium for a big, summer movie. You like strapping superheroes? You got it! You like babes and bombs? It’s all waiting for you! If you’re anything like me though, you see the summer as just a few months of mostly mindless distraction designed to pass the time before the fall. Fall is a time for prestige and pedigree, thought and revelation. Fall is a time for cerebral celebration. And while summer is not quite done with us yet, the fall is just around the corner. Over the next few weeks, Black Sheep will be looking at each of the coming months, one by one, and highlighting the most exciting films to be appearing amidst the changing leaves. So as not to get too far ahead of ourselves, how about we begin with September?

Last fall brought us the eventual Oscar winner and 2007 Mouton d'Or winner for Best Picture, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, by the infamous writer/director siblings, Joel & Ethan Coen. This September, the brothers are back and while there is little to no Oscar buzz this time around, the cool factor that used to surround every project they were involved with is finally back after a string of disappointments. BURN AFTER READING is certainly lighter in tone than their last picture as two dodgy gym employees decide to use a computer disc containing potential CIA secrets they find in a changing room as leverage to get what they want out of life. As per usual, all the stars, from Clooney to Malkovich, to Swinton, McDormand and Pitt are out for the occasion.

Opening the same weekend, “Murphy Brown” writer, Diane English’s THE WOMEN looks to continue the trend of successful female driven pictures that proved themselves and then some this summer (see SEX AND THE CITY and MAMMA MIA!). A remake of the 1939 classic, English has rounded up a stellar cast that includes Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Jada Pinkett Smith, Debra Messing and Eva Mendes. If English pulls it off, this could be the picture that finally gets Bening her Oscar and even more impressively, gets America to fall back in love with Meg Ryan.

You would think that winning an Academy Award for writing a screenplay that genuinely struck a chord with audiences or creating a groundbreaking television series that forced people to face death in a whole new way would be plenty to get your first directorial effort sold in no time. Apparently not so. Alan Ball, the writer of AMERICAN BEAUTY and creator of “Six Feet Under”, screened TOWELHEAD at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival and it was days before it was bought up by the now defunct Warner Independent. At the time, it was called NOTHING IS PRIVATE but when it resurfaced at this year’s Sundance festival, it had gone back to the title of the novel it was based on.

Spike Lee is still making joints and not pictures but they are nothing like his earlier work. Or so it would seem on the surface. His later works might have a greater reach after mainstream success like THE INSIDE MAN but Lee is still fighting for the cause of the African-American people just by making sure they are front and center and getting their stories told in a fashion that is neither exploitative nor watered down for a wider audience. MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA is a fresh WWII story about a battalion of black soldiers that only gets heard in 1984, after a postal worker who served in that same battalion commits a seemingly inexplicable murder.

The month closes with a throwback to the summer time. Not every fall movie is Oscar bait. Believe it or not, some people still want to have an explosive good time. Enter Shia LaBeouf in EAGLE EYE. This terrorist thriller reteams LaBeouf with the director that propelled him to stardom. No, I’m not talking about the Shia-obsessed, Steven Spielberg, but rather DISTURBIA director, D.J. Caruso. LaBoeuf, along with blossoming starlet, Michelle Monaghan, unwittingly become roped into a terrorist plot that I’m sure they will be desperately trying to foil. This production was a bit of a rush, has many a writer to its credit and was pushed back from an earlier August release date. Ordinarily these would all be very bad signs but LaBeouf is the hottest young star on the planet so if anyone can change the direction of the harsh fall wind, he can.

Also in September … Nicolas Cage kills for money in BANGKOK DANGEROUS … Box-office golden boy, Tyler Perry takes a road trip in THE FAMILY THAT PREYS … Al Pacino and Robert Deniro reteam to the delight of every man’s inner boy in RIGHTEOUS KILL … Samuel Jackson torments his beautiful new mixed race neighbours (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington) in LAKEVIEW TERRACE … Keira Knightly throws on her best Victorian wig in THE DUCHESS … As previously reported, CITY OF GOD director, Fernando Meirelles gives us a world without sight in BLINDNESS … Actor Ed Harris directs for the first time since POLLACK with the western, APPALOOSA … John Cusack voices the little guy who finally demands his glory in IGOR … One of Hollywood’s favorite writers, David Koepp, returns to directing with GHOST TOWN, a vehicle for Ricky Gervais where he can talk to dead people … Rachel McAdams, Tim Robbins and Michael Pena are a trio of soldiers road tripping through a homeland they no longer recognize in THE LUCKY ONES … and Richard Gere and Diane Lane reunite for love in the Nicholas Sparks adaptation, NIGHTS IN RODANTHE.

Tune in next week to see how Hollywood intends to scare the crap out of you in October!