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THREE IS
A MAGIC NUMBER
The 2007 Summer Movie Season (part 1)
Three is a powerful
number in Western culture—Biblical events, punchline setups, the Beastie
Boys, you name it. But it also happens to be the magic number for franchises
in Hollywood; anomalous pop-culture phenoms like the Harry Potter
books aside, most big drooling concepts get only a trinity to sustain
popularity (and then get shuttled off to fertilize other segments of the
entertainment market). Since the town in question is desperate in a
different way this season—desperate to prove that last year’s upswing in
profits was itself no aberration—finishing the franchises actually becomes
secondary to planting new seeds. Do this summer’s few new ideas have that
kind of stretch in them? Only fall will tell.
MAY
Shrek the Third
and Pirates of the Caribbean:
At World's End are two 
of the giant mega threepeats heading into your pop-corn palace: the
first unleashes a metric buttload of classic fairy tale villains and
heroines to fight for the kingdom, while the second finds our heroes en
route to Singapore to take on
Chow Yun-Fat. Grossout fans will salivate in all the right ways over the
sequel 28 Weeks Later (although it’s not helmed by the original
crew), and also William Friedkin’s adaptation of Tracy Letts’ off-Broadway
horror hit Bug. Perhaps in recognition of the season, the month’s
lone big romantic comedy is the fish-out-of-water slacker correctional
The Ex, but lovers of drama may also find themselves at the World Series
of Poker-based Lucky You, featuring Robert Duvall going up against
the son he abandoned, or Georgia Rule, with Lindsay Lohan possibly
typecast as a West Coast druggie drying out in the Midwest, or even
September Dawn, which tries to do for the infamous Mormon-led massacre
of 1857 what West Side Story
did for Nuyorican gang violence. (No, it’s not a musical, just a doomed
romance.)
In Limited Release:
Some of the season’s narrowest
releases can seem like big-screen filler. Whether the studios do this out of
deference to their sleeper ability, or just use May as a big-ticket dumping
ground, is hard to say. Certainly the Hitchcockian post-911
paranoia of Civic Duty and the Iraq war drama Home of the Brave,
uniting Samuel L. Jackson and 50 Cent, seem like the former, while the
Richard Gere/Claire Danes FBI
thriller The Flock and the Saw-with-romance flick Captivity—already
damaged by a tasteless ad campaign—probably fall into the latter category.
Fans of foreign cinema can scour the arthouses for The Flying Scotsman,
for those in need of a Lance Armstrong type tale, and Severance, a
British black comedy about business holidays, or the Aussie aborigine
anthology Ten Canoes. Then you’re left with the pieces that don’t
fit, like the pointlessly offensive and very literally titled Blind
Dating, the documentary ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway, Luke
Wilson’s directorial debut in the conman comedy The Wendell Baker Story,
and Jeff Goldblum’s Henry Fool sequel, Fay Grim. Those in
serious need of something different and fresh should head for Day
Night Day Night, a stark and simple portrait of a female suicide
bomber’s last day.
BEST
MOVIE EVERYONE WILL SEE: Spider-Man
3. Spidey goes over to the dark
side, and Sam Raimi, thank God, is still there to film it.
BEST
MOVIE NO ONE WILL SEE: Shortcut to
Happiness. It’s been on the shelf
for a while now, but director Alec Baldwin’s take on The Devil and Daniel
Webster looks promising anyway.
BEST
NOT THOUGHT ABOUT: Delta Farce.
Half of the Blue Collar comics—the stupid half—get shanghaied to kick ass in
Iraq and unknowingly end up in Mexico. Goddamn, that’s one Texas-style
buffet of xenophobia! Wooooohooo!
JUNE
Okay, there’s but one
threepeater in the bunch this month, but it’s Ocean’s 13,
 which, based on prerelease
buzz, may find Soderbergh, Clooney and co. repairing the major leaks that
threatened to sink the franchise entirely with 12. Two unlikely
franchises also keep unfolding with Hostel: Part II, which examines
the house of horrors through female eyes this go-round, and Evan Almighty,
which is betting that Steve Carell can pull off what Jim Carrey couldn’t
with Bruce. (The 40 Year Old Virgin crew, sans Carell,
is also back with another sex comedy, Knocked Up.) And speaking of
Bruce, Mr. Willis goes to the well for the fourth,
I-actually-am-getting-too-old-for-this-shit time with Live Free or Die
Hard.
The real yippie-ki-yay in June may be found in the new meat,
however, like teen popster Emma Roberts starring as a live-action Nancy
Drew and John Cusack adopting a Martian
 Child. Elsewhere, Frank
Oz returns to filmmaking with the British black comedy Death at a Funeral,
while Michael Moore sets his sights on America’s healthcare system in
Sicko; the girl-empowerment soccer drama Gracie will also be a
good fit for tweens while their parents take in the Daniel Pearl docudrama
A Mighty Heart. Everyone will probably want to step over sticky trash
like the videogame adaptation DOA: Dead or Alive, Kevin Costner as a
serial killer (!) in Mr. Brooks, and some c-grade animated penguins
in Surf’s Up. You can probably guess what they’re doing this time.
(Enough with the goddamned penguins!)
In Limited Release:
June is a banner month for those
of you who like to escape reality by watching reality, or at least a
fictionalized version of it: there’s plenty of documentaries and
docudramas out there to offset the blockbusters, such as the real-life
Southern murder mystery The Trials of Darryl Hunt, the Edith Piaf doc
La Vie en Rose, a look at Roky Erikson, one of rock’s legendary
psychedelic burnouts, in You're Gonna Miss Me, and Ghosts of Cité
Soleil, a Haitian gang portrait produced by Wyclef Jean. Crazy Love
outlines the highly dysfunctional relationship of Burt and Linda Pugach, and
Pierrepoint focuses on the most unlikely of celebs—the 20th century’s
most famous (and prolific) hangman.
 here
are some big films dumped off in limited release this month, also, for
whatever reasons. Decide for yourself if the majors were wise not to invest
too much in Rise: Blood Hunter, featuring Lucy Liu as an undead
vigilante, Jon Heder in yet another you-know-what vehicle, Mama’s Boy,
Tracey Ullman as Mother Nature in the romcom I Could Never Be Your Woman,
or J. Lo investigating murder in a Bordertown. Rounding things out
are oddballs like Day Watch, second in a Russian sci-fi trilogy,
Evening, a generational chick flick drama, the child prodigy of Vitus,
and the oddball British horror comedy Black Sheep, which is about
exactly what you think it is.
BEST
MOVIE EVERYONE WILL SEE: Ratatouille.
John Lasseter may be turning new
Pixar into Old Disney, but Brad Bird still has his thumb on it with this
story of a Parisian rat that becomes a five-star cook.
BEST
MOVIE NO ONE WILL SEE: Fido.
The rest of the world’s seen this
question answered already: What if zombies were domesticated?
BEST
NOT THOUGHT ABOUT: Fantastic Four:
Rise of the Silver Surfer. A
sequel to a movie that pleased no one, featuring a character best remembered
as a long–winded trophy come to life? When he’s remembered at all? Gonna be
a long vacation, kids.
The 2007 Summer Movie Season
(part 2)
hree
is a powerful number in Western culture—Biblical events, punchline setups,
the Beastie Boys, you name it. But it also happens to be the magic number
for franchises in Hollywood; anomalous pop-culture phenoms like the
Harry Potter books aside, most big drooling concepts get only a
trinity to sustain popularity (and then get shuttled off to fertilize other
segments of the entertainment market). Since the town in question is
desperate in a different way this season – desperate to prove that last
year’s upswing in profits was itself no aberration – finishing the
franchises actually becomes secondary to planting new seeds. Do this
summer’s few new ideas have that kind of stretch in them? Only fall will
tell.
JULY
he
latest Harry
Potter film—midway through its
second trilogy— will rule mid-July, and majors are almost
sitting out the entire month in fear. Almost, that is: The
Simpsons Movie,
despite being a decade late and (advance reports say) a dollar short, will
almost certainly trounce the rest of the July competition. Michael Bay’s
CGI/live action Transformers,
featuring everyone’s favorite rising young actor, Shia LeBeouf, is a major
popcorn event for aging geeks and youngsters alike, although the Bay
imprimatur may doom it as a buffet of unintentional laughs. Likewise,
Lindsay Lohan’s entry into the mindfuck-slash-slasher genre, I Know
Who Killed Me, will probably only interest
fame hags looking for clues to her troubled offscreen life. (Although, since
the month’s only other horror offering is an unknown but promising werewolf
flick called Skinwalkers,
she may make out all right at that.)
 ith
the two major juggernauts set to dominate, studios can only counter with
that cheapest of genres, the slapstick comedy:
License to Wed features Robin Williams in a
Meet The Parents-style jokefest that
replaces the fearsome father-in-law figure with a fanatic marriage counselor
of a priest; I Now
Pronounce You
Chuck and
Larry skirts around the gay marriage
issue by casting Adam Sandler and Kevin James as two straight lunks who
exploit a domestic partner loophole for profit; and Who's Your Caddy
features
Outkast’s
Big
Boi in
a
black Caddyshack – proof that golf
has officially entered the buppie dreamscape. Finally, the lone romantic
comedy of the month, No Reservations,
places Catherine Zeta-Jones
and Aaron Eckhart against the background of the cutthroat Manhattan
restaurant scene.
In Limited Release:
No Hollywood blockbuster can possibly match the cast of the documentary
Your Mommy Kills Animals for sheer star-studdedness,
but if you’re not interested in either side of the animal-rights movement
controversy, you can always turn to the Vietnam protest doc The
Camden 28 or more florid biopics like Molière and Milos
Forman’s Goya's Ghosts. Come to think of it, however, several
of the month’s limited release offerings read like their big-budget
brethren: there’s Don Cheadle doing the Good Morning
Vietnam thing as a civil-rights-era soul DJ (Talk to Me),
Queen Latifah attempting to do for polar bears what Morgan Freeman did for
penguins (Arctic Tale), a French farce with a high-concept bet
at its center (My Best Friend) and Sam Rockwell helming
a yuppie Rosemary’s Baby (Joshua). Turned off by the
summer indies playing at being hits? Try Steve Buscemi directing a remake of
Interview, the Black and White manga adaptation
Tekkon Kinkreet, the Oi-era Neo-Nazi drama This Is
England, or the Icelandic gay footballer’s movie – you heard right –
dubbed Eleven Men Out.
BEST MOVIE EVERYONE WILL SEE: Harry Potter and the Order of the
Phoenix. The
books keep getting worse, but the films keep getting better – and there’s no
reason to believe British TV vet David Yates will let the franchise get away
from him.
BEST MOVIE NO
ONE WILL SEE: Sunshine. 28 Days Later director Danny Boyle goes
straight sci-fi with a cast of (relative) unknowns.
BEST NOT
THOUGHT ABOUT: Hairspray. An unnecessary remake of the John
Waters film, featuring Adam Shankman, late of The Pacifier and
Cheaper By The Dozen, in the director’s chair –
and Travolta attempting to fill Divine’s cha-cha heels. Seriously.
AUGUST
Summer’s traditional dumping ground
of bad ideas does not disappoint in its annual cornucopia of big-name
disappointment: what other month would dare foist upon us a Daddy Day Care
sequel without even the star power of Eddie Murphy (Daddy
Day Camp,
featuring Cuba Gooding Jr.) or a wobbly, aging franchise wrapup like
Rush Hour
3 or a live-action version of the
barely-remembered Underdog animated
series? There’s no need to fear: seek solace in Mr. Bean's Holiday,
which finds the title character in Cannes (and backed up by the cream of
modern Britcom writers), Charlie
Bartlett, where the titular
character plays shrink to his troubled high-school peers, or
Wristcutters: A Love
Story, featuring a quirky dream cast
as lost suicides whose souls roam in a holding pattern. This is also a
promising month for comedy, what with the teen beer run Superbad
(featuring several cast and crew from Arrested Development and
Da Ali G Show) and Balls
of Fury
(the State/Reno 911! crowd tackling Will Ferrell sports
parody territory).
 f
course, on the off chance it’s cheese you’re really looking for, try the
stuntman revenge fantasy Hot
Rod, the dead-in-the-water
swords-and-sandals epic The Last Legion,
or horror retreads like the Nicole Kidman/Daniel Craig Body
Snatchers rip The
Invasion and Rob Zombie’s pointless
Halloween remake, both apparently
deemed too bad to debut in October. (Now that’s awful.) How the uplifting
and self-explanatory Samuel L. Jackson boxing movie Resurrecting
the Champ
or the Aussie debate-team love story Rocket
Science got in the mix is anyone’s
guess.
In Limited Release:
I know what you’re
thinking—where’s J. Lo? No? Well, she’s hanging around August anyway,
investigating rapes and murders in a Bordertown and pairing up with
Marc Anthony in El Cantante, a biopic of “Salsa’s bad boy,”
Seventies singer Hector Lavoe. Other stars hyphenate themselves with glee
around the end of summer, such as Julie Delpy continuing her
writing/directing career with the comic travelogue 2 Days
in Paris and her Before Sunrise/Sunset co-star
Ethan Hawke doing the same (adapting his own novel, even!) in the romance
The Hottest State. Biopics also dot the dog-day landscape,
whether it be Anne Hathaway as Jane Austin in Becoming Jane or
Gandhi, My Father, which casts a less-than-flattering
light on the spiritual leader’s parental skills. In other true-life flicks,
New Zealand’s Out of the Blue portrays one of
the country’s most notorious shooting sprees, while the documentary The
King of Kong contrasts two of Donkey Kong’s
highest-scoring legends. Finally, there’s Penelope, featuring
Christina Ricci as an unmarriable blueblood with a family curse and the
J-horror homage of The Signal (lensed by three different
directors).
©
2007 Audience magazine. All rights reserved.
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