MCN: Movie City News

Not all of the films produced in India are three hours long. Nor are all filmmakers required to include a dozen lavish song-and-dance numbers in every new release, or cast female actors who look as if they might have worn the Miss World crown, as did Aishwarya Rai. When Sony Pictures decided to stick its corporate toe into the waters of Bollywood last year, with the romantic musical Saawariya (now in DVD here), it wasn’t because the studio thought it could change the viewing habits of tens of millions of Hindi movie fanatics. It simply coveted a stake in a nearly $10 billion box-office economy and, because of cheap ticket prices, access to a vastly greater audience than could be found almost anywhere else.

Iron Man rigidly held sway in the marketplace despite a 49% box office decline with an estimated $50.2 million gross. That proved to be bad news for the bow of Speed Racer that was expected to rank a close second but wound up fighting a hard race with the romantic comedy What Happens in Vegas. Estimates place Vegas marginally ahead at $20.1 million but within a statistical margin of error that could reverse the order when actuals are reported Monday.
The Weekend Finals
Top Domestic Grossers
Domestic Market Share

The theory is that eventually our televisions will work like our computers do, with the ability to download material and store it on a hard drive. With high-definition programming growing by the day, we will eventually reach a point where we can download movies or television shows, store them on our insanely large hard drives, and watch them in perfectly crisp high-definition. This is the next wave of the home theater.

The big concern for a lot of people is: what will this do to the movie theater experience? And the really sad fact is that, for me, I don't really care.

Confession: Watching the Wachowski brothers' Speed Racer, often felt like i was getting my head jammed down the gullet of a huge, monstrous video game/pinball machine. Sheeeesh! Based on the celebrated Japanese anime TV series about a young race-car driver, this is a blazing, whiplash-cut, CGI-laden screamer of a movie - not entirely a pleasurable experience, but you sure won't forget it soon.

Bronston's Rome set, which is unseen until near the end of the movie's first half, is an amazing piece of industry. Constructed in Spain and close to a half-mile in length, it is a recreation of the actual plaza in front of the Roman senate that is as exact as possible in both size and detail. The movies had seen nothing like it since Intolerance and now, because of CGI, they never will again. Ultimately, there are not enough motion picture spectacles in the history of cinema - what happened to Bronston is one of the main reasons why - so that those which did manage to make their way to the screen are loved unconditionally by many fans for the shear grandeur of their existence, and The Fall of the Roman Empire is not only a prime example of this romance, but a justification of it.

"I knew that we had something really powerful with Waiting for Hockney and the question that presented itself was "what is the right vessel for this?" Content really determines form. While the piece initially started out as a story for public radio, it quickly outgrew the time allowed for exploration on radio and also exceeded---because of it's visual nature---what sound (in which I strongly believe) can do alone 99% of the time."

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The Hot Button
The Billion Dollar
Paramount '08 Illusion
by David Poland

You might remember that it was only a few years ago when Sherry Lansing and financial architect Jon Dolgen were getting creamed in the media for not risking enough, finding financial partners on pretty much every single movie they made for Paramount.

That complaint could emerge again this summer, as their four biggest likely grossers this summer are all deals that will not be terribly profitable for the studio.

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While undeniably entertaining and revealing, Charlie Wilson's War and The True Story of Charlie Wilson beg a question raised countless times by ethics professors and at least one Twilight Zone episode, If you were transported back in time to Nazi Germany, on or around Krystalnacht, would you have attempted to assassinate Adolph Hitler, and save the world from the horrors of World War II? Or, as it applies here, If a well-meaning American congressman, CIA operative and Dallas socialite hadn't conspired to provide Afghan mujahedeen with the Stinger missiles used to drive Soviet forces from their soil, would we have been spared the events of 9/11 and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?.

Also .. The Savages, Cloverfield, Nana, Starting Out in the Evening, Cuba: An African Odyssey