Brilliant For Your Consideration Ad for 'The Spirit'

This is just about perfect. Kudos to Peter at Slashfilm for posting this and most of all, many thanks to TotalFilm for doing it in the first place. It's a For Your Consideration ad promoting Frank Miller's The Spirit...for Razzie Awards. The film will no doubt get its share of nominations; Sam Jackson and Scarlett Johansson seem like prime candidates for supporting Razzies, and there may be a Worst Picture slot reserved for it, too, although the Razzies tend to pile onto films that it's cool to hate. I don't think The Spirit is among the five worst movies I saw in 2008, though I'll admit it's plenty bad. So check out the video, which is expertly made and might be the highlight of my entire Spirit experience. Incidentally, the Razzie Awards will be unveiled in Hollywood on February 21st, the night before the Oscars. Nominations will be announced on January 21st.

Wall Street Not Kind to Lionsgate

Some interesting reading about the future of Lionsgate after back to back dull thuds at the box office. First, Punisher: War Zone tanked and was unceremoniously pulled from theaters after only three weeks and $8 million earned. Then came The Spirit, which opened to resoundingly negative reviews and had only made $12 million through its first six days. On Tuesday, analysts from the investment bank Caris & Co. painted a less-than-rosy picture for Lionsgate, downgraded the stock to "above average" from "buy." Said the company's David Miller in a message to his clients, "Explanation for the weakness came primarily from a smattering of negative reviews, coupled with heavy competition from Marley & Me, which opened with a stellar $37.0 million in gross receipts." Miller said that a lot is riding on the studio's next major release, My Bloody Valentine 3-D. If it's a dud, the studio would suffer a third major shelacking in less than 60 days. And if you look at 2008, both as a production company and a distributor, Lionsgate had a less-than-distinguised output. Really only Saw V, Religulous, and Rambo could be deemed "hits," with nearly a dozen movies that had very mediocre to poor box office performance. I wouldn't say the company is doomed or anything - they still have the Tyler Perry and Saw franchises, plus they don't pour a lot into projects as a general rule - but it could be telling that Wall Street is giving investors this kind of notice.

Box Office - 'Marley' and Money on Christmas Day

It was a record day for Marley & Me on Christmas, as the Aniston-Wilson flick took in over $14 million on Thursday. In fact, the top three films released yesterday all set records for December 25th debuts, but it was really only good news for two of them. For Marley, it could help keep solvent the film career of Jennifer Aniston, which has never been as fully realized as most people predicted it would be. But a $50 million weekend, which this movie looks more than capable of hitting, would be a step in the right direction there. The biggest winner of all might be the second place finisher on Thursday, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It wasn't expected to be in the race for the weekend's top spot, but it jumped into the silver medal position with nearly $12 million. Because it also has the most to lose by finishing poorly, Button's $40 - $45 million weekend estimate will go a long way toward the film's profitability, and with this reaction coupled with a likely Oscar run, Button could be the biggest hit of all the awards movies. Bedtime Stories, which had been the projected weekend winner, only finished in third place on Christmas. It's still probably going to make over $40 million over four days, as well, but whether or not it has a lot of longterm life at the box office remains to be seen. Tom Cruise's Valkyrie earned over $8 million on Thursday, a solid number, but probably not enough to put the film on track to $100 million. Still, it's better than being The Spirit, which will be lucky to finish the weekend with over $15 million.

There's a lot of competition for your dollar over the extended holiday weekend. With travel, family, busy shopping days, college football bowl games and more, maybe this isn't the best weekend to release a film. After all, the all-time record for Christmas Day box office is under $11 million. So why is this supposed to be a huge time for movies? There are really two reasons: 1) Family movies tend to do well on holidays, and this is the most family friendly holiday of the year. The box office numbers don't usually trend that way, at least not noticeably, on December 25th, but that's the reason we see so many movies aimed outside at male 18-34 demo. 2) It's the last week for movies to be released for consideration for the Academy Awards. So, even though the box office receipts may not be kind to some of the more downbeat films in theaters right now, this has traditionally been a big weekend for studios, at least in terms of quality. But I think when we examine the final numbers on Sunday, we'll wonder what all the Christmas commotion was about...again. The top-trending movie heading into the holiday is Bedtime Stories, which should come close to $50 million over the four-day weekend. That's not all that good, especially when you think back to November and our back-to-back-to-back $60 million debuts. Those were all over the course of three days. And while the new Adam Sandler kid comedy will be a success, it's hardly a world beater. The news is not as rosy for Marley & Me, the comedy-with-a-dramatic-kick-in-the-nuts starring Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston. We're looking at under $40 million over the Christmas weekend. Again, considering she's supposed to be the goddamn be all end all, that's not a good number. The movie will make money, but like Bedtime Stories, only modestly so. I don't see $150 million in its future. Benjamin Button should do the best of all the new releases, if not right away. The prohibitive multiple Oscar nominee will open quite well, in my opinion, especially considering it's not the most entertaining movie in the world, is easily the new release that requires the most brainpower, and clocks in at just under three hours. Oscar buzz will help this last a long time in theaters, and a good jump this weekend could help it earn back its pretty sizable budget. Valkyrie and The Spirit should round out the top five, neiher one of them making enough of a dent to follow their progress for more than a couple weeks. The Top Five:
1 - Bedtime Stories ($48.5 million)
2 - Marley & Me ($34 million)
3 - Benjamin Button ($29 million)
4 - Valkyrie ($21 million)
5 - The Spirit ($15 million)

Movie Review - 'The Spirit'

The Spirit Starring Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, and Eva Mendes Directed by Frank Miller Rated PG-13

Spending 100 minutes with The Spirit is like going on a blind date with a beautiful, vapid woman. At first, you're mesmerized by her looks, and for a while, you buy into the theory that she might have a bit of an attitude. You can deal with that; you've dealt with it before. But the longer she keeps yappin', the easier it is to realize why she was set up on a blind date with you: She's an idiot. Frank Miller was bitten by the movie bug with Sin City a few years ago. At least that's when it bit him professionally. You can tell by watching The Spirit that he's studied some aspects of filmmaking before. But his real background is in comic books. The titles movie fans will know him for are Sin City and 300, but he has a long history in the form. The Spirit is not one of his comic books, however; it was created by the late Will Eisner over 60 years ago. Fans of the original Spirit might wonder why this movie looks more like a new beat cop assigned to Sin City, though. The color palette is identical, which is truly one of the film's failings. If Miller had proven he could do more than black, white, and red, this might be allowable. But when he tries to throw in a new color - there's a hint of blue with one of the female characters - it doesn't fit at all. It would be like adding a baby blue pocket silk on your blind date with that beautiful, vapid woman if you were wearing, say, a black suit and, of course, a red tie. But it must be said that, for the most part, the look of The Spirit is incredibly compelling. Many of the costumes and the way Miller incorporates digital backgrounds really come to life and fill the scenes. This movie is never boring. Now if it would just shut up.

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