Tyler Perry's 'Good Deeds' Isn't As Bad As You Might Think, Really!

What can I say about Tyler Perry that hasn't already been said about Uwe Boll?  Tyler Perry has yet to make a film that critics can call a masterpiece.  I Can Do Bad All By Myself came pretty close with a 60% approval and I can attest that it was his best film.  He can barely write and hardly direct; his dialog comes off stupid, the directions come off stale but one thing is for sure, he knows how to capture the emotions and triumphs of a woman in need.  As Madea might say, "Amen to that!" 

 

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Tyler Perry Remaking Hitchcock's 'Rear Window'

Here's a remake I never saw coming: Tyler Perry will make a new version of Rear Window called It Had to Be Murder. Technically, I suppose, it's not really a "remake," but another adaptation of the Cornell Woolrich story that bears the name of the new Perry movie, and the story was also turned into Disturbia a few years ago.

Full disclosure: Rear Window is my favorite film. I don't have a top ten or a top twenty or anything, but I know what a few of them would be off the top of my head. Rear Window is just it for me, though, but I'll also acknowledge it's not the best film ever made. That's a separate argument. It is one of Hitchcock's best, however, and is among the highlights of a ten-year period probably unmatched by any other commercial director who has ever lived: Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, North By Northwest, Vertigo, and Psycho were all produced between 1950 and 1960, the last three coming right in a row, which is staggering.

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Box Office - 'Clash of the Titans' Earns $64 Million

In like a lion, out like a lamb. That's the opening weekend for Clash of the Titans, which roared with $26 million on Friday and immediately lost steam, taking in $35 million the rest of the way. Counting a couple million bucks on Thursday, that grand total is an estimated $64 million, which is exactly what we projected on Thursday.

In an ordinary environment, that would be a good start. However, we don't know what percentage of that amount is 3-D ticket sales and if it's like last week's How to Train Your Dragon results (two-thirds of which were 3-D), this $64 million is decidedly less impressive. Is it a bomb? No. Should it give Warner Bros. cause to rethink putting every one of its tentpoles in 3-D? Yes. After all, a lot of these 3-D announcements didn't follow Avatar, but Alice in Wonderland. Well, the last two weekends saw big studio movies that combined couldn't do the business Alice did. It isn't the 3-D that's selling the tickets.

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Fearless Forecast - 'Titans' to Rule the Weekend

It's an atypical weekend at the box office in a lot of ways. To begin with, the Good Friday holiday will have a larger impact than most Fridays, there are two new movies expected to clear $20 million, and old movie that might flirt with $30 million, and another new release that could hit $60 million or more because it has some openings tonight.

That movie, of course, is Clash of the Titans, which isn't winning over any fans in the critical community. Actually, I think bad reviews could hurt this one, particularly because it's a remake. Older audiences generally don't like new versions of films they grew up with - and by "older audiences," I mean anyone over about the arbitrary Hollywood cut-off of 34 - and if the remake is getting bad reviews on top of that, it probably won't help matters. Still, they're just gravy, anyway. All Warner Bros. really cares about is 3-D ticket sales in that expanded 13 - 25 demo, and there should be plenty of those. Curiously, this is about the number I predicted for Alice in Wonderland, which, as we know, ratcheted it up a notch or two on opening weekend. I really don't think Titans can break $100 million, but I'll keep my mouth shut here in the age of 3-D.

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Another Trailer for Awards Favorite 'Precious'

The awards website In Contention keeps a running tally of the projected Oscar front-runners and currently, the Oprah-Tyler Perry production Precious is in the field for seven Academy Awards. All the big ones are represented - Picture, Director, Lead and Supporting Actress, and Screenplay - and this is the movie that picked up audience awards at Sundance and Toronto.

So, it's shaping up well for a big Slumdog-style run for this film, with the official title Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, and Lionsgate, I believe, knows what it has here. So expect to see quite a bit about this one around the end of the year. If you missed the trailer when it first premiered in the months after Sundance, here's another one. It's easy to see why the festival crowds have fallen in love with it; this seems tailor-made for success in that environment.

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