Charlotte.com: Movies

'Hancock' grabs heroic $107.3M over long weekend

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:38 EDT

Will Smith's box-office superpowers remain intact. Smith's "Hancock" - the story of a boozing, foul-mouthed superhero who dresses like a street bum - led the Fourth of July weekend with a $66 million debut, according to studio estimates Sunday.

That raised the total for Sony's "Hancock" to $107.3 million since it opened Tuesday night to get a jump on the holiday.

It was a familiar place for Smith, one of Hollywood's most-consistent draws. "Hancock" is his fifth movie to open at No. 1 over the Fourth of July. The others were "Men in Black" and its sequel, "Independence Day" and "Wild Wild West."

"Will Smith, Mom, apple pie and the Fourth of July. It doesn't get any better," said Rory Bruer, head of distribution for Sony. "People just so relate to him and the characters that he plays. They totally embraced it as something different, something fresh."

The previous weekend's top flick, the Disney-Pixar animated tale "WALL-E," slipped to second place with $33.4 million. Its 10-day total is $128.1 million.

Overall business slipped for the first time in a month. The top 12 movies pulled in $158.7 million, down 4 percent from the Fourth of July weekend last year, when "Transformers" opened at No. 1 with $70.5 million, according to box-office tracker Media By Numbers.

Revenues this summer are at $2.22 billion, about 2 percent ahead of Hollywood's record pace in 2007, when summer revenues topped $4 billion for the first time.

"Hancock" co-stars Jason Bateman as a public-relations man who tries to give an image-makeover to Smith's cranky character. Charlize Theron plays Bateman's wife, who has her own reasons for wanting the superhero to stay out of her life.

It was the second-best opening weekend for Smith, following last December's "I Am Legend" at $77.2 million, and was his eighth-straight movie to open at No. 1.

"'Hancock' did not get great reviews, but it doesn't matter. A guy like Will Smith is arguably the most-bankable star in the world," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media By Numbers. "He's utterly likable and he's real, and that permeates from the screen to the audience."

Overseas, "Hancock" pulled in an additional $78 million in 50 other countries.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. Final figures will be released Monday.

1. "Hancock," $66 million.

2. "WALL-E," $33.4 million.

3. "Wanted," $20.6 million.

4. "Get Smart," $11.1 million.

5. "Kung Fu Panda," $7.5 million.

6. "The Incredible Hulk," $5 million.

7. "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," $3.9 million.

8. "Kit Kittredge: An American Girl," $3.6 million.

9. "Sex and the City," $2.3 million.

10. "You Don't Mess With the Zohan," $2 million.

'Side Show' shows surprisingly grand side

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 06:48 EDT

There's a sadly beautiful scene in the film “Freaks” when the sideshow attractions get away from gawking crowds for a picnic.

The Living Torso, Human Skeleton, “Siamese” twins and the others frolic and sniff sweet meadow air, liberated from judgmental onlookers. Though the horror film ends with grim vengeance wreaked on a “normal” man who betrays one of them, the idea that they have the same capacity for happiness as all of us comes through in this interlude.

Multiply those moments by a factor of 30, and you have the slender but endearing “Side Show,” which Queen City Theatre Company has mounted in a surprisingly grand manner at intimate McGlohon Theatre.

It's a musical about Violet and Daisy Hilton, the conjoined twins from “Freaks,” and their rise to such notoriety that the former was wed in the Cotton Bowl during the Texas Centennial in 1936. (That marriage was soon annulled.)

Composer Henry Krieger and author/librettist Bill Russell play fast and loose with their subject. The Hiltons, British girls who emigrated to America, were treated harshly by guardians but not exposed to such degrading conditions as we see. Director Tod Browning shows up at Violet's wedding to hire the sisters for “Freaks,” but the filming predated that event by five years.

Yet, “Side Show” gets under their joint skin in a believable way, exploring their lack of privacy, mutual dependence and troubled search for satisfying love from men. (Daisy married for one month in 1941.) It ends when they're in their 20s, and the second act mostly repeats the first with one twist. But it rarely seems long when performed with such loving care.

Director Glenn Griffin and choreographer Eddie Mabry exploit every inch of the stage, and costumer Stuart Williams has worked wonders: His designs are apt, easy on the eyes and genuinely opulent in the siblings' vaudeville number.

Alyson Lowe and Sydney Shepherd are so well-matched as impetuous Daisy and shy Violet that we're startled whenever the script has them separate for a dream sequence: They seem so connected physically (at the hip) and in touch emotionally that they appear to share a brain and heart, too.

The male cast is more variable, sometimes struggling with Krieger's free-flowing score. Strong-voiced Marcus Sherman stands out as Jake, the steadfast friend whose own isolating condition – the hue of his black skin – keeps him from declaring his love for Violet.

P.S. The real twins (who would have been 100 last February) lived for seven years in Charlotte, where they ended up after a 1962 publicity tour for “Freaks.” They took a job at the Park-N-Shop on Wilkinson Boulevard, died in 1969 and are buried at Forest Lawn West Cemetery off Freedom Drive.

Will Smith's kids see `daddy being mean' in film

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:54 EDT

Will Smith usually plays the hero in his summer blockbusters. But in "Hancock," he drinks, swears, mouths off - and goes to prison.

Smith's role as a superhero-gone-bad could be jarring to some moviegoers - but not his children and wife Jada Pinkett Smith.

"Fortunately, our kids are in the business so they kind of understand," the 39-year-old actor told Associated Press Television News at the red-carpet premiere of the film. "But it is such a bizarre shock for them to see daddy being mean. It was fantastic in our house."

The Hollywood couple's son Jaden co-starred with Smith in 2006's "The Pursuit of Happyness"; daughter Willow can now be seen in the family flick "Kit Kittredge: An American Girl."

(Smith's 15-year-old son, Trey, is from his previous marriage.)

Pinkett Smith, 36, said the children were unfazed by Hancock's in-prison therapy sessions.

"The unfortunate part is that they know all about rehab because of (our) family members, so it wasn't a foreign concept to them," she said. "They totally understand and got it."

Movie productions keep rolling despite uncertainty

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:19 EDT

On-location movie shoots are on the rise in Los Angeles, despite repeated warnings from Hollywood studios that the possibility of an actors strike had stalled moviemaking, a permitting group said Wednesday.

Several big movies set for release next year also were still rolling the cameras Wednesday.

In the five-week period ended June 24, the number of film permits increased 12 percent from 94 to 105, according to the nonprofit agency FilmL.A. Inc., which gets government permits for film producers. And during the week ended Tuesday, FilmL.A. obtained 21 permits, up from 13 in the same period a year ago, spokesman Todd Lindgren said.

The brisk activity seemed to belie assertions by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers that the industry had lapsed into a "de facto strike" because of uncertainty about the potential for a strike by the Screen Actors Guild.

"I wouldn't say it is the de facto strike that the AMPTP has mentioned," Lindgren said. "We are seeing the opposite."

The contract between SAG and the studios expired Tuesday. Union leaders said they had not called for a strike authorization vote by members and would remain at the bargaining table.

The smaller American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, meanwhile, awaited the results of a ratification vote by its 70,000 members on a contract for a handful of prime-time TV shows. The results are due July 8.

Studios vowed to keep Hollywood working.

With most labor groups having reached deals with the producers on their contracts, the industry alliance made what it said was its final offer to the Screen Actors Guild: a pact worth more than $250 million in additional compensation to guild members over three years.

SAG officials were studying the offer but previously said it did not appear to address some key issues for its 120,000 members.

The sides met for four hours Wednesday to discuss the offer, and the producers said the guild asked for more time to review the proposal and would get back in contact Monday. No other meetings were scheduled.

The guild said it had "substantive questions" about the offer and was preparing a response.

While the alliance said it was hopeful the actors would accept, it said production would continue to suffer from uncertainty.

Alliance spokesman Jesse Hiestand said 24 major studio productions were shooting around the end of June a year ago - not including animated pictures.

As of Wednesday, 17 films being produced or distributed by the major studios - including "The Da Vinci Code" sequel "Angels & Demons" from Sony - were still shooting, according to daily list compiled by The Hollywood Reporter trade publication.

"Severe periods of labor uncertainty have a powerfully depressing impact on the amount of capital that people are willing to invest in major projects," Hiestand said. "The longer the uncertainty continues, the more severe the economic impacts will be."

The cast of "Angels & Demons," led by Tom Hanks, has returned to Los Angeles after shooting for several weeks in Rome and was to resume production Wednesday.

The Hollywood Reporter counted six ongoing animated features in production, including "Toy Story 3" from Pixar, a unit of The Walt Disney Co.

Some studios, such as Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros., are cautiously scheduling future film shoots.

"Many of our current projects are finished, and those that are not have scheduled hiatuses in the event of a strike," said Warner Bros. spokesman Scott Rowe. "As much as possible, we are prepping for future productions."

Lorenzo di Bonaventura, producer of next summer's sequel "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," said filmmakers factored in a hiatus around the end of June and turned their attention to visual effects so they could get by without actors if necessary.

Disney's "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time," starring Jake Gyllenhaal, remained on track for a late July start.

Cary Tusan, a senior research editor at The Hollywood Reporter who leads the team that compiles the production list, said many movies now in production will wrap up soon.

He said studios have been reluctant to set start dates on upcoming films, but a number of productions were ready to start shooting if labor uncertainty clears.

"They do seem to be hedging their bets," Tusan said. "It seems as if they are waiting to see what to do."

The threat of an actors strike did not appear to deter television production, mainly because TV production is generally easier to shut down and ramp up than production for movies, which can take place in exotic locales or with more elaborate sets. The vast majority of prime-time TV work and all film projects are covered by SAG contracts.

Permits obtained by FilmL.A. for shooting TV dramas on location in Los Angeles more than tripled compared to a year ago, jumping to 119 in the five-week period ending June 24 from 37 last year, the agency said.

The increased activity came as producers struggled to make up work days lost to the 100-day writers strike ended in February.

Warner's "Pushing Daisies," broadcast on ABC, began shooting in June instead of the typical start in August, while "Chuck," broadcast on NBC, began in May instead of July or August.

In New York, shooting began in June on the Warner Bros. shows "Fringe" and "Gossip Girl" and NBC's "Lipstick Jungle," according to the New York Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting. The office did not provide a comparison of the number of film and TV shows in production between this year and last.

Unheroic superhero appealed to 'Hancock' director Peter Berg

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:54 EDT

"I loved the idea of an alcoholic, nihilistic, subversive superhero, fighting crime drunk," says Peter Berg about "Hancock" - a screenplay that's been kicking around Hollywood for a dozen years or so, and that had, at various points, Michael Mann and Tony Scott among the folks attached to direct.

But Berg, the actor ("The Last Seduction," TV's "Chicago Hope") turned director, landed the gig. He heard about the project, and about Will Smith's interest in the role, when Berg was midway through shooting "The Kingdom," the Jamie Foxx/Jennifer Garner Middle East action pic.

"Michael Mann was a producer on 'The Kingdom,'" explained Berg, on the phone from Santa Monica last week. "I had wanted to do a superhero film for a while, and had tried to work with Will Smith, and then Michael said, 'We got this thing we're doing, and Will wants to talk to you about it.'

"Of course, I was there."

Although "Hancock" - with Charlize Theron and Jason Bateman in key roles - is dark, Berg says that the original screenplay, written by Vincent Ngo, was way more so. "You know the Nicolas Cage character in 'Leaving Las Vegas'?" he says, referring to the booze-soaked, suicidal scribe that won Cage an Oscar. "Well, Vincent's screenplay took a left turn from 'Leaving Las Vegas' ... We all loved the idea of that character, but weren't ever interested in making a film that tough."

Still, one of Berg's early cuts of "Hancock" featured Smith's character, a guy who can fly, who has super strength, and whose body is impervious to harm, trying to kill himself. If you're invincible, suicide becomes a serious challenge.

"It's a great sequence, but it's just very dark," Berg says. "And we felt like it would be hard to get audiences laughing after that opening ... The film has always been tonally challenging. It took a while for the tone to sort of shake itself out."

It also took Berg and company a while to get the MPAA's ratings board to give Hancock a PG-13 - the rating that Sony Pictures expected for its big summer release. The opening scene now shows Smith's hung-over superhero waking up on a Los Angeles street. He's ringed by bottles of cheap whiskey, there's a high-speed freeway shoot-out in progress, and a 10-year-old is trying to get Hancock to get his act together and save the day. Profanity is exchanged.

"Hancock" got stuck with the more restrictive R rating on its first two passes with the notoriously tricky ratings board.

"I've never worked on a film that didn't have a ratings issue," says Berg, who made his directing debut with 1998's "Very Bad Things," a twisted piece about a Vegas bachelor party gone seriously awry. He has also directed "The Rundown," with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and "Friday Night Lights."

"There's always a dance with the ratings commission," he says. "They actually didn't have a problem with (a prison scene) because they deemed it physically impossible. They are more concerned with language. You get one f-word in a PG-13 film. And sex is utterly taboo in a PG-13 film. And then they can hit you on something they call 'general intensity'... It's a catchall phrase. We had a scene at the end that was just too intense for them."

Berg, who is 44 and hails originally from New York, says that the idea of overseeing a $150 million effects-driven movie with "the biggest movie star in the world" took some getting used to. It's the first film for the director where CGI and visual effects are such key components. Hancock lifts cars, stops trains simply by standing in front of them, and swoops and soars across the sky.

"It's definitely like having to deal with the revenge of the nerds on an epic scale," Berg jokes about working with the visual effects teams. "These guys are really smart and very technical. It's like anything else when you're directing a film - whether it's talking to a cameraman or an art department person or an actor - there's a phase where you're learning how to communicate in their language. It's just a little bit trickier with the effects.

"But I was able to learn how to do that, and we had really good guys at Sony Imageworks who can push all the technical complexities and the nomenclature aside and just talk about the emotion of a scene. Once I was able to do that, it wasn't as daunting."

Berg confirms that if "Hancock" does the kind of business being forecast for it, there could well be a "Hancock 2." He says that he'll certainly consider a reprise, and he guesses Smith will, too.

"He's eternally optimistic," Berg says of his star, who also served as one of "Hancock's" producers. "He just has the greatest mental positive attitude of anyone I've ever met, and he's tireless.

"He will work 23-hour days back to back to back, and I don't think he's sleeping in the one hour off. He's completely energized by what he does, and, you know, when you love what you do that fully, the passion comes out, and it comes out as charisma."

Art-house filmmaker is just a Guy from Winnipeg

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:55 EDT

A self-confessed "part-time surrealist," Guy Maddin has made weird little art-house gems that include "Careful" (1992), about townsfolk creeping around on tiptoe, speaking in hushed tones for fear of an impending avalanche, and "The Saddest Music in the World" (2003), a Depression-era tale of a brewery heiress (Isabella Rossellini) and her melancholy song contest.

His latest, "My Winnipeg," is something else again. Maddin calls it a "docu-fantasia." Canada's now-defunct documentary channel asked the director if he would be interested in doing something about his hometown - the midsized, mid-Canadian city - and Maddin said yes.

"I was urged to make it a personal one, not a real travelogue," he explained on the phone from Toronto recently. "I had never had any interest in making documentaries, there's too much work involved - objectivity, scientific detachment, all that - but when I was told to make it personal, I knew I could conduct all my research within my own heart, and so away I went. I just started walking the dog and daydreaming, coming back with some notes, and before I knew it I had enough material for Winnipeg Alexanderplatz. ... I easily could have had 16 hours of stuff."

The version Maddin made for theaters, however, is a mere 80 minutes - 80 minutes of fact and fiction, of '40s B-movie starlet Ann Savage playing Maddin's mom, of haunting images of frozen horses trapped in ice, of homeless people sleeping on skyscraper roofs, of Nazis trooping through downtown, as if Hitler had won the war. It is, like most of Maddin's work, dreamlike and deliriously odd.

"I can never seem to entirely wake up, nor do I want to," Maddin says. "There's just so much truth in everything you dream because your dreams ... come from within you, exclusively, and so they're true expressions of something.

"You can never quite figure out exactly what, but if you sort through them you sometimes find echoes and themes that actually help you make a little bit of sense of what you were dreaming."

'Wall-E' rakes in $63.1 million with No. 1 debut

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:13 EDT

The robot love tale "Wall-E" rolled over the competition on its debut weekend, hauling in $63.1 million as it held the Angelina Jolie thriller "Wanted" to a second-place opening.

The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by Media By Numbers LLC:

1. "Wall-E," Disney, $63,087,526, 3,992 locations, $15,803 average, $63,087,526, one week.

2. "Wanted," Universal, $50,927,085, 3,175 locations, $16,040 average, $50,927,085, one week.

3. "Get Smart," Warner Bros., $20,211,242, 3,915 locations, $5,163 average, $77,477,031, two weeks.

4. "Kung Fu Panda," Paramount, $11,692,061, 3,670 locations, $3,186 average, $179,276,754, four weeks.

5. "The Incredible Hulk," Universal, $9,577,245, 3,349 locations, $2,860 average, $115,859,210, three weeks.

6. "The Love Guru," Paramount, $5,340,895, 3,012 locations, $1,773 average, $25,222,377, two weeks.

7. "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," Paramount, $5,179,960, 2,556 locations, $2,027 average, $300,085,447, six weeks.

8. "The Happening," Fox, $3,907,948, 2,483 locations, $1,574 average, $59,120,854, three weeks.

9. "Sex and the City: the Movie," Warner Bros., $3,808,288, 1,755 locations, $2,170 average, $140,170,362, five weeks.

10. "You Don't Mess With the Zohan," Sony, $3,175,214, 2,147 locations, $1,479 average, $91,190,129, four weeks.

11. "Iron Man," Paramount, $2,257,113, 1,379 locations, $1,637 average, $309,179,318, nine weeks.

12. "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian," Disney, $1,037,841, 690 locations, $1,504 average, $137,665,472, seven weeks.

13. "Mongol," Picturehouse, $812,862, 209 locations, $3,889 average, $2,288,109, four weeks.

14. "The Strangers," Universal, $632,115, 602 locations, $1,050 average, $51,519,705, five weeks.

15. "What Happens in Vegas," Fox, $370,726, 361 locations, $1,027 average, $78,344,563, eight weeks.

16. "The Visitor," Overture Films, $295,387, 191 locations, $1,547 average, $7,651,884, 12 weeks.

17. "Baby Mama," Universal, $205,720, 278 locations, $740 average, $59,644,700, 10 weeks.

18. "Made of Honor," Sony, $190,960, 291 locations, $656 average, $46,012,734, nine weeks.

19. "Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic," Yash Raj, $181,610, 83 locations, $2,188 average, $181,610, one week.

20. "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," Universal, $124,165, 194 locations, $640 average, $62,725,000, 11 weeks.

Ledger burns up screen as Joker

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:21 EDT

The buzz over Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker in “The Dark Knight” is justified. With his final full film role, Ledger delivers what may be remembered as the finest performance of his career.

A recent press screening of the “Batman Begins” sequel had the audience cackling along with Ledger's Joker, a depraved creature utterly without conscience whom the late actor played with gleeful anarchy.

At times sounding like a cross between tough guy James Cagney in a gangster flick and Philip Seymour Hoffman's fastidious Truman Capote, Ledger elevates Batman's No. 1 nemesis to a place even Jack Nicholson did not take him in 1989's “Batman.”

The Joker masterminds a series of abductions, assassination attempts, murders and bombings, all aimed at calling out Batman (Christian Bale) and proving to the vigilante hero that they are two sides of the same coin.

“You complete me,” the Joker tells Batman, dementedly borrowing Tom Cruise's sappy romantic line from “Jerry Maguire.”

A best-actor Academy Award nominee for “Brokeback Mountain,” Ledger – who died in January from an accidental prescription drug overdose – has earned fresh Oscar buzz for “The Dark Knight,” which could land him in the supporting-actor race.

Running just over two and a half hours, “The Dark Knight” is a true crime epic. Throughout, the Joker's bag of tricks is bottomless, twisted to the point of horror-flick sick.

“Some men aren't looking for anything logical,” Michael Caine's butler Alfred tells Bruce, who's trying to decipher the Joker's motives. “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

Come July 18, when “The Dark Knight” lands in theaters, the world will be watching Ledger burn up the screen.

Western extras play bit parts in new Egyptian film

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 13:33 EDT

A motley group of foreigners - English teachers, students of Arabic, even a journalist - gathered on a recent chilly night in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria, brought together by a love of cinema, curiosity and a furtive hope of catching a glimpse of Omar Sharif.

Glamour, however, was in quite short supply for our band of film extras. Waiting around for hours in our 1940s period costumes, we slouched in the elegant wood paneled bar of a luxury hotel eating cold food from McDonald's, waiting to shoot a five-minute dining room scene. The lead actors had yet to even show up.

Still, it was a unique opportunity, one I had searched for off-and-on during the decade I have lived in Egypt - especially since this production is being touted as a rebirth of Egyptian cinema.

"The Passenger" has a cast full of Egyptian stars, topped by Sharif in a heralded comeback to Egyptian film after a 15-year absence. The movie has been billed by Culture Minister Farouk Hosni as a "return to the golden age of cinema."

The ministry itself is footing the bill for the film, the first time it has done so in 30 years, in effort to boost the flagging reputation of what was known as the Hollywood of the Middle East.

Egypt has one of the region's oldest movie industries; 50 years ago, it was producing films on par with those of Hollywood. But in the past two decades, it has declined, throwing together slapdash comedies and over-the-top melodramas with poor production values.

"In the West, the film has a great position and it used to be the same here in the 1940s and 1950s and then something happened, it became, I don't know why, a second class economy," said Amr Waked, one of Egypt's up-and-coming actors, who also appears in "The Passenger." He is better known to international audiences as the Egyptian terror leader in George Clooney's 2006 film "Syriana."

Critics have blamed Egyptian cinema's decline on a host of factors. Rising Islamic conservatism made movies disreputable, while at the same time, the funding dried up leaving producers just trying to make a quick buck.

The Culture Ministry is hoping that by returning to its role of financing the cinema - the way it's done in many countries - it can produce quality features like "The Passenger."

The film is a multigenerational epic set in 1948, 1973 and 2001, and first-time director Ahmed Maher has spent a year and a half filming it.

"There was a need to capture the right stuff, no matter how long it took, no matter how many times you repeat," Waked said. "There was very little compromise on that, unlike other (Egyptian) productions where they sometimes accept certain compromises to finish quickly."

The painstaking process was certainly clear in our scene that night, as the two dozen foreigners - from Britain, the U.S., France, Puerto Rico, Germany and Sweden - were transformed into diners on a postwar luxury cruise.

Battered trucks parked outside the hotel where the scene was being shot served as makeshift makeup and dressing rooms.

In the harsh glare of lights, hairdressers heated metal tongs on open gas flames to carefully straighten and then curl each woman extra's hair into elaborate coiffures, as everyone was fitted into natty suits and ball gowns.

I was selected to be a waiter. Unfortunately, I wouldn't have the chance to act with Sharif. He was appearing only in the 2001 scenes of the movie - and my brief appearance in a crisp white waiter's jacket was set half a century earlier.

The scene was shot in Alexandria at a luxury hotel that once served as a 19th century hunting lodge for Egypt's royal family. The ornate wood-paneled restaurant would stand in for the cruise ship's dining room. Maher whisked away the anachronistic no-smoking signs that had been inadvertently left on the tables.

Ahead of the shoot, Maher - who spent years in Italy - chatted in Italian with his director of photography, Marco Onorato, whose film "Gomorra" just won the Grand Prix at Cannes.

Then, as filming finally began at 1 a.m., Maher bellowed across the set with the Egyptian version of "lights, camera, action": "Doh! Tasweer! Action!"

The camera circled around the lead couple: Egyptian actor Khaled Nabawy, who appeared in Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven," sat across from Lebanese pop diva Cyrine Abdelnour in a tense dinner scene.

Nabawy plays a lower class postman who intercepted letters between Abdelnour and her childhood sweetheart, whom he is now impersonating in effort to win her heart.

For my part, I - the waiter - was struggling with my own job: precariously balancing two plates on my arm.

Just minutes before I was to appear on camera, the restaurant's real head waiter took me aside and taught me how to carry plates and properly pour wine.

I tottered across the dining room floor, desperately trying to remember my cue and look appropriately haughty as I served the elite clientele and delivered my sole line - "excuse me," in English.

The steak slid ominously across the plate toward the two actors as my overburdened arm faltered, and I had a sudden vision of the entire movie turning into a farce as the bumbling water dumped his food onto their exquisite costumes.

Fortunately, the scene went off more or less without a hitch, despite me stuttering my line and saying it too early at first. But it was just a rehearsal and we had several more takes ahead us. At one point, Abdelnour just buried her head in her hands - she'd been working since the morning.

Hours later, it was over. One more scene finished. Only a few weeks of filming left and the year-and-a-half odyssey for the actors would be over.

We had been sitting around for 14 hours and would be paid $50. The true compensation, however, was a little taste of movie glamor, with the hope, perhaps, that it might lead to something bigger.

For me, my sole prospects for a career change came from elsewhere. "You know, you're weren't too bad," the restaurant's head waiter told me. "If you ever need a job here, just let me know."

SAG president doesn't want to hear strike talk

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 07:40 EDT

The head of the Screen Actors Guild doesn't want to hear the s-word as a deadline for contract expiration looms.

"We have taken no steps to initiate a strike authorization vote by the members of Screen Actors Guild," Union President Alan Rosenberg said in a statement Sunday. "Any talk about a strike or a management lockout at this point is simply a distraction."

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers has taken out an advertisement in trade publications calling a strike "harmful and unnecessary." Citing $2.8 billion in lost wages, the ad says "We've completed four equitable and forward-thinking labor agreements. Let's get the fifth done."

The ad is scheduled to run in Monday's editions of Variety and Hollywood Reporter.

"The industry is shutting down because SAG's Hollywood leadership insisted on 11th-hour negotiations and dragging these talks into July so they can continue attacking AFTRA," AMPTP spokesman Jesse Hiestand said in a statement.

The contract runs out at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday.

Anxiety has been growing in Hollywood that actors might walk off the job or studios could lock out performers on the heels of a Writers Guild of America strike that devastated production from November through February.

SAG leaders have been fighting a deal reached between producers and another actors union, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. Vote results among that union's 70,000 members are due July 8.

AFTRA and the 120,000-member SAG have 44,000 members in common. SAG leaders are urging its members in AFTRA to vote against the deal, saying they can strike a better bargain with producers if the contract is defeated.

SAG has said it is willing to continue talks with producers after its own contract expires.

"The Screen Actors Guild national negotiating committee is coming to the bargaining table every day in good faith to negotiate a fair contract for actors," Rosenberg said.

'WALL-E,' 'Wanted' team up as $100 million duo

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:24 EDT

A lonely little robot made millions of friends during the weekend - and even outgunned Angelina Jolie.

"WALL-E," the Pixar Animation tale of a robot toiling away on a long-abandoned Earth, debuted as the No. 1 movie with $62.5 million in ticket sales, with Jolie's assassin thriller "Wanted" opening in second place with $51.1 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.

The two movies combined to keep Hollywood on a roll. The top 12 movies took in $179.2 million, up 22 percent from the same weekend last year, when Pixar's "Ratouille" opened with $47 million.

It was the fifth straight weekend that revenues climbed. Revenues for the summer season that began May 2 are up 6 percent over last year's record pace, according to box-office tracker Media By Numbers.

The sour economy and high gas prices may be helping to fuel Hollywood's boom, said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media By Numbers. Movies tend to thrive when times are tough because they are relatively cheap compared to sports events, concerts and other outings.

"Audiences are obviously gravitating toward the movies as their first choice for entertainment," Dergarabedian said. "It doesn't take that much gas to get to the local multiplex. That might have a little something to do with this, as well."

The previous weekend's No. 1 movie, the Warner Bros. comedy "Get Smart," slipped to third place with $20 million, raising its total to $77.3 million.

"WALL-E" maintains the perfect track record of Pixar, the Walt Disney unit that has made nine films, all of them critical and commercial successes, including "Cars," "Monsters, Inc." and the "Toy Story" flicks. "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles" put up the biggest opening-weekend numbers among Pixar movies, both pulling in just over $70 million.

Set centuries in the future, "WALL-E" is the story of a rickety, walking trash compactor that humans left running after abandoning the over-polluted planet.

The movie overcame a dialogue challenge - the two main robot characters barely speak, beyond each other's names - using wildly inventive visuals and sound effects to propel much of the story.

Like other Pixar films, "WALL-E" packed in family crowds, as well as adults without children.

"The real secret is they're not children's movies. They're movies for everybody. Children absolutely adore them, but parents enjoy them on a different level," said Mark Zoradi, president of Disney's motion-picture group. "You can't be nine-for-nine like Pixar is without that."

The G-rated "WALL-E" was complemented by Jolie's R-rated "Wanted," which distributor Universal originally planned to release back in March. The studio decided the movie was too good to release at a slower moviegoing time and moved it to summer on a weekend when competition for a violent action tale would be light.

"We knew 'WALL-E' would be huge, but it's not the same audience as 'Wanted,'" said Nikki Rocco, head of distribution for Universal.

"Wanted" stars Jolie as a member of a secret society of assassins whose new recruit (James McAvoy) is trained to use his superhuman abilities to take out a rogue killer.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. Final figures will be released Monday.

1. "WALL-E," $62.5 million.

2. "Wanted," $51.1 million.

3. "Get Smart," $20 million.

4. "Kung Fu Panda," $11.7 million.

5. "The Incredible Hulk," $9.2 million.

6. "The Love Guru," $5.4 million.

7. "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," $5 million.

8. "The Happening," $3.9 million.

9. "Sex and the City," $3.8 million.

10. "You Don't Mess With the Zohan," $3.2 million.

Strike 2? Hollywood braces for actor walkout

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 21:35 EDT

Hollywood loves a good sequel, but here's one it could do without: Another union strike just months after the town got up and running again from a devastating walkout by writers.

The contract between the Screen Actors Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers expires Monday, and negotiations have dragged on for weeks with no apparent headway.

SAG leaders have said they are willing to continue talking beyond the contract deadline. Yet their hard-line rhetoric and a squabble with another actors union could put performers on the sidelines, taking electricians, set-builders, caterers and other Hollywood working stiffs along with them.

"If you're a below-the-line worker, your blood is probably running cold, because they're the ones that took the biggest hit from the writers strike," said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp., which estimates the WGA walkout cost the town $2.5 billion in lost wages and other revenue.

A strike in July - or a potential actors lockout if producers decided to play tough - could delay the return of many fall TV shows, which normally would be going back into production then.

With a longer lead time, big-screen movies generally are in good shape through the early part of summer 2009, with studios rushing to finish production on most films before the actors' contract expired.

A few films such as "The Hannah Montana Movie" and Tom Hanks' "Angels & Demons" could be forced to shut down if a strike occurred. A long walkout could postpone movies scheduled to start shooting late this summer and fall, including Russell Crowe's "Nottingham."

"The possibility of another strike, especially in this economy, has the town on edge, including the thousands of guild and crew members who are still recovering from the last strike," said Jesse Hiestand, spokesman for the producers alliance.

Big action films could ride out a short strike by turning to other work while actors were off. Lorenzo di Bonaventura, producer of next summer's sequel "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," said the filmmakers factored in a hiatus where they can get by without actors, working on visual effects instead.

But it would be another blow to an industry that remains in a stall after the writers strike.

"It's not been a complete shutdown, but everybody's been working at pretty minimal capacity the last nine months," di Bonaventura said. "The pain everybody felt over the last nine months certainly makes the prospect of another strike even more foreboding."

While the Writers Guild of America went on strike in general solidarity among members, SAG is a house divided. Its 120,000 members include 44,000 who also belong to the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and leaders of the two unions are at each other's throats.

AFTRA, with 70,000 total members, negotiated a contract similar to ones writers and directors accepted this year. SAG is holding out for a better deal that many in Hollywood say it cannot realistically achieve in a business stung first by losses from the 100-day writers strike and now by studio stinginess amid the weak economy.

"Militancy has its moments," said James Cromwell, a former SAG board member who is among members of both unions urging AFTRA to approve the deal.

"Under the circumstances, with this town having just gone through a writers strike, militancy is useless," Cromwell said by phone from Shreveport, La., where he is co-starring as George H.W. Bush in Oliver Stone's "W."

While the unions traditionally have negotiated side by side, they split this time, and SAG leaders are actively campaigning to defeat AFTRA's contract, whose results are due July 8.

SAG is pushing for more money on DVD residuals, a raise producers have refused to give other Hollywood unions. Leaders of SAG also say the AFTRA contract shortchanges actors on potential revenue from Internet programming.

"When unions compete with different contract terms, actors lose. It starts a race to the bottom that SAG doesn't want to win," SAG chief negotiator Doug Allen said in a June 23 message asking actors who belong to both unions to vote against AFTRA's deal.

Along with Cromwell, actors such as Tom Hanks, Alec Baldwin, Kevin Spacey and Morgan Fairchild are among hundreds who have signed an agreement encouraging AFTRA members to approve the deal.

SAG, which accounts for about 90 percent of TV production and all of the film industry, insists it can strike a better bargain. But if the AFTRA deal goes through by a wide margin, it could undermine SAG's leaders, who might not be able to drum up the votes should they decide to ask members to authorize a strike.

"The worst thing you can do is to try to get it and fail," AFTRA President Roberta Reardon said. "It's hard to imagine a performer voting yes for one contract then voting to put himself out on the street for the other one."

Alexandra Leighton, a 28-year-old actress who appears in two episodes of the new CBS drama "Swingtown," said she is voting for the AFTRA deal and would oppose a SAG strike.

Leighton backs SAG's demand for tougher consent rules over use of an actor's image in online clips, but she said it was not worth losing her job - her first acting gig outside of commercials.

"Too many people would be put out of work," Leighton said. "It's just not worth it. The economy is already iffy, and it would just crush the local economy."

It also could ruin some TV series. Audiences did without new episodes on many shows for months while writers were on strike. If actors walk and new episodes vanish again, fans could lose interest for good.

When writers returned in February, the feeling in Hollywood was that cooler heads among actors and producers would avert another strike. Optimism gradually eroded as the two actors unions began beating up on each other.

While SAG has struck deals to allow work to continue with many independent producers, studio production that accounts for most of Hollywood employment has been hurled into limbo.

Jolie has killer role in summer film

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:55 EDT

Some things about the summer movie season are as predictable as … well, the summer movie season. There will always be movies based on comic books – like “Wanted.” There will always be movies worked on by five writers – like “Wanted.” There will be movies starring Angelina Jolie cast as a kind of gun-wielding fashion model – like “Wanted.” And action thrillers with body counts that rise faster than the national debt clock – like “Wanted.”

So what's different about “Wanted,” which opened Friday, and its relationship to the very season that makes Hollywood the happiest? Among other things, that it's directed by a Russian horror stylist; it stars a Scotsman whose biggest films have been the quasi-art-house hits “The Last King of Scotland” and “Atonement.” And that it features, in the all-important role of uber-villain, a German best known for playing either Nazis or the pope.

“I was really insecure when they hired me,” said Thomas Kretschmann, the East German-born actor whose parts have included an officer of the Third Reich in “The Pianist” and the title character in the TV movie “Have No Fear: The Life of Pope John Paul II.” “Angelina does it all – give her a weapon, and she knows what to do. Me, it was, ‘When can I start weapons training? Please!'”

For all his firearms phobia, it's Kretschmann who kicks things off when his character, Cross, murders Mr. X (David O'Hara), and we discover that the recently deceased had a son, Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy), who is a miserable, cuckolded accountant. And yet … he carries the latent genetic material to make him the world's greatest assassin. Who can help him realize his potential? The mysterious Sloan (Morgan Freeman), Fox (Jolie) and a team of trainers who nearly kill Wesley, in preparing him to kill others.

Did we mention that the team is part of a 1,000-year-old tradition of assassins founded by a guild of weavers? The mystery looms …

“That they were willing to cast me meant they were willing to do things totally differently,” said the Glasgow-born McAvoy. “And I thoroughly enjoyed it. When I read the script, I was impressed, but I wasn't entirely sold. But then I saw his other films. He's so different, so weird.”

“He” is director Timur Bekmambetov, Soviet-born (in what is now Kazakhstan) and, along with filmmakers such as Guillermo del Toro and Sam Raimi, one of the leading explorers of the outskirts of supernatural cinema. His double-barreled vampire thrillers “Night Watch” and “Day Watch” opened up all-new veins of visual mayhem en route to box-office success.

And yet, despite “Wanted's” defiance of physics, medicine and use of bullets that shoot around corners, he said special effects take a backseat to character. And that on “Wanted,” he had the same type of relationship with his performers he had enjoyed on his Russian films.

“It was very collaborative and free, and without statuses,” he said, then laughed at his own mangled English. “Sometimes, the players create ideas, and then we translate them to CG, but the most powerful special effect is the actor. All the visual style is an extension of character.”

Bekmambetov said he got what he wanted, and made the film that he wanted, although McAvoy said the ending of the film is now completely different from what they shot. “There was a massive 10-minute fight scene between me and Sloan that's gone. The film is better for it. I knew it would be violent. But this is a film that luxuriates in its own violence. It bathes in its own violence.”

And this, the actor said, really separates “Wanted” from the standard summer fare. “It's an adult-oriented action-thriller, a hard-R, no-kids-allowed kind of film. You don't see that much in summer. But it's cool. It's different. That's why I was interested in the first place.”

Kretschmann is used to violence. He starred in “Grimm Love,” about a real-life case of cannibalism, which was deemed unreleasable in Germany. “That almost never happens,” he said.

For all the creative angles and counterintuitive characteristics of “Wanted,” the big question remains: Jolie. “She's chilled out, a nice woman,” McAvoy said. “She doesn't take it all too seriously. You know, we're not changing people's lives with a movie like this, and if you can't have fun on the set of something like ‘Wanted,' then someone else should probably be doing it.”

Kretschmann echoed his “Wanted” colleague. “You come on set, you've seen her all over the place, but it takes about 30 seconds to get over any intimidation. She makes it that way. She's easygoing, but she's a strong woman. I like strong women.

“She knows what she's after,” he added. “And she goes for the kill.”

Hellboy director: I would've been a bank robber

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 21:51 EDT

Guillermo del Toro has had it with the beautiful people of Hollywood. It's monsters - or bank robbers - he wants to see.

The Mexican director, whose latest movie "Hellboy 2: The Golden Army" opens next month, said Thursday night that monsters have a inherent beauty that not enough people appreciate.

"We live in a world that's constantly trying to tell you what (expletive) products to use to diminish your ugliness, or smelliness or the unpleasantness", he said Thursday. "I say (expletive) them all, let us be whatever we are, let us be free in our ugliness, fatiness, stretch markings, whatever the (expletive) we are. Monsters can be that, monsters can represent something else".

One monster that's definitely something else: del Toro's movie version of the comic-book character Hellboy, a red demon that protects humans and shaves his horns down to nubs to better fit in.

"I attacked this movie the same way I attacked 'Pan's Labyrinth': from a design point of view, from a enjoyment point of view", the director said in front of a full theater at the Los Angeles Film Festival. "I think we created very unique monsters."

Del Toro said his grungy ideal extends to himself. Dressed in a black suit with a polo shirt tucked out, he said he's so uncool that he dresses poorly and drives a 2000 Chrysler.

"If I wouldn't have been a director, I would've been a bank robber. I hate banks", he said. "Give me 'Ocean's Eleven' or any movie where banks are robbed, and I'm happy".

'Voice' of WALL-E: Robot sounds toddler-inspired

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 22:51 EDT

Sci-fi animation moviemaking in aisle four!

Ben Burtt, the two-time Oscar-winning sound engineer who designed the voices of R2-D2, ET and now the main character in "WALL-E," says his out-of-this-world audio often comes from the most mundane, Earth-bound activities - like a trip to the grocery store.

When he needed the sound of shopping carts banging together for a scene in Pixar's robot love story, Burtt took his 10-year-old daughter to a Safeway, where they put their recorder in a cart and pretended to shop (banging into things in the parking lot for good measure).

But when it comes to making robots emotionally resonant, Burtt bases his ideas on the voice of humans. Very small humans.

"The bulk of the vocals, the expressive vocals, are really sounds that are more like a toddler makes ... kind of the universal language of intonation," Burtt said in an interview aired on AP Radio. "'Oh,' 'Hm?,' 'Huh!,' you know? This sort of thing."

Sometimes, though, finding just the right sound is the product of a happy accident, said Burtt, who's won sound effects editing Oscars for 1989's "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" and 1982's "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial."

"I'd gotten a big punching bag, a big canvas bag that you normally would beat and box with it, and I wanted to do some impacts," Burtt said. "But I dragged it through the hallway to go to the studio on a rug, and it made a wonderful sound, like a howling wind."

The result: the main component of the sound of a wind storm in the film.

"WALL-E," a Walt Disney Pictures release, opens this weekend.