This is how you do counterprogramming. Wall-E pulls in $62.5 million and Wanted pulls in $51.1 million. “G” and “R” co-exist in perfect harmony.

Wanted, by the way, is better than you think.

7/4

Wide

HANCOCK

WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Alcoholic superhero gets PR makeover.

WILL IT SUCK?
Dude, how awesome would it be if this turned out to be a Herbie Hancock bio-pic with Will Smith in the lead, and all this superhero stuff was just a scam?

I think the mock-superhero genre is played out (the death knell was My Super Ex-Girlfriend). The only thing that gives me hope here is the combo of underrated helmer Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom) and X-Files vet writer Vince Gilligan and Vincent Ngo, who wrote a couple of those kick-ass BMW shorts back in the day.

Early buzz is mixed with audiences taking a shine while critics bring up the specter of Last Action Hero.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Will Smith with July 4th weekend all to himself? I don’t care if the marketing campaign can’t make up it’s mind as to what kind of movie this is, he’ll pwn that shit. $192mil.

Limited

THE WACKNESS

WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Kid grows up in New York dealing dope to his therapist while dating the therapist’s daughter.

WILL IT SUCK?
It’s not the second coming of Rushmore or anything, but it’s a good, hip, indie coming-of-age flick. More here.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Been building good buzz since Sundance. $10mil.

GONZO: THE LIFE AND WORK OF DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON

WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Doc about the life and work of that weird-looking muppet. No, wait.

WILL IT SUCK?
Writer/director Alex Gibney is one busy motherfucker. Fresh off a Best Doc Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side, he’s back with this Sundance pleaser. Early buzz is good.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Always nice to have name recognition for your doc. $3mil.

KABLUEY

WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Guy dresses up as big, blue corporate mascot. There’s more to it than that, but that’s the most interesting part.

WILL IT SUCK?
Early buzz is very strong. Honestly, just watching that guy run around in that blue suit has gotta be good for at least a half an hour.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Do not, do not, do not open your indie comedy against the one high profile indie comedy of the summer. $2mil.

DIMINISHED CAPACITY

WHAT’S THE PITCH?
The good news is Cooper’s (Matthew Broderick) uncle Rollie (Alan Alda) has a baseball card worth a fortune. The bad news is Rollie’s Alzheimer’s-impaired, and Cooper’s not doing too well remembering things either. Sweet family comedy ensues.

WILL IT SUCK?
Early buzz is fairly good, with Cubs fans singled out as particular beneficiaries of its appeal. Has a great supporting cast, with Virginia Madsen, Bobby Canavale, Dylan Baker and Louis C.K.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
What I said before about indie comedies taking on The Wackness still applies, though this at least has name actors. $3mil.

Next Week: In a post-Pan’s Labyrinth world, Hellboy II suddenly gets much more interesting.

A few things I’ve come across in the past few days…

The Internet Movies Car Database

They even tell you how important the car was in the film.

via Metaphilm

The Web 2.0 Company Name Generator, which I actually used to try to come up with a name for an LLC I’m thinking of forming for my Web and film ventures. Any suggestions? You know, other than Zoomdrive or Flipblab?

Finally, I’m glad to hear that Chuck is coming back, but what a way to find out.

Glad I got rid of Love Guru in my fantasy roster, but starting to wish I’d picked up Kitt Kittredge. $44,539 per screen. Damn!

6/27

Wide

WALL-E

WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Who cares? It’s Pixar.

WILL IT SUCK?
I repeat. It’s Pixar. They’re 8 and 0. By the way, find this film to learn more about why. One of the reasons brought up in that film is the fact that they try to challenge themselves with each new project. In this case, that means virtually no dialogue for the entire film. Andrew Stanton, who wrote and directed A Bug’s Life and Finding Nemo, is at the helm once again.

Early buzz is good.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
No competition. Like that would matter. $245mil.

WANTED

WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Guy finds out his dad was an assassin and is recruited to join the family business.

WILL IT SUCK?
The fact that they hired Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch, Day Watch) to direct and some guys from a variety of Fast and Furious films to write tells me they want it to look good and not much else.

That having been said, the early buzz is unbelievably solid.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Angelina Jolie does well with action. $86mil.

Limited

FINDING AMANDA

WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Inveterate gambler (Matthew Broderick) tries to get back in the good graces of his wife by saving his niece (Brittany Snow) from her life as a prostitute in Vegas. You can guess how the Vegas part of that turns out for him.

WILL IT SUCK?
Make no mistake, writer/director Peter Tolan has penned his share of crap, including Stealing Harvard and What Planet Are You From? But he also co-created Rescue Me with Denis Leary, so that more than makes up for it. Early buzz is mixed.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
The Wackness will probably eat its lunch the following week. $2mil.

GUNNIN’ FOR THAT #1 SPOT

WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Adam Yauch’s Hoop Dreams

WILL IT SUCK?
Believe it or not, this is not Yauch’s first doc. He directed the Beasties concert film Awesome, I F*ckin’ Shot That. Early buzz is good.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Even Awesome didn’t do that well, and that was with all three Beasties. $250,000.

Next Week: Why does the black superhero gotta be all scruffy?

It’s more of a set-up than a joke, but that just goes to show you how funny he was, that even his set-ups were original…

“Here’s a little practical joke you can play next time you’re driving through a toll booth. Well, not actually driving through a toll booth. That would be a BIG practical joke.”

Pour some out for George.

On my way home from work yesterday, I saw this outside of City Hall…

I asked a guy polishing it, “What’s the camera crane for?” He said, “A camera.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! SHUT UP!

I asked him what they were shooting, and he said, “Transformers 2.”

In spite of my Michael Bay gag reflex, I had to say “Cool.”

At the end of that same walk home, I saw this…

I asked again and, yes, this was also Transformers 2. They were there all night.

That’s REM. Trust me.

So, I’m at the REM concert last night with my friend Jamil, and after a solid rendition of “Hollow Man” Michael Stipe says, “That’s our take on ‘Better Man’ by Pearl Jam. Hey, isn’t it cool that Pearl Jam’s here tonight?” And then he just moves on to some other topic of conversation like he just said, “Hey, isn’t it cool that my Aunt Agnes is here tonight?”

They do the next song. No Pearl Jam. They do the song after that. No Pearl Jam. We’re beginning to think Stipe’s just fucking with us. On the other hand, we know for a fact that Pearl Jam is playing a show in Camden, not far from our venue, the following night. Stipe’s story is plausible.

Finally we get to the encore and sure enough, second song in, Mike says, “Ladies and gentlemen, Eddie Vedder!” Crowd. Goes. Ape. Shit.

Understand, we’re in the way back in one of those weird sections where half the people decided to stand and half decided to sit. For this part, every motherfucker got on his/her feet.

Also understand my second and third favorite bands in the world are REM and Pearl Jam. So if Bono had walked out on stage at that moment, my head would have exploded like fucking Scanners.

Now, which song would you imagine Vedder would sing? I honestly had no idea. Stipe and Vedder’s voices are so different, it’s hard to imagine what they would blend on.

The answer is “Begin the Begin.” Would not have been my first guess but holy crap did it work! You have not lived until you’ve heard Eddie Vedder croon “Miles Standish prooouuuud!”

At this point, Jamil turned to me and said that if they had done that and only that, it would have been worth the price of admission. In fact, we were both saying afterwards we felt like we still owed money to the band. “No, really, we didn’t realize Eddie Vedder would be there. Here’s another ten bucks! Can I Paypal it to you or something?”

The entire concert, it turns out, was made of awesome. They opened with “These Days” and later completed the first three songs off of Life’s Rich Pageant trifecta in the encore. They reached back as far as Chronictown, playing “Wolves, Lower” for the first time in God knows how long.

All of the songs they played off the new album (six total, I believe) were fantastic, although I’m surprised they didn’t just play the whole damn thing seeing as it’s approximately nine minutes long. I was most surprised by how well I Wanna DJ worked, though I shouldn’t have been given how hard it rocks on the album.
Other high points: Due to a “request from backstage” (which I can only imagine came from one of the PJ’ers), they performed “Find the River,” which is my favorite song on Automatic for the People and one of my favorite REM songs overall. Never thought I’d hear it live, and it was everything I thought it would be. They followed that up by gathering around the piano in one corner of the stage and doing an achingly beautiful acoustic version of “Let Me In.”

They hit every album except Murmur, Reckoning and Around the Sun, and did a good job of not always hitting the obvious choice on each. For Green, for example, they hit “Orange Crush” but they hit “Turn You Inside Out,” too.

I could have done with some tuneage off of Murmur and Reckoning in lieu of “Great Beyond” and “Imitation of Life,” but I’m not complaining.

Stipe asked the audience how many of them were seeing the band for the first time and like half the sold out crowd raised their hand. And I have to say I saw a fair amount of kids and teens in the crowd.

REM is still one of the greatest rock bands in the world. Period.

1. Raiders of the Lost Ark – The Desert Chase

“I don’t know. I’m making this up as I go.”

The penultimate set piece from Steven Spielberg’s 1981 masterpiece is, like the film itself, an exercise in iconography. From the hero on the white horse to the truck stunt, everything here is a tribute that somehow becomes a new standard.

The Republic Pictures serials of the 30’s and 40’s that inspired Raiders featured, on several occasions, a man jumping from a horse onto a moving truck. Lucas keyed in on this image and built the entire sequence around it.  It makes sense that Lucas would be drawn to this motif given how much of his work derives from the natural fighting the mechanical.

Even the sequence’s signature stunt pays tribute. Stuntman Terry Leonard had previously tried to replicate Yakima Canutt’s famous Stagecoach undercarriage crawl in The Legend of the Lone Ranger.  This did not end well (he almost got his head crushed), so he wanted another shot at the title. Spielberg agreed, and the crawl under the truck was born.

All the film references in the world would mean nothing if the sequence could not deliver its own flavor, and little touches do the trick.  Indy looking in the rear-view mirrors to see German soldiers on either side sets just the right tone, especially with Harrison Ford’s pitch-perfect groan in reaction to what he sees.

As with Die Hard, the hero’s vulnerability plays a vital role in keeping us in the action. Even though he’s one guy taking on an entire Nazi convoy, he’s not a one-man army.  This is not a Schwarzenegger-esque unstoppable killing machine vibe. He gets shot in the middle of the sequence. And it hurts.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about this sequence is that it was all shot second unit!  Understand, second unit usually shoots shit like the outside of a building or a close-up of a hand dialing a phone.  So, for the most part, that was not Spielberg behind the camera. He only created the storyboards and watched the dailies shot by a man named Michael Moore (not that one).  Needless to say, I have a new-found respect for second unit directors.

In some cases, less is more, but the score here is in your face and it works. Some of John Williams’ best work, it stands on its own as a piece of music.  You can find an in-depth analysis of it here.

Watch very carefully at the end (on the DVD – the YouTube clips cuts too early).  It took me forever before I realized that the sequence includes a moment of watermelon-on-dog violence.

See also: The Entire Indiana Jones Quadrilogy (yes, even the fourth one).

Stan Winston, one of the most influential figures in special effects history, has passed. It’s like saying ILM is no more. He was no less an institution.

Without his contribution, there would be no…

or

or

or

or

and lest you think he’d slowed down, we’d also be without…

In an age when digital effects were taking over Hollywood, his work was proof positive that there was still room for practical effects and that, in fact, it was best to mix the two (see Terminator 2 or Jurassic Park).

He was this generation’s Harryhausen, and he will be sorely missed.

I suppose the lesson here is that when M. Night sticks to his horror guns, it doesn’t matter what the critics say. The Happening opened ten million shy of the total gross of Lady in the Water.

6/20

Wide

GET SMART

WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Steve Carell steps into Don Adams’ shoe phones (shoes phone?) as the eponymous goofball secret agent.

WILL IT SUCK?
You’ve got the director of 50 First Dates (not bad) and the writers behind Failure to Launch (pretty bad), so, yes, Carell might strike out critically here the way he did with Evan Almighty. Still, keep a look out for Bill Murray and Masi Oka, who seems to be making a career of cameos (see The Promotion) in the Heroes off season.

Early buzz is mixed.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Between Carell and Mike Meyers, whose Love Guru opens opposite, I think audiences are equally disenchanted. Which isn’t to say totally. $101mil.

THE LOVE GURU

WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Mike Meyers does his Austin Powers jokes as an American raised in India.

WILL IT SUCK?
The most interesting thing about this film (and it’s not all that interesting) is the much-ado-about-nobody-even-knows-yet controversy surrounding the depiction of Hinduism in the film, which has spurred not only protests, but protests of those protests by Hindu reform groups – and all, of course, before anyone’s actually watched the film.

Still, Meyers is a decent comedy writer, so this should be good for a few chuckles…but, like, on a Saturday afternoon on cable.

Very preliminary buzz is not-so-great.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Okay, maybe they’re a little more tired of Meyers than Carell. $49mil.

Limited

KITT KITTREDGE: AN AMERICAN GIRL

WHAT’S THE PITCH?
Kid grows up in the depression. Tries to solve a mystery or something. Based on a line of dolls/books I’ve never heard of because I’m not a 10-year-old girl.

WILL IT SUCK?
They’ve certainly thrown a lot more quality at this than, say, the Bratz movie. Mansfield Park director Patricia Rozema is at the helm with Narnia co-writer Ann Peacock doing the adaptation. Not to mention that this is an independent film, already gaining cred over the studio release you’d expect for a popular toy line. Good cast, too, with Abigail Breslin in the lead supported by Joan Cusack, Stanley Tucci, Julia Ormond, Jane Krakowski and Wallace Shawn.

Early buzz is good.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Being an indie, I’m not sure how well the advertising will hit the target demo, but we’ll see. $15mil.

BRICK LANE

WHAT’S THE PITCH?
The life of an Indian woman forced into an arranged marriage in London.

WILL IT SUCK?
Early buzz is pretty good. Has received some love on the festival/award circuit. Co-adapted from Monica Ali’s novel by Angela’s Ashes adapter Laura Jones.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Similarly-themed Namesake did well last year, but that was with a name cast. $3mil.

Next Week: Pixar. ‘Nuff said.

I wrote a top ten evil plans list for Filmcritic.com. Enjoy. No place to comment there, so feel free to comment here.

So, I’m in New York (well, technically Jersey City at the moment) working on Digital Downtown for my job. Check out the video we shot today. One thing I’ve learned in my time working for NAPCO is how to turn around video fast.