The producers of “Bad Santa” must’ve dug up Charles Bukowski and offered him a bottle of scotch in exchange for his version of a Christmas movie. There’s no other explanation for this film. “Bad Santa” can be summed up pretty simply: It’s a typical Christmas movie; it’s got the kids and love and a happy ending (sort of) and even a little tidbit at the end that digs into the anti-materialistic  meaning of Christmas. The only difference between this and a regular old Jolly Saint Nick movie, I guess, would be the profanity, excessive drinking, general anger targeted towards innocent parents and children and, last but not least, midget jokes. Other than all that though, this is the perfect Christmas movie for the whole family!

From frame one, “Bad Santa” is ridiculously funny. Just the image of a miserable Bill Bob Thornton in a Santa suit drinking alone at a bar with overhead narration that you definitely wouldn’t want your grandma to hear is enough to make you die of laughter. “Bad Santa” is my pick as the perfect Christmas movie because its political incorrectness and general on screen misbehavior make it more than relevant and more realistic than other Christmas movies.

“Bad Santa” is about a drunk played by Billy Bob Thornton. This drunk and his partner in crime, a black midget who gives them their niche, pose as Santa and an elf every year at a different mall in a different city. At the end of the Christmas season, they rob the mall for all its worth and pack up until next Christmas. Now, they are back at it again, only Thornton is worse than usual in his drinking and ends up staying at some loser kid’s mansion while the kid’s dad is in prison. The kid (played by Brett Kelley) adds some of the more quirky humor in the film. He seems about two steps away from being mentally handicapped, but Willie (Thornton) takes pity on him and tries to teach him a thing or two (in between yelling at the kid and coming close to physically abusing him. Remember this is not typical Hollywood fare). (more…)

Watch Billy Bob Thornton and Aaron Eckhart make perfect sense as Amber Heard practically breaks down crying at the beauty of it all…

——

Occupy Wall Street does remind me of the 60’s anti-war movement inasmuch as they were both based on a lie. The dirty, filthy hippies didn’t care about the Vietnam War; what they wanted was an end to the draft. That’s why, after Nixon ended the draft, the anti-war movement broke up even though the war would rage for a few more years.

OWS is based on the same lie. These smelly, selfish, narcissistic, spoiled loser creeps want their student loans forgiven. They claim to be outraged over the government’s bailout of Wall Street (which is worth being outraged over) and yet they want their own government bailout and in large part support President GoldmanSachsFailureTeleprompter.

(more…)

In case you don’t recognize the archetypes in the new film “Faster,” the filmmakers are kind enough to flash their roles across the screen when the main characters first appear. The main character, played by Dwayne Johnson, is the “Driver.” He is being pursued by the “Cop” (Billy Bob Thornton) and by the “Killer” (Oliver Jackson-Cohen).  For the sake of full disclosure, the words “Waste of Time” should have appeared onscreen at the beginning. That way, audiences would know what to expect during the approximately ninety minutes that follow. 

—–

As the story begins, Driver is getting out of jail. In their final meeting, the warden notes how Driver has embraced his dark side in prison. Driver has fought and beaten many of his fellow prisoners in order to protect himself and the warden hopes that he will begin a new life outside of jail. Driver doesn’t appreciate the advice. He just wants to know where the exit is.  

Soon enough, Driver arrives in an office building. Ignoring the receptionist, he searches for a telemarketer who is on a list that he carries around with him. He finds who he is looking for and kills him. Shortly thereafter, the police arrive and begin an investigation. They eventually determine that Driver is a former bank robber who worked alongside his brother. After one robbery, a group of thieves attacked the brothers and forced Driver to reveal where the money was hidden. Afterwards, the thieves killed his brother and killed Driver. Unfortunately for them, Driver didn’t stay dead.

Now that he’s out of jail, Driver plans to kill everyone responsible for his brother’s death. Johnson plays Driver as a one-note simplistic character bent on revenge.  (more…)

Tales of the whimmydiddle’s mysteries aside, one of the most stupefying stories I can recall from my childhood in the North Carolina – Tennessee mountains was about a Volunteer State man who held a 1938 funeral for himself before he died so he could hear what people had to say about him.  More than 8,000 attended, including a man who lived next door to my grandmother. He said he went because he and the others there got to participate in a lottery for the man’s land when he did pass on, which was 5 years later.  That man was “Uncle” Felix “Bush” Breazeale — shown [below the fold] sitting in front of his own coffin — and it’s that episode of his real life story that Get Low (as in get buried) is about.

The rest of Get Low tracks elements of the real story and uses some of the real names, but it introduces fictionalized backgrounds and situations to flesh out compelling characters.  In the film, Felix Bush (Robert Duvall) has lived alone in a cabin in the woods for 40 years.

During those years, the townfolk’s imaginations have concocted all sorts of stories about him. He killed two men in a fist fight one says he heard. Another says Felix knows the devil and has unholy powers — a claim I heard several times myself about people who lived far back in the Appalachian woods  where they practiced granny magic with mountain herbs and Witch Hazel. The Smokey Mountain mists do excite imaginations. But when Felix learns a friend from long ago has died, he goes to see sardonic funeral director Frank Quinn (Bill Murray — who delivers his lines so well it’s hard to hear over the audience laughter) and his associate Buddy (Lucas Black) with a wad of cash to buy himself a funeral party. (more…)

In my Final Weekend Tracking column posted on Wednesday, I predicted that X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Fox) would reach $92M on opening weekend, despite soft reviews (now only 38% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes). My first fearless forecast of the 2009 summer blockbuster season appears to be close to dead-on (missed by only 5%).

Star-turned-producer Hugh Jackman has scored his second-biggest opening ever and, easily, his biggest as a solo star. Wolverine has mauled the competition with a massive $34.75M opening day (including $5M or so in Thursday midnight sales). That could translate to a 3-day of $86.8M, getting Hollywood’s most lucrative season off to a spectacular start.

(more…)

The great thing about a sequel is that it has a built-in audience. The problem with sequels is that, as the numbers after the title go up, so does the production budget. Very hard to know for sure, but sources have told me that the production budget for X-Men was in the $75M range. X-2: X-Men United may have had a budget of about $110M, while the cost of X-Men: The Last Stand was, in all likelihood, as much as $210M. Why doesn’t it make sense to just churn out X-Men 4?

Look at these numbers.

(more…)

Recording superstar Beyonce Knowles is building a bankable resume for herself as an actress with Sony Screen Gems’ Obsessed as the latest title burnishing her resume. Co-starring the excellent Idris Elba (The Wire), this low budget, PG-13 genre pic has scored a far-above-expectations $11M on Friday, and it will likely reach $27.5M for the weekend. That is the best opening yet for the former Destiny’s Child lead vocalist as an above-the-title star, topping 2003’s The Fighting Temptations and Cadillac Records from late 2008.

Beyonce does battle with the sexy Ali Larter (HEROES) in OBSESSED

OPENINGS FOR BEYONCE MOVIES
1. Austin Powers: Goldmember – $70.3M opening
2. Obsessed – $27.5M opening (projected)
3. Pink Panther (2006) – $20.2M opening
4. Dreamgirls – $14.1M wide break (after a platform start)
5. The Fighting Temptations – $11.7M opening
6. Cadillac Records – $3.4M opening

(more…)

The final weekend of April has never been Hollywood’s favorite release date. In fact, it is generally considered to be among the worst release dates on the calendar. Whatever opens on the final weekend of April gets absolutely crushed by the official start of the summer blockbuster season on the first weekend of May.

The 4 new wide releases and 1 major specialty release set to debut this weekend will face an onslaught of mega-hits over the next month. How can Obsessed (Sony), Earth (Disney), The Soloist, (Dreamworks/Paramount), Fighting (Rogue) and The Informers (Senator) possibly find an audience with X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Fox) and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (Warner Bros) arriving next weekend followed by, in successive weeks, Star Trek (Paramount), Angels & Demons (Sony), the combo of Night at the Museum 2 (Fox) and Terminator: Salvation (Fox) and Disney/Pixar’s Up?

(more…)

With 400,000 Americans showing up every year at the Indy 500 and 200,000 more buying tickets to see NASCAR’s premiere event The Daytona 500, you would think that the most creative minds in Hollywood would be looking for a way to cash in with more movies about car racing and car culture. NASCAR has an estimated 75 million fans, and it is second only to the National Football League in terms of television ratings, so where are all the good racing movies?

Jordana Brewster is reunited with Vin, Paul and Michelle in FAST & FURIOUS

Universal seems to have answered that question by getting its successful street racing franchise back into the fast lane this weekend with Fast & Furious. The movie, which reunites Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez for the first time since 2001’s original surprise blockbuster, has exploded to a high octane $30.11M or so on Friday and that could mean a $70M opening weekend. That would make it the all-time #1 opening for a car racing movie.

(more…)

Universal’s Fast & Furious will be “burning rubber” this weekend at America’s multiplexes as the original street-racing cast reunites after some sub-par chapters of the franchise.

The original The Fast & The Furious hit theatres in 2001 under the direction of Rob Cohen who had shown a knack for action with Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story ($35M US cume) and Sly Stallone’s Daylight ($33M US cume) and a savvy feel for bigger-than-life characters in his Golden Globe winning biopic The Rat Pack (which, if you’ve never seen you should put in your Netflix cue and prepare to be amazed by Don Cheadle’s turn as Sammy Davis, Jr.). In tow, he had a 34-year-old Vin Diesel in only his second starring role following the surprise low budget hit Pitch Black ($39M cume) and 28-year-old Paul Walker, who had just starred in Cohen’s forgettable The Skulls. Also in the cast was Jordana Brewster (As the World Turns) and a pre-Lost Michelle Rodriguez, whose most notable credit was a gritty little indie called Girlfight.

Vin Diesel returns for FAST & FURIOUS

The result was box office jet fuel. Seemingly out of nowhere, The Fast & The Furious scored a scalding $40M opening weekend and reached $144.5M domestic and over $200M worldwide. But Diesel, whose signature line in the original movie is “I live my life one quarter of a mile at a time,” didn’t like the script for the sequel (or they wouldn’t pay his asking price depending on who you ask). That led to the 2003 sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious directed by Academy Award nominee John Singleton (Boyz n the Hood) starring Walker along with rapper Tyrese Gibson and Eva Mendes. Despite Diesel’s conspicuous absence, 2 Fast still delivered $127M in the US. (more…)