The Blu-ray cover art tells us “Real Steel” is “Rocky” with robots! but that’s a little too kind. This story of a down-on-his-luck promoter trying to eke out a living in the year 2020 where robot boxing’s taken the place of the real thing, is probably a little closer to another Sylvester Stallone film, “Over the Top.” To be fair,  though, “Real Steel” is a whole lot better than Stallone’s arm-wrestling cheese-a-thon, but both are glossy B-films and both involve losers who live on the fringes of an athletic subculture before a son they barely know is dropped unexpectedly into their lives.

Hugh Jackman is terrific as Charlie Kenton, the promoter in question and a degenerate gambler and former boxer who lives a step ahead of a beating at the hands of his many creditors. Director Shawn Levy is equally good at showing us around the world in which our characters inhabit, where robot boxing is the top sport in the country and exists at every conceivable level — from nationally televised events as big as the Super Bowl to underground matches where the wagering and bloodlust rival a good old-fashioned cock fight.

Like most fathers in these kinds of stories, Charlie’s never known his son, Max (Dakota Goyo). Charlie’s been too busy aimlessly moving from one hustle to the next. After circumstances I won’t spoil bring the two of them together, Charlie’s still not interested in any kind of father/son bonding until he sees an angle where he can make $100 thousand by spending a few months with the boy.

With  money in hand, Charlie buys a new robot, but Charlie being Charlie, this new beginning is hardly that before he ends up flat broke again with no prospects other than the inevitable day his creditors catch up to him. His only hope is to steal the pieces of a new fighting robot from a junkyard, and this is where Max comes across Atom, an old sparring robot built to take a ton of punishment but not trained to win. Need I tell you where this is going?

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Hugh Jackman really wants to entertain us, whether he’s shredding evil mutants as Wolverine or channeling his inner showman on Broadway.

But he’s never had to work up a sweat like he does in the new action film ‘Real Steel.’

The Aussie strains every acting muscle in his hulking frame to make this story about a father, his son and their rock ‘em, sock ‘em robot work.

And, in the end, it’s the audience throwing in the towel. It’s impossible to resist ‘Real Steel,’ even if we feel a bit guilty afterward.

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Robots guided by Hugh Jackman take on George Clooney’s latest political offering this week. One will prevail while the other is left with yet another box office disappointment.

This weekend’s predictions and projected revenue results go as follows:

1. Real Steel ($26 million) – The sci-fi action is its big sell, but the film’s focus on its father and son relationship will help fuel word of mouth. The flick will easily venture past openings posted by Contagion and other recent original IPs.

2. The Ides Of March ($12 million) – The major film critics may support them, but overall audience disenchantment is a long-established fact with these political message films. These productions have become so clichéd anyway, most viewers feel they can predict their entire plots; where’s the excitement in that? Add to this the lackluster box office results the genre has consistently pulled over the past few years, and the film will definitely struggle to find an audience. Look for, at best, only sub-par results here. (more…)

As if the capitulation of the Republicans in Washington was not depressing enough, it too often seems like we can’t even find a decent movie to look forward to seeing.  Of course, most of us are not in Hollywood’s target demographic – we’re older, have jobs, and aren’t dead-eyed, drooling morons who yearn to clap our flippers like trained seals at the hackneyed antics of third rate “stars” splashed across out-of-focus screens while seated in moist, sticky chairs that we paid close to $15 each to occupy.  

But I still love movies, and I still have hope that Hollywood is going to accidentally let slip though its paws at least a couple films this year that don’t insult my intelligence, that don’t hector me with pinko propaganda, and that don’t derive from some obscure comic book beloved by a cult of social misfit fanboys whose idea of a romantic evening is a hi-speed Internet connection, a two-liter bottle of Pepsi, and an old tube sock.  

And I love trailers too.  I hate commercials in front of movies, but there can never be too many trailers.  Each new trailer is like a bright new dawn or a just-poured pint of draft Dos Equis lager – full of hope and promise.  Sure, most of the time that hope and promise fades when Kevin James waddles on-screen to make a fart joke, but still….there are moments where something awesome blows your mind.  

Those rare, fleeting moments where a trailer teases you with the promise of a great story, an exciting adventure, a hilarious romp…where you think “Wow, that looks cool!”…where you just know that as funny as the jokes the trailer reveals are, the ones that await in the movie itself will be even funnier…they make sitting through the crap worth it.  That’s what makes me love trailers – trailers have the power to remind us that movies don’t have to suck.  

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I bet that headline got your attention!  But, as you’ll see a little later in this post, the scene in question is not really a “rape” at all.  But that didn’t keep the NY Daily News from running this headline yesterday:

‘Bye Bye Birdie’ revival on Broadway drops scene for ‘gang rape’ concern

“Just a copy editor trying to get attention by over-exaggerating a story,” you think?  That’s what I thought, too.  But here is the story with Gina Gershon’s quote: (more…)

Summer is the slow time on Broadway as theatre pros recover from their Tony Award hang-overs and try to rush out to the Island for a few days of R & R before the new season begins.  This year it seems there are a few plays aiming for early fall openings hoping to ride a crest of popularity into the always-lucrative holiday season.

Just as last season brought a record number of plays as well as stellar gross sales (despite doom-sayers in the industry) this season already looks locked and loaded with a huge number of shows scheduled to open between October 1st and the first week of May (the traditional Tony nomination cut-off).  So to help the readers of Big Hollywood plan their trip to the Great White Way (we can still say that, can’t we?), I submit the top 10 things to look for from the center/right perspective:

10.  ”Superior Donuts” – A transfer from Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre (one of my personal favorite regional houses in America), the play stars “Spinal Tap”’s Michael McKean as an aging hippie who owns a donut shop in a largely black neighborhood and Jon Michael Hill (do all young Broadway actors HAVE to go by three names now?) as a 21-year-old from the neighborhood who talks his way into a job at the shop.  From the New York Times review:  ”In one of the play’s most amusing exchanges Franco challenges Arthur to name 10 black poets. Arthur names a few, then stands dumb, a look of deep concentration on his face. “It’s like watching George Bush on ‘Jeopardy!’ ” Franco cracks.” (more…)

Entitlement. It’s a silly notion. Almost as silly as the idea of “homophobes” or the “whitey,” yet it is still an idea that permeates the minds of much of America’s lower and middle classes today. Truth be told, I’m getting really tired of being made to feel guilty for other people’s shortcomings. When will people stop playing the blame game, suck it up, grow a pair and take control over their own lives?

I was at the Houston airport the other day and I couldn’t find my baggage carousel. I asked the employee there where it was:

“What does it say on the screen?” he asked grumpily.

“Well, it says Carousel 2 but…”

“Then that’s what it is. You should be old enough to know that,” he said as he went off mumbling about how they weren’t paying him enough.  (more…)

Rebooting Bond with Daniel Craig was Bold. Christopher Nolan’s Reinvention of Batman was genius. But some thought it was overly-ambitious, even audacious, to attempt to restart the Star Trek franchise. It has begun to pay off already for Paramount Pictures, and there will dividends for years to come.

A shiny new Enterprise is luring in a new generation of STAR TREK fans

J.J. Abrams is officially the Lazarus of movie directors as his all-new Star Trek has gone “Boldly Gone Where No Star Trek Movie has Gone Before.” With a cast of relative unknowns, the 42-year-old has resurrected a franchise that had been killed by insular “nerdyness” and timid imagination. The Gene Rodenberry creation didn’t so much bomb as it died slowly over a period of years. First, the 2002 movie Star Trek: Nemesis starring the Next Generation cast disappointed with a meager $43.3M domestic. Then, the final TV series Enterprise, which starred Scott Bakula, was not embraced by core fans or broader audiences and was canceled after four seasons, ending May 13, 2005.

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Several sources at competing studios have told me that J.J. Abrams’ all-new reboot of Star Trek (Paramount), which debuted last night at 7pm at many of its 3,849 locations, may have grossed as much as $6.5M-$7.5M. Studio honchos are “locked down tight” about actual numbers, but that is in the same ballpark as Transformers (Dreamworks/Paramount), which grabbed $8.8M in its previews starting at 8pm on Monday, July 2 during the summer of 2007. (What portion of ticket sales fall into Thursday and what percentage fall into Friday will likely be an open question even after final numbers are in.)

William Shatner (left) with Captain Kirk 2.0 Chris Pine

Keep in mind that Paramount never changed its Star Trek marketing to promote the 7pm Thursday start, so the opening night audience was likely heavy on Trekkers or Trekkies (not sure which term is “politically correct” anymore). So this was a “soft” opening and what amounts to a night of word-of-mouth screenings. Keep in mind that Transformers premiered during the summer when kids are more available while Star Trek has made its premiere during the school year.

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The all-new J.J. Abrams reboot of Star Trek (Paramount) will win the second weekend of the Hollywood Summer Box Office season by at least a couple of light years over Fox’s fast-fading X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but some of the astronomical numbers I’ve seen floating around in the blogosphere are very over-heated. Make no mistake, this movie will open extraordinarily well, but it’s not going to play out as a typical front-loaded blockbuster. Moviegoers need time to shake off the disappointment of the final TV series Enterprise (starring Scott Bakula and canceled after four seasons) and the disastrous 2002 final film Star Trek: Nemesis ($43.3M domestic). It will take time for a new generation of fans to discover the magic of Gene Rodenberry’s vision of the future through Abrams’ magical lens.

As of Wednesday night, Star Trek is cruising with 94% Fresh (positive) reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and critics are slinging some seriously glowing hyperbole.

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Just before seeing ”X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” I checked the Tomatometer, hoping against hope that there had been a sudden surge since I had last checked it a half hour previously. No such luck: The ”Wolverine” TM still stood at a dismal 38%. I glumly trucked over to the theater, fairly certain it would suck, just hoping it wouldn’t ”Fantastic Four” suck.

Having now seen it, I have just one question: What are these critics smoking, and where can I get some (ok, that’s two questions)?

To be sure, the first installment of the proposed “X-Men” prequels has its share of flaws, and some of the criticism is more than fair. So let’s get the bad out of way first: (more…)

X-Men Origins: Wolverine sounds like an idea for a direct-to-DVD cash-in project: pluck out one character and fill in the back-story, which is considerably cheaper than bringing back the whole cast for another big-screen adventure. But Wolverine aspires to more than that, of course, and Hugh Jackman as the title character probably takes up most the casting budget anyway:  He’s the main draw for the X-Men movie series, the most dynamic and complicated of the characters, and if you had to pick the one best-suited to pure action sequences, it’s this guy.

Yet Wolverine still feels like an afterthought, a distant cousin to the original franchise, a sidebar that adds little to the main narrative. That’s probably because the picture is a gloomy exercise:  There’s no one to cheer for except Wolverine, and he’s working so hard at being Eyore with Elvis sideburns that it’s hard to root for him anyway. Then again, who can blame him? The character lives in a world populated almost entirely of bad guys. Besides your standard-issue unrepentants, you’ve got good guys who turn out to be bad guys, family members who turn out to be bad guys, trusted leaders who turn out to be bad guys, and lovers, friends, and comrades in arms who turn out to be bad guys, too. There are a few good guys who don’t turn out to be bad guys (I counted two), but they don’t survive long enough to earn a spot beyond the last third of the closing credits. (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.

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Have at it.

Discuss, debate, write your own review…

“X-Men Origins: Wolverine” passes the all-important summer movie “Soylent Green Test.”  What do we ask of our cinema gods from May to September? The same thing Edward G. Robinson’s Sol Roth wanted at the end of his life, nothing taxing, nothing challenging – just a pleasant, easy on the eyes diversion from our punishing everyday reality. It’s summer dammit, and the living’s s’posed to be easy. A celluloid fine line must be walked between insuring we’re never bored and not forcing us to think. And so, just like the melodic, faraway *ting* of a baseball hit off an aluminum bat, “Wolverine” hits that summer sweet spot.

Unlike “The Dark Knight,” which used allegory and theme to richen its story and characters, the first two X-Men movies (haven’t seen 3) were unduly burdened by political subtext. At no time did either achieve the most important moment in a superhero film – at no time did they soar. It’s not hard to figure out why. How do you accomplish lift-off weighed down by a blinding nuance which won’t allow an all-out rumble between good and evil? “Wolverine” never soars either, but it’s not a superhero film, it’s a genre flick; a satisfying, old-fashioned revenger, a B-movie whose characters just happen to possess extraordinary powers. (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.

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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

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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?

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A 23.3 rating this year, compared to last year’s record low of 21.9. The headlines read, ”Oscar Ratings on the Rise.” If George W. Bush ran the Academy they would read, ”Oscar Viewership Barely Keeps Up With Annual Increase in U.S. Population.”

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Good news for the Motion Picture Academy. Despite the fact that the five Best Picture nominees had combined to gross less than $300M domestic by showtime, Oscar ratings were up considerably from last year’s all-time low. Early numbers show that the ABC telecast scored a 27 share, surging by 11% overall and by over 14% with TV’s “money demo” 18-49s. Compare that to last year when the show was down 25% in households from 2007 and down 30% among 18-49s.

The credit should go to producers Lawrence Mark and Bill Condon, although I can see why the streamlined show is a bit of a Rorschach test for viewers. If you love movies, and especially actors, last night’s show was respectful and enlightening. If you are inclined to dislike awards shows and actors, then the telecast would be pretty dreary.

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