Oh, it’s not because the content of CN9 will be vacuous, foul and outright evil, though it is.  It’s because no one in Tinseltown thinks the movie will make any money.

So what is CN9 about?  Well, it appears to mix condemnation of the Iraq War, a healthy dose of gay sex, naturally, a plot to assassinate George W. Bush.  Sounds less like a hit movie than the agenda for a Daily Kos staff meeting.

According to New York Magazine, which apparently got a copy of the script, a future archeologist finds video that tells the story of – get this – “Butch,” a studly, kill-crazy Army soldier in Iraq who falls in love with an Iraqi dude and then consummates said love in graphic fashion.  Butch and his special friend then decide to kill President Bush for some reason. 

I think smell an Oscar. 

Now, if a council of renowned idiots had gathered together with a mandate to conceive a project of the least possible interest to the American movie-going public they could not have come up with a more potent combination of box office poison.  Well, maybe if it starred Ashton Kutcher. But CN9, with its apparent advocacy of murdering the President because the Wachowskis don’t like his politics, is simply vile, and we are not going to simply pretend that’s A-okay.

Perhaps the Wachowski Siblings are trying to make a point instead of a buck, though it’s not clear what that point is.  They are known for their, um, unique sensibilities.  Larry, who now goes by “Lana,” fell in with a dominatrix named – wait for it – Ilsa Strix and apparently decided that being a dude wasn’t quite cutting it anymore.  There’s some controversy about how far s/he’s gone in s/his quest, but from the available photos of the reclusive artist it certainly seems that s/he’s gone from being an ugly straight man to an ugly lesbian. 

Let’s explore the Wachowski oeuvre for a moment.  They first worked on – shock! – comic books then made a movie, Bound.  This deadly dull lesbian-themed crime flick is vastly over-praised, mostly by lonely dudes who think that stumbling onto a late-night Cinemax nudie flick after their mom goes to bed qualifies as “getting some.”

Of course, they are best known for The Matrix, which was terrible but watchable if you turn the sound off so the inane, portentous dialogue couldn’t ruin all the pretty gunfights.  Look, The Matrix is about the dumbest movie ever made, but it’s sure fun to watch, not least for the unbelievable seriousness with which it takes itself.  They get props for making a flick that you gotta finish watching if you come across it on AMC on a Sunday afternoon and are too hung-over to stretch out and grab the remote.

Then they made the sequel, The Matrix Reloaded.  TMR is pretty bad, and less fun than the original, but it’s not the cinematic war crime that is The Matrix: Revolutions.  How bad is Revolutions?  Just behold the unspeakable rave scene – “Hey, the alien monsters are coming!  Quick, turn up the techno and let’s dance!  Badly!” 

—–

With V For Vendetta, they took the next step in indulging in their delusions of oppression by an all-powerful society that just doesn’t “get” the hip non-conformist heroes.  You know, like the Wachowski’s themselves, who have suffered unendurable repression by a society that, well, gives them all the fame and money anyone could ever ask for.

In Vendetta, their solution is to blow up Parliament.  In CN9, it’s to kill President Bush.  It’s a wonder that in their Speed Racer movie the climax didn’t feature Dick Cheney being run over.  Or Chim Chim getting it on with Racer X.

According to NYMag.com, “One rep we spoke to tells us that the Iraq movie will ‘never, ever’ be made by a studio — but points out that with the money the Wachowskis pocketed from the Matrix films, they could easily self- or co-finance CN9 independently.”  Maybe they should contact the NEA about a grant, since apparently no one in Hollywood wants to put up a chunk of the $20 million estimated budget for what promises to be the Ishtar for a new generation.  

Regardless, you can be sure that it’s not because the Hollywoodoids don’t want to be associated with a movie that trashes American troops as violent, horny lunatics and sanctions the murder of the Commander-in-Chief.   That’s all fine and dandy.   No, they won’t fund it because they know that we – the people who buy the tickets – don’t want to be associated with that kind of movie.

In liberal Hollywood, that’s what passes for principle.

It was a modestly budgeted studio action movie, but without the expectations that accompanied that summer’s “Clear and Present Danger” or “True Lies.” For most of the college kids I knew, Johnny Utah Keanu Reeves was a bit of a head scratcher, oddly turning up in such artsy critically acclaimed fare such as “Much Ado About Nothing” and “My Own Private Idaho,” very rarely looking comfortable with the dialogue he was charged with reciting in his surfer-bro monotone.

But the movie had a few secret weapons, and what do you know? It was and remains pretty close to great, and word of mouth propelled it to smash hit status. Tarantino quoted the movie at the MTV movie awards the following year, and the unhip had suddenly become hip. First and foremost of these secret weapons is the script by Graham Yost, one of my favorite current geniuses/guys-I-hate-because-they’re-so-good, thanks to his work on FX’s “Justified.”

 The first twenty to thirty minutes of the movie, a tense hostage/bomb situation on a skyscraper elevator, dispel the nutshell description of the film. And by the time That Tod Keanu Reeves (as Jack Traven, as in, “We will call you Jack Travern, and you will be a cop.”) exits a sticky situation involving mad-bomber Dennis Hopper and a hostage, who happens to also be a cop and Jack’s mentor, by shooting the cop/hostage/mentor – we know we’re in the hands of great storytellers. Furthermore, two other secret weapons have been revealed in the casting: Jeff Daniels as the mentor, Detective Harry Temple, and the late, great Republican Dennis Hopper as the mad bomber, Howard Payne.

“Guts’ll get you so far, and then they’ll get you killed,” Detective Harry Temple (“You will solve crimes and dispense quotable advice.”), tells Jack as they celebrate their apparent victory over Payne, who they believe was killed. Soon, Jack is testing the limits of Harry’s advice on a bus careening all over the ridiculous Los Angeles freeway system. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

As with all of my favorite movies, there’s a smaller moment, not necessarily crucial to the plot, that occurs early in the film that sells me on it. In “Speed,” it’s when Jack enters a coffee shop and knows the bus driver who’s exiting at the same time. To me, it gives the movie a personal touch that reverberates when Payne resurfaces and blows that driver’s bus to smithereens. This explosion could have just been an explosion, but Jack knows the driver and therefore we feel like we know the driver. Payne calls Jack, lays out the rules of the game: Bomb on a bus. Bus hits 50 mph, bomb is activated. Bus dips below 50 mph, smithereens. Jack takes off to find the bus before Payne can finish a sentence (I love that shit!). At this point, it occurs to me that one of the movie’s perceived liabilities may just be a secret weapon.

About Keanu Reeves and his body of work up to this point: Reeves is for me an example of how actors used to be cultivated and primed until they were ready for stardom. Tom Cruise didn’t headline event movies right out of the gate. Same with Keanu, who admittedly went an artier and more independent route than Cruise. Big parts in small movies (“My Own Private Idaho”), small parts in big movies (“Parenthood”), studio niche or genre films (“Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure”), and a big part in a fairly big studio movie (“Point Break”), all led to “Speed.”

As of June 10, 1994, Reeves was a recognizable face, if not a household name. All of the above movies had played on cable for a few years, and we were used to him, he wasn’t jammed down our throats as the it boy. Katherine Bigalow’s “Point Break” let audiences know he could handle playing a cop. He’s not great in that movie, but he’s largely believable due to his athleticism. And college kids mocked his voice, but most people recognized his obvious screen presence. He wasn’t a star yet, but regular people saw his face on the poster and said, “Hey, I know who that is, I think I kind of liked him in that thing I saw him in.” The timing of Reeves’ rise was one of “Speed’s” secret weapons, and the movie is his “Top Gun.”

The final secret weapon in the movie’s arsenal is the casting of then largely unknown Sandra Bullock as Annie Porter (“You will embody hotness and girl-next-door approachability for all of your days.”), the passenger whose penchant for speeding citations has necessitated her frequent use of L.A.’s public transit system (I say largely because I knew her face from repeated viewings of “Love Potion Number 9” on Cinemax, a movie my roommate got me and our other roommates hooked on purely because of Sandra Bullock’s hotness in it, but whose name we never bothered to read in the credits because we were lazy.) Bullock character knows nearly everyone on the bus, they’re a kind of commuting family, another great touch.

 It’s not just Sandra, though, or Keanu, or Hopper or Daniels. They’re as good as they are because of Graham Yost (I hate you! No wait, I love you!). I don’t mean to shortchange Jan De Bont. He does a great job here, but his subsequent work has not lived up to “Speed”, and I have to give the bulk of the credit to his screenwriter, that horrible evil awesome stupendous Graham Yost, whose name I curse and bow down to.

The movie works on a kinetic level because of De Bont. The second act bounces back and forth between Jack keeping order on the speeding bus, with Annie behind the wheel, Harry trying to figure out the identity of the mad bomber back at the station, and a team of cops who have pulled alongside the bus on a flatbed trailer, under the command of Captain McMahon (“You will mediate between the gung-ho thrill seeking cop and the cerebral thinking man’s cop”), played by Joe Morton (Secret weapon!).

Yost’s script is filled with humor, tension, and its plot turns in ways that would be completely predictable in the hands of a lesser writer. Harry, the brains behind the operation, is killed in a bomb blast. According to the mechanics of storytelling, of course he dies. Of course he dies because there’s no way for his advice to be put to the test unless he dies. But we don’t really see it coming, and I think it’s because dude already got shot, by Jack (“You fuck. You shot me!”) at the beginning of the movie, and we subconsciously expect his suffering to be over.

The genius of Harry’s advice, and Yost allowing it to function as a big theme of the movie, is that it allows the hero to get away with failure. The hero should fail. Over and over again, he should fail. But what most action movies get wrong, is that they allow the hero to fail but their failures often feel more like the results of stupid decisions. We often forgive these moves because they advance the plot, but on some level we know that dumb moves sacrifice character. The hero should fail and fail huge, and it should be when his back is totally against the wall and he has no choice but to make a move that’s potentially stupid. 

In the case of Jack Travern, he fails with his back against a horizontal wall of concrete speeding underneath him at a blistering pace. Desperate to steady himself, he punctures the gas tank. When he’s back on the bus, the passengers smell gas, he breaks the news to them, and we can see it on a couple of the passengers’ faces: Dumb move, bro. But it wasn’t. It was the only move. It served character (Jack has to get smarter if he’s going to beat the mad bomber) and plot (We’re running out of gas…and fast!).

I walked away from “Speed” in 1994, having caught a sneak preview with my wife at the General Cinema Theatre at the Georgia Square Mall in Athens (Curse you, rolling rocking red vinyl chairs! Curse you!), feeling like I had seen a nearly perfect action movie. My friends said me and my wife were insane: It’s got that dude that ruined “Dracula,” half-loved the premise, half thought it was the stupidest premise they had ever heard of. But all of them went to see it and agreed that it was a great movie. In subsequent viewings, I have grown less fond of the ending, in which the action moves from the bus to a subway. It’s tense, exciting, and well-executed, but it feels like the stakes have been lowered significantly. The slight let-down of this sequence isn’t nearly enough to derail the movie, however, and it remains as superior an example of how to write, cast, direct, and sell an action movie as “Speed 2: Cruise Control” remains an example of how not to do all of the above.

“Speed” symbolizes the greatness of 1994 because it was something of a sleeper. I’m not suggesting that no one was looking forward to it, or that it was some kind of niche film that found its way. It was a second-tier action movie, designed to sell popcorn, but in exceeding its expectations, it became a huge hit, grossing $121 million domestically.

The movie was released by 20th Century Fox, and had an estimated budget of $25 million. Fox’s other big action movie that summer was “True Lies,” which had a budget of $120 million and made $146 million domestically. Clearly, “Speed” over performed. There are good years and bad years for movies, from the point of view of commerce and quality. In the good years, I believe Hollywood creates more commercially and artistic successful sleepers than in the leaner years.

Whatever the circumstances, if you’ve ever watched Hard Boiled, a 1992 movie from Hong Kong directed by a distinctive auteur named John Woo, within minutes you were privy to this:

And your action-movie lovin’ life was never the same.

One of the great Golden Ages of cinema blossomed in Hong Kong between the early 1980s and 1997. Director Tsui Hark once described that city as the Chinese version of New York: “Very business, very crowded, very stink, and people very nervous.” But with one big difference: while New York perennially writhes in the death-grip of the Democrats’ tax-and-regulate machine, Hong Kong is a capitalist’s paradise, harboring freedoms and opportunities unimaginable in modern America. This mindset isn’t just a part of their business or political community, it’s also reflected in their films. John Woo once described the special appeal of Hong Kong pictures:

They look so rich; they have so much energy. Hong Kong filmmakers have been trained to put everything into each film. They’re always creating new kinds of action. The films have lots of drama, humor, romance, action. The films are fun, like a roller coaster. People here find things in Hong Kong films that they can’t find anyplace else. Some people say that Hollywood films are made like a formula; they never mix genres. Hong Kong films do; that’s why people love Hong Kong movies.

In Hong Kong we have a lot of creative freedom. We don’t really care about censors because we have a smaller market than American films. We can do whatever we want; we never have any rules to tie us up. In fact, there aren’t any rules; we just try to make a movie as interesting as we can. We’re carefree and will try anything new.

Carefree is a quality missing from far too many American productions that smother audiences with predictable, ossified genre fare. Here are the authors of City on Fire: Hong Kong Cinema, Lisa Odham Stokes and Michael Hoover, describing the way movies were created on the island circa 1992: “Budgets are smaller, generally between US$100,000 and US$1 million. . . production time. . . is roughly seven to eight weeks from contract to screen. . . Postproduction is often out of the question, and many films are completed days or even hours before their screenings. Typically films are edited as they are shot and, until recently, without synchronized sound — shooting without sound allowing for easier simultaneous release in Cantonese and Mandarin. Subtitles are often cheaply added and mistranslations inadvertently humorous.”

There’s a delightful sprightliness coursing through movies made in this fashion, a lightness and a sense of possibility. You become acutely aware of seeing new things, fresh things, audacious things, and the experience is wonderfully refreshing. In his excellent book Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment, teacher David Bordwell says that

Hong Kong movies can be sentimental, joyous, rip-roaring, silly, bloody, and bizarre. Their audacity, their slickness, and their unabashed appeal to emotion have won them audiences throughout the world. “It is all too extravagant, too gratuitously wild,” a New York Times reviewer complained of an early kung-fu import; now the charge looks like a badge of honor.

He goes on to ask the question that is often on the mind of people who have discovered the unique joys of this cinema: “How did cheap movies made in a distant outpost of the British Empire achieve broad international appeal, while European filmmakers bemoan their inability to reach even their own national audiences? How did Hong Kong filmmakers manage to create artful movies within the framework of modern entertainment?”

John Woo’s own Golden Age lasted from 1986 until 1992, and included as highlights A Better Tomorrow parts I and II (1986 and 1987, respectively), The Killer (1989),  Bullet in the Head (1990), Once a Thief (1991), and Hard Boiled (1992). A fun volume called Hong Kong Action Cinema by Bey Logan deftly describes Woo’s style as combining “the ballistic with the balletic.” Another book, Once Upon a Time In China by Jeff Yang, goes into more detail: “Bodies fly through the air, defying common sense and physics as they spin through a murderous hail of bullets; jaded cops bond with noble criminals, before they go out together in a blaze of glory; duels end in standoffs, with multiple guns pointed at multiple targets, each shooter waiting for the wrong move to be made.”

And, tellingly, he adds that, “No filmmaker has done more to shape the vocabulary of the modern action movie than John Woo, perhaps the greatest genre auteur of his generation (some would say the greatest ever).

The first movie in that group of modern classics, A Better Tomorrow, came seemingly out of nowhere to put John Woo on the map as an action director extraordinaire, and made an ex-TV soap-opera actor named Chow Yun-fat a Hong Kong superstar. Kids, toughs and Triad gangsters all over the island mimicked his clothes and mannerisms: a long duster, dark sunglasses, and a toothpick dangling from the mouth (a costume that would later be copied almost in toto for Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Ann Moss, and Laurence Fishburne in 1999’s The Matrix). A Better Tomorrow also heralded the advent of an all-new genre: an amalgamation of Westerns, kung-fu, gangster pictures, Chinese Opera, and classic film noir, eventually dubbed “Heroic Bloodshed” by the Hong Kong film fanzine Eastern Heroes.

A tidal wave of derivative films, many of them excellent in their own right, rolled out in the picture’s wake. The best of them matched Woo’s feat of conjuring up ancient notions of honor, duty, knighthood, and swordplay, for use in tales of cops and robbers doing battle in the neon-lit, concrete jungles of the modern world. “To me,” says Woo, “the gangster films are just like Chinese swordplay pictures. To me Chow Yun-fat holding a gun is just like [classic-era kung-fu actor] Wang Yu holding a sword.”

Many consider 1989’s The Killer to be John Woo’s (and actor Chow Yun-fat’s) masterpiece. It was the first Woo movie to gain international recognition, spreading like wildfire through the film schools, arthouses, and comic-book shops of America — anywhere young men congregated looking for the next cool thing. Author Jeff Yang recalls how, “Featuring for the first time Woo’s full arsenal of tropes and clichés — leaping two-gun attacks, tense Mexican standoffs, flocks of startled doves — on the American arthouse circuit it played to jam-packed crowds, who’d never seen anything like it in their lives.”

I can attest to that, as I distinctly remember first seeing The Killer at the Art Institute of Chicago circa 1992, dragged there by a friend panting “This you’ve gotta see.” As I passed the box office, I noted with amusement that the movie poster showed that the MPAA had given the picture an X rating for its unmitigated, if not egregiously gory, bullet-riddled violence. Unlike so many arthouse screenings I had attended, the auditorium was filled to bursting, and the predominantly male, college-aged crowd hummed with an electricity, a shared feeling that we were about to experience an Event.

To this day I can still hear the massive gasps and cheers that erupted throughout the picture. As certain scenes reached a crescendo, there was raucous, sustained applause of a kind that would have been more at home at the end of a powerful opera performance. It was more than knee-jerk admiration from a giddy audience — it was an expression of true gratitude. Soon after that titanically impressive screening, my friends and I headed to Chicago’s famous Chinatown district, scouring video stores until we found a place that sold widescreen laserdiscs, and purchasing copies of The Killer and other films at $120 a pop. There were no English subtitles, but we didn’t care — we were interested in the almost impossibly inventive camerawork and editing.

Little did we know, when sitting through the even more blistering and mind-altering Hard Boiled the next year, that we were in fact seeing the last great John Woo movie from his Hong Kong period, as well as the last to pair him up with Chow Yun-fat. When, in film school, our Chinese friends informed us that the movie’s original Cantonese title translated to Hot-Handed God of Cops, our expectations were high, and we were not disappointed. In the words of Asian movie scholar Bey Logan, Hard Boiled is a “mind-blowing cops’n’undercover cops saga. The film has all the best elements of pulp fiction, as well as the gunplay stylizations of the Woo-meister.”

Triads had become an enormous problem, with even the island’s movie stars so harassed and threatened that they staged a public protest against gangster infiltration in their industry. “The violence had gone too far in Hong Kong,” says John Woo of those dark days. “The gangsters were ruthless with their gun smuggling and brutality. The police had a hard time dealing with them because they did not have the strength or the firepower. I hated to see so many innocent people hurt. There was so much confusion. At the same time, Iraq invaded Kuwait. It made me feel so angry. There was so much injustice. So I wanted to make a new kind of hero with Chow Yun-fat, like Dirty Harry, who takes it into his own hands to fight evil.”

Whereas the director’s first efforts in the genre had focused more on the criminal element, by 1992 he saw a need to address the other side of the equation. “In Hard Boiled, both the lead characters are cops, so I am hoping this will encourage kids to become policemen!”

Hard Boiled cost four-million dollars to make in 1992, a paltry sum by Hollywood standards. But Woo put every cent of that budget up on the screen via an exhausting shooting schedule lasting an almost unheard of 123 days (by comparison, Woo’s first Hollywood picture, the 1993 Jean-Claude Van Damme actioner Hard Target, was filmed in only sixty-five days). The director himself describes the film as “Dirty Harry meets Die Hard.” and explains that “It’s called Hard Boiled because that was a tough kind of detective novel. I try for a similar style in this film.” A Better Tomorrow and The Killer were more lyrical and laden with the sort of tragic tone that often heralds “true art.” But Hard Boiled was more pure action, pure adrenaline, pure masculinity — in short, pure cinema.

Like The Killer before it, Hard Boiled’s relentless body count turned off audience members and critics alike in Hong Kong, resulting in only lukewarm box-office (it was only the twelfth highest-grossing movie on the island for 1992). But in America, it was a different story entirely: appearing in the same arthouse and museum theaters that Woo’s previous release had, it sent action-movie fans completely into outer space, and became a surprise darling of the festival circuit. When, soon after, both Hard Boiled and The Killer were released on laserdisc in the US by the prestigious Criterion Collection, both titles rapidly sold out.

Next week in For Conservative Movie Lovers: John Woo’s journey from a slum-dweller bereft of hope into the most successful Asian movie director since Kurosawa.

FURTHER READING and VIEWING

There’s a surprising number of solid, useful books on Hong Kong cinema — the signal to noise ratio is much better than in many other areas of film study. Among the titles referenced for this article were:

City on Fire: Hong Kong Cinema by Lisa Odham Stokes and Michael Hoover.

Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment by David Bordwell.

Hong Kong Action Cinema by Bey Logan.

Once Upon a Time In China by Jeff Yang.

All are recommended reading for anyone looking to discover — or deepen your already significant knowledge of — Hong Kong cinema.

Mama’s in the factory, she ain’t got no shoes. Daddy’s in the alley, he’s lookin’ for food; I’m in the kitchen with the tombstone blues. “Tombstone Blues” – Bob Dylan

Perhaps the sudden death of pop icon Michael Jackson had many Hollywood stars contemplating their own future obituaries. But the industry, which has been strongly committed to promoting the dangers of man-made global warming, was strangely silent on the Waxman-Markey bill which squeaked though the House last week. The United States economy, i.e., actual real human beings who live in America, continues to suffer from the enormous Obama-lead government’s allocation of resources by massive deficit spending and taxes. The axis of deception changes with each specific fiscal proposal.

The latest comedy of abominations, named–with its usual Orwellian precision–The American Clean Energy and Security Act, was passed Friday by the House of Representatives. The Pelosi/Waxman/Markey trio lead this charge. The winners, in this latest travesty, are that new breed of Obama entrepreneur, the mega wealthy looking for Government handouts. But the Country “has no need to be nervous.” After all, they are simply fixing the “failed policies of the Bush Administration.” But as legislation goes, this Energy Act really takes the cake. As Arnold Kling so succinctly put it, “The cap and trade legislation maximizes rent-seeking (favoritism toward particular businesses) and minimizes carbon reduction.”

This bill was resisted both by Greenpeace and those growing numbers who realize the whole premise of this Act of Congress, “man-made global warming,” is a farce. I have written about global warming before: James Hansen: Man of Science » , Al Gore’s Animal Farm and “Red Flags,” and Short Update on Squealer Al and a Compliant Brokaw. The Global Warming Petition Project has 31,000 signatories from scientists in the US who oppose the so-called climate crisis “consensus.” Their work is summarized in this this paper. The EPA’s own suppressed report skeptical of global warming can be read here CEI Releases Global Warming Study Censored by EPA . And the Senate Minority Report, with 650 signatories, can be read here US Senate Minority Report on Global Warming.

There is no consensus on “man-made” global warming. There are no demonstrated falsifiable theories that support this concept. It started out as an ideological movement and has gradually morphed into a game of crony-capitalism. Much of the world has already moved on. The two fastest growing economies, India and China, don’t even pretend they will participate. This bill will only add further costs to our already over burdened economy. I clearly don’t expect any reasoned argument to persuade those who have chosen to believe in “man-made” global warming. That would be too much to wish for. But what one should expect proponents of that view to be true to their principles. Greenpeace Opposes Waxman-Markey because, in their view, it “sets emission reduction targets far lower than science demands, then undermines even those targets with massive offsets. The giveaways and preferences in the bill will actually spur a new generation of nuclear and coal-fired power plants to the detriment of real energy solutions. To support such a bill is to abandon the real leadership that is called for at this pivotal moment in history.  We simply no longer have the time for legislation this weak.” While I obviously disagree, at least they know a pig when they see one. They know this bill does little to eliminate greenhouse gasses.

Where do those Hollywood promoters of the catastrophic dangers of global warming stand on this bill? Are they on the same side as Greenpeace? Not from what I can tell. The Hollywood eco-establishment are those guys who made hundreds of millions trying to terrify the public into action. Given this bill will reduce global warming by “seven percent in 40 years,” according to those who believe in this “science,” one would think these highly visible committed Hollywood activists would be in a state of outrage. But then one would be wrong. Let’s start with “An Inconvenient Truth” Academy Award winning Director Davis Guggenheim and his star Nobel Prize winning docu-hero, Al Gore.

Guggenheim, who said upon first meeting with Al Gore, “I left after an hour and a half thinking that global warming is the most important issue, and if I do one thing in my life it’s to help more people see Al Gore do this. I had no idea how you’d make a film out of it, but I wanted to try.” Al Gore gave a speech in DC on July 17, 2008 and called on Americans to completely abandon electricity generated by fossil fuels within 10 years, and replace them with carbon-free renewables like solar, wind and geothermal. He said “the survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk….{and} the future of human civilization is at stake.”

What does this bill propose? That in ten years, 15%, not the 100% Gore says is needed, of the United States energy (not global energy) needs must come from “renewable” sources. By 2020, “greenhouse gas emissions” must be reduced by 17%.  However, “offsets” can be purchased that permits no reduction at all in CO2 emissions. These offsets include “activities such as protecting rain forests in Brazil — that are deemed climate-friendly.” Who will decide when an “offset” is appropriate? How much do you think those offset decisions will be worth? These are mere details that no one knows the answer to–but we can easily guess. This bill will also tax imports from countries that do not have the same standards as the US, which is a direct sales tax on the US consumer. This is absurd beyond belief. It is no wonder people who care strongly about this issue oppose it, regardless of which side they are on.

The entire premise of “An Inconvenient Truth” is the need for radical action now. So Al Gore must oppose this bill, correct? No. Instead Al Gore is the leading “rent seeker,” heavily lobbying Congress to pass this bill calling it “as important to our time as the Civil Rights legislation was to the minorities of the 1960’s and the Marshall Plan of was to America during the 1940’s.” Coincidentally, his venture capital firm is heavily invested in…….Global warming money making schemes. Guggenheim is onto other projects and has been silent on this bill. Davis Guggenheim documents Jimmy Page. But Guggenheim and Gore do not stand alone.

Leonardo DiCaprio has also been a very visible proponent of the dangers of global warming.  He was honored by Mikhael Gorbachev earlier this year when he received the International Green Film Award in Berlin. His website is dedicated to various “green” causes and has even written columns in Time Magazine in support of Van Jones, Obama’s advisor on “green jobs.” Congress is debating the most important pieces of legislation on global warming to date, yet he is silent on his website about its passage. Keanu Reeves and Alanis Morrisette narrated The Great Warming, an absurd ideological screed based on the book by Lydia Dotto. Where do they stand and Waxman-Markey? They, too, are silent. How about Oprah Winfrey, Laurie David , and Bill Maher? The list is endless. If they have spoken out, I have not seen it. These people are always at the forefront of appearing morally superior. So why aren’t they publicly involved in arguably the most important political Energy debate this country has had? Why aren’t they on their megaphones urging true reform?

But this is not really surprising. Being green in Hollywood has usually been about moral preening and self-aggrandizement, not actual legislative change. They are no different than Al Gore. This is a promotional device designed to advance their careers by being both visible on these causes yet indifferent to actual legislation. In fact, they may even have a direct interest in no serious legislation passing. This way, they can keep themselves relevant. Eventually, I hope and believe, this issue will die a deserving death.

Like modern day Leni Riefenstahls, Hollywood has been at the ideological forefront in support of the dangers of man-made global warming. But few change their lifestyles. Oprah bragged openly about her private jet at a graduation speech at Duke University. Like Al Gore, they give every indication of being in on the con. It does not really affect them. Paying a few thousand more a year in fuel costs is irrelevant. So what if we have another tax on the rest of the country?

The good news, if one can possibly call it that, is this bill has smoked out the fakes, who many of us have known were there all along. Plus the Senate may finally put the final stake in this vampire’s heart. If so, perhaps the Obama honeymoon can be declared officially over.

SUNDAY MORNING: Dog lovers everywhere united to make Fox’s Marley & Me the #1 Christmas weekend movie with an expected $51.18M in the Thursday-thru-Sunday period for a Per Theatre Average of $14,888. Pre-opening industry tracking pointed to a clear win for Bedtime Stories (Disney), but it was the lovable lab who finished on top.

As an aside, all of us who read John Grogan’s extraordinarily well-written novel should have seen this coming. The book is a joy, and anyone who has a dog, or has ever had a dog, could easily identify with the struggles and pleasures of having a 4-legged member of the family.

The success of Marley slightly mitigates a disastrous year for Fox. Its year started out well enough riding the huge success of 2007 release Alvin & the Chipmunks into January ($70M of Alvin’s gross landed in this calendar year). The January 18 release of chick-flick 27 Dresses scored for Katherine Heigl ($76.8M in the US), then Jumper was a good solid February hit, topping $80M, followed by the wildly successful Horton Hears a Who ($154.5M domestic). Little did Fox know that when the Ashton Kutcher-Cameron Diaz comedy What Happens in Vegas played solidly to the tune of $80.2M domestic starting in May, it would be its last legit hit until Christmas’ Marley & Me. This is a huge, redemptive win for Fox, and its sentimental tear-jerker of a dog movie could near $100M domestic by Sunday.

There were 11 consecutive under-performing titles during the Fox drought of 2008, including expensive failures like mega-bombs Meet Dave ($11.8M domestic) and The X-Files: I Want to Believe ($20.9M cume). There were also misses like The Rocker ($6.4M cume),  City of Ember ($7.8M cume) and recent disappointments like Baz Luhrmann’s Australia (about $45M in the bank as its run winds down) and the critically-reviled The Day the Earth Stood Still, which picked up another $10.29M during the Christmas-thru-Sunday frame for a domestic cume of only $63M.

Despite the success of Marley, Fox will be #6 among the so-called “Big 6” studios in market share for the year. The winning studio , Warner Bros, essentially locked up the crown in late summer as The Dark Knight piled up meteoric grosses. As I have written in the past, the WB gang seemed destined to break the all-time single year record for domestic ticket sales, and now I can report that they have officially surpassed Sony’s 2006 record of $1.71 billion.

With the respectable hold for Jim Carrey’s Yes Man ($22.38M over 4 days for a 10-day cume of $49.8M), the continued success of Four Christmases (adding $7.29M for a new cume of $111.67M) and the excellent expansion of Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino (with a $38K or so cume at 84 locations), I am projecting a total domestic box office take of $1.74 billion as of today.  That is a staggering number, and it wasn’t all due to the success of mega-hit The Dark Knight.

Warner Bros perfectly marketed and distributed Sex and the City after picking up the baton from New Line. They also maximized the gross for the previously 3D-geared Journey to the Center of the Earth, selling it as a solid traditional 2D experience and generating $100M. And, they turned a pedestrian holiday comedy, Four Christmases, into a $100M smash. Expect a jubilant press release from Warner Bros in the next few days.

There is great news for Paramount and David Fincher in this holiday season. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a big hit. Based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, this spiritual tale starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett had only 2,988 playdates, but the screen count may be as high as 3,500 with Paramount securing multiple screens at many key locations for the 2 hour 48 minute epic. The film coaxed a magical $39.1M or so r the 4-day Christmas weekend.

Benjamin Button will do very steady business through awards season, and the spectacularly-reviewed film will likely have $70M-$80M in the bank by the end of next weekend.  It will continue to hold well through awards season with major nominations at the Golden Globes and the SAG Awards. I strongly believe that this movie is headed for something in the $170M domestic range and reaching $200M is not out of the question.

Only 2 of the last 11 Best Picture winners have failed to break through the $100M barrier, including last year’s Coen Brothers thriller No Country For Old Men.

BEST PICTURE WINNERS
2008 – No Country For Old Men – $74.2M
2007 – The Departed – $132.3M
2006 – Crash – $54.5M
2005 – Million Dollar Baby – $100.5M
2004 – Lord of the Rings: Return of the King – $377M
2003 – Chicago – $170.6M
2002 – A Beautiful Mind – $170.7M
2001 – Gladiator – $187.7M
2000 – American Beauty – $130M
1999 – Shakespeare in Love – $100.3M
1998 – Titanic – $600.7M

Academy Awards voters, whether they admit it or not, love big blockbusters, and after last year’s terrible Oscar broadcast ratings, there will be a strong yet silent, push to recognize films that movie-goers all over the country have seen. Benjamin Button is now likely to fit the bill nicely. Wouldn’t an Oscar night showdown between The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and mega-hit The Dark Knight make for a spectacular Academy Awards storyline (although, there’s always a chance that Danny Boyle’s gutty, little indie Slumdog Millionaire could steal the big prize from the big budget studio blockbusters).

#3 Bedtime Stories, also starring Keri Russell, Guy Pearce and the irrepressible Russell Brand from Saving Sarah Marshall, has managed $38.6M in just 4 days. It’s a fine showing, although most experts (including yours truly) thought it would be the weekend’s big winner.. The opening for Sandler is slightly under expectations and slightly below par with his recent hits, although it’s hard to compare a Christmas 4-day opening with a traditional 3-day weekend start.

Technically, the 3-day weekend opening (Friday-thru-Sunday) for Bedtime Stories was $27.6M or so. Accepting that Christmas Day took a great deal of “steam” out of the picture, that number compares favorably to July’s You Don’t Mess With the Zohan ($38.53M opening – $100M cume) and 2007’s I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry ($34.23M opening – $120M cume). Given that Bedtime Stories skews much younger and has family appeal, it should demonstrate great “playability” could very well have $80M in the bank by the end of New Year’s weekend.

A strong 3-day weekend came on the heels of a monstrous Christmas Day as Marley & Me, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Bedtime Stories all out-grossed the previous Christmas Day opening champion Ali ($10.2M). In terms of all-time best performance on Christmas Day, opening or otherwise, the three 2008 holiday box office juggernauts finished as the #2, #6 and #10 of all time.

ALL-TIME TOP 10 CHRISTMAS DAY PERFORMANCES
1. Meet the Fockers – $19.5M
2. Marley & Me – $14.67M (estimate)
3. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King – $13.9M
4. National Treasure: Book of Secrets – $13.6M
5. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers – $12.3M
6. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – $12M (estimate)
7. Night at the Museum – $11.7M
8. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – $11.5M
9. Cast Away – $10.9M
10. Bedtime Stories - $10.52M (estimate)

Tom Cruise’s Valkerie (MGM/UA) has out-performed industry expectations finishing 4th for both Christmas Day and the long weekend. The eye patch wearing Cruise seemed headed for another disaster with his Nazi epic, but it has finished the 4-day with just over $30M. You could have won some bar bets with studio execs if back in November you had wagered that this won would even crack $25M over the Christmas holiday. Holdover Yes Man (Warner Bros) rounds out the top 5 for the long holiday weekend.

The only other new wide opening is Frank Miller’s The Spirit (Lionsgate). No Sin City magic here as the movie has stumbled out of the gates with about $10.35M, and it is fading very quickly based on downright awful word-of-mouth.

Revolutionary Road (Dreamworks/Paramount) is officially a PTA monster. Opening on just 3 screens Friday, the Sam Mendes-directed drama grabbed over $22K per location on opening day, and it will finish the weekend with about a $64,133 PTA. Not only is that the best PTA of 2008 (topping Frost/Nixon’s number for December 5-7), it is the 29th-best 3-day PTA of all time.

It is very hard to say what the commercial prospects for this picture may be. It is brilliantly acted with perfectly modulated performances by Leo and Kate, a truly unique turn by New York stage actor Michael Shannon and certain-to-be-under-appreciated work from Oscar winner Kathy Bates. I would also like to single out Kathryn Hahn, who was brilliant in Broadway’s Tony-winning Boeing, Boeing. Something about neighbor Milly Campbell’s desperate “golly gee-ness” captures the era to perfection.

Bringing Richard Yates novel to the big screen was no small feat, and screenwriter Justin Haythe has winnowed the somewhat sprawling novel down to its most cinematic pieces. Haythe is a lock for a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination at the Oscars, and I would make Winslet the betting favorite for Best Actress for her work in Rev Road, but can the film break through in other categories?

DiCaprio has a strong shot at a Best Actor nod, battling with Richard Jenkins, Brad Pitt and Clint Eastwood for the final 2 spots (after Frank Langella, Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke). It’s uphill for Shannon in the Best Supporting Actor category with Heath Ledger, Robert Downey Jr. and Phillip Seymour Hoffman as locks. Slumdog Millionaire’s Dev Patel has picked up a great deal of momentum since his SAG Award nomination, he seems to have sewn up the 4th spot. That leaves one spot open for Josh Brolin from Milk, Ralph Fiennes for The Duchess, Eddie Marsan for Happy-Go-Lucky or, an extreme longshot, Tom Cruise for Tropic Thunder. At the moment, I am leaning toward Brolin who will also get credit for his work in W..

Gran Torino has expanded very well to 84 locations and quite a few multiple screen situations for a PTA of just over $38K. There is clearly some commercial viability here as this love it or hate it movie goes wider in January.The big question remains. Will Oscar voters nominate Eastwood for Best Actor for his snarling, racist Walt Kowalski performance? In my estimation, his performance is the weakest of the contenders, but viewed in the context of his career, it feels like a nice culmination of his acting work.

It is surprising how softly Frost/Nixon (Universal) is playing at 205 locations. It generated a $9,473 PTA, which is disappointing. This is a great film with a tour de force performance by Frank Langella as President Richard M. Nixon. It may be that the movie-going public isn’t interested in reliving the Watergate nightmare, especially when everyone has a general mistrust of government after the Bush years. Movies can be an escape from a tough economy, government corruption and political scandal. Thus, films like Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button and Marley & Me are more attractive film destinations.

A lack of commercial success will not keep Langella out of the Best Actor category, but Ron Howard’s movie could be potentially handicapped in the Best Picture race if it doesn’t begin selling tickets at a better clip. Ben Button, Slumdog and The Dark Knight are all legitimate hits, appropriate to their scale. I am penciling in Milk (Focus) as a likely Best Picture nominee leaving one slot set aside for Frost/Nixon. Mega-hit Wall-E (Disney) could sneak in instead. Or, if The Wrestler (Fox Searchlight) expands better than Howard’s political biopic – Mickey Rourke’s comeback delivered almost $28K per location over the Christmas 4-day – maybe Darren Aronofsky will find his movie among the big 5. The same goes for the aforementioned Revolutionary Road. A Best Picture nod would be a game-changer for Dreamworks/Paramount, and the slow start for Frost/Nixon may have left the door open.

FINAL 4-DAY CHRISTMAS WEEKEND ESTIMATES
1. NEW – Marley & Me (Fox) – $51.67M, $14,849 PTA, $51.67M cume
2. NEW – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Paramount) – $39.1M, $13,086 PTA, $39.1M cume
3. NEW – Bedtime Stories (Disney) – $38.6M, $10,486PTA, $38.6M cume
4. NEW – Valkyrie (MGM/UA) – $30.4M, $11,214 PTA, $30.4M cume
5. Yes Man (Warner Bros) – $22.38M, $6,517 PTA, $49.8M cume
6. Seven Pounds (Sony) – $18.2M, $6,599 PTA, $38.86M cume
7. Tale of Despereaux (Universal) – $11.37M, $3,659 PTA, $28.07M cume
8. The Day the Earth Stood Still (Fox) – $10.59M, $4,409 PTA, $63.4M cume
9. NEW – The Spirit (Lionsgate) – $10.35M, $4,126 PTA, $10.35M cume
10. Four Christmases (Warner Bros) – $7.29M, $2,904 PTA, $111.67M cume
11. Doubt (Miramax) – $7.1M, $5,604 PTA, $8.78M cume
12. Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight) – $5.81M, $9,417 PTA, $19.41M cume
13. Twilight (Summit) – $5.5M, $2,975 PTA, $167.06M
*Gran Torino (Warner Bros) – $3.2M, $38,155 PTA, $4.28M cume
*Milk (Focus) – $2.32M, $7,481 PTA, $13.52M cume
*Frost/Nixon (Universal) – $1.94M, $9,473 PTA, $3.58M cume
*The Reader (Weinstein) – $847,000, $7,302 PTA, $1.23M cume
*The Wrestler (Fox Searchlight) – $515,000, $28,611 PTA, $893,000 cume
*NEW – Revolutionary Road (Dreamworks/Paramount) – $192,400, $64,133 PTA, $192.400 cume
*NEW – Last Chance Harvey (Overture) – $132,000, $22,000 PTA, $132,000 cume
*NEW – Waltz with Bashir (Sony Classics) – $55,144, $11,029 PTA, $55,144 cume

FINALY 4-DAY CHRISTMAS WEEKEND PTA ESTIMATES
1. NEW – Revolutionary Road (Dreamworks/Paramount) – 3 locations, $64,133 PTA
2. Gran Torino (Warner Bros) – 84 locations, $38,155 PTA
3. The Wrestler (Fox Searchlight) – 18 locations, $28,611 PTA
4. NEW – Last Chance Harvey (Overture) – 6 location, $22,000 PTA
5. NEW – Marley & Me (Fox) – 3,480 locations, $14,849 PTA
6. NEW – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Paramount) – 2,988 locations, $13,086 PTA
7. NEW – Valkyrie (MGM/UA) – 2,711 locations, 11,075 PTA
8. NEW – Waltz with Bashir (Sony Classics) – 6 locations, $11,029 PTA
9. NEW – Bedtime Stories (Disney) – 3,681 locations, $10,486 PTA
10. Frost/Nixon (Universal) – 205 locations, $9,473 PTA
11. Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight) – 614 locations, $9,471 PTA
12. Milk (Focus) – 311 locations, $7,481 PTA
13. The Reader (Weinstein) – 116 locations, $7,302 PTA
14. Seven Pounds (Sony) – 2,758 locations – $6,599 PTA
15. Yes Man (Warner Bros) – 3,434 locations, $6,517 PTA
16. Doubt (Miramax) – 1,267 locations, $5,450 PTA
17. The Day the Earth Stood Still (Fox) – 2,402 locations – $4,409 PTA
18. NEW – The Spirit (Lionsgate) – 2,509 locations – $4,126 PTA

Jim Carrey and his high-concept comedy Yes Man (Warner Bros) will win the pre-Christmas weekend out-performing Will Smith’s more challenging Seven Pounds (Sony), although both films seem to be under-performing industry expectations.. Audiences are saying “Yes” to a breezy, cheerful, undemanding movie experience, although it is not a particularly emphatic “Yes.” In my Final Weekend Tracking column, I predicted $26.35M for Yes Man, and industry tracking certainly supported an opening in the mid-$20M’s. Instead, moviegoers have agreed to the tune of only $6.7M on opening day, and that could translate to a less-than-expected $18.76 or so by Monday morning.

Meanwhile, Will Smith has landed in unfamiliar territory. This strange new land for the World’s Biggest Movie Star is called “Second Place.” Seven Pounds managed to churn up only $5.3M to start the 3-day, and I am projecting a $15.63M opening. This movie, a re-teaming of Smith with his Pursuit of Happyness director Gabriele Muccino, has endured scathing early reviews and some definite “Will Smith is a little full of himself” backlash. The movie has been described as pretentious and downright dumb by some critics, and heart wrenchingly-optimistic and emotionally cathartic by others. The end result is Smith’s weakest opening since 2000’s Ali ($14.7M).

Yes Man is the latest in a year-long winning streak for Warner Bros Not only have they locked up the studio market share race for 2008, this decent-not-great opening may lift Warner Bros to finish the year with more domestic ticket sales than any studio in history. If my opening weekend number for Yes Man holds, I am projecting that the film could bank a possible $48M (conservatively) before the end of the year. Add to that a projected cume of $120M for Four Christmases by the close of business on December 31, and an anticipated $5.4M or so from the limited engagements of Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino (70 playdates starting Christmas Day), and Warner Bros would reach an annual domestic sales figure of $1.75 billion, surpassing Sony’s $1.71 billion take in 2006.

The Dark Knight ($530.7M domestic so far) is the lynchpin of Warner Bros’ soon-to-be record-breaking year, but there are 4 other $100M+ grossing films that have helped to push the studio over-the-top. Along with Four Christmases, which will blow by $100M on Sunday, WB has also scored with Sex and the City ($152.6M cume), Get Smart ($130.3M cume) and Journey to the Center of the Earth ($101.7M cume). Sony set the previous record with one $200M+ performer (Da Vinci Code), 3 $100M+ hits (Casino Royale, Talladega Nights and Click) and about $96M of the ultimate $163.5M gross for Pursuit of Happyness, which landed in December 2006.

As for Will Smith, Seven Pounds is likely to break his historic streak of consecutive $100M+ grossing movies, which stands at 8.

2002 – Men in Black II – $52.1M opening – $190.4M cume
2003 – Bad Boys II – $46.5M opening – $138.6M cume
2004 – I, Robot – $52.1M opening – $144.8M cume
2004 – Shark Tale – $47.6M opening – $160.8M cume
2005 – Hitch – $43.1M opening – $179.4M cume
2006 – The Pursuit of Happyness – $26.5M opening – $163.5M cume
2007 – I Am Legend – $77.2M opening – $256.4M cume
2008 – Hancock – $62.6M opening – $227.9M cume

Critical pans be damned, people love Will Smith, but I am betting that the word-of-mouth on Seven Pounds will not be enough to net the 6.4 multiple that would be required to push it past $100M.

Universal’s Tale of Despereaux coaxed an estimated $3.8M in ticket sales to start the weekend and, with huge matinee business on Saturday and Sunday, the all-time umpteenth animated mouse movie should reach an estimated $15.27M good for third place, setting up for some solid holiday week business.

As expected, The Day the Earth Stood Still (Fox) has fallen apart, down about 67% for the weekend. Keanu Reeves’ spin on Klaatu could only muster $3.1M on its second Friday, and it will finish the frame with about $10.07M for a 10-day cume of $48.55M.

Rounding out the Top 5 is the aforementioned and surprisingly durable Four Christmases. Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon enjoyed another $3.06M in Friday sales, and it will deliver $9.49M or so more of “holiday cheer” for Warner Bros by Monday morning.

Details of the weekend’s specialty releases and lots of analysis is on tap for Saturday morning.

EXCLUSIVE STEVE MASON EARLY FRIDAY ESTIMATES
1. NEW – Yes Man (Warner Bros) – $6.7M, $1,951 PTA, $6.7M cume
2. NEW – Seven Pounds (Sony) – $5.3M, $1,922 PTA, $5.3M cume
3. NEW – Tale of Despereaux (Universal) – $3.8M, $1,224 PTA, $3.8M cume
4. The Day the Earth Stood Still (Fox) – $3.1M, $871 PTA, $41.57M cume
5. Four Christmases (Warner Bros) – $3.06M, $871 PTA, $95.47M cume
6. Twilight (Summit) – $1.55M, $521 PTA, $154.79M cume
7. Bolt (Disney) – $1.31M, $443 PTA, $92.06M cume
8. Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight) – $1.24M, $2,120 PTA, $10.23M cume
9. Milk (Focus) – $804,000, $2,257 PTA, $9.48M cume
10. Australia (Fox) – $763,000, $345 PTA, $40.38M cume

EXCLUSIVE STEVE MASON EARLY 3-DAY ESTIMATES
1. NEW – Yes Man (Warner Bros) – $18.76M, $5,463 PTA, $18.76M cume
2. NEW – Seven Pounds (Sony) – $15.63M, $5,669 PTA, $15.63M cume
3. NEW – Tale of Despereaux (Universal) – $15.27M, $4,921 PTA, $15.27M cume
4. The Day the Earth Stood Still (Fox) – $10.07M, $2,830 PTA, $48.55M cume
5. Four Christmases (Warner Bros) – $9.49M, $2,701 PTA, $101.9M cume
6. Bolt (Disney) -$5.66M, $1,908 PTA, $96.41M cume
7. Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight) – $4.86M, $8,268 PTA, $13.85M cume
8. Twilight (Summit) – $4.83M, $1,616 PTA, $158.06M cume
9. Milk (Focus) – $2.93M, $8,237 PTA, $11.61M cume
10. Australia (Fox) – $2.59M, $1,172 PTA, $42.21M cume