BIG HOLLYWOOD CONTRIBUTOR MIKE MANDEVILLE LOOKING FOR KICKSTARTER LOVE

Welcome to “Shysters” The Movie:

A laugh out loud, zany comedy!  With a bit of faith.

Make a difference!   Play a role in this hilarious Faith-based film by helping us to make it through friends and family!

Help us make this comedy film called “Shysters”!  You can do it with $1 or more.  And it’s a really simple process.  And You Get a Reward!  Depending on what you contribute, you might get a Thank You or a Visit by the Director and Producer.

First, we want you to laugh because Laughter is the Best Medicine.  With snappy dialogue, eccentric characters and a Hero Trying to Do the Right Thing, we have a combustible mixture of laugh and antics.

Much more here. Take a look and consider showing this bootstrap filmmaker some support. I would also urge you to take a look at Mike’s film history. Just for starters, he was a line producer on Liam Neeson’s “Taken.”

LEONARD NIMOY RETIRES… AGAIN

Though I despise being manipulated, I know the difference between someone like a Stephen King who tries to get attention by announcing a phony retirement and a Leonard Nimoy who really is facing that reality. And so, when it comes to a Leonard Nimoy scenario, I don’t mind when actors/singers/athletes un-retire.

As I get older, I better understand the urge not to surrender to the indignities of time. That doesn’t mean I’m going to buy a red sports car, sport a toupée and cheat on my wife. I just now know that giving in to age and saying goodbye to what defined you (career, lifestyle, hobby) is a helluva line to cross in your life, and the urge to make a comeback and reclaim it has to be so strong that it removes any peace you might have otherwise had in retirement.

Nimoy is 79 years-old, has been a major part of my life for all of my life, and if this really is goodbye, I thank him for all the pleasure he’s given to so many. And if this isn’t, it will always be good to have him back.

‘THE WONDER YEARS’ NOW AVAILABLE ON NETFLIX STREAMING

Such a great show, so well-written and beautifully acted, but it’s never been released on DVD.

In truth, a few episodes were released on DVD. I know because I have them. They were special three or four-episode collections that were thematically connected in some way, like all the Christmas shows.

From what I’ve heard, what held the DVD release up was the issue of music rights. If you remember the original series, every episode contained a number of well-known pop songs that were always used so perfectly they became as much a part of the series as anything else. The problem, of course, is that music rights are always tricky and very expensive, and what likely happened is that when the rights were originally secured they didn’t extend to home video, or at least not to DVD.

This leaves producers with the horrible choice of paying an arm and leg to renew the music rights or to do what “WKRP In Cincinnati” and “The Greatest American Hero” did: replace those great tunes with generic-sounding music that’s supposed to deliver the same feel but never does. Hopefully,  ”The Wonder Years” will stream with the original music intact. I’ll find out soon enough.

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SCOTTDS’ EPIC LINK-TACULAR

AND THE FIRST CANCELLATION OF THE TV SEASON IS…

MARVEL UNVEILING ‘AVENGERS’ FOOTAGE AT NEW YORK COMIC CON

RUMORS: JASON STATHAM MAY JOIN ‘FAST FIVE’ SEQUEL, NEXT TWO INSTALLMENTS TO SHOOT BACK-TO-BACK

DAVID CRONENBERG SAYS ‘THE FLY’ AND ‘EASTERN PROMISES’ SEQUELS ARE POSSIBILITIES

‘MISSION IMPOSSIBLE IV’ FINALLY RELEASES DECENT POSTER

IDRIS ELBA ADDRESSES JAMES BOND RUMORS

TRUTV PICKS UP EXTREME SINGING REALITY SERIES KILLER ‘KARAOKE‘

SYFY CHANNEL DEVELOPING TV SERIES BASED ON ‘THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU‘

DETAILS EMERGE ON CHARLIE KAUFMAN’S NEXT FILM, STARRING KEVIN KLINE

‘SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE’ MOVIES THAT NEVER HAPPENED

WHAT IF THIS YEAR’S MOVIE POSTERS TOLD THE TRUTH?

THE FUTURE OF INDIE FILM PROBABLY ISN’T AT YOUR LOCAL THEATER

HOW SUPERHERO MOVIES CAN ESCAPE THE PROBLEM OF TOO MANY VILLAINS (SPOILERS)

TRIBUTE TO THE CROWDED STATEROOM SCENE IN “A NIGHT AT THE OPERA“

ORIGINAL “RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES” ENDING REVEALED

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LAST NIGHT’S SCREENING

Part One of “Prohibition“: Ken Burns might be a left-wing loon, but other than the dreadful mishap that was “The War,” he tells the most compelling stories of most any documentary filmmaker out there. Thus far, this has been no different.

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CLASSIC PICK FOR WEDNESDAY,  OCTOBER 5

TCM:

12:30 AM EST:  Rio Bravo (1959) — A sheriff enlists a drunk, a kid and an old man to help him fight off a ruthless cattle baron. Dir: Howard Hawks. Cast:  John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson.  C-141 mins, TV-14, CC, Letterbox Format

The movie that made me a lifelong John Wayne fan. Been over thirty years now and I haven’t looked back or been disappointed yet.

Furthermore, the scene where Dean Martin and Rick Nelson break the tension and forget about all the coming violence and death with a song is the first time I consciously understood and appreciated the power of movie magic. Hawks takes you into the jailhouse and makes you a part of that moment. What a gift to have the ability to create such a thing — to make people feel that way.

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--Please send tips/suggestions/requests/complaints to jnolte@breitbart.com

Leonard Nimoy has called for a two state solution for which, in deference, several notables (amongst them Israelis), have called.  Nimoy does make a telling statement about the whole idea of two separate states.

“In fact, there is an end in sight. It’s known as the two-state solution – a secure, democratic Israel as the Jewish State alongside an independent Palestinian state.”

He does deserve some credit for seeing Israel as a Jewish state but, if you notice, there is only one democratic state mentioned here. It isn’t expected that another Muslim Arab state will be democratic. As a matter of fact, as always, Israel is expected to remain multicultural andrespect the rights of all its inhabitants, yet the proposed Arab state would, like all the other Arab states, not be open to Jews. Not that many Jews would like to live in an Arab state, considering the centuries of slaughter and pillage that have been the lot of Dhimmi Jews in Arab lands.

This is pretty par for the course, but what is even more egregious is his call for the division of Jerusalem.

“Their plan includes a Palestinian state alongside Israel with agreed-upon land swaps. The Palestinian-populated areas of Jerusalem would become the capital of Palestine; the Jewish-populated areas the capital of Israel.”

Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the demographics of Jerusalem would see this as being very “Pie in the Sky.” Without discussing the merits of the argument, the city is a patchwork of neighborhoods, with communities which are impossible to separate without a mass transfer of population. In the eyes of the world, this means kicking Jews out of their homes. There is also the historical precedent set by the last time parts of Jerusalem were under Arab control, between 1948 and 1967, when Jewish holy sites were used as places to corral animal and the headstones from Jewish graves as flooring in bathrooms. Lest one think this is a relic of a bygone era, recall what happened to the Synagogues left behind following the expulsion of Jews from Gush Katif in the Gaza strip.

“Peace Now’s activities and programs… keep peace on the world’s agenda… Like those Israelis who issued the peace plan, the members of Peace Now have their boots on the ground. “

Peace Now keeps one thing on its agenda, and that is the expulsion of Jews from their ancestral homes in Judea and Samaria. They have no other platform except returning Israel to its 1949 borders, otherwise known as the Auschwitz borders. The group has never called for any change to the maximalist demands of the Arabs, nor acknowledged the plain facts that the entire Arab-Israeli conflict is based on the desire of the Arabs to return the Jews to the degraded state they were in when they were under Muslim rule, where they could be beaten, robbed or killed with impunity.

Bringing his extensive resume to the forefront, Nimoy then compares the situation to an episode of Star Trek. “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” in which the two remaining survivors of a planet continue their battle fifty thousand years after every other inhabitant on the world has died in the war. This would be a strong political statement, were it not hopelessly naïve.

Israel and the Jewish nation have two options: fight for survival or return to the time when they were at the never tender mercies of the nations that lorded over them. The Muslim Arabs, following the precepts laid down by the Koran, were historically amongst the worst oppressors of the Jews. This is something worth fighting to prevent, even if it lasts for fifty thousand years. Giving in to evil does not bring peace, it only brings more evil.

The bottom line is there is no solution to the conflict in Israel as long as the Arabs demand everything and still see themselves as the rightful rulers, not so much of the land, but of the infidels who reside upon it.

The author himself was properly repulsed by the hippie movement (and indeed, by what he saw as the entire slovenly depths of American culture in general), and late in life began referring to their nightmare world of antiwar riots and hedonism as “this Fallen Kingdom of Arda, where the servants of Morgoth are worshipped.” But it was not only our side of the pond that gave him grief: he watched aghast as his work became so superficially popular and grossly misunderstood among the hip and the mod in Great Britain that the Beatles expressed a desire to star in a film version of The Lord of the Rings, complete with Stanley Kubrick directing!

It was Gandalf himself who warned Saruman that, “He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.” But that little nugget of common sense, and virtually everything else that made the book special, was passed over by those who were trying to snort, smoke, and screw their way out from under the thumb of The Man and Western Civ. Tolkien considered the free-love drug mob and its associated subgroups “cults of faineance and filth” that mindlessly smashed everything Old and Noble and Sacred while simultaneously embracing everything New, Hip, and Easygoing, all in a foolish, futile attempt to deconstruct and experiment their way to an earthly Utopia. Unlike so many from that crazed era, the man who decades earlier had laboriously penned Frodo’s arduous journey to Mount Doom knew better than to grant hippie pipe-dreams intellectual or spiritual credence.

“The essence of a fallen world,” he once wrote, “is that the best cannot be attained by free enjoyment, or by what is called ‘self-realization’ (usually a nice name for self-indulgence, wholly inimical to the realization of other selves); but by denial, by suffering.” Catholics will well-recognize this belief, and (in my experience) are laudably well-versed in the truth of its sentiments. “What a dreadful, fear-darkened, sorrow-laden world we live in,” Tolkien groaned in 1969, while the childish, cataclysmic madness was at its height. “. . . Chesterton once said that it is our duty to keep the Flag of This World flying: but it takes now a sturdier and more sublime patriotism than it did then. . . there seems nothing more to do than personally to refuse to worship any of the hydra’s heads.”

The chattering class, as it always does, ham-handedly tried to make sense of it all. In Life magazine for February 24, 1967, Charles Elliot did a good job of embarrassing himself while capturing the elite condescension of that time:

Surely [The Lord of the Rings] is not the stuff of which campus heroes are made, even though it does provide Tolkien aficionados with something to discuss over their pipe-weed, mushrooms and brown ale. What apparently gets the kids square in their post-adolescent sensibilities is not the scholarship top-dressing but the undemanding, comfortable, child-sized story underneath. No symbolism, no sex, no double meanings, no questions about which are the Good Guys and which the Bad, just a good yarn on the level of Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout.

The Lord of the Rings is thoroughly innocent. It is even innocent of ideas, which doubtless helps recommend it to those aggressive searchers for sincerity, the opt-out crowd. . . I am prepared to be generous so long as the whole thing doesn’t get out of hand.

Prepared to be generous. Gee, thank God for that! That’s the kind of pompous cultural gate-keeping that far too many professional critics engage in, and it always makes them look like fools in the long run. I note that, forty-five years later, Tolkien is as popular (and as critically studied) as ever, even while Charles Elliott is forgotten and the magazine he wrote for is defunct.

As the 1960s degenerated into the 1970s Tolkien’s popularity shot into the stratosphere, his book standing as a veritable beacon of light in the darkness of the Age. The counterculture, via Tolkien interviews and exposés featured in magazines and on TV, began to learn a bit more about the man behind the tripped-out novels that had them all abuzz. This was no cool, far-out elderly statesman like Timothy Leary or Pete Seeger, but a devout Catholic war veteran whose every public utterance seemed to shore up the old ways rather than mock them or tear them down. It wasn’t long before the pot-smoking, ’shroom-popping crowd abandoned Tolkien almost as quickly as they had embraced him.

The backlash was presaged as early as 1969, when two miscreant humorists (who soon after would found National Lampoon magazine) released Bored of the Rings, a popular parody penned in what would become the classic Lampoon style. Fun as it was for a few idle laughs, it also foreshadowed Tolkien’s future among the “we are the change we’ve been waiting for” halfwits. They were “Bored of the Rings” because the tale was now mainstreamed, and thus stripped of its counterculture cachet. Previously used by hippies as a literary lava lamp to inspire wild mental imagery suitable for dropping acid, making jejune political points at insane rallies, or freaking out one’s elders, it now possessed all of the utility of a used condom. Within a few years most ripped the Middle-earth posters off their walls, tossed out their Leonard Nimoy “Ballad of Bilbo Baggins” records, and moved on to the next fleeting hot thing.

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At the hill’s foot Frodo found Aragorn, standing still and silent as a tree; but in his hand was a small golden bloom of elanor, and a light was in his eyes. He was wrapped in some fair memory: and as Frodo looked at him he knew that he beheld things as they once had been in this same place. For the grim years were removed from the face of Aragorn, and he seemed clothed in white, a young lord tall and fair; and he spoke words in the Elvish tongue to one whom Frodo could not see. Arwen vanimelda, namárië! he said, and then he drew a breath, and returning out of his thought he looked at Frodo and smiled.

“Here is the heart of Elvendom on earth,” he said, “and here my heart dwells ever, unless there be a light beyond the dark roads that we still must tread, you and I. Come with me!” And taking Frodo’s hand in his, he left the hill of Cerin Amroth and came there never again as living man.

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“I seldom find any modern books that hold my attention,” J.R.R. Tolkien wrote again and again over the course of his long life. “. . . I am looking for something I can’t find.” Given the state of literature both before and after The Lord of the Rings, it’s not hard to imagine why. Purpose and Truth is such a rare thing to feel in art of any kind — books, film, painting, dance, song. It’s certainly utterly absent from the tales of modern authors who spend thousands of pages knocking our emotional and spiritual joints out of kilter in an effort to be hard-hitting, funny and edgy.

In so many stories from the “bored with the Good” crowd, readers are continually invited, even cleverly lured, into trusting their higher aspirations and nobler instincts, only to have those precious, delicate things cast back into their faces with a cackle. At base, it’s an attempt to deliberately scramble and pervert your inner compass — your moral and spiritual pole star — beyond all recognition, rearranging the stained glass windows of your mind until all that’s left are meaningless, mad swaths of bright color. To some of us, this is no light matter to be laughed at or ignored.

The work of modern authors like Martin, Abercrombie, Stover, et al. would have surprised Tolkien not a bit — he clearly anticipated the various attempts of today’s fallen fantasists to (d)evolve past The Lord of the Rings by making their stories “self-aware,” “quasi-historical,” “morally complex,” and (most laughably of all) “real.” Such authors, he felt, cultivate and cherish “sneer and cynicism” because it allows them to preen with the false belief that they are “freer from hypocrisy” than past generations, “since it does not ‘do’ to profess holiness or utter high sentiments.” Scaling hills of garbage and then gazing down on humanity as if from artistic or moral high ground didn’t impress Tolkien. “Inverted hypocrisy,” he called it, and deemed it a belief as false as “the widely current inverted snobbery: men profess to be worse than they are.”

In a letter to his son Christopher dated May 6, 1944, Tolkien said that much of his early writing on Middle-earth was conducted “in grimy canteens, at lectures in cold fogs, in huts full of blasphemy and smut, or by candle-light in bell tents, even some down in dugouts under shell fire.” He clearly was no stranger to the dank gutters of Life, and despite what lazy critics say his fiction adequately reflects this. Hobbits, Men, Dwarves, Elves, Wizards, and even Angelic Gods all are portrayed as fallible and fully capable of being tempted into great wickedness. “Some critics,” Tolkien sighed, “seem determined to represent me as a simple-minded adolescent, inspired with, say, a ‘With-the-flag-to-Pretoria’ spirit, and willfully distort what is said in my tale. I have not that spirit, and it does not appear in the story.”

Yet if, as Tolkien famously stated, “a safe fairyland is untrue to all worlds,” then equally untrue are fairylands devoid of sincere expressions and manifestations of “holiness” and “high sentiments.” Something that (even at this late date) is little known to average Tolkien fans is that soon after the publication of The Lord of the Rings he made overtures towards writing a sequel of sorts. The extant pages bear the title “The New Shadow,” and take place “about 100 years after the Downfall [of Mordor],” long after the death of King Aragorn.

Any hopes for a repeat of achieving a sanity and sanctity comparable to his earlier works were soon dashed by a sobering reality. “It proved both sinister and depressing,” he admitted, explaining that

Since we are dealing with Men it is inevitable that we should be concerned with the most regrettable feature of their nature: the quick satiety with good. So that the people of Gondor in times of peace, justice and prosperity, would become discontented and restless — while the dynasts descended from Aragorn would become just kings and governors — like Denethor or worse. I found that even so early there was an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a centre of secret Satanistic religion; while Gondorian boys were playing at being Orcs and going round doing damage. I could have written a “thriller” about the plot and its discovery and overthrow — but it would be just that. Not worth doing.

Upon reading this, I’m sure our fallen fantasists would offer up a whoop of approval, and lament that the old white-bread professor hadn’t gone through with this tentative exploration of his fictional universe’s treacherous underbelly, exposing all of the heroism and holiness of his earlier books as a hypocritical sham. They might even feel a certain justification about their own work, seeing in it a continuation of where Tolkien’s nascent ideas about “The New Shadow” left off, bravely (and perhaps with a smirk, nod and wink) descending into sewers where even the Master feared to tread.

As for myself, I believe that Tolkien stopped work on “The New Shadow” because he knew that a fairyland attuned solely to the “sinister and depressing” would ring false, and that the things he cherished in works of high romance would feel too distant, too pale, in this new Age of Men. He knew in his heart that a fairyland bereft of heroism, nobility, and grace was just as “untrue to all worlds” as the reverse. And yet — like many artists past their prime — he was now too old and weary to seek out the rays of eucatastrophic sunlight which, in tales of Truth and Purpose, always manage to shine through the mass of dark billowing clouds threatening to engulf the world in everlasting gloom.

No, it took another brilliant writer to look deep into that grim, savage epoch of decadence and encroaching evil, and set against it noble men who leapt into battle with “the chants of old heroes singing in their ears.” In so doing, he thunderously proved that — in a true artist’s hands — hard-boiled is very different from nihilistic and morally reprehensible. The writer’s name is Robert E. Howard, and by virtue of his haunting artistry, poetic splendor, and heroic sweep, he serves as Tolkien’s indispensable literary shield-brother in the fight against the vacuous capitulation to wickedness that infests so much of modern fantasy.

To be continued (in two weeks, after a much-needed vacation). . . . .

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.

Director J.J. Abrams will definitely "Live long and prosper"

Now riding a staggering 96% Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes – that’s 96% of America’s movie critics issuing positive reviews – The Enterprise is riding high again thanks to the creator of TV hits Alias and Lost. Try getting 96% of any group to agree on anything. It’s no small feat. Compare Star Trek’s RT score against the ratings for the last 5 Best Picture winners.

STAR TREK has better reviews than Oscars darling SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORES FOR THE LAST 5 OSCAR WINNERS
2004 – Million Dollar Baby – 91% Fresh
2005 – Crash – 75% Fresh
2006 – The Departed – 92% Fresh
2007 – No Country For Old Men – 94% Fresh
2008 – Slumdog Millionaire – 94% Fresh

The original STAR TREK cast (above) with the next generation of franchise stars

With the ringing endorsement of tough-to-please critics, Star Trek hit warp speed at the box office last night with lightly-promoted preview screenings starting at 7pm. The impeccably-reviewed feature film seized an estimated $7M or so in Thursday night ticket sales. The idea may have been to get some of the hardcore Trekkies and Trekkers out of the way, clearing multiplexes for mainstream movie audiences today, and they have showed up in massive numbers.

William Shatner (left) with Captain Kirk 2.0 Chris Pine

With Chris Pine (Bottle Shock) in the legendary role of Captain Kirk and Zachary Quinto (NBC’s Heroes) wearing the pointy ears made famous by Leonard Nimoy, Star Trek has soared to a history-making $26M on its official opening day according to multiple studio execs, double the previous-best opening day for any movie in the franchise. That means in the first 29 hours of general release, the re-imagined sci-fi blockbuster has delivered an estimated $33M.

STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT had the previous-best opening day in franchise history

ALL-TIME TOP 5 OPENING DAYS FOR STAR TREK MOVIES
1. Star Trek (2009) – $26M [$33M in its first 29 hours]
2. Star Trek: First Contact (1996) – $13M
3. Star Trek: Generations (1994) – $9.7M
4. Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) – $9.5M
5. Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) – $7.7M

How will the weekend play out? The Thursday night preview screenings will probably make Star Trek a bit less front-loaded. In fact, I’m guessing that, based on word-of-mouth and its family-friendly PG-13 rating, my sources believe that the movie could get a 5% boost on Saturday to a possible $27.3M, followed by an aggressive Mother’s Day drop of 40% on Sunday. That would mean a 4-day gross of almost $77M or so.

The great news for Paramount and Abrams and Pine and Quinto and the rest of the cast is that Star Trek will almost certainly have the best legs of any of this summer’s major tent-pole movies. Rank-and-file moviegoers are likely to discover Star Trek for the first time in coming weeks or, now that Trek is cool again, it may rekindle interest with core fans who rejected the most recent incarnations.

STAR TREK could have "legs" like BATMAN BEGINS

It will not be a surprise to see Star Trek sail past $200M. After all, 2005’s Batman Begins performed that way. The Christopher Nolan Batman reboot opened on a Wednesday with $15M and had banked $72.9M in 5 days. Based on that movie’s Friday-thru-Sunday of $48.7M, the first Batman movie in 8 years reached its $205M domestic total at a 4.2 multiple (4.2 X $48.7 got Nolan’s original to $205M). Anticipating a 4.2 multiple for Star Trek is probably overreaching, but a 3.4-3.5 multiple is possible. That would propel Abrams and company to well past $200M.

Competing studio execs  tell me that X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Fox) took a big tumble as expected. The Hugh Jackman X-Men spin-off only mustered $9.15M or so on its second Friday, but it will still likely top $27.95M for the weekend, down about 67%. Meanwhile, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (Warner Bros) coaxed about $3M to start the frame, and it will likely be helped by Mother’s Day, grabbing a possible $10M, down a mere 35% from last weekend.

Beyonce continues to sell tickets in OBSESSED

Obsessed, the low budget sizzler from Sony Screen Gems, continues to outperform its low expectations with $2M on Friday, which pushes the Beyonce catfight flick past $50M. The thriller should finish the 3-day with about $6.25M and a spectacular $55.89M by Monday.

The urban-geared comedy Next Day Air (Summit) got off to a disappointing start with just $1.25M (likely #5 for the day), and it will drift down the top ten to #6 for the weekend with a meager $4.1M or so from its thousand or so playdates.

The Zac Efron comedy 17 Again (Warner Bros) will likely spend another weekend in the top five with about $1.15M on Friday and about $4.5M for 3 days. That will give the Efron vehicle a new domestic cume of about $54.26M.

EXCLUSIVE STEVE MASON EARLY FRIDAY ESTIMATES
1. NEW – Star Trek (Paramount) – $26M, $6,755 PTA, $33M
2. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Fox) – $9.15M, $2,231 PTA, $111.77M cume
3. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (Warner Bros) – $3.05M, $961 PTA, $22.84M
4. Obsessed (Sony) – $2M, $769 PTA, $51.64M cume
5. NEW – Next Day Air (Summit) – $1.25M, $1,098 PTA, $1.25M  cume
6. 17 Again (Warner Bros) – $1.15M, $396 PTA, $50.91M cume
7. The Soloist (Dreamworks/Paramount) – $1M, $478 PTA, $20.89M cume
8. Monsters vs. Aliens (Dreamworks/Paramount) – $847,000, $388 PTA, $184.36M cume
9. Earth (Disney) – $697,000, $389 PTA, $24.29M cume
10. Hannah Montana: The Movie (Disney) – $690,000, $300 PTA, $72.35M cume

EXCLUSIVE STEVE MASON EARLY 3-DAY ESTIMATES
1. NEW – Star Trek (Paramount) – $69.68M, $18,103 PTA, $76.68M
2. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Fox) – $27.95M, $6,814 PTA, $130.57M cume
3. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (Warner Bros) – $10.06M, $3,170 PTA, $29.86M
4. Obsessed (Sony) – $6.25M, $2,402 PTA, $55.89M cume
5. 17 Again (Warner Bros) – $4.5M, $1,550 PTA, $54.26M cume
6. NEW – Next Day Air (Summit) – $4.1M, $3,603 PTA, $4.1M  cume
7. The Soloist (Dreamworks/Paramount) – $3.6M, $1,722 PTA, $23.49M cume
8. Monsters vs. Aliens (Dreamworks/Paramount) – $3.55M, $1,625 PTA, $187.06M cume
9. Hannah Montana: The Movie (Disney) – $2.62M, $1,140 PTA, $74.29M cume
10. Earth (Disney) – $2.44M, $1,361 PTA, $26.03M cume

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter@LAMase.

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.

The reviews are through-the-roof at 96% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and, as a topic, Star Trek is trending at #1 on Twitter. The reviews in the Twitterverse are just as positive.

just got back from seeing Star Trek. I am not typically a fan of sci-fi, but I really liked this movie.

Star Trek was surprisingly good, and even Star Trek newbies like myself could enjoy it.

I saw the new Star Trek last night with my son, who just turned 7. It was great; we both loved it. Next gen of Trekies/SciFi buffs is born.

I’m still pumped up from having seen Star Trek. Looking forward to seeing it tomorrow and Sunday [diff. grps].

still thinkin’ of how f*****’ awesome Star Trek was. now wanting a phaser to set from “stun” to “kill”

Go see star trek immediately. Incredible!

The new Star Trek movie was great when I went in with low expectations. It is what Nemesis was trying to accomplish and succeeded much …

for those of you who were curious. Star Trek rocked my FACE OFF. It was Shamazing! <3 Spok…*droooool*

Star Trek is fresh, funny, exciting and – biggest surprise of all – emotionally engaging.

Now the question is, “How high will The Enterprise fly on its opening day?” Seems like $20M is a lock, but it could be bigger. If the movie does $20M today, the 4-day should be $63M-$65M. $22M or better should send this spectacularly-reviewed blockbuster past $70M. If the day is $25M or better, the number for the opening 4 days could start with an 8.

I’ll be online with my Exclusive Early Friday & 3-Day Estimates as early as humanly possible tonight (Friday).

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter@LAMase.

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

“Paced at warp speed with spectacular action sequences rendered brilliantly and with a cast so expert that all the familiar characters are instantly identifiable, the film gives Paramount Pictures a new lease of life on its franchise.”
– Ray Bennett, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

“It’s an exciting, stellar-yet-earthy blast that successfully blends the hip and the classic.”
– Joe Neumaier, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

“Trading on affections sustained over 40 years of popular culture, STAR TREK does what a franchise reboot rarely does. It reminds us why we loved these characters in the first place.”
– Ty Burr, BOSTON GLOBE

“Blasting onto the screen at warp speed and remaining there for two hours, the new and improved STAR TREK will transport fans to sci-fi nirvana.”
– Todd McCarthy, VARIETY

LOST and ALIAS creator J.J. Abrams has successfully rebooted STAR TREK

Let’s be honest. Prior to what, by all accounts, is Abrams’ full-on Lazarus-style resurrection of Kirk, Spock and The Enterprise, Star Trek was dead. Worse than dead, it has been considered “uncool.” That’s what Paramount is fighting in the marketplace, and realistically, even in its peak as a movie franchise, it wasn’t a powerhouse.

The biggest opening weekend for a Star Trek movie was 1996’s Star Trek: First Contact with $30.7M and the top grossing title ever was Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (with that ridiculous humpback whale storyline), which surpassed $109M. Consider this. Here are the top five opening days for movies in the Star Trek franchise.

ALL-TIME TOP 5 OPENING DAYS FOR STAR TREK MOVIES
1. Star Trek: First Contact (1996) – $13M
2. Star Trek: Generations (1994) – $9.7M
3. Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) – $9.5M
4. Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) – $7.7M
5. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) – $7M

Erik Estrada as Ponch & Larry Wilcox as Jon Baker with Chris Pine's dad Robert, who played Sgt. Joe Getraer

When journeyman actor Robert Pine, best known for playing Sgt. Joe Getraer on the late 70’s TV hit ChiPs, appeared as an Akritirian Ambassador named Liria on the series Star Trek Voyager (the TV series with Kate Mulgrew as Captain), he could have never imagined that his son Chris would someday play Captain Kirk, but the 28-year-old is now in the Trek’s most pivotal role. He was excellent in a little movie called Bottle Shock last year, but aside from that, and roles in The Princess Diaries 2 and Smokin’ Aces, he is basically an unknown.

Original Gene Rodenberry STAR TREK television cast above and Abrams' 2009 casting choices below

In fact, the new Star Trek is filled with actors who are more-or-less unknown. Simon Pegg, the brilliant UK star of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz and cast as the colorful Scotty here, is probably the biggest name in the cast along with John Cho from the Harold & Kumar movies, playing Sulu. But these are all talented actors who will wear well as the franchise turns into a steady hit machine for Paramount. Fans of NBC’s Heroes already know Zachary Quinto who gets to don Spock’s pointy ears and Chekov is being portrayed by one of my favorite young actors, 20-year-old Anton Yelchin, who was heartbreaking in the gritty Alpha Dog and showed a lighter touch in Charlie Bartlett. Trekkers are also likely to take to the sexy Zoe Saldana (Drumline, Guess Who?) who steps into Nichelle Nichols’ shoes as Uhura and will appear in James Cameron’s long-awaited Avatar at the end of the year.

The appropriate movie to look to for box office guidance is 2005’s Batman Begins. Great filmmaker (Christopher Nolan), spectacular reviews, but the franchise was dead and uncool after 1997’s ridiculous Batman & Robin. The reboot 8 years later opened on a Wednesday with $15M and had banked $72.9M in 5 days (the Friday-thru-Sunday was $48.7M). That lays the groundwork for an accurate prediction for Star Trek.

My bet is on a possible $65M for 4 days. With Thursday preview screenings starting at 7pm, Star Trek could snag as much as $8M on Thursday night (the Trekkers will be out in full force). Then Friday could be something in the $20.5M range with a slight uptick of 5% on Saturday to a possible $21.6M followed by a standard 30% Sunday drop to about $15M.

Once audiences realize that Star Trek is light year better than previous movies in the franchise (and last weekend’s Wolverine), the picture will play and play and play. I think that, of all of the major studio releases this summer, Star Trek may have the “longest legs.” If the movie opens within 5% of my number or bigger, the multiple (the number by which you multiply the opening weekend in order to arrive at the final domestic gross) could be 3.4-3.5, which would push J.J. Abrams reinvented Rodenberry opus to something in the $220M-$230M range.

I am anticipating a steep drop of 65%-70% for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and producer/star Hugh Jackman will be forced to settle for a second weekend of $27M-$30M. That would still be a nifty 10-day gross of $130M or so.

Finally, Next Day Air (Summit), a low budget, R-rated urban comedy starring Donald Faison (Scrubs), Mike Epps (Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins), Wood Harris (The Wire) and Mos Def (Cadillac Records), will open in the shadow of the retooled U.S.S. Enterprise and is unlikely to wrap up the weekend with any more than $6M.

FINAL PREDICTIONS FOR THE WEEKEND OF MAY 8-10
1. NEW – Star Trek (Paramount) – $65M (includes Thursday previews)
2. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Fox) – $30.6M
3. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (Warner Bros) – $8.8M
4. Obsessed (Sony) – $6.7M
5. NEW – Next Day Air (Summit) – $6M
6. 17 Again (Warner Bros) – $3.8M
7. Monsters vs. Aliens (Dreamworks/Paramount) – $3.7M
8. The Soloist (Dreamworks/Paramount) – $3.3M
9. Hannah Montana The Movie (Disney) – $2.6M
10. Earth (Disney) – $2.4M

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter@LAMase.

A week into Barack Obama’s presidency comparisons abound concerning his personal and political gifts. Is he a rock star, or too cerebral for the sort of crowd-diving, one-with-the-audience intimacy that riles fans to amplified hysteria? Or is he a musician, yes, but more of a cool jazz artist who maintains an appropriate distance from his listeners while at the same providing a (false) sense of comfort for his admirers to absorb? Or is he a messianic figure who elevates our better instincts and unites the races, forever banishing the tragedy of human nature – its affairs with cowardice, its comfort with indifference, its passivity before evil – allowing us to march forward to paradise on earth? Or, finally, is he all of these things, a post-partisan president – a man who refuses to let eloquence devolve into mere rhetoric – and brings so many Clintons and conservatives into his ever expanding arms so we can make the world sing in perfect harmony?

The short answer is: No. Barack Obama is neither a rocker nor a cult leader, though his supporters treat him like the latter while giving him all the adulation (and then some) of the former.

He is, instead, Spock, the famed “Star Trek” character who makes supreme intellect a virtue and emotion both a terrible weakness and vestige of his human lineage - a handicap in the pursuit of reason. How else to explain President Obama’s inaugural address and his belief that “the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself.” This sentiment is the very essence of Spock, the equivalent of a private journal entry read aloud for billions in real time, the resignation of a logician who must abandon the purity of his laboratory to rescue an ungrateful citizenry.

And yet, Spock is not the captain of “Star Trek’s” fabled vessel, the USS Enterprise. Why? Because a Captain, even a melodramatic hero like the kind given voice (and pauses, and . . . pauses) by William Shatner, is emotional — sometimes incredibly so. Spock can assess a situation, tabulate the odds of enemy retreat, surmise an adversary’s weakness and discuss the most suitable terms of surrender, but he permanently remains unable to detect a sense of spirit and soul and righteous anger that makes, say, a Kansan oppose slavery or a Kenyan fight a military coup. For these heroes are erratic and thus the dangerous people Spock must render harmless with his Vulcan nerve pinch. (A few words to all single women: I am not a “Trekkie,” do not live with my mother and have never tried – and will never seek – to build a female companion out of spare parts and old circuit boards.)

Because we are human, a concession President Obama indulges with his megawatt smile, we can experience both extraordinary tragedy and Hope© (The One, All Rights Reserved). The two are impossible without even an ember of anger or from allowing emotion to overcome reason and summon defiance. For there is no transcending human nature – there is no spiritual awakening from the lines of tribe – without first feeling the gamut of human nature. 

We now have Spock in the White House, his oversized captain’s chair within reach of issuing every order except one: presidential anger. Until President Obama discovers his own sincere but controlled fury, he will remain the professor-as-president, a rationalist without an ounce of necessary emotion. To further mix sci-fi metaphors and earn the enmity of millions worldwide, we can’t afford a president who is Spock in a world where Darth Vader lives.