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'Dark Knight' to Make Quick Work of Opponents 'Step Brothers,' 'X-Files' and Others
Posted by STV at 2:10 AM on July 26, 2008
Welcome to the latest edition of Defamer Attractions, your regular Friday guide to another oversaturated summer weekend of new movies. While The Dark Knight sets up Batcamp for another week at number one, another brooding franchise goes up against Team Apatow in the also-ran camp. A British classic gets a fine art-house face-lift, meanwhile, and a windfall of new DVD's will keep the agoraphobes among us busy for a while. As always, our opinions are our own, but they're bulletproof, so read on for the only filmgoing advice that matters.
WHAT'S NEW: The primary competition for The Dark Knight's second weekend will be... itself. You have to feel for Sony and Fox for dropping Step Brothers and X-Files: I Want to Believe opposite History's Greatest Film, but that's just the kind of extraordinary season it's been. Those films will perform decently enough, though — roughly $30 million for the Judd Apatow-produced Ferrell/Reilly comedy, $21 million for the sci-fi franchise adaptation — which is another bummer for Fox, which has only its overachieving The Happening to show for a long, lean summer at the box office.
Also opening this weekend are the concert/protest film CSNY: Deja Vu; the oversexed '60s groupie chronicle Eight Miles High; Nanette Burstein's controversial pseudo-doc American Teen; the small-town gardener doc (seriously) A Man Called Pearl; and Minnie Driver's middling psychological drama Take.
THE BIG LOSER: Not so much a "loser" as a handicapping interest of ours, Christian Bale's reported mum-thumping exploits — however blown out of proportion the actually are — could drop The Dark Knight a few percentage points more than it otherwise would have. But even if plunges by 50% (which it won't), it'll still nab $80 million, so again, save your pity for Fox.
THE UNDERDOG: When news hit in 2006 that director Julian Jarrold (Kinky Boots, Becoming Jane) was taking on an adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited, skeptics seemed less anxious about a perversion of the author's elegant, class-crash tragedy than how the film would stand up to the epochal 1981 miniseries adaptation. We don't have time or space to even touch that, but it hardly seems to matter: Jarrold's Brideshead bites deep into the love triangle between middle-class Charles Ryder and the Catholic-burdened Flyte siblings Julia and Sebastian, aided by a cast of young British talent led by Hayley Atwell, Ben Whishaw and the extraordinary Matthew Goode (The Lookout, Match Point). Emma Thompson drops in as well for a stirring matron act, but it's Jarrold's scope and Goode's tone harmonizing so dynamically here that you almost can't imagine this story ever required nine hours to tell.
FOR SHUT-INS: Among this week's new DVD's are the Gen-Y card-counting drama 21; the nifty Famke Janssen pool-shark indie Turn the River; the taut enviro-horror sleeper The Last Winter; and, at last, complete series collection of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's Spaced.
So is this your week to catch up on The Dark Knight? Or do you, as Fox so desperately hopes, want to believe? Can Step Brothers actually have more gags than those in its trailer? Go ahead — call your shots now before the August doldrums come to claim us all.
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
spikespeigel
Posted 3:50 AM 26/7/08
Will Ferrell,
Please do another quasi-serious role akin to Stranger than Fiction. We're all tired of you playing the same roll ad nauseum.
Thanks,
The Management
spikespeigel
Cam/ron
Posted 3:42 AM 26/7/08
@NoWireHangers: Until his "Douchebag Underdog" sports films cover tennis, soccer, tree-climbing, and bocce ball.
Cam/ron
Detective Zito
Posted 3:33 AM 26/7/08
@NoWireHangers: While I'd would normally agree with you... except that I think we can all agree that immediately following the scene with the squirrels and the bat he would probably stick his head out of the sack, with a squirrel attached to his eye ball screaming something along the lines of "Sweet gods of furry rodents!"... then he'd hobble around for a bit, trip on the bat again... and fall over and yell more about "Sweet gods of childhood play toys!"... and then he'd fall down. And we would all realize at the same moment that we'd all just watched the same Will Ferrell crap again.. and somehow we were duped into it.
Detective Zito
NoWireHangers
Posted 3:12 AM 26/7/08
@Jaguares: I'd go see the next Will Ferrell movie if it entailed putting him in a burlap sack with wild squirrels and beating him with a Wiffle bat.
NoWireHangers
enriquez the water bottle
Posted 3:11 AM 26/7/08
Christian Bale's reported mum-thumping exploits - however blown out of proportion the actually are - could drop The Dark Knight a few percentage points more than it otherwise would have.
I don't think it will at all.
enriquez the water bottle
Jaguares
Posted 3:02 AM 26/7/08
Also, did you guys see him on the Daily Show this week. Like, honestly, who thought that was funny? Cause I really want you to explain yourself.
Jaguares
Jaguares
Posted 3:00 AM 26/7/08
@BowlingForDollars: @NoWireHangers: WORD WORD WORD! I think I hate Will Ferrel more than that douchy Adam Sandler sidekick, and well, Adam Sandler. Just watching a Ferrel trailer puts me in a bad mood.
Jaguares
NoWireHangers
Posted 2:57 AM 26/7/08
How many more "Will Ferrell as obnoxious buffoon" pics do we have to endure before the concept goes pop?
NoWireHangers
BowlingForDollars
Posted 2:54 AM 26/7/08
Will Ferrell: Stop making films for a while. We are sick of you.
BowlingForDollars
Al Shipley
Posted 4:24 AM 26/7/08
Predicting a $30 million opening for Step Brothers (i.e. Knocked Up numbers) is insanity. And I say that as someone who actually kinda wants to see it.
Al Shipley
juniperjenny
Posted 4:21 AM 26/7/08
@Detective Zito: I saw it at a free screening, and um, yeah. That's pretty much the film.
juniperjenny
Caroline Meeber
Posted 4:11 AM 26/7/08
No Bale beefcake picture today? Boooo.
Caroline Meeber
Calraigh
Posted 4:51 AM 26/7/08
I actually do believe. I really think X-Files got ridiculously harsh reviews for what it wasn't, rather than for what it was. Which is a really smart film and fantastic for fans. Going to see it again tonight,oh and I'd rather have brain surgery with no anaesthesia than see StepBrothers. Hell yes.
Calraigh
NoGrumpys
Posted 5:33 AM 26/7/08
Will jumped the shark soon after the PEARL youTube vids and he was just the co-star. Enjoy the gutter with Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy
NoGrumpys
Al_Pastor
Posted 5:52 AM 26/7/08
maybe i'm alone but i still like Will Farrell. i'm not tired of Will Farrell films. i am tired of people saying they're tired of Will Farrell films though
Al_Pastor
Aaron Poehler
Posted 8:32 AM 26/7/08
You're just not tired of them because you barely know his name.
Aaron Poehler
WasatchMan
Posted 8:58 AM 26/7/08
The trailer for "Brideshead Revisited" makes it look like a dumbed-down prime-time soap circa 1985. The TV mini-series was extraordinarily faithful to the novel and took the time to explore Waugh's complex themes of religion and sexuality. This new version appears to have stripped all that away and replaced it with melodrama, something Waugh himself feared when he refused to sell the book to Hollywood during his lifetime.
WasatchMan
STV
Posted 10:36 AM 26/7/08
@WasatchMan: If this is a stripped-down version of Waugh's religious themes, then they could only shoot a more faithful rendering in a monastery.
You watch the new version, I'll watch the miniseries, we'll compare notes. It's too rare an abundance of good work to let it alone.
STV
dluvvly
Posted 12:40 AM 27/7/08
It's not so much that people are tired of Will Ferrell films, just that we're tired of the same Will Ferrell film over and over and over again for the past 10 years.
dluvvly
cinerama
Posted 5:57 PM 28/7/08
You weren't supposed to notice that Will had made the same movie eight times under different titles; you're supposed to be too high or drunk when you see them to notice.
BTW, I'm not sure if spikespeigel was kidding or not, but IMHO Will did an amazing job in Stranger than Fiction.
cinerama
Al_Pastor
Posted 11:34 AM 31/7/08
@Aaron Poehler:
ha. ha ha. hahahahha
Al_Pastor