Best Picture Oscar Nominees Go Wide But ‘Mall Cop’ Still #1 And ‘Underworld’ #2

COMMENTS (40)

• re “Again, if Americans wants Hollywood to make better quality movies, then they should stop showing up for crappy ones.”

  1) Is there evidence of your thesis? Are Americans, to your knowledge, crying out for “better quality movies”? Exit polling indicates otherwise.

  2) Personally, I would think that someone of your vast experience would see this for what it is: a minor for-the-whole-family comedy that apparently works at the box office. I haven’t seen the film, but you editorialize vehemently against genre movies in your weekly Friday business report… And I don’t see that as useful. Horror movies, comedies, romantic comedies, tearjerkers – the list of normal genre pics that audiences enjoy from time-to-time is pretty long. That won’t change. So shake your fist at the business all you want, I suppose. I’m not thrilled to see junky product do business either, but it doesn’t surprise me. Nor does it particularly anger me.

  Comment by ray burns — Saturday January 24, 2009 @ 11:11am PST  Reply to this post

• The real story here is that Jeff Blake’s genius continues to rule the early months of the year. Sony cleans up every winter.

  Comment by Dwayne Brownstein — Saturday January 24, 2009 @ 11:14am PST  Reply to this post

• Revolutionary Road made me want to jump off a bridge. There was awkward silence between my wife and I as we drove home contemplating the core theme about the hopelessness of connubial suburban existence. This is the biggest anti-date movie I’ve ever seen. Michael Shannon deserved his Oscar Nomination since he made the biggest impression out of the entire cast in the scant screen time allotted. Leo and Kate were also great but their self-absorbed characters were very hard to sympathize with or care about. I’m waffling about whether or not it’s a good film because, even though I didn’t necessarily enjoy it, I’m still thinking about it.

  Comment by Paul — Saturday January 24, 2009 @ 11:50am PST  Reply to this post

• Here’s the analogy.

  Revolutionary Road is the answer to the question “What would have happened, if the Titanic hadn’t sunk?” …

  … as Mall Cop is the answer to the question “What would have happened if Napoleon Dynamite got a job when he grew up?”

  I don’t think it’s the “GENRE” Nikki is criticizing.

  I think it was the production value and originality in the scripting of Mall Cop that was so below par (as compared to other films of this same genre.) But slap me if I’m wrong Nikki – you’re the babe! Getting slapped by you is an accolade.

  In Nikki’s defense I must say that as far as this genre goes, Mall Cop was a VERY mediocre – a less than average attempt at the genre.

  Basically baby formula work, as compared to the classic Napoleon Dynamite. But at least it was “entertaining enough” to be profitable, on a common denominator level of the mass audience.

  Probably a lower common denominator that doesn’t “get” stuff like Revolutionary Road (which was by the way was ALSO a VERY mediocre attempt at another great American classic, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe”).

  The Americans got too affluent and ran out of organic new art, music, fashion, film, style and substance, decades ago. (The best we can hope for it the foreign markets for new material like “Slumdog Millionaire”.)

  “Mall Cop” truly is the end of the “art” world as we know it.

  Michael

  Comment by michael — Saturday January 24, 2009 @ 12:28pm PST  Reply to this post

• Yeah Nikki, chill with the rant. It’s a waste of time. The real story is that the Wrestler is picking up traction in only 566 theaters. One hell of a movie. If you haven’t seen it…GO NOW!

  Comment by Alboone — Saturday January 24, 2009 @ 12:36pm PST  Reply to this post

• Regarding InkHeart, notice how the poster and font on the titles resemble The Golden Compass and Narnia. The fantasy genre has taken up the generic crown right now. It needs to go away for awhile or steer towards a more adult demographic. Everyone so far that I’ve taken a gander at since the LOTR trilogy now has this vanilla, digital grading look. Enough! Bring back a hard R gritty Conan or something.

  Comment by Alboone — Saturday January 24, 2009 @ 12:44pm PST  Reply to this post

• Hey Nikke, have you seen the movie Mall Cop? Or are you one of those ” I don’t have to see it to know it stinks” types? If the movie was that awful bad word of mouth would have made it drop like a rock. Apparently a LOT of people have a different sense of humor than you. That doesn’t mean they are stupid or moronic it just means that they find humor in something that you don’t. All I hear is that parents are happy to have a movie without sex and drugs and cursing that they can take their kids to and get a laugh themselves as well. But hey it’s your site so you can be as snobby and wrong as you like. After all it’s only an opinion.

  Comment by allswell — Saturday January 24, 2009 @ 12:45pm PST  Reply to this post

• I wonder how many under 17 bought tickets to Paul Blart to actually see Notorious…

  Comment by IDM — Saturday January 24, 2009 @ 2:23pm PST  Reply to this post

• I finally got to see “Slumdog Millionaire” and now know why it is an OSCAR favorite. While some scenes in the film are hard to watch and or experience, especially those dealing with the kids, overall, this is an amazing film. The performances of the entire cast and especially the kids, the visuals, the music are all outstanding. You get no quarrel from me if this ends up BEST PIC of the Year.

  Comment by jdls08 — Saturday January 24, 2009 @ 2:40pm PST  Reply to this post

• Critics hate slapstick comedy, audiences not so much. Even a classic like Bringing Up Baby would be destroyed by critics bemoaning the decline of civilization were it to be released today.

  Comment by Heath — Saturday January 24, 2009 @ 3:28pm PST  Reply to this post

• Nikki, your elitist snout is showing again. Did it ever occur to you that not everyone thinks watching a movie that makes you want to slit your wrists is a good time.

  For every brainless by amusing Mall Cop, there are five Susan Sarandon wristslitters.

  The fact that Mall Cop has made so much money while movies like Frost/Nixon have been ignored speaks volumes. Nobody’s interested in Frost/Nixon but still Hollywood continues to churn them out. A real businessman sees what the audience wants and pumps that out. They don’t hold their elitist snout in the air, pump out pretentious drivel and then call those who don’t rush to see their wristslitting drama “fools”.

  The only fool is the latter IMO.

  Comment by Cathy Krasnianski — Saturday January 24, 2009 @ 4:22pm PST  Reply to this post

• Is Mall Cop an objectively crappy movie? The lower than expected dropoff likely means good word of mouth. People like what they like, and clearly no amount of critical acclaim is helping the oscar contenders. It also didn’t hurt Gran Torino, another pic with good word of mouth.

  Look at Revolutionary Road and Frost/Nixon, neither of which is likely to crack $30M in total domestic gross. People don’t want to be hit over the head with politics or told that life in the suburbs is worthless.

  I thought show business was a business, but increasingly the studios are pumping out low-grossing movies with no audience in mind other than each other and Academy voters.

  Comment by Joe Melnick — Saturday January 24, 2009 @ 4:30pm PST  Reply to this post

• anyone know how The Dark Knight is doing on round #2 yet?

  Comment by nick — Saturday January 24, 2009 @ 4:41pm PST  Reply to this post

• Paul

  I bet by Monday, you’ll find yourself thinking more about “RR”, and might even venture out for a 2nd viewing before the week is out.

  Like Yates’ novel I feel its intent is not to make us feel good or to entertain, but rather to make us think about our own personal relationships and choices.

  Comment by Helena — Saturday January 24, 2009 @ 5:11pm PST  Reply to this post

• Some of the best movies I’ve seen are foreign. Like American cars, they suck and foreign cars are better.
  These hollywood art films suck, we are suppose to watch them because hollywood says so.

  Comment by Jerry — Saturday January 24, 2009 @ 6:10pm PST  Reply to this post

• Folks at Sony must be relieved to forget about their Christmas turkey ,seven pounds, and move on quickly. Big sighs of relief!

  Comment by Anne — Saturday January 24, 2009 @ 11:20pm PST  Reply to this post

• The good news is: “a big $130M weekend close to last year’s” despite the recession. Let’s appreciate that for a sec.

  Another way to interpret MALL COP’s success: KEVIN JAMES is a bankable actor whose millions of fans show up to see him even if they know going in it’s not going to be a great film. And by the way, what Nikki calls “moronic” I would call “an early draft”. There’s a nice story buried in there, but it’s not quite there. Moronic we’ve seen too many times and Mall Cop doesn’t quite qualify. BRIDE WARS comes much closer, THE SHAGGY DOG and CHRISTMAS WITH THE KRANKS comes to mind. (The latter still boggles the mind as the book by Grisham already sucked so bad, there’s no explanation as to why on earth it was adapted in the first place.)

  Talking about moronic…. To release INKHEART at the heels of BEDTIME STORIES, now there’s a moronic move for you. Let’s go see the movie where chars from bedtime stories come to life. We just saw that, stupid, and it was rather boooooring, so no need to repeat that experience, Fraser or not.

  Michael wrote: “The Americans got too affluent and ran out of organic new art, music, fashion, film, style and substance, decades ago. (The best we can hope for it the foreign markets for new material like “Slumdog Millionaire”.)”

  Did you mean to add a “?”, pointing out how ridiculous that is? Did I completely miss the sarcasm? If not..

  SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, *new* material? … discredits the statement right away. Now had you pointed to the Dardenne brothers, to Laurent Cantet, to Asia, earlier works of Wong Kar Wai, had you said “LET THE RIGHT ONE IN” (Sweden) or “AICHA (FIGHTER)” (Denmark) —- I’d still not get it, but at least you’d not look like a lemming. Nevertheless, the phenomenon isn’t an American one, it seems rather universal. Average Joe goes to the multiplex and guess what they’re screening… It ain’t gonna be WENDY & LUCY, that’s for sure.

  It’s not that there isn’t any interesting art, it’s just that the art isn’t “high concept” enough in a way that telegraphs a cool tag line to the marketing department where the less creative reside. That department, so one would guess, considers their fave demo to be of a certain age, gender, and totally narrow re: what interests them.

  If we insist on lamenting, let’s bemoan the fact that small, interesting indies w/o STARS don’t get much of a release, let alone marketing. Or let’s bitch about lame/unimaginative/same-old and/or condescending indiewood productions with STARS being screened at film festivals and wasting space – but hell, they draw interest and will get a theatrical release and mindboggling Independent Spirit noms. So who’s to bitch.

  Comment by AM — Saturday January 24, 2009 @ 11:36pm PST  Reply to this post

• “Did it ever occur to you that not everyone thinks watching a movie that makes you want to slit your wrists is a good time.”
  ——————————–

  Seriously! I read the spoiler for Revolutionary Road, and based on that alone I’d rather watch ‘The Three Stooges’ for two hours. Or infomercials. Hell, it would be a hard call to make between Revolutionary Road and a root canal.

  Comment by Cat — Sunday January 25, 2009 @ 4:13am PST  Reply to this post

• …maybe if “Inkheart” had been in 3-D, and WB had stuck with their original (for 2009 anyway) January 9th release date, it might have fared a tad better.
  In retrospect, opening a kid-skewing film like “Inkheart” just seven days after rugrat-friendly hits like “Paul Blart” and “Hotel for Dogs” (both of which had bigger than anticipated opening weekends) wasn’t a smart move.

  Comment by Movieman — Sunday January 25, 2009 @ 9:36am PST  Reply to this post

• michael,

  Revolutionary Road was published in 1961, a year before Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe did not come out until 1962 on Broadway. If there is imitation involved, it would be Albee taking from Yates.

  Comment by Yates Fan — Sunday January 25, 2009 @ 9:43am PST  Reply to this post

• “Moronic” may be too strong a word, but let’s not pretend that PAUL BLART: MALL COP is a good movie. I like Kevin James and now he’s a star And it’s connecting with the family audiences. Nothing wrong with that, but it is pretty dumb. Not everyone is ten years old.

  And speaking of dumb, criticizing Hollywood for making quality, intelligent adult dramas like FROST/NIXON and REVOLUTIONARY ROAD is simply idiotic.

  From the same brilliant minds who loved MY BLOODY VALENTINE…

  Comment by Dixon Steele — Sunday January 25, 2009 @ 10:18am PST  Reply to this post

• I LOVED revolutionary Road and I think it is more deserving of an oscar nod than The Reader or even Benjamin Button. Leo and Kate deserved to be nominated — the best performances of the year in my opinion. Not to be missed.

  Nikki — regarding your comment on Paul Blart — we should all be happy that people are watching something in droves right– is that not good for the industry? Besides if families want to go the movies, what are their choices from the top 10?

  Comment by Jake — Sunday January 25, 2009 @ 10:24am PST  Reply to this post

• I also saw the trailer for RR and commented (apparently loud enough for people sitting around us to hear) “Another feel good movie!” …which produced a lot of laughs. Sam Mendes has a very strange embedded view of suburban life in America. Never mind the fact that every year when PEW releases it’s “Happy Poll,” it is the married suburbanites with children who consistently–and by a large percentage–rank the happiest. Apparently the studio folks buying into this sort of movie are clearly living in the same alternate reality as Mr. Mendes and his pathetically neurotic wife.

  Comment by Maverick Mom — Sunday January 25, 2009 @ 11:53am PST  Reply to this post

• Here’s a hint: it’s cold…ridiculously cold in the midwest. People are, and have been cooped up for days on end. A simple film, short on angst, comes to mind to break the frozen monotonoy. We saw Blart because it was the only thing in the theatre complex that all of us–teenagers, college student, and middle-aged parents–could agree upon.

  I’ll grant you that we all were not terribly thrilled with the opening half hour, but in the end, the film entertained. Isn’t that enough?

  Comment by DM — Sunday January 25, 2009 @ 11:56am PST  Reply to this post

• “Again, if Americans want Hollywood to make better quality movies, then they should stop showing up for crappy ones.”

  Nikki, I completely agree! However, after the elite Academy snubbed “The Dark Knight” whats the point in the creative branch of Hollywood working their ass off to make a near flawless blockbuster and not getting award recognized by their peers?

  This isn’t the same Academy who nominated “The Towering Inferno” for Best Picture, let alone gave the top Oscar to a ‘Lord of the Rings’ movie.

  Comment by mileshigh — Sunday January 25, 2009 @ 12:18pm PST  Reply to this post