America Never Sleeps

There is no snooze button on crime. While Superman, Batman, the three different Spider-men are in their PJs in the Fortress of Solitude, while Zorro is still catching some Zs, Captain America is at his post by 8 am, rain or shine.

(This is the first in a long-anticipated (by me) photo journal of that kooky, zany, wacky world we call Hollywood. Look for future posts on the Ham Sandwich Report.

This Week in Monkey News

Great, first they give the monkeys robot arms, now they're fucking mobile! It's just like Escape from the Planet of the Apes, except this time for some reason Ricardo Montalban is Japanese and dressed like a train conductor.



Start the countdown to Armageddon. Cute, cute Armageddon.

Should Superman Go Dark?

Interesting article at MTV.com today:


Here's my reply:

The best "dark" Superman story? "The Incredibles". Disavowed by the world he's sworn to protect, forced into a life on tedious monotony, unable to fulfil his destiny, so fixated on his lost glory that he can't appreciate the love of his family - that's pretty dark. And then when he is finally free to pursue heroism again he finds that those he loves are his greatest vulnerability.

Unfortunately, "Superman Returns" had a chance to have such a profound storyline, and completely dropped the ball (other than making Superman a deadbeat dad to a disabled kid, which is really dark, but unintentionally so). Superman gone from Earth for six years to visit his dead homeworld returns to find... that nothing has changed, and in fact somehow Lois Lane instead of six years older is somehow younger (she must have been one of those tragic pregnant highschoolers/veteran newspaper reporters you read so much about these days).

How much more profound would it have been for Superman to return to Earth to find that while he was chasing the memory of a world that no longer exists, the home that had adopted him as their own was passing him by? Instead of six years, make it the actual 30 years since Superman II, cast Margot Kidder again (I'm only being slightly facetious). Now Superman is a man with no home - so caught up in the fate of Krypton that he lost Earth. That's Superman's greatest weakness - as much as he wants to be from Earth, he will always be an alien, and the people he strives so hard to protect will eventually succumb to their own human mortality and there's nothing he can do about it. His power is his prison.

Further, Superman is a hopeful character because he is meant to embody all that is great about America. America itself is such a darker concept now than it was during Superman's Golden Era that it should darken Superman correspondingly. The best "dark" Superman I've read is in "The Dark Knight Returns". Frank Miller captured the essence that if Superman serves as America's greatest weapon, than he is inevitably colored by how America chooses to use that weapon. If Superman is trapped between following the orders of his adopted homeland or following his moral code, Superman would gain some of the complexity that has lifted the Batman reboot into epic status.

Trumbo

I saw an amazing movie last night - "Trumbo". It's a documentary version of a play by Christopher Trumbo, about his father, one of the "Hollywood Ten" blacklisted during the Red Scare.



It's made up mostly of letters written by Dalton Trumbo during his exile, read by Donald Sutherland, Nathan Lane, Brian Dennehy, Joan Allen, Michael Douglas, Paul Giammati, David Stathairn, Liam Neeson, and Josh Lucas. The letters are eloquent, witty, scathing telegrams from the hell to which self-professed patriots had sent him.



I'm ashamed of how little I knew about Dalton Trumbo before I saw the movie. I knew that he wrote a lot of great movies, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee by Joseph McCarthy, was blacklisted, won an Oscar under an alias, and that Kirk Douglas had demanded that the studio give him credit for "Spartacus".

I also knew ephemera such as he often wrote in a bathtub and had a totally bitchin' mustache. Right off the bat, he's my kinda guy.



What I didn't know was how much he, and the others tainted by the Red Scare, suffered and endured fighting for the Constitutional Rights those selfsame "patriots" had sworn to uphold. I had a nebulous understanding that his case represented the Samuel Johnson maxim "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." But I didn't know what a clarion voice Trumbo was for the very ideals upon which this country was founded. I had a vague sense of the parallels to today, but it took his words to light them in such stark relief.

I wonder how many times America can make the mistake of silencing its true patriots before the American dream stinks like rotten meat or explodes. I wonder how many times we can hear the bugle sound alarm before we answer its call.

Dalton Trumbo is the America I want to believe is still possible. Dalton Trumbo is the me I want to believe is still possible.

Stand up!

How do you cut a Ham Sandwich three ways?

This week is just about the most drab collection of lifeless lunchmeats to ever grace the Ham Sandwich Report. Okay, so this is only the second week of the blog, but it sounds more dramatic that way. And it certainly is the least exciting slate of films this Winter Ham Sandwich Season.

Our first anemic contender is the bloody yet bloodless Prom Night. Horror's can't-miss streak has come to a (pardon the pun) screeching halt. And horror remakes have fared even worse. Variety has evidently taken the week off from making actual predictions, and rather boredly calls for something "in the mid-high teens." The LA Times is placing a lot of faith in its tracking of teen girls (something my parole officer says is explicitly off-limits) and predicts $18 - $20 million. Can you really place that much confidence in the plans of teenage girls? Is there a more mercurial group? I say no, and place my chips firmly on $13 million, - make sure to bring your own apple or Little Debbie Square, we've got another Lunchables.

Fox Searchlight is trying to push Street Kings as a gritty, hard-edged combination of New Jack City and Colors. The high-water mark would have to be David Ayers' personal best, Training Day's opening of $20 million. But Training Day had Denzel Washington's bravura, King Kong scenery chomping, Oscar-winning performance. Street Kings has Keanu Reeves. Umm, whoa? The LA Times calls for $10 - $12 million. Variety waves a sleepy, dismissive hand at "not much more than Prom Night" and promptly resumes its nap. I'm feeling pessimistic and call for the low end of that spectrum, $10 million, not even a lunchable, maybe a past its expiration date Slim Jim and three strips of String Cheese.

The remaining morsels, the odd olive, baby gherkin or limp leaf of iceberg lettuce will be snapped up by the holdovers. All in all, if you walked into a party and saw this lame tray of cold cuts, you'd walk right back out the door. Maybe the LA Times has the right idea, I'm going to sleep. The tally:

Prom Night:
Client #9: $12 million
Me: $13 million
The LA Times: $18 - $20 million
Variety: "the mid-high teens" *yawns*

Street Kings:
Client #9: $12 million
Me: $10 million
The LA Times: $18 - $20 million
Variety: "just let me sleep five more minutes, 'kay?"

"Code Blue! Dr. Ross to the ER! Dr. Ross to the ER!" Monday Recap - Leatherheads

So...the first time I decide to put this in writing and I miss horrendously. Things I learned:

* It's one of the oldest betting axioms, always bet with your head not your heart. And I can tell you that heart sank when I walked into a barely half-full 8:20 Friday night showing. I definitely won't make the same mistake this week with Street Kings.

* The girlfriend is not in fact a bellwether. Something to be mindful of when I'm predicting the opening weekend of Sex and the City, the trailer of which puts the girlfriend into fits of apoplectic giggling and clapping.

But all in all, it wasn't too tragic. Everyone seems to have made the same mistakes, overvaluing Clooney, not factoring in 21 only dropping 37%. Who knows, maybe the experts at Variety and the LA Times listened to their girlfriends too.

Final Verdict: Leatherheads - a Kraft Lunchable, not quite a ham sandwich, but it might hold you over until dinner.



Meanwhile, 21 served up the unexpected "hey, look there's a leftover ham sandwich in the frig!" $15 million. Pretty impressive for a movie that was poorly reviewed and not well received.



Edit: Steve came up with a much better moniker, which I will now commandeer. Not a Lunchables, but in fact a half-empty bag of pigskins. Kudos, Steve.

Welcome to the Ham Sandwich Report

There's an old episode of "Law and Order" where Jack McCoy is in the familiar position of justifying his case to professional grumpy-guy Adam Schiff. He tries to explain that tenuous circumstantial evidence was sufficient to convince the grand jury to indict the accused. Schiff rebuffs him by saying, "You can get the grand jury to indict a ham sandwich."

It seems to me likewise that during the portions of the cinematic calendar not dominated by wizards, superheroes, Will Smith, and Will Smith as a superhero that the studios can release any movie and with the muscle of their marketing departments guarantee a $15 million opening weekend. These movies I like to refer to as the ham sandwiches.

My co-worker "Client #9" (name changed to protect his identity) and I amuse ourselves on dreary winter Fridays during ham sandwich season predicting the opening weekend of these mostly drab slabs of cold cuts and Wonder Bread. We've gotten pretty good, so I decided to up the ante and start tracking our predictions against the so-called experts.

The first contestant in this buffet of lunch meats is Leatherheads. First, the experts: the LA Times calls for $16 million; Variety projects $19 million. Variety bases its claim on the fact that the movie has been tracking well with the nostalgia set but that the oldies don't see movies on opening weekend - evidently it takes a while to warm up those Rascal Scooters.

Client #9 predicts $18.5. A solid ham sandwich and a bag of chips.

I was initially enthusiastic because the girlfriend asked me if I wanted to see it, which certainly isn't the case with most sports movies. But crunching the numbers, I couldn't find anything to bolster that enthusiasm past Client #9's $18 million. Invincible, Friday Night Lights and Glory Road seem to be the best analog for the sports angle and they opened with $17 mil, $17 mil, and $20 mil respectively (and FNL certainly skewed younger than Leatherheads).

For the fairer sex, George Clooney hasn't been in a romantic comedy since One Fine Day, which opened with a paltry $6 mil (and was pummelled by Beavis and Butthead Do America). O Brother, Where Art Thou? would seem to be a good indicator, being a period dramedy, but that movie was slow-rolled and so doesn't have the opening numbers. And George Clooney has squandered whatever goodwill he had with female audiences with his recent string of message films, all of which underperformed.

Renee Zellweger has more experience with the romantic comedy, but her resume there is Jerry Maguire; huge success, Bridget Jones; huge success, and then flop, flop, flop. No ham sandwiches they. Her best analog in fact might be Cinderella Man, not a comedy to be sure, but a period sports movie that performed well. Would you like to guess the opening weekend? $18 million.

So, factoring in a little inflation, and the remaining enthusiasm I have from my hopefully bellwether sweetheart, I'm calling for a $21 million value meal - a ham sandwich, a bag of chips and a fountain drink.

LA Times: $16 million
Variety: $19 million
Client #9: $18.5 million
Me: $21 million

Check back on Monday for the results.