Scott Mendelson: On seeing Jurassic Park 20 years ago...

I'll make this simple.  My first theatrical viewing of Jurassic Park remains, without question, the best theatrical movie going experience of my life. It encapsulated pretty much everything good about the theatrical experience, including any number of elements that are perhaps non-replicable in today's film culture.  The viewing was an unexpected advance-night screening, back before every movie opened on Thursday at 12:00 am, if not 10:00 pm or earlier.  Jurassic Park had a whole slate of advance screenings on Thursday the 10th of June, starting at I believe 8:00 pm.  I had presumed I would be seeing it sometime that weekend, but my mother informed me that my dad was coming home from a business trip and he was picking me up in time for a 10:00 pm screening.  Obviously excited, I hurriedly rushed to finish the original Michael Crichton novel that I had been blazing through.  We got to the theater early enough and the auditorium, as well as the auditoriums around us, were absolutely jammed packed.  Everyone was excited to be there, but nobody really knew what they were in for.

R.L. Shaffer: On seeing Jurassic Park 20 years ago...

This is the second of a handful of essays regarding your first (and second and/or third) viewing of
Jurassic Park twenty summers ago, as we brace ourselves for the film's 3D IMAX rerelease this Friday.  I'm sure every single one of my readers has such a memory so feel free to share them in the comments section below.

Memories of Jurassic Park:

By R.L Shaffer

I was a mere 12 years old when I first visited Jurassic Park.

From the very first teaser (seen above) I was hooked. As a self-professed lover of dinosaurs (or dino-sars as Jeff Goldblum's Ian Malcolm pronounced it), it would be my duty to see any film about these mysterious creatures. I didn't know what I was going to get, either, but if director Steven Spielberg was going to take me there, I was more than willing to enjoy the ride.

Press Release: Finding Dory swimming into theaters 11/25/15.

STILL SWIMMING!

Disney•Pixar’s “Finding Dory” to Dive into Theaters

November 25, 2015

Ellen DeGeneres, the Voice of the Beloved Blue Tang Fish in 2003’s “Finding Nemo,” Shares Plans for the All-New Big-Screen Adventure

Brandon Peters: On seeing Jurassic Park 20 years ago...

This is one of two of three essays regarding your first (and second and/or third) viewing of Jurassic Park twenty summers ago, as we brace ourselves for the film's 3D IMAX rerelease this Friday.  I'm sure every single one of my readers has such a memory so feel free to share them in the comments section below.

Jurassic Park Memories

Brandon Peters

Yes, that photo supporting the article is ridiculous…but I just kinda “had to” use it. Hilariously, its one of those images that sticks in your head from the movie.

Jurassic Park was one of those films that comes along once every 8-10 years that just restores your faith and fulfill the magic of seeing a film in a theater to the highest level.  There was an absolute joy and “level up-ing" of my love for cinema after viewing this movie.  An event movie in the greatest sense. And man, was there a craze following it.

Movies I love more than anyone else: Meet the Robinsons.

 This is the next entry of a reoccurring feature of sorts, spotlighting the movies that aren't just my favorites, but films that I probably hold in higher esteem than anyone else out there in the critical community.  Next up is a film that celebrates its sixth-anniversary this Saturday.  But I saw it six years ago today at a press screening.  No, I'm not talking about Blades of Glory, but the inexplicably wonderful Meet the Robinsons. I walked into said press screening for this one knowing almost nothing about it, save for a few pieces of promotional art and something about musical 'wiseguy' frogs.  I distinctly remember walking out of the press screening, my eyes more than a little watery, and immediately calling my wife to inform her that I had just wasted a Wednesday afternoon. I had just seen something truly special and she was going to have to accompany me for a repeat viewing as soon as possible.

Review: G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013) fixes what wasn't broken and breaks it possibly beyond repair.

G.I. Joe: Retaliation
2013
100 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

It's no secret that I'm a fan of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (review).  It's big, colorful, and filled with over-the-top action performed by larger-than-life heroes and villains.  The first 90 minutes (I have issues with the finale) is basically, as I said back in 2009, what might happen if someone gave the 7-year old me to go play with my G.I. Joe action figures and gave me $175 million to spend on the resulting play-drama.  But for whatever reason fan-boys and critics carped about the last picture, calling it too ridiculous and too silly for a, um, G.I. Joe movie.  So now four years later, we have a somewhat stripped down and more 'realistic' sequel to Stephen Sommers's outlandish original. Jon Chu was under orders to make it cheaper and basically more 'grounded' than the last picture, and I suppose he has succeeded. G.I. Joe: Retaliation can best be described as G.I. Joe meets Act of Valor.  I don't mean that as a compliment.

The Wolverine gets two halfway decent trailers...

After two days of ridiculous teasing in the form of "tweasers" and the like, Fox finally dropped the actual trailer, perhaps rewarding movie nerds for their patience with two trailers, a domestic cut and a longer, slightly superior international one.  This doesn't look like it's going to reinvent the comic book movie, but it looks like a halfway decent, if highly generic, action star-vehicle.  The train scene looks pretty neat and having this take place after X-Men: The Last Stand allows for a token amount of suspense, although even a seemingly de-powered Wolverine isn't going to die at the end of a movie titled The Wolverine.  Anyway, James Mangold's The Wolverine opens on July 26th.  As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson

The Wolverine gets two hilariously terrible posters...

Well if you're not going to make a great poster, you might as well go the other route and make a piece of marketing art so terrible that everyone will *still* be talking about it all day.  There isn't much more to say other than to point and laugh.  The trailer drops on Wednesday.  Anyway, enjoy...

Scott Mendelson

Disney unleashes the terrific opening credit sequence from Oz: The Great And Powerful. Watch it now (or whenever)!

The best thing I can say about the 3D work in Oz: The Great and Powerful is that I could tell, even in my 2D screening, that it probably looked spectacular in 3D.  Anyway, Disney has released the terrific opening credit sequence for our viewing pleasure.  Obviously it's spoiler-free.  Yes, I'm basically killing time until I get the chance to finish my Olympus Has Fallen review, but so be it.

Scott Mendelson

Iron Man 3 gets a photoshop poster spectacular!

I was holding off on posting those lovely character posters for Iron Man 3 because I wanted to put them all in one post, with the presumption that Rebecca Hall would get her own poster as well.  Alas, Hall is a no-go both for her own poster as well as even getting billing on the main IMAX poster.  That is a bit odd as her character in "Extremis" is basically a co-lead while Guy Pearce's scientist um... it's a small part in the original comic book arc.  I'll let others discuss the usual gender boilerplate here (expanding the guy's role while seemingly minimizing the female character's role, keeping the women on the poster to no more than one, etc.), and merely point out that this is basically a giant mash-up of several prior character posters smushed into one image, which may remind fans of the Batman Forever poster campaign from 1995 (with the five character posters copied and pasted into the theatrical one-sheet).  At least no one is unleashing exploding farts like the last time around...  Anyway, since they are apparently done for now, I'm including the rest of the solid Iron Man 3 posters after the jump, including the general theatrical one-sheet.  Iron Man 3 opens overseas on April 25th and April 26th but not until May 3rd in America.  As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson

Weekend Box Office: Oz: The Great and Powerful summons $80 million, with all signs pointing towards a leggy run.

I've said this before, but one of the problems with modern box office analysis is that it treats studio tracking numbers, which are supposed to be internal figures that can be used to adjust marketing in the run up to release, as ironclad box office predictions.  More often than not, pundits use tracking in a way that creates a preemptive doom-and-gloom scenario where a new release is painted as a box office turkey before it even opens *or* its used to give unrealistic expectations to a new release so that studios are then forced to defend what is actually a solid debut.  Such is the case with Oz: The Great and Powerful (trailer/posters).  The $215 million Disney prequel debuted with a strong $80.3 million this weekend.  Alas, due to rumblings and arbitrary presumptions that the film would open with as much as $100 million over the weekend, mostly due to the project's token similarities with Alice In Wonderland, Disney may now be forced to defend what is easily the biggest opening of 2013 by more than double and the third-biggest March debut ever behind Alice In Wonderland ($116 million) and The Hunger Games ($153 million).

Star Trek Into Darkness gets an action-packed new trailer.

The only spoiler bit is at around 1:02, where Captain Pike has some facial scars that I don't recall him having at the end of the first Star Trek (he was of course seriously injured, but I don't recall scarring). Perhaps Pike gets those scars when Cumberbatch escapes from his glass prison at the halfway mark, because "He planned to get caught the whole time!". Otherwise, this is a quick (78 seconds) and breezy action-packed trailer.  It's nice that they aren't focusing as much on Benedict Cumberbatch's mystery villain (I have a theory on that, broached by a friend of mine and backed up by what we've seen thus far, but I'm not sharing in case I'm right) and also showing off that the film isn't all gloom and misery this time around. The initial trailers tried to sell the film as a generic 'dark sequel' or The Dark Knight meets Skyfall meets Revenge of the Sith.  This new trailer plays in the Return of the Jedi/Tron sandbox with phasers set for swashbuckling adventure. 

Oz: The Great and Powerful earns $2 million at 10pm/midnight.

Let's do the quick midnight math, shall we?  Sam Raimi's Oz: The Great and Powerful earned an impressive $2 million at 10pm/midnight last night.  Now this isn't a geek-friendly comic book sequel or young-adult literary property in the vein of The Hunger Games, so midnight frontloading should be pretty limited.  That's a bit less than the $3.5 million earned by Alice In Wonderland and larger than the $1.6 million earned by Snow White and the Huntsman.  If we were talking about Thor 2: The Dark World, a $2 million 10pm/midnight number would mean around $40 million for the weekend, with an expected 5% of the weekend represented in advance showings, with potential for even harsher front-loading   But for a 'normal' movie, we're usually looking at between 2% and 4% representing the midnight number.  And let's be honest, this thing is going to explode on Saturday if only due to the lack of family films in the marketplace.  So offhand I'd wager a 3% 10pm/midnight take for a $66 million Fri-Sun debut, as Alice in Wonderland also did 3% of its $116 million weekend at midnight (as did Snow White and the Huntsman in a $56 million debut).  But the lack of family fare could mean an even bigger growth during weekend matinees and the film arguably has less 'must see now' factor due to the fact that Burton is a more mainstream name than Raimi.  So let's just call it 2.5% at 10pm/midnight for a $80 million weekend take.  But don't be too surprised to see it flirting with $100 million by Sunday.

Scott Mendelson  

Iron Man 3 gets a final and frankly terrific trailer...

I'll add commentary later today.  But for the moment, this looks like a pretty terrific action thriller that just happens to be a superhero threequel.  It's good to see that the bad guy isn't just targeting Stark this time around, and this may in fact dive head-first into the politics that the second film only skirted around.  Could this finally break the curse of the comic book part 3?  Share your thoughts below...

Scott Mendelson

Weekend Box Office (02-10-13): Identity Thief cements Melissa McCarthy's stardom while Side Effects clarifies Channing Tatum's box office drawing power.

Melissa McCarthy is officially a comedy mega-star.  There can be little dispute of that after this weekend.  Identity Thief topped the box office this weekend with an astonishing $36.5 million and I'm at a loss to think of any reasons it would do so well aside from Ms. McCarthy.  Jason Bateman is a terrific actor and a fine foil, but he's box office poison as a lead (The Switch opened with $8.4 million, Extract opened to $4.3 million, and The Change-Up debuted with $13 million).  The film's simple and self-explanatory title, along with the clever expository tagline ("She's having the time of his life.") surely helped, as did the lack of any big comedies in the current marketplace.  Parental Guidance and This Is Forty are both doing stealthy strong business, with $74 million and $67 million thus far respectively, but this is the first big star comic vehicle in awhile and it delivered in spades.

This was McCarthy's first big test of her alleged stardom.  Identity Thief was completely sold on McCarthy's new-found stardom.  The core imagery was basically her face on the poster, slipping a Slurpee next to a befuddled Jason Bateman. This is a much larger debut than Bridesmaids, the film which catapulted her to fame and proverbial glory back in May, 2011.  This is among the ten-best R-rated comedy debuts ever and the fifth-best for a non-sequel.  Heck, it opened bigger than the PG-13 Couples Retreat, which had a proverbial whos-who of comedy players (Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Jon Favreau, Malin Akerman, Kristin Davis, and Kristen Bell) and managed a $34 million debut back in October 2009. Fox has to be thrilled at the moment, knowing that they have a plausible gold-mine in the Melissa McCarthy/Sandra Bullock action-comedy The Heat waiting in the wings for June of this summer.

Oz: The Great and Powerful gets an FX-packed Super Bowl tease.

I'm still not uber-impressed, but I imagine I'll like the marketing more where James Franco talks less.  It's no secret that the current season is absolutely starved for kids-faire.  My daughter literally asked me today when there would be more kids movies for her to see. Whether or not I end up dragging her to this (my wife wants to see it too apparently), I imagine it will benefit mightily from the lack of such family-friendly fare in the first two months of the year, akin to The Lorax opening to $70 million last year for the same reason.  Come what may, it reminded me that I probably ought to show her the original Wizard of Oz, as I imagine she'd enjoy that one. It's also a fine education in the whole 'color vs. black-and-white' issue since she didn't end up seeing Frankenweenie.  This certainly looks visually impressive, with a sparse and less cluttered look compared to Burton's Alice In Wonderland.  The laughing at the end pretty much rules out Michelle Williams as the 'wicked witch', so now it's just a question of whether or not Rachel Weisz (who the laughing voice sounds most like) is the real villain or merely the red herring to hide Mila Kunis's true villainy.  Anyway, this is probably the last major tease we'll see until release, give or take the usual clips released online.

Scott Mendelson        

Iron Man 3 gets a creative and compelling Super Bowl tease.

This is the first piece of marketing we've seen since the teaser back in October, and it's actually a nice deviation.  The extended version (which only includes about 20 seconds of additional footage) is mostly stuff we've seen from the theatrical teaser while the remaining thirty seconds sets up without ruining a major action set piece.  I actually watched both Iron Man films over the last couple weeks and I have to say they have both aged very well, even the second one which is still flawed mostly in its messy third act and its weirdly kid-friendly tone when it comes to its poorly-developed villainy.  There's not much more to say, other than the set piece in question looks terrific and kinda scary (for no particular reason, the idea of being sucked out of an airplane, especially while still strapped to a seat, has always been kinda disturbing to me).  From what we've seen, it looks like Happy is the film's big death, but other than that I hope that Marvel and Disney show a little restraint especially as they actually have action sequences to market, as opposed to the last film which had just two major set pieces from which to cull footage.  I'm sure we'll get another trailer, probably attached to Oz: The Great and Powerful on March 8th.  But for now I'm glad about how little I know about the actual story, even having read the comic arc that it's loosely based on.

Scott Mendelson    

J.J. Abrams is directing Star Wars Episode VII. A look at how the surprising politics of Star Trek may bleed into Star Wars.

So, it's officially official.  Disney just put out a press release, which means I can write about it without fear of it being debunked moments after publication.  J.J. Abrams is indeed directing Star Wars: Episode VII.  And what do I have to say about that?  Well... not much really.  There is indeed a part of me that feels that it is wholly inappropriate and/or unnatural that the same director will be behind new Star Trek *and* new Star Wars movies.  Back in the old days, I believed in the perhaps simplistic idea that every franchise would get their own special director.  Sam Raimi had Spider-Man, Bryan Singer had X-Men, and Chris Nolan had Batman.  Obviously that idea no longer exists. Bryan Singer can helm X-Men and then go on to attempt to reboot Superman with Superman Returns before taking back the X-Men franchise from Matthew Vaughn, who is now rumored to be among Warner's top choices for a Justice League movie.  Even with more and more franchises being rebooted and/or changing hands, it seems like an awfully incestuous little circle, with only a handful of directors seemingly ending up helming these major properties.  Say what you will about Marvel, but they deserve kudos for thinking outside the box on pretty much every major film thus far when it comes to a director.

Sorry, Dredd 3D probably still not getting a theatrical sequel.

One of the bigger pieces of news in the film blogsphere was the relatively high sales figures for the debut of Dredd 3D in its first week of its various home viewing platforms.  A press release put out by Lionsgate states that Dredd sold 650,000 DVDs and Blu Rays in its first week as well as leading in digital purchases/downloads as well.  This is of course good news for those involved in the picture, which earned just $36 million worldwide on an alleged $50 million budget, but it doesn't mean that the franchise is now magically alive-and-well.  The news has had pretty much every movie blogger screaming that we may now get that theatrical sequel after all!  Sorry folks, it ain't gonna happen.  

Man of Steel gets its PG-13. Is the high-profile live-action PG-rated film an endangered species?

As of this morning, Zack Snyder's Man of Steel has been awarded a PG-13 for "intense sequences of sci-fi violence, action and destruction, and for some language."  That's not a surprise, as pretty much every major comic book film since Bryan Singer's X-Men has received said rating.  Even if the content seemed more appropriate for the more kid-friendly PG rating, such as I'd argue was the case with Fantastic Four and Thor, studios don't want the potential kiddie-flick stigma that's still somewhat attached to live-action PG-rated films.  Unless you're dealing with fantasy that's somewhat aimed at families, such as The Chronicles of Narnia or four of the eight Harry Potter films, or high-brow family adventures like Hugo or The Life of Pi), it's PG-13 or bust. Part of that is the way in which Shrek turned the PG rating into an acceptable 'for all rages' status for animated films back in 2001.  Part of that is merely the fact that getting a PG-13 doesn't seem to be making parents think twice about bringing their very young children to the likes of Transformers: Dark of the Moon or Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.