Streep is a delicious Julia Child. |
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The studios have already fired all of their big summer guns, HARRY POTTER being the last of the season's big blasts, and the box-office dawg days of summer loom.
Two August box-office trends come to mind:
1. Like February, August is somewhat of a box-office wasteland - a hodge-podge. Studios release - or do they escape? - minor motion pictures that may, or may not, make a fast buck before Labor Day.
2. Oddball characters tend to do very well during the dawg days of August: think the quirky dudes of SUPERBAD, the weighty Tracy Turnblad of HAIRSPRAY, and that endangered American relic, THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN, not to mention a couple of WEDDING CRASHERS.
We're glancing at a few of the dawg days attractions that may make August worthwhile for Match-Flickers and profitable for the box-office.
I can't suppress my curiosity about JULIE & JULIA (August 7): Match-Flickers, this is writer-director Nora Ephron's take on two bestselling memoirs: Julie Powell's JULIE & JULIA, and MY LIFE IN FRANCE, 
With Heche in SPREAD, Ashton is a sexual grifter. |
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by Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme. The very thought of Meryl Streep as 20th Century eccentric chef extraordinaire, Julia Child, is delicious. The always enchanting Amy Adams, is Julie Powell, the 30-ish housewife who vows to conquer the more than 500 recipe in Child's MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING. JULIE & JULIA is hilarity just waiting to ensue. I don't expect this to make big noise at the box-office, but I am expecting a fun pastiche marked by fine performances.
I pick SPREAD (August 14) to be a big mid-August box-office attraction. Described by its makers as as an "immorality tale," SPREAD stars Aston Kutcher as Nikki, a fun-loving, freeloading sexual grifter who trades on his looks and sexual prowess. Eventually every grifter meets his or her match, and Nikki meets his in Heather (Margarita Levieva). Some like it hot, and if you're among their number, then SPREAD is one of your winning box-office tickets during the "dawg days" of August.
Even with perpetual screen heart-throb Brad 
Pitt may be a BASTERD, but INGLORIOUS, never! |
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Pitt, wrier-director Quentin Tarantino's INGLORIOUS BASTERDS (August 21) may be deemed too "heavy" for Match-Flickers of Summer, bent on having a good time.
Picture this: German-occupied France. Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent) watches in horror as her family is executed at the hand of a Nazi Colonel.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in war-torn Europe, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) organizes a group of Jewish soldiers, known as The Basterds, whose mission is to bring down the leaders of The Third Reich. Will Brad Pitt's BASTERDS succeed where Tom Cruise's VALKYRIE failed, or will this grim epic become a casualty of the summer box-office wars?
Just in case you haven't had your fill of CGI aliens – and then some – with every summer flick from WOLVERINE and STAR TREK to TRANSFORMERS, the dawg days of August will serve up a final CGI buffet via DISTRICT 9 (August 14). From Sony Pictures' Tri-Star division and producer Peter Jackson, comes director Neil Blompkap's tale of extraterrestrial refugees 
Aliens don't shy away from water-boarding in DISTRICT 9. |
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stuck in DISTRICT 9 in present-day South Africa. These aliens without a cause may send goose-flesh up your arms, or, if like me, you've had sufficient special effects to last till next summer, you may be shouting, "Enough, already!"
Summer Box-Office Watch: BRUNO clearly swished his way west to become the Number 1 Box-Office Attraction for the weekend of July 10-12 ($30.4 million), still and all, the frame was the laziest for this particular weekend in 18 years, and down five percent from 2008. ICE AGE was a hot $28.5 million, and the third-place TRANSFORMERS, REVENGE OF THE FALLEN is now the first and only 2009 movie to gross in excess of $300 million domestically. It's currently at $340 million and counting.
HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE has already broken a record: biggest midnight screening opening with $22 million in the coffers. Now it remains to be seen if POTTER's magic feats of wizardy and voodoo can make HARRY the second member of the domestic box-office's 2009 $300 million club.
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Does advertising, public taste, or overindulged stars determine a movie's box office fate? Christoper Stone explores what's going on behind the box office.
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| Christopher Stone |
Christopher Stone is the author of the international best seller Re-Creating Your Self. With Mary Sheldon, he co-authored three highly successful hardcover books of guided meditations.
He is a member of the Writers Guild of America, West.
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