You’ll Believe a Man Can Fly, Then Pose in a Dynamic Fashion, Then Resume Flying

The staff of the Daily Planet is unimpressed by the announcementWord is spreading around the interwebs that Zack Snyder has been tapped to direct “Superman: The Man of Steel”, presumably on the strength of his batshit crazy 3D owl war movie. Christopher Nolan is producing, which seems like an even odder fit for this project.

Look, I know I’m in the minority for unreservedly loving what Bryan Singer did with “Superman Returns” — so far in the minority, in fact, that I couldn’t even get Brandon Routh to talk seriously about the experience during his “Scott Pilgrim” press visit earlier this summer — but there’s no question Singer understood the complex mixture of optimism, innocence and alienation that informs the character. Snyder gave “Watchmen” as good an adaptation as it was likely to get, but innocence just isn’t in his wheelhouse … to say nothing of complexity.

I guess it all comes down to the writer. Any chance Whedon has a free weekend before his “Avengers” movie starts shooting?

A Few Million People Like This

Wow, it takes way longer to make money with movies than it does with websitesDavid Fincher’s “The Social Network” drew enough of an audience to conquer the box office this weekend, though its $23.1 million gross is still kind of modest. That said, it’s a stronger opening than Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street” sequel managed last week, so yay.

Notably not strong was the horror genre; both Paramount’s long-delayed “Case 39” and Overture’s spanking-new “Let Me In” failed to register, landing seventh and eighth with around $5.3 million apiece. I can’t speak to “Case 39”, but “Let Me In” absolutely deserves better; maybe after you see the Facebook movie, you might consider catching up to the vampire movie, just to give it the edge for next week.

Tales from the Inside

Ryan Reynolds refers to this as 'crowning'I’m taking things a little easy this morning, since I spent last night helping a couple of good friends celebrate their marriage. (Way to go, Adam and Tanya!)

But I can still post my latest MSN Movies Gallery, which uses the arrival of “Buried” to look at ten other intensely claustrophobic movies. Can you get through it without breaking into a cold sweat, or will you crumple by the halfway mark?

If you’d prefer something a little less constricting, you could always watch this Global National piece on “The Social Network”, in which I appear just long enough to remind viewers that one should never, ever do a TV hit without makeup.

Feeling the Pressure?

This is exactly the time you don't want voicemailEnough already with the movies! Thirteen openings last week, twelve this week — surely the studios know we can’t see everything they’re throwing at us. I mean, I do this for a living and I’ve only managed to see a fraction of this week’s releases.

Let’s get to it, then …

Buried“: Ryan Reynolds spends 95 minutes in a box in Rodrigo Cortes’ stylish, quietly ingenious thriller. Claustrophobes may want to sit all the way at the back of the cinema.

“Case 39”: Social worker Renee Zellweger comes to suspect her latest charge (Jodelle Ferland, of Terry Gilliam’s “Tideland”) is at the center of a supernatural conspiracy, or something. I dunno, nobody’s seen it yet.

“Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie”: Sturla Gunnarsson gives the rightly venerated Canadian icon a loving portrait in this feature documentary patterned after “An Inconvenient Truth”. Glenn notes the one-sidedness of Gunnarsson’s presentation.

“FUBAR II”: Michael Dowse’s 2002 no-budget mockumentary has its admirers, though I’m not one of them — so it was easy enough to let Andrew take the sequel. He found it “funnier and livelier”, so take that under advisement.

“Hatchet II”: Victor Crowley is at it again in the souped-up sequel to Green’s old-school splatter romp. Hey, if “FUBAR” gets a sequel, anything’s possible. No advance screenings, though.

“Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story”: Peter Miller’s workmanlike documentary is basically a chronological list of the sport’s Jewish players. (Did you know that Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax both struggled with the decision to take Yom Kippur off? Gosh!) Susan wasn’t terribly impressed; my reaction to the doc is captured for posterity, weirdly enough, in the National Post.

Let Me In“: As utterly unnecessary movies go, Matt Reeves’ American remake of the great Swedish vampire thriller “Let the Right One In” is pretty damn great, with strong performances and an unsettling sense of Reagan-era America. Plus, Richard Jenkins atones for “Eat Pray Love” with a tremendous supporting turn.

The Social Network“: Speaking of atonement, I’m willing to allow David Fincher to make another “Benjamin Button” if it means he delivers something this good as his follow-up — a crackling social comedy with a terrific cast, a throbbing pulse and some of the subtlest and most inventive CG work in a long while. Also, Armie Hammer delivers what may be the line of the year.

“Streetdance 3D”: England challenges America’s dominance of the dance movie by offering up its own 3D extravaganza, featuring Diversity, the troupe that stomped all over Susan Boyle’s yard on “Britain’s Got Talent” back in 2009. Rad says it’s the same old song, story-wise, but the dancing delivers.

“Waiting for ‘Superman’ “: Davis Guggenheim, director of the actual “An Inconvenient Truth”, sets his sights on the sorry state of American education in this TIFF favourite. I missed it at the festival, but Glenn‘s review has me trying to figure out when I can catch up to it.

“You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger”: Susan likes Woody Allen’s latest — a London roundelay starring the likes of Anthony Hopkins, Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin, Gemma Jones, Lucy Punch and Frieda Pinto. I haven’t been able to see it yet, but if it’s as good as she says, I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Yes, I know, that’s only eleven films. The twelfth is Bruce McDonald’s “Trigger“, which started a limited run at the Lightbox yesterday. It’s very good, and you should see it. So there.

I Do a Lot of Interviews, You Know

Tracy Wright and Molly Parker: The alchemy of chemistry… well, at least during TIFF, I do.

Just check out the latest issue of NOW, and you’ll find my conversations with Bruce McDonald and Daniel MacIvor about “Trigger” (which opens today for an exclusive run at the Lightbox and is awfully good); with Ryan Reynolds and Ricardo Cortes about “Buried” and with Matt Reeves about “Let Me In”, both of which open tomorrow.

In other news, Tony Curtis has died at age 85. Held his own with Lemmon, Lancaster and Olivier, he did. I’ll always have fond memories of him camping it up as a shlock Hollywood producer in the straight-to-video curio “Lobster Man from Mars” … though I’m pretty sure no one else will.

Wild Men

Okay, the script has to be hidden in here somewhere ...My latest MSN DVD column is up, doing the compare-and-contrast thing with “Iron Man 2” and “Get Him to the Greek” — both sequels to major-studio movies that captured lightning in two very different bottles. So what do you do for an encore?

Well, read the piece. I’m not going to spell it all out for you here …

It Came From the Shelf

Image lifted from Amazon.co.uk, which is sort of my pointI was a little surprised to learn that Paramount is releasing Christian Alvart’s “Case 39” this Friday. It’s been on the studio’s shelf for so long that I figured its chances of a theatrical run were long dead — it’d end up being one of those titles that gets dumped out years later, straight to DVD, with crappy box art that almost begs you to leave it on the rack.

But Renee Zellweger will not be denied, apparently, so “Case 39” — which casts her as a social worker who becomes convinced that her latest charge (Jodelle Ferland) carries some supernatural weirdness — is getting a North American run after all. And just in time for Halloween!

The thing is, “Case 39” is one of those multi-tiered co-production deals, and its other rights holders around the world have been releasing it, both theatrically and on DVD, for quite a while now. The studio even appears to be using a marketing campaign designed in early 2009, since the trailers barely acknowledge Bradley Cooper is in the picture when they should be playing him up — surely he’s a bigger draw than Zellweger at this point in their careers.

This happens every now and then, when an American production falls through the cracks and ends up late to its own release — “88 Minutes” is the most egrigious example I can remember, having bounced around Sony’s schedule for so long that bootleg DVDs were being sold on Canal Street in New York a good ten months before its theatrical bow. (That movie was also terrible, which probably influenced Sony’s decision to pretend it didn’t exist for so long.) The pirate sellers of Toronto have been keeping a low profile of late, but I’d be willing to bet they’ve had “Case 39” in their little packets for a while.

Anyway, if you’re curious (and you own a multi-region player), you can order a legitimate “Case 39” DVD from Amazon UK for less than eight pounds — about $18 CDN, shipped, which is considerably cheaper than buying two tickets at your local megaplex. If I’d known about the North American release last week, and Paramount’s decision not to screen the film in advance, I’d have ordered one myself; as it is, there’s no way it’ll arrive by Friday.

I wonder if anyone else was quick enough to snag a copy. I guess we’ll find out, huh?

Oliver Stone, with an Asterisk

Yes, Shia, tell these guys about the glory that is 'Transformers 3'People still want to know what Oliver Stone thinks about things. Either that, or the allure of watching Michael Douglas slip back into Gordon Gekko’s tailored suits proved too strong to resist for a majority of North American moviegoers. “Wall Street: Money Never Sleepstopped the weekend box-office with $19 million … which, while not exactly a blockbuster figure, was enough to win a relatively anemic frame.

Coming in second with $16.3 million — what the AP page delicately calls a “soft opening” — was Zack Snyder’s CG owl action epic “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole“, which screened primarily in pricey 3D and IMAX engagements … and therefore did even poorer business than the gross suggests.

Last week’s top two films, “The Town” and “Easy A“, came in third and fourth with $16 million and $10.7 million, respectively. Have you seen “Easy A” yet, by the way? It’s easily the most entertaining of the bunch, has nothing to do with the sorry state of the U.S. economy and features a wonderful breakout performance from Emma Stone … who, we’re now hearing, may be playing Mary Jane Watson in the impending “Spider-Man” reboot.

Which would be entirely awesome, actually. They should totally do that.

Go Forth and Be Cultured

The magic of the cinema can take you anywhere!How has it been, after the festival? Are you waiting for someone to throw wide the doors of cinema and invite you to roll around amongst the celluloid like Scrooge McDuck in his money vault?

Well, you’re in luck; thanks to the national celebration of the fine arts that is Culture Days this weekend, Torontonians have access to all manner of wonderful cinema down at the spanking-new Lightbox. Today, for example, they’re holding free screenings of Charlie Chaplin’s “City Lights” at 2 pm and Chris Marker’s still-brilliant “La Jetee” at 4:30 pm; tomorrow, it’s multiple screenings of Buster Keaton’s “Sherlock Jr.” with live musical accompaniment.

If you weren’t able to check out the Lightbox during any of those free TIFF screenings, this is another excellent reason to wander down. And then, if you’re so inclined, you might want to buy a ticket to “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” or “A Film Unfinished“, because those are entirely worth your while as well.

No, I’m Not Busy at All, Why Do You Ask?

'The Mysterious Monsters' finally reaches ThailandThere are thirteen movies opening in town this week. Three started yesterday at the Lightbox, and ten more open around the city today. So, yeah, we had our work cut out for us. And it’s only going to get busier in the weeks to come, as the gates of fall swing wide to unleash one Oscar contender after the next … oh, and the odd CG owl movie. Are you sitting comfortably? Then let’s begin:

“Bran Nue Day”: So I interviewed Geoffrey Rush, like, two weeks ago, and he didn’t even mention he had two movies coming out today. This is the one that’s a musical. Susan liked it.

“Catfish”: Don’t tell me the secret! I haven’t seen it! But Andrew has, and he’s less than enthused.

I Am Comic“: A whole bunch of famous stand-ups talk about what it’s like to be famous stand-ups in this serviceable if unremarkable documentary. It’s fine, but I’d rather watch “The Aristocrats” again, you know?

“I’m Still Here”: So, was Joaquin Phoenix really trying to quit acting and reinvent himself as a hip-hop star, or was he just screwing with us for two full years and ruining his career? Casey Affleck has since admitted it was the latter, which makes the release of his alleged documentary feel a little superfluous. Here’s Glenn’s TIFF review, as the proper review doesn’t appear to be online yet.

“Jack Goes Boating”: Philip Seymour Hoffman directs and stars — opposite the lovely and talented Amy Ryan — in this adaptation of Bob Glaudini’s stage play. Glenn found it interesting, if a little undercooked.

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole“: A heartwarming children’s fable from the director of “Dawn of the Dead” and “300”. With talking owls that wear helmets and battle gauntlets. The tie-in toys will be … interesting. Also: Hey, it’s Geoffrey Rush again!

Never Let Me Go“: Mark Romanek turns Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel into one of the quietest science-fiction dramas you’ll ever see — and that’s a good thing. Carey Mulligan does that thing where she suggests powerful emotion roiling beneath a placid surface. She’ll probably get another Oscar nomination for it.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps“: Yeah, the title makes about as much sense as “Tomorrow Never Dies”, but that doesn’t matter. Frankly, nothing much matters in Oliver Stone’s transparent attempt to remind us that he was once known for having opinions about stuff — except Michael Douglas, who has just as much fun as he did the first time around. And Carey Mulligan turns up as his daughter!

“Whatever It Takes”: Christopher C.C. Wong’s documentary about Bronx principal Edward Tom’s uphill battle to bring his school up to acceptable standards arrives a week ahead of Davis Guggenheim’s major-studio education doc, “Waiting for ‘Superman'”. Think of this as the micro view to Guggenheim’s macro. Susan liked it.

“A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop”: Zhang Yimou transplants the Coen brothers’ “Blood Simple” to 19th century China, where … wait, what? Andrew explains.

There you go. Throw in “A Film Unfinished“, “Heartbeats” and “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” and that should keep you occupied for the weekend …

My other other gig.