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Posted: 21 Aug 2011 01:33 AM PDT

How The Smurfs took control of the box office.

HOW could so many people be wrong about Sony's The Smurfs? The retro kids movie emerged this weekend as the surprise box-office hit of the summer after being dismissed by box-office trackers and critics alike.

Coming from nowhere, the film's little blue men overshadowed Steven Spielberg's widely-hyped little green men and took in US$36.2mil.

The winning combination came from basic elements that escaped the mainstream water cooler: a clever, targeted marketing campaign, parental nostalgia and a live star-plus-CG character formula that has worked for several other kids movies.

"We were always bullish about this film,'' studio distribution chief Rory Bruer said. "Every test screening we had was terrific.''

Perhaps it was only those working on the Sony lot who knew what they had – a clever mix of timeless characters who have already proven irresistible to kids, and Neil Patrick Harris to tie it all together.

Parents, it turned out, were looking for a way to entertain their young kids on a weekend. Indeed, about 65% of the Smurfs audience included parents taking their kids.

Film critic Alonso Duralde, who like most of his peers panned the film, counted Gen Y nostalgia as a factor in the movie's success.

"If you were six in 1982,'' Duralde noted, "you're 35 now, and you've either got a lingering affection for the Smurfs or you're one of the frazzled parents.''

It's not the first time a studio flew under the radar with a kids movie full of cuddly CG characters, with a live-action TV comedy star to tie it all together, only to watch the term "box office shocker!'' erupt.

In late 2007, Fox dug out of the vault some decades-old singing-chipmunk characters out of the vault, hired Jason Lee (star of My Name Is Earl at the time), and spent about US$60mil to create the CG/live-action hybrid Alvin And The Chipmunks. The movie grossed over US$360mil for the trouble and was able to spawn a successful franchise.

Earlier this year, Disney took about as much industry ridicule as Sony did for Smurfs when it released a CG-based Shakespeare adaptation featuring funny cartoon lawn gnomes.

But Gnomeo And Juliet, which cost Disney only US$36mil to make, grossed almost US$190mil worldwide.

Further back, Universal's talking-pig movie Babe was the surprise hit of 1995, grossing more than US$254 mil worldwide.

Indeed, talking cuddly CG characters mixed with live action works consistently – so long as budgets are kept in line and the execution is good.

At US$110mil, the Smurfs production budget was hardly cheap, but still only about half of what the typical CG-3D tentpole runs.

Acquiring the project out of turnaround from Paramount, Smurfs was an inhouse collaboration, with Sony divisions including Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation chipping in on development.

They all went to work on a film that pretty much followed the Chipmunks winning formula: live-action Neil Patrick Harris stumbles on adorable characters who are pursued by shrewish evil; young adult character learns to care for others and helps save the oh-so-cute CG sentients from harm in the process.

Sony added enough funny lines to keep the parents engaged – "Did it ever occur to you that that song is annoying?'' Harris asks at one point, when the Smurfs break into their signature "la-la-la.'' – Reuters

Window to the world

Posted: 21 Aug 2011 01:29 AM PDT

Jordanian award-winning Captain Abu Raed is a story of dreams, friendship and forgiveness.

IN Hollywood's commercially driven movie market, Jordanian director/script writer Amin Matalqa's Captain Abu Raed seems like a typical film that could easily slip under the radar due to its poetic storyline.

But who would assume that Amin's directorial debut would serve as Jordan's first film shown in international theatres as well as the first ever film submitted to the 81st Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film in 2008? And judging from the number of awards it won at the Sundance Film Festival, Heartland Film Festival, Dubai International Film Festival and Kuala Lumpur International Film Festival clearly proves this film deserves more recognition.

Set in contemporary Jordan, the movie is about Abu Raed (Nadim Sawalha), a lonely janitor at Amman's International Airport. Having never realised his dream of seeing the world, he experiences it vicariously through books and brief encounters with travellers.

Finding a discarded pilot's hat in the trash while at work one day, he is followed by a neighbourhood boy who spots him wearing it as he walks home. The next morning, he wakes up to find a group of neighbourhood children at his door, believing him to be an airline pilot. And thus the friendships begin. Happy for the company and attention, Abu Raed "takes" the children to colourful places around the world through his fictional stories and inspires them to believe in their own ambitions.

Angry outsider Murad (Hussein Al-Sous) attacks Abu Raed and the sense of hope that he instills in the children. In his quest to prove that Abu Raed is a liar and a fake, Murad begins to discover new possibilities in his life. Meanwhile, Abu Raed's friendship with female pilot Nour (Rana Sultan), begins to grow as she deals with her own set of pressures from life in modern Amman.

Amin describes his movie as a universal story of friendship, inspiration and heroism.

"The film revolves around dreams, friendship, forgiveness, and sacrifice. I have always been interested in the difference between social classes, and coming from a family of pilots (Amin's father and brother are commercial pilots), what better place than an airport to set a story where the poor and the rich meet?" said Amin in the production notes provided by GSC Movies.

Producer Laith Al-Majali said: "Amin and I started thinking of jobs that fit the description of a lowly person and the idea of a janitor was a logical progression. The idea of a well-read, self-taught airport janitor followed and Abu Raed came alive."

After the first draft, Amin decided to inject a universal conflict using characters and their intersecting lives.

"After some research, I found a topic that gave me the opportunity to bring in some realistic psychological textures and with each rewrite the blend of humour, pathos, drama and suspense became more organic," said Amin, who had given up a career in telecommunications in Ohio and moved to Los Angeles to fulfil his dream of becoming a filmmaker.

Once their script had been sealed, the filmmakers faced some hurdles selecting cast members for lead roles. Their first choice to play Abu Raed was London-based Jordanian actor Nadim Sawalha whose credits include two Bond films, The Spy Who Loved Me and The Living Daylights, and Syriana alongside George Clooney.

But, the established actor was sceptical when approached to work with the greenhorn director.

"I was thrilled to be offered a starring role in the first Jordanian film, but at the same time I was apprehensive about working with a first-time director and not certain if anyone could actually produce an independent film in Jordan. All of this seemed a little far-fetched to me, but the screenplay was powerful and in my many phone conversations with Amin, I was convinced he could deliver a quality film. And now that I have seen the finished film, I am ecstatic and honoured that I worked with Amin on his first film," said Nadim.

Casting the children's roles proved to be the filmmakers' biggest challenge.

"We needed 12 young kids that would take direction without being disruptive on the set. And most of all, they needed to portray working-class children.

"We wanted simple yet complex children who could bring a certain rawness to their performances. We travelled throughout Jordan to various children's charities and spent months searching for the right boys to play the roles," said Amin.

Filming was done at Jordan's Amman International Airport and historic locations including the Temple of Hercules and a town called Salt, known for its architecture dating back to the Ottoman Empire.

Captain Abu Raed opens on Thursday in GSC international screen cinemas in 1 Utama, Mid Valley Megamall and Pavilion, Kuala Lumpur.

Raoul Ruiz, Chilean-born filmmaker, dead at 70

Posted: 19 Aug 2011 06:31 PM PDT

PARIS (AP) - Raoul Ruiz, the Chilean-born filmmaker who made more than 100 films in his teeming, international career, has died. He was 70.

A favorite of cinephiles, Ruiz rebelled against the conventions of moviemaking in an extensive, varied body of work that didn't result in a widely-known masterpiece, but left behind a vast, labyrinthine collection of experiments, curiosities and innovations.

Ruiz died Friday at Saint-Antoine Hospital in Paris following complications from a pulmonary infection, said Francois Margolin, a producer of several films by the director. Ruiz had lived in Paris since fleeing Chile in 1973 to escape the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

An avid reader, his filmography is lined with literary adaptations, including versions of works by Franz Kafka ("The Penal Colony," 1970), Nathaniel Hawthorne ("Three Lives and Only One Death," 1996, starring Marcello Mastroianni), Pedro Calderon ("Life Is a Dream," 1987), Shakespeare ("Richard III," 1986) and Marcel Proust in "Time Regained" (1999), perhaps Ruiz's best regarded film.

Ruiz's sprawling 4 {-hour "Mysteries of Lisbon," based on the 19th century novella by Portuguese author Camilo Castelo Branco, was released in New York and Los Angeles earlier this month. The film has drawn excellent reviews and in December was awarded the Louis Delluc Prize for best French film of the year.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy described Ruiz as a man of "immense erudition and infinite curiosity" and a "worthy son of the Enlightenment."

Born July 25, 1941, in Puerto Montt, Chile, to a middle class family and the son of a ship captain, Ruiz studied law and theology at the University of Chile before a Rockefeller Foundation grant in 1962 afforded him the opportunity to devote himself to writing.

He wrote a huge quantity of plays before he was 20 years old (he boasted that it was more than 100 plays) and worked as a writer on TV novelas. His first feature film was 1968's "Three Sad Tigers."

Later in Europe, he would continue to work in French television. He also taught film at Harvard and served as the co-director of the Maison de Culture in Le Havre, France, where he was able to produce his own films and those of others.

"Ruiz is the least neurotic of filmmakers," film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote. "He doesn't even seem to care whether what he's doing is good or not (and, as he's aptly noted, bad work and good work generally entail the same amount of effort)."

Ruiz dismissed conflict as an unnecessary quality in drama. He spelled out this belief in his 1995 book, "Poetics of Cinema."

"America is the only place in the world where, very early, cinema developed an all-encompassing narrative and dramatic theory known as central conflict theory," he wrote.

Few of Ruiz's films have been available in the United States. He made a handful of American films, including "Shattered Image" (1998) and "The Golden Boat" (1990). He also directed 2006's "Klimt," a biopic of Austrian painter Gustav Klimt starring John Malkovich.

"Film is often considered something inert, as something that can be manipulated: you organize it; you cut it," Ruiz said in a recent interview with The New York Times. "We forget that the cinematographic image exists by itself. The quantity of information that the image carries - against the will of whoever is trying to organize it - is enormous."

At the time of his death, Ruiz had been editing a film about his childhood in Chile. He was also preparing a film set in Portugal about a Napoleonic battle. Ruiz is survived by his wife, filmmaker Valeria Sarmiento.

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Ahad, 21 Ogos 2011

The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies

The Star Online: Entertainment: Movies

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