New Oliver Stone Flick "W" Limps Into Fourth Place

So, how do you want your biased bio-pic served up? You want it served up as good news as "edged out for first place" or do you want the cold hard reality "fourth place behind Secret Life of Bees".

The cold hard reality is where the movie is stuck, and it's not going to get any better. It's heading towards oblivion as the fourth place movie in a soft week.

Movie-goers elected a "W,'' but it was Mark Wahlberg, not George W. Bush.

Wahlberg's action flick "Max Payne'' debuted with $18 million to outdo Oliver Stone's film biography of George W. Bush, according to studio estimates Sunday.

Stone's "W.'' actually ran fourth, opening with $10.6 million to finish behind the family comedy ``Beverly Hills Chihuahua'' (No. 2 with $11.2 million) and the chick flick "The Secret Life of Bees'' (No. 3 with $11.1 million).

"For me, an Oliver Stone film about George Bush doesn't necessarily scream big box office,'' said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers. "A film like this is very tough to gauge, but this is exactly what I thought it would do.''

Lionsgate's "W.,'' starring Josh Brolin as Bush, came in well behind the $18.7 million debut of Stone's last movie, 2006's Sept. 11 saga "World Trade Center.'' That movie opened in nearly 3,000 theaters, about 900 more than "W.,'' however.

The movie is going to be heading towards oblivion, although I'm sure the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences will be sending nominations towards the movie. It's pretty much inevitable.

The Entertainment Page: 24, WTC, and Flight 93

Last night's episode of 24 was okay, but the Blogs4Bauer recaps and livebloggings were far more entertaining than the first 50 minutes. All the action was packed into that last 10 minutes, and someone ought to get CTU a dedicated mole hunter. Jack Bristow perhaps? He knows the business from both ends as Spy Daddy on Alias.

That brings me to the next point: Jack Bristow vs. Jack Bauer. Jack v. Jack. Kinda like Alien v. Predator except the guys are easier to look at. Both have killed with everything from phones to screwdrivers (and Jack has even managed to use a screwdriver for its intended purpose when putting together a crib for his daughter Sydney). We've seen Bristow kill with looks. Bauer with phones.

In other news, CNN thinks that the World Trade Center movie by Oliver Stone and Flight 93 are going to be safe bets at the box office. WTC is scheduled for an August release; Flight 93 is scheduled for the end of April.

My guess is that WTC will bomb, but Flight 93 will be more successful. Modest business for both - and both will do better on DVD than in the original bigscreen release.

CNN also put Flags of our Fathers in the "sounds promising" category. I'm sorry, but with a best seller nonfiction book and Clint Eastwood behind that project, it has Oscar potential all over it.



UPDATE:
If you want to join the Blogs4Bauer ring, go here now. Or else Jack Bauer might have to track you down. And you wont like what happens next.

A Stone's Throw Away

Oliver Stone has begun shooting the 9/11 film tentatively entitled September in New York City. He had been shooting scenes in Glen Rock, New Jersey. Now, he's working in the West Village, a mere stone's throw away from my office.

Stone Cold

Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone's new movie on the last two cops rescued at Ground Zero won't be an exploitative "Towering Inferno," with filmmakers promising 9/11 families the flick won't depict horrific images from the terror attack.
At a forum last month at Manhattan's Essex House, a dozen or so survivors and family members told the famed director of "JFK" and other history-based flicks that they don't want to see planes crashing into the Trade Center, bodies tumbling or the Twin Towers imploding.

"None of that will be recreated," Michael Shamberg, co-producer of the film, who attended the meeting and has held several similar forums since August, told The Post.

He's been scouting and shooting scenes for the movie in New Jersey, and his cast is supposed to include Nicholas Cage among others. Earlier coverage is here.

UPDATE:
Michelle Malkin wonders if others are worried about where Stone is headed with this project. I think it's pretty clear - based on his prior work, expect the 'facts' to be played with fast and loose because the facts will get in the way of a good yarn.

Oliver Stone's 9/11 Movie Project Moves Forward

According to Cindy Adams, the film will not depict planes hitting the WTC, opting instead to show TV viewers reactions. And understandably, Stone faces a few NYC restrictions, including only having access to establishing shots, skyline shots, outdoor location shots and driving shots as well as being prohibited from dressing “the streets with dirt and debris and ash and people's belongings and falling bodies.”

Sorry, but given the fact that the media is reluctant to show much of the footage from 9/11, one has to wonder why anyone needs to have a movie to show this event.

The reality is bad enough. In fact, it's worse than most anyone could realistically have thought up as a nightmare before 9/11 happened.

And yet, Oliver Stone thinks that there's a movie to be made, money to be made, and an audience willing to see it.

I think he'll be sadly mistaken.

Technorati: World Trade Center, WTC, oliver stone

Keep Your Paws Off 9/11 Oliver Stone

Oliver Stone wants to do a biopic about 9/11. About 9/11? Are you kidding me? Stone has never met a conspiracy theory he didn't endorse or a fact that he couldn't twist.

What's his angle? Roger Simon thinks it is the foreign box office. I happen to agree with Mickey Kaus - Hollywood is so out of touch with mainstream US tastes that it thinks that a director best known for making movies that rely heavily on conspiracy mongering should take on the monumental task of recounting a harrowing tale from 9/11. Oh, I'm sure the production values and acting will be very good, but what will be the guts of the story?

Should we start a poll to see whether he mentions Islamic terrorists, My Pet Goat, the 4,000 Zionists who didn't go to work that day, that the planes were really not planes, the buildings were imploded and not exploded, and that it was one big Bushitler Conspiracy?