Axl breaks his silence, speaks out online
NEW YORK–He's yet to grant an interview about Guns N' Roses' recently released Chinese Democracy, but Axl Rose broke his silence last week by answering questions on the message boards of popular GNR websites MyGNR.com and Here Today ... Gone to Hell.
Rose addressed a range of topics, including the status of his relationships with former band members, several specific songs from Chinese Democracy, and whether guitarists Buckethead and Robin Finck would one day return to GNR.
"What I can say now is you've been told a lot of things in order for others to promote themselves that factually they cannot back up in regard to either," Rose said when asked why the original lineup fell apart. "They are complicated legally, financially and have devoured a good portion of my life."
He added that he was recently sued by Duff McKagan and Slash over a merchandising issue "that I was unaware and not involved in. Fortunately that was resolved but it got ugly and took a while going into arbitration."
Rose didn't address what took so long for Chinese Democracy, which was started in the mid-1990s, to be released. But he did acknowledge additional material that could be released in its wake.
"For now we'll concentrate and keep our focus on this album, but I will say I've always thought of it as a double," he said of Chinese Democracy. Earlier, he told fans a video for the album's "Better" would be released "in a week or so."
Zombie romance, sci-fi horror, singing vampires among Canadian flicks for '09
Genres collide in next year's crop of Canadian films, with upcoming storylines incorporating trailer park hijinks, teen tragedy, zombie romance and rock 'n' roll vampires.
Projects in the offing include Bruce McDonald's Pontypool, Mike Clattenburg's Trailer Park Boys sequel, Atom Egoyan's Adoration, and newcomer Rob Stefaniuk's musical vampire comedy Suck.
"There's some really, really exciting things happening," Telefilm Canada's Dan Lyon said of the broad spectrum of films slated for 2009.
"What we've noticed is increasing genre diversity. In other words, a little less reliance on traditional drama and moving more toward comedies, thrillers and other genres."
One of the most highly anticipated films is McDonald's Pontypool, about a zombie-like invasion that traps the staff of a small-town radio station in a church basement studio on a snowy Valentine's Day.
McDonald, the renegade director behind cult favourites Hardcore Logo and Highway 61, is loathe to slot the picture in the horror genre, insisting that Pontypool is more of a love story with an edge.
"We're sitting down with the marketing dudes and the company that's going to present it to the world [and there's] a lot of thought [such as]: 'Well, what is it going to look like? What's the poster and the trailer? What's the vibe we put out there?"' he said at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
"It shares some things with zombie movies, but they're not zombies and we don't want to disappoint the zombie people."
All-star appearances
The melding of genres continues with the outrageous Suck, a wild romp billed as a rock 'n' roll vampire comedy starring Rob Stefaniuk (who also writes and directs) and Jessica Paré, with appearances by Malcolm McDowell, Alice Cooper, Moby, Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins, Carole Pope and Dave Foley.
"I've been watching dailies and it is absolutely a crowd-pleaser," said Lyon, who expects Suck to be ready for theatres next fall.
Big things are also expected of the sci-fi/horror movie Splice, directed by Vincenzo Natali of Cube, and starring Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley.
"It's about a couple of scientists, played by Adrien and Sarah, who are crossing ethical lines in creating a human-animal hybrid, with disastrous results," Lyon said, noting that the film is now in post-production.
Steve Gravestock, with the Toronto International Film Festival, said he is most excited by the scheduled May release of Egoyan's family drama Adoration. Starring Scott Speedman and Rachel Blanchard, the politically tinged tale touches on lies, technology and racism. It garnered mixed reviews on the festival circuit last year, but netted Egoyan the Ecumenical Jury Prize, which honours directing, at Cannes.
Other TIFF-screened films hoping to find audiences include the Inuit film Before Tomorrow, by directors Madeline Piujuq Ivalu and Marie-Hélène Cousineau, which will screen at the Sundance Film Festival next month, and Michael McGowan's road movie One Week, starring Joshua Jackson, which is due in March.
Coming-of-age story
First-time feature filmmaker David Bezmozgis is preparing to debut his coming-of-age story, Victoria Day, at Sundance in January. The story follows 16-year-old Ben as he grapples with budding romance, family pressures and the role he may have played in a boy's mysterious disappearance.
"It's not a genre film, it's not an either-or film, it's not a comedy, it's not a tragedy," Bezmozgis said earlier this year about the movie, which takes place over the course of one week in 1988.
"With teenage life you have all these roiling emotions — the romantic, the domestic and all the things happening with friends. So that was really the impetus — to write a good film about teenage life."
Also in production is Defendor, with first-time director Peter Stebbings. Starring Woody Harrelson, Elias Koteas, Sandra Oh and Kat Dennings, it's about a man who thinks he's a superhero and tries to clean up his city.
More arty fare comes by way of Cairo Time, directed by Ruba Nadda and starring Patricia Clarkson as a Canadian woman who joins her husband in Cairo but ends up forging a close friendship with an Egyptian man.
Those looking for sheer escapism have the Trailer Park Boys sequel to look forward to, and some are already predicting boffo box office success for the delinquent Julian, Ricky and Bubbles.
The foul-mouthed, pot-smoking troublemakers scored big with fans and critics with 2006's Trailer Park Boys: The Movie, and are slated to return to the big screen next fall with Trailer Park Boys – Countdown to Liquor Day.
Lyon says the recent box office success of Paul Gross' war epic Passchendaele and the smaller film, YPF (a.k.a. Young People F---ing), has many in the movie business optimistic that homegrown fare can thrive.
"We're feeling pretty inspired by the success of`Passchendaele," Lyon said, noting that the film hit $4.4 million at the Canadian box office. "It's just given them a tremendous spike of confidence, for films at all levels.
"The tide is really changing in Canada in terms of English language film," Lyon continued, noting that last year's Oscar nominations for Away From Her and Eastern Promises were an added morale boost.
"When you combine that kind of success with the continuing good news of all the Canadian films coming up at Sundance in January, and the commercial success of Passchendaele and YPF and so on, we have really a lot of reason to be optimistic."
Actors Have Little Appetite for Potential SAG Strike
LOS ANGELES -- When Hollywood writers began a strike a little more than a year ago, movie and TV stars went out of their way to show solidarity with the mostly unheralded scribes who craft their lines. Former "Seinfeld" star Julia Louis-Dreyfus lugged a picket sign. Jay Leno passed out doughnuts to writers outside studio gates. Dozens of actors shot brief but stylish black-and-white Internet films supporting the scriptwriters.
Now the Screen Actors Guild is pondering its own walkout, possibly as early as next month. But the deepening recession has dampened the militant pro-labor sentiments many celebrities freely espoused last year. With the entertainment business and its tens of thousands of workers still reeling from the three-month writers strike -- and with the larger U.S. economy shedding more than half a million jobs last month alone -- many top performers show little enthusiasm for another smackdown with the studios.
The chill was palpable as Hollywood celebrated the Golden Globe nominations Thursday, setting up the Oscar race for such contenders as "Revolutionary Road" and " Frost/Nixon." Earlier this year, with stars bailing on the ceremony in the depths of the writers strike, NBC offered a truncated, little-watched Globes telecast.
Actors Set Date to Vote on Strike
Next month's Globes look safe to happen before any walkout could occur. But stars are nevertheless nervous about the long-term effects of a boomerang strike.
"You can't ignore what's happening in the economy," David Duchovny, star of Showtime's dark comedy " Californication," said Thursday after receiving a Globe nomination for best actor in a comedy or musical television series. Duchovny was one of many stars who showed up at picket lines last year to support writers. "Everyone wants to keep on working. Even with what little work there is, to have none would be disastrous."
Jimmy Smits, a longtime TV star who headlined CBS' since-canceled drama " Cane," said that an actors' walkout would not be "prudent," even though SAG and the studios are contending over "really serious" financial issues. "I don't see it happening," Smits said of a strike. "Middle America is going to have a hard time with a bunch of actors out there striking when there's so much hurting going on."
The A-listers' shift could highlight a split within SAG's 120,000-member union. For all their visibility, celebrity actors make up a tiny fraction of the union's membership, the vast majority of whom do not have regular employment on union-contracted shows. Because these nonworking members do not face the prospect of a lost paycheck from a strike, they are generally more receptive than busy actors to anti-studio rhetoric from SAG's leadership.
That rhetoric has ramped up in recent days. After months of negotiation, SAG and the studios have hit an impasse over a new deal that would cover such issues as residual payments for movies and TV shows streamed over the Internet. The union announced this week that it would mail out ballots to members Jan. 2 for a vote that would authorize a strike. Seventy-five percent of the membership must vote "yes" for a strike to proceed.
"SAG members understand that their futures as professional actors are at stake," SAG President Alan Rosenberg said in a statement. "A yes vote sends a strong message that we are serious about fending off rollbacks and getting what is fair for actors in new media."
To be sure, the recession hasn't made all the leading performers strike-averse. Some actors express frustration with studio negotiators who they believe are trying to give performers a raw deal by cutting back on current compensation.
"How can you exploit people's work and not pay them any money?," said Melissa George, nominated for her work on HBO's " In Treatment." "The myth is that we're asking for more. We're just asking to keep [the contract] as it is, not more. That's not being greedy."
Others are pro-labor on principle.
"I'm a union guy," said Blair Underwood, likewise nominated for "In Treatment." "So if the union decides to strike, I'm gonna have to be out there picketing. One or 2 percent of actors make a living in this game and we as union members need to be respected in terms of residuals and the ability to make a living."
"At the end of the day I will support my union, whatever they decide," said Anne Hathaway, an award contender this year for the film " Rachel Getting Married."
But top-tier performers are facing a much more awkward position than last year. Sympathizing with the writers during their walkout was relatively pain-free because the actors' own economic position was not directly at stake.
That helped many actors to walk hand-in-hand with the striking writers. As British actor Tom Wilkinson said last December, "If actors can't have solidarity with writers -- the people who put the words in their mouths -- then who can they have solidarity with?"
Now, however, the global economic meltdown has stoked fears that a SAG strike would deal a devastating financial blow not just to performers but also to everyday production workers still trying to recover from the work slowdown caused by the writers strike.
Indeed, with the stock market hammered and money from hedge funds and other private sources drying up, some worry that the survival of the entertainment industry, or at least a large portion of it, is at stake.
"The industry is in such a state of flux, because of the economy and because things are underperforming at the box office," said Irish actor Colin Farrell, Globe-nominated for the comedy "In Bruges." "A lot of films are falling apart ... I have a lot of friends who are excited to go to work on certain things and the gigs are falling apart. Some pieces are falling apart very close to principal photography. Climate-wise, it's a worrying time for the industry. I don't know that a strike at this time wouldn't be a counterproductive thing."
Wilkinson, like many of his peers who threw their support behind the writers last year, sounds much more circumspect this time around.
"I don't really know the ins and outs, since I'm over here in the U.K.," he told The Times Thursday. "But I don't think there'll be a strike. Actors don't like going on strike. And this financial climate will make it worse ... Everyone is hoping for a solution."
'Day the Earth Stood Still' launches to $31M debut
LOS ANGELES – Audiences sat still for Keanu Reeves' sci-fi remake "The Day the Earth Stood Still," making it the weekend's top movie with a $31 million debut, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The 20th Century Fox release also added $39 million in 90 overseas markets for a worldwide total of $70 million.
The movie updates the 1951 tale of an alien and his giant robot enforcer who come to Earth with a warning about the consequences of humanity's destructive nature.
"Audiences are moving to see `The Day the Earth Stood Still.' It's a visually stunning movie with timely issues everybody on this planet can relate to," said Fox distribution executive Chris Aronson. "Basically, how we treat each other and how we treat this planet that we call home."
The Warner Bros. holiday romp "Four Christmases" slipped to second place with $13.3 million. The Reese Witherspoon-Vince Vaughn comedy raised its three-week total to $88 million.
Another seasonal tale, Overture Films' "Nothing Like the Holidays," opened a weak No. 7 with $3.5 million. The movie features John Leguizamo, Debra Messing and Alfred Molina in the story of a Chicago family's holiday reunion.
The overall box office plummeted compared with the same weekend last year, when "I Am Legend" opened with $77.2 million and "Alvin and the Chipmunks" debuted with $44.3 million. This weekend's top 12 movies took in $83.3 million, down 45 percent from a year ago.
"This was predestined to be a down weekend given the incredible one-two punch of 'I Am Legend' and 'Alvin,'" said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers. "There was no way this weekend could measure up."
A rush of films opened with big numbers in limited release to qualify for the Academy Awards.
Miramax's "Doubt" pulled in $525,030 in 15 theaters, averaging $35,002 a cinema, compared with $8,708 in 3,560 locations for "The Day the Earth Stood Still." The film stars Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams in a war-of-wills drama between an old-school nun and a progressive priest.
Clint Eastwood's "Gran Torino" played in six locations and took in $284,000 to average $47,333. The Warner Bros. film stars Eastwood as a bigot who becomes an unlikely protector for his immigrant neighbors against street thugs.
The Weinstein Co. drama "The Reader" rang up $170,000 in eight theaters for a $21,250 average. The Holocaust-themed story stars Kate Winslet as a former concentration camp guard standing trial years later.
Steven Soderbergh's two-part, four-hour-plus film biography "Che" took in $60,100 in two cinemas to average $30,050. The IFC Films release stars Benicio Del Toro as Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara.
Here are the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. "The Day the Earth Stood Still," $31 million.
2. "Four Christmases," $13.3 million.
3. "Twilight," $8 million.
4. "Bolt," $7.5 million.
5. "Australia," $4.3 million.
6. "Quantum of Solace," $3.8 million.
7. "Nothing Like the Holidays," $3.5 million.
8. "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa," $3.3 million.
9. "Milk," $2.6 million.
10. "Transporter 3," $2.3 million.