The Screengrab : still life

Indie Box-Office Roundup: Weekend of February 22-24, 2008

Paul Clark — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:00:00 GMT

One of the pleasures of doing the weekly Indie Box-Office Roundup is that there are more surprises to be had with this top ten than with the top-grossing films overall. For example, I never thought I'd live to type the following six words: "Jacques Rivette, domestic box-office champ." Naturally, we're talking per-screen average rather than overall gross, but still — wow. Rivette's latest film, The Duchess of Langeais (IFC Films), took in a per-screen average of $11,126 on two screens over the past weekend. What makes this weekend's haul even more of a surprise is that Rivette's last film, L'Histoire de Marie et Julien was snubbed altogether by American distributors as being "too uncommercial." As a long-standing Rivette fan, I'm happy to see that others are responding as positively to his new work as I did. I don't expect it to stay on top, but I'll enjoy its reign while it lasts.

Coming in a strong second was Sunday night's Best Foreign-Language Film winner, Stefan Ruzowitzky's The Counterfeiters (Sony Pictures Classics). In its first weekend in American theatres, the film brought in an average of $10,939 per screen on eight screens. Expect the film's totals to soar next weekend, as Oscar-watchers turn out to see what all the fuss is about.

Sitting at #3 and #4 were last week's top two, The Band's Visit (Sony Pictures Classics) and In Bruges (Focus Features), followed by the weekend's top documentary, A Man Named Pearl (Shadow Distribution). Also worth mentioning is 9th-place film La Traviata (Emerging Pictures), a limited-engagement performance of Verdi's opera. It's hard to gauge how the opera's attendance compares to the other titles in this week's top ten, since although many cities are showing the movie fewer times than their other titles, tickets generally sell for upwards of $20.

Next weekend should see a bump for the Oscar-winners still in release, not just The Counterfeiters but also Best Documentary Feature winner Taxi to the Dark Side, and to a certain extent No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood.

Top 10, Weekend of February 22-24:
1. The Duchess Of Langeais [IFC Films] ($11,126 per screen)
2. The Counterfeiters [Sony Pictures Classics] ($10,939)
3. The Band's Visit [Sony Pictures Classics] ($4,908)
4. In Bruges [Focus Features] ($4,530)
5. A Man Named Pearl [Shadow Distribution] ($3,308)
6. Still Life [New Yorker] ($2,933)
7. Undoing [Indican Pictures] ($2,897)
8. George A. Romero's Diary Of The Dead [Third Rail Releasing] ($2,540)
9. La Traviata [Emerging Pictures] ($2,503)
10. The Year My Parents Went On Vacation [City Lights Pictures Releasing] ($2,485)

Source: IndieWire.

It's Back! The Indie Box Office Roundup

Paul Clark — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Normally, Screengrab doesn’t go in for box office figures. After all, most of the movies that top the weekend standings are mediocre at best, and it gets downright depressing when you consider how many shell out their hard-earned wages for Meet the Spartans. Besides, the movies with the highest grosses usually play on upwards of 3,000 screens, so of COURSE they rake in the dough.

Better, I think, to use the yardstick of per-screen averages. Not only does this weed out the overhyped junk that’s playing to 25%-full houses in every mall multiplex from Schenectady to Sheboygan, but it allows some more interesting and esoteric fare to enjoy some time in the sun. And you all know how Screengrab is about esoteric fare. So, we've decided to bring back a feature from back in the day- The Indie Box-Office Charts. Then we decided to throw in the word "Roundup" after it was suddenly dropped from its regular Trailer Roundup gig. We felt so terrible seeing ol'Roundup moping around on the sidewalk in front of Screengrab Tower that we had to find it a job again, to keep it out of trouble and the like.

Moving on... this week’s per-screen winner was Focus Features’ In Bruges, the debut feature from Martin McDonough starring Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Ralph Fiennes. While we’re happy that the talented McDonough (to say nothing of Screengrab favorite Gleeson) looks to have an arthouse hit on his hands, much of the film’s draw comes from the name cast.

Of greater interest are the films that reside just below it on the list. Both #2 film The Band's Visit and #4 film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days were unceremoniously snubbed by the Academy’s Foreign Language Film branch (albeit for different reasons), but it would appear that the controversies have only helped their grosses. 4 Months is a particularly interesting case- last year’s Palme d’Or winner, Cristian Mungiu’s film has also been released on IFC’s On Demand network, so who knows how much better it would be grossing if the big screen was the only option.

Rounding out the top 5 are a pair of single-screen releases: Pere Portabella’s The Silence Before Bach and Jia Zhang-ke’s 2006 Venice winner Still Life. The most widely-released film in the top 10 is Persepolis, currently playing on 125 screens. The wide (1,000+ screens) release with the highest average gross is There Will Be Blood, which is currently sitting at #13, pulling in $2,456 per screen on 1620 screens.

Top 10, Weekend of February 8-10:
1. In Bruges [Focus Features] ($16,330 per screen)
2. The Band's Visit [Sony Pictures Classics] ($9,642 per screen)
3. The Silence Before Bach [Films 59] ($8,814 per screen)
4. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days [IFC First Take] ($5,996 per screen)
5. Still Life [New Yorker] ($4,755 per screen)
6. Caramel [Roadside Attractions] ($4,319 per screen)
7. The Witnesses [Strand Releasing] ($4,260 per screen)
8. Summer Palace [Palm Pictures] ($3,410 per screen)
9. Bab'Aziz [Typecast Releasing] ($3,286 per screen)
10. Persepolis [Sony Pictures Classics] ($3,042 per screen)

Source: IndieWire.

Mike D'Angelo at Sundance: Part 1

Peter Smith — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 19:50:00 GMT

Mike D'Angelo reports from the Sundance Film Festival:

Sundance is playing things close to the vest this year, for some reason. Upon my arrival late Thursday night — too late, alas, to catch the opening-night attraction, In Bruges, which everyone who did see it seems to think is ill-served by its hyperactive trailer — I picked up a copy of the Salt Lake City Weekly, expecting to find my friend Scott Renshaw's capsule reviews of perhaps two dozen films that had been screened for local press before the festival proper even began. Instead, there only was a page of wild guesswork, advance screenings having apparently been scuttled. Nor were Friday's press screenings particularly appetizing, as most of the morning and afternoon was devoted to soporific-sounding selections from the World Documentary section. Did I really want or need to learn anything further about Mumia Abu-Jamal? (In Prison My Whole Life.) Would Up the Yangtze, about China's Three Gorges Dam project, be any more illuminating than Jia Zhang-ke's 2006 Venice prizewinner Still Life, just now opening in limited U.S. release? Hoping the homegrown docs might be more energizing, I stuck my head into Traces of the Trade, a personal-essay film in which the director and nine relatives tour the locations where their ancestors purchased slave labor with rum and molasses, but fled after forty minutes of unbearably self-indulgent white-liberal guilt.

As I write this, most of the potentially heavy hitters are still to come. Today, however, people are buzzing, with good reason, about yet another documentary, Marina Zenovich's Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. (Full disclosure: I roomed with Marina at Cannes a few years ago, though we barely spoke since I tend to fall asleep at festivals within fifty-two seconds of hitting my room.) As the title suggests, the film focuses on Polanski's 1977 arrest for "unlawful sexual intercourse" (plea-bargained down from rape) with a thirteen-year-old girl and his subsequent flight from justice just hours before he was due to be sentenced, resulting in what may well be lifelong exile in France. Even for those familiar with the general details of the case, though, Wanted and Desired will likely prove revelatory. Zenovich dutifully provides basic psychological context for Polanski's odious conduct — mom murdered by Nazis, pregnant wife slaughtered by Manson Family — and wittily illustrates various points with well-chosen clips from Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, The Tenant, and other favorites. Ultimately, however, she's less interested in Polanski's crime than she is in the outlandish farce of judicial corruption that the banal crime somehow inspired. If you've ever run into a celebrity and found yourself instantly transformed into a babbling cretin, this fascinating film will provide some solace: At least the celeb's life and freedom weren't in your shaking hands.