Time for another small batch!
1. Serenity fans, prepare to weep — the film was only #9 at the box office yesterday, the first day of its second weekend. Last weekend it was #2, largely on the strength of its fan base (as is typical for sci-fi TV spin-offs, it actually made less money on its first Saturday than it did the day before, whereas all the other movies in wide release made more). But this weekend, now that the fans have had their fill, it seems to be plummeting. On the bright side, the film almost tied for #8, and these are only estimates at this point, after all. But then again, it also almost tied for #10. Hmmm.
FWIW, I never got around to writing anything on Serenity, partly because I’ve been taking notes on far too many films and books lately, and when I went to see it with my wife and a few friends — on opening day, at midnight, the night before my birthday — I told everyone I would be taking a break from all that note-taking. As far as I’m concerned, I saw that movie on my “day off”, while I was “on vacation”, whatever you want to call it. But I did take part briefly in the discussion at ArtsAndFaith, starting with this post.
2. FilmStew.com reports that Jon Favreau, co-star of Swingers and director of Elf and the upcoming Zathura, has been tapped to direct the adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars. Harry Knowles of Ain’t-It-Cool-News will co-produce! And the current script is by Ehren Kruger, which doesn’t bode well.
3. The Associated Press has an item on Noah Baumbach, who has directed his first movie in eight years with The Squid and the Whale. (He also co-wrote Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou — he seems to be drawn to marine life.) The reason I mention this is because I have fond memories of his first movie, Kicking and Screaming (1995); it’s about university graduates who stay at school because they don’t know what else to do with their lives, and it had a kind of personal resonance for me, as I happened to be one of those graduates lingering in “unclassified studies” when the film came out. I interviewed Baumbach at the time, for a student-newspaper story on page 8 of this PDF file.
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