The fifth installment in the Scary Movie series landed with a deafening thud at the box office this weekend, representing the biggest blow to a franchise since Kobe Bryant was injured a few days ago. Blogger’s note: for those who read this blog and really only follow the film world, Bryant is a professional basketball player who plays for a team in southern California.

It was expected to be a tight race between the two wide release titles this weekend – Scary Movie V and 42. Didn’t turn out that way – the well-reviewed baseball drama 42 surpassed most expectations with a terrific $27 million gross. Scary Movie V only managed a tepid $15 million.

Let’s put that in perspective, shall we? It had been seven long years since a Scary Movie. The third and fourth installments both grossed over $40 million in their opening weekends. Scary Movie V may struggle to make that much total in its domestic gross. Not good.

It is worth noting that the production budget for the film is reportedly only $20 million, so it will draw a profit. Still, perception is reality and its opening can be looked at only as a massive failure.

As you may recall, the Scary Movie franchise was started by a well-known comedic family. Keenan Ivory Wayans directed the first two and they featured both Marlon and Shawn Wayans. Shot for $19 million, the original was an unexpected box office smash in the summer of 2000 that grossed an astonishing $278 million worldwide.

Its success meant the immediate making of a sequel and Scary Movie 2 followed just a year later. It made a solid $141 million worldwide, though it was considered a slight disappointment in relation to its predecessor’s numbers. The first sequel also earned a considerable amount of scorn from critics who were much harsher on it as compared to the original.

A new team would take over for #3 and #4. David Zucker did the directing duties. He is the man partly responsible for the Airplane! and Naked Gun series. Different actors ranging from Charlie Sheen to Leslie Nielsen to Kevin Hart joined the mix. Released in 2003 and 2006, 3 and 4 were box office hits with grosses of $220 and $178 million, respectively.

What are my thoughts on the series? For lack of a better word – eh. I was never a huge fan of the original, truth be told. Don’t get me wrong – it’s got some truly funny moments. However, I never got over my main critique. Scary Movie is essentially a spoof of Scream, which itself is a horror movie spoof. I always felt Scream was so effective in sending up the slasher genre and that a “spoof” of Scream felt kind of unnecessary.

As for the sequels, they’re all watchable enough, but nothing special. I’d say Scary Movie 3 is probably the funniest overall of the sequels. I must admit I love the scene that spoofs the death of Mel Gibson’s wife in Signs, where Charlie Sheen must say good-bye to Denise Richards. That scene works well.

So what went wrong with Scary Movie V? The answer may be simple – it’s been seven damn years and audiences have moved on. It also had a rather strange marketing campaign, focusing on tabloid stars Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan (who apparently are only in one scene). It never seemed likely that moviegoers were going to rush out to watch actors they enjoy watching more on TMZ.

In an ironic twist, Scary Movie V is only the second highest debuting horror spoof of the year (out of two). A Haunted House opened in January to a better than expected $18.8 million. The star of that picture? Marlon Wayans, veteran of the Scary franchise.

The fifth installment brought in a new director, Malcolm D. Lee, best known for making Undercover Brother with Eddie Griffin. That’s not saying much. The future of the Scary Movie franchise appears bleak at best. #5 really isn’t performing well enough to warrant a sixth. Perhaps the studio will bring in new talent to try and reinvigorate the series. Maybe the franchise will simply go the straight-to-DVD route from now on. Or this could truly be an obituary post for a once thriving film series that has now fallen by the wayside.

As we enter the most exciting portion of The Masters tournament this weekend and hear debate from all corners of the sports world on whether Tiger should withdraw or not, let’s take a quick look at the history of golf in the film world.

I say quick look because, well, it’s a brief history. The two titles we probably think of most represent well-regarded comedies for two generations. Obviously, there’s 1980’s Caddyshack, one of the most quotable movies of all time.

For the next generation, it’s 1996’s Happy Gilmore with Adam Sandler and that classic golf course rumble with Bob Barker.

1996 also saw a generally well-liked golf movie with Kevin Costner, Rene Russo, and Don Johnson – Tin Cup. It’s a decent enough pic, though not particularly memorable.

And there’s another comedy – 2007’s Who’s Your Caddy? with Outkast rapper Big Boi. If this is your favorite golf comedy, I can’t help you.

Surprisingly, there’s yet to be a truly effective and successful drama about golf. Two examples that have tried have been met with mixed critical and audience reaction.

There’s Robert Redford’s The Legend of Bagger Vance starring Matt Damon and Will Smith. It was considered an Oscar contender prior to its release, but faltered when it opened with a weak $30 million gross. It managed only a weak 42% on Rotten Tomatoes.

And there was 2004’s Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius starring Jesus himeslf, Jim Caviezel. This one came and went with no fanfare, grossing a terrible $2.7 million.

There’s certainly been plenty of quality dramatic pictures about football, baseball, basketball, hockey, and boxing. Think Any Given Sunday. Rudy. Field of Dreams. The Natural. Hoosiers. Miracle. Rocky. Raging Bull. The Fighter. Teen Wolf… OK, I went too far. But there’s yet to be that quintessential golf drama. Are you listening, Hollywood? The sport certainly has comedy covered though… Caddyshack is generally regarded as the funniest comedy about any sport.

Finally, if you started reading this post and are wondering why Jarhead and Three Kings haven’t been mentioned, those are “gulf” movies… I’m sorry.

Good morning, my loyal readers!

I’m very pleased to announce to you a new website that just went live this morning (just a couple of hours ago):

boxofficeace.com

I’ll say it again if you didn’t hear me:

boxofficeace.com

This site has been started by the creators of moviemavericks.com – a great site that includes a podcast at the beginning of each week with box office predictions for the upcoming weekend openers. I encourage you to check out that site. It’s got some nifty stuff on it. Now back to:

boxofficeace.com

Here’s where I come in. As you’ll notice, my blog is linked on there, as well as some other fine sites that predict the box office every weekend. My box office opening predictions will be featured on the site each week. What’s the site again, Todd, you ask?

boxofficeace.com

This site I’m talking about…

boxofficeace.com

is an interactive box office predictions website. YOU (yes YOU) can go on and predict each week how you believe the new films opening each weekend will perform. So, for next weekend, take a crack at how you think Oblivion with Tom Cruise will do. And we’ll have Pain and Gain with Mark Wahlberg and The Rock (for his April movie) the following weekend. And then we get into the big summer movies with Iron Man 3, The Great Gatsby, Star Trek Into Darkness, The Hangover III, and Fast and Furious 6 (The Rock’s May movie). You can compete against me, the site’s creators, and others to see if you’re smarter than us on…

boxofficeace.com

As Trevor (one of the site’s co-creators) mentions, the site is a little bare right now. However, as people start interacting with their predictions, it should grow. My predictions for calendar year 2013 are all going to be uploaded very soon, so you can see how I did with past predictions for The Evil Dead, Oz the Great and Powerful, Olympus Has Fallen, and so on.

I encourage you to check out boxofficeace.com. It’s going to be a fantastic and fun site. And I’m on it, too!!

boxofficeace.com

Once again…

boxofficeace.com

For movie enthusiasts looking for some seriously good laughs, I would like to turn your attention to a series of YouTube videos called Honest Trailers. Some very talented people have collaborated to show us a hilarious spin on various films and their flaws. These are the kinds of trailers the studios wouldn’t want you to see, but I’m sure glad someone was funny enough to think of this great idea.

What kind of pictures get the Honest Trailer treatment? Well, for starters, how about every installment of the Twilight franchise? Love how they point out the excessive use of voice-over and the pesky fact that Edward and Bella’s relationship is kind of super creepy if you really think about it.

The Hunger Games is mentioned in the Twilight trailer and it too gets the Honest Trailer treatment.

Some of our most beloved screen heroes are not spared – from James Bond…

to Batman…

to Spider-Man…

to Indiana Jones…

For the ladies, we’ve got some interesting takes on The Notebook…

and Titanic…

There are other laugh inducing trailers for The Avengers, Lord of the Rings, Prometheus, Jurassic Park, Les Miserables, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and more.

So what should we expect the team behind Honest Trailers to spoof in the future? I have a feeling megahit Oz the Great and Powerful could be a candidate. It made a boatload of money, but certainly has its detractors. And there is no doubt this fall’s Hunger Games: Catching Fire will get its Honest Trailer. I’d love to see them take a crack at older titles like Independence Day or The Matrix. And a final request: M. Night Shymalan’s ridiculous The Happening.

I have never been one of those movie buffs who spends much time nitpicking errors or implausibilities. If the story works, a lot of that stuff falls by the wayside. Truth be told, the Honest Trailer folks have figured out a brilliant way to do it. Many of their subjects are solid movies. They even admit it in The Avengers and Dark Knight spots.

My personal fave so far? The Inception Honest Trailer. Great film, but equally great treatment here. It leaves us on a high note… seriously, why didn’t Michael Caine just take Leo DiCaprio’s damn kids overseas?

 

As news broke today of the death of Margaret Thatcher (no relation, though that’s not what I tell people), I thought of her immeasurable contributions to world history and her legacy of anti-socialism and freedom.

And then I thought of movies. I can’t control the way my mind works, people. I just blog about it!

Specifically, I thought about Meryl Streep winning the Best Actress Oscar in 2011 for her portrayal of Thatcher in The Iron Lady. 

That got me wondering just how many performers have been nominated for playing real-life characters in the Best Actor and Actress categories in recent Oscar history… say the last 25 years.

The answer? 76 nominations out of 250 in the past 25 Oscars have been for real-life portrayals, by my count. Of these 50 winners in those two top acting categories over the past quarter century, 19 of them were for such performances. Not too shabby.

Additionally, in the last 11 Oscars, at least one winner in the Best Actor and/or Actress race has been for a real-life portrayal.

Of those 19 winners, 10 were for Best Actor. 9 were for Best Actress.

Who were they, you may ask? Well, I’m going to tell you.

Best Actor

1989: Daniel Day-Lewis as Christy Brown in My Left Foot

1990: Jeremy Irons as Claus Von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune

1996: Geoffrey Rush as David Helfgott in Shine

2002: Adrien Brody as Wladyslaw Szpilman in The Pianist

2004: Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles in Ray

2005: Philip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Capote in Capote

2006: Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland

2008: Sean Penn as Harvey Milk in Milk

2010: Colin Firth as King George VI in The King’s Speech

2012: Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln

Best Actress

1995: Susan Sarandon as Sister Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking

1999: Hilary Swank as Brandon Teena in Boys Don’t Cry

2000: Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich in Erin Brockovich

2002: Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf in The Hours

2003: Charlize Theron as Aileen Wournos in Monster

2005: Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash in Walk the Line

2007: Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose

2009: Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne Tuohy in The Blind Side

2011: Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady

In the last 24 years, Daniel Day-Lewis has been nominated three times for playing real characters. He won for My Left Foot and Lincoln and was also nominated for his role as Gerry Conlon in 1993’s In the Name of the Father.

On the Actress side, Dame Judi Dench also received three nominations: as Queen Victoria in 1997’s Mrs. Brown, as Iris Murdoch in 2001’s Iris, and Laura Henderson in 2005’s Mrs. Henderson Presents. No wins for M… I mean, Dame Judi. In addition to Streep’s win for The Iron Lady, she was nominated three more times for real person roles – as Lindy Chamberlain in 1988’s A Cry in the Dark, as Roberta Gouspari in 1999’s Music of the Heart, and Julia Child in 2009’s Julie&Julia. Cate Blanchett has the interesting distinction of being nominated twice for the same role as Elizabeth I in 1998’s Elizabeth and in 2007 for its follow-up Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

In 2004, we saw the most real-life portrayals nominated in one race with four of the five Best Actor nominees. In addition to Jamie Foxx’s winning performance as Ray Charles, other nominees were Don Cheadle as Paul Rusesabagina in Hotel Rwanda, Johnny Depp as JM Barrie in Finding Neverland, and Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes in The Aviator. The following year would bring three more nominations that fit the criteria for Best Actor. Philip Seymour Hoffman won for Capote and Joaquin Phoenix was nominated as Johnny Cash in Walk the Line, as well as David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck. So in those two years for Best Actor – 70% of the nominees were based on real-life individuals.

2009 is the one and only time three of the Best Actress nominees have been real-lifers. Sandra Bullock won for The Blind Side, alongside fellow nominees Streep as Julia Child and Helen Mirren as Sophia Tolstoy in The Last Station.

What might we see in 2013 as far as potential nominees? Plenty. Tom Hanks has good odds. He’s playing Captain Richard Phillips in the true-life Somali pirate hostage drama Captain Phillips and Walt Disney in Saving Mr. Banks. Curiously, while Hanks has won two back-to-back Oscars playing fictional characters in Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, he did not receive nominations for his real-life roles as Jim Lovell in Apollo 13 and Congressman Charlie Wilson in Charlie Wilson’s War.

Steve Carell could earn Academy attention as John du Pont in Foxcatcher. After all, the film’s director Bennett Miller guided Philip Seymour Hoffman to an Oscar win in Capote and Brad Pitt to a nomination as Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane in 2011’s Moneyball.

Matthew McConaughey seems destined for an Oscar nomination with the way his career’s been going lately and his turn as real-life AIDS activist Ron Woodroof in The Dallas Buyer’s Club might be the role. Idris Elba is sure to get some attention as Nelson Mandela in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (Morgan Freeman was nominated for playing Mandelia in 2009 in Invictus). That’s happened before in recent Oscar history, by the way. Both Anthony Hopkins in 1995 and Frank Langella in 2008 received nods for playing Richard Nixon in Nixon and Frost/Nixon, respectively.

On the Best Actress front, expect both Naomi Watts and Nicole Kidman to get substantial talk for their upcoming roles. Watts as Princess Di in Diana. Kidman is Grace Kelly in Grace of Monaco. Also, Emma Thompson is a likely contender as author P.L. Travers in Saving Mr. Banks.

So, folks, there’s your recent history of performers playing real folks and getting Oscar attention. As you can see, it’s no secret why actors seek out these types of roles. That gold statue could come calling.

Bill Murray is a national treasure.

I would put forth that he’s the funniest human being on the planet and he’s been making us laugh for going on 40 years. While known best for his amazing comedic skills, Mr. Murray has also shown a great ability at drama as well. This is often found in the best comedic performers, including Eddie Murphy and Jim Carrey and it holds true here.

Picking Murray’s Top 10 Performances was not easy, but here goes:

10. Stripes (1981)

A solid comedy from 1981, Ivan Reitman’s Stripes represents Murray’s first turn as the leading man and was a great preview for what was to come.

9. Zombieland (2009)

Ruben Fleischer’s very funny zombie comedy might have starred Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, and Emma Stone, but it was Murray’s turn playing himself that represents the best part of the movie. When Murray comes on screen, it was a terrific surprise that provided huge laughs. And he’s got one of the best death scenes in memory.

8. Rushmore (1998)

This picture started Murray’s many collaborations with director Wes Anderson, with titles including The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and Moonrise Kingdom. This is still the best.

7. Kingpin (1996)

Murray’s hilarious turn as a pro bowler in the Farrelly Brother’s 1996 feature is the best thing about this movie, by far. He owns every scene he appears in.

6. Scrooged (1988)

Richard Donner’s comedic update of A Christmas Carol provided a tailor-made role for Bill as an egotistical network exec who’s forced to find the Christmas spirit.

5. What About Bob? (1991)

Frank Oz’s film gives Murray a chance to go off the rails as a severely neurotic patient who ingratiates himself to his doctor’s family on their vacation, while driving the doctor (Richard Dreyfus) a little nuts.

4. Caddyshack (1980)

Carl Spackler. This scene. ‘Nuff said.

3. Ghostbusters (1984)

This classic 80s film is one of the best comedies of all time and features Murray doing what he does best. His highest grossing picture has spawned rumors of a third installment for years, but it’s Murray’s reluctance that has held it up.

2. Lost in Translation (2003)

For those who know Murray for only comedy, please see Sofia Coppola’s wonderful Lost in Translation, starring Bill as a well-known actor in Tokyo who befriends a lonely girl played wonderfully by Scarlett Johannson. His performance is subtle and remarkable and justifiably earned him Oscar attention (though no win).

1. Groundhog Day (1993)

While Murray would earn that Oscar nod for Translation and deserved it, Groundhog Day is proof that the Academy is reluctant to honor comedy, even when it’s obvious. Murray is totally brilliant here as he relives that day over and over again in Punxsutawney. Harold Ramis’s film is a masterpiece. Murray’s performance is masterful.

And there you have it – my personal Top Ten for my personal favorite comedic actor.