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Total Recall and Dredd With IMDb’s Keith Simanton

In our monthly conversation with IMDb’s Managing Editor Keith Simanton, we discussed this […]

In our monthly conversation with IMDb’s Managing Editor Keith Simanton, we discussed this weekend’s box-office disappointment Total Recall. A reinvention of the Schwarzenegger-tastic original by Paul Verhoeven, the movie reinvents a story by Philip K. Dick, whose work has been adapted into other movies, including Blade Runner and Minority Report. What did Simanton think of the newest interpretation of the film?A bit like Marty McFly said about rock ‘n’ roll, those of us over 25 might not appreciate the film–but our kids will love it. Read on for more.Certainly this weekend should be interesting; you had this thing where Universal moved The Bourne Legacy out of the way of this weekend–how’s Total Recall looking?Well, I’m guesstimating–and this is just me speaking–that it’s actually around $28 million [note: Total Recall actually made $25.6 million and took second at the box office this weekend]. It’s not going to get great reviews from critics, I don’t think. I think it’s going to be middling–right now it’s at a 6.4, which is actually not bad here. It was pretty fascinating in that I found it pretty tedious–and it has this one conceit in it which is a major, major plot point.It’s got this major conceit, and it’s in the prologue so I’m not giving away too much here. There’s been this apocalyptic scenario and there’s only a few habitable places. One of them is basicallyi the U.K., and one of them is Australia, which is The Colony. The bizarre thing is that they travel back and forth through what they call The Fall, which is a big chunnel between the U.K. and Australia, and it only takes fifteen minutes.

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Total Recall Jessica Biel Yeah, she was rumored for The Wolverine a while back and that got quashed pretty quickly but during those couple of days, the real venom and vitriol I heard from some comics fans was out of this world. She’s the flipside of what we were talking about for Kristen Stewart, I think, in that whatever grief she gets, there’s something about Stewart that really makes me want to give her the benefit of the doubt, but Biel for whatever reason just doesn’t win me over that way. Carey Mulligan Total Recall
Alison Brie Stana Katic Castle The other thing about this is, if this is a $30 million open and it doesn’t make a ton of money, what do you think this does for Colin Farrell? Wasn’t this kind of his step back into the spotlight? Fright Night Seven Psychopaths Martin McDonagh In Bruges
Horrible Bosses Fright Night Fright Night Fright Night kind of reminded me of the way he played Bullseye in Daredevil. And it’s one of those films that proves that no matter who you are or how you’re performing, there’s only so much you can do with a bad script. Craig Gillespie
Total Recall Dredd I really, really loved it. In terms of just enjoyment factor, I think that of the four comic book movies that came out this year, it would be my favorite in terms of just sitting down and watching. I’d say Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises and The Amazing Spider-Man, probably in that order, not necessarily in terms of what is high art but in terms of where I had the most fun. It’s essentially Die Hard, but if Die Hard was a very hard R. It’s that same basic thing–he and his partner go to arrest someone and find themselves locked inside of what essentially is a city block surrounded by huge, concrete doors. The Raid Right, exactly. If the building in The Raid was 238 stories high and basically self-sustaining.
2000 AD Judge Dredd Honestly, it’s Lionsgate. I almost feel like they–becuase they did the same thing with The Hunger Games, releasing it so early in the season. Twilight, of course, is set in stone and has been for some time, but other than that I feel like maybe they don’t have the juice to get it in 4,000 theaters or something and so they try and schedule it at a time when nothing else is going to open at $100 million and so they can at least leverage, say, 1,500. At least you’re not getting steamrolled. So many people have gotten their pants handed to them at the box office this year that it seems to me that’s a legitimate concern. –And Hunger Games didn’t hurt, either. You look at the would-be blockbusters this year and it’s almost like the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. For Avengers and Batman and whatever else to probably gross a billion dollars by the time they’re out of theaters, and then everything else to underperform, with the exception of things like Ted Dark Shadows Men in Black III Yeah, they’re saying now that there’ll be a fourth Men in Black sooner than later which to me is a testament to the growing strength of the international market. Total Recall