REVERSE ANGLE
Room for disaster
For those awaiting “The Disaster Artist,” James Franco’s chronicle of the making of “The Room”: There’s now a distributor and a release date.
The distributor is little-powerhouse-that-could A24 (“Room” — not “The Room” — and “Moonlight”), and the limited-release date is … Dec. 1. So even though it won’t be out for nearly seven months, remember that the print that received much acclaim at SXSW was a “work in progress.” The filmmakers and distributors also may be aiming for more than just praise, as December is during the heat of awards season.
The 2003 San Francisco-set “The Room” is widely regarded as one of the worst films ever made and has turned into a cult movie. “Disaster” stars writer-director Franco as “The Room” writer-director Tommy Wiseau. The cast of “Disaster” includes Seth Rogen, Alison Brie, Zac Efron and Jason Mantzoukas of TV’s “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” fame.
It’s difficult to capture the off-kilter joy of “The Room” in one (all ages) scene, but here’s the “You’re tearing me apart” clip: https://tinyurl.com/jjvtajc
Trivia question
Though in different disciplines, what offscreen honors do John Cusack and Guy Ritchie hold?
Value slashed
“King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” is the summer’s first bomb. Industry experts foresee as much as a $150 million write-down after a $15 million domestic bow for the $175 million movie.
What is a “write-down”? According to Investopedia: “In terms of accounting, a ‘write-down’ is performed to reduce the value of an asset to offset a loss or expense.”
That’s a bad thing. A $150 million write-down is bad news.
Critics are having a field day, saying the filmmakers might want to put that sword back where they found it, among the kinder cuts. One analyst quoted in the Hollywood Reporter blamed the “wrong director, wrong cast, wrong script” and the “‘Game of Thrones’-onsteroids direction the studio went with.”
Chronicle Movie Critic Mick LaSalle wrote, “It’s an achievement we haven’t seen since the days of silent film: a movie that’s lousy before a single line of dialogue is spoken.”
Not counting “Arthur,” director Guy Ritchie’s career gross average stands at $145.5 million globally. Not huge, but certainly enough to keep franchise hopefuls interested — which, apparently, “Arthur” was meant to launch: yet another shared-universe franchise.
Ritchie’s Rotten Tomatoes career average, though, is now 49 after “Arthur’s” rocky landing at 27.
Right on Cusack
How about a retrospective at some respected festival for John Cusack?
Sure, his recent oeuvre has been marked by B-fare (“Arsenal,” 4 percent on Rotten Tomatoes; “Cell,” 11 percent; “Reclaim,” 0 percent), but no matter the project, he has been eminently watchable. Just watch him in Spike Lee’s “Chi-Raq” (2015), and “Dragon Blade” (also 2015) gave the longtime kickboxer the chance to fight Jackie Chan (though as a Roman general).
A quick reminder of Cusack’s filmography: “Love & Mercy,” “Max,” “High Fidelity,” “Being John Malkovich,” “Grosse Pointe Blank,” “Bullets Over Broadway,” “The Grifters” and “Eight Men Out.”
Then there are crowd-pleasers such as “Con Air,” “Say Anything …” and “Hot Tub Time Machine,” and cineastes’ darlings such as “The Player” and “The Thin Red Line.”
The Chan-Cusack fight from “Dragon Blade” can be seen at https://tinyurl.com/hxafbvj.
Trivia answer
They are both real-life black belts. Cusack has trained for more than two decades with Benny “The Jet” Urquidez in Ukidokan kickboxing and is a level-six black belt. Ritchie holds two black belts, in judo and Brazilian jujitsu (under Renzo Gracie) — and has also trained in karate.
The “Grosse Point Blank” fight scene between Cusack and real-life kickboxing mentor Urquidez is at https://tinyurl.com/ llsa7nh.