“Couples Retreat advances to top - Toronto Sun” plus 4 more

Couples Retreat advances to top - Toronto Sun
King Kong's 22-inch metal skeleton is going up for sale - News-Democrat
Paranormal Activity - San Francisco Chronicle
Suggestion powers 'Paranormal Activity' phenom - Daily Illini
Secretariat's story heading to big screen - Charleston Daily Mail

Couples Retreat advances to top - Toronto Sun

Posted: 12 Oct 2009 12:02 AM PDT

LOS ANGELES -- Swingers co-stars Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau buddied up for the weekend's top movie as Couples Retreat debuted with $35.3 million, while the micro-budgeted fright flick Paranormal Activity leaped into the top 10.

Shot for a reported $15,000, Paranormal Activity came in at No. 5 with $7.1 million as distributor Paramount expanded it into daylong release after two weeks of midnight-only screenings.

Paranormal Activity played in narrow release of just 160 cinemas, a fraction of the theatre count for other top movies. It averaged a whopping $44,163 a theatre, compared with $11,780 in 3,000 theatres for Couples Retreat.

Paranormal Activity was acquired by former Paramount partner DreamWorks at 2007's Slamdance Film Festival with the idea that writer-director Oren Peli would re-shoot it on a bigger budget.

But after audiences responded well to a test screening, Paramount decided to sneak Paranormal Activity out, allowing the movie to build buzz online much as The Blair Witch Project did 10 years ago.

Like Blair Witch, Paranormal Activity is fiction shot in documentary style as a young man tries to record strange doings and apparitions in a house

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WEEKEND BOX OFFICE

Dollar Figures are for the Friday-To-Sunday Period

1. Couples Retreat $35.3M

2. Zombieland $15.0M

3. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs $12.0M

4. Toy Story 1 and 2 in 3D $7.7M

5. Paranormal Activity $7.1M

6. Surrogates $4.1M

7. The Invention of Lying $3.4M

8. Whip It $2.8M

9. Capitalism: A Love Story $2.7M

10. Fame $2.6M

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King Kong's 22-inch metal skeleton is going up for sale - News-Democrat

Posted: 11 Oct 2009 01:01 AM PDT

Much of the credit goes to Willis O'Brien, then chief technician at RKO studios, who created the monster by adding layers of cotton, rubber, liquid latex and rabbit's fur to a metal armature.

The figurines were then filmed one frame at a time, moving them ever-so-slightly between shots to give the illusion of movement.

Although several such models were used in the film, Christie's spokeswoman Jo Swetenham said this one was thought to be the largest. She added that the monster's fleshy covering has since rotted away.

The movie spawned a series of sequels and remakes, including a 1976 version starring Jeff Bridges and Peter Jackson's computer-wizardry packed "King Kong" with Jack Black, Naomi Watts and Adrien Brody.

The skeletal miniature may lack Kong's heft, but it still comes with a kingly price tag.

Christie's said it hopes to get up to 150,000 pounds (about $240,000) from the figure's sale on Nov. 24.

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Paranormal Activity - San Francisco Chronicle

Posted: 09 Oct 2009 12:20 AM PDT

It's possible to reach a point where low budget becomes a filmmaking advantage. When you have no serious special effects, no time for reshoots and your two lead actors have one feature film role between them, the story has to be really good.

"Paranormal Activity" goes down in the ultra-low-budget horror movie hall of fame, recalling the vibe of "The Blair Witch Project" without copying that movie outright. It's an acquired taste - people who prefer minor league baseball games and amateur porn are more likely to enjoy this movie - but succeeds in its modest goals of building tension slowly and generating a handful of legitimate scares. A few people in the audience were laughing during the first half of the film. No one was laughing during the long walk out of the theater.

You may already know the story behind the film. Director Oren Peli shot it in seven days entirely in his home, for $15,000. It was championed by Steven Spielberg, among others, and a more polished version of the movie was ordered. But when Peli screened the original, crowds enjoyed it so much that the real thing got the distribution deal.

Hopefully, you know almost nothing about the plot, which will not be revealed here. Katie and Micah (Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat) are a young couple who are experiencing some paranormal weirdness in their small condo. Micah sets up a camera to capture the events, and the audience goes along for the ride.

You may not be rushing to rent Featherston and Sloat's other work (and work is singular - only Featherston had been in a movie before) but the actors have excellent chemistry, and both are sexy in a real-people-you-know, non-Hollywood kind of way. Sloat is particularly convincing, with a clueless bravado that brings some needed levity to the slower parts of the film.

Peli does some wonderful things with sound, which hopefully won't get ruined by jackasses in your audience who are conversing at inappropriate times. His script is strong and less ambiguous than "Blair Witch." (One wonders what he could do with, say, $45,000.) The slow parts are a little too slow, and the special effects aren't very special. But he paces the movie perfectly, with a less-is-more mentality that comes when your film isn't quite as expensive as a Honda Civic.

In the end, the budget seems about perfect. It turns out that a really cheap film and a filmgoer with a good imagination is more than enough for a scary and entertaining night at the movies.

-- Advisory: This film contains strong language, frightening scenes, gore and some (offscreen) amateur porn.

E-mail Peter Hartlaub at phartlaub@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page E - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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Suggestion powers 'Paranormal Activity' phenom - Daily Illini

Posted: 11 Oct 2009 08:35 PM PDT

LOS ANGELES — The no-budget ghost story "Paranormal Activity" arrives 10 years after "The Blair Witch Project," and the two horror movies share more than a clever construct and shaky, handheld camerawork.

Like its predecessor, "Paranormal Activity" has been making waves through a viral marketing campaign that has been building positive buzz through early, sold-out college town screenings and Internet chatter. The film's title has become a nightly fixture among Twitter's trending topics, despite playing only midnight shows in 33 theaters when it opened last Friday.

This week it expands to 46 markets where it will play throughout the day and evening in more than 170 theaters. And, like "Blair Witch," ''Paranormal Activity" is bound to divide audiences who have absorbed the hype.

Best advice: See it early in its run - and late at night in a packed theater. Half the fun of the movie comes from the communal experience of sharing in something that feels like it hasn't been market-tested within an inch of its life.

The irony is that Paramount Pictures did initially test the film with the idea of having writer-director Oren Peli re-shoot it with a bigger budget. But the movie, which video-game designer Peli shot two years ago for a reported $15,000, played so well in that one screening that the studio decided go a different route, trimming the length and punching up the ending.

"Paranormal Activity" opens with a title card, thanking the families of Micah Sloat and Katie Featherstone as well as the San Diego Police Department, an immediate signal that the "found footage" we're about to see won't have a happy outcome.

Micah (Micah Sloat) has bought a video camera to document the "weird (stuff)" that has been happening in the two-story San Diego home he shares with his girlfriend of three years, Katie (Katie Featherstone).

It turns out that freaky things have been happening to Katie since her family's house burned down when she was eight. Since then, Katie has suffered through nightmares and felt the presence of a "shadowy figure" at the foot of her bed. The young couple consult a psychic (Michael Bayouth), who senses the bad mojo and refers them to a demonologist.

His other piece of advice: DO NOT buy a Ouija board. You don't want to open the lines of communication with this thing. Micah, being an arrogant young dude and a bit of an idiot, dismisses the tip and refuses any outside help. "This is my girlfriend, my house and I'm gonna' solve the problem!"

Micah's solution is to set up his new camera on a tripod at the foot of the couple's bed and document what happens while they sleep. The movie's genius comes from its slow-building tension as it returns night after night to this fixed location, a time code running in the lower right corner of the screen. The bedroom door leading to the upstairs hallway is ajar ... and then it's not.

The entire film takes place at the couple's cookie-cutter dwelling, its layout and furnishings indistinguishable from just about any other readymade home constructed in the past 20 years. Its ordinariness makes the eerie, nocturnal activities all the more terrifying, as does the anonymity of the actors adequately playing the leads.

The thinness of the premise is laid bare toward the end, but not enough to erase the horror of those silent, nighttime images seen through Micah's bedroom camera. "Paranormal Activity" owns a raw, primal potency, proving again that, to the mind, suggestion has as much power as a sledgehammer to the skull.

"Paranormal Activity," a Paramount Pictures release, is rated R for language. Running time: 84 minutes. Three stars out of four.

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Secretariat's story heading to big screen - Charleston Daily Mail

Posted: 08 Oct 2009 07:59 AM PDT

DOSWELL, Va. (AP) - In an era defined by a dispiriting war and a surreal Washington scandal, Secretariat gave Americans and their bruised psyche something to cheer about when the big thoroughbred captured the Triple Crown in 1973.

The racehorse considered by many to be the best ever and the housewife-turned-breeder who soared in a male-dominated sport are now coming to the big screen.

"Secretariat" has begun filming in Kentucky with Diane Lane portraying owner Penny Chenery and John Malkovich cast as trainer Lucien Laurin.

Mayhem Pictures, with the backing of Walt Disney Pictures, is producing "Secretariat." Mayhem's other uplifting sports-themed stories include "Miracle," about the 1980 U.S. Olympic ice hockey team, and "The Rookie" and "Invincible," both Walter Mitty tales.

Randall Wallace, who directed "We Were Soldiers," is directing. A fall 2010 release is expected.

Unlike "Seabiscuit," the 2003 movie based on the undersized thoroughbred who buoyed the spirits of a Depression-era nation, "Secretariat" will focus on Chenery's improbable success in the old money, bourbon-sipping world of horse breeding and the chestnut stallion's stirring, record-shattering run for the Triple Crown. Like "Seabiscuit," the nation's mood - in this case, the era of Watergate and Vietnam - is key to the storytelling.

"Really, it's Penny's story," producer Mark Ciardi said of Chenery, who left her life in Denver to take over ailing father Christopher Chenery's faltering horse breeding farm 20 miles north of Richmond in Doswell.

"Her coming into a man's world, learning and rekindling this love she had of horse racing," Ciardi said, shorthanding elements of Chenery's story. "She's this woman in a man's world, just doing what she has to do."

Chenery, now 87 and living in Boulder, Colo., is characteristically low-key about the challenges she faced running Meadow Farm, now the home of the State Fair of Virginia.

"It didn't occur to me that I was a woman in a man's field," she said. "I just thought I've got the best horse."

Secretariat was unquestionably that.

Besides his iconic 31-length win in the Belmont Stakes, "Big Red" set records there and the Kentucky Derby that still stand 36 years later. Others - including the Daily Racing Form - insist he broke the track record at the Preakness. The disputed official time ultimately was upheld in arbitration.

"He's the best horse I've ever seen - and not just close, but by lengths," said William Nack, the retired Sports Illustrated writer who wrote "Secretariat: The Making of a Champion," the book upon which the movie draws heavily. He is a consultant for the film.

Nack, who primarily covered boxing and horse racing during his career, called Secretariat's Belmont win "the greatest sporting event up to its time." He calls it the equal of Muhammad Ali's stunning KO of George Foreman in Zaire in 1974.

"It's a helluva story and I'm glad it's being told," Nack said.

While women could be found on the backside of tracks in the 60s and 70s, the sport was still dominated by larger-than-life men like Bull Hancock, who ran Kentucky's Claiborne Farm, the top thoroughbred farm of that period. In the film he is portrayed by Fred Thompson, the actor and former U.S. senator from Tennessee.

Chenery turned to Hancock when she needed help. But in keeping with the sensibilities of the era and the sport, she would not be allowed in the breeding pen at Claiborne.

"There were certain cultural barriers she had to break down," Kate Tweedy said of her mother. "She had to establish herself as the boss. She had to understand all the breeding terms."

At Meadow Farm, Nack said, "She ran the show. There was nobody else to do it. She was the only one in that whole outfit to take a strong hand and protect the interests of her dying father."

Secretariat wasn't Meadow Farm's only star. In 1972, Riva Ridge won the 1972 Kentucky Derby and the Belmont - two jewels of the crown.

Chenery, who graduated from Smith College and nearly completed her studies for an MBA before her marriage to John Tweedy, relished the opportunity to return to Virginia. She didn't view it as a burden.

"I was always pretty well organized and a strong-minded person," she said. "I was just waiting for a chance like this to come along. I was bored stiff being a housewife."

The arrangement, however, didn't sit well with John Tweedy.

"He really was part of the generation that basically thought the man should be making the money and the woman should be staying at home," Kate Tweedy said.

The marriage ended one year after Secretariat's historic Triple Crown run.

Penny Chenery said the divorce wasn't based on her running Meadow Farm. "Marriages don't break up because of external things," she said.

Ciardi, who is producing the film with Gordon Gray, said the horse wrangler who worked on "Seabiscuit" is casting several horses to play Secretariat. Once filming is completed in the Lexington and Louisville areas, the crew will move to Louisiana to reproduce the Triple Crown infields at Evangeline Downs.

Asked how much is budgeted for the film, Ciardi said, "It's not as much as 'Seabiscuit' - not nearly as much."

Secretariat died Oct. 4, 1989, at Claiborne Farm in Paris, Ky.

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On the Web:

Secretariat: http://www.secretariat.com/

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