'Transformers' Stays on Top, 'Bosses' Fires 'Zookeeper'

by Ray Subers
July 10, 2011
Transformers: Dark of the Moon held on to first place in its second weekend, and actually showed some improvement over the last Transformers installment. Among openers, Horrible Bosses extended the winning streak for R-rated comedies this Summer, while Zookeeper wound up in third on middling results. Overall box office was off around 19 percent from the same period last year, when Despicable Me debuted to a huge $56.4 million.

Transformers fell 52 percent to $47.1 million. That was a lighter decline and a higher second weekend gross than those for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, indicating that Dark of the Moon is maintaining interest at a higher rate than its often maligned predecessor (though, to be fair, Transformers 2's second Saturday was muted by the Fourth of July). On Sunday, Dark of the Moon passed The Hangover Part II to become 2011's top-grossing movie, and its 12-day total currently sits at a healthy $261.1 million.

Horrible Bosses opened to $28.3 million, which was up from Bridesmaids but a bit off from Bad Teacher among Summer 2011's original R-rated comedies. It's also the top-grossing opening ever for a dark/black comedy, beating out The Stepford Wives remake. In a single weekend, it bested its cast members' Summer 2010 projects Going the Distance (Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day) and The Switch (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Aniston).

Horrible Bosses had a lot going for it heading in to the weekend. Distributor Warner Bros. executed a strong, omnipresent marketing effort, clearly explaining the movie'a premise that pitted three lesser-known leads (Bateman, Sudeikis, Day) against three movie stars (Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell, Aniston), with Farrell and Aniston notably playing against type. Plenty of laughs were mixed in with the well-articulated story, and they were presented in a character-oriented way so as to suggest there was more to come in the full-length movie. To top it all off, the trailer and many commercials were cleverly set to Cage the Elephant's "Ain't No Rest For the Wicked," which lined up well with the movie's upbeat tempo but dark themes. Horrible Bosses' audience skewed slightly male (51 percent), while 64 percent were over the age of 25 years old, according to Warner Bros.

Zookeeper launched to $20.1 million. That was an improvement over Kevin James' last movie, The Dilemma, but way down from the rest of his oeuvre, most notably Paul Blart: Mall Cop ($31.8 million). It also had a leg up on last summer's talking animal movies, Marmaduke and Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, but in general it's not an impressive start within the popular subgenre.

While Horrible Bosses felt fresh, Zookeeper reeked of formula. It was transparently conceived as a mash-up of hugely successful movies like Night at the Museum, Doctor Dolittle and Hitch, which could have worked out had the marketing been more compelling. Unfortunately, ads focused almost entirely on the flat relationship between James' titular character and a Nick Nolte-voiced gorilla, while opting to mostly avoid any sort of story. What's particularly odd about this is that, despite Adam Sandler and Kevin James's solid track record together, there was virtually no attempt to highlight the movie's Sandler-voiced monkey.

Zookeeper was greenlit immediately after the overwhelming success of Paul Blart: Mall Cop gave the impression that Mr. James could open a movie on his own. At the time, the movie sounded like a home run but unfortunately the original distributor MGM ran in to a mess of financial issues and the movie ended up being delayed a full year from its original release date in July 2010. In that time, Mr. James' star may have cooled a little, and family audiences have almost certainly grown less interested in the talking animal subgenre. Zookeeper could still pick up steam: Yogi Bear, for example, opened to just $16.4 million in December before ultimately closing north of $100 million, though that was a Christmas movie and was the exception, not the rule. Distributor Sony Pictures' research showed that 52 percent of Zookeeper's audience was parents and their children, and that 53 percent was female.

Cars 2 stabilized a bit, dipping 42 percent to $15.2 million. That was a steeper decline than the first Cars had at the same point, and, as of Friday, Cars 2 began lagging behind its predecessor in total gross. The animated sequel has so far made $148.8 million and is the least-attended Pixar movie at this point in its run.

Bad Teacher was surprisingly unfazed by Horrible Bosses debut, easing 39 percent to $8.9 million. Through its third weekend, the Cameron Diaz comedy has earned $78.7 million.

Larry Crowne and Monte Carlo did little to save face in their second weekends. Larry Crowne fell 55 percent to $5.9 million for a weak $26.2 million total, and it will be the lowest-grossing Tom Hanks movie since at least The Ladykillers in 2004. It did manage to eclipse Hanks' last directorial effort from 1996, That Thing You Do!, though it's unlikely to match that movie's attendance figures. Monte Carlo held a bit better than Larry Crowne: the Selena Gomez vehicle dipped 44 percent to $3.8 million for a total of $16.1 million.

Rounding out the Top 12, Midnight in Paris declined 26 percent to $2.6 million. With a total of $38.6 million, it's now a lock to pass Hannah and Her Sisters ($40.1 million) to become director Woody Allen's highest-grossing movie ever. Still, it will never reach Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and a few other older Allen movies in attendance.

Discuss the Weekend Report on Facebook, Twitter, and in Box Office Mojo's forums.

Related Stories:
? Forecast: Comedy Counter-Programming Can't Cancel Out 'Transformers'
? Around-the-World Roundup: 'Transformers' Dominates Again

Last Weekend:
? 'Transformers' Claims Independence Gross Record

This Timeframe in Past Years:
? 2010 - 'Despicable Me' Dominates, 'Predators' Solid But Unspectacular
? 2009 - 'Bruno' Not as Brawny as 'Borat'
? 2008 - 'Hellboy II' Sizzles
? 2007 - 'Harry Potter' Flies with the 'Phoenix'
? 2006 - 'Pirates' Raids Record Books
? 2005 - 'Fantastic Four' Heats Up the Summer Box Office

Related Charts:
? Weekend Box Office Results
? Showdown: 'Horrible Bosses' Vs. 'Bad Teacher' Vs. 'Bridesmaids'
? Showdown: 'Transformers' Vs. 'Transformers'
? Showdown: 'Cars 2' Vs. 'Cars' Vs. 'Toy Story 3'
? Showdown: 'Green Lantern' Vs. 'Thor' Vs. 'X-Men'

'Harry Potter' Already Breaking Records... >

by Brandon Gray
July 13, 2011
It's not even out yet, but Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 is already breaking records. Distributor Warner Bros. Pictures announced today that the Harry Potter finale has conjured over $32 million in advance ticket sales, setting a new pre-opening benchmark. Regal Entertainment Group alone claimed over $10 million for the 535 locations it operates, whlie MovieTickets.com has already sold more Deathly Hallows Part 2 tickets than for any other 2011 release, marking a 38 percent increase over Part 1.

In a bid to give fans ample opportunity to see the long-awaited finale this weekend (and to potentially break the opening weekend record), Warner Bros. will unleash Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 on over 11,000 screens at 4,375 locations, setting new records for both the franchise and the studio.

Predecessor Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 had around 9,400 screens at 4,125 locations, debuting to a franchise-high $125 million, while Warner Bros. stable mate The Dark Knight had a little over 9,000 screens at 4,366 locations and shattered the opening weekend record with $158.4 million on the same mid-July timeframe in 2008. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End likely still holds the all-time screen count record (11,500), while The Twilight Saga: Eclipse maintains the location count record (4,468).

Included in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2's release is a record 3,000-plus 3D location count, topping Transformers: Dark of the Moon's 2,789 record. Deathly Hallows Part 2 also boasts the IMAX release record, chalking up 274 IMAX locations.

For its midnight launch, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 will show at over 3,800 locations. Deathly Hallows Part 1 played at around 3,700 locations for its midnight debut, which generated $24 million. Eclipse currently holds the midnight record with $30 million at over 4,000 locations.

In Box Office Mojo's "when will you see it" reader polling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 is pulling a whopping 68.2 percent for "opening weekend" so far, surpassing its predecessor's 64.1 percent score. The Dark Knight had nearly 77 percent when it released.

Discuss 'Harry Potter' on Facebook, Twitter, and in Box Office Mojo's forums.

Previous 'Harry Potter' Weekend Reports:
? 'Deathly Hallows Part 1' Marks Liveliest 'Potter' Debut Yet
? 'Half-Blood Prince:' Harry Potter' Has Hot-Blooded Premiere
? 'Order of the Phoenix:' Harry Potter' Flies with the 'Phoenix'
? 'Goblet of Cash:' Harry Potter's 'Goblet' Runneth Over with Cash
? 'Prisoner of Azkaban:' Hotter 'Potter' in Summer
? 'Chamber of Secrets:' 'Harry Potter' Potent in Second Movie Debut

Related Charts:
? 'Harry Potter' Franchise
? All-Time Widest Releases
? All-Time Opening Weekends

Visited Bedford Falls Lately?

Michael Henninger for The New York TimesA life-size statue of James Stewart in the Jimmy Stewart Museum in Indiana, Pa. More Photos ?

IF the Jimmy Stewart Museum didn’t already exist, it might be the perfect place to invent for a sequel to “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

The museum is housed in a modest brown-brick, four-story public library building just down the street from the county courthouse in Indiana, Pa., a town of 15,000 about 60 miles northeast of Pittsburgh that could easily serve as the location for this century’s version of Bedford Falls. Inside, a quiet and low-lighted third floor is given over to an equally low-key yet substantial exhibition of hundreds of James Stewart’s artifacts and mementos, including his diploma from a nearby prep school and a favorite booth from Chasen’s, his later Hollywood haunt.

But there’s a back story: Like the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan Association in “Wonderful Life,” this homegrown institution is facing insolvency and recently needed the generosity of Stewart’s many admirers. “We were close to closure last year,” said the museum’s executive director, Timothy Harley. “Luckily, media coverage generated interest and an amount of donations that is modest but enough to remain open. But those funds will be depleted in a couple of years, and it’s hard to think that many of those who helped will step forward to save us again. They were of an older generation.”

Scattered around the country in nearly a dozen small towns are places like the Jimmy Stewart Museum. The Beech Grove, Ind., public library has built a collection of the native Steve McQueen’s films and biographies. Winterset, Iowa, has preserved the birthplace of John Wayne. Grand Rapids, Minn., has established a Judy Garland Museum in the childhood home of the girl then known as Frances Gumm. There is a range of curatorial sophistication and collection quality, but what all these places have in common is local pride in the glitzy fame achieved by a native son or daughter, the hope for some tourist dollars in otherwise out-of-the-way places, and often a beginning based on the obsessive collecting of memorabilia by a devoted fan. And they all count on something uncertain: a tireless fascination with big movie stars that continues decades after their last films.

“These museums are a relatively new phenomenon,” said Mr. Harley, who has run the Stewart Museum for 6 of its 15 years. “We don’t have a model to look at. Whether this type of presentation has a shelf life is too early to say.”

A little over a year ago Mr. Harley noticed that attendance was plummeting. “Each spring and fall we would have 10 or 15 bookings a month of 48-seat charter buses of lovely senior citizens,” he recalled. “Last fall that completely ended. Not gradually; it just stopped. This spring is the same. Clearly the people that Mr. Stewart called his partners have, at the very least, aged out of traveling, if not passed on.” At its low point recently attendance dipped to nearly half of the 10,000 annual visitors who came in the years after the museum opened in 1995.

A similar story is told by Nan Mattern, executive director of the Clark Gable Birthplace and Museum in the small former coal mining town of Cadiz, Ohio, about 90 miles southwest of Pittsburgh. In 1998, after years of fund-raising, a local group spent more than $150,000 to build a copy of the small two-story home on a quiet residential street where William Clark Gable, the boy who would become known as the King of Hollywood, was born in 1901. They have filled the place with some period furniture, memorabilia from Gable films (heavy on the “Gone With the Wind” tchotchkes) and a few of Gable’s personal items, like a boyhood sled, letters from Dwight Eisenhower and J. Edgar Hoover, and a canceled check for $6 that Gable once wrote to an exterminator.

The most expensive item in the collection, a 1954 Cadillac Coupe de Ville driven by Gable, is garaged in the basement of a separate house that has been turned into a Gable-theme bed-and-breakfast. There’s an “It Happened One Night” room (single beds with a curtain to pull between them) and a more lavish Gable and Lombard suite. (Gable’s marriage to the actress Carol Lombard was cut short by Lombard’s death in a place crash in 1942.)

“We call ourselves a birthplace,” said Ms. Mattern. “But we’re more of a living museum.” Living perhaps, but not exactly thriving. The museum is open six hours a day with varying frequency depending on the season and drew about 2,700 visitors over the last two years, an average of about 5 per day, and about half what it had been in some previous years. “We get buses sometimes,” she said. “But not as much as we’d like.”

Delhi Belly (2011) - Will It Be Aamir's Cross-Over Hit?

Aamir Khan has been associated with some of the biggest hits of Indian cinema in the recent years. These include some non-mainstream movies with cross-over appeal like 'Mumbai Diaries', 'Taare Zameen Par' and 'Peepli Live' as well as commercial movies like Lagaan that was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Film category. With Delhi Belly, Aamir Khan may have got a film that can charm audiences in India and rest of the world alike.

Gangsters, stash of diamonds, drugs, cops and 'innocent' (well, not really!) gang of friends caught in the midst has been tried many a times before. With the surprise 1998 'blockbuster' hit Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels by the talented British director 'Guy Ritchie', the formula has been unleashed on the movie-goers by filmmakers around the world. Such efforts have come, entertained and vanished without a trace, with rare exceptions such as Guy Ritchie's follow-up hit Snatch in 2000.

The Indian mainstream movie industry ('Bollywood') itself has produced a string of immensely forgettable movies with similar plot-elements. Delhi Belly, on first impressions', makes it work. The movie stars Imran Khan as Tashi, Vir Das as Arup and and the Kunaal Roy Kapur as Nitin, the poor soul afflicted with the notorious 'traveler's curse; 'Delhi Belly'.

Produced by Aamir Khan productions with the proverbial 'midas touch', Delhi Belly is an all-out entertainer that is unabashed in it's approach. The pervasive toilet humor, sexual jokes and expletive count in the movie is likely to shock the 'common' people of India who have grown up with their song and dance formulas that are largely promoted as 'family movies'. Though the explicit content in the movie might fail to shock any of the western audiences who have seen teen comedies like the American Pie series and Van Wilder, never has an Indian movie upended cultural expectations with such goofiness. The story revolves around three friends/flatmates, the journalist Tashi, the photo-journalist Nitin and the cartoonist Arup who are leading typical urban young lives with Tashi about to get married to his girl-friend Soniya (Shenaz Treasurywala).

All hell breaks loose as Soniya's favor of transferring a parcel for a fellow air-hostess turns into a nightmare for the three friends due to an innocent mix-up with a stool sample, leaving a gang of local smugglers extremely unhappy. But more than the amusingly chaotic plot line, it's the ensemble performances (I struggle to remember any weak acts) and the 'dirty/witty one liners' (Nitin on Tashi's new dowry car: "This is one ugly car. This is what you get when a donkey humps an auto rickshaw.") that does the magic.

The newcomer director Abhinav Deo's urban comedy caper has a natural cross-over potential and is likely to invite multiple viewings from it's targeted audience - the new-age 'Hinglish' speaking urban youth of India.

For more such detailed reviews with movie stills, and recommended viewings of great international films outside of Hollywood, please visit CINE INTERNATIONAL.
-Ravi Ganne

Special Effects Part 1, 1890's-1940's

Have you ever wondered how filmmakers create those incredible special effects that can turn an above average film into an academy award nominee? Well I have, so I did some digging and here's what I turned up. The origin of special effects (SFX) can be traced back to Swiss photographer Oscar Gustave Reijlander (1813-1875) who in 1856 edited sections of thirty-two different negatives to create a single image, this was an early example of trick still photography.

In 1895 director Alfred Clark created the first known motion picture special effect with the guillotine scene in the film Mary Queen Of Scots. This particular scene was created using a technique known as stop motion where just before Mary was beheaded the film was stopped and the actors all held their positions as a dummy, dressed like mary, was brought in and placed under the blade of the guillotine. The filming resumed the guillotine dropped and the audience was given a realistic sense of an execution, this film was also one of the first ones produced by Thomas Edison (1847-1931. )

Another pioneer in the field of special effects was the french magician Georges Melies (1861-1938) who in 1896 also came across the stop motion effect and would go on to create over 500 short films using this technique along with some other special effects that he discovered which included multiple exposures, time-lapse photography and dissolves. As the motion picture slowly started to evolve in the early 1900's so did special effects as was the case with the Fritz Lang 1927 silent masterpiece Metropolis In this film Lang incorporated a very creative illusional effect known as the Schufftan Process which used mirrors to "place" the actors in miniature sets.

In 1939 Mgm studios released the film The Wizard Of Oz which was based on the Lyman Frank Baum (1856-1919) book The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz, and with it came a new batch of cutting edge special effects. From flying monkeys to combining black and white film with color film to a nasty witch (Margaret Hamilton) who could fly on a broom and hurl balls of fire at a sweet and simple scarecrow (Ray Bolger), this film was packed with special effects.

To me the most impressive effect was the tornado scene where Dorothy (Judy Garland) gets swept up into a cyclone and is transported to the land of oz but creating a tornado on paper is one thing, creating it on a soundstage is entirely different! Special effects coordinator Arnold Gillespie was given this daunting assignment and here's how he did it. His original idea was to use a 35 foot tall rubber cone but that idea was scrapped after it was determined that the cone was to rigid, tornadoes have a natural back and forth and side to side motion and the rubber simply wouldn't flex enough to recreate that motion. His next idea was to use muslin, which is plain woven cloth, this type of material could be manipulated in any direction needed so Gillespie built a 35 foot long tapered muslin tower, to picture this mentally imagine a 35 foot wind sock.

The top was attached to a steel gantry, which was mobile and could travel the length of the set and the bottom disappeared into a slot in the stage floor. A steel rod came up through the base of the tornado and was moved in one direction while the gantry was moved in the opposite direction this gave the tornado a natural swaying motion. Then a material known as Fullers Earth, which is a brown powdery dust, was blown in to the base and top of the tornado by using compressed air, some of the dirt filtered through the muslin which helped to mask it. This effect recreated the dirt and other material that a tornado picks up as it moves across the ground, next came the sky. Thick dark clouds of smoke made from sulphur and carbon were blown onto the set from catwalk's over the stage, this gave the effect of the dark ominous sky's that are usually associated with severe weather. To top off all of this tornadic chaos two panels of glass, which had grey cotton balls pasted to them, were placed four to five feet in front of the cameras and were moved in opposite directions this added to the tornado's churning motion and also helped to hide the gantry and the top portion of the tornado. Throw in some wind machines and you have yourself a very convincing recreation of a tornado.

In 1940 a young special effects man named Larry Butler would use two invention that he created to forever change the field of special effects. The first was the Traveling Matte and the second was the Bluescreen, which is still widely used. The first film that these effects were showcased on was The Thief Of Bagdad (1940) which featured flying carpets, a 70 foot tall genie and a goddess with six arms, to name just a few. The traveling matte is a complex effect to work with because it requires a different matte for each frame of film unlike still photography where single mattes are used. The film must be manipulated various ways especially during its processing to create the illusion of a person being somewhere that they really aren't. An example of this effect would be someone who is clinging by their fingertips to the outside of a 1, 000 foot tall skyscraper.

You could use the actor or actress to do this but if something goes wrong you could wind up with a big mess on your hands! legally speaking that is plus actors are too valuable to risk on something like this. Another option would be to use a stuntperson and only use long camera shots but in this type of scene you would want to see the fear and tension on the actors face so we can toss this option off to the side along with the first, the next option is the traveling matte and bluescreen. First you would film the skyscraper, this is called the background plate then you would film the actor dangling from a wall similar to the skyscraper which is done in the studio against a bluescreen, in reality the actor is only a few feet off the ground. You would then manipulate and combine those pieces of film during its processing and like magic you wind up with is a very realistic scene of a person tangleing from the side of a skyscraper. Larry Butler won the first of his two oscar's in 1940 for the special effects he created using these two inventions in The Thief Of Bagdad, not bad for a man who dropped out of Burbank High School in California to learn special effects from his father who was also in that profession.

In part two we'll look at some special effects used in films from the 1950's through the 1970's.

Around-the-World Roundup: 'Transformers' Dominates Again

by Brandon Gray
July 12, 2011
Transformers: Dark of the Moon ruled the foreign box office again, drawing $94.7 million in 58 holdover markets over the weekend. The robo-threequel's total climbed to $395.7 million (through Monday), which was the third highest of 2011 so far, and it will shoot past Kung Fu Panda 2 by Wednesday to claim second for the year. Add in its domestic tally, and Dark of the Moon's worldwide sum stood at $662.6 million, slotting 47th on the all-time chart.

South Korea again was Transformers: Dark of the Moon's stand-out market. Dropping by just a third, the movie drew $16.3 million there over the weekend, and its nearly $53 million tally was the biggest ever for any movie at the 12-day point and was close to two-thirds ahead of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen by day 12.

The United Kingdom, Australia and Russia followed Korea, each contributing around $7.5 million. In the U.K., Dark of the Moon was off around 27 percent for a $31.8 million sum (nine percent ahead of Revenge of the Fallen). In Australia, it slipped 44 percent for a $29.2 million total (34 percent ahead of Revenge). In Russia, it fell 56 percent for a $36 million tally (184 percent ahead of Revenge). In each country, it also held better than Revenge of the Fallen.

Dark of the Moon also delivered big second weekend grosses and No. 1 rankings in Germany, France, Mexico and Brazil and boasted the all-time highest 12-day grosses in Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. While it's playing nearly everywhere, the movie has two more major markets on the horizon: China on July 21 and Japan on July 29.

Cars 2 came in second for the weekend with an estimated $26.9 million from 27 territories (up eight from last weekend). With $121.8 million in the till, the animated sequel's running 124 percent ahead of its predecessor Cars in the comparable timeframe and same set of territories, according to Walt Disney Pictures. It was also 45 percent ahead of Up and 17 percent behind Toy Story 3. Spain was Cars 2's top debut at $5.1 million (including previews), but the movie broke Disney's animated opening gross record in Argentina with $3.3 million, topping Toy Story 3. Mexico remained the top overall gross contributor with $21.1 million, followed by Russia at $18.4 million. Cars 2 adds only Vietnam for the coming weekend.

In third, Kung Fu Panda 2 whipped up $14 million from 53 territories and swung past the $400 million mark in the process. New Zealand was the animated sequel's main new territory, where it brought in $584,450, which was 14 percent behind its predecessor and 22 percent behind Cars 2. Panda 2's biggest haul for the weekend, though, was in Australia, taking in $3 million and competing neck-and-neck with Cars 2 for winter school vacation dollars.

Bad Teacher scored $13.1 million from 31 territories in fourth place, bringing its total to $45.9 million. The highlight for the comedy was Russia, where it grabbed $5.7 million, edging out The Hangover Part II as the top-grossing start ever for an American comedy and more than doubling the entire run of Bridesmaids.

Mr. Popper's Penguins rounded out the Top Five with $10.3 million from 39 territories (up 18 from last weekend) for a $25.6 million total.

Opening day and date with domestic in 17 territories, Zookeeper mustered modest interest, grossing $6.9 million, most of which coming from Germany and Mexico. The talking-animal comedy ranked second in Germany with $2.8 million (31 percent behind Paul Blart: Mall Cop) and third in Mexico with $2.3 million (more than triple Paul Blart).

2011's top grosser, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, added an estimated $6.5 million, down 19 percent, increasing its total to $785.4 million.

Meanwhile, X-Men: First Class inched past the $200 million mark.

Discuss the Around-the-World Roundup on Facebook, Twitter, and in Box Office Mojo's forums.

Domestic Report:
? 'Transformers' Stays on Top, 'Bosses' Fires 'Zookeeper'

Last Weekend:
? 'Transformers' Lays Waste to World

Related Charts:
? Latest Foreign Charts
? 2011 Worldwide Grosses
? All-Time Worldwide

Micmacs Review

Stars: Dany Boon, Andre Dussollier, Nicholas Marie
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Release Date: December 14, 2010
MPAA Rating: R

I had no clue what Micmacs was and hadn't even heard anyone say anything about the film. When I looked up the title on the IMDB website, there on the cover was a middle-aged man looking a little dumbfounded, wearing pants with suspenders and a long-sleeved wool sweater. So I was completely lost as to why this would be a suggestion for us to write a review on. Then I started to look at the page more closely to discover that the film was directed by Jean Pierre Jeunet. He is a wonderful, self-taught director that has done some really great foreign film work. He has an interesting way of visualizing how a movie should look, showcases different camera angles, has good character development and overall tells an enchanting story.

Micmacs begins with a boy, Bazil, whose father is just killed by a landmine in Morocco. On the day of the funeral, a messenger returns the father's belongings to the family. The young boy discovers a collection of photographs in a box taken after the incident. Upon closer investigation, he discovers the manufacturer of the landmines is La Vigilante De L'armement. His mother, dealing with her grief, sends her son away to a Catholic boarding school. Bazil cannot stand the harsh treatment inflicted by the nuns and runs away.

We meet him again 30 years later and he has become a video rental clerk at Matador Video. We find him one evening relaxing at his job watching an old Bacall and Bogart film, lip-syncing the lines of the movie. The film has ended and his attention is now drawn to the sound of gunfire outside. Someone in a black car is dueling with a person on a motorcycle. A bullet flies through the air, strikes the front glass window of the video shop and soars right past Bazil. Then suddenly the car crashes, the driver falls out and shoots one final shot at the biker. The biker slips on the wet pavement and loses his grip on the gun. The weapon goes soaring up and strikes the ground just so, that it fires again. The bullet, has found a new home, right in Bazil's forehead. The doctors at the hospital contemplate whether to remove the bullet because if they do he could become a vegetable. If they don't, he could die any second. They flip a coin and the decision is to leave it in. "He'll drive airport security wild."

After being released from the hospital, Bazil returns home only to discover that the landlord has changed the locks and his poessions are gone. He still has his job so not all is hopeless. When he arrives at work, he finds that he has been replaced by a young and attractive girl. As he is leaving, she runs up to him and hands him the shell to one of the bullets that had been fired the night of the accident. He takes it obligingly and looks it over to see the name Les Arsenaux D'Aubervilliers printed on it. He puts it in his pocket and decides to find someplace to sleep for the night. Now homeless, jobless, and without a family, he takes refuge in the streets. His only form of income is from the coins that passersby drop into his hat as he performs pantomime in the plaza.

One day while performing, a fellow homeless man calls him over. The man introduces himself as Slammer, due to his time in jail, and that he might know of a family that would be willing to adopt Bazil. Intrigued, he follows Slammer to a junkyard and enters a home built from of all sorts of trash. Inside the cavernous heap he is greeted by several other residents. There is Tiny Pete, a mechanical master, Calculator, who can eye exact measurements with ease, Remington, an ethnographer, Buster, a human cannonball with the mission to get back in the Guinness Book of World Records, Mama Chow, a motherly type, and the Contortionist. He is welcomed to the family.

After salvaging some interesting rubbish, Bazil is returning home in his three-wheeled truck. A few things fall out while he is driving and he stops to retrieve them. Bending down, he sees in the reflection of a puddle a familiar image. It is the office of La Vigilante De L'armement and across the street is the office of Les Arsenaux D'Aubervilliers. A little shocked that the two companies, that have brought the most turmoil his life, are right there beside him. He decides to go in La Vigilante to speak to the president about the bullet that now resides in his head. The president Mr. De Fenouillet wants nothing to do with him. After being thrown out, Bazil sneaks into a party for the chief at Les Arsenaux. Mr. Francois Marconi is giving a speech about how happy he is that the company is doing so well and how he regrets nothing. At that moment Bazil plans to take revenge against both of these men and their companies with the help of his new family.

Jean Pierre Jeunet has directed such films as City of the Lost Children, Delicatessen, Amelie, A Very Long Engagement and a few others. He has the most interesting way of presenting a film and the cinematography is just so unique. The colors have this muted strength like the intensity of when it is about to rain and the sky turns a purplish gray which causes the leaves on the trees to appear a more vibrant green. Jeunet's films are always a delight to watch and it's enjoyable to find Dominique Pinon. He is in every one of Jeunet's films. It's like a Where's Waldo, but you are looking for this short stocky man with great big wrinkly smile. I really enjoyed Micmacs and would be willing to watch it again, but the storyline wasn't hugely memorable. Interesting, but not necessarily memorable.

If you want more great reviews, visit http://slackers.com/!