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Today, the movie musical crosses the $300 million line domestically. It’s been 17 days since the Jon M. Chu film starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande was launched into theaters. Amazing.
Internationally, however, “Wicked” has yet to cast a spell. The total take is $97 million after arriving in a lot of countries.
But for some reason, “Wicked” hasn’t arrived in some key places. The musical only opened in China yesterday. (Pre-sales didn’t look promising, however.) In France, early numbers are low. Germany and a few European locales won’t get it until next week. Japan doesn’t see it until next March.
Still, “Wicked” shows no signs of slowing down through New Year’s here in the States. Once the holiday vacation kicks in, kids are going to be parked in those seats. Is $500 million that far off? Does Elphaba have a broom?
With “Babygirl,” Halina Reijn’s erotic thriller, all I could think was, Nicole Kidman was too much for Tom Cruise. That’s it, period.
Kidman has turned out to be the bravest actress of her generation. She’s got her Oscar, and appeared on Broadway. She’s had massive hits, and intriguing failures. The latter are almost all experiments that made no money but advanced her acting chops beyond imagination. Think “Fur” or “Birth.” She will try anything that pushes the envelope.
“Babygirl” is a sexual thriller. Kidman, who’s a stunning 57 years old, plays a wealthy, successful mogul named Romy. She’s married to Antonio Banderas’s Jacob, a theater director. They have two cute daughters, the eldest of whom is gay. Romy is a total success on the outside. But she has deep secrets, all to do with her sex life.
When the movie begins, Romy and Jacob are in bed, trying to go at it. The sex is a little graphic for a Kidman movie, and this is just the beginning. Romy makes Jacob think she’s satisfied, but she finishes up in a another room watching porn on her laptop.
It’s not long before Romy has her eye on a company intern that looks like a male model. That would be Harris Dickinson as Samuel, blonde, tall, fit and confident. Soon they are playing sex games in a hotel or anywhere else they can get away with it. They radiate heat. But Samuel seems to get the power dynamic before Romy when he reminds her that one phone call could ruin her life. She doesn’t care.
“Babygirl” could take the route of “Fatal Attraction” as Samuel starts popping up on Romy’s home turf. But Reijn won’t let it go that way. She avoids cliches throughout and always has her eye on a third act. When Jacob and Samuel actually break into fisticuffs, the fight takes an unexpected and civilized turn. This is not going to become a murder mystery.
Kidman plays Romy with utmost subtlety and human infusion. She’s an onion, peeling away layers. Another cliche: she’s a snake, shedding her skin over and over. She knows her obsession with Samuel can ruin her business and family, but she’s not going to let it. Kidman plays the sex scenes hot. She learned from Stanley Kubrick, remember? Her eyes dilate when she’s with Samuel, the first man to give her an orgasm (she tells Jacob whoops). But Kidman is all all about eyes. At other times, when Romy is playing the wife, those eyes explode, go very wide so you can see Romy’s gears turning to figure out her next move. Watch her drink a glass of milk she didn’t order, I dare you.
A note about Banderas, who the has thankless cuckold role. Watch Jacob slowly come to terms with his house burning down, and how he responds to it. Jacob has been a good husband, but he’s no pushover.
Reijn is a celebrated Dutch director and writer with no American credits. What big name star would say yes to this? Give Kidman her props. As with movies like “Rabbit Hole,” she saw the potential. Reijn takes her from boardroom to rave nightclub, lighting up the movie with revelations about Romy’s potential to break free. (It’s not for the Academy but Sky Ferreira’s electronic dance music and the lighting are memorable.) “Babygirl” goes into her win column, and guarantees her an Oscar nomination. You can’t wait to see what she does next.
The Bollywood movie, “Pushpa 2: The Rule,” made $4.5 million on Thursday night.
It came within $200,000 of topping “Wicked,” the number 1 film. “Pushpa” outranked Hollywood hits, “Moana 2” and “Gladiator II.”
According to Wikipedia, “Pushpa 2” is a 2024 Indian Telugu-language action drama film[6] directed by Sukumar and produced by Mythri Movie Makers, in association with Sukumar Writings. The film stars Allu Arjun in the titular role, alongside Rashmika Mandanna, Fahadh Faasil, Jagapathi Babu, Dhananjaya, Rao Ramesh, Sunil and Anasuya Bharadwaj. It is the second instalment in the Pushpa film series and the sequel to the 2021 film “Pushpa: The Rise.”
I caught up with HBO’s “Yacht Rock” documentary last night.
Is it a coincidence Yacht Rock rhymes with brain rot? The movie is a celebration of everything that went wrong with popular music in the early 80s. It’s a glorification of crap.
The basic conceit here is that because Steely Dan had so many outside musicians help them, they became the fulcrum for this thing. Nothing could be further from the truth. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker’s sly enigmatic lyrics and complex jazz inventions were pure genius. And when they saw their time ending in 1981 they got out. That’s when this bland interpretation of their music crept into pop.
It’s not like there aren’t some nuggets of gold from groups characterized as Yacht Rock. Toto’s “Hold the Line” is an example. A lot of Michael McDonald’s Doobie Brothers work was very good. But then it started to get copied, with each copy getting fainter. Someone in the doc says that “What a Fool Believes” is the zenith of Yacht Rock. But it was the rip offs that made it so awful.
One thing about this doc, concerning McDonald. His hit, “I Keep Forgetting,” was a rip off of Chuck Jackson’s 1961 hit, “I Keep Forgetting,” which was written by giants Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller. McDonald had to pay them and add their names to the credits of his hit. This is not mentioned at all in “Yacht Rock,” which is disturbing. It’s also one of the many glaring mistakes in the film.
In 1981 Christopher Cross won a bunch of awards for his Yacht Rock song, “Sailing.” He may be a very nice guy but I find his music as cringey as humanly possible. In 1981, smart people were listening to Prince, Talking Heads, Blondie, The Police, Elvis Costello, early rap, the Ramones, and so on. This other stuff was to be avoided like the plague. And Cross’s Grammy? Could you really say that “Sailing” was a better Best Song than “New York, New York”? Cross’s album was more important than Pink Floyd’s “The Wall.” This is garbage.
So, I vent. But “Yacht Rock” sent me over the top. It’s as unknowing a documentary as HBO’s Stax film from earlier this year. HBO makes such a good non fiction films on balance, it’s a shame they can’t get this genre right.
Timothee Chalamet is coming for his Oscar playing Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown.”
The James Mangold directed biopic is getting raves in advance of its December 18th IMAX opening. Yesterday it was named one of the 10 best movies of 2024 by the American Film Institute.
Chalamet is sensational as young Bob Dylan. He sang all the songs in the film and played guitar and harmonica. It’s a bravura performance that works much better than even fans hoped for.
The famed singer songwriter endorsed the movie this week on Twitter as well.
Sony is releasing the movie’s soundtrack on Christmas Day to streaming services. CDs and LPs will come next. In the meantime, here are two preview songs, “Girl from the North Country” and “Like a Rolling Stone.” The latter is from the big 1965 Newport Folk Music Festival scene in the movie. On Twitter yesterday, Dylan himself called the Newport episode a “debacle.” That moment in rock history — of Dylan “plugging in” and going electric — is canon. I don’t know that Dylan has ever addressed it as a debacle before.
Hold on, because “A Complete Unknown” is going to be big!
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Archewell Foundation has filed its 2023 tax report.
Their enemies would like Archewell to fail, but it’s hanging in there despite a huge fall off in 2022.
In 2023, total assets are reported at $10 million. In 2021, their founding year, total sssets were reported at $9 million. In 2022, they fell to $8.3 million. So things are improving.
Donations to the foundation from contributors were $5.3 million, up almost triple from $2 million in 2022.
Salaries zoomed from $640,441 to almost a million dollars. Harry and Meghan do not take salaries from the foundation.
Despite donations to the charity rising, grants going out only increased a little, from $1.2 million to $1.3 million.
The largest grant paid out was to Ashley Biden’s highly rated Women’s Wellness Place of Media, Pennsylvania for $250,000. Second biggest was to the NAACP in Baltimore for $125,000. Runner up at number three was The Markup News in New York $90,000. They’re a progressive journalism site that investigates technology.
All in all, no objectionable donations. The Sussexes played it safe in their third year and reaped rewards.
This has not been an easy Broadway season for new shows.
Closing on December 15th is “Swept Away,” the really strange musical that combined seafaring, folk music, and cannibalism.
Yes, I said cannibalism.
“Swept Away” was not the musical version of Lina Wertmuller’s famous movie. Instead, ittook the music of the very inventive Avett Brothers folk-Americana group and combined it with a weird, unpleasant story of sailors in the 1800s who lose their ship at sea and wind up in a row boat. Eventually, they eat one of their party.
The show was capitalized at $14 million. That money has been swept away.
“Swept Away” comes from big people. It stars John Gallagher Jr., Stark Sands, Adrian Blake Enscoe and Wayne Duvall. Michael Mayer directed from a John Logan book. They really tried to make something good out of this crazy idea. The performers were fine and so was the music but the set looked like a cheap version of “The Lash Ship” and the story was insane.
Total performances: 32. Plus 20 previews.
“Swept Away” follows Elton John’s musical, “Tammy Faye,” which closes this Saturday night.
Here are the top 10 lists for movies and TV from the American Film Institute this year.
These are likely the Oscar movies. Only two– “Wicked” and “Dune Two” — are box office hits. The rest are indie films with small grosses, or are streaming. Dark horse: “Conclave.”
Steve Alaimo, the veteran music man, died last week. Condolences to his family.
Anyone who followed Henry Stone’s TK Records in the 1970s knows Alaimo’s name from the record labels. He was the guy who made the all time classic, “Rock Your Baby” by George McRae, into a massive hit. He was also involved with Gwen McRae’s “Rockin Chair” and KC and the Sunshine Band.
Alaimo was also responsible for producing Sam & Dave’s early pre-Atlantic Records. He wrote their first hit, long before “Soul Man” and “Hold On I’m Coming.” It was called “No More Pain,” on Marlin Records. Below you can find his official obit and listen to that Sam & Dave record. Sam Moore tells me Alaimo changed his life before Ahmet Ertegun happened on the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers singing in Miami.
Another great one gone.
Official obit:
Steve Alaimo, the honey-voiced music maverick who helped create the Miami sound, passed away on November 30th, 2024 at the age of 84. Known as much for his mischievous grin as his golden ear for hits, Alaimo lived life like one of his beloved records – with perfect timing and always leaving them wanting more.
From his early days as a teen idol (with hits like “Everyday I have to cry” and “Cast Your Fate to the Wind”) He had nine singles on the Billboard Top 100 Chart and was the host of Dick Clark’s “Where the Action Is” to his later role as music industry kingpin, Alaimo’s career read like a who’s who of American music.
Alongside Howard and Ron Albert, he co-owned Audio-Vision Studios and Vision Records, where his legendary ear and irreverent wit helped shape countless hits. His earlier venture with Henry Stone, TK Records, became the launchpad for disco sensations like KC and the Sunshine Band, George McCrae, Betty Wright and Bobby Caldwell.
A man who could make even a boring industry meeting feel like a party, Alaimo approached life with a wisecrack ready and a twinkle in his eye. He split his time between making music magic and handicapping horses, often suggesting that the latter was the more reliable way to make a buck in the entertainment business.
He is survived by his daughter Lindsey and two grandchildren, Nicholas and Maximo, who were the real platinum records of his life and wife Candy. His distinctive gravelly laugh, sharp wit, and unmatched ability to spot a hit – whether on the track or at the track – will be deeply missed by all who knew him. (Stephen Charles Alaimo: December 6, 1939-November 30th, 2024)
A private celebration of life will be held on December 14th, 2024 for family and friends.”
