the contrarian: Withering "Sex"

About a month ago, when "Sex and the City - The Movie" opened in the number one spot with $57,038,404, a lot of ink was spent celebrating its feat and noting how the film had doubled its box-office predictions.

For some reason, everyone was happy about the film's success, as if we all somehow shared it it.

So happy, in fact, that the media conveniently overlooked the film's whopping 62.8% drop in its second week in release. That's huge, but there was no ink - no ink at all.

And the film has been dropping ever since. By week three, it was out of the Top Five.

Anyway, here's how Box Office Mojo reports the film's gross to date:

May 30–June 1 / $57,038,404

June 6–8 / $21,218,305 (a 62.8% drop)

June 13–15 / $9,788,353 (a 53.9% drop)

June 20–22 / $6,532,394 (a 33.3% drop)

June 27–29 / $3,770,000 (estimate) (a 42.3% drop).

The film plummeted and has continued to do so, with no one acknowledging it or offering some theory on its rapid fall.

My take is that the movie disappointed audiences that first week and became a victim of bad word-of-mouth. It simply isn't funny. The series was a comedy; the movie isn't. It's a soap opera.

And who came up with that brilliant idea anyway?

After the film was in release for a week, its star and prime mover, Sarah Jessica Parker, appeared on "The View" and confessed that deciding to do the series on which the movie is based was not easy. She liked the career she had. (I did, too.) "I always thought I had an enviable career," she said. Perfectly put. Prior to "Sex and the City" - which indeed did stop the nice momentum of her career - Parker moved smoothly from stage ("The Substance of Fire," "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," "Once Upon a Mattress") to film, a particularly eclectic slate of films ("L.A. Story," the film of "The Substance of Fire," "Honeymoon in Vegas," "If Lucy Fell," Miami Rhapsody," "The First Wives Club" and two for Tim Burton, "Ed Wood" and "Mars Attacks").

Since the series, Parker's films have been largely uneventful, despite a brave, potentially audience-alienating turn in "The Family Stone."

This certainly would not be the first time that a successful project has stymied a performer. "Sex and the City" - which arguably offered Parker her role of a lifetime - could adversely affect her career the way "Psycho" negatively influenced Tony Perkins'.

So, if "Sex and the City - The Movie" somehow manages to get her movie career back on track, it will have accomplished a lot. She deserves it.

Parker is a really good actress.

If it doesn't, well, one has only to watch the show's reruns and DVDs and savor her turn as Carrie Bradshaw to be reminded of just how good she is.

(Artwork: Variety drumbeats "Sex and the City - The Movie"; Sarah Jessica as Carrie)

simply cyd (there was only one cyd)

The divine Cyd Charisse, who left us on June 19th at age 86 or thereabouts, was a full-scale movie star, even though few people, fans included, thought of her as an actress per se. Perhaps it's too intricate to think of dance as a highly stylized form of acting. But that's what it is.

Cyd Charisse elevated every move she danced on film, even in the most benign MGM musical, to a tidy little drama. Working with some of the best dancers and choreographers, she became adept at a singular kind of storytelling. Michael Kidd, Eugene Loring, Hermes Pan, Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire were all her choreographic mentors.

And each time, I'm sure she exceeded their expectations, particularly with the graceful sexuality that she managed to sneak into each number for and with them. OK, perhaps she wasn't really that sneaky about it.

Although Charisse eventually segued into dramatic roles in such films as Joseph Pevney's "Twilights for the Gods," Nicholas Ray's "Party Girl," Minnelli's "Two Weeks in Another Town" and Phil Karlson's "The Silencers," one mostly remembers her fabulous dances on film, each punctuated by those long, shapely, seemingly endless legs:

The "Broadway Melody Ballet" from Donen and Kelly's "Singin' in the Rain" ... "Dancing in the Dark" and the "Girl Hunt Ballet," both from Minnelli's "The Band Wagon" ... And those otherwise anonymous dance numbers from Rouben Mamoulian's "Silk Stockings," Donen-Kelly's "It's Always Fair Weather" and Minnelli's "Brigadoon."

A handful of wonderful, lyrical musical moments. That doesn't seem like very much. And yet, it's a lot.

Cyd Charisse - that wasn't her real name, of course, and yet she managed to effortlessly embody it - was alternately exotic, beautiful and just plain radiant. And sexy.

And she could dance.

And that made her ... cinematic.

More than cinematic actually. Divine.

Note in Passing: Turner Classics, which coincidentally screened "Brigadoon" yesterday (June 18th), will be showing "The Band Wagon" at 9:15 a.m. (est) on Monday, June 23rd, and will also devote an evening to the actress-dancer on Friday, June 27th, with screenings of "Singin' in the Rain," "The Band Wagon" and "Silk Stockings," beginning at 8 p.m. (est).

(Artwork: Cyd and Fred in the sublime "Dancing in the Dark" number from Minnelli's "The Band Wagon")

sundance screenings

The Sundance Channel has a couple titles this week worth watching/taping.

First, there's Thompson's 2006 French-made "Avenue Montaigne"/"Fauteuils d'orchestre" about the theater people of Paris. It's an extremely companionable film and noteworthy, for me at least, for another relaxed Sydney Pollack performance.

The late director-actor plays a character named Brian Sobinski bur he's essentially playing himself.

"Avenue Montaigne"/"Fauteuils d'orchestre" airs Thursday, June 19th at 1:30 p.m. (est), with repeat showings scheduled for 5:15 p.m. (est) Sunday, June 22nd, Wednesday, June 25th at 10 p.m. and Saturday, June 28th at 7 p.m. (est).

Secondly, there's Peter Watkins' "Privilege," which was the rage of 1967 and starred one of the "It" girls of the era, model Jean Shrimpton. Watkins' also directed "The War Game" and "Edvard Munch."

In a plot not that far removed from Elia Kazan's "A Face in the Crowd," Paul Jones (the lead singer of Manfred Mann) plays a manufactured British rock star with an almost unnatural hold on his fans. He can do no wrong. It doesn't take long for a religious-right group to ensnare him and try to exploit his popularity to recruit the nation's youth to Christianity.

"Privilege," which in retropsect seems particularly pertinent to what's happening today, has never been released in the United Staters on home entertainment in any format. Its screening on Sundance at 7 p.m. (est) on Friday, June 20th is a rare one. But not the only one. It will be repeated at 4 p.m. (est) Wednesday, June 25th.

By all means, tape it.

(Artwork: Sydney Pollack can be seen on the Sundance Channel in Danièle Thompson's "Avenue Montaigne," and the poster art from "Avenue Montaigne"/"Fauteuils d'orchestre" and "Privilege")

The Fizzy Bubbeleh Flick

American moviegoers may have half-consciously rejected any serious film about the current wars but they've embraced profane comedies about swarthy Middle Eastern men with insatiable sex drives - yes, the very men who have been generalized as "the enemy."

Last year, Borat.

This year, Zohan.

And who can blame the audience?

These films use low-down comedy to humanize people we've been encouraged to peg as "different" and certainly threatening.

As the title characer in Dennis Dugan's genuinely witty and insightful "You Don't Mess with Zohan," Adam Sandler has let his usual close-cropped hair grow into a head of wild, unruly, excited-looking ringlets and has pretty much fetishized the rest of himself as well.

This is inarugably his most sexually liberated performance, replete with a seemingly permanent bulge in his pants.

Dugan's film - which received some well-earned praise from A.O. Scott in The New York Times - is loaded with characters, but it belongs to Sandler, something the star accomplishes effortlessly, without hogging the screen.

It has nothing to do with gender when I say that "You Don't Mess with Zohan" is as hilarious as its opposite-sex counterpart, "Sex and the City," isn't. (Is there even one joke in that movie?) The sly "Zohan" script - by the ubiquitous Judd Apatow, Robert Smigel and Sandler himself - works miracles with a running joke incorporating hummus and I loved the recurring visual gag involving an Israeli soft drink called Fizzy-Bubbeleh.

Is that a real product? It should be.

(Artwork: Zohan rules!)

the contrarian: The (Godawful) Tonys

The theatah.

Say what you will about The Oscarcast and its well-fed bloat, it isn't nearly as annoying or as pathetic as The Tonys, which seems to exist within a universe unto itself - a world of entitlement, driven by the bliss of delusion.

Nothing else explains the rampant pretention or the misguided, insufferable sense of self-importance and solipsism that New York's theater community regularly exudes, especially on Tony night.

It's as if everyone connected with what Variety calls The Rialto watched "All About Eve" once too often, committed Joseph L. Mankiewicz's sharp, scathing but highly artificial script to memory and now actually (mis)takes it for reality.

It's camp, people.

This year's show reached its nadir of snobbery when playwright Tracy Letts in accepting his award for "August: Osage County," thanked his producers specifically for mounting "an American play on Broadway with theatre actors." Take that, you lowly film actors, so presumptuous enough to dare think that you're actually good enough for the theatah.

Frankly, to be fair, just about all show-business awards shows are anathma to me. But this one is absolutely the worst.

And why is it that only show people shower each other with fawning, pointless adulation? Why don't carpenters celebrate their crafts?

Or plumbers even?

I'm dead serious.

Note in Passing: The only tolerable moment on this year's Tonys came when "Boeing-Boeing" best-actor winner Mark Rylance - the risk-taking actor who notoriously performed unsimulated, real sex on screen in Patrice Chéreau's "Intimacy" (2001) - handily deflated the evening's parade of poseurs by reciting an extended quote from Lewis Jenkins' prose poem "Back Country," in lieu of an actual acceptance speech. It prompted a head-scratching response from the supposedly sophisticated audience.

It wasn't Rylance who was bizarre; it was everyone else.

He was also dead serious.

(Artwork: Poster art for Mankeiwicz's campy "All About Eve" and the amusing Mark Rylance)