JIM’S MOVIE CHEAT SHEET – 16 October

’10 COMMANDMENTS’ IN FOR REBOOT

Seems there is no God. Despite much prayer from those who survived the biblical epics Noah and Exodus it appears Paramount is serious about remaking the classic 1956 Red Sea-splitter The 10 Commandments.

There’s no director, star or writer attached as yet, but they’ll apparently be going for a new angle on the old story.

Hopefully they’ll address the rather glaring fact that, according to the Mel Brooks documentary The History of the World: Part 1, there were originally 15 commandments. Perhaps Brooks could play Moses.

Much as we wince at the thought, the prospect of a remake follows standard accounting logic: Noah made about $360m; Exodus around $260m.

And, as we painfully know, in Hollywood there’s but one commandment that overrules all others: Thou Shalt Follow the Money.

TARANTINO ‘PICKED ON’ FOR BEING WHITE

Given how deeply woven black culture is into his films – Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Django Unchained – writer/director Quentin Tarantino would have preferred a ‘thank you’ card from certain commentators who, instead, have ribbed him for being white.

In a New York Times interview conducted by author Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho), Quentin hit back:

‘If you’ve made money being a critic in black culture in the last 20 years you have to deal with me. You must have an opinion of me. You must deal with what I’m saying and deal with the consequences.

‘If you sift through the criticism you’ll see it’s pretty evenly divided between pros and cons. But when the black critics came out with savage think pieces about Django, I couldn’t have cared less. If people don’t like my movies, they don’t like my movies, and if they don’t get it, it doesn’t matter.

‘It’s been a long time since the subject of a writer’s skin was mentioned as often as mine. You wouldn’t think the colour of a writer’s skin should have any effect on the words themselves.’

No reports on whether he, at any point, blew a raspberry.

EXHIBITORS LIFT YOUR GAME, COMMANDS NOLAN

Alpha male director Christopher Nolan (Dark Knight; Intertellar; Inception), a die-hard fan of film over digital, has admonished movie exhibitors for being lazy about the quality of the environment they provide film lovers.

Speaking at the London Film Festival, Nolan said: ‘For some reason, it has become acceptable to say ‘we are providing this empty room with a TV in it [so] just watch a film’.

‘That has to change and if it doesn’t change, forget film, forget digital, if that experience for the audience is not valued people [will] stop going…the experience has to be something great or, of course, people don’t want to come.’

He also showed no signs of softening his hardline support of shooting his huge films on film.

‘I have conversations with studio heads and at some point when I’m passionately advocating using film they’ll say ‘at the end of the day doesn’t storytelling trump everything?’ I say: ‘No it doesn’t! Otherwise we’d be making radio plays, it would be a lot cheaper’.’

‘MARTIAN’ INVASION CONTINUES

Matt Damon’s The Martian held on to top spot, taking another $5.8 million on 558 screens for a two-week total of $14.7m while the Robert De Niro comedy The Intern held on to #2 with $2.1m on 305 for a two-week haul of $5.4m.

This left Johnny Depp’s crime drama Black Mass to open at #3 with $1.5m on 269.

The cancer dramedy Miss You Already (#5) took $837,765 on 217 while Learning to Drive (#13) took $155,739 on 43.