I’m staying with the MovieLine critic and he deems the Noe unwatchable. Manohla dargis seems to really like it though, so it can’t be all bad?

I’m kind of happy I missed it in that now I don’t have to watch this copy of “Irreversible” sitting next to me, which is apparently “guaranteed to churn the stomach.” Being that I’m in France, my stomach is of course so filled with caviar that churning it may not be advisable.

In any case, more Cannes reviews from me soon, late though they may be. However, Rod and I both missed “Un Prophet” and ‘White Ribbon,’ unfortunately.

Honestly, has anyone watched the original Terminator movies since their 5th grade sleepover? They were cutting edge for their time (mainly because of their visual effects) but the performances were very broad, often cartoony and never really seemed to spur the necessary had any emotional connections that make a film great.

Just saw the new Terminator tonight and really enjoyed it. The cheesiness factor was almost non-existent and I cared more about the characters than I had in any of the other films. I wasn’t anywhere near as invested as I was in the new Star Trek, but this movie is getting an undeserved bad rap. It’s big, brash, loud and exciting but more than just a Michael Bay explosion-fest.

Give this movie some more credit!

To quote every lady and not a few of the men I know who’ve seen ‘Salvation’: Holy hotness, Batman, Sam Worthington is fucking hot.

Seriously, what are they feeding them in Perth? PUT SOME IN OUR WATER SUPPLY. You know why I didn’t care about the almost total lack of character development? Because Worthington’s hotness melted my brain. As I write this a small area of my occipital lobe is being reduced to caramel from the mere memory of what is was like to have my retinas seared by so much hotness. Even when he’s strung up, writhing around with his robot guts all exposed, I found myself thinking, “Yeah, I’d still hit that.”

You know who else is in the fast lane barrelling towards Hotsville? Anton Yelchin. Smokin’ hot babyface, I call him. Adored his russian accent in Star Trek, love his furrowed brow in ‘Salvation.’ Come with you if I want to live? Don’t mind if I do! If Sam Worthington is the sheriff of Hottown, Anton Yelchin is the 21 year-old who mows your lawn so he can save up enough money to fix up his beater car. And you always take some lemonade or a cold beer out to him, because it’s just so hot outside today in Hottown.

Bale would get more of a shout-out if he’d managed to capture any of the punk-ass nature of the John Connor we all know and love. Less whiny savior, more renegade, please. I guess Marcus Wright gets all the hotwiring scenes in this film, something we’re used to seeing Connor do. Also, I get that the post-apocalyptic scorch-zone you live in is a bummer and all, but dude, loosen the fuck up.

So, yes, the story needed a lot more work than it got. But ladies, do yourself a big, big favor this holiday weekend and see this in the theater. You will not be disappointed.

So, according to The Wrap, Night at the Museum 2 “nudges” out T4 for top spot on Friday with $15.4 million.

That means T4 did less than $15.4 million on Friday (they didn’t have T4’s numbers, but presumably if it were only ‘nudged’ then it probably did a little under). That means it’ll do about $60 million to $70 million for the weekend and then watch it sink.

I told you, the only “salvation” will be its foreign grosses. Fortunately Warner’s only in for $50 million, but if you include marketing costs then we’re talking about $110 million or so. I’m not sure if they’ll make that all back with NA alone (which is all they have here). We’ll see.

Also, I think the film might actually put Halcyon under, as in bankrupt.

Halcyon took out a loan for $200 million to do this. They got $50 million from WB, they got $75 from Sony for foreign sales, they got about $25 to $30 million from tie-ins. That means Halcyon is still on the hook for about $40 to $50 million.

They own the rights to some foreign markets (South Korea and a couple of similar smaller markets) and they own DVD rights and licencing.

I don’t think they’re going to make the kind of money that they thought they would. It might take years to pay back the money they still owe.

This is starting to turn into a disaster.

There may be no Terminator 5 to be had, making my last post moot.

And yes, it sounds like McG is too busy to take on 5 and yes, writing by committee always sucks.

Even if McG didn’t have final cut, dude could have spent sometimes crafting some character and story into the story.

All these guys do action so well already and then pound the audience with it. What’s the point? Why not work on your deficiencies? All his talk of the Dark Knight being a powerful story and he totally misses the point.

I’m glad Drew mentioned the brutally bad prologue.

They can’t write a story by committee. Those very rarely work out well. They need to give it to a writer and let him write it. Let it be someone who likes and understands what Terminator is all about. Maybe a good genre writer. That’s a good first step.

Also, I’m sure some of the abrupt cuts everyone is talking about comes as a result of shortening it (bringing it under 2 hours) and making it PG13. I’m sure we’ll see a better uncut version of Terminator Salvation on DVD in a few months. (I think part of the blame was Warner Bros. here and that stupid no more rated R movies).

The second thing I would suggest is a new director (a good one) with FINAL CUT written into his contract.

The producers can do a Twilight thing where they announce the desire to have a new director for each film. That could be a face saving thing for everyone. After all, McG has TWO big films lined up. I’m sure he’ll survive not returning to do T5.

What do you guys think? Could they replace McG?

Personally, I think those two things will make the situation ONE THOUSAND TIMES BETTER. Otherwise this tentpole is dead after this.

See here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TctwLOSY4M0

There were just so many terrible decisions in this movie. But thank god Mc G finally answered that nagging question of where future-John Connor got that scar on his face. Whew. I’ve spent many restless nights thinking about that one.

The concessions made to the fans, Arnold, Guns N’ Roses from T2, “I’ll be back,” “come with me if you want to live,” are retarded.

I’m surprised Christian Bale agreed to being in this thing. The script that’s on screen feels like a good first draft, but then again, maybe things got fucked in the editing room ad whatever character depth was in there was jettisoned for something more appealing to the summer retard crowd.

Mind you I still think that the anti-T4 hysteria on the internet is a little overblown (*cough Harry Knowles cough*, what was that “review” all about anyway?). People make it seem as if the first Terminator and Terminator 2 were spiritual awakenings or something. I caught the first Terminator on TV the other day and it had its share of cheese too.

That said, they also had something this film didn’t: an interesting story. This film looked good, and the concept was cool, but that’s it. It just wasn’t executed that well.

Knowning what I do about the film business, and having followed this film for a while now, i’m trying to figure out what went wrong. I realize that this is one of those films that went wrong somewhere in pre-production. You can see it starting with a good idea (hey, let’s bring back the Terminator franchise), but things probably went off the rails somewhere after that.

The producers wanted a summer action flick so they brought in McG and the writers of T3 — they ignored the fans and didn’t understand what this film had to be (I doubt they knew very much about Terminator at all when they first started). When fans began to complain, they began just throwing things in (and cutting things out) and the whole thing turned into a mess. Why do I get the sense that by the end every decision was tested among the freaks and geeks? Not a great way to tell a story.

This film has no soul. That’s the problem. The sad thing is that if it had a director who wasn’t a dickless pushover and writers who weren’t total hacks, it may have been a good film. I think a film about the future war was a good idea.

As the saying goes: when you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. That’s what we have here, I think. It’s really too bad.

This film may open strong, but it won’t have legs. I can’t imagine the fanboys seeing it over and over and I can’t imagine anyone giving a shit about it next week. the only salvation for Terminator Salvation will be overseas numbers.

They’re going to have to go back to the beginning with this thing and reevaluate how to proceed. Announcing a sequel in the near future is probably not a great idea.