Also in Monday morning’s round-up of news briefs, Red Hook Summer and 2 Days In New York lead an unspectacular weekend in the specialty box office. The Dark Knight Rises leads the way for another weekend overseas. And remembering Al Freeman Jr. Jesse Eisenberg Eyes Night Moves for Old Joy Eisenberg is in talks to play the leader of a group of eco-terrorists who plot to blow up a dam in the thriller, directed by Kelly Reichardt. Dakota Fanning is also in talks to play the wealthy girl who funds the destructive scheme, The Guardian reports . Mary Steenburgen Joins Las Vegas Steenburgen joins the comedy from CBS Films and Good Universe in which she’ll be the object of affection in a love triangle. In the film, a group of friends throw a Las Vegas bachelor party for the one remaining single member of their group, Deadline reports . Red Hook Summer , 2 Days In New York Debuts So-So: Specialty Box Office A pair of New York-centric limited releases debuted in exclusive runs in NYC over the weekend and the numerical results were decent at best. Red Hook Summer and 2 Days In New York lead specialty openers with limited runs. Spike Lee’s latest Brooklyn tale Red Hook Summer bowed in four locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn, averaging $10,525. The film doesn’t have major stars and its distributor touted its opening on four screens instead of the “safer route” of two locations as many specialty openings do, Deadline reports . Foreign Box Office: Dark Knight Rises Still Tops The box office was down overall with summer heat and the Olympics blamed for a suppression of the numbers. The Dark Knight Rises took the top spot overseas, taking in $34.2 million, down 50% from the prior week, from 58 offshore markets, THR reports . R.I.P. Al Freeman Jr. The son of African American stage actor Al Freeman (1884-1956), and star of stage, TV and film, Al Freeman Jr., has died at the age of 78 years old. In 1967, Freeman Jr. co-starred with Shirley Knight in the film version of Leroi Jones’ (Amiri Baraka’s) off-Broadway play Dutchman , which earned him critical kudos, and further attention for his portrayal of a black subway passenger victimized by a frantic white woman, Shadow and Act reports .
In his new Brooklyn-set drama Red Hook Summer , director/co-writer Spike Lee tackles the complex topics of religion and redemption within the modern African American experience, as filtered through the eyes of a spoiled Atlanta teenager (Jules Brown) forced to spend one hot, explosive summer with his preacher grandfather in the projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn. It’s a richly conceived portrait of the Brooklyn neighborhood as microcosm for the black community at large, very much a Lee joint through and through. But, as the filmmaker reminded audiences this week at Sundance , where he railed against the Hollywood system, “it’s not a sequel to Do the Right Thing !” It’s tempting to draw parallels to Lee’s incisive 1989 Oscar nominated drama – he does, after all, appear in Red Hook Summer as his Do the Right Thing character Mookie (who’s still delivering pizzas for Sal’s, though he and Tina have parted ways). But fast forward to 2012 and there are new complications to be explored now that gentrification, secularism, reverse-migration, and the evolution of culture have altered the composition of the community – and Lee, with co-writer James McBride, seeks to explore every nook and cranny of this expansive 21st century terrain. Into the evolving world of Red Hook comes young Flik (newcomer Brown), who resents the old-school rules of his grandfather, charismatic minister Enoch (Clarke Peters). A local girl (Toni Lysaith) helps Flik acclimate to the hood, but unexpected, volatile events shift this coming of age outsider tale into a polemic on faith, the church, and community that’s proven difficult for some festival audiences and critics alike to swallow. Lee, speaking with Movieline after the divisive debut of his film, wasn’t worried about leaving some viewers unsatisfied. “There are a lot of questions in the film that we don’t necessarily have the answers for, and I think a lot of the time that’s good,” he said. “I know there have been a lot of references back to Do the Right Thing , but one of the major criticisms of Do the Right Thing when it came out was that I didn’t have the answer for racism at the end of the movie. But who has that answer?” Red Hook Summer paints a picture, in vibrant colors and heightened dialogue, of a community anchored by faith and led by Peters’ charismatic, Bible-thumping minister – the lone figure leading the charge against crime, apathy, and dissolution within the neighborhood. A pointed jab at Tyler Perry seems to declare Lee’s intent to do better and be less jingoistic to the black faith-based crowd. Asked to declare his position on Perry, Lee paused. “I respect his business savvy. It’s great.” Still, he couldn’t resist inserting a mock Madea poster into his film. “What, Fat, Black and Crazieee ?” he laughed. “It’s coming this summer to a theater near you! Where Red Hook Summer goes in its last act makes it much more than a superlative version of a Perry film, suggesting that religion and blind faith can only go so far in tempering the ugliness of the world around us before personal accountability comes into play. “All one has to do, I think, is read a newspaper, because the marketing for this film is being done daily in the newspapers and on television,” explained Peters. “What Spike has done is hold a mirror up to that for you to look into, safely, and make your own judgments and hopefully govern yourselves accordingly.” The nature of the film, and the scope of Lee’s provocative vision for it, may explain why he says mainstream Hollywood studios balked at backing the project. “They know nothing about black people,” he said at the Q&A following his Sunday premiere. “Nothing!” Striking out on his own, Lee financed and filmed Red Hook Summer himself, shooting over the course of a few weeks on location, using the church founded by McBride’s parents as the film’s central backdrop and casting his two young actors from local Brooklyn schools. “Obstacles don’t bother us,” he told Movieline. “They’ve never bothered me. I’ve always been an independent filmmaker. Just because I did Inside Man , that doesn’t mean I left it.” But the studios weren’t the only ones hesitant about Lee’s project; according to McBride, “a lot of actors [wouldn’t] do it. They don’t want to be affiliated with this kind of film.” Even actor Nate Parker, who plays a former congregation member-turned-gang leader and also appears in George Lucas’s Red Tails , was advised not to take the role. “People on my team said, ‘Aren’t you afraid that people won’t want to work with you because you’re only doing these types of films? Aren’t you afraid that you’ll miss your window?’” “No,” he continued. “We need to give ourselves more credit. We need to give the world more credit. To say that the world is so short-sighted that they don’t want to see people like us – human beings doing human things? Religion is universal.” It’s not just the citizens of the contained streets of Red Hook or Brooklyn who are primed for these re-examinations of faith. Co-scripter McBride on the one hand wrote Red Hook Summer drawing on his own history with the place, but he also hopes it’s applicable to other communities. “There are a people who believe in God and need God badly, and there are people who deliver His word well, and who have some corrupt elements in their lives,” he said. “This issue of religion is something that affects white people, in fact, probably more than black folks. Look at where we are politically in this country – look how the Republican party has fallen apart as a result of this religious zealotry, which is misguided and misplaced and used as a baseball bat to divide us.” And so, in the face of studio apathy, polarized reviews, and a collective reluctance to discuss faith and its place in life, Lee and Co. are something of an underdog force chipping away at a largely unspoken topic within a vastly underrepresented community. Still, the idea that Red Hook Summer will inspire discussion and debate is, perhaps, victory enough. “With a team like this I hope that we’re on the scrimmage line all the time, moving that ball down the film inch by inch,” enthused Peters, “because we can’t do long passes! We’ve got to do it in increments. And this is just another bite into that.” Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter . For more of Movieline’s Sundance coverage here .
Coming to Sundance with new films in the Premieres section, both Stephen Frears and Spike Lee were navigating new terrain, a pair of established directors seeking distribution for their independent features. Frears’ betting memoir/dramedy Lay the Favorite went first, premiering to dismal reviews Saturday night. Lee’s Red Hook Summer , a hotly anticipated entry that brings him back to his Brooklyn wheelhouse after the underperforming WWII pic Miracle at St. Anna , followed Sunday, drawing mixed initial reactions from Twittering press. The Frears, as I shall call it, should turn out to be the bigger critical fail of the two. Based on Beth Raymer’s book detailing her experience in the world of sports betting, it’s an annoyingly bright, tone-deaf character comedy-drama built around a ditzy young stripper (Rebecca Hall) who finds she’s good at running numbers and becomes a betting agent in Vegas under veteran Bruce Willis; when the attraction between them complicates things, Beth strikes out on her own and, through a series of near-felony crimes and poor decisions, learns to grow up, kinda. It’s a shame that Hall, one of the best actresses to emerge of late, is stuck putting on one of the most grating voices and personalities in recent memory here. Transformed into a daisy dukes-wearing, hair-twirling, ditzy coquette who speaks in a breathy prattle, she comes off like a selfish, immature savant in a stripper’s body. On the flip side, Willis does nice work as Beth’s married, simpatico boss Dink, and Frank Grillo and Wayne Pére breeze in to perk up the proceedings as assistant bettors, though Vince Vaughn ratchets the manic energy to 11 as a rival agent. But Frears is too enamored of his colorful cast of zany characters — including a trophy wife played by Catherine Zeta-Jones, Laura Prepon sporting a turrrible Southern drawl, and Joshua Jackson as the only normal character in the film — to realize how little we care about most of them. I watched a dozen people around me walk out during the film’s premiere. Since this is Sundance this could’ve meant nothing, since they might have been buyers doing their thing. But if they hadn’t been, if they had been regular festival-goers who simply valued their time too much to finish the film, I wouldn’t have been surprised. Either way, I kind of wish I’d joined them. This was not quite the case for Spike Lee’s Red Hook Summer , however (which I see Monday morning with the Press & Industry crowd). Word following Sunday’s premiere was sharply divided, with reactions ranging from praise-filled (“Spike Lee’s RED HOOK SUMMER is a passionate, painful love letter to Brooklyn, NYC, black America & the black church, Tweeted Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir . “Very special movie.”) to derisive (“…one of the worst movies to ever premiere at #sundance,” declared ComingSoon’s Ed Douglas ). Some, like CinemaBlend’s Katey Rich, expressed a need to deliberate further before passing judgment: “Already regretting instant Red Hook Summer reaction. I need more time to let it settle. Forget everything I said!” Stay tuned to Movieline’s Sundance coverage for more on Red Hook Summer and Spike Lee. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
It’s officially Spike Lee Day here at Movieline! On the heels of the rumor that Lee is directing some sort of spiritual cousin to Do the Right Thing! comes an official confirmation of the last Lee rumor : Mandate Pictures has announced that the director will take over duties on an American remake of Oldboy , the 2003 Chan-wook Park film that Steven Spielberg and Will Smith were once discussing. Kinda awesome! Click through for the press release, and start fantasy casting in the comments section.
