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HOME Established A.D. 2000, March 19. Now in our eighth calendar year! Number 372  (Vol. 8, No. 19). This edition is for the week of May 7--13, 2007. "Spider-Man 3" Breaks All Records THIS WEEK'S MOVIE REVIEW by Mike Smith "Georgia Rule" THIS WEEK'S MOVIE REVIEW by Mike Smith Summer 2007 Movie Preview MIKE'S RANT by Mike Smith Maybe They Should Ban Fried Foods, Too....Do You Hear What I Hear....Movie News....Whatever Happened To...? Chapter 19: Judge Reinhold Spider-Man 3 was predicted to do well, but I think its record-breaking numbers surprised even industry vets. Here are the stats at the moment: Highest-grossing opening day, $58 million, which beats the old record set by 2006's Pirates of the Caribbean by about $5 million. Highest-grossing opening weekend at $151.1 million. (It was was revised upward Monday from the original estimate of $148 million.) World-wide, it took in $231 million. The film began its global rollout last Tuesday and by Sunday night U.S. time had pulled in an incredible $382 million in receipts. For whoever's counting IMAX sales, check out their largest domestic gross at $4.8 million in revenue and near complete sold-out shows. Finally, these big numbers must come as a relief to investors who ponied up $258 million to get the film made at all. That makes Spider-Man 3 one of the most, if not the most, expensive movies ever made. So....if you haven't seen it yet, by now you're wondering if it's really worth it. LA FLORIDIANA by Will Moriaty The Fabulous Architecture of the Tampa Bay Region -- Part Three Mike's Thoughts First, please read Mike Smith's review in PCR #371. Once you've digested the basic story and seen why Mike gave it four stars, you'll have a better perspective on my thoughts which follow. Nolan's Thoughts Terence and I saw Spider-Man 3 last Saturday. I liked much of it, but felt there was not only way too much going on, and some storylines were largely unnecessary. The whole sub-plot with Sandman seemed orchestrated to show off CGI sand effects---the "tie-in" to Ben's murder seemed tacked on to justify his presence (odd because it comes directly from the comics). Topher Grace's Eddie Brock character seemed out of place as the villain Venom (miscast, perhaps), and the whole "jealous photographer" angle tacked-on, but I got more annoyed that each actor had to "unmask" before some line was said -- as if to say to the audience, "Look, no stand-ins used here!" Results of this week's Crazed FanPoll: Which Spider-Man movie do you regard as the best of the series? 1. Spider-Man.   42%  (6 votes) 2. Spider-Man 2.   57%  (8 votes) 3. Spider-Man 3.   0%  (0 votes) Total number of votes: 14 Thanks for voting! The whole "dark-side of Peter" thing, legitimately connected with the comics, cinematically played out as an echo of the very similar theme from the '80s Superman 3. Aunt May Parker sure has a lot of heart-to-heart chats with Peter. This may be to reinforce the idea he's still too immature to handle his powers (which started in Episode 1 with Uncle Ben's admonitions), plus she really, really wants him hooked up to Mary Jane ASAP, perhaps to help stabilize his life. Effects. Am I the only one who thought the CGI effects seem much more poorly done than past episodes? Whole scenes gave off a disturbing video-game patina. Then again, I thought to myself, "you have three fantasy characters duking out out in Times Square, how else could you do that?" Drew Reiber reminded me that the effects team on this pic was NOT the same as the last two. J.K. Simmons' J. Jonah Jameson character steals every scene he's in and is a major saving grace. I'd PAY to watch a movie totally about him. There's a cameo with Bruce Campbell as a French maitre de that is a sheer delight. The appearance of Stan Lee in a brief scene with Tobey Maguire was awesome, others may disagree. The only storyline even close to resolving gracefully was Harry Osborne's. That whole sappy forgiving business with Parker and Sandman at the end was ridiculous. It moves pretty quickly and is quite an exciting ride when it isn't bogged down in soap opera. It is not quite a four-star movie to me, but for sheer energy and other enjoyable attributes, I'll give it a solid three stars. Ye Humble Editor Lends Talents to Online Endeavor In a previous edition of this week's PCR, I mentioned I'd gone down to Tampa Digital Studios last Wednesday to tape a video segment with former Tampa Tribune critic Bob Ross for the purpose of uploading to his website. I had a really good time and was told it would be uploaded by this past Friday. Unfortunately, there were some technical problems with the recordings that prevented that from happening. Since their previous videos with Ross didn't experience such problems, I thought maybe it turned out I sucked badly and that "A/V problems" was a nicely diplomatic way of telling me that. But producer Pete Guzzo vehemently insists it was due to problems with the bluescreen and such. My already borderline confidence in my ability to pull this off has been shaken badly, but we might give it another go next week. Stay tuned.

Please consider making a donation to help support Crazed Fanboy! Click on the "donate" link below and give whatever you can. I sincerely thank you for any and all consideration.---Nolan

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