"POW!"

If Hollywood people weren’t terrified of offending each other and didn’t spend 98% of their press interviews kissing each other’s asses, an actor bashing a movie he was in probably wouldn’t make news, but here we are.  Mark Wahlberg has gone ahead and admitted M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening sucked, and only three years after he read the script.

Throw Shyammy from the train under the bus, Collider:

Asked to talk about his co-star Amy Adams [during press for The Fighter], Wahlberg revealed that they almost did a previous movie together and that’s when the truth started tumbling out:

“I was such a huge fan of [Amy Adams]. We’d actually had the luxury of having lunch before to talk about another movie, and it was a bad movie that I did. She dodged the bullet. I don’t want to tell you what movie… All right, The Happening with M. Night Shyamalan. It is what it is. F*cking trees, man, the plants. F*ck it. You can’t blame me for wanting to try to play a science teacher. You know? I wasn’t playing a cop or a crook.”

Meanwhile, Wahlberg remained curiously silent on the subject of The Lovely Bones, Date Night, Max Payne, We Own the Night, Shooter, Invincible, Four Brothers, Rock Star, Planet of the Apes…  Look, I’m all for honesty, but everyone bashes Manny Shyamalan (probably because we lack a European sensibility), so this wasn’t that ballsy (or even as ballsy as say, Shia LaBeouf stating the obvious about Indy 4).  I mean have you SEEN The Lovely Bones? Just because it’s about rape doesn’t mean every character has to speak in a creepy rape whisper.  I watched twenty minutes of it on HBO and spent the next hour crying on my shower floor.
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^{Sorry, wrong Fox}

That’s the question Variety asked the studio that released The Happening, Babylon A.D., Meet Dave, X-Files 2, Mirrors, Space Chimps, and The Rocker.  Their top movie this summer?  What Happens in Vegas.  To any intelligent person, the answer to why Fox is failing is “horrible movies.”  But just for fun, here’s what Variety said:

The strategy of being cheap and eschewing top-tier filmmakers came back to bite the studio: Although Fox has been the envy of many for its remarkable box office consistency and profit margins, many producers, agents and managers have been less than charmed. Complaints about the studio’s tendency to lowball talent — particularly writers — and Rothman’s micro-managing of productions have become widespread. A broad spectrum of reps say they are reluctant to place clients on Fox projects, citing a talent-unfriendly atmosphere.

Yes, “talent-unfriendly” is certainly a good way to describe them, or pretty much anything that sucks.  But don’t worry!  They have a plan!

On the agenda, Fox will mull the possibility of more “X-Men” spinoffs, including a young-X-Men project as well as “Deadpool,” based on a character played by Ryan Reynolds in “Wolverine.” The studio is even considering reviving the “Daredevil” property.

Ooh, young X-Men.  Keep your schedule open, Jonas Bros.  Magneto can’t handle their powers of… abstinence!

And on paper, the year-end looks good with “Australia” and “Marley and Me,” and so does next summer, with the studio releasing no fewer than three tentpoles: “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” on May 1, “Night at the Museum 2: Escape From the Smithsonian” on Memorial Day weekend and “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” on the Fourth of July weekend.

To recap, they’re staking their box office hopes on a Baz Luhrmann epic and a dog movie with Jennifer Aniston in it.  And if that doesn’t work they’re going to redo Daredevil.  Really, I can’t see how this plan could possibly fail.

Mark Wahlberg has been talking to MTV lately, and besides the usual boring crap and jokes about how Max Payne could beat up Batman, he had some good Manny Shyamalan stories.

“[Night] gave me the worst advice he could have ever given me. He said, ‘After [‘The Happening’], you can never hold a gun again. You know that, right?’ I said, ‘Are you crazy?’ He said, ‘I’m serious, don’t ever hold a gun again.’ And I said, ‘I don’t know about that, man.’”

See, Manny thought his movie would be so huge that it would forever typecast all the actors. He thought so many people would see The Happening that Zooey Deschanel would walk down the street and people would whisper, “Oh my God, is that the chick from The Happening? Holy f-cking shit, I can’t believe the star of the most brilliant f-cking smash hit film of the millenium is in my town.” He thought it would be so huge that if Mark Wahlberg was in another movie where his character was even remotely similar to his character in The Happening, the entire audience would shut down, and be like, “This movie is bullshit. Everyone knows the guy from The Happening would never do that.” I’m telling you, that’s what it’s like inside the mind of an insane, megalomaniacal midget. He’s like Lex Luthor, if Lex Luthor’s plans for world domination always involved making shitty movies.

Today USA Today has an article about a subject I’ve always been interested in: the re-titling of films for the foreign market.  The Dark Knight, Get Smart, and The Happening became The Knight of the Night, Super Agent 86, and The End of Time in Mexico, for instance.

Titles are often tweaked to sound better in the local language, or to provide a hint of the plot to audiences who might be skeptical of what is, to them, a foreign film. That’s why Steve Carell’s Get Smart is playing variously as Max the Menace (France), Agent Smart: Casino Totale (Italy), Is the Spy Capable or Not? (Taiwan), and Confused Spy (China).

Local customs are also taken into account. Last year’s comedy hit Knocked Up was given the gentler title Slightly Pregnant in Roman Catholic Peru and the gloriously blunt One Night, Big Belly in China. [USA Today]

Ah the Chinese, so delightfully literal. Strangely, re-titling isn’t limited to non-English speaking countries, as I discovered in Australia, where Saving Silverman became Evil Woman (did someone think the Aussies wouldn’t see a movie with a Jewish name in the title?) and Joy Ride became Road Kill (no idea why what got changed).  But my all-time favorite for strangely translated movie titles is The Phillipines’ version of The Pacifier, Gnome. If any Filipinos are reading this, I would love to hear an explanation of that.  And, uh, sorry about all those ladyboy jokes.

In Asia, I imagine Wicker Man is known as Why is the Bear Man Yelling?

The Incredible Hulk not surprisingly was tops at the box office this weekend, earning an estimated $54 million dollars.  It was still not quite enough to match Ang Lee’s $62 million dollar opening weekend gross for the last Hulk.  But hey, no reason we can’t make another one, right?  Right?  Guys?

The Happening couldn’t quite make it to the number two spot, but did do well enough to become Manny Shyamalan’s third largest opening ever, even as the glowing reviews continued to pour in:

Another case of elegant filmmaking kneecapped by a thunderingly stupid concept. –Windy City Times
If Shyamalan wanted to commit career suicide he couldn’t have chosen a more likely vehicle than this laugh inducing ‘thriller.’  -Flipside Movie Emporium
Woeful clunker of a paranoid thriller. –Wall Street Journal  

(full top ten after the jump)  

2. Kung Fu Panda, $34 million
3. The Happening, $30.5 million
4. You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, $16.4 million
5. Indiana Jones, $13.5 million
6. Sex and the City, $10.1 million
7. Iron Man, $5 million
8. The Strangers, $4 million
9. Chronicles of Narnia, $3 million
10. What Happens in Vegas, $1.7 million

In related news, Frank Stallone threw a house party and six people came, his biggest weekend since 1997.   

[via Box Office Mojo]