It's Thursday and Oz The Great and Powerful has topped $300 million worldwide at box office, according to Deadline. So, the Franco File is going to celebrate with a clip of what is arguably the best part of the movie: the black-and-white pre-CGI opening credits sequence. more »
Look at this shit! It's Wednesday afternoon, and time for The Franco File, Movieline's daily — at least for this week — coverage of James Franco's genre- and gender-bending multimedia artistry. On Monday, I brought you, "Hangin'With Da Dopeboys," the JF-directed video from Florida rapper Dangeruss, who inspired the actor's Alien character in Spring Breakers. On Tuesday, it was time for another Franco-helmed clip for his band Daddy. And today? Another clip! But this one's more of a rap video, in which Franco does a turn-off-your-cellphones PSA for the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, TX that riffs on one of Alien's Spring Breakers monologues and references key moments from Pulp Fiction and Spider-Man. The video has like three endings, too, which is part of Franco's I'm-flying-on-instruments genius. more »
It's only Monday and James Franco is already having a good week. And that could translate to a good week for Florida rapper Dangeruss, too. Despite Franco's much-maligned performance in Oz The Great and Powerful, the movie was the top performer at the box office this past weekend, earning $42.2 million domestically, and the blogosphere is already championing him for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work as the drug dealer Alien in Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers. Meanwhile, that picture, which opens wide this weekend, racked up the best per-screen average of the year so far — $90,000 — in limited release at three theaters. more »
If James Franco reads his reviews, he should avoid David Edelstein's critique of Oz The Great and Powerful at Vulture.com. "Franco is unconvincing generally, tamping down the passion, ironicizing everything out," wrote Edelstein. "It’s possible Franco’s modern-sounding stammers and shrugs opposite actors playing it straight are meant in the spirit of Bob Hope’s hipster cowards — or those of Woody Allen, who cited Hope among his inspirations for Sleeper and Love and Death. But Franco doesn’t have the comebacks. He’s playing a noncommittal character in a noncommittal way, so that you want to scream, “This isn’t a performance-art project! You’re carrying a movie!” more »
Consciously evoking the structure and iconography of MGM’s classic The Wizard of Oz without attempting to rival its impact, Disney’s Oz the Great and Powerful can be enjoyed, up to a point, on its own colorful, diverting but finally rather futile terms. Offering an eye-tickling but gaudily depersonalized Land of Oz populated by younger, sexier versions of well-known characters (most incongruously the Wicked Witch of the West), this elaborate exercise in visual Baum-bast nonetheless gets some mileage out of its game performances, luscious production design and the unfettered enthusiasm director Sam Raimi brings to a thin, simplistic origin story. more »
Yes, this clip of Glinda The Good Witch (Michelle Williams) and a pre-wizard Oz (James Franco) traveling to the Emerald City by bubble in the Sam Raimi-directed Oz the Great and Powerful is pretty phantasmagorical, but let's give credit where credit is due: Do you, um, realize that Flaming Lips' frontman Wayne Coyne has been traveling by bubble since at least 2006 — and he don't need no stinkin' computer-generated assistance. more »
The Super Bowl's notoriously pricey ad spots already cost a chunk of change well into the seven figures last year and it's set to head well northward for 30 seconds of airtime this Sunday. But that has not scared away movie studios from snapping up commercial time on Super Bowl XLVII.
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Guess who's not in Kansas, anymore? That would be James Franco in Oz The Great And Powerful. He plays two-bit magician Oscar Diggs who rides a hot-air balloon into a cyclone and travels from a dusty black-and-white world into a vibrant colorful one populated with munchkins and witches, played by Rachel Weisz, Mila Kunis and Michelle Williams. more »
Years before Dorothy Gale plopped down in Oz right on top of that mean old stripey-footed wicked witch, a man — not just any man, but James Franco — accidentally found himself in the magical land, blown into a world of Technicolor whirlygigs and CG fairies by Sam Raimi. I mean, by a tornado. But as Raimi (along with surprise guests Michelle Williams and Mila Kunis) explained to the crowded Hall H audience Thursday at Comic-Con, his Oz won't have that much to do with the 1939 classic; for starters, those ruby slippers? Nowhere to be found.
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Disney's fantasy prequel pic Oz, the Great and Powerful has set its final witch, Glinda: Michelle Williams, who will team up with James Franco's snake oil salesman/"Wizard" to vie against evil sisters Rachel Weisz (the Wicked Witch of the East) and Mila Kunis (The Wicked Witch of the West) for control of Oz. Word on the street has Franco's salesman as a ladykiller who breezes into Oz and finds himself in the middle of a magical power struggle with romantic plot threads. In other words: Ding-Dong, the Wizard is a pimp. [Variety]
Rachel Weisz may be filling up her dance card with a role opposite Jeremy Renner in the Bourne spin-off The Bourne Legacy, which films this September. But she's also set to play Mila Kunis's mean older sister witch in Sam Raimi's Oz: The Great and Powerful. Here's to hoping it works out with her busy slate, which has her set to open at least six other films in the next two years. (That's a whole lotta Weisz, but who's complaining?) [Deadline]
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