Fred Claus — If there are three iron-clad guarantees about every Christmas season, it's these: 1) Every sweater you receive — and, especially, the ones from blood relatives — will be ugly enough to make all the needles fall off your artificial tree; 2) Every DVD you unwrap will be either scratched, in "fullscreen" format or soul-killingly awful, like a Freddie Prinze Jr. romantic comedy; and 3) You're bound have some form of "traditional" — read: so evil, no one's quite been able to destroy it yet — Christmas fruitcake inflicted upon you, passed down like cystic fibrosis from generation to generation; potentially lethal misery encased in an unconvincing, transparent veneer of good, old-fashioned family fun. However, I digress.

Here's the point: If there's a cinematic equivalent to the diabolical Christmas fruitcake — indomitable, merciless, inevitable — it's the "holiday film that's fun for the whole family!", usually starring Will Ferrell or some otherwise unemployable former Home Improvement cast member, that pops screaming into the world like an anti-Messiah, complete with enthusiastic endorsements from sellout hacks like Gene Shalit ... you know the ones I mean. Elf. Home for the Holidays. Christmas with the Kranks. Deck the Halls. Unaccompanied Minors. Any installment in the Santa Clause franchise. You can't escape them — like fruitcake, they'll hunt you down and insinuate themselves upon you, at the relatives' place, at seasonal parties, even in your own home — and they're nearly ALWAYS profitable. In some cases, ridiculously so.

And so we come to Fred Claus, which brings, perhaps, a new twist to the hoary, hokum-y, ho-ho-hum holiday hatchet job: ACTUAL, BANKABLE TALENT. Vince Vaughn and Paul Giamatti have managed to make careers out of turning irredeemable schmucks into lovable lugs. Miranda Richardson, Kathy Bates and Kevin Spacey bring to the table more critical acclaim than any holiday film since, perhaps, 2001's Ocean's Eleven. Not to mention, helmer David Dobkin, who, with Wedding Crashers, only had the one of the Top 12 highest-grossing live-action comedies in history. Current Fantasy Moguls estimates put Fred Claus's box-office prospects at an unsensational $60 million; I think that's shy by about 50 percent, perhaps more ... much more. Given this genre's past successes, a competent director and a wildly talented cast — plus, the sledgehammer marketing bonanza that's sure to commence just as soon as Bee Movie buzzes off — there's reason to cringe.

We could be looking at a Number One opening for Claus (though I frankly doubt it; the attraction of Bee, even in Week 2, and Fred's potentially tepid reviews, will simply be too great), with up to four ADDITIONAL Top 5 Finishes to follow. (Past precedent — sorry, that's a term on-loan from the Department of Redundancy Department, isn't it? — hints that Claus's second-week drop could be minimal, like, 12-15 percent; and that, if public awareness remains high, Fred could receive a modest Box Office bump between the two weekends bracketing Thanksgiving.) Projecting PTA for Fred Claus is somewhat trickier; assuming it bows on upwards of 3,100 screens, it could be looking at opening with anything from $6,000 to $10,000 per-location; and if it ends up performing better than expected in its first couple of weeks — and if titles like Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium and Enchanted fail to, er, enchant at the ticket counter — theaters could very well add additional (how repetitive ...how repetitive) prints, softening its PTA numbers but perhaps boosting Claus's bottom line. Further, I expect User Ratings to be pretty high for this sort of thing — perhaps not as lofty as Elf (6.8), but better than the tired Santa Clause films, at any rate.

Wrapping it up, now: Holiday filmgoers might well find Fred Claus just a little bit naughty, but, ultimately, it will be quite nice for Moguls players. In a very crowded seasonal family-entertainment field (Magorium, Christmas in Wonderland, Enchanted, Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep, not to mention January's singing-vegetable opus, The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything), it might just be the unloved, undervalued, underestimated Fred Claus that winds up [ahem] sleighing 'em all.

BfYB's Projections for Fred Claus
Opening Weekend: $24.5 million B.O. / 2 PTA points / 4 Top 5 points
Overall: $118 million Total B.O. / 2 PTA points / 10 Top 5 points / 6.6 IMDb

Lions for Lambs — Pity Robert Redford, arguably the greatest modern American director whose films no one goes to see. In a career behind the lens spanning three decades, he's strung together an eclectic collection of quality titles, ranging from the truly astonishing (Ordinary People) to the unaccountably moving (The Legend of Bagger Vance); from the quietly sublime (A River Runs Through It) to the gently ridiculous (The Milagro Beanfield War). A true actor's director, Redford — who has powers of discernment most folks behind the camera, not to mention in studio lot corner offices, that most can only dream of — has jump-started the film careers of dozens of Hollywood stars (Hank Azaria, Rubén Blades, Kate Bosworth, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Timothy Hutton, Scarlett Johansson, Elizabeth McGovern, Rob Morrow and Mira Sorvino, just to name a few), coaxing brilliant portrayals out of modest talents (Judd Hirsch, in Ordinary People; Brad Pitt, A River Runs Through It; Sam Neill, The Horse Whisperer; Charlize Theron and Bruce McGill, The Legend of Bagger Vance) and eliciting truly indelible, eternally relevant performances from great ones (Mary Tyler Moore, Ordinary People; John Heard, The Milagro Beanfield War; Tom Skerritt, A River Runs Through It; Kristin Scott Thomas, The Horse Whisperer; pretty much the entire cast of Quiz Show, but especially Ralph Fiennes and John Turturro).

He's also a damned fine actor in his own right. His efforts, many of which are "period films," have an inexplicably timeless quality; there's not a one of his pictures, including the decade-defining Ordinary People, that feels in the least dated, even 20 years on. He's one of very few modern helmers who knows when to let the camera, and not the actors, tell the story; his films are famous for their lush camera work and long, patient takes, and he's not afraid of giving the audience time and opportunity to muse over the significance and import of what they're seeing, unencumbered by unnecessary dialogue and unmolested by trendy editing gimmickry. Yet, for all his contributions to the art form (including the Sundance Film Festival, by the way) and his myriad accomplishments (among them, two Oscars, one for Best Director), he's only once scored the top spot at the box office (Best Picture winner Ordinary People, in 1980), and has never had a blockbuster (1998's The Horse Whisperer — not even his best film, not by a long shot — grossed just over $75 million). Lions for Lambs, his first directorial effort in seven years, will not change those statistics.

It's not for lack of effort. In a year positively choked with high-concept, socially relevant, current-events "message" movies — A Mighty Heart, The Kingdom, In the Valley of Elah, Rendition and Michael Clayton, to name a few — it's possible that none have the scale, thoughtfulness or talent of Lions for Lambs, which has been assembled with all the maturity, care and deliberation of a Norman Mailer stage production. Examining how the Global War on Terror is being fought on three separate, but inevitably intertwined, fronts (Washington, D.C., the mass media, and in foreign lands, here, Afghanistan), Redford paints a picture of a society under siege (from within as well as without) from multiple perspectives, probably resulting in a more cerebral, contemplative portrait of post-9/11 America than perhaps any other film of its kind. In a way, it's the flip side, or the missing half, of The Kingdom — ironically, Lambs features that film's director, Peter Berg, as a U.S. military officer, and (perhaps not so ironically) was written by its screenwriter, Matthew Michael Carnahan.

Although Redford's should deliver the occasional, well-crafted action sequence, its real punch is likely to come from verbal, not physical, interactions and altercations: a worldly-wise university professor (Redford) attempts, perhaps vainly, to engage one of his students; a gung-ho Senator (Tom Cruise) tries to persuade a veteran journalist (the always-outstanding Meryl Streep) that the Administration's new battlefield tactics are essential to American security. Meanwhile, two U.S. soldiers (Michael Peña, Derek Luke), former students of Redford's character, march inexorably toward their destinies on a nameless peak far from home. This feels like profound, necessary cinema, and in any other year Lions for Lambs might be one of the most well-attended, talked-about dramas to be released in theaters. However, this is 2007, and the best this Lion can hope for is to, like a lamb, be slaughtered as quietly and inoffensively as possible, and to find salvation on DVD.

It would not surprise me in the least to see Lions for Lambs debut out of the Top 5, but, given Redford's cachet and UA's aggressive promotion of the film, I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt, and project a weak opening at No. 5, with nary a PTA point to be found — audiences will treat theaters screening this title as if admission came with a free staph infection. IMDb User Ratings, currently below 6.0, could well increase, but it's doubtful they'll rise significantly above 7.0. At an astonishing $26 in the Box Office Moguls game, and $28 in Ultimate Moguls, Lions for Lambs is quite possibly the very worst pick of this, or any other season; gamers would do far, far better to take that money and flush it down the toilet, or, better yet, simply refuse to spend it at all and save the trouble of pulling their hair out while wondering aloud why they expended fully a quarter of their budgets on a title that brought them nothing but a single Top 5 point, middling IMDb and bucketloads of grief, shame and regret. On the other claw, for the popular "Fantasy Bankrupts" league, you probably can't do much better — erm, worse — than Lions for Lambs. On a list of 70-odd titles opening between now and January 25, 2008, I've ranked Lions for Lambs DEAD LAST in BfYB.

BfYB's Projections for Lions for Lambs
Opening Weekend: $5.7 million B.O. / 0 PTA points / 1 Top 5 point
Overall: $32 million Total B.O. / 0 PTA points / 1 Top 5 point / 7.1 IMDb

P2 — This title isn't even available in the Fantasy Moguls game (hey, talk about your poor omens!), but it's on the schedule of new films opening wide on Nov. 9, so what the heck. Here's some free advice for the execs at Summit Entertainment, which, presumably, bankrolled this film, and their new corporate partners, MindShare: Never get involved in a land war in Asia. No, that's not right ... Oh, I have it: Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line! Erm, no, that's not quite what I was looking for, either ... Ah, here we go: Don't name a hastily-assembled production company after its first (and, probably, only) film. At best, it looks amateurish-bordering-on-flaky (like, what, "P2" was just such a friggin' brainstorm, and the title will be such an outstanding product, that you want your entire corporation to be identified with it, from here on out, forever, amen?). At worst, desperate — as if Summit, which has put out some very, very fine films, including The Affair of the Necklace, Babel, Once and Michael Clayton, was so embarrassed by the film, that they decided the only way they could possibly stand to release it would be by incorporating an entirely unnecessary administrative entity, thereby ensuring that enough distance was placed between P2 and the people who financed it, that the stench would fail to reach the combined business offices of Summit/MindShare. (Just a hunch, but I'm betting the latter's the case.)

Good gravy, haven't American filmgoers suffered through ENOUGH bad-to-catastrophic horror films this year? And people think waterboarding is torture — they ought to try slogging through interminable crap like The Abandoned, or Blood and Chocolate, or Captivity, or Dead Silence, or The Messengers, or Primeval, or Skinwalkers. Or, Hell, sure, this, why not? The less said about this film, the better, so, how's this: It stars American Beauty's once-promising Wes Bentley, who really, really, really needs to buy his agent a one-way ticket aboard Richard Branson's SpaceShip Two, the sooner, the better; Saw IV's Simon Reynolds; and Rachel Nichols, whose very best screen credit to-date was for Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd. And that, really, just about says it all. Oh, wait: It's written by a couple of the guys behind 2006's The Hills Have Eyes remake, directed by a first-time lenser, and it promises to totally fail to do for parking garages, what Psycho and The Shining did for hotels and The Descent did for underground caverns. P2? More like, P.U.

BfYB's Projections for P2
Opening Weekend: $1.8 million B.O. / 0 PTA points / 0 Top 5 points
Overall: $4 million Total B.O. / 0 PTA points / 0 Top 5 points / 4.6 IMDb

After Dark's Horrorfest 2  — From the makers of two of the very films I mentioned just above (Captivity and Skinwalkers)! Wow, do these guys suck. It's not bad enough that they make terrible films; they actually think people will pay to see compilations of their terrible films. And, surprise, they're right; last year's After Dark's Horror Fest: 8 Films to Die For took in an estimated (how is it, that they're not sure YET? Who are these guys' accountants, Arthur Andersen?) $2.5 million and managed a per-screen average of better than $4,000. Horrorfest 2 is scheduled to take up perfectly good space at 300 or so of the nation's theaters Nov. 9, which is fine by me; it'll be showing in the smallest, dingiest, most worthless screening rooms, right by the emergency exits and the dumpsters. That's damned fine planning, if you ask me.

BfYB's Projections for After Dark's Horrorfest 2
Opening Weekend: $1.2 million B.O. / 0 PTA points / 0 Top 5 points
Overall: $2.1 million Total B.O. / 0 PTA points / 0 Top 5 points / 3.8 IMDb (if any; try finding 8 Films to Die For on IMDb!)

No Country for Old Men — Okay, I admit it: I'm a sucker for just about anything the Coen Brothers do. Any list of the Best 100 Movies of the last two decades must, by definition, include the following titles: Raising Arizona, Barton Fink and Fargo. Not to mention, The Hudsucker Proxy and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which are not only two of the most laugh-out-loud films ever produced, but also two of the most literate and perceptive comedies ever made. I'm not personally a fan of Intolerable Cruelty or The Ladykillers, and I think The Big Lebowski is somewhat overrated, but none of them are awful, and it's fair to say that there are few writer-directors closer to the top of their craft than Joel and Ethan Coen. And I haven't even talked about Miller's Crossing or The Man Who Wasn't There yet, two titles that proved that the Brothers C are anything but one-trick ponies.

So it is with a certain amount of poorly-concealed glee that I've counted down the months to the Nov. 9 opening of No Country for Old Men, based on the immortal Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel of the same name. The book reminded me a lot of A Simple Plan by way of John Sayles's nigh-perfect Lone Star, liberally seasoned with elements familiar to fans of The Deer Hunter, Pulp Fiction and even, in a strange way, John Ford's classic The Searchers — like most of McCarthy's prose, No Country is a gritty, gut-wrenching, gasp-eliciting tale of guilt, redemption and reciprocity, filled with flawed characters, revelatory dialogue and absolutely unforgettable descriptions. When I first read the book, I thought that it would make a good film for Kevin Costner (I'm a fan of Open Range), or Clint Eastwood, or Robert Rodriguez to get their hands on. In retrospect, the Coens were not only the perfect choice, they were the ONLY possible choice for this uncompromising, often unpleasant study of human frailty, greed and desperate nobility.

And I'm not alone, apparently, in thinking this way. Although there have been some vaguely conflicted early reviews of No Country, possibly owing to the film's deliberate pacing and Joel and Ethan's respectful adaptation of McCarthy's often challenging narrative, there are several points on which virtually all the critics agree: It's an absolutely masterful piece of filmmaking, showing off the directors' very best qualities, complete with astonishing visuals, blackly ruthless humor and some of the finest screen performances of the year, perhaps the decade. Tommy Lee Jones (an earthy West Texas sherriff), already an Oscar contender for In the Valley of Elah, might just — like Casey Affleck, I suspect — wind up getting a pair of nods, for two legacy-defining roles, on the same ballot; Josh Brolin (who also costarred in Elah as well as appearing in American Gangster) and Kelly Macdonald; and Woody Harrelson.

Potentially, No Country is going to be a MONSTER PTA and IMDb prospect; already at a 9.1, it could also be the highest-Rated film of the Holiday Season. Although its 23-screen first-weekend opening — and a staggered expansion, culminating on Wednesday, Nov. 21 — is a concern, it would not surprise me at all to see Old Men begin its run as the top PTA film in the nation, and to continue earning points in that category all the way to December, though probably not beyond its first week. Top 5 points will be problematic — even with its "all locations" expansion the day before Thanksgiving, I don't know if it can beat out broadly popular new releases Enchanted or Hitman, much less the juggernaut that is Beowulf — and Fred Claus might still be going strong, bolstered by higher holiday attendance. (But, a single Top 5 Finish is possible.) Also, its $22 Ultimate Moguls price tag may be a little steep for some gamers. Nonetheless, in a Holiday Season filled with potential IMDb and Per-Theater Average gold mines, No Country for Old Men has to be considered — by far — the closest thing there is to guaranteed, 24-carat pay dirt.

BfYB's Projections for No Country for Old Men
Opening Weekend: $825,000 B.O. / 5 PTA points / 1 Top 5 point
Overall: $31.5 million Total B.O. / 9 PTA points / 1 Top 5 point / 8.6 IMDb

I'll Believe You — Drawn, perhaps, from his own experiences as a onetime on-air personality — although, more likely, from repeated, overcaffeinated, sleep-deprived exposure to the overnight radio programs of Art Bell and Whitley Strieber — I'll Believe You is a repackaged version of writer-director Paul Francis Sullivan's quirky 2004 indie production, First Time Caller, which was itself an oddly endearing hybrid of Conspiracy Theory, Men in Black, Eric Bogosian's 1998 thriller Talk Radio and the Harlan Griffith character arc (if you could call it that) from Eight Legged Freaks. The title's quietly built a following on the film-festival circuit over a period of several years, and it's not without its charms — supporting turns and cameos by the likes of Thomas Gibson, Chris Elliott, Fred Willard, and even MiB franchise alums Patrick Warburton and Siobhan Fallon add pep to what otherwise could have been a fairly tedious exercise in self-referential narcissism, and I'll Believe You gamely plays up the eccentricities (not to mention, spotlights the actual realities) of the decidedly unconventional, dedicated audience of the overnight pseudo-science call-in radio format. It's not entirely impossible that this film will get a certain amount of traction on both coasts, and perhaps whatever theaters might be located in Pahrump, Nev. ... But it's not going to be a breakout hit, not by any stretch of the imagination, and I'd be very, very surprised to see it register on the PTA charts at all. However, its currently high IMDb might be appealing to gamers with a couple bucks to spend, and, Believe me, you could probably do a lot worse. 

BfYB's Projections for I'll Believe You
Opening Weekend: $120,000 B.O. / 0 PTA points / 0 Top 5 points
Overall: $260,000 Total B.O. / 0 PTA points / 0 Top 5 points / 7.4 IMDb

Saawariya — The acclaimed director of 2002 Cannes Film Festival sensation Devdas and the internationally recognized 2005 triumph Black, Sanjay Leela Bhansali may just be India's answer to Rob Marshall. His titles have an inherently organic quality, as if they had sprung of their own volition — complete and lavishly appointed visual and auditory experiences — from his own teeming subconscious, bursting into the physical world with all the subtlety of Gideon's trump. There's something irrepressibly joyful about his films, even — perhaps, especially — when they're dealing with tragedy, such as physical, mental and emotional brokenness, as they often do. (For this reason, I had been hoping for some time that the privilege of directing the film adaptation of Jean-Dominique Bauby's astonishing memoir, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, would fall to either Bhansali, Jean-Jacques Annaud or Richard Attenborough. However, I digress.) Saawariya, the first Indian film to be wholly produced by a major U.S. studio, promises to extend Bhansali's magical winning streak of making films whose truth and beauty transcend all boundaries, be they cultural or linguistic. Bollywood films, though they rarely exceed $1 million in gross domestic earnings, have been known to attract exceedingly loyal followings in the U.S. and Canada, and Bhansali is by any definition one of the Dark Continent's greatest artists. His films tend to be events in and of themselves, and they have traditionally scored consistently high in IMDb User Ratings. However, as far as the Fantasy Moguls game is concerned, Saawariya's 85-screen opening will work against it; while potentially an enormously deserving film — foreign, or any other kind — Bhansali's latest is not likely to score higher than $4,750 in PTA, leaving it out of the running in that category, and extremely unlikely to make a splash in any other — though, as I noted above, excellent User Ratings should by no means be ruled out.

BfYB's Projections for Saawariya
Opening Weekend: $365,000 B.O. / 0 PTA points / 0 Top 5 points
Overall: $1.45 million Total B.O. / 0 PTA points / 0 Top 5 points / 7.8 IMDb

War/Dance — The 2007 Sundance Film Festival Outstanding Directing Award winner (and Grand Jury Prize nominee), War/Dance is yet another of this year's plethora of outstanding documentaries examining the plight, and celebrating the perseverance of children from strife-torn regions of the world. Written, produced and directed by veteran television documentarians Sean Fine and Andrea Nix, War/Dance follows the journey of three young Ugandan refugees who, fighting off the apathy, rage and despair that — quite understandably — plagues so many of their displaced people, begin a quest to compete in their country's national performing arts festival. Not surprisingly, War/Dance has an outside shot at earning some PTA points, and it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that User Ratings will be impressive. However, the aforementioned Darfur Now — not to mention, the expanding Music Within — will likely snatch away a significant portion of its potential audience, and there's enough quality art-house competition this Holiday Season to relegate War/Dance to the sidelines. PTA can't be counted out — particularly if it opens on only one or two screens, which is possible — and it's a pretty solid IMDb bet, but, unfortunately, War/Dance doesn't have nearly enough going for it to warrant serious recommendation.

BfYB's Projections for War/Dance
Opening Weekend: $18,000 B.O. / 0 PTA points / 0 Top 5 points
Overall: $95,000 Total B.O. / 0 PTA points / 0 Top 5 points / 8.2 IMDb

That's all he wrote for this very special, very first installment of BfYB! I'll be back very soon with a look at how the Holiday Season's shaping up, as well as detailed analyses of titles being released the third and fourth weekends in November! Until then, I lay down my enchanted quill. I remain, as always ...

Nico

Nicodemus is certain to read anything that you send to nicodemus@fantasymoguls.com. Unless it's a fruitcake. He doesn't like fruitcakes.