62 Skidoo

There is relief in Jack Black's household this weekend.  Those personal appearances he put in on The Daily Show and at Colbert's new place paid off big time, as that Goosebumps movie comes in #1, just two million dollars ahead of Ridley Scott's The Martian, out for its third week.  Slightly more disappointingly, it's the latest from Guillermo del Toro at #4, called Crimson Peak.  That title seems familiar for some reason... oh well.  Maybe I'm thinking of 1997's Dante's Peak.  What a year for big disaster movies.  Anyway, Crimson Peak marks a reunion of sorts between del Toro and jaded Hollywood insider Matthew Robbins.  Robbins is, of course, best known for making that hasty follow-up movie with Star Wars star Mark Hamill called Corvette Summer.  You know, kinda like how Keanu Reeves made all those small pictures in between Matrix 1 and the other two four years later.  It's a Hollywood tradition at this point.  Meanwhile, Sizzle Beach U.S.A. is all, "So what am I?  Chopped liver?"
Of course, in the biz proper, Matthew Robbins is also known for briefly being in Spielberg's orbit, mostly with UFO stuff, like *batteries not included and being one of the six screenwriters to work on CE3K.  And how's Spielberg's own directorial baby doing this weekend?  Not bad, considering!  I guess people would rather drop their kids off at exciting-ish Halloween-esque fare as opposed to a dry, boring old history lesson like Bridge of Spies.  The reviewer over at The Onion referred to Spielberg as the most "confident" director of all time.  I don't know if that's the word I'd use, personally, considering how much Spielberg obsesses over getting things right and awesome.  I mean, sure, when it crosses the $300 million mark, then yeah, it's time to celebrate.  But confident?  No.  No, you know who's confident?  Michael Bay is confident.  Uwe Boll is confident.  Chris Columbus was confident when he boldly stepped into the breach and said "A big special effects extravaganza with Adam Sandler?  Adam Sandler in Ghostbusters, but with a video-game theme instead of ghosts?  I'm on board!"  It took supreme confidence to take that deal, and a bunch of whiskey to make it through principal photography.
And then, of course, there's the Coens.  They've got the second season of Fargo on the TV right now, and of course, a couple ads for Bridge of Spies during airtime.  They've got Hail, Caesar! in February.  Oh, it's all crappening.  I guess True Grit did better than I thought.  But Spielberg's been riding the Coens' coattails for years now, so to speak.  I mean,... and I've probably pontificated on this before... you've got most of the cast of Raising Arizona in Spielberg's 1989 bomb... I mean, sleeper hit Always... that's the only example I can think of... ooh!  I know.  Peter Stormare.  I think it's safe to say that 1996's Fargo really caused things to heat up for him.  He's in the second-to-last episode of Seinfeld, and in 1997's Jurassic Park and 2002's Minority Report.  I guess Spielberg had enough of him after that.  And yet, the Coens never did a picture for DreamWorks.  But that's how Hollywood works sometimes: the Coens don't work for DreamWorks, but Adam Rifkin does.  Interesting choice, Hollywood... interesting choice.  Oh, and costume designer supreme Mary Zophres is known to work for Spielberg now; not so much for the Farrellys.  Well, their films aren't drawing people in because of the costume design, arguably.  I gotta go for now, but I'll be talking about these things for the rest of my life.