After the record-breaking success of Night Watch and Day Watch (and an early film for B-movie maven Roger Corman, Arena), Khazakstan-born, Russia-based director Timur Bekmambetov makes his English-language big-studio debut with Wanted, a bruising, brawny action film starring James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie. Bekmambetov spoke with Cinematical in Los Angeles about making the jump to big-money moviemaking, the hidden world of secrets behind Wanted's look, the action-film apprenticeship of James McAvoy, working with Angelina Jolie and how " .... we (film makers) are all vampires. ..."

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In Wanted, rapper-actor Common plays The Gunsmith -- a cool, deadly expert marksman who mostly lets his bullets do the talking. But meeting with Cinematical in Los Angeles, the veteran of films like Smokin' Aces and Street Kings is warm and obviously enthusiastic about his experiences, talking about everything from his preparation process for playing what he calls "a Samurai warrior" in Wanted to the challenges facing African-American actors -- plus what's good to drink in Prague and how holding a real gun to James McAvoy's head can get you in the moment for your scenes.

Cinematical's podcast content is now available through iTunes; you can subscribe at this link. Also, you can listen directly here at Cinematical by clicking below:



As ever, you can download the entire podcast right here -- and those of you with RSS Podcast readers can find all of Cinematical's podcast content at this link.

Steve Carell scored big this week recreating the role of Agent Maxwell Smart in Get Smart, providing the best opening weekend ever for a film with Carell in the lead. The Incredible Hulk fell into second place for its second week but Hulk and Kung Fu Panda both outdid last week's other new release The Love Guru. Here are the totals:

1. Get Smart: $38.6 million
2. The Incredible Hulk: $22.1 million
3. Kung Fu Panda: $21.9 million
4. The Love Guru: $13.9 million
5. The Happening: $10.5 million

Two wide releases this week, a heartwarming comedy for the whole family and a stylized action adventure shoot-em-up for the older crowd.

WALL-E
What's It All About: Disney/Pixar is back with the tale of a lovable sentient trash compactor. WALL-E has been alone on the abandoned Planet Earth for hundreds of years, but he discovers a new purpose when he meets a robot named EVE. Apparently WALL-E has stumbled upon the key to the planet's future, a solution which the human race eagerly awaits.
Why It Might Do Well: The trailers look promising and WALL-E is written and directed by Andrew Stanton, who served in the same capacity on Finding Nemo, Pixar's most financially successful film to date. Plus, our star has the cute going on.
Why It Might Not Do Well: Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov described a condition called The Frankenstein Complex, which is a fear of robots -- but look at the little guy. Did I mention he's cute? This is easily next week's number one flick.
Number of Theaters: 3,900
Prediction: $70 million

This past Sunday, The New York Times featured a popular City-section story about the first-ever prom held for students of Brooklyn's International High School. In case you don't like to read, you can simply watch the video accompaniment here. And if you don't like to read and you don't like documentary-style videos, and have a lot of patience, you can wait for the feature film, which will apparently be hitting theaters some time in the future. According to New York magazine's Vulture blog, a number of producers are interested in optioning the article, while Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have personally brought it to the attention of Paramount Pictures, where Pitt's Plan B Entertainment has a first-look deal. Supposedly an unnamed non-Paramount studio exec beat us all to the punch by joking that "maybe Maddox and the twins can star in it." Of course, he forgot about Pax and Zahara (and the twins aren't really international).

Actually, the first joke I thought about was the running gag on TV's The Critic about the kid from Easter Island who attends the United Nations School. Then, the second joke I thought of was about Brangelina's adopted children. Then I kept thinking of other things, such as how thanks to Prom Night people might assume this other prom-themed movie is also a horror flick. But that's not so much a joke as it is me trying to think on a studio exec's level (hey, we were synchronous with the Maddox bit) in order to contemplate what they'd call the thing. International Prom? A Prom for All Nations (ala the video's title)? Or will Hollywood appropriately go for one of those song-based titles? Been around the World, perhaps?

The flashy advertisements, the curving of bullets and Angelina Jolie make it pretty difficult to remember that Wanted was originally based on a series of graphic novels by Mark Millar. From early reports (including a review from Cinematical), the adaptation is a loose one, so you might be surprised to hear that Millar actually felt it was an improvement on his work.

He posted his enthusiastic response on his official message board. (If you choose to click, be warned, the place abounds with spoilers.) "Even the biggest change -- the loom stuff in the middle Timur wrote -- works really well. I think the fate thing really made the character more empathetic as the 'killing for fun' stuff would have made him a little hateful. They kept all the best bits and junked my over-indulgences. So I feel very happy as it was a kind of perfected version that made it to the screen. Could not be happier."

Millar also added that he's been approached by Universal about concocting a sequel. "They've asked me how I can develop some of the other stuff from the book into the sequel. We'll see what box office is like at the weekend, but everyone knows this is going to make a LOT of dough. Wall·E permitting." (He actually has a few choice words for the hapless robot, who really shouldn't be held accountable for his release date.)

When Wanted was announced as the opening night film for the Los Angeles Film Festival, there was a mild outbreak of head-scratching over the choice; why start a film festival loaded with independent and foreign film with a big-studio action movie? The fact is that the opening-night LAFF premiere of Wanted -- directed by a Kazakh director who made his name in Russia, loosely based on a series of comics by a Glasgwegian Scot, starring America's most notable movie starlet opposite a Glasgow-born lead actor and shot with Prague standing in for Chicago -- doesn't say much about the LAFF as a film festival and doesn't say a single thing about L.A. as a real city, but it says plenty about L.A. as a company town with a global span. Wanted's a corporate product, but, thankfully, it's an excellent one -- the two-fisted, double-barreled high-octane guilty pleasure summer action movie you've been waiting for. Wanted is speedy and spiffy and shiny as a bullet, and it's got about as much actual weight when it stops moving.

For a few weeks now, a grainy video has been circling the Internet of an office worker going absolutely insane. It originated on Break.com, and I've included it after the jump for your critical enjoyment.

Those fearing that their cubicle neighbor might engage in similar hysterics can breathe easy -- it was all a sly bit of viral marketing from Timur Bekmambetov for Wanted. He revealed the stunt over on his personal blog, where he allegedly had a good laugh at the gullibility of the West. I'm not seeing any geographic mockery here, so quite possibly he took that down.

Oh look, a Clint Eastwood movie with an Oscar-friendly release date. That's new. Actually, it is relatively new, if you look over the man's directorial career. Sure, he's had a number of films come out in the fall time, but not with the same consistency we've seen since 2003, when Mystic River arrived in a few theaters on October 8 then went on to receive six Academy Award nominations the following winter.

Then in 2004, his Million Dollar Baby opened in limited release December 15 and went on to win four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. Finally, in 2006, two of his films were released in the fall, Flags of Our Fathers in October and Letters from Iwo Jima in December. Both went on to receive Oscar recognition, the latter garnering major noms, such as Best Picture and Best Director.

Other than a half-hearted attempt at a little viral marketing, the comic book thriller Wanted is sticking to the advertising basics until their release in just a couple of weeks -- probably for the best if you ask me, because that weaving site wasn't cutting it. Cinematical has received a slew of additional photos from the action flick, giving us more shots of Angelina Jolie hanging out of cars, and co-star James McAvoy wandering around without his shirt off (which earns Universal a personal thanks from me). When the official site was launched, there wasn't much to start with, but Universal has since added character bios, a couple of flash games and an invite into the 'fraternity'.

By now there probably isn't much we don't know about the movie --but for those who might have missed it, the story centers on an office drone that discovers he is the heir to an ancient society of assassins. Russian director Timur Bekmambetov is at the helm, and rounding out the cast are Morgan Freeman, Common, and Terrence Stamp.

Wanted may not be at the top of my list of must-see summer flicks, but I feel like I have a personal stake in the success of this movie. Let me explain: ever since Tomb Raider, I've been quietly hoping that Jolie was going to be the action heroine that's missing from movies today. But, it hasn't quite worked out that way. Instead, I have walked out of each flick more disappointed than the last. So for me, Wanted is Jolie's last chance to be the badass I've always wanted her to be -- and this time I mean it. Check out the new photos in the gallery below.

Wanted arrives in theaters on June 27th.