Entertainment

Hodge-Podge At The Multiplex

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

January 14, 2000 / 10:56 AM EST / CBS

If you plan to go to the movies this weekend to check out the new releases, you'll find a real mixed bag, reports Early Show Contributor Laurie Hibberd.

Also, two likely Oscar contenders are going into national release this weekend after limited runs.

Here's a sampling of the new releases:

Supernova: This is a big-budget thriller, starring Lou Diamond Phillips and James Spader, about (what else?) the end of the world and the people who are going to save mankind.
It is unusual to see the release of a big-budget film at this time of year. But, as Hibberd explains, Supernova has been plagued with problems from Day 1.
"They fired their original director and ended up with Walter Hill, a terrific director (who) produced all the Alien movies," reports Hibberd.
"He delivered a rough cut. MGM wanted to test-screen it (in front of an audience). They fought. Walter Hill walked off the project. Ultimately, Francis Ford Coppola came in, trying to save it, didn't want to spend any more money to shoot anything, so he recut to it 88 minutes," she adds.
"What you have now," she concludes, "is a film that nobody wants to say they directed."
(The director credit has been given to "Thomas Lee," which has replaced "Alan Smithee" as the fictional name the Directors Guild of America says a film can use when no one wants credit.)
No one knows whether Supernova is a movie worth seeing, because it has not been screened in advance for the critics.
Next Friday: This is the sequel to the 1995 film Friday, which was not a great success at the box office. So why do a sequel? The answer is money. Although it didn't do well in theaters, it found life in video release and and on pay-per-view, which is what happened with the first Austin Powers movie. Of course, the Austin sequel was a big box-office hit.
My Dog Skip: This is a small-budget movie, starring Kevin Bacon and Diane Lane. It's a coming-of-age story set in 1940s Mississippi about a shy boy whose life is transformed by a Jack Russell terrier that he receives for his ninth birthday.
The family film is based on the memoirs of Willie Morris, who died two days after seeing a completed print of the film. This weekend, it is opening in New York and Los Angeles.

Two films looking for Academy Award consideration are going into wider release: Hurricane, starring Denzel Washington in the life story of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, and Girl, Interrupted, starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie.

Hibberd predicts that the big box-office winner this weekend will be Hurricane.