Stone’s Chavez Documentary Soon – HSX Today

Whee… down another 26 slots yesterday. Here we go!

I smoke the Learn & Earn questions for $10K and only miss one on the box office comparisons so I’m up $18K–chump change, but fun to start the day. After a quick scan of yesterday’s IPOs (Joel Edgerton’s StarBond is only up 13 cents? Really?), I check my short positions, but nothing looks Earth-shattering.

The shifts in yesterday’s positions is a little more telling. Skank Robbers is a Jamie Foxx vehicle (written by and starring) with Martin Lawrence about their two characters in drag who, yeah, rob banks.  The stock slipped three bucks yesterday (11%) and I’m not sure why especially since Foxx is money at the box office and there is already a release date in 2011.  Those kinds of dates aren’t written on stone tablets and sent from above, but if Jamie wants a release date in late summer, so be it.

Cartel, a thriller with Josh Brolin in the daddy-done-wrong role, sinks 7% and is now only $3 above its IPO price a year ago.  Brolin is hot right now and with roles in the Wall Street sequel, Jonah Hex and True Grit with the Coen Brothers all coming up, I can’t see him stopping for a non-descript thriller so I dump my position.

On the positive side, Hanna is shooting now with Saoirse Ronan.  I love this kid and think we’re going to watch her for a few more decades.  Hanna rockets up 13% yesterday, and I’m glad I held the stock.

Today’s IPOs include Criminal Empire for Dummies.  Get this cast:  Milo Ventigmilia, Malin Akerman, Gary Oldman, Michael Clarke Duncan and Harvey Keitel.  I don’t know how to direct, and I could direct that cast.  It’s got a spotty future, especially with distribution as near as I can see, but I’m betting on the cast and what will be comfortable, familiar trailers for previews.

Other new films include Growing Up, a look at a kid in a family where the parents will divorce.  Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette  star, but I’m not dazzled by anything yet so it’s a pass for me at $12.  Oliver Stone’s documentary about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, South of the Border, is due out in 2 months and should get enough arthouse traffic to warrant a $2 gamble.

The only other offering really remarkable today is a $20 option on the opening of Chris Rock’s Death at a Funeral.  The price is slick because it will open at $30 million or $8 million, and I can’t get a good read on that except for Rock’s past.  He rocks kids films and franchises, but he rarely, if ever, carries a film’s opening weekend.  But it’s not worth the bucks for the minimal return here.  I would call the option at $10 or put at $30, but I’m not going anywhere at $20.

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