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Box-office Winner: Too Close To Call
5 July 2009 12:18 PM, PDT
It will be a photo-finish at the box office this weekend, with Friday-Sunday estimates indicating that Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen each took in $42.5 million. The final result is due to be released Monday afternoon. Early indications, however, are that the Ice Age sequel will come out on top by about $1.3 million, according to box office analysts, who say that its final figures will be boosted by strong ticket sales at theaters showing it in 3D, where the premium $2.00 (or so) price for 3D glasses was likely to offset lower ticket prices for children. For the five-day holiday, the 20th Century Fox animated feature did indeed wind up ahead with an anticipated gross of $67.5 versus about $65 million for Transformers. Universal’s Public Enemies also had a solid opening with $26.2 million for the three-day weekend and $41 million for the five-. Overseas, there was no contest, with Ice Age nailing $148 million over the five days in 101 countries, including 16 where it broke opening records. In most countries, no other movie even came close.
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New “Ice Age” Expected To Be Hot
3 July 2009 2:07 PM, PDT
Global warming will take a holiday at the box office this holiday weekend as a new Ice Age dawns with an expected five-day take of about $60-70 million, according to industry forecasters. Last year, Will Smith's Hancock took first place with $62.6 million. In a surprise, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs leaped ahead of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen out of the holiday starting gate on Wednesday with an official take of $13,791,157 -- the seventh-best opening for an Independence Day holiday. To be sure, Transformers was nowhere close to folding as it pulled in $10,939,131. Also making an impressive showing was Michael Mann's Public Enemies, which bowed at $8,165,025 but could see its numbers rise substantially over the weekend -- particularly tonight -- as older audiences arrive at the multiplex. The film, which stars Johnny Depp and Christian Bale, has piled up dozens of positive reviews, including several which predict Oscar nominations for the director and his stars. On Thursday, the Fandango online ticket sellers said that Ice Age accounts for 46 percent of its advanced ticket sales, while Public Enemies accounts for 21 percent, and Transformers 2, 9 percent. Also opening today (Friday) is the Nia Vardalos comedy I Hate Valentine's Day. It's expected to be a big, fat bomb.
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Movie Reviews: “I Hate Valentine’S Day”
3 July 2009 1:54 PM, PDT
In an odd bit of scheduling, the comedy I Hate Valentine's Day is opening over the Independence Day holiday, and it's certainly clear that critics have no sweet Valentine's Day missives to dispatch to Nia Vardalos, the star of the film. ("She can expect to loathe Independence Day, too," writes Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News.) Claudia Puig in USA Today gives it her vote as worst movie of the year, pronouncing it a "clunky, unfunny and plodding mess." Since Vardalos is also the writer, director and star of the movie, she "gives new meaning to the term triple threat," comments Lou Lumenick in the New York Post, who remarks that he's "been to funerals that were a lot more fun" than this movie. Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times observes that Vardalos goes through the entire film smiling. "Nobody smiles that much," he says, "unless they suffer from the rare giocondaphobia, or Constantly Smiling Syndrome, a complaint more often seen among viewers of Rush Limbaugh and field hands in Gone With the Wind." "This is a film with a mission," writes Robert Abele in the Los Angeles Times. "Get to the grand-gesture climax without disturbing any clichés in its path."
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“The Creature” To Make Stage Debut
3 July 2009 1:28 PM, PDT
Universal has brought the classic horror flick Creature From the Black Lagoon to the stage -- not the Broadway stage, mind you. Not even one of the out-of-town tryout venues. No, it has brought it to its Universal Studios Hollywood theme park, although with production values, as Variety puts it, "typically seen on Broadway." The musical (it's subtitled "A Raging Rockin' Show"), the trade paper observes, is intended to stir interest in a new screen version of the 1954 movie being directed by Breck Eisner and due to be released in 2011. But it's also intended to boost attendance at the theme park. Chip Largman, VP of Universal Creative, told Variety that the park "sought out all the experts, including the New York Broadway world, to come up with something that capitalizes on Universal's horror genre and pokes a little fun at ourselves." Variety calls the Black Lagoon production "just the latest example of how Hollywood-backed theme parks are increasingly turning to tuners as a way to attract more tourists."
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Surprise Wednesday Winner At Box Office
2 July 2009 2:08 PM, PDT
The first day of the long Independence Day weekend began at the box-office with a victory not for Transformers 2 and not for Public Enemies, the two films that were expected to be the primary contenders for first place. Instead, the hands-down winner was the 20th Century Fox animated 3D feature Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, which grossed an estimated $14 million in its debut. Transformers -- last weekend's winner, which had also piled up huge grosses on Monday and Tuesday -- fell to $10 million on Wednesday, its eighth day of release. Universal's Public Enemies arrived with $8 million. Box office analysts, however, were issuing cautious predictions about the total five-day holiday, pointing out that kids were out of school for summer vacation on Wednesday, skewing the results. Moreover, the actual Fourth of July holiday this year comes on a Saturday -- ordinarily the week's busiest day at the box office -- when picnics and backyard barbecues are likely to draw audiences away from theaters.
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Weinstein Says Public Enemies Is The Film To Beat
2 July 2009 1:59 PM, PDT
Producer Harvey Weinstein, generally regarded in the movie business as a genius when it comes to flogging his own films in the race for Oscar nominations, has already identified the movie to beat in 2009. It's Public Enemies, according to Weinstein. And the actor to beat is Johnny Depp. And the director is Michael Mann. In a review posted in TheDailyBeast.com, where he is a regular contributor, Weinstein, who was not involved in the production of Public Enemies, writes that with its release on Wednesday, "the Oscar race is officially on." Of Depp's performance, Weinstein comments that it displays his range as an actor. "It's the leading man as a character actor; it's the character actor as the leading man. It's the awareness, the silences ... but it's also the flinty, self-aware John Dillinger who knows what good public relations is." As for the director, he writes, "This is Michael Mann at the height of his height." Finally Weinstein urges moviegoers: "Bring your wits, your intelligence and your curiosity to the table and you'll be rewarded with a feast."
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True HD Streaming Likely Years Away, Says Report
2 July 2009 1:48 PM, PDT
It is likely to be at least five years years before high-definition movies can be streamed to home theaters with the same resolution as Blu-ray discs, according to a study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers and reported on the Video Business magazine's website. Although millions of homes are already connected to video services that claim to offer HDTV titles, via streaming, the quality doesn't even match that of standard DVDs and the "flow" is sometimes jerky. The problem in many cases is that most consumers' broadband connections are too slow to stream HD video which ideally requires an 18- to 20-megabits-per-second connection. (The average broadband subscriber's connection is about 2.5 mbps.)
Meanwhile the video subscription service ZapMyTV has signed a deal with Paramount that will allow it to offer to its online customers such relatively new films as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Hotel for Dogs and such classics as Breakfast at Tiffany's and Ghost.
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Straight-to-DVD Movie Winds Up At No. 1 In Rental Stores
2 July 2009 1:25 PM, PDT
Ordinarily a movie that goes straight to video is regarded as being among the dregs of a studio's output, but last week, The Code, starring Morgan Freeman and Antonio Banderas, debuted at No. 1 on Home Media magazine's rental chart without ever seeing the light of a theater screen. In second place was Disney's Confessions of a Shopaholic, followed by Warner Bros.' Inkheart, which flopped in theaters. Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino, which held the top spot a week ago, fell to No. 4 this week. On the sales chart, Confessions was at the top, according to Nielsen VideoScan First Alert, while Gran Torino slid to second place.
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Shawshank Coming To The Stage
2 July 2009 12:45 PM, PDT
Another movie is about to make the transition to the stage, published reports indicated on Wednesday. Prison drama The Shawshank Redemption, which received seven Oscar nominations in 1994, is scheduled to premiere in London's West End in September, with Kevin Anderson in the role Tim Robbins played in the movie and Reg E. Cathey in the Morgan Freeman role. Anderson, a member of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater Company, is best known for his starring role as a conflicted priest in the controversial TV series Nothing Sacred. The play's director is Peter Sheridan. Both the movie and play are based on Stephen King's 1982 novella, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.
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Depp Takes Aim At Transformers
1 July 2009 12:12 PM, PDT
Will Johnny Depp and his cohorts in Public Enemies be able to shoot down the rampaging Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen over the July 4 holiday? The film, along with Fox's 3D cartoon Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, opens in theaters today (Wednesday), and it's anybody's guess which one will produce the most fireworks. Transformers may have been a $200-million wonder last weekend, but ticket sales fell off far more steeply on Sunday than the studio had expected. By this weekend it could reach the point of audience saturation. At the same time, Johnny Depp is no stranger to box-office treasure troves. His Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is the third-highest-grossing film of all time (behind Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King), and his Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is the sixth highest-grossing film. Moreover, no one is willing to call Ice Age 3 out at this point either, despite mixed reviews. Ice Age: The Meltdown, after all, grossed $651.9 million worldwide.
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Movie Reviews: Public Enemies
1 July 2009 11:21 AM, PDT
With Public Enemies, Michael Mann has delivered a drama about a gangster whose name does not end in a vowel that has drawn the kind of praise from critics that they had previously reserved for the likes of The Sopranos. Manohla Dargis in the New York Times describes the movie about the last days of John Dillinger as "a grave and beautiful work of art." She adds that it "looks and plays like no other American gangster film I can think of." That is the theme of several other reviews. "You might not think it was possible to make a film about the most famous outlaw of the 1930s without cliches and 'star chemistry' and a film class screenplay structure, but Mann does it," writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. "The beauty and the skill of the filmmaking keep you tightly in its grasp," says Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times. Claudia Puig in USA Today comments, "An action film that feels like an epic, Public Enemies is an exciting and stylish slice of Americana." "The film is gripping and efficient," says Roger Moore in the Orlando Sentinel, noting that Johnny Depp as gangster John Dillinger and Christian Bale as G-man Melvin Purvis "make compelling enemies with charisma to burn." And comparing it to its rivals at the box office, Tom Maurstad in the Dallas Morning News remarks that the movie "appears as an oasis of adult entertainment." On the other hand, Lou Lumenick in the New York Post calls the film, "disappointing, curiously uninvolving." Joe Neumaier in the New York Daily News faults it for being "underconceived." And Dan Zak in the Washington Post faults Johnny Depp, who "dials down his weirdness to play gangster John Dillinger and, ironically, this choice sinks the movie."
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Movie Reviews: Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs
1 July 2009 11:15 AM, PDT
The critics are running hot and cold over Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times judges it to be "the best of the three films" in the franchise. Likewise Lou Lumenick in the New York Post remarks that "the third installment ... shows no sign of fatigue." And Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News says that it's "cute enough to engage kids and just smart enough to keep the chaperones entertained." But Carrie Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer comments, "One might call this feeble attempt to wring every last nickel from a moderately enjoyable franchise The Crass Menagerie." And Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune concludes: "Not bad, not good, Ice Age 3 may be Ok enough to do what it was engineered to do, i.e., baby-sit your kid for a while and rake in the dough."
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L.A. Schools Chief Inadvertently Adds To Bruno's Publicity Bonanza
1 July 2009 9:29 AM, PDT
In an action that is certain to draw further media attention to Sacha Baron-Cohen's upcoming Bruno feature, the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District has announced that he intends to take "appropriate personnel action" against the principal and athletic director of Birmingham High School for allowing a GQ photo shoot that featured Cohen as Brüno posing with the school's football team. He's wearing football uniform shoulder pads, a scanty pair of red shorts, an athletic cup and little else. "I don't believe that there is a place on any high school in America, including Los Angeles, for photos such as these," Cortines said in a statement. (GQ, the leading men's fashion magazine, is routinely stocked in many high-school libraries.) The parents of the boys signed consent forms for the pictures and the school itself received a $500 payment for the photo shoot. The L.A.Observed.com blog noted that Birmingham's principal wants to break away from the district as a charter school, and the school board is expected to vote on the matter today (Wednesday). Meanwhile, the inventive press agents for Brüno have taken precautions not to allow their client to be upstaged by other comics. The Australian Associated Press reported that when the Australian satirical group The Chaser showed up at the Sydney premiere of the movie on Monday, each member was forced to sign a statement promising not to disrupt the screening. They were then accompanied inside by several guards who remained close by -- just in case.
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Pink Slips Rain Over Paramount
1 July 2009 4:54 AM, PDT
Even as Paramount's top executives were cheering the rise of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen to the top of the box office on Tuesday, other executives at the studio were receiving notices that they were no longer needed. Some 31 pink slips were delivered to executives and production staff Tuesday. A memo to the staff said that the layoffs were intended to streamline the company's leadership. Among the executives let go was Guy Stodel, head of Paramount Vantage, the specialty film division that co-produced 2007's No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood with Disney's Miramax. But except for No Country, other releases by the unit have failed to score at the box office. Last month, Paramount moved Paramount Vantage's marketing, distribution, and physical production departments into the main studio. The latest personnel cuts also came on the same day that it was reported that Paramount was in discussions with Sony and Fox on possibly combining their home video production and distribution operations.
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Jackson Had Filmed A 3D Movie Before His Death
30 June 2009 1:49 PM, PDT
Details were still sketchy, but the Associated Press reported Monday that two weeks before his death, Michael Jackson wrapped up production on a 3D film titled The Dome Project, which he had expected to be included in his London performances. The project hearkened back to his 3D movie that became an attraction at Disneyland. Sources told the A.P. that the movie was shot "in marathon sessions" on four different sets at Culver Studios from June 1-9 but that five weeks of work went into the project. It reportedly was in post-production at the time of Jackson's death. It was unclear whether Jackson had planned to screen the movie in theaters or on television following his concert tour.
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Success Is Revenge's Revenge Against Critics
30 June 2009 1:34 PM, PDT
Ticket sales for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen on Sunday fell a whopping $3 million below Paramount's estimate. Nevertheless, the studio claimed that the movie earned $200.1 million over its first five days, only about 1 million below the original estimate. BoxOfficeMojo.com said that Paramount explained the apparent discrepancy by noting that it had not received complete reports from some theaters for the movie's midnight opening on Wednesday and from "institutional" IMAX locations in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. Nevertheless, the total still left Revenge of the Fallen as the second-highest-grossing movie over a five-day start, behind last year's The Dark Knight, which raked in $203.8 million. Overseas, Fallen grossed $166.1 million in 58 countries, bringing its worldwide total to $390.3 million. The success, which came despite a critical drubbing, sent shares in theater chains soaring. Carmike Cinemas, the nation's largest exhibitor, was up 10 percent, closing at $8.38. Regal Theaters was up 7 percent to $13.47, and Cinemark, up 6 percent to $11.20. In addition, Viacom, the parent of Paramount, was up 4 percent to $24.71. But today's (Tuesday) Hollywood Reporter indicated that the biggest beneficiary of the movie's success may have been IMAX, whose stock has risen 19 percent since Wednesday's opening. IMAX theaters accounted for $14.4 million of the movie's gross over the five days.
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Jerry Lewis Reviving “The Nutty Professor” On Broadway
30 June 2009 12:50 PM, PDT
Eighty-three-year-old Jerry Lewis will join the list of Hollywood personalities bringing stage versions of their movie work to Broadway, published reports said Monday. He is expected to direct a musical version of his 1963 film The Nutty Professor, which will reportedly feature a musical score by Marvin Hamlisch and Rupert Holmes. He is not expected to appear in the production. In 1995, Lewis received rave reviews for his performance in a revival of Damn Yankees, his first and only appearance in a Broadway show.
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The Pirate Bay Lured By Treasure
30 June 2009 12:38 PM, PDT
The Pirate Bay, whose leaders were recently convicted in Sweden of copyright infringement, has been sold to Stockholm-based Global Gaming Factory for the equivalent of $7.8 million. In a statement, Global CEO Hans Pandeya said that the company plans to introduce a new version of the BitTorrent indexer "that allows compensation to the content providers and copyright owners." It did not suggest how much it intended to compensate the copyright holders or even whether it had had discussions with them. The deal also raised suspicions among BitTorrent bloggers that the movie and record industries may have been behind the purchase. Global operates a network of Internet cafes and game centers.
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Bruno Rides Into Sydney, Australia
30 June 2009 12:16 PM, PDT
Launching another publicity stunt that might have gladdened the hearts of old-time Hollywood press agents, Sacha Baron Cohen as his character Bruno strode onto Sydney, Australia's Market Street Monday dressed in a skimpy version of a British knight's suit of armor, leading a horse outfitted in bondage gear. He was accompanied by an entourage of bikini-clad models, whose bodies were painted silver. Speaking in an Austrian accent, he told reporters, “Ich really hope my movie realizes its full global potential and doesn't peter out after a promising start like swine flu." The Australian Associated Press reported that journalists attending a news conference for Baron-Cohen were "instructed" not to ask questions about the actor's fiancée or about the death of Michael Jackson. (A scene from the film in which Brüno talks to La Toya Jackson about her brother was deleted after Michael's death.) Appearing to counter criticism of his performance by some gay activists, Baron-Cohen (as Brüno) declared: "I want to be the gay stereotype. I want to be the gay role model. ... My first words to my mother were: 'I'm gay, get over it.'"
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Michael Jackson's Final Rehearsal To Air
29 June 2009 3:21 AM, PDT
The final rehearsal for Michael Jackson’s planned concert tour will likely be broadcast internationally, Chicago Sun-Times entertainment columnist Bill Zwecker reported today (Monday), citing a source at Anschutz Entertainment Group, the Los Angeles-based concert promotion and touring company that was staging Jackson’s comeback. A similar report appeared on Sharon Waxman’s blog, TheWrap.com. It was not immediately clear whether the company intends to distribute the rehearsal performance to theaters or whether it is planning a television special. According to the reports, the rehearsal was shot with multiple “state-of-the-art” cameras (presumably meaning high-definition equipment) and the audio was captured in SurroundSound. Besides Jackson, the material also included performances by dancers, musicians and aerial performers.
Last week, Kenny Ortega, the show’s choreographer and director, told the Los Angeles Times that during the rehearsal, “Michael stood at my side and we looked at the stage together and were just beaming with gladness that we had arrived at this place. ... And he was happy. We all felt that and shared that. We were four or five days from finishing in Los Angeles and heading to London and feeling in really good shape.” Aeg Live CEO Randy Phillips added: “It was fantastic, he was so great.” Others who watched Jackson on stage commented that he appeared to be performing “at his peak.”
The rehearsal was reportedly taped at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on June 24, the day before Jackson’s death. The Aeg source told Zwecker and Waxman that the video could also be released as a DVD and the audio, as a live CD. “We have a live album in the can,” an Aeg official boasted to a colleague over the weekend, according to Waxman’s account.
Timing of the concert broadcast and CD and DVD releases is apparently still up in the air. Zwecker said that they may not materialize before September when a proposed tribute to Jackson is likely to be staged. He said that the special will include performances by Madonna, Diana Ross, Wyclef Jean, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder, although he did not indicate whether the tribute would be staged as a live concert or a television special.
Meanwhile, the New York Post, citing a source close to the Jackson family, reported today that the singer had recorded “a treasure trove of songs for his three children” instructing that the songs not be released until after his death.
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