April 25, 2024
BYOB
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BYOB: 235 Years Of Relative independence
BYOB Weekend: Hop, An April Fool’s Gag?
| Friday | Screens | % Chg | Cume | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Title | Gross | Thtr | % Chgn | Cume |
| Venom | 33 | 4250 | NEW | 33 |
| A Star is Born | 15.7 | 3686 | NEW | 15.7 |
| Smallfoot | 3.5 | 4131 | -46% | 31.3 |
| Night School | 3.5 | 3019 | -63% | 37.9 |
| The House Wirh a Clock in its Walls | 1.8 | 3463 | -43% | 49.5 |
| A Simple Favor | 1 | 2408 | -50% | 46.6 |
| The Nun | 0.75 | 2264 | -52% | 111.5 |
| Hell Fest | 0.6 | 2297 | -70% | 7.4 |
| Crazy Rich Asians | 0.6 | 1466 | -51% | 167.6 |
| The Predator | 0.25 | 1643 | -77% | 49.3 |
| Also Debuting | ||||
| The Hate U Give | 0.17 | 36 | ||
| Shine | 85,600 | 609 | ||
| Exes Baggage | 75,900 | 62 | ||
| NOTA | 71,300 | 138 | ||
| 96 | 61,600 | 62 | ||
| Andhadhun | 55,000 | 54 | ||
| Afsar | 45,400 | 33 | ||
| Project Gutenberg | 36,000 | 17 | ||
| Love Yatri | 22,300 | 41 | ||
| Hello, Mrs. Money | 22,200 | 37 | ||
| Studio 54 | 5,300 | 1 | ||
| Loving Pablo | 4,200 | 15 |
| 3-Day Estimates | Weekend | % Chg | Cume |
|---|---|---|---|
| No Good Dead | 24.4 (11,230) | NEW | 24.4 |
| Dolphin Tale 2 | 16.6 (4,540) | NEW | 16.6 |
| Guardians of the Galaxy | 7.9 (2,550) | -23% | 305.8 |
| Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles | 4.8 (1,630) | -26% | 181.1 |
| The Drop | 4.4 (5,480) | NEW | 4.4 |
| Let's Be Cops | 4.3 (1,570) | -22% | 73 |
| If I Stay | 4.0 (1,320) | -28% | 44.9 |
| The November Man | 2.8 (1,030) | -36% | 22.5 |
| The Giver | 2.5 (1,120) | -26% | 41.2 |
| The Hundred-Foot Journey | 2.5 (1,270) | -21% | 49.4 |
Review: Little Women (no spoilers) - The Hot Blog
Box Office First Look - The Hot Blog
Why You Should Be Afraid Of The End Of The Paramount Decree - The Hot Blog
Eli is tracking well but reports that it cost nearly 80 million are depressing but possible.
I am gobsmacked that Lovely Bones is tracking at least 5 mil below the Jackie Chan pacifier movie…wow….go Lionsgate? And from Peter Jackson…thank you Steven Spielberg and Warners for funding my next 3 efforts (directorial and production wise).
Eli is tracking well but reports that it cost nearly 80 million are depressing but possible.
I am gobsmacked that Lovely Bones is tracking at least 5 mil below the Jackie Chan pacifier movie…wow….go Lionsgate? And from Peter Jackson…thank you Steven Spielberg and Warners for funding my next 3 efforts (directorial and production wise).
It’s weird that a movie with the pedigree of The Lovely Bones feels like it’s being dumped.
I don’t think of LB as so much of a “dump” as just a lame duck at this point, a definite case where the platform didn’t work at all. It’d be like INVICTUS or THE ROAD going wide *today* and trying to get everyone in the world excited for it, after a month-plus of limited-release indifference and none of the expected critical/awards acclaim.
For the record, I liked LB and those other movies a lot, but at this point it just seems like some old-news, six-weeks-old shit where it feels like the BluRay should be out just around the corner… like releasing it wide at all is just a formality.
It is mildly amusing — and I think I predicted this way back — that the TV spots hide the “otherworldly” angle almost entirely and sell it as a Taken/Edge of Darkness-type revenge flick with Wahlberg tracking down the killer and kicking ass.
It doesn’t look very good, Wahlberg can’t act as a lead FOR HIS LIFE, it’s been out so long I don’t understand why I’m still seeing commercials for it, no one seems to know it exists. Complete fail. If it wasn’t for District 9, which Jackson did practically nothing on, when was he last relevant? Almost a decade ago?
I think after being allowed to make 3-hour theatrical cuts and four-hour director cuts of his last four movies, Jackson has forgotten how to tell a tight, concise story in a reasonable length of time.
I had the exact opposite problem with Lovely Bones, Luke. I wish the 2 hour film had been three hours, so that JP could have included all of the missing character development. It’s in the book… even the Wikipedia synopsis moved me more than this botched adaptation. Without it, everyone except for the victim and the killer come off as relatively one-dimensional at best. It’s a stunning misfire from a filmmaker that I greatly admire.
You are both wrong. It is an 85% brilliant movie… that also happens to contain three or four of the worst, most embarrassing, WTF? passages of any movie of ’09 or any other year:
1) That “wacky” montage of Ronan and Holly Golightly (UGGGGHHH) romping in the afterlife with their faces on pop magazines.
2) That repulsive montage of Susan Sarandon shrewing it up and being annoying, ill-timed after the harrowing first 45 minutes.
3) Weisz taking a cue from WHICH WAY IS UP? and going to work as an ORANGE PICKER or something, as we all know hot, suburban white women are prone to do.
4) Tucci’s final scene, which is so embarrassing and ill-conceived, I have to assume it’s from the novel and no one dared change it. It’s a really bad laugh and awkwardly executed. And just STUPID.
But other than that, the stretches depicting Ronan’s day to day life were poignant and well-acted, there’s a lot of suspense in the Tucci bits; though at times he seems to be channeling Bridges in “The Vanishing,” in terms of just being more weird than menacing. Wahlberg and Weisz and ESPECIALLY Ronan are excellent.
As Poland sort of said in his video review, it’s one of those uncomfortably earnest, borderline embarrassing movies (like “The Fountain”) that critics don’t tend to like, as they favor an intellectual approach over intense emotion and visceral feeling.
Plus, something I’ve noticed after 30 years of reading reviews:
Critics seem to be especially sensitive about “children in peril” as subject matter. It’s probably second only to “revenge” as an issue that makes them profoundly uncomfortable and nervous. Maybe it’s just that most professional critics are parents themselves, and it strikes a chord, but as a rule they’re pretty squeamish about it.
I don’t know that I’m sensitive about that, per se…but this critic IS particularly sensitive to constant voice-over narration that explains exactly what you’re seeing. Rarely works for me, and is often a lazy device when adapting books.
LexG, you have a point about critics – they seems to be ultra-sensitive to that subject matter. And I can relate as I have two young children, myself.
I can remember a lot of reviews for Jurassc Park when it came out, accusing Spielberg of exploitation with the scenes of the two kids being chased by the TRex and the Raptors – as if it was some new thing that Spielberg had cynically embraced. Didn’t these folks remember ET or Jaws? Sure were a lot of scenes in those films depicting kids in peril. If you can’t stomach it, then don’t watch it…..
Oh, and has any one seen the trailer for The A Team? Consider me psyched for this movie – love the cast and I am eager to see what Sharlto Copley does next.
It looks extremely silly, but that’s kind of the point, right?
“I can remember a lot of reviews for Jurassc Park when it came out, accusing Spielberg of exploitation with the scenes of the two kids being chased by the TRex and the Raptors – as if it was some new thing that Spielberg had cynically embraced. Didn’t these folks remember ET or Jaws? Sure were a lot of scenes in those films depicting kids in peril.”
yes, how about a kid getting eaten off a little yellow raft by a giant, lurking shark in a flurry of huge rolling fins and blood? spielberg started out with a child-slaughtering bang
(the scene on the dock where the mourning mrs. kintner slaps chief brody across the face for failing to close the beaches and causing her boy to be dead and there’s nothing he can do about it must be one of the most poignant in the history of flicks for any mother/parent; i’ve probably seen it a hundred times and i still tear up and can’t move after that slap, riveted to the screen by her pain and fragility, and brody’s shame and despair)
This weekend almost looks to be a Weekend from Hell.
“The Book of Eli” … Legion of Doom trailer … pistol-whipped
“Crazy Heart” … 4-Time Academy Award Nominee … kneecapped
“The Lovely Bones” … Academy Award Winning Director … kneecapped again
“The Spy Next Door” … fundie-friendly … shotgun blast
I say “almost” because two AMCs near me have picked up “Broken Embraces”. Almodovar in a megaplex … CHEERS!
I’m avoiding the multiplex this weekend to watch NFL Playoffs, and catch up on DVDs.
Finally saw IN THE LOOP last night. Wholly lubricated horse cock did I love it! I an just world it’s be one of the 10 nominees next month, especially Capaldi. So many lines I’ll be quoting to my death bed.
“You need to have some soldiers alive at the end of a war, or it looks like you lost.”
“Want me hole-punch your face?”
“War protest shag.”
Me likey. Vaults into my top 10.
Is THE THICK OF IT on dvd at all, especially region 1?
Fair points LexG. This is a film I really wanted to like, especially after the stick-up-the-butt nature of some of the earliest negative reviews (they reminded me of the thoughtless Speed Racer pans). But the film just left me cold. I even scanned a Wikipedia synopsis of the novel, hoping to find fault with the source material as a mitigating circumstance. But nearly every single problem I had with the film was an omission or change that Jackson made from the original book. I also second Luke’s complaint about the constant narration (it’s the worst of its kind since Wanted). As for the child in peril stuff, I’ve never had an issue with that, although I’m less likely to outright cheer a breaking of child-in-peril taboos (ie – Burton beheading a kid in Sleepy Hallow) than I was at 19. My biggest problem with the film is that I didn’t feel bad enough considering the situation. It’s as if Jackson was so afraid of bumming out his viewers with this story about the rape/murder of a young girl that he basically make a movie that didn’t make us feel anything at all. I may have had serious issues with the past and future portions of The Fountain, but the present-day stuff was so emotionally powerful that I forgive the film its trespasses. I can’t speak for other film critics, but I’m willing to give a film a lot of leeway if its able to move me. I didn’t pick Meet the Robinsons as my favorite film of the decade because of its technical merits. The biggest emotion I had in The Lovely Bones, which is probably a personal pet peeve, was anger at how Wahlberg and Weisz were neglecting and ignoring their other children for much of the second and third acts (again, a change from the novel).
The Kitner boy death remains, to this day, the most frightning horror scene in any film.
The blurry distant view of the attack. His underwater screams as he’s devoured. Chills….my god. It’s scarier than the Scheider chumming seen. Although the brief shot if the shark eating Ted Grossman in the estuary gets me too.
I’ve never seen any real info on how that particular “blurry distant view” shot was executed. Id like to. Or perhaps it should remain a mystery.
Spielberg has sinned against movies, yes, but he gets a lifetime pass for the great films he’s made because they are transcend greatness. I include E.T. It still makes me cry. I cried like a bitch when I 11 years old in the theater.
JAWS…still neck and neck with HALLOWEEN as my all-time favorite movie.
“Crazy Heart” … 4-Time Academy Award Nominee … kneecapped
“The Lovely Bones” … Academy Award Winning Director … kneecapped again
[…]
I say “almost” because two AMCs near me have picked up “Broken Embraces”. Almodovar in a megaplex … CHEERS!
Guess who else really really likes Almodovar
RE: Wahlberg’s bad acting.
That’s why he was SO convincing as Dirk Diggler. He always comes off as an air-headed fool who can’t act. Ergo, he executes porn star acting to perfection.
I love BOOGIE NIGHTS. Top 10 all-time. I gotta believe PTA secretly cast him exactly for that quality and not what he saw as real acting ability. He’ll never admit it but I am sure of it.
Discovered while looking up Wii numbers over in the Avatar thread…
WGA Video Game Nominees Announced
* Assassin’s Creed II, Story by Corey May, Script Writers Corey May, Joshua Rubin, Jeffrey Yohalem; Ubisoft Entertainment
* Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Written by Jesse Stern, Additional Writing Steve Fukuda, Story by Todd Alderman, Steve Fukuda, Mackey McCandlish, Zied Rieke, Jesse Stern, Jason West, Battlechatter Dialogue, Sean Slayback; Activision
* Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Written by Amy Hennig; Sony Computer Entertainment
* Wet, Written by Duppy Demetrius; Bethesda Softworks
* X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Script Writer Marc Guggenheim; Activision
Source: http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=6589&mp=1
Hey, Wolverine is in there – that makes it movie related, right?
If I may, X-Men Origins: Wolverine was one of the most purely enjoyable video games I’ve played in ages. Has there ever been a worse movie that inspired a better video game? It’s easily one of the best, if not the best, movie-to-game adaptations since Goldeneye. Despite my personal annoyance with the nitty-gritty difficulty level, I’m shocked that Batman: Arkham Asylum didn’t get a nod.
I suspect that’s because there’s only half a dozen or so studios who are WGA signatories.
For those of you who may not be familiar with these titles, I give you Mr Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw:
Assassin’s Creed 2
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Wet
He hasn’t reviewed Wolverine, but I’m guessing you’re already familiar with the story…
“The Kitner boy death remains, to this day, the most frightning horror scene in any film.
The blurry distant view of the attack. His underwater screams as he’s devoured. Chills….my god. It’s scarier than the Scheider chumming seen. Although the brief shot if the shark eating Ted Grossman in the estuary gets me too.”
i heard that (but no love for ben gardener’s EYEBALL)? the amazing thing about alex kintner’s attack is how the shark rolls over, characteristic of great whites when taking prey. the brief glimpse of the humongous pectoral fins as the shark rolls is simply gobsmacking.
(“JAWS…still neck and neck with HALLOWEEN as my all-time favorite movie.” also two of my all-time faves, pure excellence in film-making)
I thought Wahlberg was really, REALLY good in THREE KINGS, especially during his torture scene and the aftermath.
Lately though, not so much.
@ Geoff, definitely with you on A-Team. It’s not meant to be serious. You have Bradley Cooper shooting a plane out of the air while parachuting in a tank. That is totally in line with the TV series I think. When I was a kid, I loved the show. The movie looks to be trying to achieve that sorta madcap glee that they had. Hope it succeeds.
The A-Team looks like a blast, and if the movie is as much fun as the trailer, it’ll be a major hit. Having said that, for the movie to earn my adoration, all it has to do is include a scene where The A-Team actually hands someone a bill for their services. Despite the opening narration, I don’t recall the team ever actually get paid for their hero-for-hire work. Did the show ever explain how they supported themselves?
“”The Book of Eli” … Legion of Doom trailer … pistol-whipped
“Crazy Heart” … 4-Time Academy Award Nominee … kneecapped
“The Lovely Bones” … Academy Award Winning Director … kneecapped again
“The Spy Next Door” … fundie-friendly … shotgun blast”
How is The Spy Next Door fundie-friendly? Good gawd you are a loon. And The Book of Eli and The Lovely Bones have done just fine ($40m and $20mil ish, and compared to expectations for the latter…) so you are wrong yet again. YOU ARE A LOON!
Eh, I know we’re all too busy yelling at each other or talking about AVATAR, but a wholly unrelated observation if I may:
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY is already out on BluRay and DVD?????? Was there any fanfare for this? Doesn’t that kind of vindicate David’s take on the film, that it was an amusing novelty for a couple weeks but no real game changer?
Has it basically gone from IT MOVIE, MUST-SEE MOVIE of the fall… to totally forgotten also-ran in less than three months??? And I know it’s Paramount/DW, who’s shortened the window lately with The Goods and GI Joe, but is that the fastest homevideo turnaround since SHOWGIRLS?
What with all those commericals, oh, in LATE OCTOBER of vaguely multiethnic L.A. audiences MUGGING and HIDING UNDER THEIR SEATS in SHEER TERROR, wasn’t this supposed to be some ROADSHOW experience where they’d cart the four copies of it around the Americas for a couple years as it galvanized the public? Did they even publicize the DVD release?
@Kami: Print ads for “The Spy Next Door” feature a Seal of Approval from the Dove Foundation, a Christian fundamentalist outfit.
According to the organisation’s website, its stated mission is “to encourage and promote the creation, production, distribution and consumption of wholesome family entertainment”.
Sounds perfect for you since you are an infant
Then why does ABC Family continue to carry “The 700 Club”? Appropriate to ask after what Pat Robertson said about Haiti.
I note that Jeff Wells started deleting chunks of sane comments from his bigoted, bizarro obssession threads with Mo’nique…Is there a bigger pussy on the web than tough-talkin’ Wells?
Chucky, okay I’ll buy that but you have NO defense the success of Book of Eli and The Lovely Bones do you? None at all.
Chucky – Robertson used to own the Family Channel. It was in the contract when he sold it that whoever buys must keep The 700 Club on.