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Columns By Leonard KladyKlady@moviecitynews.com
No Room At The Marquee
National Association of Theater Owner’s president John Fithian went on a tear a couple of months back, criticizing the media for taking a myopic view of film going. There’s no question that coverage of dips and bumps in the box office is evanescent, or as folks in film exhibition like to say, “cyclic.” Fithian quite…
Read the full article »The X-Files … to be continued
Though publicized as the conclusion of a franchise, X-Men: The Last Stand isn’t likely to be the last word on the cinematic mutant super heroes. It led the 4-day Memorial holiday frame with an estimated $120.8 million with second place falling to The Da Vinci Code with $43.3 million. X-Men added an additional $76 million…
Read the full article »Cannes 2006: Come back, Edy Williams … all is forgiven
May 26, 2006 At least once in every reviewer’s career a story is written to convince to readers – and, implicitly, various editors and bosses – that watching and writing about movies for a living is hardly the picnic everyone assumes it to be. Variations on the same theme are written by reporters assigned to…
Read the full article »The Indolent and the Indulgent…
Summer 2006 is already shaping up as the season of the train wreck. The May release schedule that was supposed to dispel all talk of a movie going crisis has instead renewed considerable debate about audience apathy, blunted expectations, marketing acumen or its absence, fading stardom, cultural and demographic shifts and myriad other speculations. In…
Read the full article »Box Office Comes in for the Code
The Da Vinci Code rang up an estimated $77.2 million to lead domestic film viewing for the weekend and added close to $150 million in its international debut. The current weekend also had a strong opening of $37.3 million for the animated Over the Hedge and the combined juggernaut pretty much had a vacuum cleaner…
Read the full article »'Da Vinci Code' barbs span the globe at warp speed
April 17, 2006 Whew, that was close! Here. I was thinking of flying to Bahrain or Iceland yesterday to get a head start on forming my own opinion on the mysteries revealed in “The Da Vinci Code” — as recommended by director Ron Howard — but no one at LAX seemed interested in accepting my…
Read the full article »That Sinking Feeling
Mission: Impossible III took close to a 50% hit but that was still enough to keep it ahead of the debut of Poseidon. The Mission statement was estimated at $24.6 million while the upside-down remake soaked up $20.5 million. The marketplace had other soggy starts including a fourth place opening of $5.6 million for the…
Read the full article »If flap over 'Da Vinci Code' sounds familiar, re-visit 'Baby Doll' and 'Viridiana' on DVD
April 8, 2006 John Waters often credits the Catholic Church’s now-defunct Legion of Decency with steering him toward the sorts of movies that would shape his cinematic oeuvre. If, as a lad of 12, Baltimore’s favorite son hadn’t taken Francis Cardinal Spellman’s loud condemnation of “Baby Doll” as an invitation to calculate the wages of…
Read the full article »Beat of the Tom-Tom
I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news. The good news is that Mission: Impossible III debuted with an estimated $46.8 million to lead the domestic box office and added an additional $70 million from 57 international territories. The bad news amounts to the same thing. Additionally, there was an impressive $5.4 million bow…
Read the full article »‘Only the Brave’ follows by 55 years Hollywood’s only salute to Nisei soldiers
Look up “Nisei” in the IMDB database and only four titles pop up. Surprisingly, perhaps, the first was made in 1951, when World War II movies were being turned out like so many Fords in Dearborn. The most recent, “Only the Brave,” is struggling for distribution. “Go for Broke!” told the story of the 442nd…
Read the full article »Stop the madness! Enough on Pellicano, already … wake us in time for the movie
May 3, 2006 Like almost everyone else in Los Angeles, I’ve become so distraught by recent revelations in the Pellicano-gate scandal (there, I’ve said it) that I’ve had a hard time concentrating on the business at hand. By comparison, navigating around Monday’s immigration boycott was a walk down the Yellow Brick Road. I still find…
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