MCN Originals Archive for June, 2012

Friday Estimates: June 30

It’s a stripper and teddy bear weekend! While Merida and her Brave friends will no doubt capture more of the family market, Ted and Magic Mike are at the top of the box office charts on Friday.

Read the full article »

Wilmington on Movies: Ted

Listen, I’m like almost everybody else. If you make me laugh, I’ll forgive you. I’ll forgive almost anything. In fact, I feel here like the priest with the Mafia guy on the other side of the screen. There’s a lot to forgive and expiate: a lot of Hail Marys here. But what the hell. It made me laugh. I forgive it. Bring it in, yuh bastid. Where’s the brewskis?

Read the full article »

Pride’s Friday 5 (June 29, 2012)

Sarah Polley’s “lucid and lucent” “Take This Waltz”; “Magic Mike” and the love of “Saturday Night Fever”; the modern dance between Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone in “The Amazing Spider-Man”; Mila Kunis, in a towel, in “Ted,” and the grave beauty of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Once Upon A Time In Anatolia.”

Read the full article »

Wilmington on DVDs: 21 Jump Street; Spider-Man; Spider-Man 2; Spider-Man 3; Erin Brockovich; Sister Act; Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit

The first two Spider-Man movies were such smash critical hits (Spider-Man 2, co-scripted by Alvin Sargent, has been hailed as the acme of the whole genre, until The Avengers), that an inevitable backlash plagued the vulnerable and tearful Spider-Man 3. (Seen by itself, most critics would have probably liked it fine – just as the public liked all three). But some smasheroos deserve their popularity and this is one (excuse me, these are three) of them.

Read the full article »

Wilmington on DVDs: The Artist

It’s a cinematic feast in the style of the old time silent movies that flourished from the time of film‘s invention in 1895 — or at least since Georges Méliès started telling stories with them before the turn of the century — until 1927, when Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer made the screen speak and croon and told us we ain’t heard nothing yet and, unmaliciously of course , drove a nail in the coffin of the old technology, while ushering in the new.

Read the full article »

The DVD Wrapup: Oranges & Sunshine, Bullhead, Spalding Gray, Deliverance … More

Michaël R. Roskam not only uses steroid smuggling as a device to advance the plot, but his protagonist is addicted to them physically and psychologically, as well.

Read the full article » 1 Comment »

The Weekend Report, June 24, 2012

A decade ago you couldn’t have a better brand than Disney for animation and family fare. Today, Pixar is comparably peerless and under the same corporate banner. While no one doubted the opening strength of the Scot princess of Brave, industry b.o. trackers predicted a reduced virility between $55 million and $60 million. Otherwise opening exit demos were predictably female skewing with 57% of viewers; 55% aged 25 years or younger and 66% composed of families.

Brave also opened day-and-date in 10 international territories including Australia, Russia and China (Scotland will have to wait) with initial estimates of $13 million. With soccer finals in full swing and the Olympics in July the upcoming summer blockbusters won’t be blanket bombing foreign openings for the remainder of the summer.

Read the full article » 1 Comment »

Wilmington on Movies: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

The whole movie is nervous and over-loud and expensive-looking, full of tacky jump-at-you 3D effects; and watching it sometimes makes you feel as if the country was under attack by a conspiracy of blood-sucking idiots. Even though it was shot by the sometimes marvelous Caleb Deschanel (The Right Stuff, The Black Stallion), the film’s visual style seems like a mistake.

Read the full article » 4 Comments »

Friday Estimates: June 22, 2012

Brave scores the 3rd best opening day in Pixar history, Abraham Lincoln chops modestly at the box office, The Avengers hovers as it aims at getting to $600m domestic before all Spider-Man breaks lose, and Focus finds the end of the box office world.

Read the full article »

Pride’s Friday 5 (June 22, 2012)

The tangled red of “Brave”; the sensation of “Gerhard Richter Painting”; gentle geek fable “Nate & Margaret” and its light, platonic “Harold and Maude” vibe; the family dynamics of “Declaration of War” and the bop Italiano of Woody’s latest late-career ensemble comedy.

Read the full article »

Wilmington on Movies: Brave.

“Brave” is a beautifully visualized, sometimes blisteringly funny and exciting Pixar cartoon fairytale about a wee Scottish lassie who grows up into a feisty, flame-haired young adventuress who shoots off great big arrows and battles bears and witches and boisterous clansmen.

Read the full article » 1 Comment »

DP/30 Weekend

Interviews from Brave, Safety Not Guaranteed, The Invisible War, From Rome With Love’s producer, and Gayby. Plus, Aaron Sorkin.

Read the full article »

Wilmington on Movies: Andrew Sarris (1928-2012)

Andy Sarris was my favorite movie critic because, in “The American Cinema,” he opened up a world for me, for all of us. That’s what a good critic, or a great one, does.

Read the full article » 2 Comments »

Wilmington on DVDs: And Everything Is Going Fine; Sex and Death to the Age of 14.

He’s dead now, and his friends suspect he threw himself off the Staten Island Ferry and drowned, took his life because he was suffering the pain from a bad traffic accident on a lonely road in Ireland that left him with a smashed skull and some brain damage, and, according to Nell Casey “an orbital fracture, a broken hip, and a permanent limp“ — unable to swim, unable to ski. Unable… So he jumped, maybe. Drowned, maybe. As the Manhahttan skyline approached or receded — maybe. Unless he was on the other side of the ferry. We don’t know because he isn’t around to tell the story.

Read the full article » 1 Comment »

The Gronvall Files: Lynn Shelton

“With ‘Your Sister’s Sister’ I had a script, I had dialogue written out, but I asked the actors not to memorize it. Sometimes they would just slightly alter a line, or sometimes they would change a whole line. Maybe 25 percent of the movie is from lines that I wrote, so the vast majority of it is not. But there’s a very specific trajectory that needs to be followed, and so even though the dialogue itself may be improvised, the movie is not, if that makes sense.”

Read the full article »

The DVD Wrapup: Jeff at Home Project X, The FP, Nine Muses … More

A decade ago, Mark and Jay Duplass helped create a niche in the indie world commonly referred to as “mumblecore.” Generally speaking, these are low-budget, largely improvised productions, populated by characters that would be considered unexceptional and treated as invisible, unless, perhaps, they lived in the apartment next door, occupied a cubicle beside you at work or dated one of your kids. This isn’t to imply these people lead meaningless lives; only that almost everything they do falls under the loose heading of “normal.” If there’s been a hipster cachet attached to mumblecore titles, it’s because what’s considered commonplace by most mainstream standards can be revelatory when observed by viewers in similar circumstances and when photographed in credibly natural fashion.

Read the full article »

The Gronvall Files: Safety Not Guaranteed’s Colin Trevorrow

I write studio films, and you’re not allowed to do that anymore, you’ve got to keep the plot going. And we took like a 15-minute break from the plot in this movie, and just let these characters hang out and fall in love and discover things. I guess that’s where maybe the hipster side comes in: “hipster quirky,” or whatever the label. I don’t even know what hipster means anymore. But I can’t apologize for wanting to spend time with these characters and learn what’s really going on with them, outside of this cool time travel story.

Read the full article »

Wilmington on Movies: Rock of Ages

“Rock of Ages” is a rock movie for people who still have their old Foreigner and REO Speedwagon album collections intact, but can’t really feel the beat.

Read the full article » 4 Comments »

Wilimington on Movies: Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding

Jane Fonda plays Grandma Grace, whom you might describe as the permanent ambassador from Woodstock Nation. A devotee of sex, drugs and rock n’roll — as well as peace, love and understanding — and a still sexually adventurous old gal who claims she was once in a threesome with Leonard Cohen, Grace lives in Woodstock in a combination pot farm and upscale painters studio that looks as if it were designed by somebody rich and famous for somebody like Jane Fonda.

Read the full article » 1 Comment »

The Weekend Report: June 1, 2012

Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted fended off the competition that included two high profile debuts to lead the weekend box office with an estimated $35.8 million.

The wide release debuting films both underperformed with the discordant Rock of Ages slotting third with $15.1 million and the Father’s Day surprise That’s My Boy two notches down at $12.9 million. Also new was Bollywood’s Ferrari Ki Sawaari with an OK launch of $267,000 at 99 venues and a not particular tuneful $148,000 gross for the rap profile Something for Nothing at 157 stands.

Read the full article »

MCN Originals

Leonard Klady's Friday Estimates
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