In the first of three video chats looking back on the summer movies of 2o09, Owen and Lisa talk about whether popcorn movies for grownups had a chance in a season of battling robots.
Archive: August 2009 (1-10 of 42)
Aug 31
2009
07:08 PM ET
Aug 31
2009
06:00 PM ET
Academy changes Best Picture voting rules
I’m now starting to feel a little better about the 10 Best Picture nominees thing. In the wake of its decision to double the number of films that earn the Oscars’ biggest nod from five to 10, the Academy has decided to change the way it determines the Best Picture winner, according to the veteran Oscar journalist Steve Pond over at The Wrap. And I have to say, I’m totally on board with this move. It’s a little complicated, but let me try to explain: In the past, once the nominees were announced, Academy members voted only for the one film they thought should win the award, and the film with the most votes won. But with so many nominees next year, it’s feasible that a movie could have won Best Picture with only 11 percent of the vote, which seems crazy. So now, once the 10 nominees are named, voters will rank the films from 1 to 10. All the No. 1 votes will be counted, and if no film has more than 50 percent of the vote (which will certainly be the case), the last-place film will be eliminated and the voters who voted for that film will have their No. 2 votes counted instead. That process will continue until one film has a majority of the votes. As Pond points out, there is a chance that the film that ends up winning won’t actually have the most No. 1 votes, but will instead emerge the victor in the second, third, or fourth rounds. But I’d rather see that happen than have a Best Picture with a paltry 11 percent of the vote.
The upshot here is that Oscar campaigners who used to try to cultivate a small cult of fans for their films will now need to canvass more broadly to snag those all-important No. 2 and No. 3 rankings as well. In other words, when it comes to individual Oscar ballots, winning is no longer everything.
Aug 30
2009
03:10 PM ET
'We Live in Public': A portrait of an Internet visionary — or was he?
The Internet is good at many things, but one thing it’s great at is selling future visions of itself — speculation as reality. That’s what went on in the dotcom boom, when a thousand what if? on-line gimmicks created a thousand virtual millionaires. And it goes on, too, in We Live in Public, a fascinating documentary that nevertheless partakes of a kind of visionary-hard-sell, cult-of-the-Internet, the-future-is-now cachet. The movie won this year’s Sundance Grand Jury prize, but I confess that when I finally caught up with it just the other day, I found it at once resonant and naive — often at the same time. We Live in Public wants to be a bold statement, but it’s as much a hermetic product of its time as the hot-house Internet prognostication it traffics in.
An opening title informs us that “this is the story of the greatest Internet pioneer you’ve never heard of,” and that’s quite a hook indeed; it hints at the secret history of an underground tech revolution. The movie then lures us in by taking us back to the pre-historic days of computer culture, when Josh Harris, the movie’s genius-hustler hero, already had everything figured out. READ FULL STORY »
Aug 30
2009
02:26 PM ET
Box Office Report: 'The Final Destination' scares up top spot with $28.3 million
For many, the creative relevance of 3-D cinema remains an open question. But this weekend reinforces the format’s commercial power at the box office. Despite a moviegoing weekend dominated by R-rated violent thriller-type films ostensibly shooting for the same audience, The Final Destination scared up $28.3 million for an easy No. 1 berth, according to early estimates from Hollywood.com Box Office. That’s almost $10 million better than the opening frame for the last film in the creatively-dispatching-model-perfect-unknown-actors franchise (which, for those keeping track, was Final Destination 3). There’s really only one reason why: Although just over half its 3,121 theaters were screening the flick in 3-D, fully 70 percent of its box office take came from 3-D theaters. And theaters typically charge an extra few bucks per ticket for the privilege of watching the film with those comfy stereoscopic glasses. Rest assured, despite its title (and its abysmal “C” CinemaScore grade), this is by no means the final Final Destination movie.
The folks at the The Weinstein Company, meanwhile, had mixed news for their much scrutinized bottom line: Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds landed at No. 2 with a rather spectacular $20 million, just 47 percent down from its opening weekend; the film’s cumulative total is $73.7 million. TWC’s sister company Dimension Films, however, saw its Halloween II open to a disappointing third with $17.4 million. Director Rob Zombie’s second re-imagining of the 31-year-old slasher franchise made nothing close to the $30.6 million debut of Zombie’s first night out with Michael Myers over Labor Day 2007. But given the steep competition and the film’s $15 million budget, it will most likely yield a modest profit. (TWC also announced plans for another Halloween sequel, this time without Zombie but in 3-D.)
The box office love continued through much of the weekend’s top 10: District 9 dropped just 41 percent with $10.7 million, strong enough to hold on to fourth place and, with a $90.8 mil running total, well on its way to joining the $100 million club. At No. 5, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra banged out $8 million, a 34 percent drop and $132 million total. And Julie & Julia savored a tiny 16 percent drop for sixth, with $7.4 million in its fourth weekend for $70.9 million total.
In fact, the only true disappointment for the weekend was Focus Features’ Taking Woodstock. Director Ang Lee’s trip back to the iconic three-day concert debuted at ninth with just $3.7 million, doubly disappointing since it opened wide in 1,393 theaters (after a Wednesday opening in New York and Los Angeles) and netted a feeble $2,691 per theater average. By contrast, two limited-release debuts did rather well: Vogue magazine documentary The September Issue bowed on six screens with a fashionable $40,000 per theater average; and the extreme-sports-fandom-gone-wrong dramedy Big Fan won $13,000 per theater on two screens.
Aug 29
2009
02:03 PM ET
'The Final Destination' slays Friday box office with $10.9 mil
Horror fans are having a bloody good weekend at the box office so far. The Final Destination successfully eluded death to land at No. 1 with $10.9 million on Friday, according to figures from Box Office Mojo, a total that should have the 3-D flick raking in upwards of $25-30 million for the weekend. Halloween II sliced into $7.6 million for the day, enough for second place, albeit a softer opening number than director Rob Zombie’s original 2007 reboot of the Michael Myers slasher franchise. Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds made $5.9 million for third, a 59 percent drop from its debut. Another film opening wide this weekend, director Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock, had a disappointing opening day of $1.2 million in 1,393 theaters for ninth place. Be sure to check back here on Sunday for the complete box office report.
1. The Final Destination — $10.9 million
2. Halloween II – $7.6 million
3. Inglourious Basterds — $5.9 million
4. District 9 — $3 million
5. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra — $2.3 million
Aug 27
2009
10:31 PM ET
Box office preview: Will 'The Final Destination' and 'Halloween II' massacre each other?
Your regular box office prognosticator Nicole Sperling is out for the next few weeks, box office fans, so you’re stuck with me for this week’s horror movie showdown. That’s right, we’ve got the unusual spectacle of two slice-and-dice flicks opening this weekend, The Final Destination (actually the fourth film in the series), and Halloween II (the second in director Rob Zombie’s reboot of the durable horror franchise, but technically the ninth Halloween movie total). With the R-rated Inglourious Basterds and District 9 also vying for similar audiences, it looks like it’s gonna be — yep, you knew this was coming — quite a bloody weekend at the box office. Here’s how I see the body count stacking up:
1. The Final Destination — $19 million
The three previous films in this making-efficient-mincemeat-of-anonymous-hot-actors franchise have all built on the previous film’s opening weekend, with the last one banking $19.1 million when it opened in Feb. 2006. I do think the steeper competition this time around will suppress the total number of ticket buyers for the film. But New Line Cinema has aggressively promoted the fact that this Final Destination is in 3D, and over half the 3,121 theaters showing the film will be charging the premium ticket price that comes with that unique pleasure. The last horror movie to go 3D — last January’s subtly titled My Bloody Valentine 3D — brought in $21.1 million even though it came in third place, and that was on far fewer 3D screens.
2. Inglourious Basterds — $18 million
The big question hovering now over Quentin Tarantino’s WWII opus is whether its impressive $38 million opening weekend exhausted its potential audience, or if the film has the legs to go the distance. Since I’m planning on seeing the film this weekend, and since word-of-mouth on the film has been rather strong, I put the film’s second weekend drop around 52%, for a healthy $18 million weekend, which puts it ahead of…
3. Halloween II — $14 million
Writer-director Rob Zombie’s first stab at rebooting the grandpappy of the slasher film genre raked in $30.1 million when it opened over the four-day Labor Day weekend in 2007, but that was against no real competition, and juiced by the excitement of infusing moribund anti-hero Michael Myers with some desperately needed new blood. But a Halloween sequel? Been there, slashed that. I’m calculating horror fans looking at a choice between yet another Halloween movie and the chance at watching pretty kids die in three dimensions will go with the latter more than the former. Adding injury to more injury, Halloween II‘s distributors, the rather famously cash strapped The Weinstein Co. and Dimension Films, haven’t been able to flex as much marketing muscle for the project as they might have in their halcyon days.
Aug 26
2009
04:04 PM ET
Taking 'Woodstock' out of the sweet spot, and the Weinsteins' wizardry
Choosing the ideal release date for a movie is far from an exact science. In the case of certain films, though, a release date can become 
a shrewdly publicized, locked-in no-brainer. The Saw films, for instance, always open around Halloween (generally the week before), and for a few years there, the notion that Will Smith “owned” July 4 was inflated into a clever “patriotic” marketing ploy. (That’s part of what made him the biggest movie star in the world.) Smaller films tend to be less holiday-based, but it certainly seemed a deft move when Focus Features announced that Taking Woodstock, Ang Lee’s offbeat dramatic comedy about the creation of those three days of peace, love, music, and mud, would be released on Friday, August 14, the weekend of the festival’s 40th anniversary. The timing was perfect, right?
Evidently not. About a month ago, Focus decided to push the release date of Taking Woodstock back two weeks. It’s now opening today, then going semi-wide this weekend, on August 28. (Here’s my review.) READ FULL STORY »
Aug 25
2009
10:23 PM ET
Susan Sarandon in negotiations for Oliver Stone's 'Wall Street 2'
Susan Sarandon is the latest A-list actor to jump aboard Oliver Stone’s Wall Street sequel, Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps. The actress is in negotiations to play the mother to Shia LaBeouf’s character, Jacob. The role will also reunite her with young British actress Carey Mulligan, whom she starred opposite in the Sundance film The Greatest. Frank Langella has also signed on, while Josh Brolin is still in the talking stages. Filming for the sequel is set to begin this fall in New York.
Aug 25
2009
03:46 PM ET
Roger Ebert celebrates 30 years of sobriety
One of the most generous, knowledgeable gentlemen in the business has something vital to say. Read this. Now.
Aug 24
2009
05:47 PM ET
Does Quentin Tarantino have the right to rewrite World War II?
Of all the lively and memorable audacities committed by Quentin Tarantino in Inglourious Basterds — the casting of Eli Roth, the splatter-happy director of the Hostel films (he looks like a strapping, beetle-browed Brooklyn Jewish prizefighter from 1947), as the bat-wielding “bear Jew” who likes to pulp the heads of Nazis; transforming Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), the film’s smiling SS officer, into a nimbly joyful and light-fingered philosopher-detective who’s by far the most arresting character on-screen; or letting the bar scene twist and turn until it becomes a kind of luxurious and elongated suspense playlet, a little movie unto itself — certainly none of these provocations is more noteworthy than the outrageous, what-the-hell, history-as-war-game freedom with which QT rewrites the bloody ending of World War II.
Audacious, to be sure. But irresponsible? I was shocked when a friend of mine, an adventurous movie critic who has often loved Tarantino’s work, said that he was seriously offended by the movie’s big, explosive, death-in-a-Paris-movie-theater climax. He said that he thought Tarantino had stepped over a line of historical veracity, and that audiences, especially younger ones, might be led by Inglourious Basterds to embrace the idea that World War II was just another meaningless pulp fantasy. By now, I’ve heard this line of reasoning echoed in several other places; it could even be the core of a potential backlash. Yet the reason I was shocked is that even though I take history pretty seriously myself, it never even occurred to me to think of Inglourious Basterds as a “trashing” of history. In a strange way, the picture is far too outlandish for that. To me, the movie, and especially its ending, is defiantly a vision of war as a filmmaker’s lusciously subjective, almost childishly wish-fulfilling B-movie fever dream. The great, sick joke of the film’s grindhouse logic is that even though what it shows us didn’t happen, in a larger, almost abstract sense it did happen. (I mean, it’s not as if the Nazi high command, in the end, wasn’t destroyed.) READ FULL STORY »
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- Next
Latest News
- 'Two and a Half Men' moving to Thursday
- 'Walking Dead': Big plans for Comic-Con
- 'Grey's': Watch six minutes of the finale
- 'NCIS' tops Tuesday ratings; 'Talent' dips
- Tom Cruise: 'Playboy' interview highlights
- 'Dictator' sent Seacrest a new jacket
- '90210' season finale shocker: Really?!
- 'Anchorman II': Teaser poster art revealed
Find Movies and Showtimes
Powered by MovieTickets.com
Choose Your Movie
All movies
