Archive: January 2010 (1-10 of 98)

Jan 31 2010 04:18 PM ET

Box office: 'Avatar' wins again; 'Darkness' lands in second place

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avatar-sam-flyingWell, Mel Gibson has joined Denzel Washington and Dwayne Johnson on the list of stars that couldn’t stand up to Avatar’s box-office might. The film on track to cross Titanic’s domestic gross of $600 million in mere days took the top spot again this weekend, falling just 14 percent, which is a smaller drop-off than last weekend. Earning an additional $30 million, Avatar’s domestic total now stands at $594 million.

Gibson managed to eke out a solid second-place showing with his R-rated revenge drama Edge of Darkness. Earning an estimated $17.1 million, Darkness’s opening was a bit beneath the low-$20 million number that many industry insiders were predicting. But perhaps with its greatest audience being older males who don’t go to the movies that often, the number isn’t surprising. (There was a call from Jewish community leaders to boycott the film due to Gibson’s comments a few years ago. No word yet if that movement gained any traction.)

Third place belonged to Disney’s romantic comedy When in Rome, starring Kristen Bell and Josh Duhamel. which did better than expected with a $12 million take.

Holdovers dominated the rest of the weekend’s top 10. The Tooth Fairy didn’t open to spectacular numbers last weekend, but it held on really well in its second frame, dropping only 29 percent, earning the Dwayne Johnson-family film another $10 million. It now stands at $25 million for 10 days in release. Fifth place went to Washington’s Book of Eli. The R-rated post-apocalyptic drama has held on well since its January debut, dropping 44 percent its third weekend in theaters for a cume of $74 million. Legion took the hardest fall this session. Dropping a steep 61 percent, the Paul Bettany-Dennis Quaid drama earned only $6.8 million in its second weekend for a total take of $28.6 million. The Lovely Bones took the seventh slot with an additional $4.7 million. Its total take, after eight weeks in theaters, is $38 million. Sherlock Holmes held on to 8th place with $4.5 million and a total cume just shy of the $200 million mark. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel took spot nine, with $4 million and a total take of $209 million, and tenth place went to Nancy Meyers’ It’s Complicated, which earned another $3.7 million, putting its overall cume at $104 million.

With Oscar nominations set to arrive Tuesday, it will be interesting to see how things change — if at all — at the box office. Have a great week, everyone.

Jan 31 2010 03:49 PM ET

Sundance: Kudos to John Cooper for a year in which 'rebel spirit' really meant 'terrific films'

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In my introductory post this year from the Sundance Film Festival — the first Sundance to be presided over by newly appointed festival director John Cooper, pictured at left — I said that the real test, the only test, for the Cooper era wouldn’t be the festival’s novel display of bells and whistles: the NEXT section (which bracketed and highlighted eight films made on very low budgets — just like dozens and dozens of past films shown at previous Sundance festivals), or the freshly trumpeted, take-back-the-megaplex, this is the new rebel spirit of indie film signifiers. (Rebellion, as a word, was long ago co-opted by those who aren’t for it.) I said that what mattered would be whether there was fresh creative DNA in the programming itself.

On that score, Cooper and his team came through, triumphantly. The programming this year was bold, sharp, tasteful, and demanding. It did a first-rate job of separating the wheat from the chaff — and leaving the chaff out of the festival. I can’t tell you how many times, over the years, I have sat through a movie at Sundance that was inept and awful in every way (it might be an unwatchable kitsch comedy like D.E.B.S., or the aptly named Sleepwalking, a road movie that managed the singular feat of standing still), only to spend half the film wondering how this particular waste of time ended up in the middle of the world’s premiere independent film festival, at the expense of a submission that must surely have been more worthy.

This year, I never had that experience, or anything close to it. Every movie I saw, even a half-baked novelty that didn’t really work, like Holy Rollers, with Jesse Eisenberg as a Hasid who becomes a drug runner, justified its presence. I also think it’s encouraging that no single film dominated the buzz-sphere. There was a roundedness and vivacity to the spectrum of movies on display, which is one reason just about everyone I talked to believed that the festival had such a vital year. Here are a few of my random thoughts and observations on Sundance 2010:

For Young Filmmakers, Marriage is the New Dating. By its nature (brash, cheap, hungry for adventure), independent filmmaking is mostly a province of the young, which is why indie movies about romantic relationships have often been mumbly twentysomething comedies about hooking up and dating. This year, however, there was an abundance of films that focused on the promises and perils of marriage: Blue Valentine and The Kids Are All Right, and even text-generation comedies like Douchebag and The Freebie. Which makes me think that a whole generation — of indie filmmakers, or maybe just of Americans, period — are growing up faster than they used to. READ FULL STORY »

Jan 31 2010 09:50 AM ET

With DGA win, 'Hurt Locker' has Oscar upper hand

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As my colleague Adam Vary has reported from the scene, The Hurt Locker‘s Kathryn Bigelow won the Directors Guild prize last night, over Avatar‘s James Cameron. For many people, the outcome is a surprise: Two of the smartest Oscar experts in my mind, like Tom O’Neil at Gold Derby and Kris Tapley at InContention, both were sure Cameron would prevail considering the DGA’s populist bent and no-screeners policy. Their thinking was that The Hurt Locker simply may not have been seen by enough DGA voters to eke out a win. I was one of the Oscar dorks who had predicted a Bigelow victory, though I certainly wasn’t confident in my guess.

Now that The Hurt Locker has won the PGA and DGA prizes, is an Oscar win next? Since Avatar doesn’t have a single guild-award win to its credit as of yet, Bigelow’s film certainly has the edge at the moment, particularly in the Best Director category, where she’d be the first woman ever to win (as she was at the DGA). But let’s also remember that just four years ago, Brokeback Mountain lost the Best Picture Oscar after picking up DGA and PGA honors. So nothing is a sure thing.

Image credit: Jordan Strauss/Wireimage.com

Jan 30 2010 05:57 PM ET

Box office: 'Avatar' topping the new releases for the seventh straight weekend

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If Friday’s numbers hold, Avatar will have held off the competition at the box office for yet another weekend. The James Cameron spectacle earned an estimated $7.3 million yesterday, putting its total domestic gross at $572 million, ahead of second place Edge of Darkness, the R-rated Mel Gibson-starrer, which brought in an estimated $5.7 million for its first day in theaters. Disney’s romantic comedy When in Rome managed to eke out third place at the weekend derby, despite miserable reviews, earning an estimated $4.4 million for its opening day. The film surpassed third-weekend holdover Book of Eli, which grossed an estimated $2.5 million. Fifth place for the day went to the The Tooth Fairy, which in its second Friday in theaters took in only $2.3 million, a number that doesn’t bode well for the film’s second weekend hold. Check back tomorrow and I’ll have the full numbers.

Jan 30 2010 10:53 AM ET

Sundance: 'The Kids Are All Right,' 'Winter's Bone,' and films from around the world

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The marketing campaign for this year’s Sundance Film Festival urges rebellion, renewal, and a return to the aesthetic roots of independent filmmaking, while festival volunteers wear jackets emblazoned with the establishment logo of corporate sponsor Kenneth Cole. In other words, it’s Sundance, Jake. And this year I’ve been wearing the (non-logo) badge that identifies me as a member of the three-person jury judging 14 entries in the World Dramatic category of the competition. The awards ceremony is tonight; I’ll report on some of the outstanding selections I’ve seen next week, after I’ve removed my ID badge.

So much for my silence on this site, while Owen has been commenting eloquently on what he and I agree has been a particularly rewarding Sundance. But nothing stops me from sharing my enthusiasm for two of the films I’ve liked best outside of my jurisdiction.

I’ll start with my favorite U.S. drama with movie stars: The Kids Are All Right, directed by Lisa Cholodenko from a screenplay she cowrote with Stuart Blumberg, stars Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as a long-time married lesbian couple in California, mothers, via sperm donor, of an academically gifted 18-year-old daughter (Mia Wasikowska) and an athletic 15-year-old son (Josh Hutcherson) on a quest to find their biological father. The kids don’t have to look far: Open records lead sister and brother to Mark Ruffalo as a free-wheeling, peace-and-love-style bachelor restaurant entrepreneur whose charm enchants his chromosomal offspring — and challenges their mothers.

Rebellious filmmaking? Yes, insofar as Cholodenko’s warm, smart, audience-friendly, often very funny movie features two marvelous, famous actresses in full flower as lesbians — not to mention gay sex, straight sex, and READ FULL STORY »

Jan 29 2010 05:21 PM ET

James Bobin of 'Conchords' will direct new Muppets movie

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Sources have confirmed to EW that James Bobin, co-creator of The Flight of the Conchords, will direct the next Muppets movie for Disney. Nick Stoller and Jason Segel are writing the script. Disney didn’t immediately respond to request for further details.

Jan 29 2010 04:57 PM ET

Miramax: What a moviegoer felt like, back in the summer of '89

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Now that Miramax has finally, sadly, been effectively shut down, its offices shuttered, I promise I won’t subject you to any hand-wringing about the end of an era — mostly because I got the hand-wringing out of the way in two previous posts. Last fall, when Disney first downsized Miramax, and it was already clear that the company’s days were numbered, I took a look at what that decision portended for the future of studio specialty divisions, and for the larger world of independent film. A month later, when the company’s New York offices were closed, I talked about the central place that Miramax occupied in the history of New York movie culture. Now, at last, the company really has passed into history. That should be an upsetting and more than slightly ominous thing for anyone who loves movies.

Right now, however, I want to remember Miramax by going back to a moment – the moment, in fact, when Harvey and Bob Weinstein’s company first shook up the movie world (though no one at the time, not even Harvey and Bob, could fully have guessed what was coming). It was a sunny Saturday afternoon in August of 1989, and sex, lies, and videotape had just opened the day before. I lived in Boston at the time, and I was standing in a very long line to see it at the city’s premiere five-screen indie-art multiplex, the Nickelodeon. Like most of the people on line, I knew virtually nothing about the film but its title (I had seen James Spader play more than a few WASP slimeballs in ’80s teen movies). Yet the title was enough. It wasn’t just the lower-case sensational bluntness that hooked you; it was the teasing yet unmistakable implication of home-video porn in the mixing of those two seemingly polar-opposite concepts — sex (who wouldn’t want to see a movie that starts with…sex?) and videotape (a word that seemed, at the time, so technological, even though it now sounds about as advanced as “ham radio”). READ FULL STORY »

Jan 29 2010 02:17 PM ET

The official OscarWatch countdown chart

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Four days and counting! The geniuses here at EW.com have put together this handy interactive chart of all the big pre-Oscar award winners and nominees. Take a look as you make your last-minute predictions for this Tuesday’s Academy Award nominations. And check out my predictions too! And follow me on Twitter (@davekarger)!

Jan 29 2010 07:04 AM ET

Box-office preview: 'Avatar' and 'Edge of Darkness' battle for No. 1

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This weekend will mark Avatar’s seventh weekend in theaters. In that time it’s become the highest-grossing film of all time, crossing Titanic’s worldwide gross of $1.843 billion and likely to cross the $2 billion mark this weekend. With only one more record left to cross — Titanic’s domestic gross of $600 million (Avatar is likely to pass that milestone by mid-week) — this may be the first weekend that another film could take the top spot at the box office. And who has a shot at taking over the new title: none other than Mel Gibson, the actor who three years ago was as close to untouchable in Hollywood as they came. Oh, how times have changed. Give the 53-year old veteran an R-rated revenge drama and all seems to be forgiven. Tracking is doing well with older men, and the film is likely to debut in the mid-$20 million range, a number far below his 1996 film Ransom but better than his 2002 showing of We Were Soldiers. Also battling for some cash this frame is When in Rome, the romantic comedy starring Kristen Bell and Josh Duhamel. Read on for my predictions.

1. Avatar: $27 million
I’m still convinced this film has another weekend in the top spot. Between the elevated ticket prices from 3-D sales, which are accounting for even more than 80 percent of the weekend grosses as the theaters open up a bit, and the must-see factor which still must be around considering the scant drops each weekend, this movie is constantly over-performing. Perhaps it will drop more than the 20 percent, which has been the norm, but I don’t predict it will be by much. READ FULL STORY »

Jan 28 2010 07:24 PM ET

Sundance deal round-up: Buyers line up for 'Kids Are All Right,' 'Hesher,' 'Twelve'

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As of Tuesday, it was looking like Sundance 2010 was not going to be a buyers’ market after all. The festival could only boast two deals: Davis Guggenheim’s documentary Waiting for Superman to Paramount Pictures and the Ryan Reynolds-starrer Buried to Lionsgate for over $3 million.

But in the last two days indie distributors have become a lot more comfortable with what’s screening at the festival. In the past 24 hours three movies now have theatrical distribution attached to them. Focus Features purchased The Kids Are All Right (pictured) by director Lisa Cholodenko (Laurel Canyon) for a reported $4.8 million, making it the largest deal of the festival. The comedy starring Annette Bening and Julianne Moore centers on a lesbian couple whose teenage children want to reunite with their biological father (Mark Ruffalo). Filmed in only 24 days, the cast luckily gelled together without much time. “It’s the one narrative everybody knows,” says Moore, who stopped by the EW photo shoot with some of the cast. “Most of us have our own families or are living in families so it’s something that you can plug into pretty quickly.”

In other deals, Newmarket Films purchased Hesher, the indie drama starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a long-haired anarchist for a reported $1 million. The film, from director Spencer Susser, bowed to mixed reviews, but perhaps the star power of Levitt and Natalie Portman will be enough of a draw for audiences.

The third sale involved publisher Hannover House buying film and video rights to Joel Schumacher’s Twelve, a chronicle of privileged adolescents growing up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Starring Chace Crawford, Emma Roberts and Rory Culkin, the film will be Hannover’s first major-market theatrical release. The film, purchased for an estimated $2 million, is Sundance’s official closer, with its first public screening set for Friday night. (additional reporting by Adam Vary)

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