Tag: Holiday Movies (1-10 of 25)

Sep 19 2012 02:58 PM ET

Ripple effects: How the earlier Oscar nominations date makes waves through award season

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Image Credit: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

What difference could five days make?

The Academy Awards decision yesterday to shift its nominations day from Jan. 15 to Jan. 10 actually creates some hardship for films opening at the very end of the year and manages to upstage a handful of other awards events that derive power from their perceived ability to influence Oscar voters.

By making the move, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences effectively reasserts itself as the influencer, rather than the group that can be swayed by other trophy ceremonies. Hollywood’s “award season” has been reestablished as “Oscar season” once more.

Here’s some analysis of how the changes break down.

READ FULL STORY »

Dec 25 2011 04:08 PM ET

'Mission: Impossible' (the fourth one) tops 'Sherlock Holmes' (the second one) at the weekend box office

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Image Credit: David James

Mission: Merrily Accomplished for Tom Cruise. The fourth installment in the actor’s Mission: Impossible spy-fi franchise — this time directed by Oscar winner Brad Bird making his live-action debut — finished in first place at the box office this weekend (Friday-Sunday), beating last weekend’s top flick, Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows. Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol scared up $26.5 million on 3,448 screens and has grossed nearly $59 million since its release on Dec. 16. Game of Shadows brought in $17.8 million on 3,703 screens, down 55.1% from last weekend. The sequel has tallied $76.5 million since opening two weeks ago.

In a close battle for third, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked ($13.3 million; $50.3 million overall) edged the opening weekend frame of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ($13.0 million; $21.4 million cumulative).

The Adventures of Tintin grossed $9.1 million ($17.1 cumulative) for fifth place, followed by We Bought a Zoo, which brought in $7.8 million in its first three days in theaters.

Dec 23 2011 02:50 PM ET

'MI:4' director on filming in IMAX and how Christopher Nolan is 'throwing down the showmanship' with 'The Dark Knight Rises'

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Image Credit: David James

Brad Bird wanted to be a filmmaker since the moment he learned to draw. “I didn’t realize this until later,” says the 54-year old director of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, “but the very first drawings I did when I was a kid at age 3 were sequential. They weren’t great drawings – they were just stick figures – but they were meant to be viewed in a certain order. So from the very beginning, I was trying to make films.”

The pictures have only gotten got more sophisticated — and larger — since then. Bird made a name for himself in animation with The Iron Giant, then won Oscars with two Pixar blockbusters, The Incredibles and Ratatouille, both of which he wrote and directed. His winning streak has continued with his first live-action effort: Ghost Protocol, the fourth installment in Tom Cruise’s signature spy-fi franchise — and the second to be shepherded by producer J.J. Abrams — has received rave reviews (EW’s Owen Gleiberman even has it on his 10 best of ’11 list) and is poised to be one of the biggest movies of the holiday season. (The film, which opened in theaters nationwide on Wednesday, grossed over $17 million during a 6-day run on 425 IMAX screens.) Bird took a few minutes to speak with EW about the animation-to-live-action-to-IMAX transition. READ FULL STORY »

Dec 12 2011 09:39 PM ET

ANALYSIS: The box office had its worst weekend since 2008, but there is a silver lining

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Image Credit: Andrew Schwartz; Jack English

Ashton Kutcher’s rose-colored 2012 novelty glasses may have helped gloss over New Year’s Eve’s poor draw at the box office, but this past weekend was in fact the worst overall box office haul since Nicolas Cage got all Bangkok Dangerous on us back in Sept. 2008. It is perhaps not that shocking that  audiences aren’t keen on watching a bajillion movie stars spend five minutes of screen-time inexplicably celebrating New Year’s Eve three weeks early, or Jonah Hill spending 81 minutes cussing at and being cussed out by pre-teen kids in The Sitter. But how bad was this weekend’s take, really?  READ FULL STORY »

Nov 23 2011 01:39 PM ET

'A Dangerous Method' director David Cronenberg talks white-hot leading man, Michael Fassbender

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Image Credit: Carlos Alvarez/Getty Images

With his Oscar-buzz period drama, A Dangerous Method, opening in selected cities today, director David Cronenberg took some time from his busy schedule to talk to EW about the difficulties of finding backing for a movie about Jung and Freud, the black art of movie casting, and his good luck of landing one of the hottest stars of the year, Michael Fassbender. (The next Errol Flynn?)

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: A Dangerous Method seems like it must have been a tough sell when it was time to find financing. How long did it take to get off the ground?
DAVID CRONENBERG: It took some years because the financing was difficult and the economic meltdown affected things. I approached [screenwriter] Christopher Hampton about it maybe 10 years ago. There was some talk of him directing it, so it started and stopped. But at a certain point, when the smoke cleared, we had to think, Okay, who’s going to be in the movie? READ FULL STORY »

Nov 9 2011 01:07 PM ET

New 'Arthur Christmas' trailer: Christmas, accomplished!

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Take dozens of elves trained like Navy SEALs, throw them into a tricked-out Air Force One, and mix in some fancy Mission: Impossible-style rope maneuvers, and you’ve got Arthur Christmas. The latest 3-D holiday film spins Christmas as a military operation. Kris Kringle (Jim Broadbent) is the General, and his burly second-in-command (Hugh Laurie) is named… Steve? Well, I guess not every denizen of the North Pole can have a name like Dasher, Dancer, or Crumpet. Then there’s Arthur (James McAvoy)… Santa’s son is a lovable galoot who believes in Christmas more than anyone, and his heart-of-gold resolve comes in handy as he turns out to be — you guessed it! — the only one who can save the day. See how our unlikely hero is called into duty after the jump. READ FULL STORY »

Oct 27 2011 11:58 AM ET

'The Innkeepers': Check out the spooky poster for director Ti West's ghost story -- EXCLUSIVE

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For my money, director Ti West’s pitch-perfect ’80s horror movie homage House of the Devil was one of the most entertainingly original — or, maybe, entertainingly unoriginal — films to come down the terror trail in many a year.

West’s much-anticipated new film is the haunted hotel movie The Innkeepers, which stars Sara Paxton and Pat Healy as the last remaining employees of an about-to-be-closed, supposedly haunted New England hotel.

The Innkeepers will be available on VOD beginning Dec. 30 and hits cinemas Feb. 3, but you can exclusively check out the new, spooktacularly gruesome poster to the left and in a larger format after the jump.

Take a look and tell us what you think. Any fellow House of the Devil fans out there? Anyone see The Innkeepers during its festival run? READ FULL STORY »

Oct 11 2011 11:35 AM ET

Martin Scorsese shows 3-D work-in-progress 'Hugo' at secret New York Film Festival screening

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Image Credit: Jaap Buitendijk

After a weekend of top-secret speculation about which mysterious high-profile work in progress would be screened at the New York Film Festival on Monday night, Martin Scorsese appeared onstage at a packed Avery Fisher Hall to introduce his latest film, the 3-D fantasia Hugo. The hometown crowd stood as he made his entrance, then quietly sat down and put on their glasses, settling in for what has to be regarded as an early Oscar contender. READ FULL STORY »

Oct 5 2011 06:45 PM ET

'Arthur Christmas' trailer: It's beginning to look a lot like holiday movie season!

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I still have probably two to three weeks left of 60-degree weather here in New York, but that doesn’t mean Hollywood can’t remind me that Christmas — and thus, sub-zero weather — is just around the corner. But, then again, I’m no Scrooge — I’m a sucker for a good Christmas movie trailer. The latest one to hit the Interwebs is the spot for Nov. 23′s Arthur Christmas, which follows the titular character (James McAvoy) as he teams with Santa’s dad (Bill Nighy) to deliver gifts to one girl who was passed by when Saint Nick’s high-tech operation made its first round. (Jim Broadbent and Hugh Laurie also offer their voices, as Santa and Santa’s Enterprise-esque ship operator, respectively.) Check out the trailer below. Does it fill you with joy, or are you just counting the months until Spring? READ FULL STORY »

Sep 9 2011 01:46 PM ET

New posters promise a very happy Harold & Kumar Christmas

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There are two types of Christmas movies. There’s the ever-popular lesson-learning movie, earnestly wrapped in the holiday spirit, the best of which becomes traditional holiday viewing every year. And then there’s the more irreverent “You Want A Christmas Movie? Here’s Ya Christmas Movie!” Christmas movie that thumbs its nose at the genre. Guess which type A Very Harold & Kumar 3-D Christmas is? Hint: This is a film where Santa gets shot in the face.

Nevertheless, I love the new posters, which advertise Santa’s demise, the pharmaceutical perks of burned mistletoe, and the 3-D delights of Neil Patrick Harris’ enormous candy cane. Have a holly, jolly look below. READ FULL STORY »

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