Tag: Kathryn Bigelow (1-10 of 31)

Feb 26 2013 02:59 PM ET

Senate committee shuts down 'Zero Dark Thirty' probe

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Image Credit: Jonathan Olley

*This story has been updated to reflect Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s statement.

A day after the Academy Awards failed to recognize Zero Dark Thirty with any major awards — and nearly seven weeks after snubbing director Kathryn Bigelow altogether — the U.S. Senate closed its investigation into “inappropriate” meetings and conversations that Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal may have had with members of the CIA to research their movie, which tells the story of the secret American effort to track and kill Osama bin Laden. Reuters cited an anonymous congressional aide who said the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), would not seek further action against the filmmakers, who came under fire in early 2012 when it was revealed they had close contact with several government agencies.

Zero Dark Thirty has been a lightning rod for controversy since even before it opened on Dec. 19. READ FULL STORY »

Feb 22 2013 11:36 AM ET

'Zero Dark Thirty' banned -- unofficially -- in Pakistan

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Image Credit: Jonathan Olley

Zero Dark Thirty is set largely in Pakistan — but the citizens of that country largely aren’t able to see how their homeland is depicted in it, unless they can track down a pirated copy of the Oscar-nominated film.

EW has confirmed that Zero Dark Thirty has not been approved by Pakistan’s board of censors, and therefore has not been shown in any of the nation’s few movie theaters that play English-language films. But that’s not the whole story: according to the Associated Press, no distributor has even applied for permission to show Zero Dark Thirty in Pakistan. This means that while the movie hasn’t been officially censured by Pakistan’s government, it is unofficially unsanctioned there. DVDs of the film were being sold recently in the capital city of Islamabad — but the AP writes that rumors about a ban have driven at least two stores to stop carrying Zero Dark Thirty, while another has taken to selling it only under the counter.

READ FULL STORY »

Jan 13 2013 01:56 PM ET

Box office report: 'Zero Dark Thirty' tops chart with $24 million; 'A Haunted House' beats 'Gangster Squad'

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Image Credit: Jonathan Olley

After weeks of controversy in limited release, Sony’s $40 million Osama Bin Laden assassination film, Zero Dark Thirty, shot into first place with $24.0 million this weekend following five Oscar nominations (though not one for director Kathryn Bigelow) and an expansion from 60 to 2,937 theaters. After four weekends, the well-reviewed drama has earned $29.5 million total, and given its omnipresence during awards season, there’s no telling how high it could ultimately climb. $100 million is certainly not out of the question.

Zero Dark Thirty, which earned an “A-” CinemaScore, finished in the same range as Act of Valor, another recent Navy SEAL film, which garnered $24.5 million in its opening weekend in February 2012. The film is already far bigger than Kathryn Bigelow’s last directorial effort, The Hurt Locker, which found $17.7 million in 2009, and it will easily surpass both K-19: The Widowmaker ($35.2 million) and Point Break ($43.2 million) as the biggest hit of her career. Zero Dark Thirty played mostly to older males — according to Sony, 59 percent of its audience was male, and 62 percent was older than 30. READ FULL STORY »

Jan 12 2013 12:39 PM ET

Box office update: Despite Kathryn Bigelow snub, 'Zero Dark Thirty' wins Friday with $9 million

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Image Credit: Jonathan Olley

Director Kathryn Bigelow may not have earned an Oscar nomination (her snub, along with Ben Affleck’s, proved the main talking point on the morning of the nominations), but Sony’s Osama Bin Laden assassination drama Zero Dark Thirty is still riding a wave of good will from the five nominations it did receive, and it shot straight to number one at the box office on Friday.

Zero Dark Thirty expanded from 60 to 2,937 theaters yesterday, allowing it to gross a sizzling $9.0 million on its first day of wide release. The controversial film, which earned an “A-” CinemaScore, may take in about $25 million over the Friday-to-Sunday period — right in line with the $24.5 million that the last Navy SEAL film, Act of Valor, earned in its debut weekend last year. READ FULL STORY »

Jan 10 2013 11:59 PM ET

The big change in the Best Director category: Actually, it's not about snubs

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Image Credit: Claire Folger

The Academy Awards wouldn’t be a tenth as much fun if they held no surprises. After the endless and expert prognosticating of a thousand media odds-makers, there’s virtually no such thing as an Oscar night without at least one medium-size upset. And by the time the nominations themselves are read aloud on Tuesday — now Thursday — morning, they have inevitably coughed up their share of dark-horse nods, out-of-the-blue eyebrow-raisers, and “snubs.” This morning, however, even when the smoke had cleared, the dust had settled, and the surprises had been dutifully digested, one category looked so different from what everyone thought it was going to look like that a lot of people simply couldn’t wrap their heads around it. READ FULL STORY »

Jan 8 2013 01:09 PM ET

Spielberg, Affleck, Hooper among Directors Guild nominees

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Image Credit: James Fisher

The Directors Guild Award nominations are out, and Tom Hooper is in.

The Les Miserables director has become a bit of a question mark as reviews for the epic musical have been less than kind, but with Oscar nominations due on Thursday, this nod from his peers in the union comes as a welcome bit of support.

The full list of nominees: READ FULL STORY »

Dec 20 2012 01:20 PM ET

Senators accuse 'Zero Dark Thirty' of being 'grossly inaccurate and misleading' about torture

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Art and politics, two worlds that generally don’t know all that much about each other, have come to an angry head-on collision in the continuing debate over the portrayal of torture in Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. Most recently, three senior U.S. senators have called the film “grossly inaccurate and misleading” in a letter to Sony Pictures chairman and CEO Michael Lynton. In the missive, Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is joined by her colleagues John McCain and Carl Levin in condemning the film’s depiction of the CIA’s “coercive interrogation techniques” as contributive to the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden, which they contend is “perpetuating the myth that torture is effective.” (The full text of the letter can be read here.) READ FULL STORY »

Dec 19 2012 01:49 PM ET

Is 'Zero Dark Thirty' pro-torture? And if so, is it telling a lie?

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Image Credit: Jonathan Olley

A couple of weeks ago, when the heat over Zero Dark Thirty and the issue of torture was already percolating (it still hasn’t come close to full boil — that will happen when conservative commentators start to defend the movie and the liberal Academy Awards machine starts to have doubts about it), I began to frame a few thoughts about where, exactly, the film stood, and one of the things that occurred to me was the possibility that Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal, the director and screenwriter, didn’t understand their own movie. I figured I probably wouldn’t float that theory, since it seemed presumptious and more than a little absurd. But now I don’t have to engage in a lot of speculative critical guesswork, since Bigelow and Boal have officially gone on the record. The notion that Zero Dark Thirty is pro-torture, says Boal, is “preposterous.” Adds Bigelow: “The point was to immerse the audience in this landscape, not to pretend to debate policy. Was it difficult to shoot? Yes. Do I wish [torture] was not part of that history? Yes, but it was.” READ FULL STORY »

Dec 17 2012 12:00 PM ET

'Zero Dark Thirty' torture controversy: 'Everything we did has been misinterpreted,' says writer

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Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal directly addressed the ongoing controversy over their film’s treatment of C.I.A enhanced-interrogation techniques in an interview with The Wrap. “Everything we did has been misinterpreted, and continues to be,” Boal said, responding to charges that the film glorifies torture.

“The movie has been, and probably will continue to be, put in political boxes,” said Boal. “Before we even wrote it, it was [branded] an Obama campaign commercial, which was preposterous. And now it’s pro-torture, which is preposterous. We haven’t really talked about that, but I want to start.” READ FULL STORY »

Dec 11 2012 02:30 PM ET

'Zero Dark Thirty' premiere: Kathryn Bigelow and co. address waterboarding controversy

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Image Credit: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

Zero Dark Thirty is an Oscar frontrunner, but what would Oscar season be without a dash of politics? In the taut thriller about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow depict the American use of waterboarding leading to a suspect revealing crucial information. But the New Yorker has cast doubt on the veracity of that specific scene, citing government officials who claim that waterboarding — a controversial tactic that many consider torture — played no role in yielding useful evidence in that situation or ultimately helped the C.I.A. locate bin Laden’s hideout.

Boal, a former journalist, has defending the decision, arguing that “it’s a movie, not a documentary,” and the film’s main principals stood behind their work at last night’s Los Angeles premiere. “We had to compress a very complicated debate and a 10-year period into two hours,” Boal said. “It doesn’t surprise me that people bring political agendas to the film but it doesn’t actually have a political agenda. Its agenda is to tell these people’s stories in the most honest and factual way we know how, based on a ton of interviews and research.” READ FULL STORY »

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