This year was all about a boy wizard, a Bumblebee, and a sparklevamp. Joining Harry, Sam, and Edward in 2011′s box office toppers were two groups of wedding-oriented train wrecks, several superheroes, and a bunch of upstart Southern domestics. Over in DVDs, a couple instances of horse power and some evil geniuses joined the fray. So which films topped the box-0ffice? Click through to see 2011′s most popular movies. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Magnolia Pictures
Lars von Trier’s end-of-the-world opus Melancholia dominated the 2011 European Film Awards, taking home three prizes, including Best Film. The controversial von Trier lost the Best Director prize to protégé Susanne Bier for In a Better World, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film last February.
Speaking of the last Oscars, Best Picture winner The King’s Speech still isn’t finished taking home prizes: Colin Firth won best actor, and Tariq Anwar took home best editing for the perpetual awards circuit darling. Tilda Swinton, meanwhile, won best actress for We Need to Talk About Kevin. Check out the major winners below: READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Laurie Sparham
In the past, you might have thought that winning an Academy Award for Best Picture would be enough to save a movie from being censored by its own distributor. And you would have been right. Today, however, the Weinstein Company is releasing, to 1,000 theaters, a PG-13 version of The King’s Speech (a movie that in its original incarnation was rated R). If you go to see the new version, as I just did, here’s what you’re in for. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Laurie Sparham
Get ready for a more family friendly version of this year’s best picture-winner, The King’s Speech. The Weinstein Company announced today that a new, PG-13 version of the film will open nationwide on April 1 on 1000 screens and will be the only version of the film left in theaters.
“We are thankful to the MPAA for their wisdom and swift action in approving the release of The King’s Speech PG-13 release,” states TWC’s president of theatrical distribution and home entertainment, Eric Lomis, in an official statement. “The action enables those to whom it speaks most directly — young people who are troubled by stuttering, bullying and similar trials — to see it.”
The PG-13 version of the film will contain significantly less f-words, which helped garner its original R rating.
Read more:
‘The King’s Speech’ to get a PG-13 re-release
Tom Hooper on PG-13 ‘King’s Speech’: ‘I wouldn’t support cutting the film in any way’ — EXCLUSIVE
‘The King’s Speech’ to clean up its language for a PG-13 rating? Bulls—.
‘The King’s Speech’ to get PG-13 re-release?
‘The King’s Speech’: Geoffrey Rush and Tom Hooper answer the critics
Image Credit: Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images“We are at war.” With that stately declaration, a rapid-fire reel of the 10 Best Picture nominees began to unspool, with crisply edited power, just before the presentation of the crowning honor at last night’s Academy Awards ceremony. The speaker was Colin Firth, and the words came right out of The King’s Speech — in fact, it was the king’s speech, directly from the film’s soundtrack, his final, deliberately spoken, non- stuttered exhortation to stand up to your enemies at a time of conflict. The clips from all the nominated films bore out that defiant warrior spirit, whether it was the dueling brothers of The Fighter or the clashing talking heads of The Social Network or the domestic combatants of The Kids Are All Right or the embattled playthings of Toy Story 3 or the hero of 127 Hours facing down his rocky predicament or the heroine of Winter’s Bone standing up against her community of varmints. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Laurie SparhamThe MPAA announced today that The King’s Speech will be re-released by the Weinstein Company with a PG-13 rating. The film had famously received an R rating for a scene in which Geoffrey Rush’s character encourages Colin Firth’s King George VI to curse like a commoner in order to help him get over his stutter. “Given The Weinstein Company’s commitment to advertise and promote the new version of The King’s Speech as a differently rated movie and to remove all prints of the earlier version,” says National Association of Theater Owners president and CEO John Fithian, “and given the high-profile of the movie, we believe there is little liklihood of confusion among our patrons [between the R rated and PG-13 rated versions].” Nothing in the release hints at what words were removed to get the new PG-13 rating — the Weinstein Company has yet to release that information — but we have some guesses about that, too. It’s probably the roughly 14 times King George says the word s—, or maybe the dozen or so times he uses the word f—, or else maybe the one time he uses the word t–s. We’ll have to wait for the re-release to know for sure.
Read more:
Tom Hooper on PG-13 ‘King’s Speech’: ‘I wouldn’t support cutting the film in any way’ — EXCLUSIVE
‘The King’s Speech’ to clean up its language for a PG-13 rating? Bulls—.
‘The King’s Speech’ to get PG-13 re-release?
‘The King’s Speech’: Geoffrey Rush and Tom Hooper answer the critics
Image Credit: Laurie SparhamThe 13th Annual Costume Design Guild Awards were held last night, and Black Swan‘s Amy Westcott and The King’s Speech‘s Jenny Beavan were honored for excellence in contemporary film and period film, respectively. Alice in Wonderland‘s Colleen Atwood took home the prize for excellence in fantasy film. Beavan and Atwood are also nominees at this Sunday’s Oscars. In the TV categories, winners were Glee‘s Lou Eyrich, Boardwalk Empire‘s John Dunn and Lisa Padovani, and Temple Grandin‘s Cindy Evans. Aude Bronson-Howard was also recognized for excellence in commercial costume design for ”Chanel — Bleu de Chanel.” Previously announced honorees included Halle Berry (Lacoste Spotlight Award), Joel Schumacher (Distinguished Collaborator Award), Julie Weiss (Disaronno Career Achievement in Film & Television Award), and Michael Dennison (Hall of Fame Award).
Image Credit: Merrick Morton; Dale RobinetteOkay, I’ll own up to it. When it comes to predicting the winners of the Academy Awards, I’m a shameless amateur. An Oscar pariah wiener. At this point, it’s clear that I should simply leave the odds-making to my infinitely shrewd colleague Dave Karger, who had the Zen wisdom to see, weeks before anyone else, that despite the mountains of praise and accolades heaped upon The Social Network, The King’s Speech was still going to push all those Academy buttons — that it was exactly the kind of tastefully uplifting spectacle of Classy Anglophilia meets the Cinema of Affliction (think Ordinary People + My Left Foot + every British costume drama that ever got you to sniffle through a stiff upper lip) that is still, after all these years, catnip to a great many people who work in Hollywood. The PGA, the DGA, and SAG have all spoken. They all prefer The King’s Speech to The Social Network. So be it. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Laurie Sparham; Everett CollectionAs Bertie — er, King George VI — might say, I’m gobsmacked that Tom Hooper won this year’s top award from the Directors Guild of America over David Fincher. Hooper also won the award over Christopher Nolan. And also over Debra Granik, Darren Aronofsky, Lisa Cholodenko, Danny Boyle, Roman Polanski, and Ben Affleck. Don’t get me wrong, the director of The King’s Speech did a fine job assembling a sturdy, effective drama out of familiar, good-quality components. But by my lights, any one of those also-rans did more interesting, READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Merrick Morton; Laurie SparhamSince the beginning of the awards season, I’ve had The King’s Speech at the top of my predictions list to win the Oscar for Best Picture. But even I never thought it would sweep the three major guild awards: Directors Guild, Producers Guild, and Screen Actors Guild. Speech‘s pre-Oscar hat trick has certainly relegated the once-invincible Social Network to underdog status. But has it also rendered the last month of the Oscar season completely moot?
In the 16 years since the advent of the SAG best-cast prize, six movies have won all three guilds. Five of those six -- American Beauty, Chicago, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, No Country For Old Men, and Slumdog Millionaire — went on to take the Best Picture Oscar. There is, however, one movie that swept the guilds but failed to close the deal at the Oscars: Apollo 13. That Braveheart managed to top it on the big night wasn’t a complete shock, since Apollo filmmaker Ron Howard failed to score a Best Director nod from the Academy. But that one film has to be the lone glimmer of hope for everyone involved with Network. READ FULL STORY »
