Sync Weekly

Posts Tagged ‘box office’

Ferrum Vir II

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

Iron Man 2

Now with more iron. And a rail gun.

So, obviously the big news at the box office is Iron Man 2, which brought in a cool $133.6 million over the weekend, more or less kicking off the official summer blockbuster season. Unless you count Clash of the Titans as doing that. Or unless you believe it can’t start until Memorial Day. Either way, there are some big names right around the corner: Gladiator 2 Robin Hood May 14, MacGuyver MacGruber and the new Shrek May 21, Sex and the City (2, ostensibly) May 27, and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time May 28. And that’s just this month.

Both called the Golden Rock, but not the same.

Both golden rocks, but not the same.

Meanwhile this has been a hot week for local film news as well. Of course, there was the announcement of the lineup for the Fourth Annual Little Rock Film Festival last night at the Clinton School of Public Service. Looks like things kick off with Winter’s Bone, directed by Debra Granik. Along with the slate of narrative features, documentaries and shorts, there’s a new competition this year for a $10,000 cash prize, The Best Southern Film Award given by Little Rock’s very own Southern literary and culture magazine, the Oxford American.

Khaaaaan

Order before July 13.

Also kicking off this week were a couple of movie series worth checking out. Over at Market Street Cinema, in conjunction with The Dave Elswick Show on KARN News Radio 102.9FM /920AM, they’re presenting a series of classic films (some more so than others). First up was Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The remaining schedule looks like this:
June 8: North by Northwest
July 13: Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (!)
Aug 10: Shane
Sept 14: Top Gun
Oct 12: Friday the 13th
Nov 9: The Godfather
Dec 14: White Christmas

Not coincidentally, all those dates are the second Tuesday of every month. Showtime is 7 p.m.; tickets are $5 each. Children under 12 are admitted for free.

Drive-In

Like this. Except integrated.

For the retro experience, consider heading over to the Arkansas Flag and Banner building on the second and fourth Saturday of each month now through July to check out the Dreamland Drive-In. Complete with cartoon shorts, news reels and a feature-length movie, the experience is designed to take you back. Or, if you’re like me, to see how people lived way back when, before the cineplex. Schedule looks like this:
May 22- Reefer Madness/Sex Madness
June 12- Night of the Living Dead
June 26- The Outlaw
June 10- The Little Princess (family night)
July 24- The Fast and The Furious
Gates open at 7:30pm and the movies will start at sunset. Concessions of beer, soft drinks, hot dogs, and more will be available for purchase. Admission is $20 a car (pile in to save) or $5 person for walk ups. Proceeds go toward the Dreamland Ballroom renovation project, which is an effort to restore and preserve the historic Ninth Street venue.

Bad Hair

The hair is somewhere in the middle.

Lastly, in Netflix news, I gotta say I’ve been slacking. I got Frost/Nixon and Pandorum and have sat on the forever. Besides Avatar and Sherlock Holmes, I hadn’t updated my queue in ages. But for this week I’m thinking Daybreakers and Legion, two flicks I never made it to the theater to see. I know, it’s very angels and demons… and I don’t mean the Dan Brown adaptation where Tom Hanks has that atrocious hair. What I can’t wait for: The Road, which releases May 25.

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Posted in Commentary, Events, Little Rock Film Festival, News | No Comments »

Aliens+boats=$$

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Blue is the new green

Blue is the new green

It’s official: Avatar is number two.

No, nothing has bumped it from the top spot on weekly box office returns. Indeed, at $48.5 million for the weekend, it earned nearly three times what second place Sherlock Holmes did ($16.6 million), meaning for the third straight week the top and second spots are unchanged.

But the second place ranking earned by Avatar is instead to be found on the all-time top 5 international box office takes. That’s right, at $1.335 billion, it has passed Lord of the Rings: Return of the King ($1.129) to settle in behind 1997’s mega hit Titanic, which earned $1.842 billion worldwide. That means we have James Cameron to thank for the two movies that have earned more money than any other in the entire history of cinema. King of the World, indeed.

And perhaps his little blue aliens have what it takes to sink the unsinkable big boat. At $429 million in domestic take, Avatar has done nearly twice as well overseas, and its numbers are still climbing.

Then again, come this weekend there will be some new competition in the heavily marketed Denzel Washington doomsday pic The Book of Eli.

The apocalypse ain't got nothin' on me.

The apocalypse ain't got nothin' on me.

As for what will be released tomorrow worth adding to your Netflix, well, it’s slim pickings.

There is the war drama The Hurt Locker, which has won a lot of critical acclaim and will likely be in the race for the Best Picture Oscar.

But more interesting to me is a film I hadn’t seen much buzz about, a psychological sci-fi flick in the vein of 2001: A Space Odyssey called Moon. It’s got Kevin Spacey as the evil computer! Check out the trailer and add if it moves you.

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Merry Christmas indeed

Monday, December 28th, 2009
To: Hollywood. From: Us.

To: Hollywood. From: Us.

Man, it seems like only a year and a half ago we were collectively spending $260 million over the weekend at the box office, setting a record for the best three-day take ever.
Oh wait, it was a year and a half ago, the weekend of July 18, 2008, to be exact. The Dark Knight came out, and it was the only weekend we’d ever topped that completely arbitrary $260 million spending number — until this past weekend.
Thanks to strong showings from Avatar, Sherlock Holmes, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel and It’s Complicated (in that order), our collective spending from Friday-Sunday, Dec. 25-27, was a staggering — and new all-time high — $278 million.

Not the first result I expected from Google imaging “Avatar.”

Not the first result I expected from Google imaging “Avatar.”

Curiously, this is only a month after we very nearly broke the record back in November, spending $258 million on the weekend New Moon came out. But unlike that weekend or the now-topped record set by Dark Knight, the Christmas box office takes weren’t bolstered by one enormously successful film. Whereas New Moon accounted for more than $142 million of it’s near record weekend and Dark Knight was responsible for more than $158 million in its heyday, the highest grossing movie of this Christmas weekend was Avatar at only $75 million. Sherlock turned up $65.4 million and Alvin and his rat friends made $50.2 million, almost guaranteeing this nails-on-a-chalkboard re-imagining will become an unneeded trilogy.

You haven’t seen the last of us (unfortunately).

You haven’t seen the last of us (unfortunately).

So, what does this mean?
Well, first of all, it’s fair to say there’s a lot of movies worth seeing in theaters right now, from Avatar to The Blind Side (omg, still?!). Or, at least, there’s a lot of movies people are paying to see, like the Chipmunk movie. The top 10 biggest grossers account for $259 million, meaning there was another $20 million spent on movies that brought in less than $4.4 individually (which is what #10 Invictus collected).
Second, and perhaps more importantly, it might mean a shift, even if a subtle one at first, in the Hollywood paradigm that says big money only comes in the summer. Prior to this year that was true. The two other biggest box office weekends ever were in July 2006 and May 2007, when the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean movies were released. But this year, we were much more willing to spend in the fall — twice, in fact.
Does that mean the era of the summer blockbuster is dead? Surely not, but don’t be surprised if the notoriously clever marketing folks working for the big studios give us several presents next holiday season… though they’ll probably blow it by making them all Christmas themed.

Can’t wait.

Can’t wait.

As for this week’s DVD releases, I’m most excited about adding 9 and Paranormal Activity to my Netflix queue. Also, Glee Season 1 Volume 1 gets released. I haven’t watched this show, but have heard from several people that it’s quite good. So maybe catching up on video isn’t a bad idea since you can only watch the last 5 episodes on demand.

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Posted in Commentary, News | 1 Comment »

Monday musings

Monday, December 14th, 2009

Originality: We has it!

Originality: We has it!

Ok, so maybe I shouldn’t bash the new Disney pic The Princess and the Frog. Truth is, I know nothing about it. And though Pixar is great and all, I’m honestly excited to see a non-CG animated flick in the vein of Disney classics. But really when the title talks about a princess and a frog and the (presumed) protagonists look like those above, it doesn’t just ooze creativity, does it? Yay for diversity, but isn’t this what Disney has been giving us for, I don’t a know, a zillion years? Then again, they do it better than anyone else, which is why they’re Disney.
Other box office notes: Look who is still holding strong at #2. Yeah, it’s The Blind Side. I still haven’t seen it, but I’m told by friends (just as I predicted would happen some weeks ago) it’s tear-jerkingly good.

"You want a beer?"

"You want a beer?"

Finally, at long last, Little Rock will get to see The Road this weekend. Based on Cormac McCarthy’s best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, it stars Viggo Mortensen as a father making a journey with his young son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) across a post apocalyptic landscape. More than one Sync staffer is looking forward to this finally opening locally, including some of us who haven’t yet read the book (in case you want to get me anything for Christmas).

Zee map, it needs more swastika.

Zee map. It needs more swastika.

Lastly, if you’re looking for something for the Netflix queue, of course the big name choices from this week’s releases will be The Hangover and Inglourious Basterds. But I’m also intrigued by Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock, the (true, I think) story of how a watershed moment in modern culture came to be thanks to an unsuccessful interior designer trying to save his family’s struggling motel in upstate New York. Far out, man.

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Word of mouth

Monday, November 30th, 2009
vampire mouth

HI!

No, I’m not talking about the phrase we‘ve all heard a lot recently: “Have you seen Twilight yet?”
True, the film did rake in another $42.5 million this weekend, bringing the total domestic take up over $200 million in just two weeks. But the more telling trend over the Thanksgiving weekend was that while New Moon was down about $100 million from last week’s impressive debut, right behind it — again — was The Blind Side at $40.1 million, which is actually more than it brought in its opening weekend ($34.5 million).
Maybe people were just cracked out on that chemical in turkey that makes you sleepy and purchased the wrong ticket, but the more likely explanation seems to be that The Blind Side is actually a pretty good movie and people who are going to see it are telling their friends to do the same — as well as going back themselves.

"Walking around in daylight?! Really?"

"Walking around in daylight?! Really?"

In other news, tomorrow is DVD release day and the big name on the list (at least, for me) is Terminator Salvation. With The Sarah Conner Chronicles TV series not coming back this fall, I’ve been waiting for this fix for some time. I watched the original Terminator on Netflix over the weekend just to pump myself up.

If you look closely you can see tears for the state of this franchise.

If you look closely you can see tears for the state of this franchise.

Also out on video this week is a project I’m interested in, a film called Paper Heart. It’s about a girl who is making a documentary about how she will never fall in love and then does just that during the course of shooting. But it’s not really a documentary. It’s billed as “combining elements of documentary and traditional storytelling, reality and fantasy.” As a journalist, I’m not sure what to think about this crossing of the lines between real reporting and fictional storytelling. But to the filmmakers’ credit, they’re upfront and honest about it, and I have to confess it sounds intriguing.  Starring(?) Charlyne Yi and Michael Cera, directed by Nicholas Jasenovec.

The trailer can be found here but since embedding is disabled, I offer this tangentially related instructional video instead.

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Vampires suck

Monday, November 23rd, 2009
"We are so bank right now."

"We are so bank right now."

Edward Cullen may not feed on human blood, but he, Bella and Jacob from the Twilight series sure have learned how to feast on our money. The second motion picture in the film adaptation of the Stephenie Meyer teen romance book franchise brought in a whopping $142.8 million over the weekend according to Hollwood.com. Second place The Blind Side, the true-life inspirational story about Baltimore Ravens player Michael Oher, brought in $34.5 million. Oher might be able to match up against the best pass rushes in the NLF, but apparently fictional vampires and werewovles are too much for him. That’s ok, though; in the entire history of cinema, only Batman and Spider Man have done better than The Twilight Saga: New Moon did on its opening weekend. Think about that.

Man up, kid. Vampires aren't even real.

"Man up, kid. Vampires aren't even real."

In other news, people for whom “vampire” brings up memories of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt can see two childhood TV programs still going at each other with this week’s simultaneous release of both Beverly Hills 90210: The Eight Season and Melrose Place: Fifth Season, Volume 2.
Notable films releases on VideoETA include Angels and Demons, Four Christmases, and Funny People — though I think I’m most interested in a film I don’t recall seeing much box office marketing for: The Maiden Heist, starring Morgan Freeman, Christopher Walken and William H. Macy, among others.

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At the (box) office

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
I'm rich bit... oh wait. This is a kids' show.

I'm rich bit... oh wait. This is a kids' show.

This seems as appropriate as any image for a place to begin a discussion of the top takers at the box office over the weekend.
Surprise surprise, the big winner was blockbuster disaster pic 2012, which raked in a respectable $65 million according to Hollywood.com (which, incidentally, notes it “feels like summer” with this flick atop the charts… how right they were for this weekend in Arkansas). The makers behind it are sure to be rolling in dough.
Of course, not far behind is Disney’s A Christmas Carol, which added $22.3 million in its second week, for a total approaching $65 million. Scrooge, whether foul as in Dickens or fowl as in Duck Tales (and in Mickey’s Christmas Carol), would approve.
Other top contenders included: Precious: Based On the Novel `Push’ By Sapphire, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Michael Jackson’s This Is It, The Fourth Kind, Couples Retreat, Paranormal Activity, Law Abiding Citizen and The Box.

What?

What?

Also worth note is that today is video release day, and I’m sure I can guess what you’re all excited about, what everyone has been waiting a very, very long time for…..

Gone With the Wind: Ulimate Collector's Edition

Gone With the Wind: Ultimate Collector's Edition DVD

What’s that? Frankly, you don’t give a damn? Alright, then maybe it’s Bruno or Star Trek, which were both released today. Coincidence? I think not.

Bruno, looking fabulous

One to beam up. Please.

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