Category: Sci-Fi Movies (Page 87 of 93)

Harry Potter and the ginormous filmgoing hordes (updated)

July 15, 2009 /

We’ve got an early and rather light box office preview this week because only one new wide release is coming out. However, it’s already looking to be a doozy. Yes, it’s time for another highly profitable trip to Hogwarts with today’s (actually early as possible this morning’s) release of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”

Anyhow, word of highly boffo early ticket sales outpacing the midnight opening of “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” has proven out. Estimates of the Wednesday morning midnight take are roughly $20 million, says Variety and Nikki Finke. THR‘s Carl DiOrio wrote yesterday of roughly a $140 million five day gross and $100 million weekend. However, perhaps taking the fact that the $20 million figure beats both the Wednesday midnight opening of “The Dark Knight” by $2 million and “Transformers” by $4 million, the diviners reporting to Finke are telling her to expect $175-190 million, but with a $90-$100 million weekend a la DiOrio.

[UPDATE: The midnight gross turned out to be an even more whopping, more record breaking $22.2 million. Nikki Finke is now talking about the possibility of the fantasy flick breaking the $200 million mark in its first five days.]

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Brüno earns his umlaut

July 12, 2009 /

On Friday I wrote the following:

There’s obviously general agreement about the numbers, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this one proved the prognosticators wrong either by making a lot less or a lot more money than expected.

Well, the only person proved wrongish was me. The only surprise was that that there appear to be absolutely no surprises as Sacha Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles’s “Brüno” is projected to have made $30.4 million to top the weekend — just slightly exceeding the pre-opening estimates. The slightly bad news for Universal is that the film had a rather large drop off in its second day at the box office. Variety calculates it at 39%, Nikki Finke says 37%. (I can’t check who is right because Variety isn’t giving a complete breakdown of the daily performance, and may be working with slightly different numbers than Ms. Finke. I also suck at math.) In any case, it does show an increase over the “Borat” numbers. Also, this kind of film is a bit cheaper to make than some others, possible lawsuits notwithstanding.

Christian Bale, Public EnemiesNo big surprises further down the rankings either, with “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” breaking the $100 million mark with $28.5 million in its second “frame.” That’s an ice-cool $120.6 million so far for the family flick. If I may copy the Variety house style, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” made an automatic $24 million for a Gigantor-sized $339 domestic total, with THR/Reuters proclaiming it “easily the biggest movie of the year.” (Well, I’m still hoping for a surprise.) and “Public Enemies” knocked over the public to the tune of $14.1 million. Nikki Finke is reporting that competing studios are talking down the star-driven gangster movie’s chances of hitting the $100 million mark.

Critics and the public were, for a change, speaking with one voice and gave a box office D-grade to the week’s second wide release, the high school comedy, “I Love You, Beth Cooper.” The adaptation of a novel by original author Larry Doyle and director Chris Columbus matched its dismal critical performance with a seventh place showing, netting a paltry $5 million despite being in 1,858 theaters.

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The Guardians of Oa — and the Brothers of Warner — have decreed…

July 11, 2009 /

…that Ryan Reynolds will be the Green Lantern. So says such standard bearers of the geek film press as Cinematical (last night) and AICN (also last night).

Personally, this would not have been my choice. I’ve missed several of his movies, but after doing some very good work early on, I’m not convinced that Reynolds is anything much more than the Chevy Chase of our day, though from a ticket sales standpoint I know young women like him, and I’m keeping an open mind. While I was part of the Nathan Fillion contingent on this matter because I simply enjoy seeing the guy doing anything, I was actually willing to go with Justin Timberlake, one of three choices including Reynolds that were floated earlier in the week. Despite being agnostic on his musical talent, I was impressed by his straight forward acting work in “Black Snake Moan” (though Jason Zingale thought otherwise) and in the clips from what I understand was one of the few tolerable sections of “The Love Guru,” and even his soft drink commercials. He’s a reasonably likable presence.

On the other hand, if Reynolds can avoid falling into himself, he has some real potential. At least that’s what I thought about ten years back when I saw him in the indie black comedy “The Alarmist” (aka “Life During Wartime”). The following scene is illuminating, but also NSFW for some humorously over-frank sexuality.

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Will “Brüno” stimulate hot moviegoer-on-box office action? (Updated)

July 10, 2009 /

Okay, so a lot of things have changed in this country with regards to attitudes towards gays, but just how will America deal with the envelope-pushing antics of Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest creation? “Brüno” has already offended a few in the gay community, but is also certain to be utterly avoided by America’s sadly larger homophobic community. As far as I’m concerned, just how this obviously risky material will fare is anyone’s guess, since from all accounts “Brüno” is no cuddly “Will and Grace” or “The Birdcage” and really puts its confrontational money where it’s transgressive mouth is, however comically presented. It’s R-rating has been deemed by Roger Ebert and many others as “very, very hard.”

Reviews are positive, more or less, but critics are somewhat divided. Ebert liked it a lot. Owen Glieberman awarded it a fairly rare A-. Anthony Lane of The New Yorker, however, was less amused and trotted out a variation of the “queerface” meme some were concerned with a few weeks back. On the other hand, as I’ve discussed at my other blog home in another context, Lane’s statements are often, to be extremely easy on him, ill-informed. Joe Morgenstern, on the other hand, makes his point simply enough: he doesn’t think it’s funny, just kind of gross.

Hollywood Reporter box office prognosticator Carl DiOrio is fairly high on the film regardless, calling about $30 million or more for the Larry Charles directed stunt comedy. Pamela McClintock, his opposite number at Variety is saying it should debut in vicinity of Baron Cohen’s prior out of the box hit, “Borat,” at somewhere near $28.5 million. Apparently, the logic here is that Cohen’s now far greater fame will be canceled out by subject matter/content that some audience members who liked the earlier film may just want to avoid this time around. There’s obviously general agreement about the numbers, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this one proved the prognosticators wrong either by making a lot less or a lot more money than expected.

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Sounding off on “Basterds”, a new Spidey writer, movies you didn’t ask for, and Werner Herzog

July 8, 2009 /

Some quick items from around the web tonight.

* Quentin Tarantino talks to Mike Fleming about, what else, “Inglourious Basterds” — the movie made simply to confuse my spell checker. And, yes, once again, Harvey didn’t tell him to cut it by forty minutes and it’s actually slightly longer now than it was when it screened at Cannes to all-over-the-place reviews. He made suggestions, however.

* Gary Ross has been brought in to do a new draft of Sam Raimi’s “Spiderman 4.” Ross is a solid writer, and an okay director in his own right. He’s done wonders for Tobey Maguire’s career previously on both the career launching “Pleasantville” and the entertaining but kind of unremarkable “Seabiscuit.” So, perhaps it’s just an attempt to get a script that will work better than the highly problematic Spidey 3. Josh Wigler, however, has some concerns involving Ross’s upcoming Lance Armstrong project.

* They have a director for the big, huge, enormous 3-D Smurfs movie. Do I give a smurf? No mother-smurfing way.

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