> … and here we go.  BREAKING DAWN PART 1 narrowly set a Twilight franchise record last night with the 2d highest midnight screening grosses on record, $30.25M.  This was (very slightly) ahead of Eclipse‘s $30.1M last June, as well as the November 2009 opening of New Moon, which reached $26.3M for its midnight screenings. […]

> Sony jump-started the release of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO last night with early runs starting at 7PM at its slightly less than 3000 theatres.  Early reports are that it pulled in $1.6M for those showings.  There aren’t a lot of R-rated Tuesday night “preview” comparisons to draw on (OK, there are none), […]

>Benh Zeitlin’s BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD is the kind of movie that makes people wince when they hear “independent film”. A tale, with magical realist overtones, set in the mostly African-American poverty of the Louisiana bayous, it’s narrated by its precocious child protagonist, known as Hushpuppy (Quvenzhane Wallis). Hushpuppy lives with her father Wink […]

> Navy SEALs shoot up the Friday boxoffice. OPENINGS:  The very aggressive marketing for ACT OF VALOR (Relativity) made it seem like it was a patriotic duty to see the film, and successfully hid the fact that it’s mostly a sub-par B action movie.  The question now is whether its quality will catch up with […]

> So what just happened, and what’s likely to happen next?  Here’s a quick look at what’s new in Panem: FINAL NUMBERS:  It turns out THE HUNGER GAMES wasn’t such a hit after all, earning a measly $152.5M in its first 3 days of release, instead of the estimated $155M.  Actually the discrepancy was pretty […]

    Watch it at home.   The genial PAUL really only has one joke–luckily it’s a pretty good one: what if ET had the persona of Seth Rogen? While Paul isn’t the first alien to crack jokes (remember Alf?), Rogen’s voice gives the guy a little slacker/stoner kick. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are […]

  30 MINUTES OR LESS – Watch It At Home:  Doesn’t Deliver   The frustration of 30 MINUTES OR LESS is that of all the R-rated comedies this summer, it was the one with the most original premise and promising credentials:  direction by Ruben Fleischer, the man behind the surprisingly smart and funny hit Zombieland, […]

  IMMORTALS:  Watch It At Home – Brainless, Violent and Weirdly Spectacular   There’s no question that the director Tarsem Singh has an eye.  Singh started as a director of commercials and music videos–his most famous is probably REM’s “Losing My Religion”–and his features The Cell and The Fall both had striking, memorable visuals.  Both […]