> The 2011 box office slump continues in full force.  The top 12 films this Christmas weekend should total an anemic $112 million, down 15% from the comparable weekend last year and not even close to the previous three years.  Of course, weekend comparisons are tricky because the calendar is particularly cruel this year, putting […]

> Well, now it’s all up to WAR HORSE. Cameron Crowe’s WE BOUGHT A ZOO (20th) joined the market on Friday, and it appears to be back to movie jail for Crowe, because according to the Hollywood Reporter, it only made around $3M, even on a day when almost everything else saw 40+% increases.  Although […]

  WAR HORSE:  Watch It At Home –  Spielberg’s Beautiful Muzak   Earlier this year, audiences were presented with Super 8, J. J. Abrams’s pastiche of Steven Spielberg’s classic sci-fi adventures from the 1970s and 80s (Spielberg was a producer on the project).  Now with WAR HORSE, we have Spielberg’s own pastiche:  of John Ford, […]

> Deadline has preliminary figures for Thursday’s boxoffice, and they appear to be fairly steady with Wednesday, consistent with last year’s pattern but below 2010’s totals.  MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL (Paramount) remains at the head of the pack with $6.2M, down about 10%.  This compares with $7.1M for last year’s #1 on the Thursday […]

    WE BOUGHT A ZOO:  Worth A Ticket – Cameron Crowe Pays His Dues and Keeps His Dignity   There’s a classic line in Albert Brooks’s incredibly prescient 1979 Real Life where Brooks, as the prototype of a reality-television director, tries to decide whether to do something unethical.  His rationalization for going ahead:  “What […]

> UPDATE:  More detailed numbers are proving even better for MI4, which reportedly made $6.6M on Wednesday.  The action sequel is close to a $2K average at 3400 theatres, and looks like the hit of the season with $25M already in the bank. Things are less promising for THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, which […]

> 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), […]

  THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO:  Worth A Ticket – David Fincher Meets Lisbeth Salander   The most remarkable thing about David Fincher’s version of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (written for the English-language screen by Steven Zaillian) is that while remaining, for the most part, scrupulously faithful to the best-selling novel by […]