THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT:  Watch It At Home – If Only The Engagement Were A Little Shorter…   Judd Apatow, as both director (The 40=Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up) and producer (Bridesmaids, Superbad, Pineapple Express, TV’s new Girls) has brought a tremendous amount of first-class comedy to large and small screens in recent years.  But […]

  WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2019 film slates by studio. BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2019 is now -7% below last year’s comparable span (1 point worse than last week’s comparison) and still basically even with this point the past four years ($9.092 billion).  Over the […]

>Now 17 full weeks into 2012 (one-third of the year down already), year-to-date domestic box office is running 19% ahead of last year’s pace (down from the +22% pace last week), while the year-to-date total is now 13% ahead of the comparable period’s average for the last several years.   Updated final domestic gross estimates are […]

> Based on Friday and Saturday box office (and estimated Sunday numbers), Dolphin Tale (in its second week) moves into the #1 spot.  Look out for a boatload of TV commercials trumpeting this feat to keep the momentum going.  Not far behind is Moneyball, also in its second week, with a slightly higher weekend drop […]

> See also: THE BIJOU @ TIFF:  FIRST TITLES ANNOUNCEDTHE BIJOU @ TIFF:  FESTIVAL TITLES, ROUND TWOTHE BIJOU @ TIFF:  O CANADIAN TITLES! The Toronto International Film Festival prides itself on being one of the more comprehensive in the world, and today a slew of additional titles were announced for next month’s TIFF.  After the […]

> Mitch Metcalf will doubtless have more to say about this later today, but the weekend’s actual boxoffice totals have just been announced, and the surprise is that CARS 2 ended up almost $2M below the number Disney predicted yesterday, $66.1M rather than $68M.  This translates into a Sunday drop that was far heavier than […]

  The Sundance Film Festival saved its most high-profile announcements for today, releasing the titles of its Narrative and Documentary Premieres.  The lion’s share of the festival movies that reach theatres/VOD will come from this group, which feature the most prominent filmmakers and actors.  Here are a few of the most immediately promising: ACOD:  A […]

> On the occasion of Super 8‘s release, the Top 10 movies directed by Steven Spielberg: 10. THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS (1974):  His first feature film, it suggests that had he never touched a special effect in his life, Spielberg would still have been a great American filmmaker.  A movie about celebrity and family that moves […]