> The new PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 is off to a good start:  its $8M boxoffice from midnight shows last night was 30% higher than Paranormal 2‘s midnight performance, and in a league with Hangover 2‘s $10.4M, which is the highest ever for an R-rated title. Sequels, of course, tend to be increasingly more front-loaded, so […]

    THE THREE MUSKETEERS:  Not At Any Price – All For None and None For All   If the last couple of Pirates of the Caribbean movies and the current Sherlock Holmes franchise had a really nasty, dirty weekend together in Atlantic City, and 9 months later one of them (I’m not saying which) […]

    MARGIN CALL:  Worth A Ticket – The Real Sequel to”Wall Street”   MARGIN CALL is smarter and more gripping than Moneyball and The Ides of March combined–and those are two smart, gripping movies.  However, the superb ensemble cast of Margin Call doesn’t boast a name as instantly bankable as Brad Pitt’s or George […]

> This weekend looks like it will have a very solid opener (the best since August 5, when Rise of the Planet of the Apes bowed) but the weekend as a whole should still lag behind the same weekend last year.  The third Paranormal Activity has its sights set on over $41 million this weekend, while […]

> For many years, the National Board of Review has been the self-appointed first group on the calendar to announce awards for Best Picture and other categories.  The NBR is sort of like the Golden Globes without super-powers; they’re 110 people tangentially related to the world of film whom you’ve never heard of and whose […]

> Los Angelenos will have a chance to get advance looks at some of this year’s Oscar candidates at the AFI Film Festival, which begins in just about 2 weeks.  Today the Festival announced the Gala and Special Screenings, which typically make up the bulk of the high-profile titles, and they include quite a few […]

>The past week (seven days ending Sunday) is up 5% versus last year’s comparable week.  Year-to-date box office is now down 3.2% versus last year, the smallest year-to-year margin we’ve seen so far this year.        The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume All films in wide release playing between October 10 and October 16 grossed an awful $116 million, down 5% versus the same week in 2010 but down the same […]

>The Smurfs movie continues to inch closer to Cars 2 in worldwide box office (now $9 million away).  Real Steel is the only recent movie with any overseas box office pull.  Its overseas to date tally of $57 million has moved up to 31st place on the worldwide chart and has upside to around 21st […]