> While you weren’t looking, the Oscar race began. One could make the argument, of course, that it’s been on for months–since, at least, Woody Allen’s MIDNIGHT IN PARIS energized the indie/art-film audience and propelled him into mass consciousness for the first time in years.  (On the other hand, one could also argue that this […]

> BREAKING DAWN PART 1:  Christmas comes but once a year, and for Summit that day is the 24 hours after a Twilight movie opens.  (A little credit to the studio, too, for not fudging the numbers, which would have been easy enough to do since they’re so close, in order to claim a franchise […]

> 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 […]

> This year SHOWBUZZDAILY live-blogged the ceremony.  We’ll have round-up pieces later tonight and tomorrow, but read below for the minute-by-minute feel of the experience as it happened– 8:35PM: But the fun couldn’t last, and with the suspense so thin you could cut it with a straw, THE ARTIST takes its prize. And the friggin […]

> On its first Wednesday in release, THE HUNGER GAMES fell 22% to $8.1M, but just as Tuesday’s hold wasn’t quite as good as it looked, Wednesday’s wasn’t as bad.  For whatever reason, Wednesdays tend to be a down day in the dynamic of a typical week, particularly for the previous weekend’s new opening.  Last […]

On Homevideo and VOD:  Still Not Worth Seeing. James L Brooks is legendarily responsible for some of the great comedies and comedy-dramas of his generation, with a record that stretches from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” to “The Simpsons” on TV, and Terms of Endearmentto Broadcast News in film. Recently, though, he’s stumbled as a […]

    FRIGHT NIGHT – Watch It At Home:  At Least Farrell Had Fun   The new remake of Tom Holland’s 1985 FRIGHT NIGHT has a great set of credentials.  Craig Gillespie, the director, was behind the well-regarded indie Lars and the Real Girl, and has since been house director of United States of Tara […]

  HUGO:  Worth A Ticket – If Only For the Visual Splendors   Paramount doesn’t have much choice but to market Martin Scorsese’s HUGO as a family movie:  it’s got a PG rating, a young boy and girl as the hero and heroine, a children’s book (“The Invention of Hugo Cabret” by Brian Selznick) as […]