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2 articles from 2007

14 November 2007 | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

A year and a half after it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to a chorus of boos, Richard Kelly's Southland Tales is opening tonight (Wednesday) in New York and Los Angeles and in other cities on Friday. Like Kelly's earlier film, Donnie Darko, his new one, vastly reworked since Cannes and containing numerous added special effects, is receiving mixed reviews. But most critics point out that it's also a mixed movie. Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times describes it as "a political farce, a noir doomsday chiller, a paranoid fantasy, a Saturday Night Live sketch on acid, a musical and an Alex Cox punk rock reverie." She concludes that it is hard "to remain engrossed in a film that's occasionally inspired but ultimately manic and scattered." Lou Lumenick in the New York Post simply disses it as "incoherent and self indulgent" and a "sprawling mess." On the other hand Jan Stuart in Newsday says that while the film is open to certain criticism, it "contains stuff as uproariously out-there as anything in Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and as unnervingly subversive as Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate." Stuart concludes: "I don't know exactly what planet Kelly dwells on or what model of spaceship he's flying, but I'm tickled as punch to go along for the ride." Equally intrigued by the film is Manohla Dargis of the New York Times who describes it as "funny, audacious, messy and feverishly inspired." And, almost as if replying to Lumenick's comment, Dargis remarks that the film "sprawls, at times beautifully, at times maddeningly, but its ambition and pleasures remain undiminished."

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29 January 2007 | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news

Critics weren't given a chance to see it before it opened this weekend, but Epic Movie managed to beat out a slew of Oscar nominees and leggy holdovers to lead the box office with an estimated $19.5 million in ticket sales. "The marketing department made great [TV and Internet] spots and the young people came," Bert Livingston, senior vice president of distribution at Fox, told today's (Monday) Los Angeles Times. But the weekend reviews were as awful as the studio had evidently expected. Jason Anderson in the Toronto Globe and Mail suggested that Epic Movie might be "part of a diabolical, Manchurian Candidate-like plot to stunt the intellectual development of American adolescents so that they're sure to vote for Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 2016 presidential election. (For Canadians, it'll be Howie Mandel.)" And despite the fact that it also took a beating from many critics, Smokin' Aces debuted in second place with a solid $14.26 million. "It's a very edgy, R-rated, hip and cool movie. It doesn't surprise me," Media By Numbers President Paul Dergarabedian told the Associated Press. A third newcomer, the chick flick Catch and Release caught $8 million in its release, while a fourth freshman, Blood and Chocolate, bled (or melted) to death with just $2.1 million and failed even to make the top ten. Meanwhile, Fox's Night at the Museum remained a strong contender in its sixth week as it nabbed $9.6 million to up its total to $216.7 million. Overall, the box office was down about 8 percent from the comparable weekend a year ago.

The top ten films for the weekend, according to studio estimates compiled by Media by Numbers: 1. Epic Movie, $19.2 million; 2. Smokin' Aces, $14.3 million; 3. Night at the Museum, $9.5 million; 4. Catch and Release, $8 million; 5. Stomp the Yard, $7.8 million; 6. Dreamgirls, $6.6 million; 7. The Pursuit of Happyness, $5 million; 8. Pan's Labyrinth, $4.5 million; 9. The Queen, $4 million; 10. The Hitcher, $3.6 million.

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2 articles from 2007