It turns out even decades of laughter through the form of hundreds of felt puppets can’t beat the Kristen Stewart pregnancy movie. After having one of the most intense marketing campaigns that Disney has ever executed for The Muppets, Breaking Dawn Pt. 1 still managed to beat the film in the box office by over $10 million during the holiday weekend.

The vampy melodrama got the #1 spot for the second weekend in a row with $42 million this weekend, while Muppets (which made $42 in total since it opened on Wednesday) was only able to pull in an estimated $29 million. It looks like vampires really are more popular than singing frogs and pigs. Shame.

Also hitting theaters this weekend, Sony’s Arthur Christmas fell flat with an estimated $12.7 opening weekend. Speaking of falling flat, Scorsese’s Hugo had an even weaker opening, as it came in 5th place with just over $11 million.

These films could very well do better as we draw closer to the holidays, but don’t expect to see much in the form of sequels for these family classics. Those films may not have performed as well as they could have, but what did was the Weinstein’s My Week with Marilyn which pulled off just over $2 million for its first weekend.

Continue Reading →

The deals are happening fast and furious at the Toronto International Film Festival.  The Weinstein Company has announced that they have acquired the distribution rights to British comedy Submarine.

Ben Stiller serves as one of the film’s executive producers. The film stars Sally Hawkins (Happy Go Lucky), Paddy Considine (Hot Fuzz) and Noah Taylor (Red, White and Blue.)

The synopsis is as follows:

“Submarine is a a comedy which follows a 15-year-old boy with two objectives: To lose his virginity before his next birthday, and to stop his mother from leaving his father for her dance teacher.”

It is an adaptation of  a novel by Joe Dunthorne, and was directed by Richard Ayoade. Bidding took place last night, and Weinstein ultimately acquired the movie for around $1 million dollars, with a promise for hefty publicity and advertising.

Our colleagues who have seen the film are very enthusiastic about it.

Several movies have made the grade with critics of late, but enthusiasm for Scott Pilgrim and now Piranha has not lead to large numbers at the box office.  It has been very disheartening to see how poorly some movies have done at the box office.

Piranha should have been a slam-dunk for the Weinstein Company and Dimension, but the film only managed to snag sixth place, and did not break $10 Million over the weekend.  That is with 3D ticket prices tallied in, which makes it even more disappointing.

Audiences that did see the movie didn’t really like it. The film only got an exit poll score of “C” from film-goers, according to Entertainment Weekly’s Hollywood Insider.

Nobody seemed  too interested in seeing any of the new offerings.  Holdover Expendables won the weekend with $16.5 Million.  The film dropped about 50%, and its two week total is $65 Million. Take that, naysayers.

Vampires Suck nabbed the number two spot.  The team that brought you the Scary Movie franchise, Date Movie,  Epic Movie and many more, decided to parody the Twilight franchise this time around.  The film has made about $18 Million since its opening day last Wednesday, with $12 Million of that coming from the weekend.

The Twilight series is ripe for parody, but the film clips for this film just weren’t that funny

Continue Reading →

A Single Man is the single biggest surprise I have had at the movies all year. It is brilliant, beautiful, superbly acted, and emotionally devastating. It is one of those movies that will haunt you for days and weeks to come after viewing it.

*Minor spoilers in this review* The opening credits are set to an underwater scene depicting a man gently lolling about in the waves in slow motion.  A voice-over by George (Colin Firth) states that it has been 8 months since he lost his male partner in a car crash, and yet everyday “Waking up hurts.”

George is starting to believe that life will never really return to normal, and the day we witness in the film  is actually the day that George has decided to kill himself.  Fastidious to a fault, he meticulously lays out the outfit he wishes to be buried in, going so far as to leave instructions on how he wants his necktie to be knotted (Windsor-style.)

Continue Reading →