Film

Star Trek Into Darkness weekend box office: Downright disappointing domestic debut (photo: Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness) J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek Into Darkness, featuring Chris Pine as Captain Kirk, Zachary Quinto as Spock, and Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan, took in an estimated $22 million at 3,668 North American venues on Friday, according to studio figures found at Box Office Mojo. Is that good or bad? Well, let’s just say that this weekend Star Trek Into Darkness should end up collecting approximately $20-28 million less at the domestic box office than early estimates indicated. (Check out comparisons between the Thursday opening of Star Trek Into Darkness and the more impressive debuts of other movie sequels.) Star Trek Into Darkness vs. Star Trek: Opening-weekend box office Star Trek Into Darkness will likely gross at most $83-85 million by Sunday evening, and $70-72 million over the three-day weekend. Paramount is, with fingers crossed, hoping for those figures. A more likely scenario, however, would be approximately $62-66 million over the weekend, for a four-day cume of $75-79 million. Last night, we were wondering if the Star Trek sequel would have a solid or a disappointing opening; considering the film’s inflated early estimates, "solid but hardly outstanding" seemed to be the right assessment. Now, if the current estimates are on target, a more accurate assessment of Star Trek Into Darkness‘ performance at the domestic box office would be "downright disappointing." For comparison’s sake: without the assistance of 3D surcharges, the opening-weekend gross of the 2009 Star Trek reboot was $79.2 million, or about $84 million today. In other words, even including late Wednesday and all-day Thursday screenings and extra IMAX locations and 3D, there’s a good chance Star Trek Into Darkness will trail the "original." It gets a tad more worrisome: The Star Trek reboot cost $150 million, whereas the sequel has a heftier $190 million price tag (not including marketing and distribution costs). And next weekend, Star Trek Into Darkness will have strong competition for box-office dollars from two newcomers: Justin Lin’s Fast & Furious 6 starring Dwayne Johnson, Paul Walker, and Vin Diesel, and Todd Phillips’ The Hangover Part III, with Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, and Justin Bartha. Star Trek Into Darkness: International box office The Silver Lining for both Star Trek Into Darkness and Paramount is, as usual, the international market. This past week, J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek sequel was reportedly running about 70% ahead of the original in seven territories: Mexico, Germany, New Zealand, the UK, Australia, Austria, and German-speaking Switzerland. According to Deadline.com, Star Trek Into Darkness is expected to bring in $9m in Russia this weekend, against $2m for the original film. This weekend’s international box-office total is expected to reach $35 million, with a number of key markets yet to be visited by the Enterprise. Those rosier figures help you to understand why the Star Trek sequel was post-converted to 3D. After all, unlike most other Hollywood blockbusters, the 2009 Star Trek earned less than half of its box-office gross outside North America: $257.73 million domestically vs. $127.95 million internationally. Why? The likely explanation is that Star Trek is a cult phenomenon in the United States, but way less so elsewhere. Paramount had to lure more — way more — international moviegoers for their $190 million-budgeted sci-fi extravaganza. If 3D was going to be the most effective bait, then the studio was right to add another dimension to Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and Benedict Cumberbatch. The original Star Trek cumed at $385.68 million worldwide. Star Trek Into Darkness cast In addition to Chris Pine as Captain Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock, the Star Trek Into Darkness cast includes Benedict Cumberbatch (as a less campy version of Ric

Favorite quotes from Olivier Assayas in Filmcomment magazine, March-April 2013, on the film THE DEVIL, PROBABLY (1977, Robert Bresson, A+30): “I had a difficult reaction to it, and it’s fairly obvious, because my situation was like yours. I had the utmost respect for Bresson, but this one, my God…I had no idea what it was about. It seemed wrong. Because it was 1977, and I was into punk rock, and the energy around me was so far away from anything this film depicted. It was all about stuff we were rejecting, which we did not want to deal with anymore, it was the old world. When I looked at the film again away from that context, five or 10 years later, I realized that it was the best depiction of what the Seventies were about. To anybody who was in France at that time it’s obvious, and it’s extraordinary that it was an old man who cracked it. When I saw the film again, it just struck me so cruelly that what I was rejecting was not the movie, it was myself, the person I had been at the time. Because the characters in the film, specifically the central character, are really the closest to whatever I was at that age that I’ve seen in a film. But at the time I did not want to see that! In the end, it must be one of my favorite films of all time.” Reading what Assayas said, I wonder which film best represents your personal youth in the 1980s. Is it included in the list below? 1.THE BREAKFAST CLUB (1985, John Hughes) 2.BU SU (1987, Jun Ichikawa, A+30) 3.CLASS ENEMY (1983, Peter Stein, West Germany, A+30) 4.DEADLY FRIEND (1986, Wes Craven, A+15) 5.HEATHERS (1988, Michael Lehmann, A+) 6.PRETTY IN PINK (1986, Howard Deutch, A+15) 7.THE SOUND AND THE FURY (1987, Jean-Claude Brisseau, A+30) 8.TWO OF US (1988, Roger Tonge, UK, A+15) 9.TYPHOON CLUB (1985, Shinji Sômai, A+30) 10.VICTIMS (1987, Chana Kraprayoon, A+30)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl0_fiyI0mc As for my own personal youth in the 1980s, I think BU SU and THE SOUND AND THE FURY are the films that best represent it.

Steven Moffat has made a great number of promises throughout the seventh series of Doctor Who. I was unsure whether he'd really be able to write a satisfying answer to the mystery of Clara but "The Name of the Doctor" delivers answers to the most pressing questions while it establishes tantalising new mysteries for the upcoming 50th anniversary special and the next series. It's one of the most assured finales yet, an episode that looks back to the show's past as it prepares to step into a much more unpredictable future.Let's talk about Clara first. Improbable as it seems, the revelations about who she is feel like they make perfect sense. I'm sure people will be around to analyse it and rip apart these scenes... [Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]

When a bunch of boys return to the land named after a Whale's Vagina, you know it's about time to get sloshed on scotch and revel in the ribald inappropriateness of Ronald Burgundy and friends.This maybe the second first peek, but I don't care - I need some colour in my life, and that colour better be the darkish red, almost purple of a certain wine region in France known for their viticulture.... [Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]

Prominent indie production house Dark Sky Films and upstart Snowfort Pictures are combining forces to produce the 70s style influenced horror film Starry Eyes. Starry Eyes tells the story of Sarah Walker, a determined and desperate actor who would do anything to land her first big role. Unfortunately this leaves her prey to a satanic cult who has been operating as Hollywood's gatekeepers since the Golden Age. They have the power to make her a star, but it comes at a terrible price.What follows is an occult tale of paranoia and possession that explores themes of transformation, body horror and a woman going through a psychotic breakdown. Ira Levin meets David Cronenberg. The filmmakers, Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kolsch, along with Snowfort producer Travis Stevens, launched a... [Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]

The Coen Brothers return with the 1960s-set Inside Llewyn Davis, a delightful tragicomedy about a musician just trying to get a break. Oscar Isaac plays the titular Llewyn and this is very much his show from beginning to end. That's a good thing, too, as the very talented Isaac imbues Llewyn with just the right amount of crassness to make him an interesting character without making him unlikeable. It's a virtual cavalcade of talented actors of whose life Llewyn floats in and out. The most notable is Carey Mulligan whose turn as a folk singer with plenty of attitude shows us a side of Mulligan we haven't often seen. Fans of Girls will also love Adam Driver's small but hilarious role. Those expecting a... [Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]

It was all the way back in November of 2005 that Twitch first wrote about Russian horror film Viy, a remake of one of that nation's earliest horror films which is itself an adaptation of a story by Nikolai Gogol. The years since have not been kind to Viy. Massive delays, multiple reshoots, the apparent failure of more than one company involved in the film - at least in part due to massive budget overruns - the creation of an international framing story involving Jason Flemyng and Charles Dance in an attempt to broaden the international appeal and make their money back, more reshoots, more delays, more companies cycling through, etc etc etc ...But after all of that the film is now, apparently, nearing completion... [Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]

If ever there was an art film open to the masses this may be the one. The Coens have nailed mood, character and atmosphere with Inside Llewyn Davis and I dare anyone to watch it and not come away with at least a little something to appreciate if not a whole bag full of things to love and talk about.

The Fast & The Furious was kicked up a further notch with the release of Fast 5, and more importantly the casting addition of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s Interpol Agent Hobbs. But after Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and the …

0 0 1 1513 8630 Susquehanna University 71 20 10123 14.0 Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} “One false move and you’re in over your head” I tend to steer clear of prestige noir — there just isn’t much new to say about such films, and more often than not they wrap up in too neat a package. But in revisiting Where the Sidewalk Ends after a two-decade hiatus, I discovered a far better picture than I remembered — surprisingly post-modern in its depiction of a murky gray world where it’s difficult to tell right from wrong, with characters neither entirely good nor entirely bad, for whom just getting by is all that can be rightfully hoped for. In Dana Andrews’s detective Mark Dixon I found a man wracked by the human imperfections that compel us to watch film noir, deeply flawed yet nurturing a private hope that somewhere, somehow, in some unexplored place out beyond the neon signs and the never-ending warren of streets, there might be a chance at grace, at a better kind of life. Through the course of the film, Dixon comes to finally understand what such a chance demands of a man, and he gives it. Any way you look at it, Where the Sidewalk Ends is a plum of a movie. Released by Fox in that most noirish of years, 1950, it reteams director Otto Preminger with stars Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney, the key players from the 1944 hit Laura. And while a comparison of the two films would make for a meaty essay in its own right, here I’ll just note that while Laura, with it’s shakier claim at noir status, is concerned with human weakness in the New York glamour set, Where the Sidewalk Endspresents a more frightening — and far more exhilarating — version of the big city. The tall buildings, bright lights, and chic glamour of Laura are present, but seem forever lost in the distance. The world Preminger depicts here is bleak and gritty, strewn with trash, where predators lurk around the next street corner, and hopelessness blights each back alley. It’s a night-world, as different from the previous Preminger-Andrews project Fallen Angel as it is from Laura. Look in the window of a cheap basement flat and you’ll find Mrs. Tribaum, sleeping the years away at her kitchen table, waiting patiently for death to recall her address. Hail a taxi and you’ll meet Jiggs Taylor, who dreams that his fares are dignitaries to be shuttled from one party to the next, so beaten down by a dreary existence that he has trouble separating reality from fantasy, and worships the cop who once used his cab to chase down a petty thief. That clean-cut guy with the dice? That’s Kenneth Paine, an ex-war hero who took off his uniform only to discover that there weren’t any jobs after all, no matter what they said in the Stars and Stripes. Now he’s a degenerate gambler who drinks and smacks his wife. And then there’s the cop. Where the Sidewalk Ends serves up one of film noir’s most finely drawn anti-heroes. Dana Andrews is hard-boiled detective Mark Dixon, enigmatic poster boy for loneliness and alienation. Like many other noir protagonists, Dixon can’t escape his past. He is further complicated by the f