David Macaray | January 19, 2009

An insightful piece from David Macaray you can find here : http://tinyurl.com/7efqwa

Despite winter storms, the post holiday climate proved favorable for movie openers this weekend. Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino finally went wide into 2,808 theaters in its 5th week of release, and the actor/director showed he can make not just an Oscar-buzzed film but also a wildly popular offering. His Warner Bros pic made $9.6M million Friday and $12M Saturday, so it should end Sunday with close to $29M which would make this double the weekend debut of his biggest hits. Its new cume is nearly $40M. The No. 2 and No. 3 pics were both horror films. Fox should be ashamed of itself for making Bride Wars, as well as Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson (also a producer) for starring in such a sexist piece of nonsense. (Feel free to disagree. But you’re wrong.) The movie, which pits two BFFs against each other because their weddings are scheduled on the same day, opened to $8M from 3,226 venues Friday and $8.4M Saturday for what will be a $21.5M weekend. And Rogue Pictures/Universal’s scarer The Unborn playing in 2,356 runs debuted with $8.2M Friday and $7.6M Saturday for a $21.1M weekend. Studio insiders claim The Unborn’s negative cost was only $16M. TriStar/Sony’s African-American melodrama Not Easily Broken adapted from the book by renowned pastor T.D. Jakes managed to come in #8 despite only 724 plays with a solid $2 million Friday and $2.2M Saturday for a $5.6M weekend. The studio claims the film was produced for $5M and earned back more than its negative cost in its first three days.

The rest of the Top 10 had few surprises:
4. Marley And Me (Fox), 3,478 Locations, $11.3M weekend, $123.7M cume
5. Benjamin Button (Paramount), 2,947 Locations, $9.4M weekend, $94.3M cume
6. Bedtime Stories (Disney), 3,511 Locations, $9M weekend, $97.6M cume
7. Valkyrie (MGM/UA), 2838 Locations, $6.6M weekend, $71.5M cume
9. Yes Man (Warner Bros), 2,955 Locations, $6.1M weekend, $89.3M cume
10. Seven Pounds (Sony), 2,456 Locations, $3.9M weekend, $66.8M cume

Other Oscar-Touted Films…
Slumdog Millionaire (Fox Searchlight), 601 Locations, $3.7M weekend, $34M cume
Doubt (Miramax), 1,287 Locations, $2.4M weekend, $22.9M cume
Milk (Focus), 295 Locations, $1.3M weekend, Cume $19.1M cume
The Reader (Weinstein Co), 507 Locations, $1.3M weekend, $5.4M cume
Frost/Nixon (Imagine/Universal), 205 Locations, $912K weekend, $7.7M cume
Revolutionary Road (Par Vantage), 135 Locations, $1.4M weekend, $3.1M cume
The Wrestler (Fox Searchlight), 60 Locations, $873K weekend, cume $2.8M
Defiance (Paramount Vantage), 2 Locations, $66K weekend, $307K cume

Source : http://tinyurl.com/9vwu73

Heath Ledger won the supporting-actor Golden Globe on Sunday nearly a year after his death, earning the prize for his diabolical turn as the Joker in the Batman blockbuster “The Dark Knight.”

The award was accepted by the film’s director/co-screenwriter, Christopher Nolan, who said he and his collaborators were buoyed by the enormous acclaim and acceptance the film and Ledger’s performance have gained worldwide.

“All of us who worked with Heath on `The Dark Knight’ accept with an awful mixture of sadness but incredible pride,” Nolan said. “After Heath passed, you saw a hole ripped in the future of cinema.”

The Globe win boosts Ledger’s prospects for the supporting-actor honor at the Academy Awards, whose nominations come out Jan. 22, the one-year anniversary of the actor’s death from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs. full story : http://tinyurl.com/8ddg3j

Kate Winslet wins early golden globe

British actress Kate Winslet won the Golden Globe on Sunday for best supporting actress as the gala show, dubbed Hollywood’s biggest party, got rolling in the first major awards show of this Oscar season.

A breathless Winslet, who played a German woman with a hidden past in “The Reader,” said she was “shocked” at her victory and added, “I have a habit of not winning things.”

She thanked her co-stars and acknowledged the work of the other nominees including Penelope Cruz, who had been picked as Winslet’s key competitor for her part as a freewheeling artist in the Woody Allen movie, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” Full read  : http://tinyurl.com/7bn4ah

Check out this remix done by our good friends at Zseven entertainment. I like it better than the original track.

-=( 2 4 6 | Everything Entertainment )=-

Oscar ballots go out today from the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences to its 5,810 members and are due back on January 12th. Nominations will be announced January 22nd with the Academy Awards telecast held February 22nd. I know people love to endlessly speculate about who’s going to get nominated, and who might win, but I must say this year’s Oscars is shaping up as rather suspense-less. According to my AMPAS voter gurus who constantly talk to other Academy members, consensus already is forming around Fox Searchlight’s Slumdog Millionaire for Best Picture. Also, I don’t know why opinion is focusing on Cate Blanchett in The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button over, say, Meryl Streep in Doubt for Best Actress. And Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight for Best Supporting Actor is considered a lock. I’m told by Academy members that David Fincher would have a better shot at Best Director for Benjamin Button if only he wasn’t considered such a jerk (yes, that factors in unless a pic is the absolute frontrunner), so Slumdog’s Danny Boyle is the favorite. Which means the only real mystery surrounding the Oscars is the Best Actor category with Sean Penn for Milk, Frank Langella for Frost/Nixon, Clint Eastwood for Gran Torino, and Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler all seen as having an equal chance to win. My insiders say Langella may have the edge right now among the older voters, and Penn with younger voters, but Rourke is also starting to be singled out. It’s too early to speculate on other categories since the vast majority of Oscar voters don’t even start screening most DVDs until after Christmas. I just hope Academy members throw some major category nominations to the year’s more popular pics so it’s not a repeat of the last Oscars where mostly grim little-seen films were rewarded – and, for that reason and others having to do with yet another lousy telecast, ratings were the worst since Nielsen started tracking them in 1974. http://tinyurl.com/9u9rg5

Hollywood’s deeply divided Screen Actors Guild said on Monday it has postponed a planned strike authorization vote set to begin on January 2, so that it can “address the unfortunate division and restore consensus.”

The delay comes after high-profile members such as Tom Hanks and George Clooney lent their names to a campaign that opposed strike authorization. The “yes” side counts such celebrities as Mel Gibson and Martin Sheen.

“This division does not help our effort to get an agreement from the AMPTP that our members will ratify,” the union’s chief negotiator, Doug Allen, wrote in a letter to members posted on the guild’s Web site, referring to the studios’ bargaining agent, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

SAG has been working without a contract since its old one expired on June 30. The main sticking point in the negotiations is pay for programing shown on the Internet. After a federal mediator last month failed to solve the impasse, SAG said it would seek strike authorization. Full : http://tinyurl.com/9vz56r

In trying to keep its hold on young and fickle audiences, MTV over the decades has undergone some fundamental programming shifts, but never before on this scale.

The cabler’s recent ratings declines include a 23% fourth-quarter drop in its core demo of 12- to 34-year-olds. So MTV is embarking on a major programming overhaul, with 16 new unscripted series over the next 4½ months.

The series come from high-profile producers including Sean Combs, Matt Parker & Trey Stone, Donald Trump and Nick Lachey. And they represent a major thematic shift for the channel — more toward the meta-scripted reality of MTV’s “The Hills,” one of the cabler’s few success stories these days.

While MTV pioneered reality series with 1992’s “The Real World,” that genre has become ubiquitous, so the network is offering a slate that avoids the backbiting and bitchery of most nonfiction fare.

“Our new shows will feature themes of affirmation and accomplishment,” says Brian Graden, prez of entertainment at MTV Networks music channels and president of Logo. “Our shows are going to focus less on loud and silly hooks and more on young people proving themselves. These are themes that are consistent with the Obama generation.”

Last week, MTV unveiled eight of the series, which will aim visually for either “the cinematic feel of ‘The Hills’ ” (according to Graden) or aesthetics that are novel to reality television. “We needed a new visual language,” he says.

For example, the “College Life” producers gave U. of Wisconsin freshman camcorders, then turned them loose to shoot their own lives. Full : http://tinyurl.com/3pfpbg

The sky isn’t falling on DreamWorks 2.0.

Despite the credit crunch, Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider remain committed to rebuilding the again-private studio into a sizable production machine capable of churning out four to six movies a year. DW brass declined comment, but well-placed sources suggested that media speculation regarding the studio’s ability to tap production funding in current market conditions has been wildly overblown.

The studio — which has tapped Universal as its film distribution partner — plans on buttoning up a $325 million bank syndication by April at the latest, supplementing a firm $550 million commitment by Mumbai-based Reliance Big Entertainment. That’s less than half of what DreamWorks was gunning for before the credit squeeze prompted its lenders to lengthen their timeline on the syndicated financing, originally set to close in January.

But studio execs and their bankers are focused on raising as much as $750 million in syndicated funding in what’s being described as an “accordion” approach to the financing. So once the $325 million portion is finalized, a follow-up phase of the syndication would be pursued.

DreamWorks brass still aims to get multiple productions before cameras in 2009, with a flow of releases to multiplexes beginning in 2010.

“Everything’s still on,” an insider said.Full story : http://tinyurl.com/4ppfo2

The surprise move follows speculation linking Pirates of the Caribbean star JOHNNY DEPP to the part.

The film, set for a 2010 release, is being developed under the working title Gotham.

Execs have also signed up rising Transformers star SHIA LABEOUF, 22, to play Robin.

CHRISTIAN BALE will return as Bruce Wayne, while MICHAEL CAINE will again play Bruce’s assistant Alfred.

Meanwhile, Brit RACHEL WEISZ is said to be up for the Catwoman role.

Insiders also revealed to The Sun the flick will end on a cliffhanger over whether Batman survives a blast at Wayne Towers.Full : http://tinyurl.com/4f4p2d

Tom Cruise in Valkyrie gets slated by German Critics

Tom Cruise made an excellent sword-swishing American samurai. He even saved the Western world a few times – but he does not quite make the grade as a German war hero.

That was the first verdict of German film critics after the New York premiere of Valkyrie, the Hollywood version of one of the country’s most sensitive historical episodes: the unsuccessful military plot to kill Hitler in July 1944.

It marks the end of months of nail-biting tension among German cultural commentators and historians. Would Cruise make a hash of playing Claus Schenk Count von Stauffenberg, the very model of a Good German?Full : http://tinyurl.com/5jlz4s

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Looks like the “no” side is mobilizing the star power.

As SAG called off its emergency Friday board meeting, more than 130 stars — including George Clooney, Matt Damon and Tom Hanks — have strongly urged SAG members to vote down the guild’s strike authorization.

The list also includes Alan Alda, Jason Alexander, Alec Baldwin, Steve Carell, Billy Crystal, Cameron Diaz, Sally Field, Morgan Freeman, Jeremy Irons, Helen Hunt, Diane Lane, Helen Mirren, Kevin Spacey and Charlize Theron, along with former SAG presidents Patty Duke, Melissa Gilbert and William Schallert.

In a letter sent Monday to leaders of the Screen Actors Guild, the stars said a strike would create more economic hardship and called for SAG to unite with other Hollywood unions in three years. Doing so would be a way to “take the high road,” they added.

The letter was issued shortly before guild president Alan Rosenberg spoke before an overflow crowd of several hundred at a townhall meeting Monday night at the Westin Times Square. Prior to the meet, New York board member Paul Christie described New York members as “ticked off” about the strike authorization.

“They already realize how hard they’ve been hit financially, and the idea that we’d be asking them to go out on strike, and the idea that they’d be asking the IATSE guys, the craft services people, AFTRA guys and everybody else to go on strike at this point, we think, is just insane,” Christie told Daily Variety. “I haven’t run into one person here who’s in favor.”

Rosenberg remained resolute, saying before the meeting, “In a terrible economy like this, it’s our responsibility to make sure our members aren’t thrown under the bus; that we’re not sacrificing disproportionately while the corporations set themselves up with billions of dollars in new media.” Full http://tinyurl.com/5jf7qn