3D SAVES BOX OFFICE

If it hadn’t been for 3D, the summer box office would have seen the worst returns in 13 years, figures released on Friday indicated. Ticket sales fell to 552 million, the fewest since 1997, although total receipts rose to a record $4.35 billion — up 2 percent from last summer. The results appeared to validate [...]

NEW TECHNOLOGY TRUMPS IN-ROOM HOTEL ENTERTAINMENT

More and more travelers are taking their rented movies on the road with them to play on laptop computers or accessing them over the Internet via Netflix and other streaming services, resulting in the virtual destruction of in-room movie-rental services and impacting hotel revenue, the Los Angeles Times reported on Saturday. It noted that Sioux [...]

THE AMERICAN CLAIMS VICTORY ON LABOR DAY WEEKEND

Although Fox’s Machete took an early lead at the box office on Friday, Focus Features’s The American cut it down on Saturday and Sunday to wind up as the weekend winner, according to studio estimates. The results for The American were nothing to hoist a flag over, however. The film earned just about $12.3 million [...]

3 R-RATED MOVIES DEBUT LABOR DAY WEEKEND

With kids heading back to school on Tuesday in many areas of the country, 3 R-rated movies are debuting this weekend — and none is expected to produce sizable returns at the box office. (The Labor Day weekend is the only major U.S. holiday that does not see a spike in ticket sales; in fact, [...]

MOVIE REVIEWS: MACHETE

Robert Rodriguez’s Machete is the kind of horror romp that critics like to call a gorefest. All of the Mexican characters in it, led by Danny Trejo in the title role, are inflated stereotypes of Mexican bad men; all of the Americans in it, save for one or two, are stupid and greedy. The film [...]

MOVIE REVIEWS: GOING THE DISTANCE

Like Machete, Going the Distance, starring Drew Barrymore and Justin Long, also is getting wildly mixed notices from critics. While Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle calls the movie “first rate” and praises it for capturing “the harshness and the sweetness of our time,” Claudia Puig in USA Today writes that it buries “its [...]

TUTOR: DEAL STILL ON TO BUY MIRAMAX

Ron Tutor and his Colony Capital on Thursday attempted to shoot down numerous reports suggesting his $660-million deal to buy Miramax from Disney may have encountered a hitch with the departure of James Robinson from his investors group. Robinson was expected to contribute $100-150 million to the purchase. “All of the equity required to complete [...]

NEW HITCH IN MIRAMAX SALE

Two principal investors in the deal to buy Miramax from Disney have pulled out, leaving the remaining two principals, construction magnate Ron Tutor and private equity firm Colony Capital, with the choice of either putting up all of the $660 million purchase price or bringing in other investors, the Los Angeles Times reported today (Thursday). [...]

MOVIE REVIEWS: BLACK SWAN

Several critics have given Darren Aranofsky’s Black Swan the same sort of ecstatic praise that they bestowed on his The Wrestler two years ago. The film opened the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday (to a standing ovation), where The Wrestler won the coveted Golden Lion award when it premiered there in 2008. “Every film festival [...]

MOVIES GIVE WAY TO TV SHOWS ON DVD SALES CHART

Three season compilations of television shows nudged movies out of the DVD sales chart for last week. Indeed, the top seller for the week was ABC’s Lost: The Complete Sixth Season. The fourth season of Showtime’s Dexter also made the list at No. 4, followed by the seventh season of CBS’s NCIS. Sony’s The Back-up [...]

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