PUSS NICKED AS BOX OFFICE GOES TO THE DOGS (Updated)

Blame the unseasonably snowy weather in the East. Blame the World Series. Blame Halloween parties. Blame the economy. Box office analysts were doing a little of each to explain the lousy weekend that saw blah openings for three new movies and mostly insipid performances from everything else. The No. 1 film, as expected, turned out […]

PUSS IN BOOTS SET TO CLAW ITS WAY TO THE TOP

A swashbuckling cat is likely to lay waste to a host of rivals this weekend, and analysts are expecting it to be rewarded with $35-40 million. DreamWorks Animation’s Puss in Boots, with Antonio Banderas providing the cat’s meow, appears to have little competition for family audiences. (Paramount, which is distributing the film, moved it up […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: IN TIME

The critics all seem to agree: the premise of In Time, the sci-fi movie starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, is intriguing. It concerns a future time when time is literally money — when everyone stops aging at 25. They then receive a year in the bank, but they must buy time to live any […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS

Friends with Benefits may certainly benefit from a number of friends among the critics. Even the few who knock it don’t do so with much scorn. For example, Claudia Puig in USA Today concludes her review by writing, “When it’s good, Friends With Benefits is quite good — especially as it skewers rom-com clichés. And […]

MYSPACE, A SHADOW OF ITS FORMER SELF, IS SOLD

MySpace, the social network site that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp bought six years ago for $580, has been acquired by the ad network Specific Media for about $35 million in stock. That’s about one dollar in stock for each of the 35 million users who access the website each month. While that is an enormous […]

CARS 2 EXPECTED TO NAB CHECKERED FLAG

Critics may have made a wreckage out of Disney/Pixar’s Cars 2, but that probably won’t dissuade moviegoers from rubbernecking to see it this weekend, analysts say. While Toy Story 3 opened last year with $110 million, most forecasters suggest that Cars 2 will wind up with a little more than half that amount — $55-60 […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: BAD TEACHER

Justin Timberlake may decide to reconsider his reported decision to switch careers from singing to acting after he reads the reviews for Bad Teacher, in which he stars with Cameron Diaz and Jason Segal. Actually Timberlake himself is getting OK notices — critics particularly like a scene in which he sings an awful song off […]

EISENBERG RAINS ON SPAIN

Spanish entertainment blogs were buzzing over the weekend after The Social Network star Jesse Eisenberg complained on Conan O’Brien’s TBS show last week about his treatment on a popular Spanish variety/talk show,