WOODY ALLEN’S LATEST BEATS BLOCKBUSTERS IN ITALY

Italians are bestowing much love on Woody Allen’s To Rome With Love, which was launched in Italy over the weekend ahead of its North American release on June 22. Daily Variety reported today (Tuesday) that the film collected $3.7 million, more than the combined total of the next five pictures on the list, Battleship, Titanic, […]

3 MOVIES BASED ON BOOKS TO VIE AT BOX OFFICE

It’s an odd fact that some of the very people who are likely to rail against anyone including spoilers in online discussions of movies are also the ones to turn out in droves for movies based on popular books — and God help the director or screenwriter who deviates drastically from the original plot. This […]

CANNES SELECTS U.S. FILM TO OPEN 2012 FESTIVAL

The Cannes Film Festival has selected Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom as its opening film on May 16. The film once again unites Anderson with Bill Murray, who appeared notably in Anderson’s Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and Fantastic Mr. Fox. It also features an impressive cast that includes Edward Norton, […]

AT THEATERS: STORM OUTSIDE, DOLDRUMS INSIDE

For three weeks, box-office pundits have been writing that The Help has “exceeded expectations.” Now it’s expected to top the box office again, and the question is: is that expectation too high? Analysts have been searching record books to find another example of a movie that did not open in first place but then moved […]

SPIDER-MAN TURNS OFF THE PREVIEWS

After a record 177 preview performances during which anything that could go wrong did, the production of Broadway’s Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark finally became “frozen,” Wednesday night, with no further casting, rewrites, songs, or choreography planned, the New York Times reported today (Thursday). Critics have been invited to attend shows tonight, Friday and Saturday, […]

PRIEST MAY NEED ONE

It’s officially only the second weekend of the summer movie season, and already a movie is opening without its being shown to critics in advance — a fate usually reserved for dregs of the season that are tossed out in late August or early September. The movie is Priest, starring Paul Bettany — and if […]

FAIR GAME, 127 HOURS OPEN STRONG

Opening in limited release, Doug Liman’s Fair Game, starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts, performed reasonably well, averaging about $15,200 in each of the 46 theaters where it was screened. The political drama, which made its debut at the Cannes Film Festival last May, is being rolled out cautiously by the studio, in the hope […]