G.I. JOE: RETALIATION BLASTS EASTER BOX OFFICE WITH $51.7 MILLION

Seeming to vindicate Paramount’s decision to yank G.I. Joe: Retaliation from its June 2012 scheduled release in order to convert it to 3D, the movie opened with an estimated $41.2 million over the Easter weekend. With another $10.5 million added for screenings on Thursday and previews on Wednesday, the studio could boast an impressive domestic […]

LENO’S TROUBLES MAY BE GOOD FOR HIM

Jay Leno’s jabs at NBC for its dismal showing on the Nielsen ratings chart has actually been good for some ratings — his own. Figures for the week of March 18-22 indicate that the Tonight show drew its biggest total audience in seven weeks — 3.52 million — and its biggest audience among the key […]

CONSERVATIVE CATHOLIC GROUP BLASTS MAHER

Lapsed Catholic Bill Maher has drawn the wrath of the nation’s largest Catholic lay group, the Catholic League, which has accused him of making “vile and obscene” attacks on the church. In a letter to Time Warner, whose HBO carries Maher’s Real Time series, Catholic League President Bill Donohue wrote that Maher’s anti-Catholic “bigotry is […]

AMERICAN IDOL RATINGS SINK TO LOWEST LEVEL EVER

Producers of Fox’s American Idol appear powerless to contain its weekly ratings slide. Thursday night’s installment attracted the smallest audience among 18-49 viewers in the talent show’s history. The number of total viewers fell to 11.03 million. That was still good enough to give Fox a ratings win for the night among all adult viewers, […]

THAI MAN GETS 3 YEARS FOR SELLING AUSSIE FILM ABOUT MONARCHY

A CD/VCD vendor in Bangkok has been sentenced to three years and four months in prison and fined $2,300 for selling a controversial documentary about the Thai royal family produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corp. The court suspended one third of its original five-year sentence following Ekachai Hongkangwan’s admission that he had offered copies of […]

SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE AT EASTER BOX OFFICE

This will be the weekend of the big demo-focused movie. First, there’s G.I. Joe: Retaliation, aimed principally at the young-male demo. Then there’s The Host, which targets the young-female demo. And finally there’s Tyler Perry’s Temptation, aimed at the urban, church-going crowd. All three are getting lousy reviews. (Temptation wasn’t screened for critics, since producer […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: THE HOST

“Long,” “tedious,” “unintentionally hilarious,” “silly,” “lumbering,” “consistently empty-headed” — those are some of the adjectives being used to describe The Host. And they all can be found in just one review — Lou Lumenick’s in the New York Post. In fact, the movie hasn’t received a single positive review from a major newspaper critic. What […]

ANG LEE URGES MORE 3D PRODUCTIONS

The number of 3D films released by the major studios has been decreasing since the visual enhancement shook up the industry following the release of Avatar in 2009. But Oscar-winning director Ang Lee said on Thursday that he would like to see the current trend reversed and 3D employed not only in film spectacles but […]

LENO RESUMES PEACOCK PLUCKING

Jay Leno continued sprinkling barbs about his NBC bosses in his Tonight show monologue Wednesday night. Following numerous reports that the network is likely to give Leno his walking papers before his contract expires late next year, he said: “T-Mobile announced yesterday they are doing away with contracts. Apparently they got the idea from NBC.” […]

IDOL‘S RATINGS SLIP TO AN ALL-TIME LOW

American Idol‘s audience dropped to 12 million Wednesday night, and it’s 18-49 segment fell to its lowest level ever, Nielsen overnight ratings disclosed. While the figure was still good enough to give Fox a ratings win over its competitors for the night; it fell significantly below what NBC’s The Voice and ABC’s Dancing with the […]

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