LIBERACE MOVIE A HIT FOR HBO

Aided by solid reviews earlier in the week at the Cannes Film Festival, where it participated in the competition, director Steven Soderbergh’s Behind the Candelabra produced the highest ratings for an HBO original movie in nine years. The first screening of the movie attracted 2.4 million viewers; a second, immediately afterwards, attracted an additional 1.1 […]

ENERGY PRODUCERS TO BATTLE MOVIE

The organization that represents the oil and gas industries has gone into motion to counter a movie that is not scheduled to be released until the end of the year. The film, Promised Land, a drama being distributed by Universal’s specialty-film unit Focus Features — it stars and is co-written by Matt Damon — focuses […]

MOVIEGOERS SPEND LESS ON EXPENDABLES THAN EXPECTED

Many box office pundits had predicted that The Expendables 2 would earn significantly more than the $34.8 million that the original raked in in its debut two years ago, with many forecasting a haul in the neighborhood of $35-40 million. It didn’t turn out that way. The film actually earned $28.6 million, certainly indicating that […]

THE DARK KNIGHT WILL FALL

Three movies take on the final weekend of the Olympics and Batman over the weekend, and tracking studies and pundits’ analyses indicate that at least one of them will do so successfully. That one would be The Bourne Legacy, starring Jeremy Renner, who is replacing Matt Damon in the franchise’s lead role. It’s expected to […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: THE BOURNE LEGACY

OK, let’s get the obvious puns over with without further ado: Critics are about equally divided over whether The Bourne Legacy is a Bourne winner or was Bourne to lose. In the camp of the former is Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times. “Complex, unexpected and dazzling, alternating relentless tension with resonant emotional moments,” […]

FROM SODERBERGH: SOUR NOTES ABOUT MAKING LIBERACE BIOPIC

Director Steven Soderbergh, whose movies represent a cross-section of film fare — from the more-than-four-hour-long commercial failure Che (it earned less than $1.5 million at the box office) to the box office hits Ocean’s Eleven and Ocean’s Twelve — says it is difficult to find financing for a film “that’s not bubbly and positive all […]

A FEAST OF PLENTY AT THE BOX OFFICE

There have been scattered releases throughout the week of the some half-dozen films that are opening over the Christmas holiday — but two films aren’t opening until Christmas Day itself, the 3D horror/sci-fi film The Darkest Hour and Steven Spielberg’s War Horse. It’s hard to figure out why those two films aren’t making it into […]

MOVIE REVIEWS: WE BOUGHT A ZOO

Cameron Crowe’s We Bought a Zoo seems to have divided critics down the middle. None of them have particular praise for it, but then again none are slamming it either. Linda Barnard in the Toronto Star describes it as “an average movie that’s clearly been crafted to bring holiday families together over the popcorn machine.” […]

CAMERON CROWE: AN INNOCENT BYSTANDER IN EMBARGO FEUD

Director Cameron Crowe, who once earned his livelihood as a journalist — when he was a teenaged writer for Rolling Stone, his celebrity interviews were a regular feature of the magazine — and who still occasionally writes for the print media, doesn’t know what to make of New Yorker critic David Denby’s defense for breaking […]

TEEN MAG PUBLISHER LAUFER DEAD AT 87

Charles Laufer, who launched a publishing empire based on teen fan magazines that often featured pictures of shirtless androgynous boys who were “stars” only in the magazines themselves, has died at age 87. His daughter Teena Naumann said that her father died on April 5 in Northridge. His magazines included Tiger Beat and Fave, which […]

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