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New on DVD (11/11) and in theaters (11/14)

Laff at the Movies — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 07:32:52 +0000

A Bond weekend coming up at the box office, and a variety of options coming out to rent/buy on DVD this week.

On DVD (Tuesday): “Beer for My Horses”, “Hellboy II: The Golden Army”, “Star Wars The Clone Wars”, “Sukiyaki Western Django”, and “This Christmas.”

In Theaters (Friday): “Quantum of Solace”, “Slumdog Millionaire” (limited), and “A Christmas Tale.”

Courtesy Universal

Courtesy Warner Bros./Lucasfilm

MY TAKE ON WHAT’S NEW ON DVD:
If you’re like me and waited for “Hellyboy 2″ to come out on DVD, so as not to be so disappointed after the original – this is our week !!! And if you took my advice back in August to wait and rent “Star Wars Clone Wars” (unless you’re a die-hard fan, or young fan of the new cartoons)… this is the week to consider renting it.

Also out this week, Toby Keith’s song/music video “Beer For My Horses” turned into a feature-length movie, Quentin Tarantino in the Japanese Western “Sukiyaki Western Django” that got decent reviews, and the Christmas drama “This Christmas” about a family’s first holiday together in four years.

MY TAKE ON WHAT’S NEW IN THEATERS:
Bond, only Bond… there’s a reason why other movies shuffled their schedules around the opening of the latest 007 movie (the 2nd for title star Daniel Craig)… Bond movies always open big… and this should be no different – it will take in close to one-third of the weekend box office all by itself… some estimates have it as high as $60-70 million this weekend… I’ll be a little more realistic.

Courtesy MGM

MY WEEKEND BOX OFFICE PREDICTION:

“Quantum of Solace” – $50 million
“Madagascar 2: Ecsape to Africa” – $31.5 million
“Role Models” – $9.6 million
“High School Musical 3” – $5.5 million
“Changeling” – $5.1 million
“Zack and Miri Make a Porno” – $3.8 million
“Soul Men” – $3.5 million
“The Secret Life of Bees” – $2.3 million
“Saw V” – $1.6 million
“The Haunting of Molly Hartley” – $1.5 million
“Eagle Eye” – $1.3 million

Next Week on DVD: “The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2″, “WALL-E”

Next Week at Theaters: “Bolt”, “Twilight”, “Boy in the Striped Pajamas” (expanded release), “Special” (limited)

“Bangkok Dangerous” leads an unimpressive weekend

Laff at the Movies — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:33:42 +0000

“Bangkok Dangerous” was the top movie, but it was the only new movie in wide release and none earned more than $10 million

The fall trend continues… last weekend, only “Tropic Thunder” made more than $10 million, the week before 4 movies made more than $10 million, now this past weekend none of the movies even came close to that mark, setting up a very interesting weekend ahead…

Top 10 Weekend Box Office list this week (actual results):

1. “Bangkok Dangerous” - $7.78 million (1st week)

2. “Tropic Thunder” - $7.23 million
(4th week, was #1 last week, lost 37% from last week)

3. “The Dark Knight” – $5.52 million (total gross: $511.99 million)
(8th week, was #3 last week, lost 36% of its audience from last week)

4. “The House Bunny” - $5.51 million
(3rd week, was #4 last week, lost 33% of its audience from last week)

5. “Traitor” - $4.27 million
(2nd week, was #5 last week, lost 45% of its audience from last week)

6. “Babylon A.D.” - $4.18 million
(2nd week, was #2 last week, lost 56% of its audience from last week)

7. “Death Race” - $6.29 million
(3rd week, was #6 last week, lost 41% of its audience from last week)

8. “Disaster Movie” - $3.03 million
(2nd week, was #7 last week, lost 48% of its audience from last week)

9. “Mamma Mia!” – $2.86 million
(8th week, was #8 last week, lost 32% from last week)

10. “Pineapple Express” - $2.26 million
(5th week, was #9 last week, lost 36% of its audience from last week)

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Chasing History:

“The Dark Knight” continues to try to close the gap between itself ($511.99 million) and “Titanic” ($600.78 million) for the highest grossing movie ever in the U.S. !!

Box Office numbers courtesy Box Office Mojo

“Bangkok Dangerous” poster courtesy Lionsgate

Box Office “Thunder” gets quieter

Laff at the Movies — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 03:37:22 +0000

“Tropic Thunder” was the only movie earning more than $10 million for the Labor Day Weekend

The previous weekend, 4 movies made more than $10 million, this past weekend, it was just “Tropic Thunder”… but as I mentioned last week… its only dominating the weak August offerings in the wake of “The Dark Knight”’s success…

“Tropic Thunder” was first for the 3rd weekend…. Vin Diesel’s “Babylon A.D.” was 2nd, but had the lowest per screen average of the top 5 movies, so its likely to fall next week… my pick for a possible acting nomination “Traitor” showed up in 5th place… “Disaster Movie” debuted in 7th… and for the 2nd week in a row, a new movie - “College” – failed to make the top 10 (last week it was “The Rocker” in 13th place).

Top 10 Weekend Box Office list this week (actual results):

1. “Tropic Thunder” - $11.51 million
(3rd week at #1, lost 29% from last week)

2. “Babylon A.D.” - $9.56 million (1st week)

3. “The Dark Knight” – $8.61 million (total gross: $502.28 million)
(7th week, was #4 last week, lost 18% of its audience from last week)

4. “The House Bunny” - $8.30 million
(2nd week, was #2 last week, lost 43% of its audience from last week)

5. “Traitor” - $7.80 million (1st week)

6. “Death Race” - $6.29 million
(2nd week, was #3 last week, lost 50% of its audience from last week)

7. “Disaster Movie” - $5.76 million (1st week)

8. “Mamma Mia!” – $4.36 million
(7th week, was #8 last week, gained 1% from last week)

9. “Pineapple Express” - $3.50 million
(4th week, was #6 last week, lost 35% of its audience from last week)

10. “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” - $2.81 million
(3rd week, was #11 last week, lost 6% of its audience from last week)

14. “The Longshots” - $2.31 million
(2nd week, was #10 last week, lost 43% of its audience from last week)

15. “College” - $2.11 million (1st week)

17. “Hamlet 2â€³ - $1.69 million
(2nd week, was #22 last week, gained 286% of its audience from last week) (playing in 1,494 more theaters from last week)

Chasing History:

“The Dark Knight” continues to try to close the gap between itself ($502.28 million) and “Titanic” ($600.78 million) for the highest grossing movie ever in the U.S. !!

Box Office numbers courtesy Box Office Mojo

“Tropic Thunder” poster courtesy DreamWorks

Review: ‘The Clone Wars’ great for kids, good for fans, just ok for everyone else

Laff at the Movies — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:00:34 +0000

(RE-POSTING from 8/13/08)

The Clone Wars: great for kids, good for fans, just ok for everyone else

“Star Wars The Clone Wars” has lots of action and is fun for the kids, fans of the franchise might like it… BUT – I hate to say it, this movie fell a little flat for me… and I’m a die hard Star Wars fan. I had hoped it would be on the level of the short “Clone Wars” cartoons from 2003-2005… and I think that if they would have played on TV as shorter episodes – the way this project started – we would have enjoyed it more. I’m disappointed that my 1st media screening as a movie blogger would turn out that way.

(2008) (rated:PG for sci-fi action violence throughout, brief language and momentary smoking) (1 hr, 38 min)

Starring the voices of: Matt Lanter, Ashley Eckstein, James Arnold Taylor, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Lee, Anthony Daniels

Director: Dave Filoni

Genre: Animated/Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi

The Plot: As the Clone Wars sweep through the galaxy, the heroic Jedi Knights struggle to maintain order and restore peace.

Star Wars Chronology: The story is set between “Episode II: Attack of the Clones” and “Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” TV Series: This movie sets up the TV series on Cartoon Network starting in October.

MY TAKE (spoiler free): I can tell you that for the kids in the audience… it was a lot of fun… they even clapped at the end. No offense to those kids… but I’ve probably seen more movies in theaters *this year* than they’ve seen in theaters in their *lifetime*…. so they might think it was great or they might just be applauding because when they saw “Iron Man” the audience applauded and these kids might not know anything different.

“Star Wars The Clone Wars” seems to be geared at a new generation of Star Wars fans, because one of the main characters is a kid.. so the kids can kind of connect and relate to her. Most of the voices in the movie are different – only Samuel L. Jackson (Mace Windu), Christopher Lee (Count Dooku), and Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) return for their characters.

For Star Wars fans – many of the lines in the movie are easily anticipated, but it is nice to see George Lucas flesh out the backstory and side stories within the Clone Wars period between “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith”… and while this movie doesn’t really deal with any of the issues of Anakin Skywalker, it does do the one thing the Prequel movies didn’t – give a backstory to another big character from the original trilogy: Jabba the Hutt.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Kids are going to love this movie, fans of Star Wars will like most of this movie, but there were several times that we should have gone to a commercial and waited a week to see the next chapter (like the old Saturday Matinee Serials that influenced George Lucas)… I give it 6.0 out of 10… the action and side plot to the Clone Wars were good and it looked great on the big screen, but the overall story came up a little short for me and didn’t have the hard edge that the Clone Wars animated cartoons had in 2003-2005. This really should have been three 30 minute TV episodes… or bring back the Movie Serials and make it a series of 30-minute movies!!

FOOT NOTE: “Star Wars The Clone Wars” was originally conceived as an animated TV series… but they decided to amp it up and turn some of the episodes they had made into a feature-length movie to promote the upcoming TV series on Cartoon Network starting in October. This is related, but not a continuation of the animated shorts “Star Wars: Clone Wars” cartoons that aired on Cartoon Network in 2003-2005… that were actually pretty good and won some Primetime Emmy Awards.

“Star Wars The Clone Wars” poster courtesy 20th Century Fox