Movie News
"Avatar" Receives A "Dear John" Letter
Avatar is no longer No. 1 with movie fans. The James Cameron movie was unseated over the Super Bowl weekend by Dear John, a critically drubbed weepie that brought women together en masse while their husbands and boyfriends took part in the annual testosterone observance. Dear John wound up with an estimated $32.4 million -- making it the highest grossing film ever to open on the weekend of the big game. Sony said that 89 percent of ticket buyers were female. With $23.6 million, Avatar fell out of first place for the first time in its eight-week run. (Titanic, by contrast held on to the the box office crown for 15 weeks.) The film that seemed the most damaged by the competition from the two-pronged attack of the Super Bowl and Avatar was the John Travolta action film To Paris with Love. The movie opened with just $8.1 million.
Source: Studio Briefing
Is "Avatar's" Reign At The Top Ending?
The Na'vi of Avatar will go head-to-head against the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts, and the blue-man crew is expected to be thrown for a loss. The film has continued to play strongest among young males who are expected to desert theaters on Sunday and to be active lugging home the beer, chips, and dips for Super Bowl parties on Saturday. The movie also faces competition from the romantic weepy Dear John, which is expected to attract women abandoning their homes to their husbands and boyfriends on Sunday. Some analysts are predicting that the movie could unseat Avatar as the No. 1 film at the box office for the first time in eight weeks. (The Hollywood Reporter's box-office maven Carl Diorio wrote, "This could be the last time James Cameron's Avatar tops the domestic box office.") But most feel that it can hold on until next week, when it will face the romantic comedy Valentine's Day (on Valentine's Day weekend), the fantasy film Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, and the latest remake of The Wolfman. Also opening this weekend is the action film From Paris with Love, starring John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys Myers, which some analysts regard as an odd choice for a Super Bowl weekend but point out that the previous film from its director, Pierre Morel, opened with a solid $24.7 million a year ago.
Source: Studio Briefing
Movie Reviews: "Dear John"
Time was when critics might have called a movie like Dear John "schmaltzy," referring to the Yiddish term for the sickly sweet chicken fat that Jewish families once slathered on rye bread. An acquired taste was necessary to appreciate it. Apparently it has not been acquired by today's critics who appear to have had a collective case of indigestion over Dear John. Indeed, Lou Lumenick in the New York Post writes that Dear John "pushed me perilously close to nausea and diabetic shock, not to mention deep sleep." The movie is based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks, a leading schmaltz purveyor. (He has turned out 15 of them.) Orlando Sentinel film critic Roger Moore describes them as "beach novels" and the movies made from them as "cinematic sand castles -- sappy, old fashioned and utterly forgotten by the next time the tide rolls in." Writes A.O. Scott in the New York Times, "In Mr. Sparks's novels ... star-crossed lovers, often shadowed by illness and death, have an odd way of producing happy, or at least blissfully cathartic, endings. He is a master of the feel-good weepie." Linda Barnard in the Toronto Star agrees, saying that Dear John is contrived to have "romantics reaching for their hankies," but, she adds, "the only eyeball action Dear John got out of me involved rolling."
Source: Studio Briefing
Movie Reviews: "To Paris With Love"
Critics have barely finished polishing off John Travolta's last movie, Old Dogs, when here comes another one that they're kicking around. Joe Neumaier in the New York Post clearly has no love for From Paris, With Love, which he says has "the patchwork plotting of grade-schoolers making up a game at recess." He adds: "This sock-it-to-'em souffle falls very quickly, unless watching Travolta trying on another faux-hip look is considered fun." Claudia Puig in USA Today, while calling the movie "leaden and obnoxious" trains her guns primarily on Travolta, who, she says, "overplays his trigger-happy, racist, sexist character so much that he qualifies as one of the most annoying screen presences ever." Liam Lacey in the Toronto Globe and Mail describes that presence: "In a black leather jacket, with a shaved bald head and a goatee and a perpetual scarf to hide his jowls, he looks like a well-fed pimp or a gay bear." On the other hand, Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune, while calling the movie "stoopid fun," writes that it doesn't do much for Paris or love, or your brain cells, but it flies like a crazed eagle on uppers." Kyle Smith in the New York Post writes that director Pierre Morel delivers "all screech and no suspense, takedown without buildup, pure slam, bam, merci madame."
Source: Studio Briefing
Guess Who The Top-paid Actors Are
Robert Downey Jr. may have starred in two films in 2009 (The Soloist, Sherlock Holmes); Matt Damon may also have starred in two films (Invictus, The Informant); George Clooney may have made three movies in 2009 (Up in the Air, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Fantastic Mr. Fox), but their $22 million in earnings apiece for the year paled in comparison with the $30 million earned by Rupert Grint and Emma Watson for their appearances in the two-part Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, according to Vanity Fair magazine. Nineteen-year-old Watson's earnings, in fact, topped those of any actress in Hollywood. And the highest paid actor in movies in 2009? Twenty-year-old Daniel Radcliffe, Harry Potter himself, who earned $40 million for the two films, plus an additional $1 million for the use of his image in Potter merchandise. (That merchandise fee put him slightly ahead of Ben Stiller, who earned a total of $40 million for the year.) But the two highest-paid creative figures in the movie business were producer-directors Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg with $125 million and $85 million respectively.
Source: Studio Briefing
entertainment of our users only. Moviesplanet.com takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the magazine articles. The content of
these posts is edited by the srouces ascribed next to each article and the articles are the copyright of their ownsers (the ascribed sources). The
articles in the news section do not represent MoviesPlanet's opinions nor can we guarantee that their ownser's reporting is completely factual.