"Bright Star
" (PG): Jane Campion's ode to poetry and young love stars Ben Whishaw as the poet John Keats and Abbie Cornish as his neighbor, Fanny Brawne.
She proved a perfect foil for blue-collar bigot Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor), and their blistering exchanges were so entertaining that producer Norman Lear fashioned Arthur's own series.
This weekend Moviegoers still love Nicolas Cage action flicks as the actor's latest film, the doomsday thriller Knowing, easily beat out two other new releases to capture the top spot at the North American box office. Opening in second and third respectively were the buddy comedy I Love You, Man starring Paul Rudd and the Julia Roberts-Clive Owen spy pic Duplicity. With the trio of new titles pulling in over $57M, most holdovers suffered sizable drops as the overall marketplace lagged behind last year's numbers by a slim margin.
Scoring his eleventh number one opening since winning an Oscar in 1996, Cage led the effects-driven actioner Knowing to a strong $24.8M debut, according to estimates. The Summit release averaged a potent $7,447 from 3,332 theaters and gave the young studio its second number one opener in four months. The company's vampire smash Twilight hit the top of the charts during its November launch and hit DVD this weekend with its Saturday street date. Knowing, which finds Cage playing a professor who discovers a code that can predict future disasters, was rated PG-13 and played evenly to males and females according to studio research. The audience was older as 63% of the crowd was 25 or over. Critics mostly pointed their thumbs down, but ticket buyers didn't care.
The male bonding comedy I Love You, Man debuted in second with an estimated $18M for Paramount. Starring Paul Rudd and Jason Segal, the R-rated laugher averaged an impressive $6,641 from 2,711 locations and performed much like the last comedies from each actor. Rudd's Role Models bowed to $19.2M last November while Segal's Forgetting Sarah Marshall opened to $17.7M last April. Both carried R ratings and played to young adults just like Man reaching final tallies of $67.3M and $62.9M, respectively. Reviews were generally positive.
Julia Roberts and Clive Owen debuted in third place with their caper pic Duplicity which grossed an estimated $14.4M from 2,574 theaters for a solid $5,595 average. Universal's PG-13 film about former spies that plot a con operation against a pair of corporations marked Roberts' first lead role in a live-action wide opener in more than five years. During that time, the Oscar-winning actress took many supporting roles in films that were not anchored by her like Ocean's Twelve and Charlie Wilson's War. This time around she was the main star and settled for third place, but still posted numbers that were very respectable. Openings for her films from the early part of this decade include $11.5M for 2003's Mona Lisa Smile, $20.1M for The Mexican, and $28.1M for 2000's Erin Brockovich. Reviews were decent and the adult female audience could continue to show up in the weeks to come. Duplicity had the best Friday-to-Saturday bump among the weekend's new releases with 27% compared to Knowing's 9% and I Love You, Man's 7%.
Even with no new family films opening, Disney's PG-rated adventure Race to Witch Mountain still suffered a sizable drop falling 47% to an estimated $13M in its second weekend. After ten days, the Dwayne Johnson starrer has banked $44.7M. Race is nearly on par with Johnson's last kid-friendly offering for the studio, 2007's The Game Plan, although it opened stronger and is falling harder. Game Plan bowed to $23M and dipped only 28% in the second frame for a ten-day tally of $43.2M on its way to a $90.6M final. With DreamWorks charging into theaters aggressively on Friday with its 3D toon Monster vs. Aliens which could generate the biggest opening of the year, the Disney actioner may see more big declines ahead ending its run with $80-85M.
In its third weekend, the comic flick Watchmen fell another 62% and grossed an estimated $6.8M raising the 17-day cume to $98.1M for Warner Bros. At its current trajectory, the final domestic gross should finish with about $110M. Universal's horror redo The Last House on the Left also fell hard dropping to an estimated $5.9M in its sophomore frame, down 58%, for a total of $24M in ten days.
The Fox companies followed with their $130M+ blockbusters. Liam Neeson's Taken took in an estimated $4.1M in seventh place, off 38%, for a sum of $133.1M. Fox Searchlight's Slumdog Millionaire dropped 46% to an estimated $2.7M putting its gross to date at $137.2M.
Falling to ninth place was Madea Goes to Jail with an estimated $2.5M, off 51%, and a total of $87.2M for Lionsgate. The Focus 3D hit Coraline slipped only 21% and pulled in an estimated $2.1M in its seventh round. Cume is $72.8M. Each film is now the second biggest grosser ever for its distributor trailing Fahrenheit 9/11 ($119.2M for Lionsgate) and Brokeback Mountain ($83M for Focus) respectively. Coincidentally, Slumdog is Searchlight's number two all-time hit but still has a chance of surpassing the $143.5M of Juno.
The top ten films grossed an estimated $94.3M which was down less than 1% from last year when Horton Hears A Who remained in the top spot with $24.6M; and down 19% from 2007 when TMNT opened at number one with $24.3M.
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – "Mamma Mia!" replaced "The Dark Knight" as the top-selling DVD in the United States, according to Nielsen VideoScan data issued Wednesday.
(Blu Monday is our roundup of what's new in Blu-ray...) One high-definition question that comes up a few times a year is when will major sports be available on Blu-ray? We love to watch live games in high definition, but keepsake DVDs are only in standard definition. Just this year, though, we've gotten our first Blu-ray releases for the Big Four, meaning MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL (I'm not counting wrestling, swimsuit stuff, etc.). For the Philadelphia Phillies, the World Series highlight film came out on both DVD and Blu-ray (the Blu-ray came out three weeks later), and the Boston Celtics' NBA championship film also came out on DVD and Blu-ray (the Blu-ray was almost four months later). Major catch: both Blu-ray discs are the highlight films only. If you want to watch the actual games, you'll have to stick with the standard-definition DVD sets Philadelphia Phillies 2008 World Series Collector's Edition and Boston Celtics: 2007-2008 NBA Champions Special Edition. And of course the big prize is the Super Bowl. Perhaps that will be released on Blu-ray in 2009.--David
New Blu-ray pre-orders that have recently hit the catalog:
Amazon Movies & TV editors recently gathered to vote for our Best of the Year DVDs. Everyone weighed the options, researched the contenders, and looked deep within their hearts to pick the funniest, smartest, and most insightful entertainment of 2008. Then I moved Mad Men to the top anyway. (Jon Hamm can sell me anything.)
Anyhoo, here are my (with lots of input from my friends) top 10 TV DVDs of 2008. But you shouldn’t take our word for it--TV is a populist art form, after all. Here's what our customers have to say:
1. Mad Men: Season 1 (available on DVD or Blu-ray):
Average customer rating: 4.5 stars
Customer quote: “It would be hard to imagine a more absorbingly intelligent American TV series--in terms of writing, acting, and visuals--than Mad Men... Ostensibly the series is about a group of advertising agency working for Madison Avenue advertising agency, the fictitious Sterling-Cooper, in 1960, during the Nixon-Kennedy presidential contest; yet on a deeper level the show wrestles with much larger questions about the meaning of obsession with having (and marketing) happiness in mid-20th-century America.” --Jay Dickson
2. The Wire: Season 5 (available on DVD as a single season or in the five-season set)
Average customer rating: 4.5 stars
Customer quote: “All in all, the final season of The Wire further proves the frequently mentioned point of just how unbelievably good this show was, and how much of a shame it is that it never achieved the kind of uber-popularity that it deserved compared to many of HBO's other shows. Either way, longtime fan or late newcomer, there is nearly nothing better than The Wire, even to its bittersweet end.” –N. Durham
3. John Adams (currently available on DVD or pre-orderable on Blu-ray):
Average customer rating: 4.5 stars
Customer quote: “I typically do not enjoy programs about American history, especially from the colonial days. This series goes beyond history, however. It is captivating in its psychological depiction of both John and Abigail Adams as human beings.” –-Not Yet a Lemming
4. The Tudors: Season 1 (available on DVD):
Average customer rating: 4 stars
Customer quote: “Yes, there are inaccuracies, as others have pointed out [on Amazon.com]. This is a dramatization and this is elegant popular entertainment. As an armchair historian, in love with the stories of Henry VIII, I find it absolutely gripping. The acting is for the most part marvelous, and the idea of doing these great personages as compellingly attractive people is a brilliant one.” –Anne Rice
5. 30 Rock: Season 2 (available on DVD):
Average customer rating: 4.5 stars
Customer quote: “Watching 30 Rock during its second season was a completely exhilarating experience. It had in its rookie year quickly established itself as the funniest show on TV, but during its sophomore campaign the writing and acting got sharper and sharper with each episode. Next to Arrested Development, I honestly believe that this is the funniest American comedy series ever.” –Robert Moore
6. The Office: Season 4 (available on DVD as a single season or in a four-season set)
Average customer rating: 4 stars
Customer quote: ”If the writers’ strike had not cut [this] season in half then I'm sure it would have ranked up there with Season 2 and 3. Season 4 offered the usual story of the complex relationship between Jim and Pam and also the odd and disturbing at times relationship between Michael and Jan.” –-Jason Orzello
7. Dexter: Season 2 (available on DVD)
Average customer rating: 4.5 stars
Customer quote: “I didn't think the second season of Dexter could even come close to to the brilliance of the first season, but I was wrong. Instead of the Ice Truck Killer, Season 2 begins with the Miami P.D. hot on the trail of another mass murderer dubbed as the Bay Harbor Butcher. Dexter (Michael C. Hall) already knows the identity of the killer right off the bat, because it happens to be him.”—Melissa Niksic
8. Battlestar Galactica: Season 3 (available on DVD as a single season or in the three-season set)
Average customer rating: 4.5 stars
Customer quote: “…the modern BSG is fast becoming for me one of THE greatest works of film making art I have ever had the privilege to witness... To be quite honest, the story line of BSG makes Star Wars seem like a cartoon by comparison...” –-S. White
9. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Season 3 (available on DVD)
Average customer rating: 4.5 stars
Customer quote: “Tears streaming down my face, fall off the couch, beer through the nose, crude, rude HI-LARITY! If you ain't watching this, get out of your mom’s basement, put down the PlayStation controller and glue your orbs to FX.” –-Carla D. Paschal
10. Pushing Daisies: Season 1 (available on DVD or Blu-ray)
Average customer rating: 5 stars
Customer quote: “Alternately funny and whimsical, Pushing Daisies is a visually-distinctive romantic comedy that encompasses a truly winning mix of ingredients.” –The Masked Reviewer
Sex and the City: The Movie
Iron Man
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
WALL-E
Gossip Girl - The Complete First Season
Grey’s Anatomy - The Complete Fourth Season
The Office - Season 4
Dexter - The Complete Second Season
Jeff Dunham - Very Special Christmas Special
Godfather: The Coppola Restoration
The Dark Knight (+ Digital Copy and BD Live) [Blu-ray]
Iron Man (Ultimate Two-Disc Edition + BD Live) [Blu-ray] (2008)
Lost - The Complete Fourth Season
Mystery Science Theater 3000: 20th Anniversary Edition [Limited Edition]
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008)
Dark City (Director's Cut) [Blu-ray] (1998)
Sunshine (2007)
Battlestar Galactica - Season Three
Terminator - The Sarah Connor Chronicles - The Complete First Season [Blu-ray] (2008)
Event Horizon [Blu-ray] (1997)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Beverly Garland, the B-movie actress who starred in 1950s cult hits like "Swamp Women" and "Not of This Earth" and who went on to play Fred MacMurray's TV wife on "My Three Sons," has died. She was 82.
She gained cult status for playing gutsy women in low-budget exploitation films such as "The Alligator People" and a number of Roger Corman movies including "Gunslinger," "It Conquered the World" and "Naked Paradise."
She went on to be cast in "My Three Sons" as the second wife of MacMurray's widower Steve Douglas during the last three seasons of the popular series that aired from 1960 to 1972.
