May 4 2009 'Wolverine' Made So Much Money
Movie audiences this weekend, as expected, heavily favored movies about guys with claws:
1. X-Men Origins: Wolverine - Neither an early internet leak nor hundreds of awful reviews could stop Hugh Jackman-cuts-through-things from grossing $87 million.
2. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past - $15.3 million. It's like no one even cares about Matthew McConaughey learning valuable lessons by magically revisiting his sexual past.
3. Obsessed - $12.2 million. With so many losing their jobs, Americans needed to be reminded how great it was before the economic crash, when everyone had a great career, a hot temp at work obsessed with them, and Beyonce as a wife.
4. 17 Again - $6.4 million. Ah, to be 17 again. I would waste so much time playing StarCraft, again.
5. Monsters vs. Aliens - $5.8 million. Still?
Weekend Box Office Results [Box Office Mojo]
Apr 20 2009 '17 Again' Reestablishes Popularity of Age-Changing Fantasy Comedy
Many hard-earned money rectangles were spent this weekend, many of them going towards seeing these five films:
1. 17 Again - A respectable $24.1 million, proving Zac Efron can do more than play a singing, dancing high school basketball player. He can also play a high school basketball player who is secretly older.
2. State of Play - 14.1 million taut, thrilling dollars.
3. Monsters Vs. Aliens - $12.9 million, holding onto the third place position for the second straight week. Guess they didn't get the memo that third place is second place loser: NO FEAR.
4. Hannah Montana: The Movie - $12.7 million, giving it over $50 million in total. I'd think that would be enough profit to warrant a sequel, so here's what I'm thinking: Hannah Montana gets so popular that the character within the movie is offered her own movie. Meta! But there's a problem: the producers notice Miley on the street and demand she plays Hannah's sister! How is she going to work that out when they're the same person??? Ut-oh! Pretty good, right?
5. Fast and Furious - $12.3 million and FURIOUS.
Weekend Box Office Results [Box Office Mojo]
Apr 13 2009 Either Hannah Montana or Miley Cyrus Win Box Office
I know what you were watching at the theaters this weekend!
1. Hannah Montana The Movie - $34 million. I'm sort of proud I have such a vague understanding of the multiple personas of Miley Cyrus, but at the same time, it's so enormously popular that I also feel really out of touch. This is Tamagatchis all over again.
2. Fast and Furious - $28.8 million. Vin Diesel fans are legion.
3. Monsters Vs. Aliens - $22.6 million. Not every kid wanted to see Hannah Montana. That shit's for girls, dude.
4. Observe and Report - $11 million--now the second highest grossing mall security guard movie in America!
5. Knowing - $6.7 million, meaning, even in its fourth week, Nicolas Cage interpreting worrying numbers beat:
8. Dragonball Evolution - $4.7 million. Yikes!
Weekend Box Office Results [Box Office Mojo]
Apr 6 2009 Fast/Furious Combination Still Successful
1. Fast and Furious - $72.5 million? That's ridiculous. I swear, it's like no one's seen Vin Diesel drive a sweet car before.
2. Monsters vs. Aliens - $33.5 million, a 44% drop since last week, probably in response to the lackluster ending. The monsters using a laptop to upload a virus into the alien mothership was pretty far fetched. If Macs and PCs aren't even fully compatible, what are the chances we could plug in a Powerbook and upload a functioning virus?
3. The Haunting in Connecticut - $9.6 million. It's just so hard to take a haunting in Connecticut seriously when we now know Connecticut's greatest threat is its psychotic ape population.
4. Knowing - I am slightly disappointed that Adventureland only made $6 million but Nicolas Cage-predicts-disasters-with-numbers still pulled in $8.1 million in its third week. Such is Cage's power.
5. I Love You, Man - Male-on-male non-sexual affection earns another $7.9 million.
Weekend Box Office Results [Box Office Mojo]
Mar 30 2009 'Monsters vs. Aliens' Had a Great Weekend, Thanks for Asking
1. Monsters vs. Aliens - $58.2 million That expensive 3-D SuperBowl ad seems to have worked out better for Monsters vs. Aliens than it did for whatever Sobe drink those geckos were dancing about.
2. The Haunting in Connecticut - $23 million. Connecticut is to this haunting as New York is to Seinfeld. Believe it.
3. Knowing - $14.7 million. Come on, down to third place in it second week? Do you guys not realize how often Nicolas Cage gives intense, dumbfounded stares in this one? You need to keep seeing it every weekend if we're going to make it our national movie.
4. I Love You, Man - $12.6 million, BRO.
5. Duplicity - $7.6 million, meaning this film is officially not successful enough to warrant creating a cute combination nickname for the hypothetical coupling of Julia Roberts and Clive Owen.
Weekend Box Office Results [Box Office Mojo]
Feb 23 2009 A Few Seconds of a Bunch of Upcoming Movies
If you made it to the end of the Oscars--or more likely, if you dozed off and were awakened by the credit sequence's jamming guitar--the night's reward was a three-minute movie preview sequence. For some of the films (Public Enemies, Whatever Works), it was a first look at scenes from highly-anticipated projects. For others (Old Dogs!), it was the warning: oh god, Robin Williams and John Travolta made some kind of boot camp comedy, and it's called Old Dogs. Here it is:
Continue Reading " A Few Seconds of a Bunch of Upcoming Movies "
Feb 3 2009 Monstrous Monster 'Monsters vs. Aliens' Poster Monster
OK, so maybe "Alien Problem? Monster Solution." sounds a bit like a cutesy pitch for illegal immigrant genocide, but let's not focus on that. As Yahoo! Movies User says, "It is great and the blue thing is funny," and that's what's really important.
'Monsters vs. Aliens' Poster [Yahoo!]
Feb 2 2009 'Monsters vs. Aliens' 333-DDD Super Bowl Spot
Don't throw out your 3-D glasses yet! I know you never got the 3-D glasses in the first place, but bear with me, because here's the super 3-D edition trailer for Monsters vs. Aliens (assuming 3-D survives YouTube conversion). It's so 3-Demazing that Bruce Springsteen reportedly said, "I have to follow THAT??? "Born to Run" is going to put these people to sleep after they've see this MF'er!"
Mock enthusiasm aside, I thought all the animation studios were pushing hard to legitimize 3-D as more than a gaudy bell and/or whistle. If that's the case, maybe they should starting cutting all the look-at-this-coming-at-the-screen!-for-no-reason crap. A paddleball zooming at me? Come on. And furthermore, a paddleball at all? Does this generation of kids even know what a paddleball is? Why not a guy using a stick to roll a hoop out of the screen?
Continue Reading " 'Monsters vs. Aliens' 333-DDD Super Bowl Spot "
Jan 5 2009 'Monsters vs. Aliens' Will Have 3-D Trailer--Thanks, Beverage Makers!
On February 1st, the biggest match-up in Superbowl history won't just be on the field--it will also be in your head, as your brain tries to marry the images of your left and right eye into a three-dimensional image! As some sort of horrible promotional merger between re-branded Pepsi, Dreamworks Animation, and Sobe (yes, Sobe is still a purchasable beverage), one of the many Superbowl commercials will be the first 3-D trailer for Monsters vs. Aliens (followed by a questionably-anticipated sequel commercial with dancing geckos). Just pick up 3-D glasses wherever you see the appropriate Pepsi/Sobe standee and prepare to be entertained.
Welcome to the future: scheduling visits to soda kiosks to properly watch commercials. Here's the commercial for the commercial:
Continue Reading " 'Monsters vs. Aliens' Will Have 3-D Trailer--Thanks, Beverage Makers! "
Dec 23 2008 'Monsters vs. Aliens' Trailer
Dreamworks has released another trailer to its next unremarkable, celebrity-voiced CGI effort, Monsters vs. Aliens. It's no Steven Seagal v. Vampires, but what is?
Dec 2 2008 Ooze Wants to See a 'Monsters vs. Aliens' Poster?
I've been trying to cut back on audibly sighing at these things, but this Monsters vs. Aliens poster just violently threw me off that wagon. Back to being the internet's exhaust port.
Monsters vs. Aliens Poster [IMPA]
Nov 4 2008 'Monsters vs. Aliens' Trailer: Classic Match-Up
Monsters versus aliens: classic match-up. Brute size and strength versus advanced technology. Unless we're talking about Aliens aliens, then it's brute size and strength versus acid blood and a smaller mouth inside the normal mouth. And sometimes are greatest "monsters" are in fact man (HITLER!). Still though, classic match-up, and it's just the battle you'll find inside DreamWorks' aptly-titled CGI comedy, Monsters vs. Aliens. Here is the trailer:
Continue Reading " 'Monsters vs. Aliens' Trailer: Classic Match-Up "
Mar 11 2008 First 'Monsters vs. Aliens' Shot in ULTIMATE 3-D
DreamWorks has passed along some new information about upcoming kiddie-style B-movie, Monster Aliens, including the above shot of a giant gaunt woman and some monsters, a cast list, and the bitter threat of even higher ticket prices.
Reese Witherspoon as Susan Murphy, a modern-day California girl who has the bad luck to be hit by a meteor on her wedding day and grows to be 49 feet, 11½ inches tall (a wink at 1958's The Attack of the 50-Foot Woman). Captured by the military, she's renamed Ginormica.Joining her giantess to fend off Rainn Wilson's evil alien Gallaxhar are Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D. (Hugh Laurie), the jellylike B.O.B. (Seth Rogen) and the half-ape, half-fish Missing Link (Will Arnett). Kiefer Sutherland speaks for Gen. W.R. Monger (get it?), and Stephen Colbert is the president.
Good to hear Rogen could find time from being in every other comedy to join this, and that they were able to nail several quirky television actors popular with hip, young demographics--hearing the voices of House and Dwight Schrute should distract me from the mediocre attempt at one-upping Pixar--but what's the deal with the higher ticket prices?
Continue Reading " First 'Monsters vs. Aliens' Shot in ULTIMATE 3-D "
