The Weekend Report Archive for April, 2010

The B Team …

April 25, 2010 The entry of some short timers did little to energize the movie going bug and through the rubble How to Train Your Dragon emerged as the weekend favorite with an estimated $15.1 million. Top among newcomers was J-Lo’s rom-com The Back-Up Plan that slotted second with $11.7 million. The other national debs…

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Butt, Butt, Butt …

April 18 , 2010 The seemingly unending potency of 3D fare continued with How to Train Your Dragon a winner by a snout with a weekend estimate of $19.9 million. The debut of Kick-Ass — the session’s presumed winner based on early tracking — had to settle for a second place position with $19.2 million…

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Night at the Bistro

April 11 , 2010 The Titans didn’t clash but there was considerable jostling at the top of the box office charts with fierce competition for win, place and show positions. Freshmen entry Date Night scored the lead in its opening day with $9.1 million but lost ground as the session proceeded. The final frame scoreboard…

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A Touch of Clash

April 4 , 2010 Ye Gods! Clash of the Titans felled the competition to take weekend bragging rights with an estimated $61.1 million. The record setting session also saw excellent results of $30.1 million for Why Did I Get Married Too?; a strong hold that generated $29.3 million for How to Train Your Dragon; and…

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Quote Unquotesee all »

“I don’t really think, Sean, that you need to know about my various sexual liaisons. Or that anyone else needs to. I did write about them. I filled a hundred pages of Moleskine notebooks with my one-night stands, my affairs. But I decided they didn’t belong in a professional memoir. First of all, these are real people we’re talking about. Many of them were enjoyable. Some were abject failures. My wife said to me when she read the pages, ‘Of what purpose is this in a memoir? Of what purpose is this other than to titillate?’ The point is, I never see them. It’s because I have nothing in common with them, frankly. And probably didn’t at the time. I could not provide a sensible reason why I married these women. The thing is, in the case of my marriages, it takes two people to fuck up a marriage. It wasn’t simply the fault of these women that I lost interest in them and realised they were insignificant relationships. Which is how I look at them right now–as being insignificant. I see them as blips.”
~ William Friedkin On Cutting Interviewers Off At The Sass

“I have to imagine from Mr. Spielberg’s point of view, the paradigm shift in the 1970s was just the new “normal,” a “halcyon era” from which we are straying in the 21st century–because theatrical exhibition is tenuous (as it has been since the 1940s), the home video market has dried up and people are watching pirated movies on their phone. Spielberg’s coming-of-age era was for him the halcyon period that the 21st century “implosion” will cause to go “crashing into the ground.” But he is wrong. The market for movies is actually diverse and highly segmented–although from the top-down movie industry vantage point and media punditry you would not think this to be true.  Would we really mourn for Mr. Spielberg or ourselves if Lincoln would have been made for cable or had played on public television?  Is it bad for humanity that cable television is creating wonderful, resonant stories in long-form series that people want to watch at home on TV (or streamed onto their computer)? I don’t think so, but it is a paradigm shift and it might affect people’s theatrical moviegoing habits. Televisions in people’s homes have had that effect for seven decades–it is not a new phenomenon. As Art House cinema impresarios we need to focus on what WE can do at our theaters and in our communities. It is not productive for us to fret over what pundits say or about what well-meaning filmmakers like the Stevens–Spielberg and Soderbergh–say. We should fret about what we can do in our communities. What we can do to support filmmakers.”
~ From A Response By Russ Collins, CEO, Michigan Theater – Ann Arbor And Director, Art House Convergence, To Mr. Spielberg