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THE FINAL DESTINATION Tops Box Office

New Line Cinema’s The Final Destination slashed its competition at the North American box office, as the horror sequel took the No. 1 spot with a solid $28.3 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The David R. Ellis-directed fourth installment in the popular series delivered a better opening weekend than its predecessors, scoring an average of $9,079 per theater at 3,121 locations. The Final Destination is currently playing in both 3D and standard format.

Last week’s winner, Inglourious Basterds, slipped to No. 2, fending off Rob Zombie’s new entry Halloween II. Starring Brad Pitt (above), Quentin Tarantino’ World War II drama delivered another strong performance at the box office, earning [...]

Cannes 2009: INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

Brad Pitt in Inglourious Basterds

Richard Corliss/Mary Corliss in Time:
"… Inglourious Basterds — first word as in "glower," second as in "turds" — is an alternative history of World War II from the writer-director of Pulp Fiction, the Palme d’Or winner 15 years ago. As with all of his recent work — the two Kill Bill movies and Death Proof — Basterds draws portraits of strong women facing down evil men; and in Shoshanna (Mélanie Laurent) and Third Reich screen star Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) he’s created two of his fullest female portraits. But Basterds is long and, for the hypercharged auteur, surprisingly wan. It has to be declared a misfire."
***
J. Hoberman in The Village Voice:
"So what is [...]

Eric Roth on the Making of THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON

Merrick Morton/Paramount Pictures
In the London Times, screenwriter Eric Roth discusses "The curious case of the making of Benjamin Button" with Kevin Maher:
"’In 1922 F.Scott Fitzgerald had a baby girl,’ continues the 63-year-old Oscar-winner Roth (Forrest Gump). ‘And when she was three months old he wrote a short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.’ The tale, about a man who was born at 70 and slowly aged backwards towards infancy, reflected Fitzgerald’s newly altered views on mortality, Roth says, adding: ‘But it was very broad and whimsical.’ However, the basic idea would eventually evolve into the story of an 86-year-old man, Benjamin ([Brad] Pitt), who is born as a wizened homunculus [...]

SAG Awards 2009: Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Penélope Cruz

Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt

Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick

Penélope Cruz, Kate Winslet
Photos: Kevin Mazur (Jolie/Pitt), Lester Cohen (Bacon/Sedgwick, Cruz/Winslet)
Click on the photos to enlarge them.

Golden Globes 2009: Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Susan Sarandon

Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie © HFPA / 66th Golden Globe® Awards

Susan Sarandon © HFPA / 66th Golden Globe® Awards

Amy Adams © HFPA / 66th Golden Globe® Awards

Golden Globes 2009: Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Sally Field

Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie © HFPA / 66th Golden Globe® Awards

Kevin Connolly © HFPA / 66th Golden Globe® Awards

Sally Field © HFPA / 66th Golden Globe® Awards

BAFTA 2009: Nominations Longlist

Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (top); Frank Langella, Michael Sheen in Frost/Nixon (bottom)

As usual, Hollywood and Anglo-American productions dominate the longlists of the 2009 British Academy of Film and Television Awards.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Frost/Nixon have 14 nominations each, followed by Slumdog Millionaire, The Reader, Revolutionary Road, Changeling, and The Dark Knight with 13; Milk and Burn After Reading with 11; and Doubt, The Wrestler, Mamma Mia!, The Duchess, and In Bruges with 9.
Small British films managed only a handful of nods: three for Hunger and Happy-Go-Lucky; two for Dean Spanley. Non-English-language films fared just as poorly: five nominations for I’ve Loved You So Long, three for Waltz with Bashir, [...]

MARLEY & ME Again Tops Box Office

Marley & Me topped the North American box office for the second consecutive weekend with $24 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.
David Frankel’s comedy starring Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston easily dominated the competition all week long, bringing its domestic total to an impressive $106.5 million after barely two weeks in release.

At No. 2, Adam Sandler’s latest comedy, Bedtime Stories, picked up another $20.3 million, reaching a total haul of $85.3 million. In the film, Sandler plays a hotel handyman whose bedtime stories become true the next day.

Meanwhile, David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button picked up $18.4 million in third place, lifting its cumulative [...]

2009 Golden Globe Nominations

Golden Globe record holder Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia! (top) and in Doubt (bottom)

The biggest surprise in the 2008 Golden Globe nominations’ list is that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association didn’t dig a spot for Nicole Kidman in Australia (which was totally shut out), especially considering that Kidman’s former husband Tom Cruise did garner a best supporting actor nod for Tropic Thunder. (Cruise’s nomination, by the way, elicited laughter from journalists present at the Golden Globes announcement ceremony at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Laughter also greeted James Franco’s nomination — not for Milk, mind you, but as best actor in a comedy or musical for Pineapple Express.)
Among other Golden Globe oddities was the fact that Milk [...]

2007 Golden Globes: Nominations

Following the announcement of the 2007 Golden Globe nominations early yesterday morning, I watched three entertainment "journalists" discussing the choices of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) as if they meant significantly more than the outcome of good marketing tools.
In all fairness, the same can be said about nearly every other group, no matter how self-important, that gives out film awards. After all, their choices are usually the result of p.r. and marketing strategies, past or expected box-office revenues, and personal or professional politics.
That said, those types of biases — who, when, where is giving out awards to which films and individuals — are exactly what make those myriad film awards worth reporting. By looking at the choices, [...]

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