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THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL Tops Box Office

Twentieth Century Fox’s The Day the Earth Stood Still destroyed its competition at the North American box office with US$31 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Scott Derrickson’s critically panned remake of the 1951 sci-fi thriller directed by Robert Wise opened at 3,560 locations this weekend, landing at the No. 1 spot early Friday. The film stars Keanu Reeves as an alien who comes to Earth to warn humankind of its potentially imminent destruction.

Last week’s box office champion, Four Christmases, dropped to second place, earning $13.2 million for a domestic total of $87.9 million after a strong three-week run. Starring Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn (above, with Sissy Spacek), the holiday comedy follows a couple paying [...]

FOUR CHRISTMASES Tops Box Office

Seth Gordon’s holiday comedy Four Christmases topped the North American box office this Thanksgiving weekend with US$31.6 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Starring Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon as a couple paying a visit to all four of their divorced parents on Christmas Day, the film lifted its domestic total to $46.7 million after only five days in release.

Jumping to No. 2 this weekend was Walt Disney’s Bolt, which collected another $26.5 million and brought its cumulative gross to $66.8 million. Featuring the voices of John Travolta and Miley Cyrus, the animated adventure follows a dog who believes he has superpowers until he realizes he’s [...]

Oscar 2008: Nicole Kidman, Johnny Depp, Harrison Ford, Keith Urban

Keith Urban, Nicole Kidman

Harrison Ford, Calista Flockhart

Johnny Depp
Photos: Matt Petit (Depp, Kidman), Richard Harbaugh (Ford). All photos: © A.M.P.A.S.

Oscar 2008: Nicole Kidman, George Clooney, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz

Nicole Kidman

George Clooney, Sarah Larson

Rebecca Miller, Daniel Day-Lewis

Cameron Diaz
Photos: Matt Petit (Clooney), Richard Harbaugh (Day-Lewis), Greg Harbaugh (Diaz, Kidman). All photos: © A.M.P.A.S.

Douglas Kirkland Photo Exhibition

Brigitte Bardot (top); Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge! (bottom)

The photo exhibition "Freeze Frame: 5 Decades of Photographs by Douglas Kirkland," opens today in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ Grand Lobby Gallery in Beverly Hills. Admission is free.
"Freeze Frame" features more than 125 color and black-and-white images of old and new motion picture celebrities, including Anne Bancroft, Antonio Banderas, Brigitte Bardot, Drew Barrymore, Warren Beatty, Mel Brooks, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, Gene Hackman, Salma Hayek, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Kevin Kline, Sophia Loren, and Baz Luhrmann.
Also, Shirley MacLaine, Ewan McGregor, Jeanne Moreau, Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Sidney Poitier, Susan Sarandon, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Peter Sellers (right, as a paparazzi going after Britt Ekland), [...]

THE GOLDEN COMPASS and Catholic Censors

Nicole Kidman as Mrs. Coulter in The Golden Compass

Via Tim Drake’s "U.S. Bishops Withdraw Controversial Movie Review" in the National Catholic Register:
"’The aggressively anti-religious, anti-Christian undercurrent in The Golden Compass is unmistakable and at times undisguised,’ [Denver Archbishop Charles] Chaput wrote in a column in the Dec. 12 issue of the Denver Catholic Register. ‘The wicked Mrs. Coulter alludes approvingly to a fictional version of the doctrine of original sin. When a warrior Ice Bear — one of the heroes of the story — breaks into the local Magisterium headquarters to take back the armor stolen from him, the exterior walls of the evil building are covered with Eastern Christian icons. And for Catholics in our own world, of [...]

Oscar 2008: Best Song Longlist

Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey in Enchanted. Three songs from this romantic fantasy have been shortlisted.

Fifty-nine songs from eligible feature films will be vying for a Best Original Song nomination at the 2008 Academy Awards.
In all honesty, I don’t think I know any of those songs. Some of the titles, however, are quite something, e.g., "Atkozott Egy Elet," "I Was Zapped by the Lucky Super Rainbow," "The Tale of the Horny Frog," "The Devil’s Lonely Fire," "First Amendment Blues." I’m just not sure if they make me more or less willing to hear the melody and lyrics.
According to the Academy’s press release, "on Tuesday, January 15, the Academy will screen clips featuring each song, in random order, for [...]

Best Films – 2002

A man is dead. Who among the greedy, ruthless, amoral singing-and-dancing suspects stuck in the snowbound countryside mansion has done it? 8 women is an acquired taste, bien sûr. What seems silly the first time around becomes increasingly wittier and funnier — though no less bizarre — with each repeated viewing. Beautifully shot by Jeanne Lapoirie and chock-full of bitingly sardonic lines and situations (adapted by director François Ozon and Marina de Van, from Robert Thomas’ play), this murder musical is dotted with 8 of the brightest stars of the French cinema of the last 7 (!) decades.
More than seventy years after her film début, Danielle Darrieux, in full form both as an actress and as a singer, joins [...]

THE HOURS II – Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore

THE HOURS Review: Part I
As a plus, instead of the plasticky makeup Kidman has used in her other roles (including her destitute heroine in the purportedly gritty Cold Mountain), she has an ugly fake nose plastered on her face for this one. Whether the fake nose possessed magical properties, I don’t know, but Kidman — though no Virginia Woolf replica — has never looked as interesting or acted as movingly. With a glance, she is able to convey in heartbreaking fashion Woolf’s yearnings for freedom from her constraining life, while her lowered tones add the appropriate somberness to the precarious psychological state of her character.
Finally, to her belong the two emotional highlights of the film: the first, when Woolf [...]

THE HOURS d: Stephen Daldry

The Hours (2002)
Direction: Stephen Daldry
Screenplay: David Hare, from Michael Cunningham’s novel
Cast: Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, Ed Harris, Toni Collette, Allison Janney, Claire Danes, Jeff Daniels, Stephen Dillane, John C. Reilly, Miranda Richardson, Eileen Atkins
 

 

Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer-winning The Hours uses Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway (whose working title was "The Hours") as the link that binds its three leading female characters. Far apart in terms of time and space, those three disturbed, unhappy women have in common both the deadness of a life of self-abnegation and the living reality of death itself.
Despite gaps in the narrative, Stephen Daldry’s stabs at melodrama, and one poor central performance, The Hours stands as an intelligent and deeply moving achievement. Most [...]

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