Released and summarily forgotten about on Christmas Day, Gulliver's Travels has made a paltry $28 million at the U.S. box office thus far, good enough to place it 94th on the list of 2010 films. All is not lost, though: In China, the Jack Black bomb has grossed enough Hong Kong dollars to crack the box office top-ten from the entire last year. Bully for Fox!
Sure, it's the first week of January, which means it's freezing outside, taxes are imminent, and the New York Giants have crushed their fans' expectations once again. But there's customary good news as well: Slate's annual Movie Club is back in action, spearheaded by that site's Dana Stevens and this year including Movieline's chief critic Stephanie Zacharek. First up: Stephanie's comments on pleasure at the movies -- including her latest defense of The Tourist. Good stuff as always; the duo is aided and abetted by Dan Kois, Karina Longworth and Matt Zoller Seitz as well. Enjoy! [Slate]
· What else to say about this credit sequence? OK, this: The familiar theme is replaced by song with the lyrics, "We're going all night, yeah, cause it's all right." Whuck? Click ahead to watch this bit of random absurdity and then stick around for more Buzz Break.
Last night, the Lifetime Network -- otherwise known as the guilty pleasure center of your cable package -- premiered The Craigslist Killer, its highly-publicized docudrama about the good-looking Boston medical student convicted of murdering masseuses he found on the Internet. Like any good TV movie, Killer included a romance, the poorly-acted betrayal of a pretty blonde who could not pick a clue up with a forklift, and the subtext that all men -- especially the good-looking ones you don't suspect -- are evil. Ahead, I sift through the discarded Kleenex and chocolate wrappers to uncover nine lessons learned from the film.
Admittedly, when I'm flipping through channels and come across the episode of Seinfeld titled "The Old Man," I never even considered the possibility that the old man in question in this episode, played by Bill Erwin, was still alive. This episode aired in 1993! And Erwin wasn't someone who just looked old like Wilford Brimley (fun fact: This year, Tom Cruise, the guy filming a new Mission: Impossible movie, will be as old as Brimley was when he filmed Cocoon) -- Erwin was almost 80 when he filmed his role. Sadly, Erwin passed away this past week at the age of 96, but he leaves a treasure trove of popular culture appearances behind.
Point of truth: Here at Movieline HQ, we're busy stocking up on batteries and canned goods in the wake of the mass bird and fish deaths that happened in Arkansas over the weekend. (Not to mention the flooding in Australia.) That said, not everyone has worked themselves up into a full blown lather of panic. Just ask born-again Christian Kirk Cameron: "I think it's really kind of silly to kind of equate birds falling out of the sky with some kind of an end-times theory." Wait, even Cameron is making sense? Maybe this really is the end of times.
Also in today's edition of The Broadsheet: Olivia Wilde meets some new People... the Foo Fighters are hiring a director... Jason Schwartzman is a father... the quest for the longest sentence in literature... and more...
Yesterday, we got two omens of the apocalypse, which looked even more like omens of the apocalypse when taken in a cinematic context. Granted, movies are sometimes wrong about the future, but seriously, is the latest explanation that those 5,000 dead birds just ran into each other really more far-fetched than the explanation advanced by The Seventh Sign, in which birds falling from the sky is one of the signs of judgment day? Well, it doesn't stop there. You know those Australian floods? Yeah, there's an Oscar Nominated director who already told us exactly what those mean. Hint: It's bad news.
Roger Ebert will be launching a revamped version of his television show At the Movies on January 21st and he has just revealed that AP critic Christy Lemire and Mubi.com contributor Ignatiy Vishnevetsky will co-host the show. He also revealed a number of other contributors and special segments that will be featured. Lemire isn't so much of a surprise, as she's a well-known, veteran critic for AP who has also appeared on Good Morning America, The Charlie Rose Show and even At the Movies. But who is this Vishnevetsky guy?
· The Office isn't quite what it used to be, but Splitsider argues the show has maintained one unfunny constant: a disappointing gay character in Oscar. "He's fussy, prissy, aesthetic, and cruel -- a sketch of a certain type of homosexual drawn by writers who seem to know the type at which they're aiming." We concur! [Splitsider]
Technically speaking, the Biebster is still a wee babe -- that is, he's 16 years old (and looks about 12), and is thus subject to child pornography laws -- but visual confirmation of romance between the pop-R&B crooner and 18-year-old tween starlet Selena Gomez is technically celeb news, right? At least it's my job to click on these questionable spy pics of Bieblena almost-kissing and butt-grabbing and canoodling in swimwear on a pre-New Year's Eve Caribbean cruise, which I'd estimate rank about a 1.5 on the COPINE scale of child pornography. What's your excuse? [Bauer Griffin via TMZ]
Even the most cynical among us are probably looking forward to seeing what Brad Bird can do with Tom Cruise and Jeremy Renner in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol come next December. Can the Pixar genius help resurrect Cruise's career in ways that don't involve Les Grossman? Will Renner provide enough star wattage to carry on the franchise himself? Will Tom Cruise affect a Russian accent at any time during the film to coincide with this uniform? What will Simon Pegg be doing? Regarding that last one, the Paul star posted a picture to his Twitter feed that might help answer that query.
Just days after Cee Lo revealed that he would gladly team up with Gwyneth Paltrow, despite her work covering "F*ck You" for Glee, the Country Strong star says she might appear with the Grammy-nominated singer on this weekend's episode of Saturday Night Live. "We're sort of emailing each other, we don't know where that's gonna go," said Paltrow. "But I am such a big fan of Cee Lo, he is so gorgeous and talented and amazing." Whatever that means. For reference, Jim Carrey is hosting this weekend with musical guest The Black Keys. Stay (unfortunately) tuned. [NYP]
· If you thought all Back to the Future nostalgia ended when the calender flipped over to 2011, think again! Circulating the Internet today are a bunch of set photos taken by a Universal Studios security guard. Set your flux capacitor to "shrug" and click ahead to see the Essex Theater after the fall of Hill Valley. Then, stick around for more Buzz Break.
Finally! I've been patiently waiting for any officially released footage from Captain America: The First Avenger from the day it was announced; Green Lantern only comes out one month before Captain America and I feel that I've already seen half the film. Well, as you may have heard, today is that special day as the early footage of Captain America is heating up the Internet in the form of a promo for a promo that will air on Wednesday's installment of Entertainment Tonight. In celebration, I've decided that I will live blog the footage, a la Harry Potter, so I can get my initial reactions down. All right, I've just downed two Coke Zero's in preparation, so...let's do this!
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