The biggest upset of this year’s Oscars took place weeks before the actual ceremony, when Zero Dark Thirty helmer Kathryn Bigelow was snubbed for a Best Director nod. Conventional wisdom holds that debates about torture and political bias in the Osama Bin Laden thanato-pic, which began weeks before the film’s release, derailed Bigelow’s chances at a second statuette. But the bigger story – one that’s hardly been told – is that Bigelow’s partnership with the Central Intelligence Agency during the production of ZDT inadvertently shined an unwelcome spotlight on the military-entertainment complex: the surprisingly close and definitely reciprocal relationship between Hollywood and the Pentagon. more »
As terribly easy as it is to hate on the Twilight films, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part II was the best of the series. (Not that it was without its share of WTFery — imprinting and vampire fistfights and every second of Michael Sheen onscreen, anyone?) But with Breaking Dawn - Part II nominated for 11 Razzie Awards in just ten categories, up against the likes of Adam Sandler's That's My Boy, Eddie Murphy's A Thousand Words, and the bizarro pop culture sensation/box office bomb The Oogieloves In Big Balloon Adventure, let's be real: Does Twilight truly deserve to win all the Razzies?
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While the GOP gathers in tropical storm-plagued Tampa to Do That Thing They Do, this week's new DVD selections feature a rallying cry against the status quo and an overblown, flag-waving spectacle based on a board game that, all things considered, is still pretty fun to watch. more »
Also in Friday morning's briefs round up, Edinburgh and NY Asian Film Festival set their lineups with Disney's Brave headed to Scotland, Kick-Ass alum bid for a return to the sequel, while Universal torpedoes a rival Battleship.
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"Even though the media exhibit enormous sophistication and historical perspective in a thousand different ways — not that I can think of a specific example right now — they are far too often bedazzled by the sheer novelty of a story. If you watch cable news, for example, you know all too well that if there are two child kidnappings in the same month, the first one gets far more attention than the second. This same law applies to box-office bombs. With Battleship, the fascination with Hollywood flop sweat had already worn off. When I asked a veteran showbiz reporter why his publication had spent so little time covering the demise of Battleship, he joked: 'I guess we all had the same reaction — didn’t we just write that story already?'" [LAT]
The Memorial Day frame wasn't one quite worth remembering for Will Smith, who walked away with the holiday's biggest opening almost by default as The Avengers waned — not a lot, but enough — in its fourth weekend. Meanwhile, the week's other wide release suffered a catastrophic B.O. meltdown en route to sixth place overall. Your special holiday-edition Weekend Receipts are here.
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Also in this afternoon's Biz Break: The breakout director of Animal Kingdom plots his next (possibly with the help of Robert Pattinson), Rupert Everett to direct himself as Oscar Wilde (with the help of a few friends of his own), and more...
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Another Monday morning, and thus another look at what carnage The Avengers has wrought at the weekend box office. And while things aren't as bad as they may look at first for Battleship and the rest of the competition, they're not what you'd call pretty. Your Weekend Receipts are here.
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Some days you just need to see, as SCTV’s Farm Film Report guys Big Jim McBob and Billy Sol Hurok used to put it, stuff blowed up real good. If you’re having one of those days, Peter Berg’s Battleship is as good a choice as any. Beyond that, you should know a few things going in: Battleship is allegedly based on the Hasbro game of the same name, but never in the film is the line “You sunk my battleship!” uttered, so don’t expect a refund. Also, one of the invading aliens – spoiler, sorry! – looks a little like the guy from that ’90s Swedish band Stakka Bo.
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Now here's the way to make your run of the mill Battleship junket interview way more interesting: Turn the tables on your talking-head interviewer by grilling him on Israel's nuclear policy and why he didn't serve his compulsory service in the military. Which is what Peter Berg did to one unsuspecting journalist for Israel's Channel 10.
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The one-sheet for Battleship has proven intriguing fodder for at least a couple clever poster manipulators out there: First there was this art-house-inspired bit of genius, and today brings an assortment of other work for movies based on popular games — themselves all standing in the alien nemesis in Battleship, of course. You've really got to just see them.
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The U.S. military has a history of joining forces with Hollywood. Michael Bay's Transformers franchise and Peter Berg's Battleship have cozied up to the military to take advantage of defense material, while the Pentagon gets to market itself to moviegoers. (To say nothing of the recent Navy SEAL showcase Act of Valor.) So how did The Avengers not make the cut?
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I never thought I'd say this after such dubious product partnerships and horrid early reviews, but: I think I've found some marketing that might actually make me want to see Battleship! It's not from Universal or Hasbro, alas, but it's not too late for either party to maybe pick it up for the last push ahead of May 18.
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The Avengers (titled Avengers Assemble in the UK) exploded at the UK box office with £15.78 million — or roughly $25.6 million — over the weekend, including its Thursday preview screenings, giving the superhero film the winning spot among British releases. And coming in the heels of John Carter (which has yet to even break the £5m mark in Britain), Disney is wasting no time celebrating, calling the result the biggest superhero-movie opening of all time, The Guardian reports.
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Ever since growling his way through 2008's gloriously B-movie-esque B-movie Taken, Liam Neeson's been enjoying his newfound status as the gruff hero with killer instincts and a particular set of skills that you want on your side in the event of a kidnapping/assassination attempt/jailbreak/wolf attack. So why fix something that ain't broke? Enter Non-Stop, Neeson's next actioner and an airplane-set excuse to see Neeson smash heads and deliver straightfaced epic one-liners.
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