Johnny Depp wanted his and Tim Burton's gothic vampire comedy Dark Shadows to be anything but Twilight. Mission accomplished, I suppose: The film fizzled into a very distant second place behind another jaw-dropping performance by The Avengers, which continued to rewrite the blockbuster history books in its second weekend. Your Weekend Receipts are here.
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Marvel's The Avengers broke virtually every box-office record known to Hollywood over the weekend, becoming the first film to surpass $200 million domestic on an opening weekend and hurtling toward $1 billion worldwide in what should be a matter of days. Consider the superhero gauntlet thrown down before The Amazing Spider-Man and The Dark Knight Rises. Your Weekend Receipts (for what they're worth) are here.
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While Think Like A Man may have conquered the domestic box office two weekends in a row – an impressive feat for what Hollywood execs refer to as an “urban comedy” – there’s no question that the film’s success is as much due to the popular self-help book on which it is based as it is to its comedic merits. Roger Ebert hit the nail on the head in his review, remarking: “The movie's mistake is to take the book seriously. This might have worked as a screwball comedy or a satire, but can you believe for a moment in characters naive enough to actually live their lives following Steve Harvey's advice?” The funny thing is that the screwball version film Ebert would have liked to see actually exists -- and is infinitely superior to the more dramatic, contemporary incarnation.
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The last weekend before summer blockbuster madness ensues proved to be a wrenching one for Hollywood, which watched as four new openings stumbled out of the gate behind tested literary thoroughbreds Think Like a Man and The Lucky One. Is the Apatow comedy machine broken? Has America lost its taste for the Stath? Your Weekend Receipts are here.
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After nearly a month in first place, The Hunger Games surrendered its banner to another big-league bestseller-adaptation — and not the one that you (or I, for that matter) were expecting. Your eye-opening Weekend Receipts are here.
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Like He's Just Not That Into You and What to Expect When You're Expecting, Think Like a Man is a film adapted from a book that offers advice instead of a story — Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, a bestselling dating guide for women from comedian and TV host Steve Harvey. If the work was actually as life-changing and popular when it was published as the movie suggests, I must have missed all the women fighting each other over copies in the aisles of stores (an actual scene). But despite its cloying genuflections to its source material, Think Like a Man is rowdy and funny and showcases an immensely likable ensemble cast it uses to delineate its war between the sexes.
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