Marisa Tomei has won Academy and Anatomy Awards, but when she gets naked in Untamed Heart , Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead , and The Wrestler , we’re all winners!
Newcomers Killing Them Softly and The Collection bowed soft over the weekend, with the latter barely making it into the top ten. Holdovers including Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 , Skyfall and Lincoln remained the top three pics domestically. The Weinstein Company’s Silver Linings Playbook , meanwhile, placed just outside the top ten over the weekend, though the Oscar hopeful played in comparatively far fewer locations and is showing strength as it continues to roll out slowly. 1. Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 Gross: $17,410,000 (Cume: $254.6 million) Screens: 4008 (PSA: $4,344) Week: 3 (Change: – 60%) Number one for three weeks, the final Twilight scored the top spot after a weak showing from newcomers. The feature dropped 62 locations from its second weekend and its $4,344 average was significantly lower than its $10,723 showing in week 2. Still, it is a bit better off than its previous installments and is within $1 million from matching New Moon . 2. Skyfall Gross: $17 million (Cume: $246 million) Screens: 3,463 (PSA: $4,909) Week: 4 (Change: – 52%) The highest grossing Bond film continues to show strength one month into its U.S. run. The pic averaged a solid $4,909, compared to Twilight ‘s $4,344 average in its third week, though it is in 545 fewer theaters. Globally, Skyfall has grossed over $869 million, a good return for its $200 million budget. A $300 million domestic run is not out of the question. 3. Lincoln Gross: $13,509,000 (Cume: $83,698,000) Screens: 2,018 (PSA: $6,694) Week: 4 (Change: – 47%) Steven Spielberg’s big Oscar contender remained in the same number of theaters in its third weekend, though its per screen average was almost halved from the previous weekend’s $12,724. Still, it had the highest PSA in the top 10 for the weekend. Its nearly $83.7 million gross is outpacing the filmmaker’s 2011 movies The Adventures of Tintin ($77.6 million) and War Horse ($79.9 million). 4. Rise of the Guardians Gross: $13,500,000 (Cume: $48,947,253) Screens: 3,672 (PSA: $3,676) Week: 2 (Change: – 43%) The Paramount/Dreamworks animation added 19 theaters and remained fourth in the overall top ten. Still, it will struggle to reach $100 million. 5. Life of Pi Gross: $12 million (Cume: $48,361,141) Screens: 2,018 (PSA: $4,098) Week: 2 (Change: -46.6%) The Ang Lee 3-D feature added just one location over the weekend, rounding out the top 5, though. Globally, it has grossed nearly $109 million ($60,500,000) abroad and is said to be performing well. 6. Wreck-It Ralph Gross: $7,020,000 (Cume: $158,257,000) Screens: 3,087 (PSA: $2,274) Week: 5 (Change: – 57.6%) The animated feature remained at the sixth position, though dropped 172 locations and had a fairly steep 57-plus percent drop from the week prior. Its $2,274 average compares to $5,085 last week and $5,131 the week before that. Still, it’s had a good run and combined with foreign box office of $44 million, it topped the $200 million mark over the weekend. 7. Killing Them Softly Gross: $7 million Screens: 2,424 (PSA: $2,888) Week: 1 The Cannes 2012 feature is one of Brad Pitt’s worse performing openings ever, though not as bad as The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford which only made $3.9 million. The pic should fade from theaters soon. 8. Red Dawn Gross: $6,550,000 (Cume: $31,322,708) Screens: 2,781 (PSA: $2,355) Week: 2 (Change: – 54%) The film had a relatively steep 54% decline in gross compared to its first weekend, though it added 57 more venues. Its $2,355 average compares to its $5,241 opening. It may struggle to match its $65 million production budget domestically. 9. Flight Gross: $4,540,000 (Cume: $81,526,836) Screens: 2,603 (PSA: $1,744) Week: 5 (Change: – 46.3%) Flight shed 35 theaters in its fifth week after adding locations over the past month. Still, the Denzel Washington-starrer has performed well at the box office with a domestic come over $81.5 million vs its $31 million production budget. It may be a reach to hit the $100 million mark. 10. The Collection Gross: $3,409,224 Screens: 1,403 (PSA: $2,430) Week: 1 In its debut, The Collection barely made it into the top ten and its nearly $3.41 million opening is slightly off from its predecessor, The Collector ‘s 2009 $3.57 million bow. 11. Silver Linings Playbook Gross: $3,341,000 (Cume: $10,990,981) Screens: 371 (PSA: $9,005) Week: 3 (Change: – 23.8%) Though not in the top ten, The Weinstein Company’s Oscar hopeful Silver Linings Playbook has continued to gain traction after an opening that was a bit of a disappointment. It ranked 11th for the weekend, though it is in far fewer theaters than titles in the top ten and its $9,005 average was far better than any in the top ten. Word-of-mouth is clearly driving the title.
The Griffins have sung their way through the small screen, making a Broadway-style splash at the start of each program about “Violence in movies and Sex on TV.” And apparently, they’ll have their chance to do just that on the big screen. Family Guy creator – who of course will fete the big screen as this year’s Oscar telecast host – said that a feature length movie about the animated irreverent nuclear family is in the offing, though it is not clear when it will actually happen. During a visit to UCLA for MTV’s series Stand In , MacFarlane said that “it will happen at some point,” he’s quoted as saying via Huffington Post . MacFarlane also announced a new Oscars contest in the surprise visit to the Westwood campus in L.A.’s Westside. He told an undergraduate film and television class that a contest sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will allow college students to appear on the February 24th Oscar telecast. Up to six winners will serve as trophy carriers during the show, replacing models who typically carry in the statuettes. “In re-imagining what we want the Oscar show to be, we wanted everyone appearing on that stage to feel a deep commitment to film and its legacy, and most importantly, its future,” said Oscar telecast producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron in a statement. “That was the impetus in creating this special honor for young film students who will inspire a new generation to create the films that will be honored in the future.” MacFarlane said that Family Guy is based on his own student film. Speaking of Oscars hosts past, MacFarlane offered up his empathy, noting jokingly that the event is a “crazy little variety show,” adding, “all I can do is do what I think is funny and most entertaining.” He noted to the UCLA class: “The Oscars is a tricky venue. The (hosts) who have not done well, I would classify them as a noble failure, an honorable failure, because at least they were trying something new… If I can do it without torpedoing my career and getting drummed out of the business… All I can do is my very best.” [ Source: Huffington Post ]
Helen Hunt is in a new movie about a paralyzed due to Polio poet who is a virgin and decides to hire her to have sex with him…it is called The Sessions, but I call it 40 year old virgin, the Oscar winning edition… Luckily, like all hookers…or “sex surrogates” as they call her in the movie…she gets naked, shows her old lady hangers…and some bush…cuz I’m guessing if this 40 year old version is paralyzed due to Polio…it takes place in an era before the bikini wax… The scary thing in all this is that these pics some Pirate took…totally turns me on…. I blame Mad About You circa 1994….or maybe I blame the fact that Helen Hunt Has got bush..cuz bush is dead with today’s youth…but as an old as fuck dude…I Remember…I’ll Never Forget…
Tommy Lee Jones has played a lot of curmudgeonly sons of bitches over the course of his career, but his latest is his something to behold. The actor’s portrayal of the rapier-tongued Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens is one of the cornerstones of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln , and now that Disney has released a clip of one of his key scenes, you can see for yourself why he’s generating Oscar buzz. In addition to being the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee during the CIvil War, Stevens was a staunch abolitionist and the kind of orator who was known for verbally decimating his opponents with searing invective. (As he does in this pivotal scene.) At the New York screening where I saw Lincoln , audience members applauded this and other scenes where Jones opened a can of whoop-ass on his pro-slavery rivals. New Yorkers love an inspired put-down when they hear one. What’s not apparent from the clip is how tightly controlled, complex and palpable Jones’ performance is overall. Hobbling around with a pronounced, painful-looking limp and looking at the world through bag-laden, world-weary eyes, his anger and his disdain for those who oppose abolition come at you like 3D fists when he’s on screen. Check out the clip below and tell me whether you agree that this is a performance worthy of an Oscar nomination. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter
Tommy Lee Jones has played a lot of curmudgeonly sons of bitches over the course of his career, but his latest is his something to behold. The actor’s portrayal of the rapier-tongued Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens is one of the cornerstones of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln , and now that Disney has released a clip of one of his key scenes, you can see for yourself why he’s generating Oscar buzz. In addition to being the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee during the CIvil War, Stevens was a staunch abolitionist and the kind of orator who was known for verbally decimating his opponents with searing invective. (As he does in this pivotal scene.) At the New York screening where I saw Lincoln , audience members applauded this and other scenes where Jones opened a can of whoop-ass on his pro-slavery rivals. New Yorkers love an inspired put-down when they hear one. What’s not apparent from the clip is how tightly controlled, complex and palpable Jones’ performance is overall. Hobbling around with a pronounced, painful-looking limp and looking at the world through bag-laden, world-weary eyes, his anger and his disdain for those who oppose abolition come at you like 3D fists when he’s on screen. Check out the clip below and tell me whether you agree that this is a performance worthy of an Oscar nomination. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter
It’s easy to draw parallels to President Obama in Steven Spielberg ’s historical Oscar hopeful Lincoln , a portrait of the 16th American President who stood tall, orated well, united a divided nation across color and party lines, and was re-elected to office for a second term. But Spielberg insists he had no specific political agenda in mind when the long-gestating Lincoln came to fruition. “I would have been very glad to have made Lincoln in the year 2000,” Spielberg explained recently in Los Angeles, “the year after I met [author Doris Kearns Goodwin, whose book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln was adapted by Lincoln scribe Tony Kushner]. It took her a couple years to write the book. It took us more than a couple years to get the screenplay written. So, I wasn’t waiting for a certain time.” The divided politics of Lincoln’s presidency, as explored at length in Spielberg’s film, find pointed parallels in President Obama’s tenure in the White House: A President with a humanistic streak tasked with bringing war to an end, Lincoln is depicted wrestling with military crises, huge wartime losses of life, moral questions of personal freedoms, Constitutional history-making, all-too eager rivals, and, notably, his own family issues at home. Still, Spielberg says the Obama-Lincoln parallels have nothing to do with it. “At one point I flirted with coming out on the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, but we weren’t ready to make the picture then,” said Spielberg, who spent years wooing star Daniel Day-Lewis and had even resigned himself to not making Lincoln without the actor. “People say ‘Oh, you made it because of what’s happening in politics today.’ No, we were ready to make it during the Bush administration. It had had nothing to do current politics.” That’s not to say no inference at all should be drawn into Lincoln ’s messaging as a reflection of modern politics; it’s just that, despite “tremendous similarities” between politics in the time of Lincoln and today, reading too much into the details might be confusing because of how much the intervening 14 decades have altered America’s political system. “There’s a lot of confusion about the political ideologies of both parties, [which] have switched 180 degrees in 150 years,” he explained. “It’s just too confusing. Everybody claims Lincoln as their own. And everybody should claim Lincoln as their own, because he represents all of us, and what he did basically provided the opportunities that, that all of us are enjoying today.” So while a theatrical release on Friday should bring President Lincoln and his legend to vivid life in the wake of Tuesday’s Obama re-election, those few extra buffer days allowed Spielberg to get some distance from the real-life Presidential race. “I just wanted people to talk about the film, not talk about the election cycle. So I thought it was safer to let people talk about film during the election cycle in this run-up with ads on TV and posters going up and all that, but the actual debut of the film should happen after the election’s been decided. That was my feeling.” Despite peeling the curtain back on Lincoln — the film reveals intimate glimpses of his home life and career, but leaves ambiguous the fringe theories of his sexuality, as hinted at by Kushner in an interview with Metro — Spielberg is happy to continue letting people talk and wonder at any deeper messages seeded within what he otherwise says was meant only to be a portrait of a great figure in American history. “I’m really excited to see how deeply people will reach to contemporize our film,” he said with a smile, “far beyond how it deserves to be contemporized.” Read more on Lincoln , in select theaters Friday . Lincoln closes the 2012 AFI Fest on Thursday. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Skyfall is ready to get its L.A. close-up at AFI Fest Wednesday night. The latest James Bond film will have a “Secret Screening” tonight at the festival where free tickets are now available. The film, which has been a box office triumph in the U.K. where it opened in late October, has garnered critical acclaim and the title is even getting some early Oscar buzz – a feat that has alluded 007 over its 50 years. Directed by Sam Mendes the latest James Bond the latest installment has earned a record-breaking £53.44m ($85.36 million) in just 10 days. This is the first time a film has surpassed the £50m in 10 days in the U.K. And three-time Academy Award-nominated screenwriter John Logan thinks the pic, which opens Friday in the U.S., deserves attention from Oscar. “I think we made a proper movie, which was our goal,” Logan said via BBC. Asked if he thought Skyfall could get an Oscar win, Logan replied, “Yes.” Logan, who is rumored to be writing the next two Bond films that will again star Daniel Craig as the dashing British operative, received noms for Gladiator , The Aviator and most recently Hugo . Judi Dench, who is reprising her role as 007’s boss M has been named a potential nominee though she has kept a distance from the awards rumor mill. “Don’t talk about that yet, that’s a long way off,” she said. Craig, meanwhile passively acknowledged Oscar at the film’s world premiere, saying reluctantly that “of course” he’d be happy to see Skyfall get Academy Award recognition. “I mean certainly Roger Deakins who did the camera work on this; it would be fantastic if he were to be recognized because he’s done such a wonderful job,” he said. Of the 23 Bond pics over five decades, only two have picked up Oscars and both were in technical categories. Goldfinger won best sound effects in 1964, while Thunderball took best visual effects in 1965. “I think we’ve established, and as have Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace , we’ve established a tone that is the base line reality of Bond now,” said Logan. “So it can’t become camp, it can’t become grandiose in a bad way at this point, it simply has to be honest to the tone that we’ve worked so hard to create in Skyfall .” Wednesday night’s screening at AFI Fest may be an Awards consideration beginning for the pic, which will likely see huge box office returns if the film’s U.K. momentum is any indication. Tickets are available to tonight’s screening on the second floor of the Hollywood & Highland complex at the AFI Fest Box Office. Tonight’s screening takes place at 9:15 PT at Grauman’s Chinese Theater next to the venue where the annual Oscar ceremony takes place. [ Source: BBC ]
David O. Russell ( The Fighter ) is gunning for awards season again with his Silver Linings Playbook , and Movieline’s got a signed poster from the Oscar hopeful to give away! So sharpen your pencils and your wits and submit your best 10-word review of any film by director Russell for a chance to win. Silver Linings Playbook stars Bradley Cooper as Pat, a guy who’s lost everything – job, marriage, sanity – and moves back in with his parents (Robert De Niro, Jackie Weaver), where he meets an intriguing woman named Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence). The dramedy has been steadily gaining momentum since its debut at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival, and marks Russell’s second film in two years to aim for the Oscars. (Read more at the Silver Linings Playbook Facebook page, where sports nuts can submit their best-worst sports obsessions and listen to four Pandora playlists “selected” by the film’s eccentric characters.) CONTEST RULES: – Submit an original 10-word review of any David O. Russell-directed film in the comments below, on Twitter, or on Facebook. Entries must be exactly 10 words, no more, no less! – Enter with your full name and an email address where you may be reached. – One (1) winner will be selected and announced on Friday, November 2. Contest ends Friday, Nov 2 at 5pm ET/2pm PT — so get to reviewing! More Silver Linings Playbook goodies can be found over on Facebook : The Silver Linings Playbook ” Gameday ” allows fans to join in on the Solitano family sports obsession by submitting their own game day superstitions, the best of which will make it onto the Silver Linings Playbook website. Meanwhile, music fans can check out the Silver Linings Playbook ” Playlist ” app, which allows you to listen to four different playlists created by the four main characters in the film. For example: Jen Lawrence’s Tiffany is a Dave Brubeck kind of girl; Bradley Cooper’s Pat Jr. likes his Tom Petty. Silver Linings Playbook hits theaters November 21. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
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