Earning $14.3 million in its third weekend, Tropic Thunderretained its top placement on the box office chart over the holiday, yet it’s total gross still hasn’t reached the movie’s reported $90 million budget. Meanwhile, five new wide releases (Babylon A.D., Traitor, Disaster Movie, College and Hamlet 2, which expanded this week) performed badly enough to place this year’s Labor Day total at 17% below last year’s. In the end, the slow four-day weekend may have contributed to Summer 2008’s inability to top the box office of Summer 2007, despite The Dark Knight’s now more than $500 mill. take.
The most interesting box office news from the weekend is Mamma Mia!’s 34% increase over its previous weekend take — despite having lost more than 350 screens — due to Universal’s releasing a special sing-a-long version of the musical to 299 locations. I’d say something about the film being on its way to Rocky Horror-likecult hit status, but at $132.9 million and climbing, it’s already earned more than Rocky Horror has in 35 years and should anyway be considered an actual hit.
As for limited releases, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter failed to mention that Takashi Miike’s Sukiyaki Western Djangoearned $13,106 on a single screen in NYC this past weekend. Meanwhile, one of my favorite films of the year, Jirí Menzel’s I Served the King of England, earned a terrific per-screen average of $8,488 to gross almost $68,000.
I’ve always thought Nastassja Kinski was one of the most boring actresses in the world, but at least she would have given Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastardsthat usual casting from the ’70s cred. Unfortunately, Diane Kruger, who’s just plain boring, has instead been cast in the part originally offered to Kinski.
Is Bruce Wayne, as John Carney wonders at Dealbreaker, “exactly the ‘better class of criminal’ that the Joker describes”? Spoileriffic analysis of Batman’s white-collar misdeeds follows.
Mike Jones weighs in on the sale of indieWIRE to SnagFilms. “Despite the owners’ (which included myself, to a very small extent) desire to sell under the right terms, indieWIRE seemed destined to be independent.” Buuut…”The difficult truth about being independent is that it’s mostly for the young.”
Glenn “Lists are Bullshit” Kenny offers 14 numbered thoughts on Mamma Mia!He begins by contemplating “the comingled semens of Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard, and Colin Firth competing in the fallopian tubes of Meryl Streep”; he ends with the admission, “I kind of want to have sex with Christine Baranski.”
There’s apparently a new Batman movie out? And it had the best weekend opening ever? Hmmm. The things a girl misses when she goes on vacation! Meanwhile, Meryl Streep continued to prove her insane drawing power at the summer box office, as Mamma Mia! withstood the Dark Knight onslaught to scrape up a totally respectable $27.6 million.
Cinetic Media is developing a “multimillion-dollar film-finishing fund”, with the help of an injection of cash from Aver Media.
Time Warner Cable has struck a deal to carry Fearnet, the horror movies on-demand service of Sony Pictures TV, Lionsgate and Comcast.
Meryl Streep has previously sung on screen (most recently for Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion), but the upcoming Mamma Mia!is the first real musical of her 30 year career. Why all the singing and dancing, and why now? “It was to prove Pauline Kael wrong,” insists Stuart Jeffries.
In this Guardian interview, he suggests to Streep that her decision to take a lead role in this likely summer blockbuster was nothing but a long-delayed strike against the film critic who decades earlier complained that Streep acted only “from the neck up.” Amazingly, Streep essentially shrugs and says, “Yeah, maybe”––and then goes on to tie Kael’s criticism of the actresses body language to the film critic’s ethnic/economic insecurity. The actual, speculative diss after the jump.
I don’t know if they show Broadway musical ads on television anywhere outside the New York area, but I used to hate the cheesy commercials for Mamma Mia! This coming from a guy who loves cheesy, especially when it involves ’70s music like ABBA. As much as I was turned off by those ads, though, I have to admit the new trailer for the movie adaptation is a perfect continuation of their marketing style. The quick edits that just barely show us parts of dance numbers, the overplayed acting that doesn’t seem as suitable when close up and on-screen — the only thing missing is shots of the audience dancing and clapping. And that trademark image of the mother and daughter in front of the mirror.
Of course, this means I’m turned off to the movie, too, despite my man crush on Colin Firth, who plays one of the three men who might be the father of the bride, and my interest in seeing Meryl Streep pumping her arms up and down a lot. If there’s anything more cinematic that Mamma Mia!resembles than those Broadway ads, it’s two terrible, sunshiny musicals: From Justin to Kelly and Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights. Nonetheless, I’m sure plenty of moms and daughters are more excited about the movie than I am, which is fine for them. I’ll stick to watching the more macho ABBA movie, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, preferably with my dad.
If you like the trailer, be sure to check it out in crisp HD over at Moviefone, and check out the photo gallery at Cinematical. Oh and check out one of the old Mamma Mia! Broadway promos here.
Is Bruce Wayne, as John Carney wonders at Dealbreaker, “exactly the ‘better class of criminal’ that the Joker describes”? Spoileriffic analysis of Batman’s white-collar misdeeds follows.
There’s apparently 
