Perhaps the most depressing quote I’ve read in Variety all year: this weekend, Alvin and the Chipmunks “grossed an estimated $30 million from 3,484 runs for a cume of $142.4 million, outpacing all expectations and positioning the family title to be among the top 10 grossing films of the year.” The less soul-sickening box office news is buried at the bottom of the writeup: There Will Be Blood scored the highest per screen average of the year with a six day gross of $185,525 from just 2 screens, and Charlie Wilson’s War and Juno both saw significant increases.- Joe Leydon predicts the future of film academia: “Decades from now, film scholars writing about early 21st-century chick flicks likely will cite 27 Dresses as an illustrative example…a romantic comedy in which nothing the least bit surprising occurs, no disagreement or estrangement seems sufficiently serious to persist, and no one behaves in a manner that cannot be predicted by anyone who has seen more than two or three other romantic comedies. And yet, despite all that, or maybe even because of it, pic is surprisingly enjoyable as slickly produced, undemanding fluff.”
- Jay Leno is having trouble booking A-list stars for planned, writer-less installments of The Tonight Show. In a pinch like this, where can one expect to find a desperate media whore with no qualms about defying a union? Oh, right––the presidential campaign.
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