ScarlettJohannson Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The dog days of summer hit the indie box office this weekend, as the top earner was a film in its third week of release. Elegy, directed by Isabel Coixet and starring Ben Kingsley and Penélope Cruz, expanded from six to 92 theaters and grossed $5,546 per screen, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo. The adaptation of a novel by Philip Roth has not been universally praised, but maintains a strong 74% positive rating at Rotten Tomatoes. I can't help but conclude that Penélope Cruz is the art house crowd's answer to Megan Fox, because . . .

. . . Cruz also stars in Vicky Christina Barcelona (pictured), which made $4,339 per screen in its fairly wide (692 theaters) second week. Woody Allen's latest features other pretty people such as Javier Bardem and Scarlett Johansson, of course, and has very good reviews behind it, yet it's silly to ignore the current Cruz heat factor.

As Eugene has already noted, Andrew Fleming's Hamlet 2 got a jump start on its wide release by opening on 103 screens, but its average of $4,223 "doesn't inspire confidence for the expansion." Will this slow down star Steve Coogan?

Suspense drama Transsiberian ($4,157 per screen, 38 theaters, 6th week), tense drama Frozen River ($4,048 per screen, 41 theaters, 4th week), and mystery thriller Tell No One ($3,643 per screen, 101 theaters, 8th week, $3.8 million total) continued to draw well, while debuting debt doc I.O.U.S.A. made $3,461 per screen at 18 locations.

It's a common complaint among the beautiful women of Hollywood -- they're not taken seriously and not given access to the meatiest parts (you don't even know the restraint it is taking not to make an "access to the meatiest parts" joke here). If I looked like Jessica Biel, I would be more than happy with that alone. I wouldn't need Academy Awards or critical adulation, I'd just need a mirror to gaze upon my incredible hotness. I'd probably never leave the house. Biel talks to Elle for their June issue (no, I wasn't reading Elle -- the article was quoted online), saying "Parts that I really want aren't going to me. Like The Other Boleyn Girl with Scarlett Johannson and Natalie Portman. I don't want to say there's nothing I love that I can't have. But there's still the occasional script that the director doesn't want to see you for. They want that top tier of girls."

I'll admit I've had a somewhat unseemly fixation on Biel since The Rules of Attraction, but when you get past the blinding attractiveness, she is a pretty decent actress. People don't put her with the Portmans and the Johannsons simply because she hasn't really had a chance to prove herself yet. I, like most of the world, didn't see her dramatic turn in Home of the Brave, but I thought she held her own quite nicely in The Illusionist. She's certainly as talented (and a lot less annoying) than a Kirsten Dunst. Biel is in theaters now with Nicolas Cage in Next, and she will be on the big screen again in this summer's I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. If she wants to take the focus off her looks, she probably shouldn't have done the underwear scene in that one. Clips of it in the trailer made me feel like a 13 year-old boy again.

• Good news for all you guys waiting for your shot: Scarlett Johannson says she doesn't believe in monogamy. "I don't believe humans are monogamous creatures by nature", Johannson said while promoting the Woody Allen flick Match Point, in which she costars. Frat boys everywhere reportedly high-fived each other in agreement.
• Is Jonathon Rhys-Meyers secretly a girl? Johannson also says she would never date her Match Point costar, because he likes gossip and shoes and was "like a girlfriend on the set". Not the best image you want to project as a sexy leading man, perhaps.
• Tori Spelling is apparently really bored from all the lack of real work to focus on. Not only is she now engaged to actor Dean McDermott before the ink is dry on her divorce, but she's already planning a spring or summer wedding. Dang, Tori! You might want to think about maybe taking the time to get over one failed relationship, before launching another equally doomed one.
• Courtney Love stopped making payments on the house late husband Kurt Cobain's sister, Kim, was living in back in December, and now the house has been foreclosed on, having failed to sell at auction. Love could have saved the house by paying out some $386,000 owed on it, but it seems she didn't want to. Bet that whole situation made for some fun family holiday gatherings. It's not the first time Love has had financial issues - her New York condo was almost foreclosed on back in August and the condo board had some liens filed against her for unpaid charges. Question is, does Love not pay her bills because she doesn't want to, because she's too stoned to remember when to send checks in, or because she's just too damn lazy and/or cheap to hire and accountant to keep up with things for her?