TheLongshots Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Weekend Box Office: Ben Stiller Beats Up on 'The House Bunny'
Filed under: New Releases », Box Office »
There were no big surprises at the box office this weekend. To officially ring in the fall, it was the first weekend since April when no film debuted to more than $20 million. The best opener was the tolerably-reviewed Anna Faris vehicle The House Bunny, with $15.1 million. Interchangeable Jason Statham Movie, a.k.a. Death Race, followed with an estimated $12.3 million -- among Statham's weakest showings and the worst ever for director Paul W.S. Anderson (not counting the indie Shopping, which played on one screen). Neither The House Bunny nor Death Race could dethrone Tropic Thunder, which held up fairly well to stay on top with a $16.1 million second weekend. It looks to have better legs than Pineapple Express, and should pass that film before all is said and done. In other holdover developments: The Dark Knight fell to fourth, but should reach $500 million by next weekend; Star Wars: The Clone Wars fell an unsurprising 60%+, and will top out around $35 million -- still not bad for a cartoon, I think.
Two more wide release debuts fared poorly. The Longshots -- the Ice Cube/Keke Palmer football drama directed by Fred Durst -- made a predictably tepid $4.3 million bow. But boy was I ever wrong about The Rocker, which was heavily advertised and promo-screened, but landed out of the top 10 with $2.8 million and an under-$1000 per-screen average. Color me surprised -- it's a decent flick, too. I guess Rainn Wilson not only can't open a movie, but affirmatively turns people off.
Hamlet 2 opened on 100 screens before going wide next weekend. Its $435,000 gross -- around $4,200 per screen -- isn't terrible, but doesn't inspire confidence for the expansion.
The full estimates after the jump.
Review: The Longshots
Filed under: Sports », New Releases », MGM », Theatrical Reviews », Family Films »
Last year I saw Gracie, a movie about a teenage girl who wants to play high-school soccer in the late 1970s, when the game was considered a males-only sport in America, and faces a lot of opposition from her school. I finished my review with the line, "If it were football, would we be agreeing more with Gracie's opponents?" The Longshots gives us the opportunity to consider that question. Can we sympathize with, and cheer on, a girl who wants to succeed as a quarterback in an all-boys' football league? The answer is yes, because The Longshots focuses on characters and personal relationships and as a result, feels richer and more satisfying than the standard sports-genre film.
The story is simple and except for the girl-quarterback angle, old-fashioned in a Capra-esque way. Jasmine (Keke Palmer) is a middle-school loner and misfit in a small town hit by economic troubles. Her mom Claire (Tasha Smith) has to work longer hours at the diner -- dad ditched town and family several years ago -- and Jasmine is still too young to be left alone after school. So Claire pleads, nags and finally bribes her husband's brother Curtis (Ice Cube), an unemployed ex-football player, to keep an eye on his niece Jasmine. Of course they can't stand each other at first, but eventually Curtis discovers that Jasmine has an excellent throwing arm and teaches her how to be a quarterback. Meanwhile, the town's playground football team is languishing, and one thing they're missing is a decent quarterback, sooo ...
Box Office: This Bunny is a Longshot in the Death Race
Filed under: Action », Comedy », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », Box Office Predictions »
After four weeks as the top movie in America, The Dark Knight finally yielded the spot to the action comedy Tropic Thunder despite the threat of boycotts. Here's the top five:
1. Tropic Thunder: $25.8 million
2. The Dark Knight: $16.4 million
3. Star Wars: The Clone Wars: $14.6 million
4. Mirrors: $11.2 million
5. Pineapple Express: $9.8 million
Four more new releases this week. Will any of them be able to knock Tropic Thunder's, um, thunder? Let's see:
Death Race
What's It All About: Jason Statham stars in this reimagining of Roger Corman's Death Race 2000. In the not too distant future prison inmates are given a chance for freedom by taking part in a brutal cross-country race that can have only one survivor.
Why It Might Do Well: The summer blockbuster season is on the wane, and since this is the only action flick coming out this week, Death Race may benefit from the public's need to see things blow up. Also, Statham does have his admirers.
Why It Might Not Do Well: You can only watch so many spectacular car wrecks.
Number of Theaters: 2,400
Prediction: $15 million
1. Tropic Thunder: $25.8 million
2. The Dark Knight: $16.4 million
3. Star Wars: The Clone Wars: $14.6 million
4. Mirrors: $11.2 million
5. Pineapple Express: $9.8 million
Four more new releases this week. Will any of them be able to knock Tropic Thunder's, um, thunder? Let's see:
Death RaceWhat's It All About: Jason Statham stars in this reimagining of Roger Corman's Death Race 2000. In the not too distant future prison inmates are given a chance for freedom by taking part in a brutal cross-country race that can have only one survivor.
Why It Might Do Well: The summer blockbuster season is on the wane, and since this is the only action flick coming out this week, Death Race may benefit from the public's need to see things blow up. Also, Statham does have his admirers.
Why It Might Not Do Well: You can only watch so many spectacular car wrecks.
Number of Theaters: 2,400
Prediction: $15 million
A Trailer for Fred Durst's Football Movie
Filed under: Comedy », Trailers and Clips »
What fresh hell is this? Rapper and rabblerouser Fred Durst gets a chance to make a movie, and he comes up with... a heartwarming tale of a girl who wants to play football, and the underdog team that she joins? Starring Ice Cube? There's a trailer for The Longshots here, but it's... how do you say... uninspiring. Part of it could be the insufferable voiceover ("he was a hero who lost his way; she was a loner who didn't belong" -- you don't say), but really the entire thing looks like, oh, every movie ever made. Every underdog sports movie ever made, anyway, and God knows there are plenty of them.A bit disappointing from the man who once called Creed's Scott Stapp a "f****ing punk" on stage. This isn't Durst's directorial debut -- that would be The Education of Charlie Banks, which played last year's Tribeca and won the award for Best Movie Made in New York. It was about a cat-and-mouse game between a bully and the kid who put him in jail years earlier. I didn't see it, but it sounds like a much grittier film. The Longshots is just weird -- there's no particular reason for Durst to have become a Hollywood hack-for-hire, so one would think he has some emotional connection to this project. I wonder what it could be.
Ice Cube's Back in Rated R Form with 'Janky Promoters'
Filed under: Comedy », Music & Musicals », Deals », The Weinstein Co. »
So today is the day I officially feel old. Variety reports that Ice Cube has made a deal with Dimension Films for his comedy script Janky Promoters; a title that had me running to Urban Dictionary to figure out what the heck 'Janky' meant. But mid-life crisis aside, back to the real news: Cube will be producing the film along with Dimension and his partner Matt Alvarez, and will also star.The story centers on two hip-hop promoters who are given the chance to put together an all-star show in California. When the two discover that they are in way over their heads, wackiness ensues. Bob Weinstein tells Variety, "This feels a lot like Uptown Saturday Night to me, a caper film where you have these music promoters who are slightly shady but are good enough guys that you root for them, this is going to be R-rated, and it appeals right to the core of Cube's audience." Thankfully, Cube is getting out of the kiddie flick business (at least for now) and Promoters is his first script since the Friday series finished back in 2002.
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