Month: August 2011

Categories
Movies

No movies for me again this weekend, but I hope to see ONE DAY soon!!!

‘The Help’ moves upstairs with $20.5M, No. 1 weekend
LOS ANGELES (AP) — “The Help” continues to clean up at the box office, taking over the No. 1 spot with $20.5 million in its second weekend. The DreamWorks Pictures film starring Viola Davis, Emma Stone and Octavia Spencer in a drama about Southern black maids had debuted in second-place a week earlier. “The Help” raised its domestic total to $71.8 million and bumped 20th Century Fox’s “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” which slipped to No. 2 with $16.3 million after two weekends at the top, according to studio estimates Sunday.
“Rise of the Planet of the Apes” remains a solid hit, lifting its domestic total to $133.8 million.
Much as Kathryn Stockett’s novel “The Help” became a best-seller through readers talking it up, the film is holding strong as audiences tell friends to go see it, said Dave Hollis, head of distribution for Disney, which releases DreamWorks films.
While revenues often drop 50 percent or more in the second weekend for big studio films, receipts for “The Help” were down only 21 percent from opening weekend.
“It is a rare feat to see a film not open at No. 1 and then become No. 1,” Hollis said. “To me, it’s a testament of it being a great film, as well as the viral nature of the word of mouth about it.”
A rush of new movies had weak openings: the Weinstein Co. family sequel “Spy Kids: All the Time in the World” at No. 3 with $12 million; Lionsgate’s action remake “Conan the Barbarian” at No. 4 with $10 million; the DreamWorks-Disney horror-comedy remake “Fright Night” at No. 5 with $8.3 million; and Focus Features’ literary adaptation “One Day” at No. 9 with $5.1 million.
Overall domestic revenues slid for the first time in five weekends. Receipts totaled $124 million, down 3 percent from the same weekend last year, when “The Expendables” led with $17 million, according to box-office tracker Hollywood.com.
Other than “Fright Night,” the new movies were panned by critics, and audiences were apathetic about all of the newcomers.
“This is the reason the term dog days of August was invented,” said Hollywood.com analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “Other than the ‘The Help’ and to some extent ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes,’ everybody else got beat up this weekend. This was one of those really slow, turn-movie-theaters-into-a-ghost-town weekends.”
Three of the new movies — “Spy Kids,” ”Conan the Barbarian” and “Fright Night” — had the benefit of higher-priced 3-D screenings, but none were able to capitalize.
Robert Rodriguez’s fourth “Spy Kids,” featuring Jessica Alba as an agent whose step-kids get in on the espionage action, also added odor to the picture with scratch-and-sniff cards handed out to viewers so they could smell what the characters were smelling.
The gimmick failed to pack in crowds, though, with the sequel’s revenues coming in at barely a third of the $33.4 million debut for the last “Spy Kids” flick in 2003.
“Conan the Barbarian” stars Jason Momoa as the fierce warrior played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1980s original. “Fright Night” features Colin Farrell as a vampire going after a neighbor (Anton Yelchin) who discovers he’s a blood-sucker. Based on David Nicholls’ best-seller, “One Day” casts Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess as friends in a decades-long romantic dance that plays out on the same day each year.
With solid reviews, Disney executives thought “Fright Night” would offer a good mix of scares and laughs for fans in their late teens and early 20s. But distribution boss Hollis said “Fright Night” fell victim to an issue that has troubled studios all summer: How do you bring out younger crowds when they have so many personal entertainment options, from video games to downloading movies?
“What happened here has been a problem for the industry for a long time, and that’s just how do you crack the nut with young adults?” Hollis said. “They’ve been increasingly finicky.”
Here are the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. “The Help,” $20.5 million.
2. “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” $16.3 million.
3. “Spy Kids: All the Time in the World,” $12 million.
4. “Conan the Barbarian,” $10 million.
5. “Fright Night,” $8.3 million.
6. “The Smurfs,” $8 million ($35.3 million international).
7. “Final Destination 5,” $7.7 million.
8. “30 Minutes or Less,” $6.3 million.
9. “One Day,” $5.1 million.
10. “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” $5 million.
Categories
Music

The disc is great, give it a listen!!!

Hiatt’s 20th disc began with intriguing offer
NEW YORK (AP) — John Hiatt was intrigued. Who wouldn’t be?
Noted producer Kevin Shirley had left a message with Hiatt’s manager: “I know where John is trying to go with his music, and I think I can get him there.”
“Nobody has ever said that to me before,” Hiatt said, adding with a laugh, “I don’t even know where I’m going.”
Hiatt had produced his two previous albums on his own. Since Shirley’s statement came with an offer — he’d fly to Nashville for a free trial — the two men began working together on Hiatt’s 20th disc.
The resulting “Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns” is a strong one, judged by The New York Times as Hiatt’s best work since 1995 and deserving to be mentioned alongside two of the pivotal works in his career, “Bring the Family” and “Crossing Muddy Waters.”
Shirley, who has worked with Journey, Aerosmith and the Black Crowes, has always been impressed with Hiatt’s songwriting. But he said it seemed Hiatt and his musicians hadn’t been pushed much beyond the roots rock genre where they comfortably fit.
“I just thought there was a mystery and a darkness to his songs that wasn’t being exploited enough,” Shirley said. He and Hiatt use the term cinematic to describe it, the notion of giving the songs more room to breathe.
One example is the opening track “Damn This Town,” narrated by a loser who lives with his mom at age 57, has seen all sorts of evil and misery befall his family and keeps one secret: “I can’t let my mama tell you what her youngest boy did.”
The album closer, “When New York Had Her Heart Broke,” also sets a striking mood. Shirley had an unusual request, asking the musicians to play as if they were disconnected from one another, to approximate the jagged nerves of New York on Sept. 11, 2001. Hiatt’s vocals don’t come in until the 2:20 mark of the song.
Hiatt ends on a hopeful note that was not apparent when he wrote it: “Ah, but she will rise again.”
The singer happened to be in New York that day, scheduled for a round of interviews to support a new album. They were canceled, of course, and he walked city streets before getting out later on a train. He wrote “When New York Had Her Heart Broke” in the next couple of weeks to help him personally come to grips with the event but performed it only a few times. He never recorded it, not wanting to seem exploitive.
He was adamant about that when Shirley noticed the file on the iPad where Hiatt stores songs in progress. He had to be coaxed into even performing it for Shirley in the studio — then burst into tears when the song was over, Shirley said.
It still took some convincing to get Hiatt to record it.
Shirley did his job quickly and had clear ideas, but wasn’t so enamored with recording process that he lost sight of the music being made, Hiatt said. “We never felt like we were in the studio,” he said. “And, to me, that is always the hurdle that you have to jump — the environment.”
Hiatt is wary of musicians and producers who get too wrapped up in the technical aspects of their work. Too often, he can hear a person’s skills and training when they play an instrument, but not music. He’s from the school of “let’s go out and see what happens,” he said.
“I’m real proud of this record,” he said. “It is too early for me. I’m still in love with it. You’re always in love with the record you just made. It’s like your latest romance. This record was special to me because of the working relationship with Kevin and the guys who played it. It made something special that I couldn’t have gotten if I’d made another self-produced record.”
Sunnier work includes “I Love That Girl,” written with his wife of 25 years in mind. The same woman was the subject of Hiatt’s “Thing Called Love,” best known by Bonnie Raitt’s version, written in the blush of new love.
“Twenty-five years along, it just keeps changing and evolving,” he said. “I guess that’s why we stay together. It just keeps getting to more wonderful places.”
Another silver anniversary is approaching, of Hiatt’s “Bring the Family,” recorded with a killer band of Hiatt, guitarist Ry Cooder, bass player Nick Lowe and drummer Jim Keltner. The 1987 album contains what is probably Hiatt’s most enduring song, “Have a Little Faith in Me.”
There are no deluxe reissue plans. Hiatt would love to reconvene that band at some point; they made an album together in the 1990s under the Little Village moniker, but it was a letdown, partly doomed by democracy. Hiatt said they resolved to write all the songs together and it would probably work better for the artists to bring in songs of their own.
“The thing that we missed was the rough-and-tumble rock band we had on ‘Bring the Family,'” he said. “I’d love to have another crack at it. That’s what the band does best — that ragged-edge, seat of the pants playing where it all sounds like it’s about to fall apart.”
In concert when Hiatt introduces “Have a Little Faith in Me,” he thanks his audience for keeping faith with him.
“I’m running out of time,” he said. “I’ll be 59 at the end of this month. All I know is, I got a lot more time behind me than I have in front of me. I love what I’m doing and I want to do more of it. If anything, it has way more value to me — the work — than it ever has.”
Categories
Books

I like new words!!

Retweet, sexting enter Oxford English Dictionary
LONDON (AP) — Woot! The online expression of enthusiasm is now in the dictionary. So are textspeak, sexting — and, less happily, cyberbullying.
They are among 400 new entries in the 12th edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, published this month.
Another newcomer to the reference book’s 24,000 entries is retweet — to repost another Twitter user’s message.
Editor Angus Stevenson revealed some of the new entries in a blog post Thursday.
Some of the new words describe forms of behavior and communication created by technology. There’s cyberbullying, a form of online abuse, and textspeak, the abbreviated language used in cell phone messages. And, of course, sexting — sending explicit photos or messages by mobile phone.
Less high-tech new entries include jeggings — a jeans-leggings hybrid popular with some and considered a fashion crime by others — and mankini, a sling-style bathing suit made infamous by comic character Borat.
Stevenson said the latest edition also added new meanings for existing words like friend and follower to reflect their new online uses. A friend is no longer just an intimate acquaintance, but also “a contact on a social networking website.”
Unlike the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary, the concise edition was founded to include modern and slang terms as they enter common use. Its first edition in 1911 featured the then-new words aeroplane, motorist and flapper.
Stevenson said the new additions “are just carrying on the tradition of a dictionary that has always sought to be progressive and up to date.”
Earlier this year compilers admitted hundreds of new words to the vast Oxford English Dictionary, including the Internet abbreviations OMG, “Oh My God”; LOL, “laughing out loud”; and IMHO, “in my humble opinion.”
Categories
Television

Interesting choices, all around!!

‘The Office’: Josh Groban joins Andy’s family too
A day after “The Office” gave Andy Bernard parents, the show is giving him a little brother.
Grammy-winning singer Josh Groban will guest-star as Andy’s (Ed Helms) younger brother on an episode this fall, Deadline reports. Presumably that episode will be the same one that features Stephen Collins and Dee Wallace as his parents.
We’re also guessing that there might be a fair amount of sibling rivalry. Groban is playing Walter Jr., which “Office” aficionados will recall was originally Andy’s name, until his parents decided his younger brother was more deserving of it.
It probably wouldn’t be out of the question to expect a Bernard brothers musical duet/competition either, one which we suspect would not go in Andy’s favor. 
Although we wonder why the Bernard family might make its way from Connecticut to Scranton — could it be to celebrate their son’s promotion to branch manager? Or perhaps their false belief that Andy was promoted? We’re just spitballing here.
“The Office” premieres Thursday, Sept. 22 on NBC.
Categories
South Park

I will watch that!!

Trey Parker and Matt Stone Set for “South Park” Documentary
Tony Award-winning Book of Mormon authors Trey Stone and Matt Parker will give fans a glimpse into the creation of their Emmy-winning series “South Park” in a new documentary on Comedy Central.
Set to air Oct. 2 at 10 PM, the documentary is part of a year-long celebration of the hit animated series “South Park,” which begins airing the second half of its 15th season Oct. 5 at 10 PM.
The documentary promises “an all-access pass to the behind-the-scenes world of creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone at South Park Studios in Los Angeles through this special documentary, providing an exclusive, insiders look into the making of a ‘South Park’ episode.”
Stone and Parker made their Broadway debuts this year with The Book of Mormon, the hit musical co-authored with Tony-winning Avenue Q creator Robert Lopez. All three writers earned 2011 Tony Awards for Best Book and Best Original Score.
The Book of Mormon also picked up Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Direction (Parker and co-director/choreographer Casey Nicholaw), Best Performance by a Featured Actress (Nikki M. James), Best Orchestrations (Larry Hochman and Stephen Oremus), Best Scenic Design (Scott Pask), Best Sound Design (Brian Ronan) and Best Lighting Design (Brian MacDevitt).
Categories
Movies

The Summer has been mediocre at best!!

Summer box office headed to record
A popular boy wizard, comic-book heroes and some foul-mouthed women are leading Hollywood toward a record-breaking summer despite the sour economy and high unemployment resulting in tightened consumer spending.
Underscoring the notion that movies are recession-proof, U.S. and Canadian ticket sales are expected to finish nearly 5 percent higher than a year ago thanks to the “Harry Potter” finale and other big-budget sequels plus raunchy adult comedies such as “Bridesmaids.”
Summer ticket sales in the domestic (U.S. and Canadian) market through last weekend stood at an estimated $3.8 billion. Attendance was up 2.8 percent, though that was compared with last year’s 13-year low, according to figures from tracking firm Hollywood.com. Premium charges for 3D films and slightly higher average ticket prices helped raise revenue.
“If we keep at this pace, we should wind up with $4.5 billion,” the highest summer total ever, said Paul Dergarabedian, box office analyst with Hollywood.com.
The summer film season – usually measured from early May through Labor Day weekend in September – represents the most lucrative time of the year for studios, providing as much as 40 percent of annual box-office dollars.
Still, year-to-date box office revenue is down 4 percent from 2010 while attendance has shrunk 5 percent after weak winter and spring ticket sales. Studios need a strong holiday season to regain lost ground at a time when the U.S. economy is sputtering.
“Overall I think people are feeling good about the summer results,” said Rory Bruer, president of worldwide distribution for Columbia Pictures, a unit of Sony Corp that rang up big sales with family film “The Smurfs.”
HOLLYWOOD BUCKS THE ECONOMY
The strong summer box office belies recent data on consumer spending from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which showed that Americans spent less and saved more money in June, just as the summer season was moving into full swing. It also goes against concerns among economists about the possibility of a double-dip recession brought on by high unemployment and anemic economic growth.
But moviegoing, which is one of the cheaper entertainment options for consumers, usually holds up in weak economies, industry players said. For instance, in summer 2008, the most recent comparable period to this summer in terms of the macro-economy, domestic box-office sales gained 0.5 percent year-over-year, though that was largely due to ticket price increases. Attendance actually fell 3.7 percent that summer.
Box-office success is tied more to the quality of the films than economic trends, Dergarabedian said. “Good movies are recession-proof,” he said.
Chris Aronson, senior vice president for domestic distribution at 20th Century Fox, added that “lower-quality 3D films could be under pressure as audiences become more discerning.” Overall box-office totals for 2011 “will probably get to a position where we are level with last year,” he said.
WINNERS AND LOSERS
This summer’s standout performers thus far include “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2,” which broke records worldwide and was among three movies to sell more than $1 billion globally. The others were the third “Transformers” and fourth “Pirates of the Caribbean.”
“The one consistent area of success is still in the big franchise and in the big sequel,” said Rob Moore, vice chairman of Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom Inc.
Foul-mouthed women scored big with better-than-expected sales for “Bridesmaids” and “Bad Teacher.” Another adult comedy, “The Hangover 2,” also was a hit.
Superheroes abounded on screens – to mixed results. “Captain America: The First Avenger” and “Thor” performed well while “The Green Lantern” fizzled.
Four of the five highest-grossing summer 2011 films were offered in 3D, as were several other summer flicks. But filmgoers often decided to live with two dimensions, sparking a debate in the industry over whether the appetite for 3D movies had petered out.
“Avatar” director James Cameron recently urged Hollywood to make sure 3D movies provided a quality experience to justify the higher price.
“This is a good moment for Hollywood to acknowledge that they have to try harder to maintain the idea that 3D is a premium experience. We can’t take cheap routes,” Cameron told Reuters in an interview.
Walt Disney Co’s revered Pixar animation unit for the first time stumbled with critics who panned “Cars 2.” The film has proven resilient with audiences, however, surpassing the original’s box-office tally with more than $476 million in gross sales worldwide.
But the strong performance of sequels this summer has a downside.
“There really weren’t any new franchises created … This summer may wind up with record gross (box office), but I don’t know if enough seeds were planted for the future,” said Brandon Gray, president of industry tracking firm boxofficemojo.com.
From that perspective, the rest of the year appears ominous for studios, with sequels to “Twilight,” “Mission Impossible,” “Happy Feet” and “Alvin and the Chipmunks” all set for release.
Categories
Letterman

Stay well, Dave!!!

Threat to David Letterman on Muslim forum
NEW YORK (AP) — A frequent contributor to a jihadist website has threatened David Letterman, urging Muslim followers to “cut the tongue” of the late-night host because of a joke the comic made on his CBS show.
The Site Monitoring Service, a private intelligence organization that watches online activity, said Wednesday that the threat was posted a day earlier on the Shumuka al-Islam forum, a popular Internet destination for radical Muslims.
The contributor, who identified himself as Umar al-Basrawi, was reacting to what he said Letterman did after the U.S. military announced on June 5 that a drone strike in Pakistan had killed al-Qaida leader Ilyas Kashmiri.
Al-Basrawi wrote that Letterman had made reference to both Osama bin Laden and Kashmiri and said that Letterman had “put his hand on his neck and demonstrated the way of slaughter.”
“Is there not among you a Sayyid Nosair al-Mairi … to cut the tongue of this lowly Jew and shut it forever?” Al-Basrawi wrote, referring to El Sayyid Nosair, who was convicted of the 1990 killing of Jewish Defense League founder Meir Kahane. Letterman is not Jewish.
Al-Basrawi, which is likely to be an alias, has made some 1,200 postings to the Muslim website, said Adam Raisman, an analyst for the Site Monitoring Service. The private firm, part of the Site Intelligence Group, provides information to government and commercial clients on what jihadists are saying on the Internet and traditional media. Raisman said the online forum is often used by al-Qaida.
Muslim extremist groups in the past few months have increased calls for people to take violent action against certain targets in the West, he said.
“The concern is that there is someone who will read it, agree with it and say, ‘I want to be the Sayyid Nosair of 2011 and kill David Letterman,'” Raisman said.
The FBI is also looking into the threat, said Jim Margolin, spokesman for the bureau’s New York office. “We take every potential threat seriously,” he said.
Neither CBS nor a Letterman spokesman, Tom Keaney, would comment on the threat. CBS would not make available a transcript of Letterman’s monologue on the killing of Kashmiri.
Letterman has been the target of criminal threats in the past. A former CBS News producer was jailed for trying to extort $2 million from Letterman in 2009 by threatening to expose the host’s sexual dalliances with members of his staff. A former painter at Letterman’s ranch in Montana was jailed following a 2005 plot to kidnap the TV funnyman’s nanny and son.
A radical Muslim group last year warned the creators of “South Park” that they could face violent retribution for depicting the prophet Muhammad in a bear suit on the Comedy Central cartoon. Author Salman Rushdie spent years in hiding after Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini urged he be killed for blasphemy after writing the book “The Satanic Verses.”
Filmmaker Theo van Gogh was killed on an Amsterdam street in 2004 by a Dutch Muslim angered by his film “Submission,” a fictional study of abused Muslim women.
Categories
Awards

Oh yes, please, please, please bring him back!!!!

Billy Crystal ‘itchy’ to host Oscars
Billy Crystal is ready to host the Oscars again.
Crystal was Oscar host eight times between 1990 and 2004, but he said his brief appearance in the 2011 show, as a presenter honouring Bob Hope, has made him “itchy” for more.
At an event in Santa Monica, Calif., this weekend, the 63-year-old comedian was asked about reprising his Academy Award hosting duties by a fan, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
“I came out last year as a surprise. It was a last-minute decision,” Crystal said. “They had called and said would you do this thing and honour Bob Hope and that was a kind of cool thing to do. I said OK. I did it, and people wanted to see me, they stood up, and I couldn’t talk for about a minute. And, um, I got a little itchy. So we’ll see what happens. I can’t promise anything.”
Crystal told the audience hosting the Academy Awards takes a big chunk out of his schedule — about four or five months. “I so appreciate that you like when we do it,” he said after drawing applause for saying he is open to the suggestion. “And I had a good time doing them. I did eight of them. And it takes a long time. I sort of stopped doing it — I would do it in patches — and then fortunately I was doing other things that I wanted to do.”
Crystal is currently working on Monsters University, a prequel to animated film Monsters Inc., and also has plans to make a film out of his Tony-winning one-man play 700 Sundays.
The academy and the producers of the awards gala refused to discuss the choice of host for 2012. The 84th Academy Awards are scheduled for Feb. 26, 2012.
Categories
Business

Nice move, Bono!!

Bono to become a Facebook billionaire 
The U2 man’s investment in the social networking site has paid off
U2 frontman Bono is about to make $1 billion (£611 million), thanks to his 2009 investment in Facebook. 
Bono’s investment company Elevation Partners bought $210 million (£128 million) worth of shares in the social networking site almost two years ago. This week the site has been valued at $65 billion (£40 billion), meaning that Bono and his company’s share of the business is now valued at a whopping $975m (£595 million).
Elevation Partners was valued at $50 billion (£30.5 billion) last December, before Facebook was re-valued at $65 billion (£40 billion), reports the Guardian.
U2 were recently named the world’s highest-earning musicians by Forbes over Bon Jovi, Elton John and Lady Gaga, making $195 million (£120 million) over the previous 12 months. They have just finished their 360 world tour in Canada, grossing over $736 million (£447 million) in the process.
Categories
Uncategorized

Really??!?

Sex and the City returning to TV: report
The stars of Sex and the City are reportedly keen to put the lukewarm reaction of last year’s movie sequel behind them by making another series of the hit TV show.
Sarah Jessica Parker and her co-stars are said to be happy to ditch further Hollywood outings and return to the small screen, following the critical backlash and mediocre box office success of Sex and the City 2, reports Britain’s Mail on Sunday.
An insider tells the paper, “Ultimately Darren Star – the man who created the hit series – will have the overall say, but everyone is agreed a TV show is the direction they want to take the franchise in.
“Sarah Jessica Parker will be producing. She was worried about doing another film after the bad reaction to the Sex and the City 2 movie, but a TV show is definitely something she wants to happen.”
The girls’ return to TV would mean the much discussed big screen Sex and the City prequel will be put on hold. The film, which charts the early lives of Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha and Miranda, has been heavily speculated recently, with actresses Blake Lively, Selena Gomez and Emma Roberts all linked to the movie.
The insider adds, “They want to make the TV series before doing another film.”