Thanks for the memories, Wendel
Wendel Clark provided Maple Leafs fans with many reasons to cheer, but here is The Toronto Sun's top-10 list:
- The wild applause at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre when Clark put on the Leafs jersey on draft day 1985. The Leafs had finished last overall the year before and there was an immediate sense that this Saskatchewan farm boy was something special.
"When he put the sweater on, a few thousand people suddenly sounded like 20,000," assistant GM Gord Stellick said. "It told you a lot about Leaf fans, that they'd take to Wendel like that after the year we'd had."
- Clark's homespun take on a wild brawl with the Detroit Red Wings in his rookie year: "Just like a bar in Kelvington on a Saturday night."
- His check that flattened Bruce Bell of the Quebec Nordiques.
- How he dealt with a persistent reporter who kept asking why he wouldn't fight distant cousin Joey Kocur of the Wings. After the reporter's 10th attempt, Clark brought the conversation to an abrupt end by saying "would you like me to fight you?"
- The famous video of him strolling in front of the Gardens with his mullet and rural wardrobe.
"He was part of this city, like Toronto's son," Tie Domi said. "You saw him grow up, you saw him go away (twice), but you always knew he would come back."
- How you knew he was going to shoot, even on a 3-on-0.
- He took on all comers, from John Kordic to Slava Fetisov to Marty McSorley.
"He was 5-foot-10 but played like he was 6-foot-3," Steve Thomas said. "It showed the heart he had."
- The strong relationship with his parents, Les and Alma, who drove hours and hours to see him play in Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg and the Western U.S. Les had the greatest hockey influence, but Wendel never forgot his mother's role.
"It's because of my mother's sacrifices that I'm in the NHL," Clark once said.
When Wendel took a shine to playing the saxophone in high school, Alma agreed to pay for lessons, but only if he saw them through and didn't cut hockey practice.
- The standing ovation he received for hitting the post in a 2000 playoff game against the Devils.
- His tearful 2000 retirement at the ACC: "This will bring closure," Clark said in front of friends and family. "I started as a Leaf and now I can end as a Leaf. No matter where I've played, this always has been like home."
The Road To Oz
Hugh Jackman: Sexiest Man Alive. Wolverine. Third wheel?
The newly-titled actor recalls a twinge of concern when he signed on to play a lowbrow cowboy in the ambitious Baz Luhrmann epic "Australia." Mostly because he was starring opposite Baz's BFF, Nicole Kidman.
"I've heard Nicole describe Baz as her creative soulmate," says Jackman, looking not-at-all lowbrow (but still superlatively sexy) while snacking on raspberries and melon in a posh Midtown lounge. He wondered whether he'd be intruding on the Kidman-Luhrmann partnership, which began with the Australian director's lush 2001 musical "Moulin Rouge."
"The moment we started shooting, though, I felt like it was the three of us," Jackman says. "It was always inclusive, and that expanded to the entire cast."
No one puts Hugh in a corner! Least of all Luhrmann, who says Jackman was the very embodiment of that "rough-hewn" type missing in today's movies, Daniel Craig notwithstanding. (Though, truth be told, not even Jackman seems to know what rough-hewnness entails, exactly, or how it might surpass the brawniness of his "X-Men" character. "I've got a beard in this one," he offers.)
"I think audiences will be surprised by Hugh Jackman in this film," says Luhrmann. "He really easily assumes that classic movie style of Clint Eastwood or John Wayne."
Indeed, he squints like a champ, rides horses and looks good in a silhouetted clinch against a blood-orange sunset background. It's all part of Luhrmann's master plan to resurrect the old-school epic.
"The music must be sweeping!" the director says grandly. "The drama must be intense! You have high comedy, and then you have romance and action. These days, it's either or. But this film has all of them. It's a banquet."
It's also a big, expensive gamble. With budget estimates ranging from $130 million (the official version) to $200 million (the detractors'), "Australia" is crossing its fingers that audiences will clamor for an unapologetically heartfelt saga that owes more than a small debt to oldies like "Out of Africa," "Gone with the Wind" and "The African Queen." Especially "Out of Africa." (See sidebar.)
Out Friday, the film's set during World War II and is based around a relatively little known historical event: the bombing of the city of Darwin by the Japanese.
Nicole Kidman's Lady Sarah Ashley, just arrived from London, has found her husband dead and herself the proprietor of an enormous middle-of-nowhere cattle farm called Faraway Downs. Jackman's character, known only as The Drover, is the archetypal hot, reluctant hero - a mercenary who finds himself unwittingly drawn to the initially bitchy heroine he's agreed to help out of an impossible situation.
So, does Luhrmann's movie fit the requirements of a true epic? Let us count the ways.
The story of "Australia," Luhrmann's first film since 2001's "Moulin Rouge," is itself epic. He'd already been thinking gargantuan for years, planning a spectacle about Alexander the Great starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kidman. Then he found out Oliver Stone was working on one, too.
Luhrmann changed tack and began researching the history of his native country. Which involved spending quality time in the Aussie countryside he refers to fondly as "the faraway of the faraway."
Once written, the project went through several casting changes. Kidman was attached from the beginning, but Russell Crowe was initially slated to play the Drover. When his demands about script approval became problematic, he was out and Jackman was in (with a reported brief period of consideration for Heath Ledger).
The story contains many chapters, most of them on a grand scale involving explosions, animal herds or extreme weather. Its running time is appropriately lengthy at two hours and 40 minutes. And - this is absolutely key - it was shot on location in the middle of a forbidding landscape that would inevitably be problematic for the cast and crew.
Despite the fact that the director and his stars were all in their home country, none had ever spent any time in the sort of remote terrain in which they'd be shooting.
"I've seen far more of this country during the making of this film than I had in the 30 years that I lived here," Kidman says. "Even though it was extremely difficult at times, I'm so glad we traveled and filmed in those locations. To feel the air and be ravished by the elements was exquisite and necessary."
Luhrmann concurs. "When you're making a sweeping epic, you expect all sorts of challenges," he says. "Equine flu? Raining for the first time in 100 years? That's just normal stuff."
He's not exaggerating about the rain. "We were in the middle of the dry season, and they had so much rain - the last recorded rainfall that was anything like it was 100 years ago, and that was half what we got!" says Jackman.
And then there was the horse flu. "The moment equine flu hit, everyone freaked out," Jackman says. "The government immediately put out a quarantine. And we're in the middle of shooting a movie about horses. So we had 300 horses that were not allowed to move 5 yards."
There are so very many pitfalls involved in shooting an epic, one almost begins to suspect people of making them just for the anecdotes. (After all, a wild tale of a near-escape from wildlife in the outback sure beats recounting your latest foray into Studio City.)
"At night, we'd shine a light into the river and you could see all the crocodiles. It was infested with crocodiles," Jackman recounts, a little nostalgically. "We were up on a hill, and they told me crocs rarely go up the hill. But Baz was camping down by the bottom of the river."
"We kid each other about who had the most threatening crocodile story," says Luhrmann, who'd insisted on camping the entire time the film was shooting.
Luhrman's movie has been one long cavalcade of challenges - and in that respect, it can count itself in the ranks of all the epics which Luhrmann freely cites as influences.
When David Lean made "Lawrence of Arabia," his star was nearly trampled to death by a camel. "Gone with the Wind" went through three different directors. Meryl Streep, on the set of "Out of Africa," had to contend with territorial hippopotami, lions on the loose and a beetle as big as her hand.
And nearly everyone on the set of "The African Queen" got sick, except for Humphrey Bogart, who claimed it was because he subsisted on Scotch.
Luhrmann's shoot was plagued with sickness of a different sort: the morning kind. An astonishing six crew members, plus Kidman herself, found out they were pregnant during the seven-month shoot. Local aboriginal waters were cited as the reason for the fertility - though, one might note, there also wasn't much else out there in the way of nightlife.
The rockiest territory of all may have been the film's Aboriginal-oppression theme. "I think you can't really tell a story about Australia without handling the first inhabitants of our country," says Jackman. "They've been there for 40,000 years. We've been there for 200."
The film's youngest star is Brandon Walters, who plays a "half-caste" boy - half-Aboriginal, half-white - in danger of being rounded up and shipped off for cultural "retraining" by whites. This dark chapter in the country's history is known as the Stolen Generations.
"This was a big scar on the history of our country," says Luhrmann, who says he isn't taking any overt political stance. "The film doesn't purport to say it's right or wrong. It just says it happened."
In early reviews, the director's handling of the Aboriginal issue has been largely praised, with Walters even garnering some Oscar buzz.
But a larger question remains: Do American audiences really care? Some are speculating the movie will be a bomb. (Although, famously, Gary Cooper said the same thing about "Gone with the Wind," predicting it would be "the biggest flop in Hollywood history.")
"There's a reason people don't make movies like this anymore," says Jackman. "They're hard to do. God knows, they may never make them again - not like this, anyway."
The naysayers are nothing new for Luhrmann, of course. When he made "Strictly Ballroom," they said nobody wanted to see a high-concept dancing movie. When he released "Moulin Rouge," they said the movie musical would never make a comeback.
And when he pitched the idea for "Australia," they said nobody makes movies this way anymore. Luhrmann had a one-word response for his detractors: Tara.
"I'll go back to Tara. I'll go home," he says, paraphrasing the final lines of "Gone With the Wind." "It means, ultimately what matters is that you're with people who you'll love and who love you. It means that life continues on. That's the big message of my film. And I think people are absolutely famished for it. I wouldn't have said that until I saw how intensely the audience reacted."
The audience he's referring to is the crowd at "The Oprah Winfrey Show," which was recently treated to an advance viewing of a rough cut of the film (when The Post spoke to the director last week, he still wasn't done editing).
But rumors began shortly after that screening that Luhrmann had been pressured by the studio - and negative test-audience reactions - into re-cutting the film's end into a happier conclusion. Which Luhrmann has denied repeatedly, if vaguely.
"I wrote about four endings, and I shot two," he says, "and I'll tell you something - the ending was actually a surprise, even to me, because it was really a response to what I was feeling as I edited it."
Jackman, who at the time of the interview had not seen the film, thinks people ought to give Luhrmann the benefit of the doubt.
"I think it's redundant, and a little unfair, to talk about what could have been until people have seen it," he says. "Because it's a work of fiction. So there's always options. People should just see it straight out. They shouldn't see it thinking, 'Oh, I heard there was going to be this other ending.'
"Whatever he chooses," he says, "I'm sure it will be the right thing."
First Twilight Sequel Announced
All it took was one big Box Office day for Summit Entertainment to officially commit to more Twilight. They’re so excited, they came into work on a Saturday to email the media and let us know that they are officially moving forward on the sequel, based on the second book in Stephanie Meyer’s vampire series. It’s called New Moon and there’s no way to keep it from rising.
This isn’t exactly a surprise. A few weeks ago the company locked up the movie’s screenwriter, Melissa Rosenberg to start working on scripts for New Moon and the other inevitable sequels to follow. Now, even though she probably hasn’t finished the script, the whole thing has a big, screaming, green light. Twilight made $35 million just on its opening day domestically. It only cost $37 million to make so even if no one shows up to see it on Saturday and Sunday they’ve already pretty much turned a profit. For a relatively new, smallish studio like Summit, this is a really big deal.
From what we’ve heard, it’s likely the same old cast will return. Twilight may make them a hot commodity, but before it it’s not like Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart were in big demand. They owe them.
Everyone who hasn't been brainwashed by the books seems to agree that this is a very poorly done movie, which makes this sequel news particularly depressing for lovers of good film, while at the same time presumably the best thing ever to all of the women who came squealing out of midnight screenings on Tuesday. The silver lining here is that since the first movie has made so much money, the second one will almost certainly have a bigger budget. Maybe that won't help the script any, but some halfway decent special effects couldn't hurt.
Below I’ve posted the full, official press release from Summit announcing New Moon. You fangless Twilight fans may want to frame it or something. Non-fans should probably print it out and burn the thing in effigy. You’ve just been sentenced to spend the rest of this decade Meyered in emo vampire emotion porn.
SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT ANNOUNCES TWILIGHT SEQUEL – NEW MOON
Los Angeles, CA November 22, 2008 – Summit Entertainment announced today that the studio is officially moving forward with the production of NEW MOON, the second installment of its filmed franchise TWILIGHT, the action-packed, modern day vampire love story. The movie will be based on the second novel in author Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series titled, New Moon. The first movie in the TWILIGHT franchise, the self-titled TWILIGHT, arrived in theaters this weekend to sold-out showings.
Stephenie Meyer stated, "I don't think any other author has had a more positive experience with the makers of her movie adaptation than I have had with Summit Entertainment. I'm thrilled to have the chance to work with them again on NEW MOON."
Starring Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, TWILIGHT tells the story of 17-year-old Bella Swan who moves to the small town of Forks, Washington to live with her father, and becomes drawn to Edward Cullen, a pale, mysterious classmate who seems determined to push her away. But neither can deny the attraction that pulls them together…even when Edward confides that he and his family are vampires. Their unorthodox romance puts her in physical danger when Edward’s nemesis comes to town and sets his sights on Bella.
About Summit Entertainment, LLC
Summit Entertainment, LLC is a worldwide theatrical motion picture development, financing, production and distribution studio. The studio handles all aspects of marketing and distribution for both its own internally developed motion pictures as well as acquired pictures. Summit Entertainment, LLC also represents international sales for both its own slate and third party product. Summit Entertainment, LLC plans to release 10 to 12 films annually.
No Doubt Regrouping For Tour, Album
No Doubt will return to the road in 2009 while it finishes its first studio album in seven years. The group made the announcement via an instant message transcript posted on its official Web site, but did not provide specific details.
"I have cabin fever. Maybe we should play some shows or something," guitarist Tom Dumont wrote. Vocalist Gwen Stefani answered, "I think we should go out now. I don't think we should wait. Pack up the babies and get a bunch of nannies. So fun! Would be so inspiring to get out there and play all those songs again."
The group then discusses how continuing to write new music on the road would be inspiring, and vows to alert management to its plans.
No Doubt has been in the studio on and off throughout 2008. But Stefani's participation has been limited of late, having given birth to her second son in late August.
The group hasn't played live since mid-2004, and its last studio album was 2001's "Rock Steady." Since then, Stefani has released two critically acclaimed solo albums, while the other group members have pursued solo and session work as well as producing. Most recently, they appear on Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland's solo album, "'Happy' in Galoshes."
DVR usage making big changes in television viewing
NEW YORK (AP) — Figuring out a prime-time schedule is usually one of CW network chief Dawn Ostroff's most important duties. Never, however, has it seemed to matter less.
The promise inherent in digital video recorders — that viewers can be in control of their own TV schedules — is rapidly being fulfilled this fall, and the business is changing around it. Nearly 30% of the nation's TV homes have at least one.
Nowhere is the impact more apparent than at the CW, where recording the shows and watching them later account for nearly 17% of the network's viewership over a one-week period. Two years ago, it was less than 5%, according to Nielsen Media Research.
The time-shifting is more dramatic for individual shows. The CW even had a week where the audience of 18-to-34-year-old women for 90210 increased by a stunning 79% over the live broadcast.
Viewing for ABC, CBS and NBC programs are all more than 10% time-shifted now, too. Fox's programming is only 8% time-shifted this fall, in large part because it has shown postseason baseball, which very few people watch later.
"More and more people are changing the way they consume television," said Alan Wurtzel, NBC's chief research executive. "In the next few years, we will rewrite all the rules."
The most time-shifted show is NBC's The Office, where 28% of its audience watched it sometime other than Thursdays at 9 p.m, Nielsen said. Action shows and serialized dramas, like Fringe,Heroes and Grey's Anatomy, have big time-shifted audiences. Not surprisingly, young people are the quickest to adapt to new technology.
Among the least time-shifted shows this fall were Deal or No Deal,60 Minutes and King of the Hill.
With The Office, time-shifting has kept alive a show that might otherwise be dead. The comedy has the week's toughest time slot, competing directly against CBS' more popular CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and ABC's Grey's Anatomy.
The flip side is that DVRs make it harder for new shows like NBC's just-canceled My Own Worst Enemy to get established. Given the choice of trying something new or watching a recorded version of a favorite show, the DVR usually wins out.
"I call the DVR our frien-emy," Wurtzel said.
Time-shifting has played a prominent part in the decline of the 10 p.m. time slot, where a powerhouse like NBC's ER ruled television not too long ago. Only three of Nielsen's top 20 prime-time shows a week ago started at that hour, all of them on CBS.
Many viewers are recording shows from 8 or 9 p.m. and watching them later, after dinner or when the kids go to bed, instead of what's on live at 10 p.m. This phenomenon hurts late-night programming, too.
"The biggest single competitor to network programming in any time slot now is (pre-recorded) network programming," said David Poltrack, chief researcher at CBS.
Networks will likely continue to concentrate their top shows in an earlier hour. Some executives can even see a day when networks stop putting high-cost scripted series at 10 p.m. altogether, although there's pressure from local stations to provide strong lead-ins to their late-night news shows.
There was a time, not too long ago, when network executives slept with laptops or fax machines by their beds so they could rise before dawn to check the previous night's ratings.
Now, Ostroff said, "it's a system that's no longer relevant."
She got a peek at the new TV world last spring. CW executives were getting an anecdotal sense that Gossip Girl was catching on, even though it wasn't reflected in the overnight ratings. It had a big DVR pickup, and many young fans watched free video streams. The CW briefly stopped streaming the show in order to increase the TV ratings, but fans quickly found illegal versions online, so CW streamed again.
The problem: the CW isn't earning as much from the show as it should, considering how many people are watching it.
"We've got to figure out a way to monetize this content being consumed," Ostroff said.
The networks' weekly ratings scorecard, a traditional psychic barometer, also means less. It's based on live viewing, plus playbacks within 24 hours. One recent week the broadcast networks were down 10% from the previous year — an alarming sign of failure on its face — but add in a week's worth of time-shifters and the decline was only 3%, Poltrack said.
Asked whether the increased time-shifting helped the networks, Fox chief scheduler Preston Beckman was as ambivalent as Wurtzel.
"It's a little of both," he said. It's always encouraging that viewers watch the shows, whenever they do it. But advertising rates are calculated based on people who watch a show within three days of its original airing. So if you tape House on Tuesday to watch Saturday night, Fox gets nothing for it.
He worries that the ease of DVRs may get people out of the habit of watching their favorite shows. First, they don't have to worry about being at the TV at a certain hour because their shows are being recorded. Then they forget to watch the playback. Before you know it, they've stopped seeing the shows regularly.
It isn't simply more houses getting DVRs that is making a difference these days, it's houses getting their second or third DVRs, the experts said.
CBS' Poltrack believes that DVR usage will continue to grow until the machines are in about half of the nation's homes with TVs. He expects the technology to become obsolete soon after that, because more people will have televisions and computers working together to give them even more freedom to program their personal networks.
"We basically have reached the point now where everyone realizes that it's in everyone's best interests to make popular programming available so people can watch it any time they want to watch it," he said.
'Controversial' George Harrison interview comes to light
An illuminating interview with the late Beatles guitarist George Harrison has been unveiled after 40 years in storage.
Journalist Miranda Ward, a Beatles friend at the time, recorded the interview in 1967 on reel-to-reel tapes.
Film director David Lambert told BBC News he heard the recordings as part of his research for his movie, The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour Memories. Lambert uses a small portion of the interview in the film.
"He goes on to talk about the drink culture of Great Britain, which in 1967, from how he describes it, seems exactly as it is today," Lambert said.
"He talks about use of drugs and how certain politicians tend to rule the world and rule our lives."
Lambert described the interview as "pretty controversial" but refused to divulge details.
"He covers all aspects of things, the Eastern mysticism, he was very involved at the time with the Maharishi [Mahesh Yogi]."
Expands on views
Lambert said Harrison, who died of cancer in 2001, expands on his own views about life and philosophy.
"I think you'll actually look at George and think, 'The guy really is talking a lot of sense and people should have listened possibly at the time.'
"He wasn't one to talk about these things. If you listened to it, you would fully expect someone like John [Lennon] to be doing the interview."
Lambert said he believes the full recording will come to light soon. He said movie director Martin Scorsese has expressed interest in the reel-to-reels. Scorsese announced in 2007 he was making a film about Harrison.
Harrison embarked on a successful solo career after the Beatles broke up at the end of the 1960s. The hits he wrote and sang include Here Comes the Sun, Something, While My Guitar Gently Weeps and My Sweet Lord.
'Twilight' takes $70.6M bite out of box office
LOS ANGELES – The vampire romance "Twilight" drained the box office in its opening weekend, taking in $70.6 million. Catherine Hardwicke's film also enjoyed the biggest opening ever for a female director, blowing away the previous standard of $41.1 million set by Mimi Leder's "Deep Impact" in 1998.
Drawing from its huge fan base of teenage girls, who fell for Stephenie Meyer's novel of forbidden love between brooding vampire Edward Cullen and bookish high schooler Bella Swan, "Twilight" made a whopping $20,636 per theater, according to Sunday morning estimates.
And the fangirls will get another taste soon enough: Summit Entertainment, which released "Twilight," announced during the weekend that it's going ahead with production of "New Moon," based on the second book in Meyer's internationally best-selling series. Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart will return as its star-crossed lovers, but whether Hardwicke will be at the helm again is still being determined.
The laid-back Hardwicke, who went bodyboarding at sunset Saturday to take her mind off this high-pressure weekend, said Sunday morning that she was heading to a meeting later in the day to discuss her possible involvement in "New Moon."
"I want to be sure that it's going to be done right. I don't want to rush into it," she said. "It's not like `Friday the 13th' or `Halloween,' you can't just do it super fast and knock another one out. I want to understand their plans and all that."
Hardwicke, whose previous films include "Thirteen" and "Lords of Dogtown," also said she was thrilled about the prospect that the success of "Twilight" will inspire other women and young girls to pursue a career in filmmaking.
"I hope not just women but all minorities get enthused and encouraged by it. I look at the (Directors Guild of America) calendar, at the pictures of everyone that had different movies each month, and it's usually 22-29 different directors, and almost every month there's one female and maybe one minority," she said. "We've been having a lot of events, talking to a lot of fans, and so many kids of course are madly in love with Robert but tons of kids of every kind (and) girls are coming up to me and saying `I want to direct now, I'm writing a screenplay now, you're my inspiration.' I think it's great that people are getting excited."
The big opening for "Twilight" also helps put Summit Entertainment on the map, said Richie Say, the company's president of domestic distribution. Summit has only been around since April 2007 and "Twilight," its sixth release, cost just $37 million to make.
"It certainly says what we've been saying all along, that we can do more with less," he said. When Warner Bros. pushed "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" from this weekend to a July 2009 debut, and Summit jumped to move "Twilight" from Dec. 12 into that spot on the schedule, "that decision was made in a day. I don't know that the major studios have that ability."
The tremendous take for "Twilight" far exceeded expectations, which had been set around $50 million.
"Teen girls rule the earth," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media By Numbers. "If you look back at the `Hannah Montana' movie, how well that did, and now this movie, the teen girl audience will never be ignored again or underestimated. It was always teen boys who were the coveted ones, but someone finally caught on to the idea that girls love movies, too, and if you create something that they're into, that they're passionate about, they will come out in big numbers and drive the box office."
The other major debut of the weekend, Walt Disney's 3-D animated "Bolt," made $27 million to take third place. Featuring the voices of John Travolta and Miley Cyrus, "Bolt" follows the cross-country journey of a dog who plays a superhero on television, but sadly realizes he has no magical powers once he gets separated from his "person."
Chuck Viane, Disney's head of distribution, said "Twilight" took a bite out of everyone's box office this weekend. If the vampire saga hadn't been around, Viane said, Disney would have expected an opening of at least $30 million.
"Obviously we believe in the Thanksgiving holiday in a big, big way," he said. "We've always viewed this as one of those 10-day marathons between opening day and the end of the Thanksgiving weekend."
Last weekend's No. 1 movie, "Quantum of Solace," came in second with $27.4 million. The latest James Bond extravaganza has now grossed $109.5 million, and it crossed the $100 million mark faster than any other film in the franchise, said Rory Bruer, head of distribution for Sony. It's also made $309 million internationally.
"We're in great shape. We're way ahead of where we were with `Casino Royale,'" said Bruer, referring to the last Bond picture, which also starred Daniel Craig as a more visceral incarnation of 007.
Here are the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. "Twilight," $70.5 million.
2. "Quantum of Solace," $27.4 million.
3. "Bolt," $27 million.
4. "Madagascar 2: Escape 2 Africa," $16 million.
5. "Role Models." $7.2 million.
6. "Changeling," $2.6 million.
7. "High School Musical 3: Senior Year," $2 million.
8. "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," $1.7 million.
9. "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas," $1.67 million.
10. "The Secret Life of Bees," $1.28 million.
Vatican: Beatles music better than today's songs
VATICAN CITY – Vatican media are praising the Beatles' musical legacy and sounding philosophical about John Lennon's boast that the British band was more popular than Jesus.
Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano recalls that Lennon's comment outraged many when he made it in 1966.
But it says in its Saturday edition that the remark can be written off now as the bragging of a young man wrestling with unexpected success.
The newspaper as well as Vatican Radio last week noted the 40th anniversary of the Beatles' "White Album."
It said the album demonstrated how creative the Beatles were, compared with what it called the "standardized, stereotypical" songs being produced today.