Results tagged “ewanmcgregor”

       

While Disney's A Christmas Carol won the weekend with an underwhelming $31M, the real story at the box-office was Precious. The darling of this year's Sundance Film Festival earned an astonishing $100,000 per theater, breaking the record for the largest opening EVER for a specialty film (A Christmas Carol, by contrast, earned a little over $8400 per venue). Michael Jackson's This Is It had a solid second weekend ($14M | $57.8M), just topping the fantastic The Men Who Stare at Goats ($13.3M) and the weird and phony The Fourth Kind ($12.5M). Not surprisingly, Paranormal Activity continued to print money ($8.6M | $97.4M).

       

If you like movies filled with whimsical, daffy humor (think Wes or Spike or Charlie) then you will probably dig The Men Who Stare at Goats as much as I did. It concerns our military's experimentation with paranormal phenomena as epitomized by the Jedi Warriors of the First Earth Battalion stationed at Fort Bragg, NC (yep!). Best of all, most of it is true. I like that Bob Zemekis is always pushing the boundaries of the technical aspect of filmmaking, but I'm motioned-captured out at this point! I'll see Christmas Carol but with gritted teeth.

       

While it didn't approach the monstrous financial heights of the poorly-conceived The Da Vinci Code, Thomas de Hanks' Angels & Demons ($48M) tricked enough Americans into theaters to hold off the sturdy Star Trek ($43M/$143.6M) to capture the weekend box-office crown. X-Men Origins: Wolverine had a reasonably good third weekend to place, uh, third ($14.8M/$151M) while Ghosts of Matthew McConaughey's Bangbus Girlfriends ($6.8M/$40M) and Obsessed with White Chicks ($4.5M/$40M) rounded out the top five.

      

Dan Brown's quickly-paced novels seem tailor-made for the big screen, but The Da Vinci Code was a lumbering dud. Here's hoping that Angels & Demons is edited at a much brisker pace (with less exposition). At least they fixed Tom Hanks' weird hairdo from Da Vinci. If you want to see something that will just fill you with joy, try The Brothers Bloom. Rian Johnson's superb debut Brick was clearly not a fluke. In fact, he may have the best cinematic style since Wes Anderson. Management continues Jennifer Aniston's slow descent into irrelevance. How did such a once-cheery actress become so damn sour? At least the great Steve Zahn is in it.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is so expertly crafted that one can't help but marvel at it from a technical viewpoint. As a story, however, the film is just so-so. Sure, it's a provocative premise, but Brad Pitt is almost lifeless as the titular character. Dustin Hoffman is one of the handful of actors whose movies I will always see. Last Chance Harvey is a poignant and wistful reminder that it's never too late to do all for love. What I said about Dustin Hoffman above, same goes for the amazing Michelle Williams. LOOK works better as an idea than an actual movie. Still, Rhys Coiro is fast becoming one of my favorite unknown actors.

I liked , but I'm glad to see Woody Harrelson working again. Here's to hoping he finds something befitting his unique talents.

In a bit of a surprise, the surrogate pregnancy comedy target audience forgot that the movie was opening and spent their weekend eating a family-size bag of Doritos.

I think it will be hard for Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay to replicate the success of the original seems bigger, more absurd and ultimately less funny. Still, I'll be there. Probably a little buzzed, too.

In other news, a desperate NBC has ordered a pilot of the BBC's cars & celebs series, Top Gear. The show has been running on BBC America for a couple years now, I've seen a few episodes, notably one with Ewan McGregor. The show may be amusing depending upon which celebrities they line up, but it's no American Idol. Again, instead of coming up with something original, we're forced to watch rebranded concepts from overseas.

A Word or 56+/-: Even the movie selections suck tonight unless you want to watch an Ida Lupinow filmfest on TCM, which I really don't want to do. I'm superexcited to see Parker Posey on Late Late and hopefully I'll catch Feist on Conan after switching over. Tonight - Tuesday - June 12th, 2007 Mets @ Dodgers (PRIME, 7:00 p.m.) Angels @ Reds (Fox Sports, 7:30 p.m.) On the Lot (Fox, 8:00 p.m.) The...

OK so last night's Colbert/Decembrist Green Screen thing wasn't such a great premise but the line-up was incredible. Due to non-existent new programming somebody here suggested that I occupy my time with porn, but this is the TV Junkie spot, not the Porn Junkie spot, I'm not sure that the LAist editorial staff want that to happen yet, and no one has stepped forward to start supplying me with said porn yet either --...