Weekend Boxoffice Report December 17th – 19th

Its a soft weekend which is understandable considering its the last shopping weekend before Christmas. The biggest film hits $43million, which is extra soft when that film is as anticipated as Tron Legacy.

Boxoffice Mojo has the estimates:

Tron Legacy – $43,600,000 – Opening
Yogi Bear – $16,705,000 – Opening
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – $12,400,000 – 2wks
The Fighter – $12,200,000 – 2wks
The TouristSony – $8,700,000 – 2wks

I figured Tron would be on top, and Yogi Bear would do well, but didn’t think it would grab the #2 spot with Narnia still making the rounds.

The big boo boo this week wasn’t a sidekick bear however, as starpower rom-com How Do You Know secured itself an embarassing $7.6m earning them a #8 spot on its opening week. Ouch.

So what did you see this weekend?

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Worthington Promises Wrath of the Titans Will be Better

Sam Worthington is joining the new Hollywood tradition of admitting you made a bad movie. But with Wrath of the Titans he is promising will be a better film.

Empire shares:

“I think we can improve [on Clash],” Worthington told Moviefone. “I totally agree the first one let people down, and what the writers, the director and myself are setting out to do with this one is improve. I want to take all the notes I’ve been reading on the net, and try to give people a movie they fucking want.”

It’s good to know that Worthington – an actor hired to play in a movie – is spear heading the movie himself.

I appreciate his enthusiasm for the franchise and his hopes that it will be better. But I am pretty sure this is not his call.

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Snyder’s Superman to film in Vancouver

It was good enough for Smallville, so why not have the bigscreen Superman film in Vancouver Canada as well?

And that is exactly what is happening.

Live For Films says:

Zack Snyder’s Superman: The Man of Steel is heading to Vancouver next Summer.

“[Zack Snyder’s] next feature’s coming here,” said Peter Leitch, chair of the Motion Picture Production Industry Association of BC and president of North Shore Studios and Mammoth Studios.

They still don’t have the Big Blue Boyscout cast yet, but I hope people don’t chalk up the filming location to think that Tom Welling has a shot at this. Welling has been living in Vancouver for the past decade, but this is not a Smallville movie.

Vancouver has been a staple of the Hollywood outsourcing for years, and is rapidly taking the “Hollywood North” moniker away from Toronto.

I am sure Superman will do fine there. The parts that are in Metropolis anyways. For foreign deserts Alberta has the Badlands. For Mountains we have the better looking part of the Rockies, and Saskatchewan has the farms and small towns for Smallville.

You would think that someone involved in inventing Superman was originally Canadian.

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Review: Tron Legacy

Thanks for checking out our Tron Legacy Review

Genre: Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi
Directed by: Joseph Kosinski
Staring: Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Bruce Boxleitner, and Olivia Wilde
Released: December 17th, 2010

THE GENERAL IDEA

Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), the tech-savvy 27-year-old son of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), looks into his father’s disappearance and finds himself pulled into the digital world of Tron where his father has been living for 25 years. Along with Kevin’s loyal confidant Quorra (Olivia Wilde), father and son embark on a life-and-death journey of escape across a visually-stunning cyber universe that has become far more advanced and exceedingly dangerous.

THE GOOD

The film is beautiful. And I am not just talking about its more attractive stars, I mean every inch of the world of Tron is painstakingly inspiring. Digital dayglow and real landscapes mesh into a perfect fabricated world in which Sam’s father has been trapped for decades. And absolutely worth the 3D, as this film almost seems to want to be in 3D. In fact, all the scenes in the “real world” are effectively in 2D, and the Grid world are all in 3D. This makes the leap of settings that much more effective.

The soundtrack is awesome and so appropriate with Daft Punk offering their digital sound to the film. Every bit of this score is beautiful, and I downloaded it from iTunes on the way home from the theater. Just incredible stuff there.

Considering the film is a 28 years later sequel, I was surprised the effort that went into the nods to the original series. Even with Bruce Boxleitner only being in such a small part of the movie he was a great nod to the original. And a LOT of nostalgia for the original film is a big part of what makes this film enjoyable which this delivers in spades without isolating the new audience that would not be familiar with the first movie.

THE BAD

The plot itself is weak. Clu (young Bridges) runs the grid, and has nothing to gain by eliminating the creator and his interloping son, but he acts like his very existance is threatened by it. In fact his true mission is to get something from old Flynn that will reverse the travel between worlds and allow him to leave the Grid and enter the real world. What he figured he would do once out there is oddly irrelevant and never really explained. Would he have any power or ability in the real world? Not the best villain and better listing him as “the opposition” instead.

That and every character in the movie is just there to spell out what’s going on in this strange new world. No one has a purpose except to explain something new. Very little character development at all in the supporting cast.

Young Jeff Bridges comes SO close to being perfect but when you catch those moments that remind you he is digital it ruins it. SO CLOSE!

Cillian Murphy makes an uncredited cameo appearance in this film as a character named Edward Dillinger. If I hadn’t watched my DVD copy of Tron yesterday, I might not have recalled the significance but David Warner played the badguy in the original Tron and his name was Ed Dillinger. Cool right? But no. No purpose for the charcter, no tie in, no plot involvement. He is just there as an easter egg name dropping the badguy from the first film, but they do very little with him. Why get such a known actor to play the part then if they are just name dropping. Seems a lot of effort to do nothing.

OVERALL

A lot of fun, and I cannot stress just how enjoyable the movie is in visuals alone. I do wish that they had gone deeper into character development instead of a succession of show-and-tell moments, but what is good about this movie is SO good that you find the complaints about the other stuff to be particularily minor.

Still I cannot give the movie a top rating just because the visuals and action deserve it, but I will say that if any film NEEDS to be seen in 3D, this might be it.

I give Tron Legacy a 7 out of 10

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Phil Noyce will not Direct Salt 2

There have been talks that Salt would be seeing a sequel, but word has it the director of the first film – Phil Noyce wants nothing to do with it.

Dark Horizons says:

“Those three [alternate] Blu-ray cuts [of the film] represent just about everything I have to offer on Evelyn Salt. If there ever is a sequel, better its directed by someone with a completely fresh take on what I believe could be a totally entertaining and complex series of stories” says Noyce.

Salt was an OK film, so I wasn’t really looking forward to a sequel. I could see how Noyce thinks this is a complete story, for him at least.

Is there really anything to sequel from this film? It felt pretty complete to me.

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Cruise and Paltrow in Rock of Ages Movie?

The popular stage rock opera looks to be making the leap to the big screen and its lead male role may just go to Tom Cruise while another role has been offered to Gwyneth Paltrow.

Hollywood Reporter says:

“It sounds cool,” Paltrow told EW on the red carpet at the Country Strong premiere. “I just got the script and I will read it on the plane home tomorrow. But it sounds like it could be fun.”
As for Cruise, producer Jenno Topping told EW, “It’s real, although it is not cemented.”

Gwyneth Paltrow has been doing a lot of singing lately. With an appearance on Glee and Country Strong her co-star and real country singer Tim McGraw even suggested that she open for his next tour.

And if anyone has seen Top Gun we know Cruise is fearless about singing, and Risky Business proved he is fearless about dancing.

The stage musical is about a late 80s bus boy who has dreams of becoming a rock star, and he falls for a girl who encourages him to go after his dreams. Adding Cruise as a 48 year old bus boy, it makes the crushed dream that much more impacting.

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The Films of 2010 in The Cinescape

YouTube mashup star Matt Shapiro has put together a glimpse at a big pile of the major films that have come out this year into one video he calls The Cinescape.

I like how the collected shots are not just some random spatterings of moments from the films, but rather all tied together by a theme as the song goes on.

Very well put together and encapsulates the past year rather well.

What was your favourite films this year?

Via

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