Universal’s feel-good musical ‘Mamma Mia’ has totaled an eye-popping $307 million outside the United States, dwarfing its $139 million domestic take. And with back-to-back first-place finishes, it has kept overall foreign business decent at a time when moviegoing often lags.
This is not a great Coen brothers’ film. Nor is it one of their bewildering excursions off the deep end. It’s funny, sometimes delightful, sometimes a little sad, with dialogue that sounds perfectly logical until you listen a little more carefully and realize all of these people are mad. The movie is only 96 minutes long. That’s long enough for a movie, but this time, I dunno, I thought the end felt like it arrived a little arbitrarily.
A cleverly written and humorous script by renowned playwright and director Martin McDonagh, together with outstanding performances by Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes, results in one very brilliant film.
On September 8th, 1966, the world was transported for the first time to the 23rd century and the final frontier. On TV screens across America, “The Man Trap” introduced Star Trek and ushered in a franchise that endures to this day.
Most people think of science fiction movies as hard and rational. But remember when the poster boy for all that is logical, Spock (Leonard Nimoy), died in 1982’s Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan? Come on, admit it: You had “a little something in your eye” at that moment.
Darren Aronofksy’s drama “The Wrestler,” starring Mickey Rourke as Randy (the Ram) Robinson, a washed out pro-wrestler in comeback mode — both on and off the screen, it turns out — has pinned down the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion, providing the Lido with a grand finale. The Silver Lion for best director went to Russia’s Aleksey German Jr. for Kazakhstan-set “Paper Soldier,” centering around the Soviet space program in the 1960s.
Columbia Pictures has set “The Office” co-exec producers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky to write a script for a new ‘Ghostbusters’ film designed to bring back together the original cast of Harold Ramis, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson.
New York, New York: A city so nice they keep destroying it. In science fiction films, that is. The Big Apple is arguably the city most likely to be devastated by a giant monster or natural disaster in movies, in part because it has such lovely landmarks to devastate.
The first film, which starred James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie, was based on Mark Millar’s graphic novel. After its recent box office success, Millar was reportedly approached by Universal Pictures who were keen on making ‘Wanted 2′… and it seems Millar is just as keen to develop the story.
The Ben Stiller comedy “Tropic Thunder” was the most-watched movie across North American over the long US Labor Day weekend, but it was “The Dark Knight” that made news by breaking the 500-million-dollar mark, industry figures showed Sunday. Debuting at second place was Babylon A.D., a sci-fi action thriller starring Vin Diesel and Michelle Yeoh which earned 12 million dollars.