Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris continues its torrid box office pace. When I talked to Allen right before he opened this year's Cannes Film Festival, he knew that he had a hit ("it's a hit, a big-titted hit!" as Robert Duvall says in Network). Sure enough, the movie has broken weekly house records a...
Read More »Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 smashed opening weekend records as moviegoers flocked to the ultimate event movie, the last in Warner Bros.' beloved eight-film series based on J.K. Rowling's global literary phenomenon. (See Richard Corliss's fine summation in Time.) Anthony D'Alessandro...
Read More »If you never studied Marshall McLuhan in school, you probably know him from his infamous cameo in Annie Hall, when Woody Allen pulls him out from behind a signpost to shame a fellow moviegoer who has been pontificating on McLuhan's theories (below).
Read More »The earlier a high-prestige art house movie opens in the fall, the less likely that its distributor harbors serious Oscar hopes for it. In other words, if Sony Pictures Classics moves Pedro Almodovar's retitled Skin I Live In from November to October, and slates Roman Polanski's Carnage on November ...
Read More »Midnight in Paris is shaping up as not only Woody Allen's widest release ever (1038 screens, more than Anything Else), but the filmmaker's biggest hit ever; it's on track to outscore Hannah and Her Sisters's $40 million domestic gross. Midnight in Paris dropped only 10% last weekend, for a total $21...
Read More »As Paramount labored to both downplay expectations and build up word-of-mouth via advance sneaks, Super 8 exceeded box office predictions and got off to a strong start. Anthony D'Alessandro reports:Super 8’s projector bulbs burned brighter than expected as Paramount’s sci-fi drama bested its lowest ...
Read More »I had a smile on my face from the moment Woody Allen’s latest film began, with an idyllic series of Parisian street scenes set to the music of jazz great Sidney Bechet…and the film maintained that lovely quality all the way to the finale. Allen may be a fatalist, as he often cla...
Read More »Woody Allen's latest, "Midnight in Paris," begins its roll-out in theaters today, and with it comes the second part of our complete retrospective on the great writer-director's work. (check out yesterday's Part One here). We pick up in 1992, with "Shadows and Fog.&qu...
Read More »Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides may be commanding 81% of Fandango's ticket sales -- and could score a $90 million weekend -- but it's getting a critical spanking. To be surprised and delighted rather than lulled into a familiar open-eyed coma, go to Woody Allen's delightful Midnight in P...
Read More »As promised, Kris Tapley and I break our post-Oscar silence with a special Cannes edition of Oscar Talk with In Contention's London correspondent Guy Lodge. We cover the films in contention for the Palme d'Or, from Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, starring Brad Pitt, and censured filmmaker Lars v...
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