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The obsessives' guide to contemporary cinema via film discussion, news, reviews, features, nostalgia, movie music, soundtracks, DVDs and more.

Interviews

Discuss: After 'Project X,' 'Chronicle' & Universal's $5 Million Retool Of 'Ouija' Is Low-Budget The New Mega-Budget?

By Oliver Lyttelton
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March 7, 2012 2:58 PM
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3 Comments

Features

After a brutal year at the box office in 2011, with many seemingly sure-fire things underperforming, the studios have been breathing a sigh of relief in 2012 so far. For each of the nine weekends of 2012 so far, takings at U.S. theaters have been significantly higher than the equivalent weekendsin previous years, and two movies, "The Vow" and "Safe House," have already crossed the psychologically vital $100 million barrier, with "Dr. Seuss' The Lorax" a dead cert to join them by the end of next weekend.

By Drew Taylor
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January 13, 2012 11:00 AM
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2 Comments

News

In an event that no one saw coming, last weekend, the micro-budgeted found footage horror film "The Devil Inside," managed to scare up $34 million and displace "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" from the top of the box office heap. We got a chance this week to chat with director William Brent Bell and writer Matthew Peterman and they told us what it was like to be behind a huge smash, what's coming next, and what people think about that controversial ending (which led to the film's CinemaScore being a dismal F).

By Gabe Toro
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January 8, 2012 12:04 PM
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20 Comments

Box Office

The smash-and-grab -- who needs a fourth or fifth weekend, when you can nail down a profit after your first day? Paramount dipped into the kitty and spent a million producing “The Devil Inside” (through their low budget shingle Insurge) and a little bit of marketing later, we have our first big winner of the new year. Final estimates have the studio looking at a big $30 million+ weekend for the latest in a wave of cheap found-footage horror films.

By Katie Walsh
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January 6, 2012 5:06 PM
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0 Comments

News

Welcome to the first movie-going weekend of 2012! Hope you all had delightful New Year's celebrations filled with debauchery and poor judgment. The only way to ring in the new year in my opinion. Now that the Oscar race is heating up, there's still time to catch up with the glut of prestige pics released in the last few weeks of 2011, or you can explore some of the small new releases making their way to screens this weekend. Also, "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" opens nationwide today, so you can catch up with the Brit spy thriller if you haven't seen it yet.

By William Goss
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January 6, 2012 10:59 AM
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0 Comments

Reviews

In theory, the fundamental effectiveness of horror should spring from a willful dissonance between a sense of normalcy and the discord of the story’s events…but what happens when that sense of discord itself becomes all too familiar? Among the many problems of "The Devil Inside" is a slavish two-fold adherence to the routine of modern horror films – specifically, the tropes of the demonic-possession genre and those of the faux-documentary approach. When director William Brent Bell and co-writer Matthew Peterman, the brains behind the equally turgid "Stay Alive," aren’t evoking every single exorcism movie this side of, well, "The Exorcist," they’re dutifully aping the decade-old wave of imitation spawned by the success of "The Blair Witch Project" and fueled more recently by the "Paranormal Activity" franchise.

By Kevin Jagernauth
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October 17, 2011 9:36 AM
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4 Comments

Considering it was made on a shoestring budget, as part of Paramount's "micro-budget" shingle Insurge, "The Devil Inside" has probably already made it's cost on pre-sales, so it's likely no one at the studio particularly cares if this entry in the exorcism genre has absolutely nothing new to say.

By Oliver Lyttelton
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April 18, 2011 1:17 AM
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2 Comments

With the cost of movies ever rising, profit margins on the biggest budget pictures ain't what they used to be. With most tentpoles coming in around the $150 million mark these days (with some well over $200m), even without a press & advertising cost of at least 50% of the budget, the special-effects blockbusters of the world are lucky if they return double their investment to the studios on the theatrical take. So when the chance comes along for a low-budget flick to crossover, the studios are thankfully still interested.