Thompson on Hollywood

Weekend Box Office: Last Exorcism Over Takers in Summer Photo Finish

Two pictures vied for the top slot on the last slow dog-days-of-summer weekend. At press time it looked like Lionsgate's The Last Exorcism was beating out Sony/Screen Gems' Takers. Meanwhile holdovers The Expendables and Eat Pray Love hung onto slices of the top-five b.o. pie, reports Anthony D'Alessandro.

By Anthony D'Alessandro
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August 29, 2010 4:28 AM
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Scott Pilgrim vs. Universal and the Matrix

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World's bottom line comes down to the same problem that has faced a long line of Universal projects. It was an indie movie that cost too much to be successful inside the studio paradigm and should have been produced and released on a smaller less ambitious scale at the studio's specialty division Focus Features, which could have nurtured it and sent it into the world on a more limited basis and built on the film's strong word-of-mouth from its narrow base. To them a $12 million gross would have been fine. To Universal, it's less than the film's marketing budget. (A funny mash-up of Scott Pilgrim vs. The Matrix is below.)

By Anne Thompson
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August 23, 2010 11:37 AM
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Box Office: Expendables Holds Off All New Takers on Weak Weekend

It's the dog days of August indeed as the mighty Expendables threw off all new challengers and cheapie Twilight parody Vampires Suck outperformed Eat Pray Love on its second go-round. Anthony D'Alessandro does the numbers. (UPDATED.)

By Anthony D'Alessandro
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August 22, 2010 4:26 AM
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Weekend Box Office: Expendables Pulls Men, Eat Pray Love Gets Women

Both Sylvester Stallone and Julia Roberts marked their best openings in years with a boost from a raft of action stars in The Expendables and femme fans of the Elizabeth Gilbert bestseller Eat Pray Love, respectively. Comic-book youth film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World stumbled out of the starting gate. Anthony D'Alessandro does the numbers:

By Anthony D'Alessandro
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August 15, 2010 4:19 AM
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Eat Pray Love Early Review: A Shallow Guilty Pleasure

Ryan Murphy's film adaptation of Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestseller about the divorced New Yorker's lone odyssey to Italy, India and Bali in search of meaning in her life, delivers an escapist Julia Roberts romance and exotic travelogue. But its pleasures are guilty and skin-deep.

By Anne Thompson
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August 11, 2010 7:23 AM
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September Issues Star Women in 40s, Witherspoon's Peggy Lee Biopic, Casting Hunger Games Franchise

- On the covers of this year's top September issues--the fattest and most important fashion magazines of the year--are established actresses in their 40s, who editors are counting on to sell as many magazines as possible. These glamour icons are out-dressing and out-charming their twenty-something and thirty-something peers (one exception is Vanity Fair's Lady Gaga cover). September Vogue (whose cover models' age average over the past year is the highest at 34.5) features Halle Berry (44 this weekend); Harper's Bazaar went with Jennifer Aniston (41); and Elle boasts Julia Roberts (42).

By Sophia Savage
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August 10, 2010 5:29 AM
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Directors Talk: Vaughn on Super-Hero Movies, Cameron on Avatar 2 and Oil, Murphy on Eat, Pray, Love

- Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake, Kick-Ass) tells Hero Complex that the quality control of super hero movies (which have been "mined to death") is "not what it's supposed to be." Vaughn jumped on the chance to do X-Men: First Class, because people are getting bored of the super-hero frenzy, which can't last forever. After producing, directing and co-writing Kick-Ass, a big budget superhero film is something Vaughn has always wanted to do - and an opportunity that may not be on offer again. He withdrew from the opportunity to direct the third X-Men installment (he didn't feel ready at the time), and it went to Brett Ratner. Now Vaughn says that he would have done a better job (100 times better to be exact). When X-Men: First Class comes out next summer, the box office will be crowded with protagonists in tights, like Captain America, Thor and Green Lantern - what Vaughn calls a too-crowded room.

By Sophia Savage
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August 9, 2010 5:30 AM
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Roberts Talks Eat Pray Love, Tucci Directs Streep, Galifianakis Comedies, Von Trier's Melancholia

- In this week's Eat Pray Love EW cover story, Julia Roberts reveals that she declined the option to have a spit bucket, preferring to actually eat all of the food during the Eat portion of the film set in Italy. The 7 to 10 pounds Roberts gained was exactly what her character needed to do before moving on to the praying and loving; an authentic rediscovery of her taste for life and abandonment of joyless eating (and living). As for Roberts' working relationship with director Ryan Murphy--a healthy one, since they're working together again --Roberts says "one of the things I love the most about Ryan is that he has a real legitimate answer for everything. There’s nothing that he hasn’t considered weeks before I’ve thought of the question."

By Sophia Savage
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July 29, 2010 5:29 AM
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Trailer Watch: Eat Pray Love and Salt Star Roberts and Jolie

Two leading ladies, two very different films. One puts Angelina Jolie through an identity crisis in Salt's neo-cold war atmosphere, the other stars Julia Roberts in a big-budget adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's bestseller, Eat, Pray, Love. Jolie and Roberts are two of the highest-earning, name-brand A-listers in the business. See the trailers below for these summer movies. Eat Pray Love could prove welcome summer programming for adults, especially women, while Jolie could inject an element of the unexpected in Salt, which was originally set to star Tom Cruise.

By Cameron Carlson
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July 7, 2010 9:15 AM
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Oscar Talk Summer Edition: Pre-Cannes Season Survey

In Contention's Kris Tapley, refreshed after a sojourn from his labors, and I reconvene for a summer edition of Oscar Talk. We cover the lacklustre spring season, look forward to Cannes and the summer, and dissect Iron Man 2.