Despite facing a brutal marketing challenge, Funny People managed to top the box office this weekend. Though it was the lowest-performing champ of the summer, the Judd Apatow-helmed laugher brought in $23.4M to hold off a resilient Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ($17.7M | $255.4M). The awful G-Force was a hair behind ($17M | $66.4M), followed by the awful The Ugly Truth ($13M | $54.4M) and the, uh, awful Aliens in the Attic ($7.8M). Orphan ($7.2M | $26.7M), Ice Age 3 ($5.3M | $181.8M), The Hangover ($5M | $255.7M), The Proposal ($4.8M | $148.8M) and Transformers 2 ($4.6M | $388.1M) rounded out the top 10.
Results tagged “rosebyrne”
If you're planning to see one movie this weekend, you should re-jigger your schedule and see four! Funny People would be an excellent place to start. It's Rogen, Apatow and Sandler's best film to date (LAist review here). Sure, it's not a straight comedy, but it is damn funny. You'll leave the film in a good mood, but that will quickly turn into righteous anger once you've seen The Cove. The best movie at the Sundance Film Festival this year (LAist reviews here and here), it's a thrilling and sad documentary about the annual dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan. I mean seriously, how many eco-documentaries have scenes inside ILM? The Cove is that cool. More to the point, it almost feels like a narrative film with all the intrigue and plot that go into capturing the wrenching footage of dolphins being mercilessly pitchforked in the water by giggling fisherman. See it!
Today NBC launched a 24-hour cable channel in New York called "New York Non-Stop", replete with expanded news coverage, on-location stories, and interactive elements. When can LA expect the same investment?
One of my favorite films of 2007 arrives to DVD today, , rectify that mistake today by buying the new, juicier version.
Cable networks continue to fire on all cylinders this last week. A new episode of Mad Men on AMC has revealed that everyone is flawed and that they're all potentially unredeemable. Last night's angel-stalked Holly Hunter (Saving Grace, TNT) has her thinking about cleaning up her act but despite being a tough girl, she's weak and human and falls back into old habits. Tonight we get to see just a glimpse of the Machiavellian...
A review of the Fox Searchlight movie, Sunshine. The movie is directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, and stars Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Cliff Curtis, Michelle Yeoh, Hiroyuki Sanada, Rose Byrne, Benedict Wong, Troy Garity, and Mark Strong.
Danielson: A Family Movie (or Make a Joyful Noise Here) - A music documentary about oddball indie/pop/folk band the Danielson Famile. The film features appearances by Daniel Johnston and Steve Albini, as well as a young Sufjan Stevens, who was mentored by the band's "patriarch," Daniel Smith, and whose success would soon grow to outshine that of the Danielson Famile.
The Dead Girl - Writer-director Karen Moncrieff (Blue Car) weaves together five seemingly unrelated stories that reveal the circumstances surrounding the death of a young prostitute (Brittany Murphy). The ensemble cast includes Toni Collette, Marcia Gay Harden, Piper Laurie and Rose Byrne.
The Hitcher - Remake of the 1986 horror film, this time starring Sophia Bush and Zachary Knighton as a college couple stalked and terrorized by an evil hitchhiker (Sean Bean). Who knows? It might be sweet and quaint to recall a time when people actually picked up hitchhikers.
The Italian - Russian drama about a six-year-old boy who is on the verge of being adopted by an Italian couple but decides to run away and search for his mother.
