Race to Witch Mountain knocked Watchmen off the top spot in movie box office receipts this past weekend. S. T. Karnick explains why.
Posts Tagged ‘ movie ’
Abba Movie Musical Surprises with Box-Office Record
The movie musical Mamma Mia! finished a strong second to The Dark Knight in the weekend box office race last week—setting a record for its genre.
Ouija Board to Star in New Movie
Filmmaker Michael Bay will make a new thriller centering on use of a Ouija board. This is more important than it may sound.
Dark Honeymoon Comedy Off to a Bad Start at Box Office
The past weekend’s movie box office statistics provide another reminder that many people are tired of the forced bleakness and unpleasant nature of much of what the culture offers today. As E! News reports: Stiller’s new comedy, The Heartbreak Kid, opened with a disappointing $14 million, per estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations Sunday, and the box office suffered its third straight down weekend when compared with last fall. That makes it "Stiller’s weakest-ever opening for a movie that debuted at more 3,000 theaters, according to Box Office Mojo stats. It is a far cry—and many millions—from Meet the Fockers, which opened with $46.1 million in 2004, and last year’s Night at the Museum, which jumped out to a start of $30.4 million," E! reports.
The Admirable Conciseness of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer topped the U.S. box office during the past week, performing very well at the box office while garnering generally negative reviews. The audiences are right on this one (as usual).
“300″ Movie’s Historical Accuracy
USA Today has an excellent article in which the author interviews historian Paul Cartledge, author of Thermopylae: The Battle that Changed the World, about the historical accuracy of the movie 300, which premieres this Friday nationwide. The film was based on the accouint in Herodotus’s Histories, by way of a graphic novel by Frank Miller. Cartledge saw a preview of the movie, and the news is good: The historical record is (pretty much) Book 7 of Herodotus’ Histories. What the movie leaves out is that Sparta didn’t fight the Persians alone but as the head of a Greek alliance that included, most importantly, Athens. Sparta was the greatest Greek military power on land, Athens by sea. The resistance to the massive Persian invasion had to be an amphibious one, both by land and by sea, to counter the Persians’ amphibious invasion. So the filmmakers missed out that Leonidas and his Spartans were attempting to hold the Thermopylae pass by land in conjunction with the allied Greek fleet led by Athens just up the coast. However, there are two points about this Greek alliance: 1. It was tiny — only about 30 Greek cities out of 700 or so who might
Is “Amazing Grace” Irreligious?
In an article on William Wilberforce and Amazing Grace in the Opinion Journal, Charlotte Allen of the religious website Beliefnet.com argues that the movie covers up the Christian foundations of William Wilberforce’s political activities that led to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire: Alas, a lot of people watching "Amazing Grace," Michael Apted’s just-released film, may get the impression–perhaps deliberately fostered by Mr. Apted–that Wilberforce was a mostly secular humanitarian whose main passion was not Christian faith but politics and social justice. This is an utterly astonishing claim. I categorically disagree with Ms. Allen’s assessment of the film. To give evidence of an absence in a film is difficult, of course, but it is significant that she doesn’t give any examples of specific instances in which Amazing Grace slights religion. All she provides is an interview statement by the film’s director, Michael Apted, to Christianity Today in which he clearly meant to convey that he wanted to avoid preachiness in the film. That is a statement for which I would commend him. In great contrast with Allen’s assessment, the reviewer for Christianity Today enthusiastically endorsed the film: Similar to Chariots of Fire and Shadowlands in tone, Amazing Grace
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