$132 million. I'll be damned. I didn't think it was physically possible for a 155-minute movie to make that much money over a three-day weekend.Consider the following... (All numbers are rounded off) Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (or...
Those who are familiar with my reviews know that the average length of one is about 700 words. There are times, however, when I display a tendency to ramble. Often, especially for films in the ** to **1/2 range, I don't have a lot to say. Mediocrity...
The following quote has been widely attributed to Good Morning America movie critic Joel Siegel: "Time to go! First movie I've walked out of in 30 fucking years!" The movie that so distrubed Siegel is Kevin Smith's Clerks II, a mildly raunchy but ...
NOTE: This will be the last "ReelThoughts" entry for a little while. After today, I will turn my attention to daily coverage of the Toronto Film Festival. Barring computer or travel snafus, the festival "blog" will have daily entries from September...
The site doesn't quite look the same as it did yesterday. I have been threatening for a while to do some kind of upgrade; I didn't expect it to come so soon. Sometimes I do things impulsively, and this is one of them. The new design is not ...
Every once in a while, I get an e-mail from someone asking me to write a "real" blog entry rather than a themed commentary. I usually demur, feeling that such "journal entries" can be egotistical and boring. (Unless you're Anne Frank, who wants to ...
Three years ago, New Line Cinema was the toast of Hollywood. They were an unstoppable force, destroying the competition at the box office and rolling to an Oscar blitz. 2003 was, of course, the year when the climax of Peter Jackson's The Lord of ...
In 1977, when director Richard Donner began filming Superman, he started work on what was intended to be a four hour epic that would be released in two parts. The goal was for Superman to enter the marketplace during the Christmas movie season of ...
While regarding the cover of a certain magazine depicting revealing images of Kiera Knightley and Scarlett Johanssen, several random thoughts came to mind. One was to wonder how many Oscar nominated actresses have done nude scenes during their ...
So what does it all mean? Damned if I know. So here are few musings and guesses. Feel free to disagree. This is 100% opinion.The roughly 80% for Lead Actresses seems like a high number. My guess is that it's higher than that of the actress ...
There are two ways to look at all the numbers I'm about to throw out: "Just the fact, ma'am" or "There are three kinds of untruths: lies, damn lies, and statistics." It's said there's no time like the present, so let's start there, with the last ...
As has been widely publicized recently, studios have decreased the number of films being made available in pre-release screenings for critics. Hardly a week goes by when one or more films is held back from an advance exposure. One might construe ...
The time has come for full disclosure. I feel as if I owe my readers an explanation about why ReelViews has, in less than one year, gone from being "The Largest Non-Commercial Movie-Related Site on the Net" to a site where it's tough to find a ...
It has always fascinated me how one person's work of comic genius can be another's bat guano. What impulses are there that tell our brains something is worth laughing at, and why are there dramatic differences in what intelligent people find funny? ...
Size is important. At least when it comes to video devices. But, depending on age, it's important in different ways. For kids and teenagers, small is big. But for adults, big is better. It all comes down to the application, and it sheds a great ...
There are three kinds of Star Wars fans:(1) The obsessive die-hards. Those who have devoted a large portion of their lives and creative energies to the films, and for whom it has attained a nearly religious status.(2) The more-than-casual fans. ...
The Dog Days have begun. They are so-named for that time of the year when Sirius (the "Dog Star") rises around the same time as the sun. That equates on the calendar to the period beginning in mid-July and ending in late August. Movie-lovers looking...