TOP 100 ACTOR SITES
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| Decision to quit not about money, Ross says. Jonathan Ross, the BBC’s highest-paid TV star, sensationally quit today after 13 years at the Corporation. breakingnews.ie |
Avatar's on the up but Nowhere Boy's going … nowhere With a little help from Sherlock Holmes, Avatar is sustaining the UK box office through a weak January that's seen especially disappointing receipts for Sam Taylor-Wood's John Lennon biopicThe winnerWhile the chatter about Avatar's box office sales is now all about whether it can beat Titanic's $1.8bn (£1.1bn) to become the world's biggest ever box office hit, the sci-fi spectacle still has a few more obstacles in its path in the UK. In the first place, although it leapfrogged Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and Up over the last seven days, it still needs to gross another £9m just to become the biggest-grossing release of 2009 (currently Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince), never mind of all time. In fact, clearing that £50m hurdle won't even earn it a place in the all-time UK top 10.Looked at another way, however, Avatar continues to do spectacular business: its takings of £4.77m for 8-10 January are the best ever for the fourth weekend of a film in the UK. The figure compares with £3.85m for Titanic on its fourth weekend, £3.44m for Up and £3.17m for Mamma Mia! – all titles noted for their box office staying power. The only grey cloud on Avatar's horizon is a 20% dip since the previous weekend, although it's worth noting that snowy conditions have been even more challenging for cinemagoers than they were over the 1-3 January period. Every other film in the chart, except Sherlock Holmes, fell by at least 50%. Despite playing at more than 300 2D screens, only 7% of the weekend's Avatar gross was contributed by 2D – barely more than the proportion contributed by nine IMAX cinemas.The runner-upSherlock Holmes, enjoying the second-smallest decline in the chart, posted its third straight weekend at £2m-plus. Takings of £15.68m to date earn it 17th place among 2009's movies, and compare with lifetime totals for Guy Ritchie's previous big hits of £11.78m for Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and £12.34m for Snatch. Sherlock Holmes has every chance of cracking £20m, which must surely be at the top end of expectations for Ritchie and backers Warner Bros.The new playersWith Avatar and Sherlock Holmes continuing to dominate, several new releases fought to make their mark. Over the three days of Jan 8-10, Meryl Streep romcom It's Complicated just pipped vampire flick Daybreakers, with £1.10m v £1.07m. But when you add in Thursday's takings to the latter, it wins the crown as the top new release. Neither film is exactly doing gangbusters business, and the It's Complicated figure compares with a £2.83m opening for director Nancy Meyers's previous film The Holiday (admittedly boosted by a stellar cast including Cameron Diaz and Jude Law), and a £1.22m debut for Something's Gotta Give (with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson) in 2003. Meyers's films are not cheap – she shoots famously slowly, presumably because each vine-ripened tomato has to look absolutely perfect – and backers Universal would have hoped for a bit more.The alternativesWe are now in the corridor leading up to the Baftas and Oscars, but we have yet to see the launch of a major awards contender in 2010. Unless, that is, we are still counting The Road, despite a lack of good omens from the nominations announced thus far. As for box office sales, the film opened sturdily, with £627,000 from 157 sites, and a screen average just shy of £4,000. That's nowhere near the debut of the previous film taken from a Cormac McCarthy novel – No Country for Old Men opened with £1.26m including previews, from 164 screens – but compares favourably with the first weekends of three of last year's Best Picture nominees: The Reader (£671,000 from 199 screens), Frost/Nixon (£591,000 from 307) and Milk (£336,000 from 131). And, let's face it, The Road's ultra-gritty subject matter – environmental apocalypse, grief, cannibalism, impending death – is hardly the easiest sell.The Road's result is also far ahead of the other new specialist title: Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll. The Ian Dury biopic debuted with £174,000 from 131 screens and an anaemic £1,327 average. Mat Whitecross's film earned mostly positive reviews, but Dury isn't well known by the under-30s, and Andy Serkis isn't a proven box office draw in a leading role. The opening compares unfavorably with that of Control £252,000 from just 71 screens – suggesting that Ian Curtis and Joy Division, while lacking the huge chart hits enjoyed by Dury, are now more revered. Another apt comparison might be Bronson – with which Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll shares stylistic similarities. That biopic debuted last April with £258,000 from 85 cinemas.The loserWhile the box office chart is not short of big fallers, few can match Sam Taylor-Wood's Nowhere Boy, which tumbled a troubling 67% on its third weekend of play, and now has a screen average of £795. Since it's also a rock biopic of sorts – although the focus is on the teen John Lennon's relationship with his mother and aunt, and the words "the Beatles" are never uttered – it may have been especially vulnerable to competition from the newly arrived Dury flick. Nowhere Boy featured strongly on last week's long list for the Bafta awards, especially in the acting categories, but the paying public seems less enthused than the British Academy voters.The futureDespite the continuing success of Avatar, the market overall is 1% down on the equivalent weekend from 2009, when Slumdog Millionaire, Role Models and Bride Wars all opened strongly. In other words, UK cinemas have a lot to thank James Cameron for – without his film, the January box office would be trailing last year badly. With the next few weeks hardly packed with surefire winners, Avatar will have its work cut out to keep the market buoyant. Having said that, highly regarded awards contender Up in the Air, starring George Clooney, should do well, and it is joined on Friday by the post-apocalypse thriller Book of Eli, which boasts Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman. Sandra Bullock will struggle to repeat her The Proposal success with the critically reviled comedy All About Steve, and then there is UK gangster drama 44 Inch Chest, from the writers of Sexy Beast.UK top 101. Avatar, £4,770,980 from 493 sites. Total: £40,991,7972. Sherlock Holmes, £2,026,732 from 486 sites. Total: £15,676,5653. Daybreakers, £1,344,588 from 378 sites (New)4. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, £1,220,271 from 489 sites. Total: £15,006,6265. It's Complicated, £1,098,659 from 434 sites (New)6. The Road, £627,147 from 157 sites (New)7. Did You Hear About the Morgans?, £558,415 from 397 sites. Total: £2,247,3508. Nine, £338,454 from 369 sites. Total: £2,401,9829. St Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold, £293,904 from 390 sites. Total: £6,182,13110. Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, £173,831 from 131 sites (New)How the other openers didDulha Mil Gaya, 48 screens, £70,176 + £1,584 previewsPyaar Impossible, nine screens, £16,207It Might Get Loud, 12 screens, £6,171 + £5,814 in previewsMugabe and the White African, three screens, £5,470Treeless Mountain, six screens, £5,420Mitti, six screens, £3,090Exam, three screens, £2,794 + £1,107 previewsFireball, two screens, £392BaftasJames CameronScience fiction and fantasyAndy SerkisCharles Gantguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Schiffer expecting third child Supermodel Claudia Schiffer and her British film director husband Matthew Vaughn are expecting a third child, it was announced today. breakingnews.ie |
Raise a toast to Mariah Carey and her fortuitously-timed champagne launch Last week she was blaming her ebulliant awards acceptance speech on 'splashes of champage'. Now, Mariah Carey has launched her own brand of fizz. How's that for brilliant timing?It's no secret that Mariah Carey is an exceptional polymath. It doesn't matter what you ask of her – maybe you've asked her to take most of her clothes off and sing a song about Christmas, or maybe you've asked her to perform the world's most superfluous cover version of Foreigner's I Want to Know What Love Is in the style of a dolphin enmeshed in a tuna net – Mariah Carey will always prevail.And recently this mastery of all trades has extended in two new directions. First, thanks to her well-received role in Precious, Mariah has learned how to act – or at the very least she's learned how to take her makeup off and mumble about incest. And this acting prowess is directly responsible for Mariah's second skill – as a virtuoso of méthode Champenoise. That's right, Carey has decided to make her own range of champagne. Last week she updated her Twitter feed – usually home to such breathtaking insights as, "Test your knowledge of MC's lyrics by singing along to her songs, get the Mariah Carey-oke LyrIQ iPhone App" – with the stark cry: "ANGEL CHAMPAGNE (ROSE) by MC coming soon!"What has Carey's role in Precious got to do with the fact that she's about to start selling a beverage that'll undoubtedly taste like a bottle of sweat that's had an AA battery dropped in it? Everything, that's what. If she wasn't so eye-opening in Precious, then she wouldn't have won the best breakthrough actress award at the Palm Springs International film festival earlier this month. And if she didn't win, then the world wouldn't have seen her hilariously boozed-up acceptance speech.It's undoubtedly a good thing that we did, of course – between the unfocused gaze, the unexplained silences and the way that the audience began to clap her off a full minute before she decided to stop talking, Carey's speech transcended the boundaries of what anybody could have possibly expected from her – but we've had our fun. And now she is going to make us pay the only way she knows how – with overpriced pink plonk.That said, the announcement does seem suspiciously well-timed. On 6 January, Carey was blaming her acceptance speech on "splashes of champagne" and barely a week later she's announcing her own line of champagne? What if – and we're really going down the rabbit-hole here, people – Carey already knew about her champagne line, and decided to ramble on like some kind of bleary-eyed Scotsman during the awards as a promotional tactic? It's unlikely, but remember that this is Mariah Carey we're talking about – normal human rules don't apply.Still, once she's conquered the world of champagne production in the same manner that she's conquered the worlds of unbearable wedding songs and looking dowdy in sad films, it'll be time for Mariah Carey to move on again. What'll she prevail at next? Here's hoping it's either the development of a cheap, clean energy source or millinery or something.Film industryMariah CareyAwards and prizesStuart Heritageguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Baldwin: Bowers 'using the forces of darkness' to win CBB Stephen Baldwin thinks Dane Bowers could win 'Celebrity Big Brother' with the help of the devil. breakingnews.ie |