11 articles from 2008
15 July 2008 4:57 PM, PDT | From ifc.com | See recent IFC news
By Neil Pedley
This week sees the opening of "The Dark Knight." Advance marketing and coverage might have you believe that that, apparently, is all, but there are other films coming out this week well worth your time. (Besides, "The Dark Knight" is totally going to be sold out.)
With Britain in the midst of a youth crime epidemic, Irish investigative reporter Donald McIntyre takes an unflinching look at Dominic Noonan, a granddad of the English gangland who's spent over half his life behind bars. Having legally changed his name to Lattlay Fottfoy (an acronym of the Noonan motto . "Look After Those That Look After You; Fuck Off Those That Fuck Off You"), the openly gay head of Manchester's most notorious crime family shows off his gentler side as a man who uses his reputation to position himself as a "problem solver" more concerned with the
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Neil Pedley
12 July 2008 9:00 PM, PDT | From NYPost.com | See recent New York Post news
Category: Drama
Holy revenge
Grace (Holly Hunter) confronts her past in the second-season premiere "Saving Grace." While off duty, Grace chases down a subject who turns out to be one of the FBI's Most Wanted. Afterwards, she is hailed a hero. But nobody is aware of what she was really doing on her day off, a shocking secret involving the priest who molested her as a child.
Monday, 10 p.m., TNT
Category: Reality
Pass the Alka-Seltzer
Five brave and presumably hungry contestants enter the wide world of competitive eating competitions on "Hurl!
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By ROBERT RORKE
10 July 2008 9:23 PM, PDT | From screeninglog.com | See recent screeninglog news
R&B star Chris Brown is in negotiations to star in John Lussenhop’s upcoming thriller “Bone Deep,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The plot centers on a gang of criminals who plan a tricky heist at a money depot. Matt Dillon, Idris Elba and rapper T.I. (Clifford Joseph Harris Jr.) are already on board.
Brown celebrated his big-screen debut with last year’s success hit “Stomp the Yard.” He also starred in Preston A. Whitmore’s surprise comedy “This Christmas.”
Could “Bone Deep” be the “Mad Money” for men? I know it’s going to be thriller and not a comedy, but a bunch of gangsters trying to rob a money depot sounds somewhat familiar. Time will tell.
Franck Tabouring
16 June 2008 10:00 PM, PDT | From PEOPLE.com | See recent PEOPLE.com news
After signing on to be a Jenny Craig spokeswoman in January, Queen Latifah has shed a few pounds and is continuing her mission of encouraging others to lead a healthy lifestyle. The Mad Money star, 38, who is known for embracing her curves, said her weight loss goal wasn't "about getting skinny." "My intention was to lose five to 10 percent of my body weight because it makes a difference with health related issues, and I achieved that goal in a couple of months," she told People at the first annual National Awards & Recognition Luncheon for The League recently. "I'm excited about this weight loss.
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Christina Tapper
18 April 2008 9:10 AM, PDT | From PEOPLE.com | See recent PEOPLE.com news
Last year, Suri Cruise celebrated her first birthday with a lunch at her parents' compound in Los Angeles, where members of both the Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes clans gathered to dine on pizza and cupcakes from a Beverly Hills bakery. This April 18, as she turns 2, it seems that the birthday girl got an early start on gathering her presents. In January, as her mother was promoting her movie Mad Money in Manhattan, Suri and Katie managed to hit toy heaven – better known as Fao Schwarz – where Tom threw Katie her own birthday bash in 2005. As history has proven, birthdays
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18 March 2008 5:42 AM, PDT | From buddytv.com | See recent BuddyTV news
The two-hour second-to-last episode of The Celebrity Apprentice airs this Thursday and I could not care less about it's outcome. That's not saying I'm not looking forward to the episode. I am, but not because I'm invested in who eventually wins. Now that Omarosa is gone, and four worthy Apprentice contestants remain, my rooting interests have become muted. Since The Apprentice is now being played for charity, viewers aren't really rooting for specific people. To root for a contestant is to root for a charity and, by extension, to root for one charity is to root against three charities. That's not something I'm interested in. What I am looking forward to is all of the fired Celebrity Apprentice contestants returning to help the two finalists in one last task.
Cnbc's Jim Cramer (Mad Money) will join Donald Trump at the beginning of Thursday's episode to help decide which of the
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BuddyTV
28 January 2008 | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news
The low-budget Meet the Spartans, a spoof of last year's 300 from Warner Bros., earned as much as it cost to produce at the domestic box office over the weekend, taking in an estimated $18.7 million and edging out Rambo, from Lionsgate and the Weinstein Co., which finished in second place with about $18.2 million, according to box-office trackers Media by Numbers. The two films knocked last week's winner, Cloverfield to fourth place. After grossing $44.3 million over the four-day Martin Luther King Day holiday, Cloverfield garnered just $12.7 million in its second weekend, a 72-percent drop. It was beaten by the film it trounced a week ago, 20th Century Fox's 27 Dresses. Debuting in fifth place was Sony's Untraceable, which took in a better-than-expected $11.2 million. Continuing to amaze was Fox Searchlight's Juno, which passed the $100-million mark an upped its gross from last week despite losing some 100 theaters. The top ten films for the weekend, according to studio estimates compiled by Media by Numbers: 1. Meet the Spartans, $18.7 million; 2. Rambo, $18.2 million; 3. 27 Dresses, $13.6 million; 4. Cloverfield, $12.7 million; 5. Untraceable, $11.2 million; 6. Juno, $10.3 million; 7. The Bucket List, $10.2 million; 8. There Will be Blood, $4.9 million; 9. National Treasure:Book of Secrets, $4.7 million; 10. Mad Money, $4.6 million.
23 January 2008 | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news
The box office posted solid results on Monday, the Martin Luther King Day holiday, with the top 12 movies recording $27 million in ticket sales, according to final figures released Tuesday by Media by Numbers. Paramount's Cloverfield led the pack with a gross of $6.09 million. It also set a record for the four-day holiday with a total of $46.1 million. It's three-day total of $40 million set a weekend record for January, erasing the previous record of $35 million set by Star Wars (Special Edition) in 1997. Paramount says that the total budget for Cloverfield was just $25 million, although it was assumed that the studio spent far more than that to promote it. In a successful effort at counter-programming, Fox's 27 Dresses came in second with $27.4 million for the holiday, $4.43 million of which was earned on Monday. The top ten films over the four-day Martin Luther King Day holiday weekend, according to final figures compiled by Media by Numbers (figures in parentheses represent total gross to date): 1. Cloverfield, Paramount, $46,146,546, (New); 2. 27 Dresses, Fox, $27,442,040, (New); 3. The Bucket List, Warner Bros., $16,664,347, 5 Wks., $44,223,780; 4. Juno, Fox Searchlight, $11,966,082, 7 Wks., $87,092,615; 5. National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Disney, $9,606,326, 5 Wks., $199,489,171; 6. First Sunday, Sony Screen Gems, $9,504,908, 2 Wks., $30,170,510; 7. Alvin and the Chipmunks, Fox, $9,433,049, 6 Wks., $198,813,230; 8. Mad Money, Overture Films, $9,273,645, (New); 9. I Am Legend, Warner Bros., $5,905,443, 6 Wks., $248,482,867; 10. Atonement, Focus, $5,528,377, 7 Wks., $32,653,183.
21 January 2008 | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news
Cloverfield turned out to be not quite the equal of 1998's Godzilla in its opening weekend, but the monster movie nevertheless became the biggest hit of the year as it took in $41 million domestically. By contrast, Godzilla earned an estimated $55.7 million, but that was during the Memorial Day holiday. Moreover, ticket sales for Godzilla quickly trailed off, and the movie wound up with a domestic gross of $136 million. Cloverfield is now expected to exceed that figure. What's more, Godzilla had a budget of $130 million; Cloverfield was made for just $25 million. Debuting in second place was 20th Century Fox's 27 Dresses, which also exceeded prediction with sales of $22.4 million. Two other newcomers did not fare as well. Mad Money took in $7.7 million. Opening in limited release, Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream performed reasonably well, given generally unfavorable reviews. The movie earned about $501,000 in 107 theaters, for an average of $4,700 per screen. Surprisingly, the film with the highest per-screen average was the French animated film Persepolis which took in $281,000 in 30 theaters, or an average of $9,400 per theater. The overall box office was up 39 percent over the same weekend a year ago with ticket sales of $135.3 million for the top 12 films. The top ten films for the weekend, according to studio estimates compiled by Media by Numbers: 1. Cloverfield, $41 million; 2. 27 Dresses, $22.4 million; 3. The Bucket List, $15.2 million; 4. Juno, $10.3 million; 5. National Treasure: Book of Secrets, $8.1 million; 6. First Sunday, $7.8 million; 7. Mad Money, $7.7 million; 8. Alvin and the Chipmunks, $7 million; 9. I Am Legend, $5.1 million; 10. Atonement, $4.8 million.
18 January 2008 | From Studio Briefing | See recent Studio Briefing news
A film titled Mad Money that stars Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah and Katie Holmes sounds like the kind that should draw just about every female moviegoer to the box office. But critics suggest that's not likely to happen. Even the female critics have few kind words for it. Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News asks, "Why would so many accomplished women waste their time and talents on a movie as counterfeit as Mad Money?" Claudia Puig in USA Today comments, "This lifeless comedy and uninventive caper feels as if it were cobbled together at a studio's obligatory consciousness-raising diversity seminar." As for the male critics, most of them post implied warnings to their gender to avoid it. Kyle Smith in the New York Post writes that director Callie Khouri "achieves a level of overall drabness suggesting Saturday afternoon at your local Wal-Mart, in whose $2.99 bins you will soon be finding the DVD of this movie."
15 January 2008 | From wenn.com | See recent WENN news
Queen Latifah gave the cast and crew something to look forward to every Friday on the set of her new film Mad Money - she gave cash away. The rapper-turned-singer/actress came up with a "five dollar Friday" ruse that would give runners, camera operators and interns the chance to go home for the weekend with a cash bonus. The generous Chicago star explains, "It was actually my way of giving back to the crew. Sometimes you get to throw a barbecue or do something special but usually I know that the crew people are working really hard and everybody is not making the same amount of money we are. So we do this five dollar Fridays thing and everybody writes their name on a five dollar bill and puts it into a bucket and at the end of the day somebody picks a bill out and whoever's name is on the bill wins all the money." And Latifah, real name Dana Owens, had a way of sweetening the deal further: "I'd double the money every Friday. It could be a lot of money, so don't tell the IRS (tax authorities at the Internal Revenue Service)."
11 articles from 2008