Written by
Kirk Baird
Before a
recent screening of Magic Mike, the
male stripper movie starring Channing Tatum and directed by Steven
Soderbergh, another film critic wondered aloud to me just how successful
the movie would be. I told him I thought it would be quite successful based on
two themes: female audiences and Tatum.
The weekend
box-office performance of Magic Mike
returns proved me right, with the R-rated comedy-drama easily outperforming
expectations and opening with a nearly $40 million haul. Considering Magic Mike
was produced with a budget of only $7 million, that’s a profit four times over.
And thus a lesson is learned: Never underestimate the female audience and never
underestimate the appeal of Tatum.
It was young
female moviegoers who helped make James Cameron’s Titanic
the biggest film of all time for more than a decade before Cameron’s Avatar
in 2009 took the title away. It’s a lot of the same crowd who struck again with
Magic Mike, which drew a 70% female
audience. And their reason for flocking to the theatres? Channing
Tatum. The former stripper whose life inspired Magic Mike is now a major player in Hollywood. Tatum has a total
gross so far of nearly $921 million in combined movie ticket sales at the North
American box office. That’s more than action-film star Jason
Statham, more than comic-actor Paul
Rudd, and about $100 million shy of equaling his Magic Mike costar Matthew
McConaughey, who’s been around about a decade longer.
2012 has
been a very good year for Tatum. The romantic drama The
Vow made $125 million, and the comedy 21
Jump Street made $138 million. His January action-thriller Haywire,
also directed by Soderbergh, did underperform, however, with less than $20
million, but it was also budgeted at $30 million, so the losses weren’t
significant. Tatum was supposed to appear in the new G.I. Joe movie, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, which was
scheduled for a June release. In fact, Tatum’s character, Captain Duke Hauser,
was killed off early in the film. The rumor has it that test audiences didn’t
like his early exit, and that the film is being retooled, in part so Hauser
lives to appease Tatum fans.
Based on the success of Magic Mike this weekend, that’s a
financially wise decision.
Hollywood lost
a beloved personality this week when filmmaker Nora Ephron passed away on
Tuesday, June 26. She was 71.
Ephron is
perhaps best known for writing the screenplay for When Harry Met Sally, starring Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. She went
on to write and direct such hit romantic comedies as Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve
Got Mail. She was nominated three times for an Academy Award for Best
Writing.
Before she
broke into Hollywood, Ephron was briefly an intern in the Kennedy White House.
She also wrote for the New York Post,
where she broke the news of Bob Dylan’s marriage to Sara Lownds, as well as Esquire and other notable publications.
She assisted Carl Bernstein (then her husband) and Bob Woodward with their
script for All the President’s Men,
which led to her career in the movies.
Away from the
silver screen, Ephron also made a name as a novelist and essayist, playwright,
and journalist. Her most recent essay collection, I Remember Nothing, was published in 2010.
Many
celebrities have expressed their thoughts on Ms. Ephron’s passing, including
Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, whom she paired in both Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve
Got Mail. Hanks said, “…she lifted us all with wisdom and wit mixed with
love for us and love for life.” Ryan said that Ephron was “All wisdom, wit, and
sparkle lights, what a treat she was, what a blessing.”
Although Nora
Ephron may be gone, her books and classic films remain very popular. Make sure
you have them in your collection.
Written by Nedda Pourahmady
Recently, you may have noticed some moderate delays in
product delivery times from our company. We just wanted to let you know that we
have heard your concerns and have been proactive in addressing this issue. We
have made recent modifications to expedite all orders.
However, due to the new logic put into place, you may notice
deliveries arriving out of sequences from when they were ordered. For example, if you have placed additional
copy order requests to receive more quantities of a title previously ordered,
there is a chance that the additional copies will arrive before the originally
ordered selections. We guarantee that
you will receive all parts of your order and will monitor orders to maximize the
proper sequence of orders as much as possible.
Please note that this change will only impact deliveries
temporarily and only affect catalog titles, with no impact on street date
sensitive titles.
Here at CVS/Midwest, we are dedicated to following a
steadfast, first-in-first-out order policy. We value our libraries and wanted
to make you all aware of this situation.
If you have any further questions or concerns, please do not
hesitate to contact our customer service department at 866-698-2231.
We thank you for your understanding!
Written by Kirk Baird
She’s not dead. She’s only resting.
There’s something Monty Python-esque about the latest news
from the camp de Lindsay Lohan, a one-time actress-turned media circus. Even as
the 25-year-old is again trying to get her career pointed in the right
direction, she makes news for appearing unconscious in a hotel room, someone
gets worried and calls 911, and paramedics show up.
Her publicist told People magazine, the actress "was examined and is fine" and that her
condition was due to her "grueling schedule" on the set of the
Lifetime movie Liz & Dick, an
Elizabeth Taylor biopic with Lohan in the starring role.
Lohan also dismissed
any concern about her health via a Tweet.
"Note to
self.." she Tweeted, "after working 85 hours in 4 days, and being up
all night shooting, be very aware that you might pass out from exhaustion &
7 paramedics MIGHT show up @ your door."
A week ago, Lohan
escaped serious injury when her Porsche smashed into the back of a dump truck
on the Pacific Coast Highway. Lohan and her assistant were unhurt. The truck
driver alleges that a member of the actress’ entourage attempted to bribe him
into not calling the police, while a Lohan publicist denied this, and said that
the actress was cooperating fully with the police investigation.
Trouble never seems to
be far away from Lohan. As the saying goes, there’s no such thing as luck; you
make your own breaks. Could the same be said of misfortune?
Meanwhile, her
promising career is suffering. Prior to the Liz
& Dick cable film, Lohan was cast in a yet-to-be-released theatrical film,
InAPPropriate Comedy, directed by the ShamWow pitchman Vince Offer. She’s also
rumored to have a lead role in novelist/screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis’
sex-fueled Los Angeles drama The Canyons,
starring adult-film star James Deen.
Her first big-screen comeback, Robert
Rodriguez’s 2010 grindhouse nod Machete,
did make money — $44 million worldwide — but that was largely based on a
reasonable production budget of $10.5 million.
So how distant does
Lohan’s Disney past — including a platinum-selling debut record Speak in 2004 — seem now? Lohan was once
the freckled angelic face of several Disney family comedy remakes.
For a refresh of her
career, check out these Lohan films — proof that once
upon a time she was more than a celebrity, she was an up-and-coming actress.
What are your thoughts on Lohan's career?
Written by Kirk Baird
With the recent release of Rock of Ages to movie theaters, here are some other jukebox
musicals on DVD.
Have you seen any of these films? Which would you rate as your favorite and why?
Written by Kirk Baird
The demon-for-good Ghost Rider is back, as the Devil
plots to assume a new, more powerful form to allow him to wreak havoc on Earth.
Motorcycle daredevil Johnny Blaze and his nighttime fiery alter ego Ghost Rider
are all that can stop him. It’s an easy plot for a film that chugs along at a
high rate of speed — and doing its best not to be slowed down by plot or
character development.
Considering the collective letdown from 2007’s Ghost
Rider, the approach to the 2011 sequel from everyone — new directors Mark
Neveldine and Brian Taylor and star Nicolas Cage — is “let’s not pretend this
is anything but what you expect it to be and just have fun doing it.”
With no air of pretension hanging over this suitable for
drive-in comic-book hero film now out on DVD and Blu-ray, there’s no other way
to take anything that happens in the 90-plus minutes than with than with a
smile, a shrug, and the acknowledgement, “Hey, the special effects are much
better this time.”
Cage, as most everyone knows, owes millions in unpaid
taxes to the IRS, which means you can see him in just about anything these
days. The actor may be selling his soul to Hollywood to square himself with the
government, but at least he’s having fun doing it. And in a purely guilty
pleasure kind of way, so are we with Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.
Written by Kirk Baird
20-year-old Harold is obsessed with
death — particularly his own — until he learns how to really live through a youthful
80-year-old woman named Maude. Theirs was a love story as told in 1971’s Harold and Maude, an avant-garde
flop-turned cult classic that gets the deluxe treatment via Criterion
Collection on DVD and Blu-ray.
Harold and
Maude is also the template for numerous indie comedies to come: quirky
characters, contemporary soundtrack to punctuate emotions, poignant camera
shots, taboo subject matter and/or themes. (Director Hal Ashby essentially made
a Wes Anderson film while the 43-year-old Anderson was still in diapers.)
It’s the considerable age gap between
Harold and Maude that draws creeped-out looks from those who haven’t seen the
movie, but Higgins and Ashby handle the relationship with considerable care and
warm affection; Harold and Maude
makes a strong case that age isn’t necessarily a barrier for what the heart
feels. Standout performances by Bud Cort as the sullen and withdrawn youth, and
Ruth Gordon as his firecracker love interest effectively sell the premise of
the sweet and enduring relationship.
More than an offbeat love story, Harold and Maude packs a wicked sense of
humor, poking at contemporary mores, authority figures, and even the U.S. military
with pointed observations and amusing insults. It’s also a deceptively simple
story, refreshingly unencumbered by goofy side plots or oddball characters on
screen for strangeness sake.
Cat Stevens (now Yusuf Islam) provides
the memorable soundtrack, led by “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out” and “Don’t
Be Shy.” Unfortunately, Harold and Maude
soundtrack is not available for purchase — though it can be pieced together
through various CD releases. Criterion does include a recent interview with
Yusuf about recording the music for the film.
Among other interesting tidbits:
Ashby, pleased with the music as it was, used demo versions of the songs rather
than waiting for Yusuf to re-record them. Harold
and Maude pointed to a brilliant career for Ashby, who followed up the
black comedy with 1970s classics The Last Detail, Shampoo, Coming Home, and Being There, before a vicious drug habit made him persona non grata
in Hollywood by the mid-1980s.
Ashby died in 1988 at the age of 59
from pancreatic cancer that had spread throughout his body. But
Harold and Maude remains a testament
of his talent, the times, and true love.
|
Contact Us
