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‘Madagascar 3’ stays at #1 at box office!

Once again ‘Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted’ rules the box office with $35.5 million dollars, earning a total of $120.5 million dollars. The animated film has continued to surprise everyone holding on to the number one spot.

‘Prometheus’ also stays strong at number two with $20.2 million dollars; the sci-fi movie tried to win the number one spot but failed. This film was suspected to become a summer blockbuster; it’s a wonder what made the public turn away.

The Broadway musical turned film ‘Rock of Ages’ landed on the third spot with $15.1 million dollars. This amount is far below of other musicals adapted to the big screen, such as ‘Mamma Mia!’ or Shankman’s own ‘Hairspray’, which opened with $27.5 million dollars in 2007.

The Top 10 Movies in the Box Office:

1. Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted – $35.5 mil

2. Prometheus – $20.2 mil

3. Rock of Ages – $15.1 mil

4. Snow White and the Huntsman – $13.8 mil

5. That’s my Boy – $13 mil

6. Men in Black 3 – $10 mil

7. The Avengers – $8.8 mil

8. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – $2.2 mil

9. Moonrise Kingdom – $2.2 mil

10. What to Expect When You’re Expecting – $1.3 mil

First pic, poster of America Ferrera in ‘It’s a Disaster’

America Ferrera is such a prolific young artist, who’s an Emmy, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award, ALMA and Imagen Award winner among others. She’s had her share of comedy with her hit show on ABC ‘Ugly Betty’. We also have seen her strong talents in the dramedy ‘Real Women Have Curves’. We will see her September 28 in ‘End of Watch’ with Jake Gyllenhaal. Finally, she will star opposite Michael Peña and Rosario Dawson in Diego Luna’s ‘Chavez’ as Helen Chavez, the wife of civil rights activist Cesar Chavez’. Given her resume, it’s a wonder what we can expect from her character in Todd Berger’s comedy ‘It’s a Disaster’ set to come out later on this year; which explores the idea on how four couples would deal with the unexpected end of the world.

Four girlfriends meet for Sunday brunch, brining their significant others and shortly realize this might be their last few hours on Earth. Tracy Scott (Julia Stiles) brings her boyfriend Glenn (David Cross) to meet her girlfriends for the first time: Hedy (America Ferrera), Emma (Erinn Hayes) and Lexi (Rachel Boston). Tracy nervously awaits her friends’ approval, not knowing that there are bigger things happening to worry about it. An apocalyptic disaster catches the four couples off guard, but they don’t let their issues take a back seat; instead they resolve to work them out.

The director was very keen in creating relationships that felt authentic as to have almost real people on screen reacting to an end of the world disaster. Berger injected comedy to the coming disaster; by having four unprepared couples that are at different stages of their relationships react in ways that would shock their significant other. Inspired by end of the world films such as ‘Night of the living dead’ and ‘2012’, he decided zombie’s have been overplayed and opted for a natural disaster instead; keeping in mind that the satirical part is that the end of the world is secondary to the character’s own problems. According to the director, panic runs out in a disaster situation, he aims to represent eight variations of human responses in this kind of situation. We anxiously wait to see what all the actors; Ferrera in particular, will be like in this comedy.

Check out the first picture and poster of the film ‘IT’S A DISASTER’.

Rock of Ages (Movie Review)

To describe ‘Rock of Ages’ I’m going to need to use various synonyms for cheesy, because that was the main thought going through my mind while I watched the film. The music rocks, there’s no doubt about that; everything else around it wasn’t good enough to classify this as a good musical. I unfortunately haven’t seen the Broadway musical this film is based on, but I’m not afraid to guarantee that it’s probably better than this film adaptation.  

 

The film is set in 1987 in Los Angeles where a small town girl, Sherrie (Julianne Hough) comes hoping to begin her singing career, shortly after arriving she ends up in the Bourbon Room, a famous rock club where she meets Drew (Diego Boneta). Drew begs the club’s owner, Dennis Dupree (Alec Baldwin) to give Sherri a waitressing job, thanks to Lonny (Russell Brand) Dennis’ right hand he decides to give the girl a chance. The Bourbon Room is at risk when religious groups led by the Major (Bryan Cranston) and his wife, Patricia Whitmore (Catherine Zeta-Jones) threaten to close it down, specially when rock god Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise) shows up to perform with his group –Arsenal- one last time. With L.A. as a stage this group of people try to lead their lives surrounded by rock n roll from the likes of Def Leppard, Journey, Foreigner, etc.

 

It looked like most of the actors in this movie were just lip-synching, which whether that’s the case or not that made it hard to enjoy it as a musical. My favorite acts though were seeing Boneta on stage as well as Cruise; they rocked the house in and out of the screen. Their acting as well as everyone else’s was pretty questionable though. Cruise’s character is eccentric and entertaining with his overly macho jockstraps and tattoos, his rockstar act though might be right on, with his short attention span it was hard to follow or understand. I’m not sure if I was annoyed at Hough’s character or at herself, neither her voice nor her acting were convincing; sure she’s stunning, but that wasn’t enough. 

 

I would like to say that our young Mexican actor, Boneta, was fabulous, but except for a couple of good singing skits his acting was like seeing a puppy follow commands. Boneta is one of the main characters, so he had a glorious amount of screen time, despite of that he didn’t shine except for his first singing opening number (clip below) as well as his closing number. He definitely has potential to carry over his heartthrob skills from his Rebelde days; there is some chemistry between Hough and him, but it wasn’t exploded to the point of making believable their fairytale story.  

 

Baldwin and Brand presented some funny scenes, but their main act is actually offensive. The movie began dragging after the first act, perhaps because of the various montages; I was ready for it to finish around the first hour (It’s two hours). The corniness of the film just kept escalating until it reached a level of ridiculous.

 

I can honestly say I really enjoy musicals and was disappointed by the result of this star-studded film. Even though director Adam Shankman also made ‘Hairspray’, another Broadway hit musical into a film filled with Hollywood A-listers and was well received he didn’t achieve the same with this one. With that said I suggest you save your pennies and go see the musical on Broadway, I’m sure you will be satisfied and entertained then.   

 

Check out Mexican actor Diego Boneta “rocking out” in ‘Rock of Ages’ in the video below.

Madagascar 3 tramples the box office

A surprising turn of events occurred at the box office this weekend, where ‘Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted’ wan taking first place with $60.3 million dollars. What’s interesting is that the animated film collected this money mainly from 3D ticket sales, which is a rare event.  

Ridley Scott’s ‘Prometheus’, which was expected to rule the box office, got second place with $50 million dollars. Either way for a rated R film it still did surprisingly well and word-of-mouth may put it at number one for next weekend.

The fairy tale ‘Snow White and the Huntsman’ fell quickly to third place with $23 million dollars. To finish off with the bizarre ‘The Avengers’ has left the top 3 after six weeks.

The Top 10 Movies at the Box Office are:

1. Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted – $60.3 mil

2. Prometheus – $50 mil

3. Snow White and the Huntsman – $23 mil

4. Men in Black 3 – $13.5 mil

5. The Avengers – $10.8 mil

6. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – $3.2 mil

7. What to Expect When You’re Expecting – $2.7 mil

8. Battleship – $2.3 mil

9. The Dictator – $2.1 mil

10. Moonrise Kingdom – $1.6 mil