The Latest in Latino Entertainment News

‘The Dark Knight’ – fourth times a charm at the box office

Dan Fellman, Warner’s head of domestic distribution, cited several factors for the movie’s hold on the top spot, including repeat business, popularity among older and infrequent moviegoers, and a continued strong showing on Imax screens, which rang up $3.2 million this weekend.

He predicted that “The Dark Knight,” which stars Christian Bale as Batman and the late Heath Ledger as his nemesis, the Joker, would soon bump up a notch and eventually gross about $520 million.

“By next weekend, we’ll be in No. 2, ahead of ‘Star Wars,’ ” he said. That 1977 hit brought in $461 million; “Titanic” topped $600 million.

Though “Pineapple Express” didn’t manage to grab the top spot, Sony executives weren’t exactly crying in their bong water over the box-office performance of the raunchy comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco.

Produced by Judd Apatow, who earlier brought to life such hits as “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up,” the movie opened Wednesday at $12 million and sales more than tripled by the weekend.

“The $40 million for us was just like, wow, we couldn’t be happier,” said Rory Bruer, Sony’s president of domestic distribution.

“Everything about this movie has just played out really well.”

Brandon Gray, president of box-office tracker Box Office Mojo, said “Pineapple Express” was doing better than might be expected, given that its subject matter had a narrower appeal than some of Apatow’s earlier offerings.

“For a stoner action comedy, it’s doing very well,” he said.

In other results this weekend, Universal’s “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” slipped to third from second with $16.1 million in ticket sales and nearly $71 million total.

“The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2,” a Warner Bros. movie that also premiered Wednesday, finished fourth with $10.7 million for the weekend and $19.7 million in all.

Universal’s “Mamma Mia!” dropped two spots to sixth but still took in $8 million, enough to push it across the $100-million mark in domestic ticket sales.

Despite some strong showings, this marked the third weekend in a row that box-office receipts were lower than comparable weekends last summer, Dergarabedian said. This weekend’s total was about $120 million, compared with $154 million for the same one last year, his data show.

His numbers also show that box-office revenue for the year is $6.14 billion, down from $6.17 billion for the same period last year. Attendance is off by 4.3%.

Bernie Mac dies at 50

Bernie Mac, a stand-up comic who played evil-tongued but lovable rogues in films like “Bad Santa” and “Mr. 3000” and combined menace and sentiment as a reluctant foster father on “The Bernie Mac Show” on Fox, died on Saturday in Evanston, Ill. He was 50 and lived near Chicago.

The cause was complications from pneumonia, said his publicist, Danica Smith.

Mr. Mac, an imposing stage presence with a line of scabrous insults, parlayed his success as a stand-up comedian onto the big screen in a string of comedies that cast him in cameo roles, usually as wily con men like Pastor Clever in “Friday” and Gin, the store detective in “Bad Santa.” He also excelled as short-tempered misanthropes, notably in his starring role as Stan Ross, the nation’s most hated baseball player, in “Mr. 3000.”

In 2001, the Fox network took a gamble with “The Bernie Mac Show,” an unconventional family comedy with Mr. Mac portraying a childless married comedian who reluctantly takes in his sister’s three youngsters when she goes into a drug-treatment program.

The irascible Mr. Mac made a different kind of TV dad, “more Ike Turner than Dr. Spock,” Chris Norris wrote in a 2002 profile for The New York Times Magazine. Mr. Mac’s special style of tough love — “I’m gonna bust your head ’til the white meat shows,” he warns his surly teenage neice — set the show apart from other family sitcoms and raised a few critical eyebrows, but audiences saw enough of the character’s soft center to find the show touching.

“The success of my comedy has been not being afraid to touch on subject matters or issues that everyone else is politically scared of,” Mr. Mac told The Times in 2001. “It’s a joke, believe me. I’m not trying to hurt anybody.”

Mr. Mac incorporated aspects of his standup act and during each episode would break the fictional world of the show and address the audience directly. On one show, he swiveled in his chair and said, “Now America, tell me again, why can’t I whip that girl?”

“The Bernie Mac Show” show ran for five seasons, and Mr. Mac won Emmy awards as outstanding actor in a comedy series in 2004, 2005 and 2006.

Bernard Jeffrey McCullough was born in Chicago to a single mother who inspired him, indirectly, to become a comedian. When he was 5, he told a television interviewer in 2001, he saw her sitting in front of the television set crying. “The Ed Sullivan Show” was playing, and when Bill Cosby began telling a story about snakes in the bathroom, she started laughing despite herself. “When I saw her laughing, I told her that I was going to be a comedian so she’d never cry again,” Mr. Mac said.

His mother died of cancer when he was 16, and he was raised by his grandmother on the South Side of Chicago. His two brothers also died, one in infancy, the other of a heart attack in his 20s.

At Chicago Vocational Career Academy, he was voted Class Clown by his graduating class. Already serious about his intended profession, turned down the honor “I said, ‘I’m funny. I’m a comedian, I’m not a clown,’” he later recalled. “My humor had changed from foolishness to making sense.”

After high school, Mr. Mac worked as a janitor, a mover and a school bus driver before finding a job at a General Motors plant. In 1976 he married his high school sweetheart, Rhonda who survives him, as does their daughter, Je’Neice, and a granddaughter.

Desperate to get started as a comedian, he told jokes for tips on the Chicago subway and worked comedy clubs, many of them off the beaten track. “When I started in the clubs, I had to work places where didn’t nobody else want to work,” he told The Washington Post. “I had to do clubs where street gangs were, had to do motorcycle gangs, gay balls and things of that nature.”

In 1983 he was laid off at GM and for a time his family had to move in with relatives. Plugging away at his comedy career, he caught the attention of Redd Foxx and Slappy White, who invited him to do off-the-cuff material in Las Vegas in 1989, and a year later he won the Miller Lite Comedy Search, a national contest, with his profanity-laced monologues on events in his own life and on black life in Chicago

In 1990, he was invited to do two shows with Def Comedy Jam, a tour featuring young black comedians that was filmed for HBO. Small film roles followed, in “Mo’ Money” (1992), “Who’s The Man?” (1993) and “House Party 3” (1994), as well as an HBO variety series, “Midnight Mac,” and a spot with the Original Kings of Comedy, a tour that showcased some of the most popular contemporary black comedians. The tour, which grossed an astounding $59 million, generated several HBO specials and a film by Spike Lee, “The Original Kings of Comedy.”

Mr. Mac made the move to television reluctantly. “The people come to see you, the person they fell in love with, but when they see you on TV you bvecome a whole other character, another person, and they become disappointed, and I wasn’t going to allow that to happen to me,” he said.

Nevertheless, he appeared in a recurring role as Uncle Bernie on the UPN sitcom “Moesha” for several years beginning in 1996, and in 2001 he took the plunge with “The Bernie Mac Show.”

Praised by the critics for its fresh irreverent take on the family sitcom, it became one of Fox’s biggest hits.

The show coincided with a spate of films that made Mr. Mac, if not a box office star, a welcome comedic presence in films like “What’s the Worst that Could Happen?” “Ocean’s 11” and its two sequels and “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.”

In July, Mr. Mac, a fervent Barack Obama supporter, dismayed his candidate at a fund-raising dinner in Chicago. Delivering a stand-up routine, he told salacious jokes and drew a reprimand from Mr. Obama, who warned him, “Bernie, you’ve got to clean up your act next time.”

Natalie Portman to remake Dario Argento’s ‘Suspiria’

One of the hipper projects in Hollywood is shaping up to be the remake of Dario Argento’s psychedelic horror flick, Susipira, from director David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express, George Washington). Bloody Disgusting just confirmed minutes ago that Natalie Portman will headline the film, which means she’ll hop into ballet slippers and battle a coven of beautiful, gossipy (foreign?) witches.

The actress’s shingle, Handsome Charlie Films, is producing. If you’ve seen the original, you’re probably wondering what the plans are for the soundtrack, but those details haven’t been announced. Here’s what Green told MTV about the project a few months ago…

“Supiria is a classic to me. I want to be scared. I want to be afraid,” he said to MTV. …”It’s an opportunity to take all artistic excellence and be inspired by what was a low budget Italian 70’s gore movie. Where the art world meets the violent and supernatural. I would love to get every geek that loves torture porn and every old lady in line to see ‘Phantom of the Opera’ to come and have this insane experience.”

With its enchanting candy colors and surreal lighting, Dario Argento’s 1977 flick, widely cited as his best work, rivals Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou for its stained-glass color palette. The story dips into nightmare-logic as we follow an American student at an elite European dance academy who discovers it’s a front for evaaal. Argento’s inventive, deranged use of gore is outmatched by a harrowing, instrumental soundtrack by the band Goblin. While it’s not exactly a perfect film, with time Suspiria has arguably transcended the cult genre.

‘The Goonies’ to have sequel?

A very, very, very good source – if I revealed his name, you’d know straight away this was a solid bit of news – informed me a few days ago that “the sequel Corey Feldman has been telling media will never happen”, one “Goonies 2”, is indeed… happening. 

Now I don’t know when it’s going to happen, because it has been on the drawing boards for a good decade now (“Star Trek” and “Transformers” scribe Robert Orci told me today that he was involved in a draft in about 1998), but it does seem to be inching forward.

So what have I been told? well, Warner Bros are finally going to give it the respect it deserves – this will be a large-scale theatrical release. It will not be a direct-to-video release.

(A source at Warner Bros has since confirmed this – saying they are developing it as a major movie, but won’t share anything other than that. Nothing we didn’t already know though)

We’ve been told that there are writers on the project – and they’re being paid rather nicely for their services too.

I’ve no idea what the script is about, nor do I know how far into the script the writers are, but we’re told that it’ll apparently involve some of the original cast – I doubt Josh Brolin will return though; and even if he was keen, would Warner want to pay him the hefty fee he now gets? Doubtful – and some new cast members. I can’t imagine ‘all’ of the original “Goonies” coming back, can you? I’d think Corey Feldman, Sean Astin and, er, Short-Round would be the most likeliest recruits for a reprise… if only because they haven’t disappeared off-the-map (Martha Plimpton where art thou? Keri Green… does she still act?). You never know, ‘Chunk’ might even get a call too.

But there you have it, after years and years of rumours – and even some attempts to get the film up by original director Richard Donner – “The Goonies 2” will soon be a reality.

Johnny Depp confirmed for Burton’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’

After it was announced that Tim Burton would direct “Alice in Wonderland 3-D,” a take on the classic Lewis Carroll fairy tale, fans assumed that Johnny Depp would somehow have to be involved. Burton and Depp have previously collaborated on six previous films, including “Sweeney Todd,” “Sleepy Hollow,” “Edward Scissorhands” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

Now, Entertainment Weekly is reporting that fans’ suspicions are absolutely true. But whether he will play the rumored Mad Hatter is still unknown.

A source revealed that the film will be live-action until Alice (Mia Wasikowska) jumps down the rabbit hole and meets the loopy tea party host. Even if Depp does take on the Mad Hatter, there is still the question of whether he will have to do any acting or simply lend his voice for the computer-generated part of the film.

At this point, the new movie is set to begin filming early next year for a 2010 release. Linda Woolverton (Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King) penned the script.

Lethal Weapon 5?

Hollywood tracking board TrackingB.com reports that Shane Black, who wrote the first Lethal Weapon movie, has written a spec script for Lethal Weapon 5 without telling anyone. The site adds that he contacted franchise producer Joel Silver and said that he wanted to continue the story.

This time, homicidal Riggs (Mel Gibson) is about to retire, but pulls Murtaugh (Danny Glover) out of retirement to solve one final case, before they both officially head off into the sunset.

TrackingB.com says that Gibson and Glover are down to return, but no deals have been signed.

The first film was released in 1987, the second in 1989, the third in 1992 and the fourth in 1998.

Tarantino to cast Britney Spears

Britney Spears has accepted a role as a psychotic lesbian stripper in Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming remake of the 1965 cult classic Faster Pussycat! Kill Kill!

The Pulp Fiction director has cast 26-year-old Britney as “Varla,” an adult entertainer who leads a trio of exotic dancers is murdering a young couple trapped alone in the desert.

According to The Daily Telegraph, Brit’s character murders the boyfriend with her bare hands before taking the girlfriend hostage, with whom she will engage in a number of sex scenes.

“Quentin is convinced Britney will be brilliant.”

“Britney is delighted, she thinks it could turn her career and her life around. A successful film could help her get out of her current nightmare,” an excited insider confirms to The Daily Telegraph.

“It is perfect Tarantino material. He wanted to get Britney first. She’s playing the most important character.”

Quentin is still on the hunt for a pair of Hollywood starlets to take on the roles of the remaining two strippers.