‘The Hobbit’ is #1 at the box office!

Peter Jackson’s ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ the first part of the prequel trilogy, took over the first spot with $84.8 million dollars. This makes the film the best debut for the month of December, which is good news for the studio. It still remains to be seen how much more it will earn or drop during the upcoming last weeks of the year, to see if it can match up to its predecessors LOTR numbers. The movie has received mainly good praise from critics and audiences alike, which is something that’s bound to help it.

‘Rise of the Guardians’ held on to second place with $7.4 million dollars, which gives it just a total of $71.4 million since its opening. This film has not brought in nearly as much money as the studio expected it to.

‘Lincoln’ jumped one spot up reclaiming number three with $7.2 million dollars. The Golden Globe nominations might have helped the film regain interest by those that have not seen it yet; since surely Spielberg is bound to win a couple of awards for this one.

The Top 10 in the Box Office are:

1. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – $84.8 mil

2. Rise of the Guardians – $7.4 mil

3. Lincoln – $7.2 mil

4. Skyfall – $7 mil

5. Life of Pi – $5.4 mil

6. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn- Part 2 – $5.2 mil

7. Wreck-It Ralph – $3.3 mil

8. Playing for Keeps – $3.2 mil

9. Red Dawn – $2.4 mil

10. Silver Linings Playbook – $2 mil

‘Skyfall’ reclaims #1 spot

The box office was shaken up this week when ‘Skyfall’ reclaimed the number one spot, after having lost it for three weeks with $11 million dollars. The movie has been out for five weeks and now has become Sony’s highest earning film. This is a big deal for the Bond franchise all around.

The animated film ‘Rise of the Guardians’ also made a jump this week taking the second spot with $10.5 million dollars. Perhaps its theme and Santa Claus hero character have made it more appealing with the holidays nearing. Surprisingly though this film has not been a success for Dreamworks Animation.

After three weeks at number one ‘The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2’ fell to number three with $9.2 million dollars. Either way this last chapter of the saga is the highest earning out of all of them, holding on to $751.1 million dollars world wide it probably will reach the $800 million mark before its run is over.

The Top 10 in the Box Office are:

1. Skyfall – $11 mil

2. Rise of the Guardians – $10.5 mil

3. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 – $9.2 mil

4. Lincoln – $9.1 mil

5. Life of Pi – $8.3 mil

6. Playing for Keeps – $6 mil

7. Wreck-It Ralph – $4.9 mil

8. Red Dawn – $4.3 mil

9. Flight – $3.1 mil

10. Killing Them Softly – $2.7 mil

Guillermo Arriaga to unveil new horror short at Sundance

Acclaimed Mexican screenwriter, director and producer Guillermo Arriaga’s next project is a short horror film called ‘Broken Night’. The interesting thing about this short is that it has been shot entirely with a Nikon D800, which the movie’s website describes it as giving “the highest possible image quality.”  Not to get too technical, but worth mentioning, “the camera has a 36 megapixel FX- format CMOS sensor; spectacularly low noise and high dynamic range.” The camera is so versatile that the page states “it’s as much at home on a movie set as on a landscape shoot or in a photo studio.” Pay attention film students, your film might just have gotten cheaper to shoot.

‘Broken Night,’ is about a young mother and her four-year-old daughter who are driving across desolated hills on a joyful trip that suddenly becomes a nightmare when they get into a car accident. Arriaga spoke on a video about how it is based on a car accident he had a couple of years ago. He continues on to say that he became involved in the project because he wants to play with horror, which he describes as an unexpected event such as a car crash.

He worked on this short horror film with Janusz Kamiński, one of the preeminent cinematographers in Hollywood who won the Oscar for ‘Schindler’s List’ and ‘Saving Private Ryan’. He was also nominated for ‘Amistad’, ‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’ and ‘War Horse,’ also beautiful looking movies. 

Arriaga got Hollywood’s attention with ‘Amores Perros’ a story that is certainly known as one of Mexican cinema’s best films. Soon after he was asked to write ’21 Grams’ a crime thriller, which started Naomi Watts, Benicio del Toro and Sean Penn; the aforementioned actors won an Oscar for their performances. He went on to write ‘Babel’ another acclaimed film, which was nominated for an Oscar and starred Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Gael García Bernal. To bring my point home, he wrote and directed ‘The Burning Plain’ with Charlize Theron, Jennifer Lawrence and José María Yazpik and went on to win an award at the Venice Film Festival. 

This man has an impressive resume and is certainly one of the best storytellers of our time, whether he’s putting his stories down on paper or getting behind the camera.

It’s been announced that ‘Broken Night’ will be part of Sundance’s 2013 Short Film program, which will take place from Jan 17-27 and it’s under the “U.S. Narrative Short films” category. Out of the 65 films in this list, this is definitely a film many are keeping their eyes on.

For more info check out the movie website http://brokennightmovie.com

NYFCO names ‘Chico & Rita’ Best Animated Feature

One of the movie critic’s group I belong to is The New York Film Critics Online (NYFCO). We held our thirteenth annual meeting on December 9th, 2012 at the LGBT Center in New York City to select our annual best of movie awards.

Kathryn Bigelow’s “Zero Dark Thirty” gathered momentum as NYFCO voted the film about the hunt for Osama Bin Ladin as the Best Film of 2012, with Bigelow honored for her direction and Mark Boal for his screenplay.  Daniel Day-Lewis received honors for his performance as Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” while veteran French actress Emmanuelle Riva was esteemed for her performance in Michael Haneke’s drama “Amour,” which also received NYFCO’s award for Foreign Language film.

Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Hathaway received kudos for Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress respectively in Spielberg’s “Lincoln” and Tom Hooper’s “Les Misérables.” Ben Affleck’s “Argo” received an award for its Ensemble Cast

Benh Zeitlin’s “Beasts of the Southern Wild” was feted for a Breakthrough Performance by then five-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis, and Zeitlin was honored as Debut Director.  The Spanish language “Chico & Rita” was honored as Animated Feature while “The Central Park Five” was selected as Documentary.

These are the awards selected by the 35-member organization in fifteen categories:

A complete list of winners follows:

Best Picture:
 Zero Dark Thirty

Best Actor:
 Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Best Actress
: Emmanuelle Riva, Amour

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty

Best Supporting Actor
: Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln

Best Supporting Actress: 
Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables

Breakthrough Performer:
 Quvenzhane Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild

Debut Director: 
Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild

Ensemble Cast
: Argo

Best Screenplay
: Zero Dark Thirty

Best Documentary: 
The Central Park Five

Best Foreign Language
: Amour

Best Animated Feature:
 Chico and Rita

Best Cinematography:
 Life of Pi

Best Use of Music: 
Django Unchained

NYFCO’s TOP TEN FILMS (alphabetical)

   Argo (Warner Bros)

   Beasts of the Southern Wild (Fox Searchlight)

   Django Unchained (The Weinstein Company)

   Les Misérables (Universal)

   Life of Pi (20th Century Fox)

   Lincoln (DreamWorks)

   The Master (The Weinstein Company)

   Moonrise Kingdom (Focus Features)

   Silver Linings Playbook (The Weinstein Company)

   Zero Dark Thirty (Columbia Pictures)

Se presentan 9 minutos de “Star Trek Into Darkness”

Paramount Pictures y Bad Robot Productions presentaron en IMAX nueve minutos de la secuela de “Star Trek” de J.J. Abrams – “Star Trek Into Darkness” – a la prensa cinematográfica. Los nueve minutos lo están llamando “el prólogo” y las imágenes se ven intrigantes. 

Por lo que la secuencias de imágenes dejaron ver, mucho está en el primer avance y lo demás deja en duda la identidad del villano que Benedict Cumberbatch interpreta. 

El pietaje se inicia con Noel Clarke y Kayla Hassan, personajes que parecen tener una vida muy normal en el siglo 23. Se despiertan, preparan su desayuno y manejan al hospital, donde una niña, probablemente su hija, está inconsciente en la cama. No hay dialogo mientras durante estas escenas. 

Preocupados por la niña, Cumberbatch se les acerca a los padres y ofrece ayudarlos. Clarke pregunta quién es y él simplemente se sonríe pícaramente.

El resto de las imágenes tienen a la nave Enterprise viajando a una misión a un planeta rojo donde Kirk y McCoy están disfrazados de locales para espiar a una comunidad, pero luego son perseguidos a la muerte.

Abrams está molesto de que fans piensan que su film será un film oscuro, pero vemos una película entretenida donde cada miembro de la tripulación recibe un breve momento estelar. 

“Star Into Darkness” se estrenará el 17 de mayo de 2013 en los Estados Unidos protagonizados por Chris Pine, John Cho, Bruce Greenwood, Zachary Quinto, la dominicana Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Anton Yelchin, Alice Eve y Peter Weller. 

‘The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn-Part 2’ 3rd week on top!

There are very few changes for this week; ‘The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn- Part 2’ continues to reign at the box office, staying at number one for the third consecutive week with $17.4 million dollars. This was certain a very weak weekend at the box office, the hype from the Thanksgiving holiday has died down.

‘Skyfall’ continues its strong hold of the second spot with $17 million dollars, continuing to earn profits for Sony. Daniel Craig and director Sam Mendes should certainly be proud.

The biographical film ‘Lincoln’ also stays at number three with $13.5 million dollars. Without at doubt this has been a hit for Steven Spielberg. The rest of the places in the box office remain the same up to number seven with ‘Killing Them Softly’ coming in to change the rest of the Top 10, along with ‘The Collection’ at number ten.

The Top 10 in the Box Office are:

1. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 – $17.4 mil

2. Skyfall – $17 mil

3. Lincoln – $13.5 mil

4. Rise of the Guardians – $13.5 mil

5. Life of Pi – $12 mil

6. Wreck-It Ralph – $7 mil

7. Killing Them Softly – $7mil

8. Red Dawn – $6.6 mil

9. Flight – $4.5 mil

10. The Collection – $3.4 mil