Posted on 07/04/2005 4:12:15 PM PDT by timsbella
War of the Worlds" conquered the box office as easily as the movie's aliens overpowered Earth, but it did not have enough firepower to overcome Hollywood's prolongued box office slump.
Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise's sci-fi tale took in $77.6 million over the long Fourth of July weekend, lifting its total since debuting Wednesday to $113.3 million, according to studio estimates Monday.
That fell well short of the all-time high held by "Spider-Man 2," whose $180.1 million haul in its first six days led Hollywood to a record Fourth of July weekend last year.
The top 12 movies took in $160.1 million, off 25 percent from that 2004 record weekend.
It was the 19th straight weekend that domestic revenues were down compared with last year's, extending the longest slump since analysts began tracking detailed box-office figures. The worst downturn previously recorded was 17 weekends in 1985.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.myway.com ...
"Batman Begins" was pretty good at a cost of $5.75.
Really, visit Hollywood. Go on the Universal tour, buy a t-shirt, talk to people in the movie business.
"Really, visit Hollywood."
Been there many times since my first visit in 1959.
"Go on the Universal tour"
Yeah, lots of high-order information to be gleaned there.
"talk to people in the movie business"
With the exception of Ben Stein and a few others, I wouldn't cross the street to pee on people in the movie business even if they were on fire.
I love the Universal tour, but I also love Disneyland and all tour buses in general. A small and not very interesting vice.
I suspect that you would find a wide chasm between what you think movie people are and what they actually are...though I'm not certain since I never did learn what the phrase "Hollywood elite" means.
Geez, you'd think that Hollywood was Republican from the tone of this article.
Taxi Driver and Raging Bull are schlock? Not by any definition of cinema I know. Two of the best films of the last 30 years. The statement about everything produced by lefitsts being suspect doesn't get very far in this subject. Dickens, Stienbeck, Shelley, Faulkner... The list goes on and on.
Calm down. You'll bust a vein.
Perfectly calm :-)
There are those who view everything in the light of politics. The point of art is to transcend politics, even when it's political, i.e. Richard III. But you'll never convince some people of this fact, either on the left or the right.
Nice to hear of another person boycotting movies (see my tag line). I'm like you - there are so few movies that I actually want to see. The BBCA (British Broadcasting of America) shows many excellent films in which people can actually act.
Richard III of course was blatantly political as was much of Shakespeare's output. RIII was a hatchet job and as historically dubious as anything Oliver Stone ever made. It's also his longest play and not quite good enough to justify the length.
Wow you missed the Indie film explosion of the 90s. And Schindler's List.
I kinda like it. Actually, I thought Titus was his longest play, but no matter. For pure bad guy, RIII is just terrific. You got to love a villain who says,
Conscience is but a word that cowards use, devised at first to keep the strong in awe. Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law.
Titus isn't even close. It's R3 followed by Hamlet. The latter however justifies its length.
Anybody who re-releases "The Dukes of Hazzard" is completely out of ideas. Hollyweird needs to die off and be replaced.
Yeah, but sometimes you just want a bad guy -- RIII is the Hannibal Lechter of Shakespeare.
This is a terrible time for mainstream film making. The sort of films that used to be the industry's Bread and Butter (Batman Begins) are just completely worthless now. All the remakes and feature film versions of old TV shows are a perfect way to signifiy the malaise.
You have to think like an executive. Warner Bros. owns the original TV series, which it can cross market on cable in the U.S. and internationally, as well as releasing the DVD set. The movie promotes DVD and sub rights to the original series and the original series promotes the movie. And remember, in the international market -- an ever increasing piece of the movie pie -- the Dukes of Hazard don't carry the same stigma of shlock.
That said, the movie is destined to be a piece of crap.
"By the current definition, Dickens was a hack. So was Shakespeare. They were just brilliant hacks"
Shakespeare, certainly. Churchill, MacArthur, and I disagree on Dickens.
"And the best of Hollywood cinema is among this country's greatest cultural achievements."
Among? Perhaps. It remains to be seen if they stand the test of time. Seems to be Dickens is already slip-slipping away.
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