News

Martin Scorsese's tale of financial excess holds firm at the box office, pulling ahead of American Hustle and 12 Years a Slave

Wolf pulls ahead

A week ago, contenders for the best picture Oscar American Hustle, 12 Years a Slave and The Wolf of Wall Streetstood more or less neck and neck with around £11m apiece. Now the Scorsese comedy has pulled ahead with just shy of £15m, compared with £13.69m for Slave and £12.2m for Hustle. The Wolf of Wall Street is already the ninth-biggest 18-certificate movie at the UK box-office, behind Hannibal (£21.6m), American Beauty (£21.3m), Seven (£19.5m), Silence of the Lambs (£17.1m), Bruno (£15.8m), Django Unchained (£15.7m), Basic Instinct (£15.5m) and Fatal Attraction (£15.4m). Wolf will very soon overtake the last four films on that list, and has a good shot at £20m lifetime. The Bruno figure includes some box-office for the 15-certificate version. Including Monday takings, Wolf is now at £15.17m.

Meryl Streep heads a fine ensemble cast let down only by dowdy direction in this adaptation of Tracy Letts's play

Reading this on mobile? Click here to watch video

Two of Tracy Letts's stage plays have already been brought to the screen, both by director William Friedkin. While the southern gothic jet-black "comedy" Killer Joe is more widely known, Bug remains the finer movie, largely because Friedkin attacks it like a full-blooded horror film, a screaming descent into paranoid terror. Crucially, both works are profoundly cinematic – functioning as films first, stage adaptations second.

The same cannot be said of August: Osage County, a typically ripe play transposed to the screen in uninspired fashion by ER stalwart John Wells. Shedding around an hour of the play's running time, Wells's adaptation is notable primarily for its A-list ensemble cast, all of whom relish the chance to sink their teeth into Letts's bilious dialogue.

At Thanksgiving it looked like box office numbers were moving in an upward trajectory, but now that the dust has settled, it appears that the numbers are continuing to disappoint

Top of the heap this week is New Year’s Eve, director Gary Marshall’s followup to his 2009 hit, Valentine’s Day. However, New Year’s Eve only banked $13.7 million over the weekend, a far cry from the $56 million that its predecessor scored when it debuted. Valentine’s Day was a front-loaded release, smartly positioned to debut strong over the Valentine’s day weekend. It could be argued that V Day had a better line-up of stars, with the likes of Julia Roberts, Jessica Alba, Bradley Cooper, Anne Hathaway, Jamie Fox and Jennifer Garner. Meanwhile, New Year’s Eve features Robert DeNiro, Zac Efron, Michelle Pfeiffer, Halle Berry, Sarah Jessica Parker and Jon ...

Click to continue reading Weekend Box Office Wrap Up: December 11th,...

The Reaper Awards are presented by Home Media Magazine and Dread Central, celebrating the best of horror on blu-ray and DVD. Top of the heap is the Alien Anthology, taking home three of the thirteen awards presented this year. For a complete list of winners, hit the jump. Best of Show Alien Anthology (Blu-ray) 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment Choice Theatrical Cut Insidious Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Best Direct-to-Video Frozen Anchor Bay Entertainment Best Title From the Vault (Catalog Title) Dark Night of the Scarecrow Vci Best TV DVD Thriller: The Complete Series Image...

Civil rights drama looking for garlands, but will guilty pleasure Conan muscle in? Meanwhile One Day can only squeak in at 9

The Help is starting to show the legs it will need to bolster its awards season credentials and climbed to No 1 in the second weekend. The civil rights-era drama is a gently provocative, albeit manipulative, drama based on Kathryn Stockett's bestseller and boasts a terrific female cast led by Viola Davis, Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer and Bryce Dallas Howard.

Jessica Chastain also has a key role and while she won't garner any nominations for The Help, she is ubiquitous this year, floating through Terrence Malick's stately The Tree of Life, running around in John Madden's thriller The Debt and hunkering down before the storm in Jeff Nichols' beguiling Take Shelter. It's only a matter of time before she takes over the world. She's a big talent.

When one thinks of old timey private detectives, one doesn't have to stray too far from imagining the likeness of Humphrey Bogart. He is the face most remembered to represent Dashiell Hammett's hard boiled hero Sam Spade. It's worth noting that the film's version of Spade is considerably different in looks and demeanor than in the novel, and yet Bogart grabs the role so effortlessly and radiates such an overwhelming cool that he not only controls the image of Sam Spade, he also becomes the prototype of every hard boiled private dick, as well as any film noir protagonist, ever since.

As far as the John Huston-Humphrey Bogart combos go (there were six of them), The Maltese Falcon is unbeatable, but that's taking my unapologetic love for unadulterated film noir into account. The titular "Maltese Falcon" is a priceless statue made of gold and encrusted with jewels,...

Reports about the Superman storyline have bloggers fearing disaster. They underestimate Zack Snyder

And so, the Kryptonian dust has settled, and Zack Snyder is the anointed saviour of the Superman saga, with Christopher Nolan in a sort of Jor-El father-figure role, wisely manipulating matters via crystal from a shiny cave somewhere in the north pole. That all sounds rather splendid, doesn't it? The visually superb Snyder, working from a screenplay by The Dark Knight's David Goyer (and, one assumes, Jonathan Nolan), with the elder Nolan making sure nobody does anything silly. So far, so super.

Except that no sooner did the news break that Snyder had got the job than stories began hitting the web about how terrible this new version might turn out to be. Top of the heap comes an investigation via New York magazine's Vulture section, as re-reported by SlashFilm (the original piece doesn't seem to...

Winners of the 2010 New York Innovative Theatre Awards were announced Monday night in a ceremony hosted by Lisa Kron at Cooper Union. The It Awards celebrate the stars of the Off-Off-Broadway community. The event was available for streaming and was live-blogged by theatre critics Doug Strassler and Aaron Riccio at www.nyitawards.com/live, where a rebroadcast is available. The list of nominees follows with the winners' names in bold.Outstanding Ensemble Marc Bovino, Joe Curnutte, Michael Dalto, Stephanie Wright Thompson, Samuel and Alasdair: "A Personal History of the Robot War"Christine Rebecca Herzog, Itsuko Higashi, Jubil Khan; "Fêtes de la Nuit" Kaela Crawford, Julia Giolzetti, Caitlin Mehner, Alison Scaramella, Stephanie Strohm; "Pink!" Jenny Bennett, Melissa D. Brown, John Graham, John J. Isgro, Courtney Kochuba, Kyle Minshew, Amanda Nichols, Katherine Nolan Brown, Jed Peterson, Sean Reidy, Miranda Shields, Douglas Taurel, Nate Washburn; "The Disorder Plays" Joie Bauer, David Bishins, Gina Nagy Burns,...