December 7th, 2014
This week on the Holiday Gift Guide, we tackle TV on DVD releases. As usual, I will only talk about first season and complete series updates, because you don't need me to tell you if Modern Family: Season Five on DVD would be a good gift or not. Do you know someone who owns and likes the first four seasons but doesn't have season five on DVD yet? Buy it. Or maybe not. Maybe they are waiting for it to come out on Blu-ray. Okay, bad example. But you get were I'm coming from. Unfortunately, this year's collection seems rather weak. There were only three new TV shows from last year that I really liked and there are not as many Full-Season Megasets to compensate. Worst still, some of these Megasets that are coming out are like True Blood or How I Met Your Mother and ended on a really weak note.
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September 12th, 2014
There's a large number of limited releases, including a few that are earning good reviews and strong buzz. One of these is The Drop, but it is opening in too many theaters and I think that will hurt it at the box office. If I were to guess, The Skeleton Twins will be the biggest hit on this week's list.
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December 14th, 2013
SAG handed out nominations over the week, and like with the Independent Spirit Awards, 12 Years a Slave led the way and earned four nominations. It wasn't the only film that was singled out.
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November 28th, 2013
Independent Spirit Award started the Awards Season this week, handing out its nominations. 12 Years a Slave led the way with seven nominations, but it wasn't the only film to pick up multiple nominations.
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September 22nd, 2013
Ever since Argo won the Oscar for Best Picture, the industry has been talking and thinking about the strategy of releasing a film ahead of all the other award hopefuls and building buzz through the season. The first test of this theory comes this weekend with one wide release and one platform release. The wide release, Prisoners, will comfortably top the chart with a very respectable $21.4 million from 3,260 theaters. While hardly in record-setting territory, it is very close to Argo's $19.5 million from 3,232 venues. Audience responses have been good (with 90% audience positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, for example), but next week's drop will be a big indicator of whether the film will have the chops for an awards run: Argo declined just 15% in its second weekend. Prisoners will need to do something similar before there's real talk of nominations to come.
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September 20th, 2013
There are a few films on this week's list earning overwhelmingly positive reviews, including the The Wizard of Oz 3D re-release. This film might do well enough to reach the top ten. Rush opens in two theaters before expanding wide next weekend, so its per theater average is not as important, but could still do well. Enough Said is the big limited release hit of the week. The film has a lot of buzz, a sad real world story, and amazing reviews. It will likely come out on top.
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November 1st, 2012
October was pretty good with a few films really crushing expectations, which made up for the few duds that opened at the end. 2012 gained about $100 million over 2011 during the month of October. We really needed this success and hopefully November will continue this push forward. However, November is a bit of a weird month. There are five weekends, but only eight true wide releases, half of which open on the Thanksgiving long weekend, leaving the other four weeks with just one true wide release each. There are a couple others opening in the semi-wide level and another opening in limited release with a planned wide release, but even so, it is not a busy month. That said, it is a case of quality over quantity. There are four films that are pretty much guaranteed to reach $100 million, one of which should reach $300 million. By comparison, last November only produced one $100 million film. Granted, that film was The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1, which made nearly $300 million, which is a huge number no matter how you look at it. But this year, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 should top that number and with the other $100 million movies pulling in more than $400 million combined, it should be a very profitable month at the box office.
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