Welcome back to our series Rembert Explains the '80s. Every so often, we'll e-mail 25-year-old Rembert Browne a video from the 1980s that he hasn't seen. Rembert will write down his thoughts as he's watching the video, then we'll post those thoughts here. This week's installment was selected by Grantland reader/hero David P. Levine: Christopher Walken's Puss in Boots. If you have an idea for a future episode of Rembert Explains the '80s, e-mail us at hollywood@grantland.com.
It might be tough to get excited about a spinoff of the Shrek franchise, but at least in the case of Puss in Boots, Antonio Banderas — voicing the titular kitty — sounds like he's having a ball (of yarn) (I had to, guys). And at least this tertiary Shrek character has a little charm; we very well could have gotten a Gingerbread Man movie, and for all the money we've given DreamWorks for Shreks over the years, we would have deserved it.
You knew Twilight was going to earn boatloads this weekend. But how did films not starring vampires do? Terrible. Below, your Top Five movies.
1. Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 (weekend: $139.5 million) Breaking Dawn couldn't quite top the Twilight franchise's previous biggest debut (New Moon opened to $142.8 million in 2009), but it did set the record for best-ever North American first weekend for a movie in which a vampire delivers a demon baby via C-section with his own teeth (discounting inflation). Eighty percent of Dawn's audience was female, which is less than we might have guessed.
2. Happy Feet Two (weekend: $22 million)
Despite a voice cast that includes Matt Damon and Brad Pitt, and a boost from 3D tickets, this dancing-penguins sequel (budget: $135 million) opened to half of what the 2006 original did — and next weekend, families will presumably opt for The Muppets. Happy Feet Three: probably not happening.
It's Friday and Hollywood has disgorged another batch of movies into multiplexes. Which will reign supreme and why? Below, our predictions for the Top 5 films at this weekend's box office.
1. Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1
Critics say it's terrible, but that won't matter to the fanatical, unshowered hordes who've been camped out in front of theaters for a week without access to bathrooms or Rotten Tomatoes. The plots of previous Twilight movies have mostly revolved around Edward and Bella gazing boringly into each others' dead eyes. But Breaking Dawn features a wedding, a sex scene, and a womb-shredding demon baby, so tracking indicates its first-weekend gross to hit triple-digit Harry Potter numbers.
It's Friday and Hollywood has disgorged another batch of movies into multiplexes. Which will reign supreme and why? Below, our predictions for the Top 5 films at this weekend's box office.
5. J. Edgar
Leonardo DiCaprio puts on a rubbery old-guy mask and even less plausible accent to play the titular FBI director in Clint Eastwood's latest biopic, which expands nationally today. Eastwood's movies usually do better when the director is in front of the camera, but Edgar has made an impressive $53,000 in limited release since Wednesday, plus what else do your parents have to do this weekend?
It wasn't just new releases Tower Heist and Harold & Kumar 3 that disappointed this weekend — it was everything: total box-office receipts were down 30 percent from the same three-day period a year ago. "The fear is that our total business is in the toilet,” a studio exec tells Nikki Finke. Before we flush, though, a look at what happened. Here are your Top 5 movies.
1. Puss in Boots (weekend: $33 million; $75.5 million total)
In PiB's second weekend at No. 1, grosses for the Shrek spin-off fell just three percent, which is the smallest-ever box-office drop for a non-Holiday release. For which the industry credits last week's snow on the East Coast, which depressed Boots' opening, and the fact that parents were no less desperate this weekend to make their kids shut up for 90 minutes.
2. Tower Heist (weekend: $25.1 million)
Despite good reviews (for a Brett Ratner movie), the film in which Eddie Murphy gives his funniest performance since Bowfinger debuted below expectations, probably because most of the people who still remember Murphy's performance in Bowfinger took their grandchildren to see Puss in Boots (62 percent of Heist's audience was 30 or older).
The dog days of August are upon us. In your office, every day is like Sunday; in your neighborhood, swings creak in the wind, the children who usually occupy them cavorting on a beach 300 miles away. The city is as empty of humanity as the third act of a zombie movie.
The good news: You won’t have to fight the crowds to see a movie this weekend. The bad news: There’s nothing worth seeing. Tomorrow is Rehash Friday, when every movie released is a pale imitation of something that came before. (See below for more on Rehash Friday.) But that means it’s a great week for RazzieWatchers, because it’s a perfect time to take a look at one of the Golden Raspberries’ most competitive categories, Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off or Sequel.
It’s hard to believe 2011 is already half gone! It seems like just yesterday that the cold of winter had descended upon us as we celebrated The Last Airbender and its five Razzie wins. But now we’ve finished off our Fourth of July hot dogs and legally purchased fireworks, and just as all the finest Oscar blogs are rolling out their early-bird 2011 predictions, so too is it time for RazzieWatch to step out on a limb and make some bold guesses. Which films will achieve Razzie glory come January 23?
In the coming weeks we’ll predict the acting awards and other categories. But today we'll start with the big kahuna: Worst Picture!
