Dear John ends Avatar’s box office dominance

 

After an 8 week run, Avatar ends its domination at #1 at the box office. Adding its domestic gross of $630 million to its 1.5 billion, Avatar my have slipped from #1 but continues with world-wide domination a 2.2 billion. Romantic drama Dear John, was able to de-throne James Cameron’s juggernaut with a $32 million opening weekend. Avatar still boasts impressive numbers after two months with $23 million. Big movie openings this coming weekend from Wolfman and Valentine’s Day will also contribute to the end of Avatar dominance in the box office.

This Wk		Title	Dist.	Weekend Gross	Cumulative Gross	Rlse Wks
1		Dear John	Sony Pictures Releasing	$32,400,000	$32,400,000	1
2		Avatar	20th Century Fox	$23,600,000	$630,093,000	8
3		From Paris With Love	Lionsgate	$8,120,000	$8,120,000	1
4		Edge of Darkness	Warner Bros. Pictures Distribution	$7,005,000	$29,097,000	2
5		Tooth Fairy	20th Century Fox Distribution	$6,500,000	$34,333,000	3

I see blue people…

After years of oppression, the blue community is finally vindicated with the success of Avatar. Blue people, unjustly enslaved to a life of servitude in the entertainment industry, are finally able to celebrate cinema domination with their Na’vi brethren from Pandora. After breaking the world-wide record last week, Avatar is just millions shy of breaking the all time domestic record of $600 million- the last stronghold held by Titanic. The ’Blues’ creative voices will finally be legitimized and they will no longer be relegated to trivial children’s programming or Las Vegas shows. Although the Blue Man Group helped paved the way years early, Avatar’s enormous success has ushered in a new era in ‘blue rights’. Still yielding ‘opening day’ numbers at $30 million this past weekend, Avatar will no doubt hold this record for many years to come. Not only is this a celebration of the American dream but to the to red, white, and BLUE.  

This Wk		Title	Dist.	Weekend Gross	Cumulative Gross	Rlse Wks
1		Avatar	20th Century Fox	$30,000,000	$594,472,000	7
2		Edge of Darkness	Warner Bros. Pictures Distribution	$17,120,000	$17,120,000	1
3		When in Rome	Walt Disney Studios Distribution	$12,065,000	$12,065,000	1
4		Tooth Fairy	20th Century Fox Distribution	$10,000,000	$26,106,000	2
5		The Book of Eli	Warner Bros. Pictures Distribution	$8,770,000	$74,373,000	3

AVATAR breaks historic record!

January 26th, 2010 marks a significant day in the history of cinema. The 12-year-old world-wide record previously held by Cameron’s own Titanic has officially been sunk. Experts thought it would never happen considering today’s ‘fast food’ movie era in which the average theatrical run is about 6 weeks. The 1997 Titanic domestically and internationally made $1.84 billion. Today’s reports is that Avatar has made $1.85 billion and is still growing. Which is pretty impressive considering the current economic crunch. Titanic still retains the domestic record at just over $600 million. Avatar just climbed to #2 with $554 million bumping the Dark Knight to #3 with $533 million. It is projected that Avatar will make the domestic record within the next few weeks. Looks like 3-D is here to stay. Congrats Jimmy.

Check out our posts, reviews, and exclusives on AVATAR.

Hot Tub Time Machine

The 80’s was my decade. I reflect back and remember, my first kiss, my first car, graduating high school, and going off to college. Many fond memories. However, I typically don’t have fond feelings for ‘road trip’ buddy movies. But since it takes place in the era of my youth, I will have to see it. I’m a Jon Cusack fan- but my John, how far you have fallen. This looks pretty awful, but hey so were the 80s. Hot Tub Time Machine opens March 19th.

Legion

*spoiler filled review (you can’t spoil what is already rotten!)*
I’m not a big fan of zombie or vampire movies but give me a good ‘end of the world’ story any day. I’m a sucker for angels, demons, and judgment day movies. However, against the better judgement of my peers, critics, and the entire Western hemisphere (13% on RottenTomatoes), I caught Legion in hopes of having something worthy to review for the faithful readers of B5. I apologize a head of time and please consider this a public service warning to protect your sense of good taste.

Legion starts with less than angelic Michael, played by Paul Bettany (Da Vinci Code, Beautiful Mind), dropping down from the heavens as a rogue agent on a mission of mercy. After inexplicably cutting off his wings, he heads off by car (?) into the darkness (not sure why he couldn’t just land at his destination). Meantime, a motley crue of characters are stranded at a crappy diner in a desolate town called Paradise Falls (I guess referring to Milton’s Paradise Lost?). 8 months pregnant Charlie, gets a visit from a sweet, old grannie traveler that turns out to be a freaky, wall crawling beast. After loss of power, loss of communications, and some serious bug problems, the panicking group is finally visited by the gun-toting Michael. The wingless angel explains that for some reason God is done with humanity and is about to destroy it with an army of heavenly hosts. However, for some inexplicable (you’re going to get tired of this word) reason, Charlie’s baby is the key for mankind’s survival. So like a video game, the new recruits have to gun down wave after wave of angel-possessed human-zombies as they try to break into the diner and kill Charlie’s baby. Eventually, there is a showdown between Gabriel and Michael. Michael somehow dies (I guess he’s a human now?) and returns just in the nick of time to save Charlie and baby for their inexplicable destiny. Whew, the only thing worse that watching it was writing it all out.

Legion had potential. There is not a lot of movies out there about angels, and even fewer that focus on heavenly warfare. The first half of this film sets up ok. The remote diner turns into a ’haunted house’ with zombies running around outside so that was pretty cool. However, it started to feel like they were trying to tell an ‘end of the world’ story within the confines of an aquarium. Instead of being about epic cataclysmic events, it just turns into a claustrophobic shoot out that takes place in about 2,500 square feet. To make it worst, when the plot tries to shift into high gear, the thing comes apart forcing you to suspend belief and all reason. Why are angels ‘possessing’ the weakling humans and try to zombie-walk their way up to the diner when they could just swoop down and tear the roof off? Why do the ‘angel possessed’ humans look more like demonic zombies? How exactly do bullets stop angels anyways? Angels seem to be able to possess anyone, why can’t they possess the principal characters? How did Paul Bettany get this gig? I’m thinking about this way too much…

By the time it reached its way to cliché, car chasing climax I was kind of hoping the good guys would lose just to see what would happen. The big shocker ending? Michael is elevated back to his angelic status because he was brave enough to turn on God and compassionate enough to save the baby- oh geez. By the end, the good guys win and drive off into the cliché sunset.

Tipped off by the trailer, the special effects are pretty amateur. Certainly nothing you wouldn’t see in a direct to DVD or cable TV program. It also didn’t help that this was one of the first movies for rookie Director Scott Stewart. I could have thought of about 100 other actors other than Paul Bettany to play Michael. His slim build and English accent hardly does the mighty archangel justice. A few of the other characters do an okay job but they had little to work with. A few cool things: The crazy grannie from the trailer was pretty freaky. There is also a brief toddler killer which was disturbing. I thought about 30 seconds of the final showdown between Michael and Gabriel was entertaining. Gabriel flapping around wielding a giant mace and slicing things up with his metallic wings was the best part of the movie. That was it for the likes.

For a movie named Legion, there was nothing big, epic, or interesting about this movie. With the exception of a little gore, this looked like something Christian broadcasting like TBN or Left Behind’s Kirk Cameron would have produced. Which is unfortunate because this is a topic still unexplored. With the right story, director, and budget, the next big genre could be discovered. Until then, I think even God will have trouble forgiving this sinful act.

I give Legion a 1.5 Babbles out of 5

Avatar = energizer bunny…

 

For a 6th straight week, Avatar has dominated the box office. Avatar’s run is reminiscent of the good ol’ days when movies like Star Wars and ET remained king of the box office for months at a time. Not only is it only 50 million short of the domestic record held by Titanic, its international sales has also been very strong. With it continually amassing profits for the next month, it looks like Cameron’s ‘Unobtainium’ of sinking his own record will become a reality. 

A smattering throw away movies didn’t stand a chance this weekend. Wolfman (Feb 10th) might be the first movie to challenge Avatar’s firstplace status anytime soon.

This Wk		Title	Dist.	Weekend Gross	Cumulative Gross	Rlse Wks
1		Avatar	20th Century Fox	$36,000,000	$552,797,000	6
2		Legion	Sony Pictures Releasing	$18,200,000	$18,200,000	1
3		The Book of Eli	Warner Bros. Pictures	$17,000,000	$62,003,000	2
4		Tooth Fairy	20th Century Fox	$14,500,000	$14,500,000	1
5		The Lovely Bones	Paramount Pictures	$8,800,000	$31,624,000	7

Daybreakers

*no spoilers*
The vampires are back but with a new twist in the Spierig brothers film Daybreakers starring Ethan Hawke and William Dafoe. Rick, my esteemed college, already did a great job in his review from last week so I won’t go into too much details besides my pros and cons.

Pros
In a world filled with overly hormonal and emotionally immature vampires running around, it was actually nice to see the undead of the night get some genuine creepy respect. The fact that vampires have now taken over society and are living the ‘manic Mondays’ is a fun and interesting interpretation. They catatonicly go to work, wait for public transportation, and have rebellious teenagers. In one scene with a group of vampire teenagers, it would have been ironic if they were all reading a the latest romance novel about a vampire falling in forbidden love with a human! But I digress. The environment Daybreakers created was quite interesting. It was blend of the ordinary and the fantastic. The world reminded me of a remix of Matrix and Gattica (another favorite Hawke movie)- where it’s strangely familiar and totally foreign at the same time. The coffee shops serving blood instead of creamer was a nice touch. I especially liked the feral, beast-like mutants that were a result of vampires feeding off their own blood. They were pretty freaky and vampires becoming the victims is an interesting twist on things.The first half of this movie was great. I love bizzaro world tales and how a culture can be perverted and yet remain so familiar. Even if you are a blood thirsty predator, you still gotta pay bills and take care of your family. Oh, there are also a few jumpy scenes if you are into that kinda stuff.

Cons
Unfortunately Daybreakers went from undead to dead by the second half of the movie. It’s like the vampiric monsters I mentioned earlier, the movie fed off itself until it mutated and went crazy. While I generally enjoy Hawke and Dafoe, the story really slipped away and became problematic. The plot digressed into the typical ‘hero with the cure on-the-run’ type climax which is so predictable. Plus the crux of the ‘cure’ is based on very unconvincing science. They just didn’t sell it well and it ultimately hurt the film. I can’t criticize it more without spoiling it but I just didn’t buy into it. I mildly enjoyed the final ’domino effect’ sequence but couldn’t fully appreciate it because I couldn’t suspend belief long enough to enjoy it. A small spoiler; Hawke is far more interesting as a vampire than his human counter part which contributed to the momentum loss of the film. There were a lot of extra stuff and storytelling that also convulted it by the end. By the finale, I was starting to feel a bit undead as well.

Overall, Daybreakers showed much more potential than it followed through with. This alternate reality of a vampire filled world was very fascinating, eery, and chilling. Ironically, when the story transitions to the humans, it seems to lose all it’s life. So if you see Daybreakers, go see it for the world it created versus the world it tries to save.  

I give Daybreakers a 2.5 out of 5 Babbles

Book of Eli

*no spoilers*
The future is so bright, I gotta wear shades- mainly because of the nuclear fallout. The Book of Eli is the latest post-apocalyptic movie to remind us again that we will be spending our days scavenging water and eating emaciated cats. Denzel Washington stars as mysterious road warrior Eli, the protector of the last King James Bible. He is on a journey west and encounters a quagmire of men of questionable character. Along the way he picks up Solara (Milas Kunas) and together they form an odd couple as they try to survive harrassment from mob boss Carnegie played by Gary Oldman. It’s a very simple story of one man’s mission to take his sacred book to the west.

Book of Eli has many familiar components to it as you would expect from this genre. There is a lot of scavenging, bargaining, and shoot outs. It’s like a modern-day, gun slinging ‘old west’ world where the corrupt rule and no one is innocent anymore. Book of Eli reminded me of a remix of the Postman, Mad Max, and more recently The Road. Directors, the Hughes brothers, do an adequate job designing this world. It’s represented well with its gritty muted colors (apparently, the nuclear war had blasted all color from existence). It’s stylized like a graphic novel and overall is done convincingly. Unlike water, the one thing in abundance is slow motion as an element to add tension to scenes. Visually Book of Eli is fine but nothing I haven’t seen before and nothing to make me look forward to our crappy  future.

Denzel does what he does best. He is cool, calculating, and always in control. Journeying for over 30 years, Eli’s character origins are kept somewhat mysterious and it make you wonder how he developed such super combat skills. He is clearly a close combat expert and dead shot unlike the savages he encounters. Denzel brings the usual regal and strong moral centeredness that we have come to love in his others roles. He does fine but it did left me wanting something new or unexpected. Mila Kunis is clearly out of place in this role. Even while trying to down play her natural beauty, her sculpted eyebrows and ’doe like’ eyes are too glamorous for her environment. Her acting doesn’t help her case either. They even try to evolve her character by the end of the film but I couldn’t help but think she won’t survive too much longer in this harsh world.  

For the most part, this is a pretty predictable story. There is one glimmer of hope at the end with a small twist however, it wasn’t enough to set this a part from other similar movies. The Book of Eli does have an unusual and subtle Christian focus with how they connect hope and the Bible. It would make for a fascinating discussion in the right settings. Overall I thought this film was fine. Nothing truly bothered me about it but I found it at times as drab as the colorless world they live in. Ultimately, Book of Eli is cool because Denzel is cool. Without him this would have been a different film. If you like post- apocalyptic movies then I would recommend this. If you have to muster enthusiasm for these types of movies then I would skip it and wait for a real thing to occur instead.

I give this a 2.5 Babbles out of 5

Avatar is #1 for 5th week

This Wk		Title	Distributor	Weekend Gross	Cumulative Gross	Rlse Wks
1		Avatar	20th Century Fox	$41,300,000	$491,767,000	5
2		The Book of Eli	Warner Bros.	$31,615,000	$31,615,000	1
3		The Lovely Bones	Paramount Pictures	$17,060,000	$17,527,000	6
4		Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel	20th Century Fox	$11,500,000	$192,592,000	4
5		Sherlock Holmes	Warner Bros. Pictures	$9,825,000	$180,018,000	4

Avatar podcast has landed!

The official BabbleOn 5 Avatar podcast has landed here on earth! We called it the “Welcome to Pandora” podcast. The Babblers had high expectations for this long anticipated epic film by the legendary James Cameron. But did it meet expectations? Check out this podcast as we discuss not only our thoughts on the record-breaking Avatar but how it compares to Cameron’s body of work. 

Listen to it here and check out the library of podcast from other movies of ‘09.

You can also check out a our wide variety of other Avatar posts here.

CHUCK is back!

*no spoilers*

We don’t talk about TV shows too often but since we are all nerds, we can’t let this one pass without a nod.

The Babblers and a few friends got together last night to watch the premiere of CHUCK season 3 after being off the air for almost a year now. Threatened with cancellation, the only way it made it back for a third season was because of a fan campaign this past summer. Scrambling to put this new season into production, season 3 was delayed to this year. It’s been too long but better late than never.

In season 2, Chuck is programmed with the ‘intersect 2.0′ which allows him to instantly access super spy skills (ala Matrix) for a short period of time. The problem is that triggering the abilities is still unpredictable and Chuck’s roller coaster of emotions only complicate the matter. The past team with Agent Sara Walker and Agent John Casey are disbanding as Chuck explores his potential as the next generation uber-agent. However, with all these new abilities, will Chuck be able to bring the team back together or are they doomed to never see each other again?!?! Well, what do yo think?

Many of the same plot devices are re-introduced like the ever fragile relationship between Chuck and Sara, the political struggle at the Buy More, and the clueless but loyal best friend Morgan. Chuck is a great, light-hearted faire that pleases both the girls and geeks. You have to suspend some disbelief and just have fun with this show which is mix of Alias meets The OC. Chuck is largely successful because of the loveable characters. It’s perfectly casted and as hopeless as they are, you can’t help but root for them. For nerd, geeks, and freaks, this is a must see series. I own both seasons and will surely own this one someday. I give the new Chuck premiere a 4 out of 5 Babbles.

Chuck is on Monday nights at 9/8c. It’s not too late to get on board with Chuck. Even though it’s season 3, you won’t have trouble figuring out what’s happening. Check out the premiere episode: ‘Chuck verses the pink slip’ at HULU.com

Here is my ‘Nerd Herd’ costume from our Chuck viewing party:

You are on Pandora…(and staying for a while)

Perhaps this world hasn’t gone to the crapper afterall. Avatar surpassed Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen as the highest-grossing 2009 release. I have a little more faith in Hollywood knowing that the awful mess of T-2 isn’t going to be declared the King of 09.

James Cameron’s unstoppable force added another $48.5 million to its domestic total, now at $429 million; it has earned $1.3 billion worldwide so far. (“Transformers” topped out at $402 million in the U.S.)

New releases were nowhere within reach of this mega-hit. Only vampire flick “Daybreakers” nudged its way into the top five; the Amy Adams rom-com “Leap Year” came in sixth with $9.1 million, while raunchy Michael Cera comedy “Youth in Revolt” nabbed $7 million and landed in ninth place. It’s rare these days for any movie to be in control of the box office for more than a couple of weeks. Avatar is now in week 4 and looks to be there for a while longer.

This Wk		Title	Dist.	Weekend Gross	Cumulative Gross
1		Avatar	20th Century Fox	$48,500,000	$429,040,000
2		Sherlock Holmes	Warner Bros. Pictures Distribution	$16,610,000	$165,178,000
3		Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel	20th Century Fox Distribution	$16,300,000	$178,184,000
4		Daybreakers	Lionsgate	$15,000,000	$15,000,000
5		It’s Complicated	Universal Pictures	$11,007,000	$76,370,000