Thursday, December 31, 2009
Nicole Kidman: The Actress of the '00s
By Michelle Orange on 12/04/2009, IFC.COM
If time is an avenger, then the Naughts have had it both ways with Nicole Kidman. In the span of a decade, Kidman was transformed from arm candy into an artist -- the rare movie star who made genuinely interesting choices -- eclipsing her ex-husband, Tom Cruise, who filed for divorce in 2000, with an Oscar win and the embrace, finally, of her peers on her own terms.
However, as the '00s limp to a close, Kidman seems to be succumbing to a personal vendetta against time: by manipulating her face into a mask -- a waxworks ideal of "Nicole Kidman" -- rather than continuing to deploy it as a functional instrument, an artist's tool, Kidman is taking perhaps the most surprising risk of her career: she has chosen to age into glacial iconicity. In this, she exemplifies a decade that treated actresses with ambivalence, waving all the flags of empowerment and agency at the post-Julia Roberts cohort, who wanted to have it all without having to play the charming prostitute, only to corral them into the same old pens: ingénue, mother, old maid.
Kidman, of course, showed signs of life during her pre-Naughts career, most notably in her 1989 breakthrough "Dead Calm," and again in "To Die For" in 1995 and "The Portrait of a Lady" in 1996. Maligned as often for her mannered, on-screen frigidity as she was dismissed for her off-screen attachment to Herr Cruise, audiences gave her her due, particularly for her turn in the Van Sant film, a blackly comic media farce, but it was grudging, as though the director had tapped into a neat utility for Kidman's innate chill and deserved most of the credit.
The Naughts: The Actress of the '00s Read more!
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Monday, December 28, 2009
U.S Box Office: December 25-27, 2009
| # | Title | Dec 25 - 27 | % Chg. | Theaters | Weeks | AVG | Cumulative | ||
| 1 | Avatar | $ 75,617,133 | -1.8 | 3,456 | 2 | $ 21,880 | $ 212,711,184 | ||
| 2 | Sherlock Holmes | 62,390,000 | 3,626 | 1 | 17,206 | 62,390,000 | |||
| 3 | Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel | 48,875,415 | 3,700 | 1 | 13,210 | 75,589,048 | |||
| 4 | It's Complicated | 22,100,820 | 2,887 | 1 | 7,655 | 22,100,820 | |||
| 5 | The Blind Side | 11,470,000 | 14.5 | 2,766 | 6 | 4,147 | 184,127,000 | ||
| 6 | Up in the Air | 11,275,000 | 251.2 | 1,895 | 4 | 5,950 | 24,038,000 | ||
| 7 | The Princess and the Frog | 9,004,610 | -26.1 | 3,475 | 5 | 2,591 | 63,679,289 | ||
| 8 | Nine | 5,452,513 | 1,412 | 2 | 3,862 | 5,830,605 | |||
| 9 | Did You Hear About the Morgans? | 5,000,143 | -24.4 | 2,718 | 2 | 1,840 | 15,600,328 | ||
| 10 | Invictus | 4,045,000 | -3.8 | 2,160 | 3 | 1,873 | 23,020,000 |
Source: Box Ofice Guru Read more!
Friday, December 25, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
U.S Box Office December 18-20, 2009
| Title | Dec 18 - 20 | % Chg. | Theaters | Weeks | AVG | Cumulative | |||
| 1 | Avatar | $ 77,025,481 | 3,452 | 1 | $ 22,313 | $ 77,025,481 | |||
| 2 | The Princess and the Frog | 12,185,949 | -49.7 | 3,475 | 3 | 3,507 | 44,717,721 | ||
| 3 | The Blind Side | 10,021,280 | -33.4 | 3,407 | 5 | 2,941 | 164,725,525 | ||
| 4 | Did You Hear About the Morgans? | 6,616,571 | 2,718 | 1 | 2,434 | 6,616,571 | |||
| 5 | The Twilight Saga: New Moon | 4,407,598 | -44.6 | 3,035 | 5 | 1,452 | 274,598,319 | ||
| 6 | Invictus | 4,203,171 | -51.2 | 2,125 | 2 | 1,978 | 15,877,956 | ||
| 7 | A Christmas Carol | 3,443,464 | -49.6 | 2,070 | 7 | 1,664 | 130,813,354 | ||
| 8 | Up in the Air | 3,210,132 | 34.1 | 175 | 3 | 18,344 | 8,216,051 | ||
| 9 | Brothers | 2,889,121 | -42.4 | 2,009 | 3 | 1,438 | 22,350,518 | ||
| 10 | Old Dogs | 2,340,575 | -46.9 | 2,630 | 4 | 890 | 43,625,471 |
Source: Box Office Guru Read more!
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
James Cameron: Terminator has run its course
"I've moved on creatively from The Terminator, so I'm not really interested in that imagery and even those ideas anymore—and I'm not sure the world is that interested either. It's run its course, I feel."
As evidence of this, he points to this summer's disappointing Terminator Salvation, which attempted to continue the series without Arnold Schwarzenegger.
"His persona was part of The Terminator, and when you uncouple those, you get Terminator Salvation, which is actually a fine film from a pure filmmaking standpoint—it just doesn't gel up into anything mind-blowing."
Some additional comments from a recent interview with Total Film
TF: What did you make of Terminator Salvation?
JC: It didn't quite have the emotional power that it should have had.I thought Sam [Worthington] was great, very powerful, and Christian [Bale]...people have criticised him for being one-note but that's part of the character.He was playing a guy who's furiously deicated to the survival of the human species.Maybe more could have been done with that.In T2 we showed the consequences.It drove Sarah insane.
TF: Was McG the man for the job?
JC: McG's a strong shooter and he honoured the iconic touchstones of the first two movies-almost too much so.I actually felt Salvation is like Aliens, in that it's a fan making a sequel to a movie they loved.
Sources: Sci Fi Wire/The Toronto Sun/Total Film #162 (King of the World: The Complete Works of James Cameron)
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