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'Harry Potter' magic at box office
LOS ANGELES — Harry Potter continues to work box-office alchemy, turning his latest movie adventure into an overnight blockbuster.
The sixth installment, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," took in $79.5 million domestically over opening weekend and $159.7 million since debuting last Wednesday, according to estimates from distributor Warner Bros. on Sunday.
The movie also took in $237 million overseas since Wednesday in 54 countries, bringing its worldwide total to $396.7 million.
Source: www.kansas.com
Mel Brooks honored this week
It all started on Henry Street in Brooklyn for Mel Brooks.
"I was a street-corner comic," he recalled, more than 60 years later. "I would comment on the goings-on in the neighborhood —'Here comes Mrs. Bloom. Duck.' "
Brooks honed his comedic chops as a young stand-up in New York's Catskills Mountains in the 1940s.
Source: www.kansas.com
Out of the movie mainstream
If you feel like seeing a movie but don't want to battle the crowds flocking to "Harry Potter" or "Transformers," there are lots of other offerings around. You just have to know where to look.
Here's a sampling for the rest of the summer:
ass="subhead">Timeless Classics Series, Palace West
Source: www.kansas.com
Wichita's Anime Festival
The fifth Anime Festival will take place this weekend at the Hyatt hotel in Wichita. Anime is a Japanese form of film or digital animation; manga is its print form. Here are all of the festival details:
1) The festival has attracted some of anime's biggest stars , including Caitlin Glass, a voice actress and director who has been working in the anime industry since 2004, and Robert Axelrod, who has appeared in more than 30 feature films and is the voice of Lord Zedd and Finster on the "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers."
2) NDP Productions, which has been making manga the past eight years, will have a booth in Artist Alley at the festival. Appearing will be the founders, Nicole and Danielle Pelham.
Source: www.kansas.com
Love her? You won't even like her
At the end of the drearily formulaic romantic comedy "The Ugly Truth," as our two leads are finally admitting they've fallen for each other (no spoilers here, folks), Katherine Heigl's character asks Gerard Butler's why he's in love with her. Basically, he says he has no idea, only he phrases it with a word we can't reprint here.
Our sentiments exactly.
Obviously, in a battle-of-the-sexes comedy like this, the guy and the girl who hate each other at the beginning realize they're meant for each other by the end. But there's nothing even remotely likable, much less lovable, about Heigl's Abby Richter. She's a control freak who runs a tight ship at a Sacramento TV station, producing the morning news with unflappable efficiency and zero creativity.
Source: www.kansas.com
Out of the movie mainstream
If you feel like seeing a movie but don't want to battle the crowds flocking to "Harry Potter" or "Transformers," there are lots of other offerings around. You just have to know where to look.
Here's a sampling for the rest of the summer:
ass="subhead">Timeless Classics Series, Palace West
Source: www.kansas.com
'Watchmen' for fans, for sure
If Batman's badly needed cinematic reboot put comic book films on a new kind of notice, "Watchmen" — which brings the cherished 1986 graphic novel to the big screen and into the mainstream — essentially raises the bar beyond reach.
That's in equal parts due to how well the film brings to life the anti-superheroes and villains (Jackie Earle Haley, Billy Crudup, Malin Akerman, Patrick Wilson, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Matthew Goode) that comprise the cast, how faithful it is to the source material in doing so, and how perfectly it makes the alternate-history United States in which they exist practically a starring character in its own right.
"Watchmen" checks in at a bloated 162 minutes in theatrical form and 24 minutes heavier in Zack Snyder's director's cut. But outside of a few momentary lulls and the occasional narrative redundancy, it utilizes that time to pay meticulous tribute to the source material without drowning in the details.
Source: www.kansas.com
'G-Force' knocks 'Harry Potter' out of No. 1 spot
LOS ANGELES — An elite squad of guinea pigs has worked its own brand of magic at the box office, taking the No. 1 spot from boy wizard Harry Potter.
The 3-D "G-Force" was the top movie at the box office this weekend, opening with $32.2 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. The Walt Disney release from producer Jerry Bruckheimer, with its mixture of live action and computer- generated animation, is a "Mission: Impossible"-style adventure. It features voiceover work from Nicolas Cage, Sam Rockwell, Tracy Morgan and Penelope Cruz as resourceful rodents.
Last week's No. 1 film, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," came in a close second with an estimated $30 million. That's a 61-percent drop from its opening last weekend of $79.5 million.
Source: www.kansas.com
In the end, Woody Allen's 'Whatever Works' doesn't
The more you care about Woody Allen and his 40-year career as a writer-director, the more "Whatever Works" will affect you.
In and of itself, this film is no great shakes, but it does make intriguing connections to the Allen of the recent as well as the more distant past.
For one thing, Allen is back in Manhattan for the first time in five films. His vehicle is a sour romantic comedy, only sporadically amusing, about the relationship between Larry David's misanthropic genius and Evan Rachel Wood's dim-witted Southern beauty queen turned young runaway.
Source: www.kansas.com
Child violence makes 'Orphan' offensive
"Orphan" proves you can wrap child pornography and abuse in the pretty wrappings of a big-budget Hollywood film and it still will be stomach-turning repugnant.
Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiga play John and Kate Coleman, a married couple dealing with alcoholism, adultery, social insecurities and the stillborn death of what would have been their third child. So they decide to adopt 9-year-old Esther (played by 12-year-old Isabelle Fuhrman).
Kate soon realizes Esther is a psychopath. If only she could have convinced her dolt of a husband of this, then they might have saved themselves — and the audience — a lot of pain.
Source: www.kansas.com
