Saturday, May 4, 2024

Top 5 This Week

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In “entertainment” news (i.e., the latest raging anti-Republican rants on big and small screens)…

I thought Saturday Night Live did a pretty god job of not being total asshats about Sarah Palin last night.  But what struck me mostly was that Sarah Palin doesn’t cease to amaze me (and even liberals—if they had the guts to admit it) in the sheer size of her bollocks.  She once again showed America (and Canada) that she can face down an enemy better than any liberal, south of Alaska.  For example I instantly thought of how the Democratic Party refused, at the beginning of the election campaign, to hold any debates on Fox News Channel, citing the notion that (waaaah, waaaah) Fox News is “biased”;  and it reminded us once again what whiny wieniepants liberals can be, compared to even small-framed women Republicans in skirts and heels. 

In other “entertainment” news, Bush Derangement Syndrome sufferer Oliver Stone’s “W” opened at number two, but sank to number four over the weekend, despite unprecedented fawning and free advertising by all the liberal media for the past week or more.  The state-owned CBC even sent its state-employed “entertainment” reporter to New York (at taxpayer expense) to get some oh-so-sage quotes from Stone, and shockingly he graced our Canadian airwaves with the following information:  McCain (yes, McCain, not Bush, now), is a “moron”.  (This information will serve the Canadian national interest so very well, so once again, the CBC has proven to have provided taxpayers with superb value for your tax dollars and mine.) 

I thought this viewer analysis from Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily was a good analysis of the movie market.  I especially like where it says “But the real surprise this weekend…” in describing how it opened well.  Wow—what a shock that it opened so well!:

SUNDAY AM: After an embarrassing summer season with few big movies to speak of and a lot of bombs that every other studio made fun of, Fox Filmed Entertainment is dominating this autumn weekend with the No. 1 and No. 2 movies. Very early weekend numbers showed that 20th Century Fox’s video game-turned-motion picture aimed at males, Max Payne, opened with $7.1 million Friday and $6.7M Saturday from 3,376 North American theaters for an $18M weekend. That’s exactly what the studio projected for Mark Wahlberg’s PG-13 starrer. Coming in at No. 2 was Fox Searchlight’s female-skewing we-are-family film based on the bestselling book The Secret Life Of Bees that’s playing in only 1,591 venues. It opened with $3.5 million Friday and $4.5 million Saturday for an $11M for the weekend. But don’t count out Disney’s dog pic Beverly Hills Chihuahua which also made $11M with $3 million Friday and $4.8 million Saturday due to crowded matinees. Its new cume is $69M.

But the real surprise this weekend was Oliver Stone’s W. There was tremendous curiosity not just in Hollywood but also in political circles nationwide surrounding the George W Bush biopic’s North American weekend gross, with predictions ranging wildly from a low of $5 million to a high of $12 million. On Friday, it opened No. 2 with $3.8M from 2,030 theaters, then on Saturday fell to #4 with $4.1M for a $10.5M weekend. That’s equal to what its producers hoped.

EXCLUSIVE: *I’ve learned that the exit polling showed that among W. filmgoers, 89% disapprove of Bush. In addition, 78% are voting for Obama, 6% are voting for McCain, and 6% don’t know. Moviergoers were 52%/48% male vs female. And a whopping 47% were over age 40. The audience was overwhelmingly liberal at 55%, followed by moderates at 31%, conservatives at 10%, and those who don’t care about politics 5%. The audience was primarily white at 66%, with African Americans at 10% and all other ethnic groups less than 10%. Most attended because of the prospect of making fun of Bush (42%), or because of Oliver Stone as director (41%), or because the preview looked good (39%), or because of the prospect of humor (33%). In terms of expectations, only 27% felt the movie was better than expected, with 38% feeling it was not as good as expected (this was consistent across all groups, especially liberals), and 35% felt it was as good as expected.  Those who disapprove of Bush felt very strongly that the movie was not as good as expected.*

 

 

Joel Johannesen
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