- Not a stellar weekend at the box office, even if you’re a fan of the supernatural, the other-worldly and the outer-spacy. In its opening weekend, Ron Howard's "Angels & Demons" earned a solid, yet unspectacular $48 million to take the to spot in earnings over "Star Trek," which raked in $43 million in its second week. The $48 million for "Angels & Demons" ranks well behind the $77.1 million debut for its predecessor, "The Da Vinci Code," in 2006. Of course, much of that drop in revenue can be attributed to the steady cooling off of the controversy over the religious subject matter in Dan Brown's novels. The strength of the dork following of the No. 2 film for the weekend, J.J. Abrams' "Star Trek," could also have something to do with it. The $43 million weekend haul for “Star Trek” brings its cumulative total to $147.6 million, making it the year's fourth highest-grossing movie after just eleven days in theaters. Finishing third for the weekend was “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” with $14.8 million and a cumulative gross of $151.1 million after three weekends. The fourth spot in the earnings race (sadly) went to Matthew McConaughey' s "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" with $6.9 million), followed by and the Beyoncé-Ali Larter thriller "Obsessed" at No. 5 with $4.6 million. Other big-name stars weren’t so successful over the weekend, with Jennifer Aniston's "Management" not faring well in limited release. The movie grossed just $378,420 from 212 screens for a measly per-screen average of $1,785. One new movie that did do well, also in limited release, was the comedy "The Brothers Bloom." Appearing in only four theaters, “Brothers Bloom” brought in $82,000 from those four theaters for a $20,500 per-theater haul. Now two weeks old, the is off to a promising start. Overall box office revenues are up 16 percent over last year with a Memorial Day double-header of "Terminator Salvation" and "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" on the way………
- It’s about freaking time someone used Facebook for something other than a) organizing a kegger, b) posting pictures of their new pets, c) bitching about how much they hate school or d) throwing up a photo gallery of their latest drunken night on the town. Some out there - I’m talking about you, Israeli security agency Shin Bet - may not be down with terrorism groups using Facebook and other social networking sites to recruit Israeli citizens as spies, but I’m enjoying the trend. If terrorist groups want to create their own Facebook pages, groups and events, (“Suicide bombing party at Ahmir’s house, Saturday at 10:30! B.Y.O.B.”) and try to convince people to trade confidential information for money, what’s the big deal? “The Shin Bet has gotten many reports about cases where terrorist elements are using the Internet to get in touch with Israelis with proposals to enlist in terror activity or to pass classified information in exchange for payment," the statement from Shin Bet said. If you believe the worryworts in the Israeli intelligence community, these efforts could lead to leaked information that would hurt Israeli security or citizens traveling to other countries to exchange the information for money "might lead to them being kidnapped by terror organizations.” As you’d expect, Shin Bet isn’t exactly forking over a lot of details about how this entire Facebook terrorism thingy works, although the Shin Bet statement did describe one example of a person who was recruited by a terrorist organization on Facebook. “Lately, an Israeli citizen contacted the Shin Bet and complained about a request in Facebook from a person that presented himself as a Lebanese merchant, who asked him to give him classified information for money,” the statement said. Do what you want with this development, Israel, but personally I’d like to see you embrace the fact that Facebook is finally being used for something productive/possibly destructive……..
- Lately, I’ve read opinions from a lot of places on the inherent problems of the drafts in various U.S. professional sports, which reward the worst teams with at least the best chance for the top picks in their sport’s amateur draft. The arguments fall along the lines of not wanting to reward organizations that don’t do a good job of running their operations and putting a quality product on the floor. These poorly run teams receive high draft picks, which invariably fail to make them a contender and often ruin the psyche and career of a promising young player before it really gets going. All of that was on my mind as a I caught the latter part of last night’s NBA Draft Lottery, in which the 14 teams that didn’t make the playoffs sent someone tangentially linked to their organization to sit in a TV studio with 13 other team reps and their respective lucky charms to listen as the league announced the results of the lottery. In case you don’t know, the NBA lottery currently operates by placing ping-pong balls in a hopper and drawing balls out to determine the order of picks. The team with the worst record from the just-concluded season has the most ping-pong balls in the hopper and thus the best shot at the top pick, the second-worst team has the second most balls and so on. Watching the reps from these mostly terrible teams sit behind their own individual podiums and await the lottery results, it struck me just how inept most of the teams are and also that you see many of the same teams back in the lottery year after year. Just look at the teams that landed the top picks in the lottery this year: 1) the L.A. Clippers, who boast the league’s worst coach and its worst general manager, all rolled into one crap-tastic package (Mike Dunleavy, take a bow!) and are in the lottery more often than the actual ping-pong balls used to select the order of picks, 2) the Memphis Grizzlies, with GM Chris Wallace running a team in a fashion that combines the financial savvy of Enron with some of Dunleavy’s patented franchise-killing basketball un-savvy and are also perennial lottery participants, 3) the Oklahoma City Thunder, a team hijacked from Seattle prior to this season and which hasn’t been a viable playoff contender for pretty much a decade, 4) the Sacramento Kings, who haven’t been relevant since their exciting battles with the Lakers in the Western Conference playoffs…..back in the ‘90s, 5) the Washington Wizards, whose highest rise has been the opening round of the playoffs for a few years as the sparring partner for Cleveland so the Cavaliers could get ready for the real playoff teams they would face beyond the first round. I could go on, but the point is that these high picks are going to teams that are a) too inept, basketball-wise, to use them in a way that will make their crappy teams relevant and/or b) too cash-strapped to put a good supporting cast around these high picks. So yes, the drafts of the NBA and also the NFL are very much f’d up. The question is whether either league has the guts to actually do something about the problem…….
- Who could have see this coming, other than me the second I heard about the concept for Privileged on the CW network? One of the CW’s 17 shows about rich, privileged kids and their spoiled, party-filled lives won't be returning for a second season. Series creator Rina Mimoun (hard to believe she was ever linked to my all-time fave show, Everwood) confirmed that Privileged won't return for a second season. If I could argue that bad writing, mediocre acting and a lame premise were the only reasons that Privileged struggled in the ratings, that would be disappointing. Then, I couldn’t claim that people are simply overloaded with these shows about spoiled rich kids in New York or Southern California and that the CW is so unoriginal, lazy and brain-less that it can produce nothing but these shows of late. Not being able to make those claims would be very disappointing to me. Some of you (probably females age 15-34) may have enjoyed JoAnna Garcia and her fellow cast members, but the show is getting the ax along with the likely demise of another CW comedy, Reaper. Instead, the CW will do what it does best: recycle old ideas and shows. It will feature a Melrose Place remake (with Ashley Simpson-Wentz), along with new, sure-to-be-canceled shows like Vampire Diaries (starring Ian Somerhalder and Paul Wesley as blood-sucking brothers), the and Beautiful Life (about young, fab models living together). I can only say that I take immense pleasure in seeing a network that killed so many of my favorite shows run itself right into the ground, because it couldn’t happen to a crappier group of people than Dawn Ostroff (damn you, Ostroff!) and her crew………
- Warning to all Haitian women: Slick Willie is on the way. Yes, one of the great womanizers of the past century, Bill Clinton, has been named as a United Nations special envoy to Haiti. Note that it isn’t the Obama administration that tabbed Ol’ Willie to go to Haiti, but rather the world’s most universally ignored and dismissed governing body, the U.N. A senior U.N. official confirmed the appointment Monday and an official announcement was made Tuesday. I guess adding a two-term president who has traveled to Haiti on several occasions as a presence in an impoverished and struggling nations could help, but I do think that the ladies of Haiti need to be forewarned if Bubba Clinton is coming to their shores. Dude will clearly hit most anything that a) moves and is b) female (Need evidence? Just do a Google image search for Paula Jones.) When Clinton made his most recent visit to Haiti in March, he was held somewhat in check by the fact that his battle ax of a wife, Hank, was with him. Both of the Clintons voiced optimism at Haiti's potential back in March because of political stability and economic growth after decades of chaos. Still, I don’t see how Bubba Clinton is going to play a huge role in turning things around for the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. If only having sex with any woman willing to crawl under a desk or sneak a quickie while your wife is out of town could revive a struggling economy…….
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