- The weekend was not an overly profitable one at the box
office and perhaps the most impressive performance came from a film that barely
cracked the top 10. Last week’s runner-up, “Mr. Peabody & Sherman,”
switch spots with last week’s champion, “300: Rise of An Empire,” and banked
$21.2 million for the win in its second weekend. Its cumulative domestic
earnings now stand at $63.1 million. “300” snagged $19.1 million in its second
weekend, padding its overall earnings to $78.3 million. The top new film was “Need
for Speed,” which banked $17.8 million for third place in its debut and has a
long way to go to earn back its $66 million budget. “Non-Stop” scored fourth
place with $10.6 million, giving the latest Liam Neeson ass-kicking epic $68.8
million through its first three weeks in theaters. The latest “virtually
identical to every Tyler Perry movie before it” Tyler Perry movie, “The Single
Moms Club,” could do no better than fifth in its first weekend of release with
$8.3 million. Sixth place went to “The LEGO Movie,” which banked $7.7 million in
its sixth weekend of release to up its overall earnings to $237 million and
counting. “Son of God” rode its messiah powers to seventh place, adding $5.4
million to its bank roll and giving the Jesus-centric flick $50.8 million
through three weeks. “The Grand Budapest Hotel” remained in limited release but
found a way to rise nine spots to eighth place as it added 62 theaters to the
four its showed in last weekend and earned $3.7 million for a two-week tally of
$4.8 million. “Frozen” stayed in the top 10 for a staggering 17th weekend in a
row with $2.2 million, giving the animated success story $396.4 million in
total domestic earnings. The most impressive effort of the weekend came from
“Veronica Mars,” the movie spin-off from the cult-favorite teen detective TV
show of the same name that was made with funding from a Kickstarter campaign,
showed only in 291 AMC and independent theaters and yet managed the highest
per-theater average of any release for the weekend on its way to $2.1 million
and the final spot in the top 10. “The Monuments Men” (No. 11), “3 Days to Kill”
(No. 12), “Ride Along” (No. 13) and “12 Years a Slave” (No. 14) all fell out of
last weekend’s top 10……..
- German tax cheats have been forewarned. They can continue
drinking their top-notch beer, powering through their plates of bratwurst and
rocking their lederhosen, but if and when they slop up, their government is
looking to drop an even bigger hammer on them. Germany's finance minister announced plans
late last week to tighten rules allowing tax evaders to escape punishment if
they turn themselves in. The announcement followed the conviction of soccer
giant Bayern Munich's ex-president on tax evasion charges, coupled with public
opinion polls showing strong opposition against concessions to tax cheats who
confess. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble criticized the rules as an
"effective instrument" that are in need of an overhaul. On the
surface, ol’ Wolfie would seem to have a point. Currently, German tax cheats
who manage to deke their way out of more than 50,000 euros ($69,500) in taxes
have to pay 5 percent extra. That paltry amount would not seem to be a
significant deterrent for anyone with a tax bill that large, so upping the
number to 15 percent or more would be a solid start. In addition increasing the
penalty for tax cheats, Schaeuble suggested changing the statute of limitations
on money parked abroad. If the new rules are enacted, supporters can thank Uli
Hoeness, who subsequently quit as Bayern president. He was sentenced to 3 1/2
years in prison Thursday for evading millions through an undeclared Swiss
account, proving once more that the one crime that will bring you down anywhere
in the world is trying to cheat the government out of the money it so loves and
craves………..
- Boxing and corrupt judges are like crappy singing and a
Britney Spears album, rioting and European soccer fans or terrible acting and
Paulie Shore movies. In other words, they are inextricably intertwined. George Groves is all too aware of his
sport’s corruption and that’s why he has refused to fight WBA and IBF super
heavyweight Carl Froch unless the British Boxing Board of Control appoints
"neutral officials" for their rematch at Wembley Stadium. Froch
retained his titles with a ninth-round stoppage against Groves in Manchester on
Nov. 23 and Groves quickly cried foul, launching an appeal on the grounds that
referee Howard Foster stopped the fight prematurely. The IBF seemed to agree
and ordered a rematch. That rematch will take place on May 31 and at a news
conference last week, Groves denounced the ninth-round stoppage as a
"stonewall robbery" and added that his request for neutral officials
was "conditional on the fight going ahead." Challengers typically do
not dictate terms to champions, but this is an unusual case. Both Groves and
Froch are British, so nationality shouldn’t be a factor in any referee bias. Promoter
Eddie Hearn supported Groves' call for neutral referees, but refused to assign
blame to Foster for his decision to stop the first fight. The controversy could
well be a thinly veiled attempt to sell more pay-per-view buys for the rematch,
which is expected to set a post-World War II attendance record for a boxing
match in Britain after 60,000 tickets that went on sale on Monday sold out
quickly. Wembley is able to seat up to 90,000, so the bout will easily shatter
the previous record of 56,000 in
2008 for Ricky Hatton-Juan Lazcano at City of Manchester Stadium. "I don't
believe in fate, but I do believe in everything happening for a reason,"
Groves said. "Maybe I had to go through that decision, that first fight,
to get to the point where I can fight at Wembley, in my home city, in front of
my home fans. I couldn't be more excited about this fight now.” Here’s hoping
the fight lives up to all the drama……..
- Someone does not sound confident in her senatorial
fundraising abilities, Sen. Jeanne
Shaheen (D-N.H.). Shaheen is an incumbent facing a midterm election and rather
than rest confidently in her abilities to raise copious amounts of cash through
both legit and dubious means, she is calling on newly announced Republican
challenger Scott Brown to sign the same pact in New Hampshire that helped
prevent outside groups from pouring money into his Massachusetts Senate
election. Her nomadic challenger, who seems intent on bouncing from state to
state around the Northeast in order to find a constituency willing to elect him
to a cushy job in which he gets all sorts of perks and benefits without having
to actually accomplish anything on a regular basis, signed the so-called
People's Pledge with Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2012. Shaheen,
perhaps figruing that Brown lost the first time around while operating under
that pact and could suffer the same fate once again, said she admired Brown for
agreeing to the deal two years ago. It took her all of two seconds to ask for
the same deal Saturday morning after Brown announced plans to launch an
exploratory committee to enter the New Hampshire race. Shaheen outlined her
proposal in a letter to Brown and wrote that New Hampshire voters should have
the same assurance their voices won't be "drowned out by third-party
expenditures." Brown not-so-deftly sidestepped questions on whether he
would agree to the offer, instead shifting the focus to the fact that Shaheen
is on a multiple-city West Coast fundraising swing that he says will provide
money to third party groups for more outside negative ads against him………
- Did you know that the Tyrannosaurus rex had a cousin? A team of
researchers led by paleontologists Anthony Fiorillo and Ronald Tykoski of the
Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas announced on Saturday that they
have discovered a much smaller Arctic cousin of the T-Rex. The remains were found
in Alaska and have been tagged with an official genus and species: Nanuqsaurus
hoglundi. According to the museum’s team, the dinosaur lived around 70 million
years ago and its remains were first discovered in 2006 in the Prince Creek
Formation on Alaska's North Slope. The same quarry has yielded other noteworthy
finds such as the horned dinosaur species Pachyrhinosaurs perotorum, whose
discovery was announced in 2011. “I find it absolutely thrilling that there is
another new dinosaur found in the polar region," Fiorillo said in written
release. "It tells us that the ecosystem of ancient Arctic was a very
different place, and it challenges everything we know about dinosaurs.” The
team discovered only a few small fragments of the Nanuqsaurus hoglundi,
including the top part of a skull, part of a lower jaw and part of an upper
facial jawbone. "Nanuqsaurus" loosely translates to "polar bear
lizard," according to the museum, and was chosen to honor the Inupiat
people whose territory traditionally includes the area where the remnants were
found. The "hoglundi" portion of the name is a nod to Dallas
entrepreneur and philanthropist Forrest Hoglund. While its larger cousin would
have weighed between 7-8 tons and spanned nearly 40 feet, an adult Nanuqsaurus
might have been only 25 feet long, with a weight of 1,000 pounds. That would
still be a large beast, but the researchers believe its relatively small size
may be attributable to how isolated the area was and how little food was likely
available. At that time in Earth’s history, it is believed that Alaska would
have been dark about half the year. “Conditions in this setting were relatively
warm, but there were profound to extreme seasonal changes in light regime
throughout the year that would have limited resource availability and produced
substantial variance in temperatures,” the researchers wrote in their findings.
Yes, but a small T-rex is still a T-rex……..
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