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Box Office Analysis-Friday Surprises
Box office figures for Friday are in, and there are some surprising grosses to talk about. Four Christmases Makes Way Too Much Money Posting an opening probably a little higher than expected, Four Christmases topped the box office friday with 13.2 million (all figures according to Variety.com and boxofficemojo.com). The film now has grossed 28.2…
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Writing Character-Jack Nicholson Scene As Frank Costello
Building Character Doesn’t Have to Take All Day In the first 4 minutes of “The Departed”, you find out all you need to know about Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson, “The Bucket List”) to know him, and what kind of person he is. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4nUFxsZqpA] His first line, intoned in voiceover is, “I don’t want to be…
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Four Christmases-Five Groans
Representing the squandered talents of two (2) proven comic talents (Director Seth Gordon of “King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters” fame, and Vince Vaughn of “Wedding Crashers” fame), “Four Christmases” is the type of well-marketed, high-concept, assembly line dreck that makes money and reproduces to create more processed junk comedy. Vaugh generally has only…
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Bolt Barks at Pixar’s Shadow
In the documentary “The Pixar Story”, some of the commentators discuss their sadness that Pixar basically made obsolete Disney’s hand-drawn animation division. In much a similar way, it seems Disney has become second-banana to Pixar in the computer animation department. Sure the companies are affiliated, but it seems pretty clear when a film is a…
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WTF Gerard!
Why Gerard Butler (300) insists on doing chick flicks is beyond me. He was perfectly fine in P.S. I Love You but really, is this the best use of his prodigious talent? And at the very least P.S. I Love You had an intriguing concept. His upcoming, “The Ugly Truth” with Katherine Heigl doesn’t seem…
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Park Chan Wook’s “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance”
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance In my personal continuing quest to see all films by Park Chan Wook (Oldboy), I recently saw “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance”. It’s particularly interesting to see the contrast between this film and Park’s earlier film “J.S.A. Joint Security Area”. Stylistically as a director he clearly grew a lot from “J.S.A.”. In…
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Tony Gilroy Switching Gears For “Duplicity”
Tony Gilroy has made a career out of being…well, relatively humorless. The Bourne series, which he wrote on, was known for its nearly emotionless protagonist. And Michael Clayton (directed and written by Gilroy) was marked with the same serious, somewhat somber, weary intellectual vibe. So when “Duplicity” was announced, about two rival corporations feuding, it…
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Welcome
Hello and Welcome to Dan Benamor’s Movie House, updated semi-daily. We have reviews, clips, screenplays, screenwriting analysis, box office analysis, standup, trailer reviews, and other movie-like content.