'Just when you thought I was dead...'

Harvey Weinstein was back in the media and the MPAA’s bad graces this morning after appearing on "CBS This Morning" to announce the launch of yet another attack on the ratings system. This time, the MPAA managed to incite the very, very public irritation of Weinstein by giving one of his awards-season contenders, Philomena, an audience-restricting R instead of a PG-13 rating. Like that time they tried to give Blue Valentine an NC-17 instead of an R rating (Harvey won that one), or that time they gave The King’s Speech an R instead of a PG-13 rating (Harvey did not win that one), the MPAA has apparently once again acted in a manner that could hurt the success, of the fiscal or Academy Awards variety, of a Weinstein film. A thing not to be borne.

But this particular campaign has gotten off to a remarkably likable start. The hullabaloo managed to transcend a typical Weinstein publicity blitz the moment Judi Dench, in character as James Bond’s late boss M, swiveled to face the camera in a 20-second video spot and pronounced herself resurrected. “Just when you thought I was dead,” M (or PhiloMena) wink-winks, before telling the audience she has an important mission for them. “Are you familiar with M-P-A-A?” she asks at video’s end. Presumably, when the next spot airs tomorrow, we’re to be charged with virtually accosting the MPAA as Weinstein brow-beating stand-ins until the bad guys relent and stop picking on poor old PhiloMena. It’s silly, but also fun, as Weinstein himself acknowledges (“I’m having fun with them”). One would think after 20-odd years – Weinstein launched his first attack on the MPAA back in 1994 when they tried to give Clerks an NC-17 rating (Harvey won that one) – the organization would be a little tired of the Weinsteins’ kind of fun. But the rest of us can enjoy the video clips.

A special M.essage:
 

Weinstein on "CBS This Morning:"
 

I do think Weinstein has a point. The difference between one F-word and two F-words in a film that doesn’t otherwise feature unduly adult or mature material seems negligible. I’m less sure how all those Southern church-going families will react to the negative portrayal of the movie’s nuns, but perhaps Philomena’s embodiment of Christian ideals will salve the wound. The ratings appeal is scheduled for next Wednesday, but count on at least another video or two before then.

Charting the similarities between 'Hyde Park on Hudson' and 'The King's Speech

Even the indie world can have copycats. The critical and, more importantly, box-office success of The King's Speech in 2010 has spawned at least one imitator: Hyde Park on Hudson. Keeping with the light, uplifting tone of The King's Speech, the project stars Bill Murray as FDR. The historical movie focuses on one weekend, during which the King of England made his first visit to America and stopped by FDR's country home, Hyde Park on Hudson.

The picture won't come out until December 7, but the trailer for the Focus release debuted yesterday. I took a look at the trailer and documented some of the similarities between the two films.

They both have King George. Americans will certainly love that in this picture, the King takes a back seat to FDR.

An outsider.  THe King's Speech had Geoffrey Rush as a speech teacher who treated the royals more casually than one might expect. Hyde Park has Laura Linney as FDR's distant cousin (and lover), who appears to do the opposite, giving a sense of reverence to the proceedings.

Gentle humor. Gentle romance. FDR tells the press not to take pictures of him and the King in their bathing suits. People think FDR and his cousin are having an affair and get caught spying out a window.

Candid moments with royals. "Can I call you Elizabeth?" A character says to the Queen, in what appears to be an uncomfortable breech of protocol.

War in the background. Same World War II, and right at the beginning of it too.

Rulers with disabilities. King George had a stutter. FDR can't walk.

Oscar bait.  The King's Speech won the four biggies: picture, director, actor, and screenplay. Bill Murray definitely wants a Best Actor statuette.

 

For all their similarities, and even because of them, I have Hyde Park on Hudson on my to-see list. Biopics are often sweeping, long, and drab, but The King's Speech showed that focusing on light-hearted historical snippets can create humanizing portraits of staid historical figures. The tourism industry in the Hudson Valley is already preparing for an upswing in visitors interested in checking out the area. I'll raise their bet.

'Hop' skips and jumps to first place

By Sarah Sluis

Families turned out en masse for Hop, earning the Easter Bunny flick $38.1 million, the highest opening weekend of the year. A number in the high $20 millions was expected, so this opening was leaps and bounds ahead of projections. Critics may have sniffed and grimaced, but the CG/live-action hybrid appears to be a winning genre at the box office, not to mention more economical and quicker to produce than an animation-only movie. Hop opened above CG/live-action mixes G-Force and Beverly Hills Chihuahua, but failed to outperform the holy grail of the medium, Alvin and the Chipmunks. Easter is the last Sunday of April, giving Hop three more weekends to take advantage of its holiday tie-in.

Sci-fi actioner Source Code debuted in second place with $15 million. Similarly sci-fi infused titles The Adjustment Bureau and Limitless both opened at $18 million, so Summit probably had higher hopes for the "Groundhog Day on an exploding train" flick.

Haunted house movie Insidious finished with $13.4 million. With 500 fewer theatres than Source Code, the horror pic actually had a higher per-screen average than the action movie. According to Variety, Insidious cost less than $1 million to produce but had $20 million of marketing behind it. The release is the first for distributor FilmDistrict, which is starting out strong with an unusual budget/marketing ratio.

The PG-13 version of The King's Speech didn't seem to revive the box office. The picture dropped 23% to $1.1 million, the same drop as the previous week. Given the millions The Weinstein Co. spend on new prints and publicity, the re-rated version doesn't seem to be an (instant) success, although the distributor noted that more conservative markets like Salt Lake City, Utah, showed the greatest improvements.

The movers and shakers in the specialty market were Win Win and Jane Eyre. Both films have increased week-over-week since they opened three and four weeks ago, respectively. Jane Eyre went up 27% to $1.2 million, doubling the amount of theatres in its release. Win Win skyrocketed 153% to $1.1 million, increasing the theatres in its release by a factor of six. The Oscar-winning Best Foreign Language Film In a Better World opened to an $8,800 per-screen average. The Danish movie debuted lower than last year's winner, The Secret in Their Eyes.

This Friday 80s comedy remake Arthur will open widest, followed by stoner comedy Your Highness, girl assassin pic Hanna, and Soul Surfer, the tale of a teen surfer who survived a shark attack.

'Hop' poised to jump straight to the top

By Sarah Sluis

Releasing well in advance of the Easter holiday, Hop will spring into 3,577 theatres and shows all signs of landing in first place. Critic Frank Lovece rated it a "Santa Clause 2.6," which is pretty close to the terrible Santa Clause 3. He also bristled at the movie's message of nepotism, since a lazy heir triumphs over the underdog hard worker. The film's mix of live action and CG historically results in a very kid-specific following, with poor reviews having no effect on the great box office (See director Tim Hill's Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties and Alvin and the Chipmunks 1&2). Hop should accrue at least $25 million in its opening weekend.

In retrospect, it's surprising someone didn't turn Groundhog's Day into an action film sooner. In Source Code (2,961 theatres), Jake Gyllenhaal plays an army operative who must relive over and over the final minutes before a terrorist attack explodes a train. The exercise is supposed to give him time to figure out what went wrong, but he also finds time to fall in love with a girl, too. Could love save the day? Critic Maitland McDonagh pronounces the sci-fi actioner a "good ride" that's "slick, shiny, sweetly gratifying and clever enough that you don't have to feel dumb for enjoying it." Adult fare has been lacking in recent weeks, so Source Code should do well, perhaps in the high teen millions.

An F-word free The King's Speech will make its PG-13 debut in 1,011 theatres. Will the change in rating make much of a difference? I haven't seen any ads proclaiming the movie's toned-down rating, but maybe I'm just the wrong audience. Currently, the Oscar-winning drama is hovering just outside of the top ten, so the rating change and added marketing could be enough to launch it back onto the box-office radar screen.

A back-to-basics haunted-house movie, Insidious (2,408 theatres) comes from Saw creators James Wan and Leigh Whannell. Their "trust in human emotion" and focus on "two ordinary parents [taking] their stand against God only knows to save their child" pays off, according to McDonagh. Though it's not a perfect example of the haunted-house film, she gives the duo credit for "keeping the atmosphere thick with menace as long as they do."

The Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film, In a Better World, will open in 4 theatres. The drama juxtaposes violence among Danish schoolboys with violence in Kenya, which critic Erica Abeel sums up as "a deeply involving film unafraid of raw, visceral emotion, a film that for once thinks almost too big."

On Monday, we'll measure Hop's leaps and see how close Source Code followed. Insidious may surprise, given horror films' strong opening weekends, and it will also be the first test for newbie distributor FilmDistrict. Perhaps the biggest surprise will be The King's Speech, which has already grossed $138 million with its R rating. Are there any more viewers out there?

'Rango' lassoes a first-place finish

By Sarah Sluis

This weekend's big winner was Rango, which finished the weekend with $38 million, nearly twice the gross of the competition. Attendance was actually higher than last year's How to Train Your Dragon, which earned $43.7 million thanks to 3D surcharges. For an animated movie, a surprising amount of the audience was above 25: 54%, which is more than one would expect for a film that has the greatest appeal among kids.

In second place, The Adjustment Bureau garnered $20.9 million, carried along by reviews that praised the movie as an adult action-romance that didn't go for the lowest common denominator. It paid off: 73% of the audience was aged 30 or above. Those kinds of numbers spell another payoff for Bureau--a long shelf life, typical for movies skewing older.

The teen fantasy-romance Beastly had a respectable debut, finishing third with $10.1 million. Star power may have had something to do with it. The movie was delayed a year, and just so happened to release just weeks after star Alex Pettyfer made his action-hero debut in I Am Number Four. Enough time for him to get a small following among the teen beat? I think so.

The same cannot be said for Take Me Home Tonight, which wrapped production way, way, back in 2007. Though critic Ethan Alter concluded "there's no glaring reason why [the movie] was benched for so long," in terms of quality, the marketing team may have run into trouble finding a way to generate excitement about this 80s throwback comedy. The comedy finished in a sober eleventh place with $3.5 million. All the Aqua Net in the world couldn't give this movie a lift.

After its Best Picture win and major-category sweep at the Oscars, The King's Speech actually dipped a bit, 11%, to $6.5 million. However, Monday through Thursday the movie overperformed compared to the week before, so perhaps audiences were out catching newer adult fare, like The Adjustment Bureau, instead. The historical drama stands at $123 million, and weeks more of 10% drops could bring it closer to the $150 million mark. The only Oscar nominee/winner to improve from last week was Inside Job, the recipient of the Best Documentary Oscar. The indictment of the financial industry went up 94% to $65,200, adding to its theatrical total of $4.1 million.

In its fourth week, Cedar Rapids added 99 theatres for a total of 235, adding another $815,000 to its $3 million plus total. Happythankyoumoreplease premiered slightly soft, with a per-screen average a light but respectable $15,000.

This Friday, Rango will face competition from the animated Mars Needs Moms. Likewise, Beastly will have to contend with another teen-oriented fantasy romance, Red Riding Hood. Finally, Battle: Los Angeles will offer up some fresh sci-fi action.

'The Rite' finds disciples and audiences crown 'The King's Speech'

By Sarah Sluis

Exorcism-themed The Rite led the box office this weekend with $15 million. More a thriller than a horror movie, the film lured a slightly older audience, and attracted both genders equally. Back in August, The Last Exorcism opened to $24 million, so this movie did well considering its inferior January timeslot.

Action-fueled The Mechanic tied with The Green Hornet, earning $11.5 million. Distributor CBS Films has been struggling to get some hits. This film will be their second-highest opening weekend after The Back-Up Plan.

In the wake of its twelve Oscar nominations, Weinstein Co. release The King's Speech launched an expansion that led to a 40% increase from last week and $11.1 million. Compared to other nominees, this story of friendship between a stuttering king and his speech therapist held back from pursuing a quick expansion. In terms of cumulative gross, it's still behind The Social Network, True Grit, and Black Swan, but it's approaching the total of The Fighter, which is currently at $78 million after eight weeks, compared to The King's Speech's $72 million in ten weeks. New York Times columnist David Carr recently wrote an article talking about Harvey Weinstein's comeback, comparing him to Jason rising from the dead in Friday the 13th. The King's Speech performance, both at the box office and awards shows (it recently won the DGA award for Best Feature Directing and the SAG award for Best Ensemble), is a big win for a distributor that was near bankruptcy a year ago.

127 Hours also launched an expansion in the wake of Oscar nominations, adding another $2 million to the film's coffers. Even as most of the nominated films dropped theatres, True Grit rose 4% to $7.6 million, and The Fighter dipped just 2.6% to $4 million. Black Swan glided down 33% to $5.1 million. Blue Valentine, farther down the list, rose 33% to bring in $1.1 million.

Hispanic-targeted romantic comedy From Prada to Nada opened outside of the top ten with $1.1 million, but its per-screen average of $4,300 bested half of the releases in the top ten.

This Friday, the Super Bowl's not getting in the way of male-targeted releases. Sanctum 3D will enter the fray, hoping to get the adrenaline-fueled crowd before the big Sunday football game. Targeting teen females not interested by the game, The Roommate, starring "Gossip Girl's" Leighton Meester, will also hit theatres.

'Rite' and 'Mechanic' compete against specialty pics flush with Oscar nods

By Sarah Sluis

The action thriller The Mechanic (2,703 theatres) sounds like typical late-January B-movie fare, but critic Maitland McDonagh begs to differ. The "sleek, brutally succinct thriller" comes along with an "emotional pitch [that] lies somewhere between those of King Lear and a Roadrunner cartoon, which doesn't sound like much until you stop to seriously consider the range of most mainstream action movies." Jason Statham also turns in a praise-worthy performance, projecting an "elusive warmth."

Marketed as a horror movie, The Rite (2,985 theatres) should draw in plenty of young females. McDonagh, however, feels that the exorcism movie does not fall within the genre, and "anyone who buys in expecting levitation, demonic apparitions and sundry other gross-out clichs will be disappointed." It's really about "the power of faith," told through "the relationship between a cynical seminarian and [an] unorthodox but devout exorcist." Warner Bros. has apparently been marketing this movie heavily to Hispanic viewers, many of whom are Catholic, and avid moviegoers to boot.

In the wake of the Oscar nominations, The King's Speech will up its screen count to 2,553 theatres, an addition of over 800 theatres. Studio head Harvey Weinstein has also reportedly talked about recutting the film to remove the F-word, and thus secure a PG-13 or PG rating. 127 Hours, which received nods for Best Picture and Best Actor for James Franco, is expanding to 916 locations. Franco is not only a nominee for Best Actor, but he's also doubling as one of the Oscar hosts, a nice increase in exposure for the movie.

Biutiful (57 theatres) reach more ticketbuyers this week, sure to benefit from its two Oscar nominations, one for Best Foreign Language Film and another for its star, Javier Bardem. While critic David Noh wasn't the biggest fan of the movie, he praised the "wearily weathered and better than ever" Bardem, who "proves the very heart and soul of this film."

The Sense and Sensibility-inspired From Prada to Nada (256 theatres) follows two wealthy young women who move in with their aunt after misfortune befalls their family. The romantic comedy is an attempt to woo the Latino market, which is a strong consumer of movies, especially in their first week. While few reviews are on the scene, the first-week receipts should predict whether this movie is among the likes of Prada, or nada.

On Monday, we'll return to analyze which Oscar-nominated films saw the biggest bumps over the weekend, and if The Rite and The Mechanic were able to pull in their respective audiences (apparently the Statham pic is tracking extremely well with older males).

Audiences swarm for 'The Green Hornet'

By Sarah Sluis

Whoever at Sony decided to push The Green Hornet to a January release is getting a nice pat on the back right now. The post-holiday release opened better than Little Fockers and not far under action fare like Tron: Legacy. Though the movie won't have the high weekday earnings of the December releases, the four-day weekend gave it a chance to rack up $40 million in four days ($33.7 million came from the three-day weekend).

The marriage/adultery-themed romantic comedy The Dilemma finished in second place, laughing up $20.5 million over the four-day period. Star Vince Vaughn's previous film, Couples Retreat, earned twice as much its opening weekend, making this debut a disappointing one.

The King's Speech and Black Swan both added around 750 theatres, giving each film a boost even without the holiday factored in. Right now, The King's Speech is the up-and-comer, with its three-day gross up 43% and a per-screen average of $7,200. Black Swan, which has been out a week longer than The King's Speech, has reached its near-saturation point (2,300 theatres to King's Speech's 1,500). The ballet thriller brought in $10.3 million to the historical film's $11.1 million. In terms of cumulative gross, however, Black Swan is the winner, with a total of $75 million to date vs. The King's Speech's $48 million. Elsewhere in the top ten, The Fighter dropped theatres, falling 27% over the three-day period. The biographical film still earned another $5 million, and its decision to go big early has allowed it to accumulate $65 million in six weeks.

With the school holiday, family films dropped minimally. Yogi Bear earned $7.4 million over the four-day period and Tangled scooped up another $5.4 million, making this Disney princess tale one of the most lucrative in recent history.

This Friday, the romance-sex comedy No Strings Attached will lead the pack, with more targeted releases for The Way Back and recession drama The Company Men.

'True Grit' overtakes 'Little Fockers'

By Sarah Sluis

True Grit won the box-office horse race, overtaking Meet the Fockers in its third week of release. The two films' race is a lesson in the power of the long tail: True Grit dipped 38% to $15 million, while Little Fockers fell 47% to $13.7 million. Because of Little Focker's higher opening, the comedy's total take is $123 million to the Western's $110 million, but the gap could close if True Grit continues to play strong (and, fingers crossed, receives a boost from Academy Award nominations).

Nicolas Cage's turn in Season of the Witch eked over the eight-figure mark, coming up with $10.7 million. Critics (and audiences) were not kind to the film, which reportedly had a $40 million budget. The supernatural action adventure/kinda comedy/historical film may have been the victim of too much genre mixing, leaving audiences confused about what kind of movie they were signing up for.

Country Strong mustered up $7.3 million in its expansion to 1,424 theatres. Though the number may be small, so was the release, and the country music drama averaged $5,126 per-screen, the third-best average in the top ten. A common complaint: star Gwyneth Paltrow looking way too nice to play an alcoholic music star.

In its second weekend, Blue Valentine went from 4 to 40 theatres and gathered $18,000 per screen. The per-screen average fell by slightly more than half from its debut, but given the rapid expansion this un-romance is in good shape. Within the top ten, specialty films rose even higher. Black Swan fared the best, descending just 6% from last week to earn $8.3 million. With fewer new releases as competition, the ballet-horror-drama rose from ninth to fifth place. The Fighter grabbed seventh place, dipping 30% to ring in $7 million. The King's Speech dropped 12% to $6.8 million. Notably, the movie is still in just 758 theatres and boasts the highest per-screen average in the top ten. Methinks this film will go big once Academy Award nominations are announced.

Mercifully for the future of children's animated movies, Tangled has trounced Yogi Bear. Though Tangled has been in release for three more weeks than Yogi Bear, the family offerings are performing neck-and-neck: Yogi Bear finished with $6.8 million this weekend and Tangled with $5.2. Tangled has $175 million in the bank, while Yogi Bear has around $75 million. This may not prevent the release of next winter's Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, but here's hoping there won't be a sequel to the cartoon adaptation our critic Ethan Alter called a "naked cash-grab."

This Friday, comic book adaptation The Green Hornet will debut alongside cheating spouse comedy The Dilemma.

Golden Globe nominations: A whole lot of 'Whaaat?'

By Sarah Sluis

So maybe this hasn't been the strongest year for movies. But does that really justify the Hollywood Foreign Press nominating the flop The Tourist in three categories? When I outlined the film's dismal box-office prospects the Friday it opened, I wondered if Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp would be enough to save the film. Well, it earned just $17 million opening weekend, but the star wattage of Jolie and Depp was enough to blind the Foreign Press Association to its negative reception stateside. I imagine the dialogue going something like this--"We need Depp and Jolie on the red carpet--we can't disappoint the people running E!'s Red Carpet show!" How big of a joke were The Tourist's nominations? They "drew audible laughter from the crowd of press and publicists assembled at the Beverly Hilton for the pre-dawn announcement," according to THR.

The other big "What" came from the HFPA's total shut-out of The Coen Brothers' True Grit. I don't see the movie until tomorrow, but it's currently tracking at 93% positive on Rotten Tomatoes. The Tourist? 20%.

Another big shut-out, but one that will receive less attention, was Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, which received zero nominations. Perhaps they didn't like the movie's jabs at press conferences and foreign awards shows? Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning both turned in solid performances, but at the very least a writing or directing nomination was deserved. Never Let Me Go didn't receive any nominations (though it was better than many nominated films), but that's less of a surprise as its early, October release shows that Fox Searchlight wasn't putting too much faith in it for awards season.

The Hollywood Foreign Press did make a couple of good decisions. It nominated Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams for Blue Valentine, one of the best movies I've seen all year. Jennifer Lawrence also got a nod for Winter's Bone, an Ozarks drama that's quietly powerful. But really, a lot of these nominations are a joke. The silver lining? The star power will make for an entertaining broadcast, and smart people betting on winners in awards pools may just get lucky.

'The Fighter' has a knockout performance in a big week for little films

By Sarah Sluis

The holiday season usually brings a mix of delightful popcorn fare and heavy-hitting awards films. This week, at least, was a good week for tiny releases and a thoroughly mediocre one for wide releases.

Paramount's The Fighter debuted to $80,000 per screen in four theatres, the highest per-screen average of the week. With a starry cast list that includes Christian Bale, Mark Wahlberg, Amy Adams, and Melissa Leo, this movie could do extremely well as it moves into wide release next week--the blue-collar subject could expand the audience beyond the rarefied world of Oscar films, and Adams should appeal to female audiences less excited about the boxing subject.

Black Swan has also proved itself to be a film with significant commercial potential. With only 90 theatres showing the ballet drama, the movie managed a sixth-place finish thanks to its $37,000 per-screen average. The Natalie Portman starrer has been called a horror film and drawn comparisons to Showgirls, and its arty melodrama has been a winning formula so far.

The King's Speech, which released a week before Black Swan, has been expanding more deliberately. Its per-screen average of $31,000 was close to Swan's, but only 19 theatres (up from 6) screened the historical, lightly comedic tale of King George's attempt to cure his stutter.

The Tempest had a stormy debut, earning $9,000 per screen on five screens. With Disney selling Miramax, this film appears to have been just as disconnected from marketing and publicity efforts as Prospera's island.

Both the wide releases this week underperformed. The bombastic Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader came in below expectations, with $24.5 million when a $30 million+ figure was expected. The family action film's broad strokes make it more comprehensible to foreign audiences, however, and the film earned three times more abroad than it did at home.

Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp's beautiful, empty romantic thriller The Tourist racked up $17 million its opening weekend, a number that was also on the low side. International prospects for this film, set in Venice, are also considered to be rosier than its domestic outlook.

This Friday, Disney revives a cult sci-fi film with Tron: Legacy, CG/live-action mix Yogi Bear will entice family audiences, and James L. Brooks' rom-com How Do You Know will make its debut. Oscar-seeking Rabbit Hole will join the list of specialty releases, and The Fighter plans to fast expand its rollout, moving into a 2,000+ theatre release.

'Blue Valentine' successfully fights NC-17 rating

By Sarah Sluis

A month ago, I lamented that Blue Valentine received an NC-17 rating. The portrait of a dying relationship has the emotional impact of a freight train. The sex scenes that supposedly warranted the NC-17 rating are not unusually explicit, just unusually real. It seems artifice and exaggeration provide enough emotional distance to ensure an R rating, while something so shockingly real is so powerful, it feels more naked than the actors themselves.

After hiring some dynamo lawyers, The Weinstein Co. successfully reversed the ratings of Blue Valentine (now an R) and The King's Speech (now a PG-13 despite a profusion of F-words). The King's Speech is actually already in release, and doing quite well, but the lower rating could help as the movie expands its release beyond the arty crowds presumably turning out for the film now.

All the hullaballoo and press (overwhelmingly in defense of the film) over the rating of Blue Valentine seems like a good way to get attention, but a press release sent out by the Weinstein Co. tries to pretend the opposite. Blue Valentine producer Jamie Patricof said, "While this has been a frustrating distraction from the film, the outpouring of support from the industry, journalists and film fans has been truly moving. We are ecstatic, that the MPAA was able to see the honesty that Derek [Cianfrance] was able to achieve in this film and overturned the original rating, so the film can now be seen all across the world." (my emphasis)

Blue Valentine and The King's Speech already hold spots in my top ten for 2010. After all the layoffs and talk of bankruptcy, The Weinstein Co. has made an impressive rally with two stunningly good films. Harvey Weinstein is known for being a master at receiving Oscar nominations, even without a truly stellar film, but this year I can really get behind these movies. I only hope that Blue Valentine will receive as much of a push as the more awards-friendly King's Speech.

'Tangled' climbs to the top

By Sarah Sluis

As predicted, Disney's Tangled rose from second place to first in its second week. The Rapunzel retelling dipped 55% to $21.5 million, a strong hold given that last weekend had higher-than-average traffic because of post-Thanksgiving crowds. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I took a steeper dive, falling 65% to $16.7 million. Many Harry Potter fans presumably saw the film shortly after its release, while Tangled should play well to families throughout the holiday season.

The Warrior's Way, a hybrid of the Asian action and Western genres, with some supernatural enemies as a bonus, eked out $3 million its opening weekend, below an estimated $5 million opening. The genre amalgamation follows this summer's sci-fi/comic book/Western flop Jonah Hex, and the (critical, sort of commercial) failure a decade before of another Western hybrid, Wild Wild West. Let it be known: The Western does not take kindly to genre mixing.

Just outside of the top ten, 127 Hours dipped 6% to $1.6 million as it increased the number of theatres showing the film by a third. Love and Other Drugs ($5.7 million) and Burlesque ($6.1 million), which both opened over the Thanksgiving holiday, fell in the 40% range. Thanks to the added holiday receipts, each of these films has each crossed the $20 million mark.

As prestige, awards-seeking movies make their end-of-the-year debuts, per-screen averages of specialty films have skyrocketed. Multiple films posted averages in the tens of thousands. Leading the pack with the highest average of the week, Black Swan opened in 18 locations to a stunning $77,000 per-screen average. Another Oscar frontrunner, The King's Speech, in its second week, made a comfortable slide into a $55,000 per-screen average as it went from four to six theatres. All Good Things, the true-crime drama, tallied up $20,000 per screen at two locations, just ahead of I Love You, Phillip Morris, which averaged $18,000 per screen at six locations.

This Friday, Tangled will have some competition from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, a former Disney franchise that has been passed to Fox. The Angelina Jolie-Johnny Depp smoldering thriller The Tourist will offer adults some fresh intrigue set in an exotic location, and another Oscar contender, The Fighter, will hit select theatres.