'New Year's Eve' leads a lackluster box office

By Sarah Sluis

The period from Thanksgiving to New Year's is usually filled with good movies, but early December tends to be sluggish at the box office as people focus on holiday gift shopping. This weekend, which totaled just $78 million, posted the lowest numbers since September 5-7, 2008. That's not good news. The leader of the pack was New Year's Eve, a romantic comedy releasing well in advance of its holiday. With just $13.5 million, the star-filled ensemble picture performed short of expectations that had the film inching closer to $20 million.

In second place, the R-rated babysitting comedy The Sitter grabbed $10 million. So-so viewer feedback, as evidenced by the movie's C+ CinemaScore, could have this movie hurting in coming weeks. However, a small budget and healthy returns from younger moviegoers could make the Jonah Hill starrer profitable for Fox.

With no new family films, existing fare posted strong holds. Arthur Christmas dropped just 10% to $6.6 million as the titular holiday approaches. One spot below, Hugo fell 19% to $6.1 million. The Martin Scorsese-directed picture reportedly cost over $100 million, so its U.S. total of $33 million to date is far behind where such movies usually are after three weeks. The Muppets continued its trend of bigger week-to-week drops with a 36% dive to $7 million. Happy Feet Two held on in the top ten, sliding to eighth place with $3.7 million and a 36% decrease in receipts.

New specialty pictures fared much better than wide ones. In eight locations, Young Adult nabbed $40,000 per theatre. The espionage thriller Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy averaged $75,000 per screen in half the locations. Both movies' debuts put them in a good position for expansion and awards season. Finally, We Need to Talk about Kevin, which seemed to inspire a "love it or hate it" critical reaction, had a softer $24,000 debut playing on one screen. The indie The Descendants added 300 theatres to go up .9% from last week and add another $4.8 million to its $23 million total. The push for The Artist is still heating up. Its 38% improvement from last week, as well as its $18,000 per-screen average, show this black-and-white silent feature has a lot of momentum.

This Friday, another family picture, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, will add to the already-saturated kid market. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows will provide some action fun, and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol will have a limited, IMAX-only release.

Telluride Film Festival hints at this year's Oscar contenders

By Sarah Sluis

The Telluride Film Festival is known as a festival for people who love movies. Not many sales come out of the Labor Day weekend event, but in recent years audience reactions to movies at the festival have predicted which films end up crowned at the Oscars. Both Slumdog Millionaire and The King's Speech first screened there, and they both ended up with the Best Picture Academy Award. This year a number of highly anticipated end-of-year films screened at Telluride. I've picked out ones that may end up making waves--or just a splash--come awards season.

The Descendants: Starring George Clooney as a father who reconnects with his children after their mother falls into a coma after a jet skiing accident, this Hawaii-set tale is the first effort from director Alexander Payne since Sideways. Payne hasn't gotten his full critical due yet, so I think this movie could receive a lot of play come awards time. IndieWire thinks so too, predicting that the movie is "sure to gain major momentum when it screens for hundreds of journalists and movie fans at the Toronto film fest this coming weekend."

The Artist: I think the future of this movie is a tossup purely because it is silent. Many people feel that no audiences will see a silent movie, making the movie too obscure to receive attention come awards season. Another camp--and this may include awards seasons experts Weinstein Co., which picked up the movie for distribution--knows the historical film hits a sweet spot. Movies about the industry, like Singin' in the Rain, Sunset Boulevard and A Star is Born, have done very well come awards season, and voters may be suckers for a film that salutes their business.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: This movie, which is on my to-see list, is the first English-language film of Tomas Alfredson, who directed the haunting Let the Right One In. Hollywood Reporter came out mostly in favor of the movie ((based on a well-known John le Carr novel), with critic Deborah Young noting "it is one of the few films so visually absorbing, felicitous shot after shot, that its emotional coldness is noticed only at the end, when all the plot twists are unraveled in a solid piece of thinking-man's entertainment for upmarket thriller audiences." Alfredson's Let the Right One In could also be described as emotionally cold, when in fact its coldness stokes the film's emotional impact. I hope Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy falls into the same category. Regardless, Alfredson is on a two-hit streak and will be a director with many projects to choose from in the future.

Shame: The second feature from Steve McQueen, who directed Hunger a couple of years ago, Shame tells the story of a sex addict (Michael Fassbender) and his sister (Carey Mulligan) in New York City. IndieWire praised it as a "a powerful, beautifully acted sophomore film," but also had some reservations, namely its "conventionally moralistic" ending. This movie hasn't even been picked up for distribution yet, though that is expected to happen at the Toronto Festival, so there is a chance it will show up in next year's awards season.

The Telluride response confirms that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Descendants are candidates for one of the (up to) ten Best Picture spots. I think Shame and The Artist will be tougher sells, but both are in the game. Other findings of the festival? Midwestern butter-carving comedy Butter will not be a Juno, and A Dangerous Method could also end up seeing action come awards time, particularly for performances. Reactions of critics at Toronto will help solidify the direction many of these movies are going. It's only September, many opinions abound, and the Oscar race is just beginning.