The “Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots” rip “Real Steel” managed to fend off George Clooney’s political thriller “The Ides of March,” to win this weekend’s box office battle. Here’s the take, by the numbers, courtesy of Box Office Mojo:
| TW | LW | Title (click to view) | Studio | Weekend Gross | % Change | Theater Count /Change | Average | Total Gross | Budget* | Week # | |
| 1 | N | Real Steel | BV | $27,300,000 | – | 3,440 | – | $7,936 | $27,300,000 | – | 1 |
| 2 | N | The Ides of March | Sony | $10,400,000 | – | 2,199 | – | $4,729 | $10,400,000 | – | 1 |
| 3 | 1 | Dolphin Tale | WB | $9,160,000 | -34.2% | 3,478 | -37 | $2,634 | $49,070,000 | $37 | 3 |
| 4 | 2 | Moneyball | Sony | $7,500,000 | -37.7% | 3,018 | +25 | $2,485 | $49,253,000 | $50 | 3 |
| 5 | 5 | 50/50 | Sum. | $5,500,000 | -36.4% | 2,479 | +21 | $2,219 | $17,300,000 | $8 | 2 |
| 6 | 4 | Courageous | TriS | $4,600,000 | -49.5% | 1,161 | – | $3,962 | $15,892,000 | $2 | 2 |
| 7 | 3 | The Lion King (in 3D) | BV | $4,552,000 | -57.1% | 2,267 | -73 | $2,008 | $85,962,000 | – | 4 |
| 8 | 6 | Dream House | Uni. | $4,500,000 | -44.6% | 2,664 | +3 | $1,689 | $14,500,000 | $50 | 2 |
| 9 | 8 | What’s Your Number? | Fox | $3,050,000 | -43.7% | 3,011 | +9 | $1,013 | $10,306,000 | $20 | 2 |
| 10 | 7 | Abduction | LGF | $2,900,000 | -48.3% | 2,591 | -527 | $1,119 | $23,369,000 | $35 | 3 |
The New York Times takes a look at Soviet-era cinema and the wonders that directors such as Sergei Eisenstein worked with access to only a very limited visual palette. Eisenstein’s “Alexander Nevsky” is a long-time favorite of mine.
Here’s the nut graf:
“Part of the folklore of Soviet montage is that it was invented by the idealistic filmmakers of a newborn nation as a way of converting imported American movies from capitalist pettifoggery into proletarian uplift by rearranging sequences and redefining characters. Alas, none of these Leninist mash-ups has ever surfaced, but as Kuleshov and Eisenstein both happily admitted, their inspiration was the American director D. W. Griffith, who had elevated editing to new expressive heights in his short films and early features.
The earliest film in this collection, Kuleshov’s 1924 comedy “The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks,” invokes the American friend in the person of the title character (Porfiri Podobed), a high-ranking official of the Y.M.C.A. who has come to savage Russia to witness the atrocities of the bloodthirsty Bolsheviks for himself. But as much as Mr. West is ridiculed for his naïveté, the film pays tribute to American action films and slapstick comedies with its strong, simple compositions and dynamically edited nonstop action.”
Read the full story here.
The Cineaste's Lament. 
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