Good Morning, Everyone.
Sorry about the absence. I’ve been taking care of some stuff on the homefront and that’s kept me away from the blog. But let’s get right down to business with the entirely unsurprising news that it was a banner opening weekend for “The Avengers.”
Director Joss Whedon’s super-team flick rampaged through the domestic box office, taking in a truly insane $200.3 million, Box Office Mojo reports. By way of comparison, the previous opening weekend record belonged the “Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows,” which took in a paltry $169.3 million in its first three days.
Here’s the weekend, by the numbers:
| 1 | N | Marvel’s The Avengers | BV | $200,300,000 | – | 4,349 | – | $46,057 | $200,300,000 | $220 | 1 |
| 2 | 1 | Think Like a Man | SGem | $8,000,000 | -54.6% | 2,010 | -5 | $3,980 | $73,029,000 | $12 | 3 |
| 3 | 3 | The Hunger Games | LGF | $5,700,000 | -47.3% | 2,794 | -778 | $2,040 | $380,727,000 | $78 | 7 |
| 4 | 4 | The Lucky One | WB | $5,510,000 | -49.0% | 3,005 | -170 | $1,834 | $47,917,000 | – | 3 |
| 5 | 2 | The Pirates! Band of Misfits | Sony | $5,400,000 | -51.5% | 3,358 | – | $1,608 | $18,563,000 | $55 | 2 |
| 6 | 5 | The Five-Year Engagement | Uni. | $5,100,000 | -51.9% | 2,941 | +5 | $1,734 | $19,200,000 | $30 | 2 |
| 7 | 7 | The Raven | Rela. | $2,508,000 | -65.6% | 2,209 | +6 | $1,135 | $12,047,000 | $26 | 2 |
| 8 | 6 | Safe (2012) | LGF | $2,470,000 | -68.7% | 2,271 | +5 | $1,088 | $12,874,000 | – | 2 |
| 9 | 8 | Chimpanzee | BV | $2,395,000 | -54.2% | 1,531 | -36 | $1,564 | $23,012,000 | – | 3 |
| 10 | 9 | The Three Stooges | Fox | $1,800,000 | -65.2% | 2,174 | -931 | $828 | $39,637,000 | $30 | 4 |
With director Tim Burton’s reboot of the 1960s horror soap “Dark Shadows” on the way to the multiplex, the New York Times takes a look at the original show and what made it so unprecedented for its time.
Here’s the nut graf:
“There’s been a lot of supernatural drama on television since the demise of the original “Dark Shadows,” in 1971, but even under the influence of a powerful spell you would have a difficult time coming up with another show that roamed so freely and so recklessly through the underworld of horror pulp. Though nearly forgotten now, the series’s conflicted vampire, Barnabas Collins (played by Jonathan Frid, who died last month), was its biggest draw — at the time, he was more popular than the comparably peculiar Mr. Spock of “Star Trek”— but he was hardly the only unlikely denizen of the soap-opera town of Collinsport, Me. Over the course of 1,225 half-hour episodes Collinsport, a demographic anomaly even by the standards of New England, rolled out the Welcome Wagon for a staggering number of witches, warlocks, doppelgängers, mad scientists, werewolves, and, of course, ghosts, who seemed to descend in waves, like tourists in foliage season.”
Read the full story here.
The Cineaste's Lament. 