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LOS ANGELES – A wimpy kid has delivered a knock-out punch to a band of warrior vixens at the weekend box office.
The 20th Century Fox family sequel "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules" debuted as the No. 1 movie with $24.4 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. The girl-power action fantasy "Sucker Punch," released by Warner Bros., opened at No. 2 with $19 million.
The previous weekend's top movie, Relativity Media's sci-fi thriller "Limitless," slipped to third with $15.2 million, raising its total to $41.3 million.
"Rodrick Rules" did a bit more business than its predecessor, "Diary of a Wimpy Kid," which opened a year ago with $22.1 million. The "Wimpy Kid" movies are based on the children's books by Jeff Kinney about a timid youth trying to cope at school and home.
The sequel casts wimpy kid Greg (Zachary Gordon) into sibling rivalry and bonding with one of his chief tormentors, older brother Rodrick (Devon Bostick).
Though its main characters are boys, the movie drew family crowds of both sexes, said Fox distribution executive Bert Livingston. The appeal of the story is in the title, he said.
"`Wimpy,' because every kid knows that feeling. That's why `Spider-Man' works. Everybody thinks that they could be the outsider who could be Spider-Man," Livingston said. "I think anyone can associate with that, and I think that's why we got fathers, mothers and young people, male and female."
"Sucker Punch," from director Zack Snyder ("300," "Watchmen"), follows the adventures of a group of young women (Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish and Vanessa Hudgens among them) who escape a mental hospital into a fantasy realm of dragon slaying, samurai combat and battles with zombie soldiers.
While the "Wimpy Kid" sequel and "Sucker Punch" combined to deliver more than $40 million in revenue, Hollywood's long box-office dry spell continued.
Overall business totaled $120 million, down 7 percent from the same weekend last year, when "How to Train Your Dragon" debuted at No. 1 with $43.7 million, according to box-office tracker Hollywood.com.
Domestic revenues this year are dragging at $2.2 billion, a 19 percent drop from 2010, whose first quarter was unusually strong because of big business from 2009 holdover "Avatar" and a few other hits.
Business was so-so for the rest of 2010, with movie-ticket sales sagging during the summer and holidays, the two periods that account for about 60 percent of Hollywood's annual theatrical revenue.
Hollywood.com analyst Paul Dergarabedian said he expects the opposite to occur this year. He predicts Hollywood will have a strong summer that will offset this year's weak start, with studios potentially rebounding to haul in record revenue for the year.
"This is a big downturn, but I think summer is on the way to save the day with some really big titles," Dergarabedian said. "I'll take a strong summer and fall and holiday over a strong first quarter any day."
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules," $24.4 million.
Criticamos las películas "Limitless" y "Red Riding Hood". Con Marcos Rodríguez, Alberto Reyes y Seles Benz. Invitados especiales, Jesus Osvaldo Velazquez "DJ Mista OZ", Laura Pereira, Salvy Ortiz, Angel Soto y Sorimar Gonzalez. Duración 59 Minutos 12 segundos. Música en los intermedios por Maxarathiel Les' Shyerar del album "Beyond The Karma", cortesia del Free Music Archive.
LOS ANGELES – Elizabeth Taylor, the violet-eyed film goddess whose sultry screen persona, stormy personal life and enduring fame and glamour made her one of the last of the old-fashioned movie stars and a template for the modern celebrity, died Wednesday at age 79.
She was surrounded by her four children when she died of congestive heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she had been hospitalized for about six weeks, said publicist Sally Morrison.
"My Mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with great passion, humor, and love," her son, Michael Wilding, said in a statement.
"We know, quite simply, that the world is a better place for Mom having lived in it. Her legacy will never fade, her spirit will always be with us, and her love will live forever in our hearts."
Taylor was the most blessed and cursed of actresses, the toughest and the most vulnerable. She had extraordinary grace, wealth and voluptuous beauty, and won three Academy Awards, including a special one for her humanitarian work. She was the most loyal of friends and a defender of gays in Hollywood when AIDS was still a stigma in the industry and beyond. But she was afflicted by ill health, failed romances (eight marriages, seven husbands) and personal tragedy.
"I think I'm becoming fatalistic," she said in 1989. "Too much has happened in my life for me not to be fatalistic."
Her more than 50 movies included unforgettable portraits of innocence and of decadence, from the children's classic "National Velvet" and the sentimental family comedy "Father of the Bride" to Oscar-winning transgressions in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "Butterfield 8." The historical epic "Cleopatra" is among Hollywood's greatest on-screen fiascos and a landmark of off-screen monkey business, the meeting ground of Taylor and Richard Burton, the "Brangelina" of their day.
She played enough bawdy women on film for critic Pauline Kael to deem her "Chaucerian Beverly Hills."
But her defining role, one that lasted long past her moviemaking days, was "Elizabeth Taylor," ever marrying and divorcing, in and out of hospitals, gaining and losing weight, standing by Michael Jackson, Rock Hudson and other troubled friends, acquiring a jewelry collection that seemed to rival Tiffany's.
She was a child star who grew up and aged before an adoring, appalled and fascinated public. She arrived in Hollywood when the studio system tightly controlled an actor's life and image, had more marriages than any publicist could explain away and lasted long enough to no longer require explanation. She was the industry's great survivor, and among the first to reach that special category of celebrity — famous for being famous, for whom her work was inseparable from the gossip around it.
The London-born actress was a star at age 12, a bride and a divorcee at 18, a superstar at 19 and a widow at 26. She was a screen sweetheart and martyr later reviled for stealing Eddie Fisher from Debbie Reynolds, then for dumping Fisher to bed Burton, a relationship of epic passion and turbulence, lasting through two marriages and countless attempted reconciliations.
She was also forgiven. Reynolds would acknowledge voting for Taylor when she was nominated for "Butterfield 8" and decades later co-starred with her old rival in "These Old Broads," co-written by Carrie Fisher, the daughter of Reynolds and Eddie Fisher.
Taylor's ailments wore down the grudges. She underwent at least 20 major operations and she nearly died from a bout with pneumonia in 1990. In 1994 and 1995, she had both hip joints replaced, and in February 1997, she underwent surgery to remove a benign brain tumor. In 1983, she acknowledged a 35-year addiction to sleeping pills and pain killers. Taylor was treated for alcohol and drug abuse problems at the Betty Ford Clinic in Rancho Mirage, Calif.
Her troubles bonded her to her peers and the public, and deepened her compassion. Her advocacy for AIDS research and for other causes earned her a special Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1993.
As she accepted it, to a long ovation, she declared, "I call upon you to draw from the depths of your being — to prove that we are a human race, to prove that our love outweighs our need to hate, that our compassion is more compelling than our need to blame."
The dark-haired Taylor made an unforgettable impression in Hollywood with "National Velvet," the 1945 film in which the 12-year-old belle rode a steeplechase horse to victory in the Grand National.
Critic James Agee wrote of her: "Ever since I first saw the child ... I have been choked with the peculiar sort of adoration I might have felt if we were in the same grade of primary school."
"National Velvet," her fifth film, also marked the beginning of Taylor's long string of health issues. During production, she fell off a horse. The resulting back injury continued to haunt her.
Taylor matured into a ravishing beauty in "Father of the Bride," in 1950, and into a respected performer and femme fatale the following year in "A Place in the Sun," based on the Theodore Dreiser novel "An American Tragedy." The movie co-starred her close friend Montgomery Clift as the ambitious young man who drowns his working-class girlfriend to be with the socialite Taylor. In real life, too, men all but committed murder in pursuit of her.
Through the rest of the 1950s and into the 1960s, she and Marilyn Monroe were Hollywood's great sex symbols, both striving for appreciation beyond their physical beauty, both caught up in personal dramas filmmakers could only wish they had imagined. That Taylor lasted, and Monroe died young, was a matter of luck and strength; Taylor lived as she pleased and allowed no one to define her but herself.
"I don't entirely approve of some of the things I have done, or am, or have been. But I'm me. God knows, I'm me," Taylor said around the time she turned 50.
She had a remarkable and exhausting personal and professional life. Her marriage to Michael Todd ended tragically when the producer died in a plane crash in 1958. She took up with Fisher, married him, then left him for Burton. Meanwhile, she received several Academy Award nominations and two Oscars.
She was a box-office star cast in numerous "prestige" films, from "Raintree County" with Clift to "Giant," an epic co-starring her friends Hudson and James Dean. Nominations came from a pair of movies adapted from work by Tennessee Williams: "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "Suddenly, Last Summer." In "Butterfield 8," released in 1960, she starred with Fisher as a doomed girl-about-town. Taylor never cared much for the film, but her performance at the Oscars wowed the world.
Sympathy for Taylor's widowhood had turned to scorn when she took up with Fisher, who had supposedly been consoling her over the death of Todd. But before the 1961 ceremony, she was hospitalized from a nearly fatal bout with pneumonia and Taylor underwent a tracheotomy. The scar was bandaged when she appeared at the Oscars to accept her best actress trophy for "Butterfield 8."
To a standing ovation, she hobbled to the stage. "I don't really know how to express my great gratitude," she said in an emotional speech. "I guess I will just have to thank you with all my heart." It was one of the most dramatic moments in Academy Awards history.
"Hell, I even voted for her," Reynolds later said.
Greater drama awaited: "Cleopatra." Taylor met Burton while playing the title role in the 1963 epic, in which the brooding, womanizing Welsh actor co-starred as Mark Antony. Their chemistry was not immediate. Taylor found him boorish; Burton mocked her physique. But the love scenes on film continued away from the set and a scandal for the ages was born. Headlines shouted and screamed. Paparazzi snapped and swooned. Their romance created such a sensation that the Vatican denounced the happenings as the "caprices of adult children."
The film so exceeded its budget that the producers lost money even though "Cleopatra" was a box-office hit and won four Academy awards. (With its $44 million budget adjusted for inflation, "Cleopatra" remains the most expensive movie ever made.) Taylor's salary per film topped $1 million. "Liz and Dick" became a couple on a first name basis with millions who had never met them.
They were a prolific acting team, even if most of the movies aged no better than their relationship: "The VIPs" (1963), "The Sandpiper" (1965), "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966), "The Taming of the Shrew" (1967), "The Comedians" (1967), "Dr. Faustus" (1967), "Boom!" (1968), "Under Milk Wood" (1971) and "Hammersmith Is Out" (1972).
Art most effectively imitated life in the adaptation of Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" — in which Taylor and Burton played mates who fought viciously and drank heavily. She took the best actress Oscar for her performance as the venomous Martha in "Virginia Woolf" and again stole the awards show, this time by not showing up at the ceremony. She refused to thank the academy upon learning of her victory and chastised voters for not honoring Burton.
Taylor and Burton divorced in 1974, married again in 1975 and divorced again in 1976.
"We fight a great deal," Burton once said, "and we watch the people around us who don't quite know how to behave during these storms. We don't fight when we are alone."
In 1982, Taylor and Burton appeared in a touring production of the Noel Coward play "Private Lives," in which they starred as a divorced couple who meet on their respective honeymoons. They remained close at the time of Burton's death, in 1984.
Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born in London on Feb. 27, 1932, the daughter of Francis Taylor, an art dealer, and the former Sara Sothern, an American stage actress. At age 3, with extensive ballet training already behind her, Taylor danced for British princesses Elizabeth (the future queen) and Margaret Rose at London's Hippodrome. At age 4, she was given a wild field horse that she learned to ride expertly.
At the onset of World War II, the Taylors came to the United States. Francis Taylor opened a gallery in Beverly Hills and, in 1942, his daughter made her screen debut with a bit part in the comedy "There's One Born Every Minute."
Her big break came soon thereafter. While serving as an air-raid warden with MGM producer Sam Marx, Taylor's father learned that the studio was struggling to find an English girl to play opposite Roddy McDowall in "Lassie Come Home." Taylor's screen test for the film won her both the part and a long-term contract. She grew up quickly after that.
Still in school at 16, she would dash from the classroom to the movie set where she played passionate love scenes with Robert Taylor in "Conspirator."
"I have the emotions of a child in the body of a woman," she once said. "I was rushed into womanhood for the movies. It caused me long moments of unhappiness and doubt."
Soon after her screen presence was established, she began a series of very public romances. Early loves included socialite Bill Pawley, home run slugger Ralph Kiner and football star Glenn Davis.
Then, a roll call of husbands:
• She married Conrad Hilton Jr., son of the hotel magnate, in May 1950 at age 18. The marriage ended in divorce that December.
• When she married British actor Michael Wilding in February 1952, he was 39 to her 19. They had two sons, Michael Jr. and Christopher Edward. That marriage lasted 4 years.
• She married cigar-chomping movie producer Michael Todd, also 20 years her senior, in 1957. They had a daughter, Elizabeth Francis. Todd was killed in a plane crash in 1958.
• The best man at the Taylor-Todd wedding was Fisher. He left his wife Debbie Reynolds to marry Taylor in 1959. She converted to Judaism before the wedding.
• Taylor and Fisher moved to London, where she was making "Cleopatra." She met Burton, who also was married. That union produced her fourth child, Maria.
• After her second marriage to Burton ended, she married John Warner, a former secretary of the Navy, in December 1976. Warner was elected a U.S. senator from Virginia in 1978. They divorced in 1982.
• In October 1991, she married Larry Fortensky, a truck driver and construction worker she met while both were undergoing treatment at the Betty Ford Center in 1988. He was 20 years her junior. The wedding, held at the ranch of Michael Jackson, was a media circus that included the din of helicopter blades, a journalist who parachuted to a spot near the couple and a gossip columnist as official scribe.
But in August 1995, she and Fortensky announced a trial separation; she filed for divorce six months later and the split became final in 1997.
"I was taught by my parents that if you fall in love, if you want to have a love affair, you get married," she once remarked. "I guess I'm very old-fashioned."
Her philanthropic interests included assistance for the Israeli War Victims Fund, the Variety Clubs International and the American Foundation for AIDS Research.
She received the Legion of Honor, France's most prestigious award, in 1987, for her efforts to support AIDS research. In May 2000, Queen Elizabeth II made Taylor a dame — the female equivalent of a knight — for her services to the entertainment industry and to charity.
In 1993, she won a lifetime achievement award from the American Film Institute; in 1999, an institute survey of screen legends ranked her No. 7 among actresses.
During much of her later career, Taylor's waistline, various diets, diet books and tangled romances were the butt of jokes by Joan Rivers and others. John Belushi mocked her on "Saturday Night Live," dressing up in drag and choking on a piece of chicken.
"It's a wonder I didn't explode," Taylor wrote of her 60-pound weight gain — and successful loss — in the 1988 book "Elizabeth Takes Off on Self-Esteem and Self-Image."
She was an iconic star, but her screen roles became increasingly rare in the 1980s and beyond. She appeared in several television movies, including "Poker Alice" and "Sweet Bird of Youth," and entered the Stone Age as Pearl Slaghoople in the movie version of "The Flintstones." She had a brief role on the popular soap opera "General Hospital."
Taylor was the subject of numerous unauthorized biographies and herself worked on a handful of books, including "Elizabeth Taylor: An Informal Memoir" and "Elizabeth Taylor: My Love Affair With Jewelry." In tune with the media to the end, she kept in touch through her Twitter account.
"I like the connection with fans and people who have been supportive of me," Taylor told Kim Kardashian in a 2011 interview for Harper's Bazaar. "And I love the idea of real feedback and a two-way street, which is very, very modern. But sometimes I think we know too much about our idols and that spoils the dream."
Survivors include her daughters Maria Burton-Carson and Liza Todd-Tivey, sons Christopher and Michael Wilding, 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
A private family funeral is planned later this week.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand – Cameras started rolling Monday on director Peter Jackson's production of "The Hobbit," following months of delays on the prequel to his Oscar-winning "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
Hollywood studio funding problems, a threatened actors' boycott and ulcer surgery for Jackson have plagued pre-production on the $500 million, two-movie project.
The director posted a studio news release on his website Monday saying production has commenced in New Zealand on the much-anticipated project.
British actor Martin Freeman will star as hobbit Bilbo Baggins alongside Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett and Orlando Bloom in twin movies of J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy novel about a short, hairy-footed hero.
The films are expected to take up to two years to make, with the first timed for release in late 2012.
"The Hobbit" is a prequel to "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy by Tolkien that Jackson helmed to blockbuster film success in 2001-03, winning best-picture and best-director Oscars for the finale.
Jackson underwent surgery last month for a perforated stomach ulcer, pushing back the start of filming at least by several days.
Last October, New Zealand changed labor laws and tipped in extra tax breaks for Hollywood studios MGM and New Line Cinema to ensure the Hobbit films would be made in the country.
The changes mean actors and others working on the films will be hired as contractors not employees. The union had wanted local actors and other production workers to be hired as full-fledged employees on union contracts.
New Zealand received a huge boost to its tourism and film-making industries from "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
Freeman, whose films include "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and "Hot Fuzz" but who may be best known from Ricky Gervais' "The Office" television comedy, has said playing Baggins is the role of a lifetime.
Criticamos las películas "Battle: Los Angeles" y "Paul". Con Marcos Rodríguez, Alberto Reyes y Seles Benz. Invitados especiales, Jesus Osvaldo Velazquez "DJ Mista OZ", Laura Pereira, David Figueroa. Duración 56 Minutos 16 segundos. Música en los intermedios por Maxarathiel Les' Shyerar del album "Beyond The Karma", cortesia del Free Music Archive.
NEW YORK – Hollywood would like to skip spring and head straight to summer.
The summer-style blockbuster "Battle: Los Angles" performed like one at the box office, opening to a strong debut of $36 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. The film stars Aaron Eckhart as a veteran soldier leading a platoon of Marines in combat against invading aliens.
For Columbia Pictures and Sony, the sci-fi action film recalls its 2009 Oscar-nominated hit, "District 9." "Battle: Los Angeles" hasn't received nearly as good reviews, but it benefited from a 68 percent male audience and a very successful marketing campaign.
"It's kind of like having a summer film in the spring," said Rory Bruer, president of worldwide distribution at Sony. "From the beginning, this was a film we were excited about."
Bruer added that there's "definitely a connection" between "Battle: Los Angeles" and "District 9," which opened to $37.4 million and was also helmed by a South African filmmaker. Neill Blomkamp directed "District 9," while Jonathan Liebesman directed the similarly handheld-heavy "Battle: Los Angeles."
In its second week of release, the animated Western spoof "Rango" came in second, adding $23.1 million for a cumulative total of $68.7 million. The critically acclaimed Paramount Pictures film appeared on its way to surpassing $100 million.
The weekend's other new releases didn't fare as well.
"Red Riding Hood," the updated fairy tale starring Amanda Seyfried and helmed by "Twilight" director Catherine Hardwicke, debuted to $14.1 million for Warner Bros.
Worse was Disney's animated 3-D family film "Mars Needs Moms!" It opened to a disappointing $6.8 million, well below expectations. With a voice cast including Seth Green and Joan Cusack, it also opened on more than 200 IMAX screens.
Based on the book of the same title by Berkeley Breathed, "Mars Needs Moms!" had an estimated production budget of $150 million. Such a poor start means it's likely to be a significant loss for Disney, though that pain is somewhat alleviated by its surprise hit, "Gnomeo & Juliet." It has taken in $89 million in five weeks.
Overall, moviegoing business was still down from the corresponding weekend last year. Since November 2010, such down weekends have been the norm except for one up weekend. The box office for 2011 was 21.5 percent off last year's pace.
Hollywood.com analyst Paul Dergarabedian said the weekend business was "good news for aliens, bad news for the overall box office."
"It's a cyclical business, but this is a long downturn," said Dergarabedian. "The industry is holding its collective breath for summer to start."
With myriad blockbusters planned for both the summer and holiday seasons, Hollywood has reason to expect better business as the year continues.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released Monday.
En este programa criticamos las peliculas "América" y "Hall Pass", con la participacion de Marcos Rodríguez, Alberto Reyes, Seles Benz y un nutrido grupo de invitados especiales. Duración 53 min. 42 seg.
Música en los intermedios de Max Les'Shyerar del Album "Beyond The Karma".
Criticamos las películas "Unknown" y "The Adjustment Bureau". Con Marcos Rodríguez, Alberto Reyes y Seles Benz. Invitados especiales, Jesus Osvaldo Velazquez "DJ Mista OZ", Laura Pereira, José Saul Nieves y David Figueroa. Duración 55 Minutos 11 segundos. Música en los intermedios por Maxarathiel Les' Shyerar del album "Beyond The Karma", cortesia del Free Music Archive.
Former Hollywood actress and sex symbol Jane Russell has died at the age of 89.
The brunette was discovered by eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, who cast her in his 1943 Western The Outlaw.
Some of her most memorable films include the The Paleface (1948) with Bob Hope, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) with Marilyn Monroe.
She died on Monday at her home in California of a respiratory-related illness, her daughter-in-law confirmed.
She said the most common question asked of her was who was the best kisser in Hollywood - her response? 'Bob Hope - those blubbery lips - oh my God!'”
"She always said I'm going to die in the saddle, I'm not going to sit at home and become an old woman. And that's exactly what she did, she died in the saddle," Etta Waterfield said, recounting that Russell had remained active in her local community until illness intervened in recent weeks.
Russell was a pin-up girl in the 1940s and 1950s, but her film career had faded by the 1960s.
"Why did I quit movies? Because I was getting too old! You couldn't go on acting in those years if you were an actress over 30," she said in an interview in 1999.
In 1971, she featured in the Broadway musical Company.
Later, she appeared in TV commercials promoting brassieres, including the 18-hour bra for Playtex.
Russell married three times and adopted three children.
After experiencing problems during the adoption process, she founded the World Adoption International Agency, which has helped organise the adoptions in the US of tens of thousands of children from overseas.
