''Stuart Little'' still living large at box office
By Dean Goodman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - ``Stuart Little'' remained the big cheese at the North American box office, selling about $11.5 million worth of tickets during the weekend, according to studio estimates issued Sunday.
The talking mouse picture has spent three of its four weeks at No. 1, with an exception during the Christmas weekend when
'Any Given Sunday'' ruled the roost. After 24 days in release, ''Stuart Little'' has now earned about $95.6 million, and should
pass the century mark next Friday or Saturday, said a spokesman for the film's distributor, Columbia Pictures.The top 10 contained two films that expanded into wide release, ``Magnolia'' (New Line) at No. 7 and ``Snow Falling on Cedars'' (Universal) at No. 10. Dropping out were box office weaklings Fox's ``Anna and the King'' (down one to No. 11) and Universal's ``Man on the Moon'' (down three to No. 12).
``The Talented Mr. Ripley'' (Paramount) was No. 2 with $9.8 million, followed by ``The Green Mile'' (Warner Bros.) with $9.7 million, ``Any Given Sunday'' (WB) with $9.0 million and ''Galaxy Quest'' (DreamWorks) with 8.3 million; all were up one place each from last weekend.
According to Exhibitor Relations Co., which collects the studios' estimates, the top 12 movies this weekend grossed a combined $83.6 million, down 24 percent from last weekend, but up nine percent from the year-ago weekend. Next weekend sees the sci-fi picture ``Supernova'' bowing in theaters, while ``The Hurricane'' and ``Girl, Interrupted'' will expand to wide release.
``Toy Story 2'' (Walt Disney Pictures) fell four places to No. 6 with $7.5 million, taking its 52-day total to $220 million. The film passed the animated ``Aladdin'' ($217 million) to become Disney's second-biggest cartoon (after ``The Lion King'' with $301 million) and the company's third-biggest overall (behind ``The Lion King'' and $277 million grosser ``The Sixth Sense''),
a spokesman said.
``Magnolia,'' a three-hour ensemble drama starring Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore and William H. Macy, jumped to No. 7 with $6.6 million from 1,038 screens. It was No. 34 last weekend on nine screens. Its per screen average of $6,359 was the highest in the top 10, followed by ``Stuart Little'' with a $3,860 average from 2,979 screens.
``Cruise is driving a lot of this (business), but there has been so much heat and so much talk about this film,'' said David Tuckerman, executive vice-president of domestic distribution at New Line.
The film played to the 25-and-above crowd, and enjoyed pockets of strong support throughout the United States and Canada, Tuckerman added. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (''Boogie Nights''), the film stars Cruise as a motivational
speaker who lectures men on how to snag women. Moore plays his stepmother, and Macy a washed-up former child celeb. Its total stands at $7.5 million.
The other expansion was ``Snow Falling on Cedars,'' based on the bestselling David Guterson novel about a murder trial and racial bigotry in the Pacific Northwest. The film, starring Ethan Hawke and James Cromwell, rose 41 places to No. 10 with $4.0 million after boosting its screen count to 1,150 from three. The per screen average for the critically maligned drama was
a modest $3,478.
Among other expansions, Universal's ``The Hurricane,'' starring Denzel Washington as wrongly imprisoned boxer Rubin ''Hurricane'' Carter, grossed $2.4 million and a $15,094 average after widening to 159 theaters from 11 in its second weekend. Its total stands at $3.1 million, and it widens to about 1,500 screens next weekend.
Honors for the best average went to Disney's ``Fantasia 2000'' with $50,000 from each of the 54 large-format Imax screens playing the 75-minute cartoon. The film's weekend haul was $2.7 million, taking the nine-day total to $8.5 million.
Totals for the other films are $54.7 million for ``The Talented Mr. Ripley'' (after 16 days); $91.3 million for ``The Green Mile'' (31 days); $59.5 million for ``Any Given Sunday'' (19 days); and $38.8 million for ``Galaxy Quest'' (16 days).
Rounding out the top 10 were the Touchstone Pictures pair of ``Bicentennial Man'' at No. 8 with $5.2 million (24-day total $47.1 million) and ``Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo'' at No. 9 with $5 million (31-day total $54.0 million). They each fell one place from last weekend.
Columbia Pictures is a unit of Sony Corp. Paramount Pictures is a unit of Viacom Inc. Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema are units of Time Warner Inc. Walt Disney Pictures and Touchstone Pictures are units of Walt Disney Co. DreamWorks SKG is privately held. Universal Pictures is a unit of Seagram Co. Ltd. Twentieth Century Fox is a unit of Fox Entertainment
Group Inc.
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years after it was cancelled without Louis DePalma will still work. If you
believe in a man on the moon you think that Jim Carrey has a chance in heck of
winning an Oscar for best actor. If you believe in a man on the moon you
Jerry Lawler did a shoot on Andy Kaufman in their Memphis wrestling matches and
nearly broke AK's neck. If you believe in a man on the moon you believe
that his fight on the TV show Fridays was not preplanned by the major players
involved. If you believe in the man on the moon you think Tony Clifton is
a hilarious character that should have gotten his four spots a season on
Taxi. And if you think the moon is made of green cheese then you must be
an R.E.M. fan. I checked out Man on the Moon this weekend starring Jim
Carrey about the short life of Latka Gravas. This movie was okay and acted
well for the most part. Jim C. plays Latka Gravas quite well. He has
his Caspiarian accent down to a "T." You learn that Latka was a
struggling comedian in the 1970s pretending to be Elvis Presley. Then one
day the dispatcher of a New York City Cab Company saw Gravas' act and hired him
as a mechanic. Things were going well, but Gravas was feeling he 
had
not reached his full potential. There had to be more to do in his
life. He befriended loudmouthed Vegas lounge singer Tony Clifton who
helped Latka look so good he was able to go off and participate in his true
love, professional wrestling. The man from Caspiar battled women to show
how superior he was to the female gender while getting off at the same
time. This lead to a real wrestler challenging him to take on a real man,
and that was Jerry "King of the Puppies" Lawler. One suplex and
a piledriver later he was off wandering around doing nothing until lung cancer
took him out at the age of 34. Latka also went by his less popular name of
Andy Kaufman. Many people who hear that name, go "who?"
Kaufman was famous for 2 things, being on Taxi and getting slapped by Jerry
Lawler on the David Letterman Show. Nothing else he did was all that
significant. His tv specials were rarely seen, he was fairly popular on
Saturday Night Live, but eventually no one cared, and his inter gender wrestling
was a bit too local and never made national publicity until the E! channel and
Comedy Central decided to do specials about his life. The movie is fine as
it is, but after seeing it, its like who cares. Kaufman was just not
that interesting and Carrey does a better Kaufman than Kaufman because people
laugh at Carrey because he is inherently funny, so when he would do some of
Kaufman's more off the wall bits like reading "The Great Gatsby" from
beginning to end to a booing crowd or saying how his day sucks because he has
been diagnosed with cancer the movie crowd laughs instead of saying wow that is
not funny. Carrey was too smiley and energetic with his performance.
Kaufman was more subtle and laid back. You had to listen closely to what
he was saying because he did not speak that loudly except when he wrestled
Lawler. Carrey is good for what he was told to do, but it is still more of
an impersonation instead of a performance. His Tony Clifton bits are
funny, but there is very little to judge it on since for most people that will
be the first time they have seen the character. The movie portrays it as a
funny character, but in reality it was supposed to be annoying and
disgusting. Clifton was made a hero that in some way kept Kaufman sane by
letting him be outrageous. The movie is a string of bits and personal
accounts that really do not get in the head or the
background of what was real or fake with Kaufman. The movie tells you that
everything was a joke to Kaufman just to put people in a sort of artificial
reality. They think they are seeing something set up at first, then it
becomes real, and then it becomes fake again. Many times Kaufman would leave you
in the reatlity, say "thank you very much" and go home. More
detail on how Kaufman created his false reality would have made the comedic bits
more substantive. Finally, Kaufman was hit with the ultimate reality, his
own mortality, but many thought he was crying wolf again. To this day
people think Kaufman is alive and faked his death and is living in the
Mediterranean with Elvis Presley. Man on the Moon is a well made film
about the life of a comedian who did not live long enough to make a huge impact
on society. Movie audiences are avoiding MOTM because few people remember
the actor. His life was not interesting enough for the mass
audience. I don't understand why Carrey isn't drawing because he is one of
about 5 actors who name alone can open a movie to over $20 million. The
specials about Kaufman's life shown on various channels are more interesting
than this movie, so try to catch those. If you see this movie, it won't
disappoint you much, and you will probably enjoy it. You just won't learn
a whole lot about Kaufman. But that is what Latka wanted. The real
him never really existed. Final review: Thumbs up; 3 stars out of 4; B; 7
out of 10. Recommended.
this
film, who cares? Jason Robards is a good actor who now has to play sick
evil fathers all the time now. Philip Seymour Hoffman is trying to make
movies that are important so that he can be called the "great Philip
Seymour Hoffman" by the critics everytime one of his movies comes out. The
critics kissed his as in Happiness and Flawless, but the mainstream crowd still
can't tell in which order to say his name. William H. Macy is also an
actor that shows up every 3 months in movies. He is still the crazy
husband from Fargo. Paul Thomas Anderson directed this family drama and
like his last movie, Boogie Nights, seems to not know when to quit. BN is
an awful movie, but its first and 45 minutes is interesting enough if you like
the porno industry, but its focus on the 80s drug culture was
tiresome. From reviews I have seen of Magnolia, the same thing
happens. He starts out good for most of the movie, but the last third sort of
falls apart as he can't figure out how to end the picture or put everything
together. Must be one of those slice of life ideas which means that life never
ends with everything wrapped up neatly, but just continues. We shall see if
Magnolia can stay in the top 10 long enough to reach a profit to pay off the
money they gave Cruise to show up to cry at Robards' bedside.
trial going on while these two peple are having sex among cedar trees in the
winter time. Sappy love story between 2 different cultures and a murder
trial to put some non romantic drama in the film. This is a chick flick as
they say. If the guy gets to see Deuce Bigalow, then he will sit through
SFOC without protest. Quid pro quo romance is so wonderful. Ethan
Hawke is trying to make these important films, but no one has seen him act since
Dead Poets Society. But don't weep for him, he is married to Uma
Thurman. They both need a hit to help support that hungry kid of
theirs. I don't see a long life for the cedar movie. They needed to
market it like they did Bridges of Madison County which was the ultimate chick
book made into a pretty successful chick movie. I work in a library and
the book was very popular. A more literary promotion would have helped it.
The line about Hawkes girlfriend smelling like cedars is a bit corny though. As
soon as guy hears that, it's back to drinking beer and watching
sports.