January 20th, 2009
A terrible week for first run releases. There are five such releases on this week's list, but they has a combined haul of around $130 million, and nearly $100 million of that came from two films. With no big releases, we had to look other places for the DVD Pick of the Week. Repo! The Genetic Opera on Blu-ray is a clear contender for that title, but its lack of mass appeal is troublesome. This American Life - Season Two is a safer pick, but it is a Borders Exclusive release. Regardless of these issues, both releases are worthy of the DVD Pick of the Week. Despite the weakness at the top, there are still more than enough total releases to cause this column to stretch into two parts. The second part can be found here.
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March 4th, 2006
Despite crumpling by 47% during its second week of release,
Saw II remained in first place on the rental charts with $5.29 million for the week and $15.34 million in total.
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February 20th, 2006
As usual, there's a very strange mix of DVDs coming out tomorrow with something for even the most unique of tastes. As for the best of the best,
The Memory of a Killer -
Buy from Amazon is the DVD Pick of the Week, only the third
foreign language film to earn that distinction. Honorable mentions include two films that were unfortunately neglected when they first came out,
Class of 1984 -
Buy from Amazon and Erik the Viking -
Buy from Amazon. Neither of which would be considered high art, but I like them and getting to highlight personal favorites of mine is one of the perks of the job.
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November 28th, 2005
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire continues to prop up an otherwise sagging box office.
It was the only film to top $20 million over the long weekend, the first time that just a single movie has topped that figure over Thanksgiving weekend since 1997.
This led to a decrease of 8.4% compared to last weekend, but the three-day weekend was still 1.7% more than last year. The five-day result was even better, with 2005 up 2.9% over 2004.
Year-to-date, 2005 is still 6% behind, but with a few more potential monster hits on their way, it could close the gap.
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November 23rd, 2005
Thanksgiving Weekend is as busy as ever.
With five films opening wide (and another expanding wide) and with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire a dead cert to finish first again, many of the films will have a difficult time attracting moviegoers.
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November 1st, 2005
Wow, that sucked.
October was a terrible month at the box office and all the gains made in September were erased. November promises to be better than October, but the real question is whether it will be better than November of last year.
On the plus side, last November was pretty bad, with most films missing expectations.
On the down side, there is only one guaranteed hit this month, and only a couple of others that should also perform well with both the critics and the moviegoers. If you have predictions of your own to make, feel free to head over to our forum and share them with our readers.
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June 23rd, 2005
During the past week promotional websites for several movies were launched and some older ones added additional content. Here the list of this week's releases, a couple of new sites and few updates, including this week's winner,
Chicken Little -
Official Site.
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June 9th, 2005
During the past week promotional websites for several movies were launched and some older ones added additional content. Here the list of this week's releases, a couple of new sites and few updates, including this week's winner,
Stealth -
Official Site.
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May 18th, 2005
During the past week promotional websites for several movies were launched and some older ones added additional content. Here the list of this week's releases, a couple of new sites and few updates, including this week's winner, New Police Story -
Official Site.
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