Top grossing movies of 2010

As the movie year comes to a wrap, it's always fun to take a quick look at what kicked much butt at the box office. What worked? Surprisingly not 3D, which only occupies 2 of the top 5 spots.

1. Toy Story 3- $414.9M
2. Alice in Wonderland- $334.2M
3. Iron Man 2- $312.1M
4. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse- $300.5M
5. Inception- $292.5M

It should be noted that technically James Cameron's Avatar was #2. It debuted in December of 2009 but still grossed over $408M in 2010.

Warner Brothers led all studios in terms of market share with it's 32 flicks accounting for 18% of the estimated $10.5B haul.

Yet again the highest grossing movies of the year were rated PG-13, with those films accounting for 44% of the market.


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The Awesomeness of Kung Fu Panda 2

Dreamworks has released a new TV spot for Kung Fu Panda 2, and it's nothing but pure awesomeness. And we actually get some footage of the flick, which we didn't get in the teaser trailer a few weeks back. It's short, but sweet. Check it out for yourself!



Kung Fu Panda 2 will be released on May 26th 2011! Damn next year's gonna be busy!

Javier Bardem the lead to star in The Dark Tower?

Even though the idea of Stephen King's massive epic, The Dark Tower, getting turned into a feature film has floated around for years I never once considered it a possibility to ever get completed. Even with Ron Howard involved now and the project moving ahead slowly but surely, I still think it's just too big to ever get accomplished. The plan Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman have come up with has so many moving parts and would take up so much time how can they ever find someone willing to make that kind of commitment? For those that don't know, the plan is to kick things off with a massive feature film, a TV series, another film, a second TV season, then a third and final flick. Honestly, I think the best route might be casting an up 'n coming star, but that's certainly not where the rumors have been trending.

Brad Pitt signs on to Andrew Dominik's 'Cogan's Trade'

Back in November there was a story about the possibility of Brad Pitt re-teaming with director Andrew Dominik(The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford) for his next film, Cogan's Trade. Based on the novel by George V. Higgins, the story follows a mob enforcer investigating a heist that takes place during a mob protected poker game. Well now Scene Louisiana is reporting that the film is set to begin shooting in New Orleans soon, with not only Brad Pitt attached but a number of really surprising names I bet nobody was expecting.

Trailer Time: The Grandmasters, directed by Wong Kar Wai

I know a lot of people were disappointed with Wong Kar Wai's last film, My Blueberry Nights, starring Norah Jones and Jude Law.  I rather enjoyed it, mainly because of the supporting cast and the typical Kar Wai heavily moody atmosphere. Rachel Weisz is great in a rather limited role.  The director has focused his energies mainly on romantic time pieces like In the Mood for Love and 2046, but now he's taking a turn in a totally different direction with his next flick, The Grandmasters.

Movie Poster: Melissa Leo as 'Sarah' in Red State

Kevin Smith continues to do good, auctioning off yet another of the character posters for his upcoming horror film, Red State. This one was won by Ma's Meatloaf, with the proceeds going to Eliza Dushku's charity to build centers for former child victims of war. The poster they got to debut is my favorite, featuring one of my favorite actresses Melissa Leo(Frozen River) as Sarah. Without knowing all that much about Sarah's character, I get the feeling she's a hardened disciple of the evil Pastor Abin Cooper(Michael Parks).  Even in the shot she seems to be looking up to the heavens for some sort of divine inspiration. The cracked, damaged layout only adds to the creep factor.

Kevin Smith's plan is to have the film debut at Sundance next month(wish I was going!!) with a hopeful March release.  Check out the poster below!

Brand new images from Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch

Warner Brothers has done all us guys a favor and release a few brand new images from Zack Snyder's all-girl fightfest, Sucker Punch! The action/fantasy stars Emily Browning, Jamie Chung, Vanessa Hudgens, Jena Malone, and Abbie Cornish as a group of inmates using everything at their disposoal(including the power of their imagination) to escape the asylum. 

Major Twilight SPOILERS about the fate of Edward and Bella!

Before you read any further, be warned that this story will reveal future plot details to the final chapter of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn. So if something gets spoiled, that's on you! The story continues after this humor break...

New images from The Adventures of Tintin, directed by Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg

The combinatinon of Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson was bound to break new ground, and judging by the first images we saw of The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, it looks like that's exactly what they're doing.  Now a few of those shots have been released in high resolution, and they are stunning. It's like they've taken the years of development Robert Zemeckis has been using with his performance capture technique(used in The Polar Express, Monster House, and others) and ramped it up a notch.  Check out the images below, and set your calandars for December 23rd 2011!

Is Hawkeye set to make a cameo appearance in Thor?

As the Marvel movie universe continues to tighten up, it's practically become policy that we see characters from other flicks popping in and out for cameos. The coolest of which by far was Iron Man showing up at the end of The Incredible Hulk to announce the formation of The Avengers, the film version of which is already coming together. One of the key cogs in The Avengers, Hawkeye, is being played by Jeremy Renner(The Hurt Locker), but it's looking like we'll get a chance to see him strut his stuff a little early.

A new look at Tomar-Re from Green Lantern

Tomar-Re is one of the earliest debuting members of the Green Lantern Corps, and if the trailer for Green Lantern was to be believed he's due to have a major role in the upcoming film.  We got a pretty good glimpse at the Xudarian ring wielder in all his CGI  glory in the trailer, as he seemed to be welcoming Hal Jordan onto the planet Oa or something. Couldn't quite tell. Well now there's another brand new image of exactly how Tomar-Re is going to look, and I think it's pretty impressive.

Clint Eastwood "definitely" adds Judi Dench, maybe Charlize Theron to cast of 'J. Edgar'

The best thing about Clint Eastwood? His answers are almost always straight forward and to the point, so there's not too much need for speculating. While speaking with SandwichJohnFilms(don't ask me about the name) on the red carpet for his California Hall of Fame induction, the director revealed that he's already reeled in a very big name to join the cast of J. Edgar, his biopic on the former FBI Director...

Marvel seeking another female to join The Avengers

I have no idea who Demi Lovato is. Apparently she's one of those Disney pop princess bubblegum starlet people? Hangs around those Jonas Brother-types or something? It's part of the reason why I didn't bother writing about it when news broke that she was up for a role in The Avengers. Well, it started out that she was in talks, and then almost immediately jumped to "She's in the movie!". That was all quickly debunked, for no other reason than the fact that Lovato is currently in some sort of treatment facility for...*ahem*..."emotional and physical issues she has dealt with for some time." 

The chick is like 18 and she's already well on the path to Lohan-ville.  So those rumors were debunked by both Marvel and Lovato's suppliers...I mean Lovato's camp, but apparently Marvel is indeed looking for someone to add more of a feminine touch to the superhero frathouse.  Here's what The Hollywood Reporter had to say about it....

Video: The Beauty of Pixar

Thanks to our friends at Slashfilm for bringing attention to this video, a 7-minute tribute to some of Pixar's most wonderful, memorable moments. The film was put together by editor Leandro Copperfield, and uses some 500 scenes he personally selected. Pretty sweet.  Check out The Beauty of Pixar below!

More Uncharted: Drake's Fortune rumblings. Is Mark Wahlberg not signed yet?

Having never played any of the Uncharted games, I have to admit I've been a little surprised by the uproar from fans over the hiring of Mark Wahlberg to play adventurer/treasure seeker Nathan Drake. Some of the Twitter posts I've seen have been downright brutal towards director David O. Russell. In particular they seem to hate this idea of a group family dynamic, which would involve bringing in Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci as fellow members of the Drake clan. I guess it's not close enough to the video game storyline for some folks.

Well, according to Justin Richmond, video game director for Uncharted 3, all of those ideas that the diehards seem to hate aren't going to happen anyway...

Open Water duo returns to Sundance with new film, 'Silent House'

One of the most affecting shark films not named 'Jaws' was 2004's Open Water. The Sundance darling, directed at a slim trim budget of an estimated $500,000, was based on the true story of a couple that was left behind by in the middle of a shark infested ocean by their scuba diving group. Me being not so fond of the ocean, Open Water struck a nerve with me. The filmmakers, Chris Kentis and Laura Lau, used real life sharks in order to accurately portray the creatures' behavior. Open Water was a massive hit, earning $55M during it's run.  Now Kentis and Lau are back with their latest film, Silent House.

Trailer Time: Mad Bastards,directed by Brendan Fletcher

Nobody can deny that it's been an eye-opening couple of years for Australian filmmaking, and if the line-up at the upcoming Sundance Film Festival is to be believed, 2011 is looking pretty impressive too.One such film worth looking ahead to is Brendan Fletcher's directorial debut, Mad Bastards, which will have it's premier at the event next year. The story follows three generations of "mad bastards" as they deal with the hardships of becoming a man. 

I love the cinematography, which captures both the beauty and the isolation of the region. The use of clearly local actors(if they're even actors, I suspect most aren't) adds a certain authenticity. Here's hoping this one gets picked up and brought stateside.  Check out the trailer for Mad Basterds below!

Punch Drunk Critics Live! Ep. 81: Most Anticipated Movies of 2011

What's all this stuff about there not being any new movies this week? You think that gives us a day off? Hell no! You think just because 2010 is over that means the Punch Drunk Critics are over? Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no! In fact, we'll be looking forward to the new year and discussing the movies we're most looking forward to in 2011! Plus, since we'll probably still be getting over our New Year's Eve hangovers, we'll see if we can pull together our Top 5 party movies while we're at it. We'll  be joined by Film Threat's Elias Savada to help get 2011 kicked off right! We hope you'll join us for what should be another great show, courtesy of our friends at BlogTalkRadio!

Trailer Time: Summer Wars, directed by Mamoru Hosoda.

One of my favorite anime films ever was The Girl Who Leapt Through Time from director Mamoru Hosada. But ever since then I'd been waiting for a proper follow-up from Hosada. I was hyped when he first announced Summer Wars back in 2008, but it's taken forever and a friggin' day for it to land over here on American shores. The film came out in June 2009 in Japan and was an immediate critical smash hit(even if the box office was so-so).

Summer Wars follows typical anime nerd hero, Kenji, who works as a moderator in the massive virtual reality world known as Oz.His life is pretty dull up until the moment Natsuzki, the girl of his dreams, asks him to play her boyfriend at a family gathering. Things only get weirder when Kenji receives a mysterious code in the mail, which he cracks and unleashes a rogue artificial intelligence intent on hijacking Oz and using it to destroy reality. D'oh.

X-men: First Class set photos

Awlright maybe I need to be a little more trusting of the "secret tip" rumors. Yesterday we got a flurry of minor news bits and small spoilers regarding X-men: First Class from someone supposedly working on the film. Now today we get a number of new set photos, a couple which actualy tie-in to things he reported. D'oh.  Most people know I'm not a big fan of set photos(most are just people standing around looking bored), but one of these in particular I like because it's a storyboard which appears to feature a fight involving Cyclops' brother, Havok.  The rest are mostly of a scene involving the X-men's in house fighter jet, the Blackbird. Check 'em out below!

Punch Drunk DVDs

Resident Evil: Afterlife
At this point the Resident Evil movies have virtually no connection to the popular Capcom video games other than a few names and the occasional zombie. Even though director Paul W.S. Anderson continues to parade his hot wife Milla Jojovich around in these never-ending flicks, he's not resting on his laurels. In fact the fourth entry in the franchise is arguably the best, going back to the man vs. zombie nature of the first film, and adding the revolutionary look of James Cameron's awesome Avatar 3D cameras.

Spoiler Alert!- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 2

Well my friends, the end has come and gone without much fanfare. That's right...shooting has wrapped on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 2 which means, I'm afraid, that no Harry Potter movie will ever be filmed past this day. Alas, I mourn but have some news for you from the final re-shoots, namely pictures of two of the new cast members. Check in after the jump for more WARNING: Mild spoilers.

Rumor Killer: No Kree/Skrull War in The Avengers

Real quick: Remember that story a couple of days ago from the Albuquerque Journal stating that The Avengers would be facing off against both the Kree and Skrulls in the upcoming movie? Remember how pretty much everybody, myself included, figured this must've been an unforced error on the newspaper's part because information that big couldn't possibly have slipped by all of us?  Well, it turns out that information didn't slip by all of us.

The National Film Registry's 25 new additions honor Leslie Nielsen; Wookies

The National Film Registry of the Library of Congress has named the 25 films to be added to the national archives, preserved not only for being great but for their impact on society and the industry as a whole. Y'know,I really need to start going through my these old flicks and watching them one-by-one, because I think I've seen half of these. I've been putting off Make Way for Tomorrow for months. The late great funnyman, Leslie Nielsen, is recognized by the addition of Airplane!. George Lucas gets a double honor with his college short film, Electric Labrynth: TXH 1138 being preserved, as well as The Empire Strikes Back. I can't believe it took so long for that. Linda Blair's head turning(pun intended) performance in The Exorcist now will never be lost to history, either. And lookie there, Spike Lee's Malcolm X made the cut. Next up, School Daze! You can see the complete list of newly preserved flicks below.

Trailer Time: The Other Woman, starring Natalie Portman

Both the poster and the trailer for The Other Woman released within hours of eachother? For a movie that practically nobody has been concerned with for nearly two years? Call me crazy but I think IFC might be trying to cash in on the Natalie Portman buzz. The Other Woman(formerly titled Love and Other Impossible Pursuits), has Portman starring as the new wife of a high powered attorney. She's struggling to deal with his nosey ex-wife(Lisa Kudrow) while also trying to forge a bond with her new stepson.  The film was directed by Don Roos(Bounce), and will hit theaters on February 4th, 2011. You'll be able to see it On Demand starting on New Year's Day. Check out the new trailer below!

Movie Poster: The Other Woman, starring Natalie Portman

Natalie Portman might be the busiest woman in Hollywood. Not only does she have like a gazillion movies coming out next year, most of which look great, but she's also thrown the cosmic order completely out of balance by getting pregnant by some other guy! Grrrrrrrr!!  Even though I'll never forgive her cheatin' heart, she still knows how to pick interesting projects to headline, and before we get a chance to check out all those comedies she's got lined up, we'll see her next in The Other Woman, directed by Don Roos(The Opposite of Sex).

1st look at sci-fi romance, Upside Down, starring Kirsten Dunst and Jim Sturgess

Holy crap I had totally forgotten about this movie! I first wrote about Upside Down, the sci-fi romance starring Kirsten Dunst and Jim Sturgess, way back in October of 2009. That was around the time Dunst officially signed on, and I think it was then that Sturgess had won the lead role over Emile Hirsch. Directec by Juan Diego Solanas, Upside Down is the story of two childhood loves separated by living in alternate universes. The film recently wrapped shooting in Montreal, and French website Into the Screen has the first images, which you can check out below....

DVD Deal of the Day: Toy Story 3 for $9.99

There are a lot of folks out there that think Disney and Pixar are stretching Toy Story 3's chances too thin by campaigning so hard for the Best Picture award and not just settling for Best Animated. I don't think so. Toy Story 3 is without a doubt in my mind the best animated movie I've ever seen(that isn't Transformers, mind you) and Pixar isn't lying when they say it was the best reviewed movie of the year.  If by some small chance you haven't seen Pixar's masterpiece, Amazon has a remarkable deal where you can get the film for only $9.99. That's a whopping 67% off the regular price. Along with that you can a host of special features, including the awesome short film, Day and Night, as well as the Cars 2 teaser trailer.  You can click here to pick up your copy now!

All of Pixar's Toy Story 3 Oscar Campaign ads

Pixar's been making a pretty strong case to do something that's never been done before, and that's have an animated feature bring home the Best Picture award at the Oscars. If there ever was a film that deserves to be the first, it's Toy Story 3. And so Disney and Pixar launched a perfectly pitched campaign comparing the film to other Best Picture winners that most didn't expect to win for various reasons. All of the ads have been hilarious, but now you can see each and every one of them and judge for yourself.  Check 'em out below! And what do you think of Toy Story 3's chances of taking home the gold?

Video: "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch" parody

Does anybody even remember anything about Brett Ratner's terrible X-men: The Last Stand anymore? Pretty much everybody acknowledges that it was an awful film, poorly written, badly cast, and shot with no creativity whatsoever. All anyone remembers about it now is that one scene. That one perfectly horrible scene where the Juggernaut(played by Vinnie Jones of all folks) and Kitty Pryde(Ellen Page) squared off, featuring the now classic retort "Don't you know who I am? I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!"  Ever since then, parodies of it blew up the internet. And since I was just reminded of this by our recent story on the filming of X-men: First Class, I thought I'd drag up one of my old favorites for you to enjoy.  It features a very ghetto Juggernaut and his hetero life mate, Black Tom, from an old episode of the X-men animated series. And it's hilarious.  Enjoy! "I'm gonna hit you with your own pimp"!

Possible X-men: First Class spoilers. Could there be a mutant birth?

A tipster who supposedly has been working on Matthew Vaughn's mutant origin flick, X-men: First Class, has dropped a ton of minor tidbits and possible spoilers. Most of them won't have much of an impact, such as the look of Havok's costume or the scar on Azazel's face, but there are a couple of interesting tidbits in there. I'll follow up on those, but first take a look at what the guy told comicbookmovie....

Tops at the Box Office

1. Little Fockers- $34M/$48.3M
We tend to believe the idea that families gather together after Christmas and go see a movie, but this is usually a down weekend. Such is the case with Little Fockers, which got a five-day kick and still managed less than Meet the Fockers got last year for the same weekend. So it wins, but don't expect much more to come from it.
2. True Grit- $25.6M/$36.8M
It might seem disappointing that The Coen Brothers' western fell short of the dismal Focker clan but bear note that the $25.6M open was the best ever for a western flick. With the five day boost it's only $17M short of the total gross of 3:10 to Yuma, the most recent big time western featuring A-list stars. This also marks the largest debut for the Coen Brothers ever. Doesn't sound so bad now, does it?
3. Tron Legacy- $20.1M/$88.3M
Slipped 54% in the face of some stiff holiday competition, but continues to perform well for the sequel to a 30 year old film.
4. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader- $10.8M/$63.9M
Perhaps due to the heavy religious themes, the third Narnia film had the strongest hold over the holiday weekend.
5. Yogi Bear- $8.8M/$36.8M
6. The Fighter- $8.5M/$27.6M
Despite all it's Oscar bonafides, The Fighter continues to lag behind some of the most recent sports dramas such as The Blind Side and the Mark Wahlberg starring football drama, Invincible.
7. Gulliver's Travels- $7.2M
Opening on a Saturday automatically put this Jack Black starring adventure comedy behind the 8 ball. Even so, that opening indicates a general lack of interest. Normally movies of this type perform beyond expectations opening on Christmas weekend, so this dismal debut indicates something in the marketing realm didn't quite click.
8. Black Swan- $6.6M/$29M
Adds another 500 theaters and continues to perform reasonably well.
9. Tangled- $6.52M/$144M
10. The Tourist- $5.7M/$41.2M

No doubt aided by the scads of Oscar buzz surrounding it's star, Colin Firth, The King's Speech just barely missed the Top 10 with an estimated $4.6M at only 700 locations.

Sofia Coppola's ruminations on the lives of celebrities, Somewhere, kicked off nicely at only 7 locations and a per site average of over $20,286. Not bad at all.

How Do You Know continues to crap all over it's $120M budget, pulling in $3.7M for a two week total of $15.1M.