A three-way contest this weekend

Natalie Portman has been in the news lately for all the right reasons. Her portrayal of a troubled ballet dancer in the Black Swan won her a Golden Globe award and she is my favourite to land the Oscar as well. Portman had previously come close to winning the Oscar in 2005 when she was nominated for her role in Closer under the category of 'Best Supporting Actress'. But this year she is likely to make the transition from being an Oscar nominee to an Oscar winner! Even with all these wonderful and much deserved accolades coming her way, it would require something really special for her latest film to have any serious impact on the box office. No Strings Attached starring Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher is releasing this weekend without hardly the buzz that Black Swan created. And understandably so. No Strings Attached, as the name suggests, is nothing more than a story of two friends who want to be in a relationship without any strings attached and who, I presume, would eventually fall in love that would complicate matters and thus result in a two hour long movie that the audience will have to endure. Releasing alongwith it is the Ben Affleck and Tommy Lee Jones starrer The Company Men - a story about three co-workers whose lives change after being laid off by their company. Sounds more meaningful. Both these movies would have to wrestle with The Green Hornet for the top spot that did decently well with $34 million collections at the US box office on its opening weekend. A three-way contest it would be, but the sparkling gems of 2011 are yet to come!

Who is the Green Hornet?

Seth Rogen is, if I were to answer my own question. The Green Hornet starts off the year for caped crusaders, superheroes, masked vigilantes, call them whatever you prefer. Rich man's son who seems to have lost his way, till he realises that he could be out there, on the streets of Los Angeles, in the shadiest of places, doing some good after all. But not in his true form. Aha! Step in the alter-ego, Green Hornet. With shades of the personality clashes that Bruce Wayne (aka Batman) and Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) went through, Green Hornet though does not play solo and rolls on the streets in a gun-laden car with his sidekick, Kato. Well, the masked crusaders have clicked in the recent past on the big screen and makers of The Green Hornet would be hoping to have that feel-good factor going for them as well. A January release seems ominous though and while Avatar raked up much of its moolah in this month last year, big budget movies are usually not put out in the first month of the year. The Green Hornet should easily become the first movie of the year to hit the $100 million mark at the US box office, it will still need stronger legs to ensure that its distributors are happy considering the reported production budget of about $150 million. Seth Rogen has had his fair share of $100 million hits with Superbad and Knocked Up, though these were made at much lower budgets. Keeping all this aside, The Green Hornet will be there at the top of the weekend box office, hopefully Seth Rogen will earn good reviews (highly talented guy; is the co-writer for the movie too), and most importantly... it will pave the way for what could be an year for superheroes - Green Lantern, Thor and Captain America are waiting in the ranks...

True Grit pays off!

Two more movies released in 2010 have now passed the $100 million mark in revenues at the US box office taking the total to 25, still lower in comparison with the 30 movies that had achieved this feat in 2009. Little Fockers, the first of the two to achieve it, follows in the footsteps of its predecessors, Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers, in achieving this milestone. However, the movie has still fallen short by a long margin as compared to Meet the Fockers released in 2004 that had been a raging success with $279 million gathered at the domestic box office alone. It seems the right time to give this franchise a rest, unless the producers would want to continue pushing any future movies through the direct-DVD route, though cannot see the likes of Ben Stiller and De Niro wanting to reprise their roles. True Grit, on the other hand, has been marked as a success, becoming the biggest hit for the Cohen Brothers, surpassing the revenues of their previous big hit, the Oscar winning No Country for Old Men. Cohen Brothers seem to be hitting it off well with Western Classics and with possible Oscar nominations lined-up for True Grit, there could be more to come from them in this category. This weekend has very few releases and this should keep the competition at the top between Little Fockers and True Grit. Nicolas Cage would like to have a say in this with the release of his fantasy movie Season of the Witch. But Cage has had a shaky box office performance in the recent past. His last movie, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, had performed below expectations, and while he earned better reviews for his role in Kick-Ass, the revenues at the box office were still lack lustre. Much is not expected from Season of the Witch either. Hoping the witches do not doom the entire year that lies ahead...

2011 Beckons!

The year has begun and new movies are calling us out in their vivid sultry voices, urging us to forget all our worries and wait patiently for them to hit the silver screens... where once again we will be taken from one magical world to the other, told stories about one hero and the other, and witness the range of emotions from love to hate, from selflessness to greed, from ecstasy to despair! And of all the movies that will be released in 2011, there are bound to some that hold the potential to be something more than just a movie... something more than a getaway from the real world. These are the ones that would be termed as greats, masterpieces, legends... movies that will lead to sequels... sequels that will lead to more sequels. Such a list is what I have compiled. Movies with the potential to be raving hits, hit the $200 million mark at the US box office and maybe more, movies that we wait for with bated breath. The expectations from such are always high and we hope that most will live upto it! No wonder this list contains many movies from the summer period of May to July and the winter holiday time of December. This list has them all - a castaway superhero, a rum-loving pirate, cars that can talk, the final chapter of a saga and the origins of another... this year has got a wonderful booty of adventures lined up. So be patient and enjoy... 2011 is underway...

1. Sucker Punch (March)
2. Fast Five (April)
3. Thor (May)
4. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (May)
5. The Hangover 2 (May)
6. Kung Fu Panda 2 (May)
7. X-Men: First Class (June)
8. Green Lantern (June)
9. Cars 2 (June)
10. Transformers: The Dark of the Moon (July)
11. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (July)
12. Captain America: The First Avenger (July)
13. Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol (Dec)
14. Untitled Sherlock Holmes Sequel (Dec)
15. The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (Dec)

PS: Thanks to Murgi for his equal contribution to the list!

2010 in numbers!

How will you define the year 2010 - the year of animation, the year of vampires and wizards, the year of dreams within dreams, the year of... oh, you could possibly think of a number of ways to describe it! But to put it simply in numbers, 2010 has seen US box office earnings of more than $10 billion for the second year in a row, 23 movies crossing the $100 million mark (quite less than last year's 30), 4 movies managing to cross the $300 million mark at the US box office, 2 movies earning more than $1 billion in worldwide revenues (the first such instance in the same year) and... well to put it simply, a pretty good year.

The Number 1 movie for the year, and deservedly so, was actually the third movie of a much-loved and talked about series, the Toy Story series. Toy Story 3 broke all sorts of records, becoming the all-time highest grossing animated movie, reaching #5 at the all-time worldwide revenue charts and #9 at the all-time US box office charts. Phew! Pixar continues to surpass all expectations! Not to be left much behind, DreamWorks Animation had a good showing with two of their films grossing more than $200 million at the US box office, How to Train Your Dragon and the final chapter of the famous ogre series, Shrek Forever After, alongwith Megamind grossing more than $100 million towards the end of the year. The surprise hit though was Despicable Me that finished #7 at the US box office charts for the year.

While animation ruled, the films of fantasy held their own too. Alice in Wonderland, surprised everyone with the strong following that it generated. With a cast consisting of Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathway and such, a good performance at the box office was expected, but few would have put their money on this film finishing #2 for the year and #6 at the all time worldwide revenue charts, the second movie other then Toy Story 3 to gather $1 billion worldwide. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse continued to enthrall its set of devoted fans and become one of only 4 films of the year to cross the $300 million mark at the US box-office. The seventh and penultimate movie of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, rounded off the year in style for the fans of magic and wizardry whereas The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader hardly impressed with its weak numbers.

Iron Man 2, as expected, earned more or less as much as its predecessor and was #3 for the year at the US box office, keeping Robert Downey Jr. in the A-list category of stars. With a number of superhero flicks slated for 2011, this is a good foundation to work on! While success of Iron Man 2 was predicted by many, few would have known the fate of Christopher Nolan's Inception. While the movie had a famous director at its helm and a stellar cast led by Leonardo Dicaprio, the film did outdo itself as it captured #5 at the US box office and #4 on the worldwide earnings chart with $824 million collected to date worldwide. If that is not enough, the movie is creating quite a strong buzz to feature in the Oscars, and one can only say that any award that goes to this masterpiece would be well-deserved.

While some new kids arrived at the block, in the form of Will Smith's son, Jade Smith who starred in the hit movie, The Karate Kid, some veterans emerged again with unexpected successes. Adam Sandler impressed with his Grown Ups, while Sylvester Stallone continued to direct and act and hit the target again with The Expendables. Leonardo Dicaprio scored another hit with Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island and Angelina Jolie continued to match any other male counterpart in box office revenues with the success of Salt. A tad disappointing were the performances of M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender which had a famous anime series to emulate and Ridley Scott's Robin Hood that had too big a production budget of about $200 million.

Other things too happened during the year... Ben Affleck made quite a reputation in Hollywood with his directed movie The Town, the Saw series finally ended this Halloween, Facebook reinvented itself on the big screen and earned rave reviews in the form of The Social Network, Tom Cruise on the other hand could not hit it off with Knight and Day, a role which he supposedly took overriding Salt, Clash of the Titans did good enough to deserve a sequel, Gordon Geeko's long pending return in Wall Street 2 was so-so... An interesting year, an entertaining year, and with a wonderful line-up of films for 2011 awaiting our attention it is time to say goodbye to the old and bring in the new. Bring it on!