Avatar - the movie

"Avatar" to Become Second Highest Grossing Film, After "Titanic"

Posted: January 7th, 2010 byWorstPreviews.com Staff

"Avatar" is still knocking films off the biggest worldwide earners list. It is now in third place with $1.1 billion (through Tuesday), surpassing "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," which took in $1.07 billion in 2006.

The James Cameron-directed sci-fi epic is also quickly gaining on the second top grosser "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," which is currently sitting with $1.12 billion worldwide total.

If "Avatar" overtakes "Lord of the Rings," that means that the only film that will stand in its way is Cameron's other monster hit "Titanic." But it's very unlikely that "Avatar" would be able to break $1.84 billion.


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Best programme over Xmas????????????????????????????

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Dr Who! Dr Who! Dr Who!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The BBC Wales programme Dr Who was a quite outstanding Xmas programme when compared to the rest of the rubbish put out by all TV channels.

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The Triffids are back.....not as good as the book

The Day of the Triffids

More asbo cacti than killer plants, these new triffids were not remotely scary, says Sam Wollaston

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  • The Guardian, Wednesday 30 December 2009
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The triffids were weedy, but not as wooden as Joely Richardson Photograph: BBC/Power/BBC / Power

In the land of the blind, Gordon Brown should be king. But he doesn't even seem to be prime minister any more; he is nowhere to be seen, Downing Street has been deserted and Eddie Izzard has taken over. That could make for a refreshing change. Should we worry for the economy?

Eddie was snoozing on a 747 with an eye mask on when the Big Flash happened, so he got to keep his sight; then he survived the plane crash by locking himself in the loo with a load of inflated life jackets (would that even work?). Now, inspired by Winston Churchill's statue in Parliament Square, he's gone power crazy. There are a few other lucky ones, including Joely Richardson, who kept her sight but appears to have lost the ability to act, and Dougray Scott, who's still going to fall for her – as well as trying to save the world. Otherwise, it's just the blind . . . well, you know who they're leading. Plus the killer plants, of course, whose day this is.

We met them – the killer plants – early in part one of The Day of the Triffids (BBC1) on Monday night, after which it became very hard to take any of it very seriously. No screen adaptation of John Wyndham's classic post-apocalyptic novel can ever really compete with the book: when it comes to creating menacing flora, special effects and computer graphics still lag a long way behind the human imagination. These triffids are laughable. They seem to be based on quite a common species of cactus (I don't know the name, but I've definitely seen them in the plant section of Homebase). Then, rising from the centre of the plant, is a kind of red hoodie – possibly playing, like a Daily Mail editorial, to our fear of modern feral youths. The Day of the Asbo Cacti. Pah! They don't frighten me: they're cute, I want one, for my conservatory. Well, I call it a conservatory . . .

The triffids' collective performance is still better, and less wooden, than Joely's. In last night's second and concluding part, her mother, Vanessa Redgrave, attempted to restore some dignity to the family's reputation with a spirited performance as the mother superior of a rural convent. Dougray has ended up there, injured and in need of help if he's to save mankind, though Vanessa turns out not to be the saint she appears to be. (Was anyone else concerned about the wound by Dougray's right eye, I wonder, and the way it seemed to appear and disappear? Maybe that's just symptomatic of a triffid sting).

Anyway, the convent is a beautiful place, filmed – I think – at the Hospital of St Cross in Hampshire, with St Catherine's Hill covered in snow (and waving triffids) behind. I enjoyed all the locations, and trying to identify them – the views over London, the Gherkin in the City, the Ark at Hammersmith, the A4, Cobstone Windmill (possibly) in the Chilterns. This was a big-name, all-singing, all-dancing, big-budget production and, hoodie triffids aside, it looked fabulous.

It was also pretty faithful to the novel, in terms of character and plot. So they modernised it a bit, gave it a new eco makeover, with the triffids being grown as a source of renewable, clean energy, instead of something to do with the Soviet Union. And it's a loony plant-rights activist who liberates the triffids in the first place – for which he pays, as he should do, with his life.

Under these bodywork modifications though, the chassis is basically the same. I'm glad they kept the ending, too – the Isle of Wight and an uncertain future for mankind – instead of the happy discovery that seawater works as a triffidicide, which is what one screen adaptation had.

But – and it's a big but – what it doesn't do is anything the book doesn't. In fact, it does a lot less – there is none of that feeling of foreboding or doom. Maybe it's because I was (much) younger when I read it, but I remember a certain darkness. I'd like to have tried it out on some children, but unfortunately there weren't any to hand. I've been more scared watching Doctor Who. I don't think I'm even going to have a problem going to the plant section of Homebase.

The Day of the Triffids - New TV show in UK

What rubbish has been served up this Xmas & New Year on TV in the UK! Poor repeats, old films, ineffectual interviews, extraordinarily bad music and programmes destined to be on the rubbish heap within minutes of being shown. "The day of the Triffids" was one of these - poorly scripted with acting beyond creditable belief. What a show to serve up at prime time. Wake up all you programmers. We are an intelligent audience!

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Oh Happy Days........

Happy Xmas Reading.....

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Xmas reading and seeing.......

Bollywood

Bollywood looks to Aamir Khan to end 2009 on a high

By Shail Kumar Singh (AFP) – 11 hours ago

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MUMBAI — Bollywood is looking to Aamir Khan to bring festive cheer to the industry after a disappointing 2009 hit by a producers' strike, swine flu fears and a lack of box office success.

The actor-producer-director's heavily-marketed "3 Idiots", based on Chetan Bhagat's best-selling debut novel "Five Point Someone" about three struggling students at a business school, is released on Friday, Christmas Day.

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Bollywood watchers hope Khan -- known for only making one big film per year in an industry where leading actors can be working on several films at the same time -- can replicate his previous year-end successes.

His 2008 Christmas offering, "Ghajini", became Bollywood's highest grossing film and followed the acclaimed "Taare Zameen Par" (Stars on Earth) in 2007.

"We hope he creates a hattrick this year," said Amod Mehra, a Bollywood trade analyst.

Another leading critic, Taran Adarsh, gave the film 4.5 stars on his bollywoodhungama.com site and said it "easily ranks amongst Aamir, (director) Rajkumar Hirani and (producer) Vidhu Vinod Chopra's finest films".

Bollywood began 2009 after a muted end to 2008 due to the deadly terror attacks in Mumbai, which saw the cancellation of a number of films.

Audiences had already dwindled due to recession fears and disaffection at under-performing big budget films.

But the much-anticipated "Chandni Chowk To China", a co-production with US studio Warner Brothers and the first Bollywood film to be part-filmed in China, bombed at the box office.

Leading star Shahrukh Khan's own production "Billu" also disappointed, as world attention focused on the British film about a Mumbai teaboy, "Slumdog Millionaire", and its runaway success at the Oscars.

In April, Bollywood producers began a two-month boycott of multiplex cinemas, calling for a fairer share of box office receipts. The strike saw the postponement of scores of films and losses estimated at 63 million dollars.

Rising numbers of swine flu cases in Mumbai and the surrounding area added to Bollywood's woes, leading to the temporary closure of cinemas on public health grounds and the postponement of several films.

Despite a glut of new releases since then, only a handful of films have been considered hits, like "New York", about a group of friends in the city on September 11, 2001, and the thriller "Kaminey" (Scoundrel).

A new hero was found in Ranbir Kapoor after his hit "Wake Up Sid" and "Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani" (An Amazing Story Of Strange Love), while Salman Khan made a successful comeback in "Wanted".

But Adarsh told AFP: "It's not been a good year. In my opinion, it's been the worst year for the film industry.

"You can't blame anyone apart from the industry for churning out such bad movies. This results in perhaps 90 percent of films failing. It's not a good situation. We need to concentrate on quality."

Mayank Shekhar, national cultural editor at English-language newspaper The Hindustan Times, agreed and suggested that Hollywood -- which still has only a tiny market share but is trying to make inroads into India -- has benefited.

Roland Emmerich's "2012" crossed the 900 million rupees (19.2 million dollars) mark last weekend, making it the highest grossing Hollywood film in India, The Times of India newspaper said on Sunday.

Dubbed and original versions of James Cameron's "Avatar" and the hit comedy "The Hangover" have also done well.

Shekhar said "2012" would turn out to be the biggest hit in India this year, and had proved popular in both more expensive urban multiplex cinemas and traditional single screen cinemas in small towns and villages.

"This is the first time we've seen something like this. It may be an indicator of things to come, that people are now willing to choose," he told AFP.

"The Indian movie market has been the only one in the world where no one cares that (Hollywood director Steven) Spielberg is releasing a film. That might change."

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