In Contention

Tag: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

  • ‘Coraline’ leads the field of Annie nominees

    Coraline“Coraline” and “Up” both received nominations in eight categories.  “The Princess and the Frog” showed up in five while “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” showed up in four.

    “Fantastic Mr. Fox” (3),  “Monsters vs. Aliens” (3), “9” (2), “Astro Boy” (2) and “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” (2) brought up the rear with mentions in three and two categories respectively.  “Ponyo” also only landed two nods, for music and direction, so that’s probably worth noting.

    I’m listing per category, by the way, because it’s weird to me to have two separate “nominations” in fields like character design and production design, one per person.  Why not just one for the film with the artists listed as nominees?  It makes sense for vocal performance nods, but not really otherwise.  Anyway, to be fair, I guess “Coraline” leads the whole field with 10 total nominations, while “Up” has nine.  “The Princess and the Frog” has eight, with that in mind.

    Anyway, check out the full list of feature nominees after the jump (and the full list of all nominees at the Annie website).

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  • SUNDAY CENTS: ‘Wild Things,’ you make everything…groovy

    Where the Wild Things AreWell, it was maybe the most anticipated PG-rated film amongst the young adult set since “Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace” and “Where the Wild Things Are” landed with a bang this weekend. The Spike Jonze adaptation grossed $32.5 million to top the box office and justify all the bickering and problems during production between director and studio.

    Warner Bros. is having quite a year with unique directors tackling projects and possibly turning in a different movie than the studio was expecting (“Observe and Report” and “The Informant!” also come to mind), but it’s hard to imagine the film doing this well without a name like Jonze behind it. Kids made up only half of the audience and the broad appeal amongst all age groups should help with staying power over the next few weeks, even though reaction seems to be slightly mixed to positive.

    “Law Abiding Citizen” took the runner-up spot in a bit of a surprise. The action/thriller grossed a strong $21.3 million, which would have been enough to top the chart on this same weekend last year. That’s a new high mark for Overture Films and another feather in Gerard Butler’s 2009 cap after “The Ugly Truth.” He may not be headed to an Oscar anytime soon but he has to be commended for turning the freak box office performance of “300” into bona fide movie stardom.

    “Paranormal Activity” continues to gross paranormal numbers with another $20.2 million this weekend from 760 theaters. It’s not quite at the pace that “The Blair Witch Project” was at when it expanded but with a 2,000+ theater roll-out planned for next weekend and Halloween fast approaching, this no budget exercise should be knocking on the door of $100 million when all is said and done. Flabbergasting.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: ‘Education’ lands, animation expands

    Carey Mulligan and Peter Sarsgaard in An Education• After a quiet week for awards news, this week’s Off the Carpet column contemplated the depth of the Best Actress race.

    • A topic that Kris and Anne also debated in this week’s episode of Oscar Talk.

    • Speaking of Best Actress, “An Education,” with its nomination-bound performance by Carey Mulligan, finally hit theaters this week.

    • And speaking of Mulligan, she placed highly in our list of the Top 10 actors under 30.

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  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Sound Editing — Volume II

    9Back in July, I took an initial stab at the “zaps,” “booms,” “clinks” and “bams” of the sound editing category.  Since then, several titles have been seen, moved on to 2010 or popped up as new comers.  Let’s take a look…

    With “Green Zone” and “The Wolf Man” delayed until next year, the category’s potential seems a touch depleted.  And also from that early crop, I think “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” and “Public Enemies” hardly made enough of an impression to be remembered come the end of the year.

    Then again, I thought the same about “Wanted” last year.

    I do believe a genuine new contender has joined the race in Neill Blomkamp’s “District 9.” While the film’s sound editors have not been recognized by the Academy to date, the film was a surprising hit and its soundscape seems the sort this branch would like to cite.

    Elsewhere, my early “Inglourious Basterds” hunch in this category seems to have worked out. The film did quite well for itself and artificial sounds were integral.  Wylie Stateman failed to get nominated for his work on the “Kill Bill” films, but he is a four-time nominee nevertheless.  And this is a (slightly) more Oscar-friendly film than that two-parter.

    I don’t think anything has changed the course of Michael Bay’s “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” in this field.  Regardless of quality, Bay’s films do well with the sound branch and Ethan Van der Ryn is a two-time winner. Only if the branch really can’t make it through the film would I expect him and his crew to miss.

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  • We can officially add ‘A Christmas Carol’ to the animated list

    Gary Oldman in A Christmas CarolYesterday we covered the animated feature film race and the potential for the category to have five nominees this year, largely dependent on Robert Zemeckis’s “A Christmas Carol” being submitted as animation (a decision completely in his hands).  As it turns out, the film will indeed be submitted for consideration.

    That, along with “Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure” brings the tally up to 16 titles.  Some are expressing doubts that “Tinker Bell” can qualify, but I’m told the film “looks great, is made professionally, and will receive a theatrical run in LA, so those are the criteria.”  Still, being right on the edge, this thing could go either way.

    I’m still waiting on confirmation that the French film “A Town Called Panic” had a qualifying run or will have one (mass confusion), and ditto Summit’s “Astro Boy,” but that would be 17 and the absolute ceiling (by my calculation) on the number of submitted titles.

    Assuming five nominees, here’s what I’m thinking…

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  • Animated feature forecast: could be ‘Cloudy’

    Cloudy with a Chance of MeatballsOver at The Odds (The Wrap’s new Oscar blog, in case you haven’t been reading), Steve Pond brings up the fierce competition of this year’s animated feature category and brings up an intriguing tidbit worth considering.

    In looking through Time Out London’s list of the 50 greatest animated films of all time, collected by the magazine’s editors and filmmaker Terry Gilliam, Pond takes note of the complete absence of both “Up” and “Ponyo.” These are two films considered very much in the thick of this year’s toon Oscar race, of course.

    However, after that aside, he comes to the two animated films from 2009 that did make the list.  The first is Henry Selick’s “Coraline,” but, well, hopefully the other note will provide some insight to those puzzled over my animated feature film predictions.

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  • SUNDAY CENTS: ‘Zombie’ lands at the top

    ZombielandFox may not be able to get teens excited about horror comedy but Sony sure can as “Zombieland” debuted with an impressive $25 million and the number one spot.The studio  makes a killing off these types of relatively low budget genre titles (“Obsessed”, “Lakeview Terrace”) and you have to hand it to the marketing department for turning yet another one into a winner. I mean, this is the studio that can get a film like “21” a $24 million opening weekend and that’s pretty amazing.

    Sony holds the runner-up spot as well with the animated hit “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.” Another slim drop, this time 33%, gave the film a $16.7 million weekend and $82.4 million in the books already. In a few weeks it’ll become only the fifth film released in September this decade to cross $100 million joining illustrious company like “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Remember the Titans.”

    “Meatballs” was served a healthy dose of competition by Disney’s 3D double feature of the first two “Toy Story” films. $12.5 million is pretty exceptional for films that are widely available on DVD and were never meant to be seen in 3D in the first place, so Disney can laugh all the way to the John Ratzenberg-voiced piggy bank.

    Warner Bros. and Ricky Gervais exceeded mild expectations with “The Invention of Lying” by grossing $7.4 million and stealing fourth place. That’s an improvement over the $5 million of “Ghost Town” and makes Greg Kinnear look like the box office poison in this equation. Gervais is crafting a pretty strange big screen career for himself and this result will help get his next milquetoast idea past the pitch stage.

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Foreign contenders and underdogs

    James McAvoy in The Last Station• The deadline for Best Foreign Language Film entries passed, as Israel and Italy bucked conventional wisdom with their selections.

    • Among the better-received contenders, however, were major festival prizewinners from Australia and Greece. A full list of submissions here.

    • As the smaller studios beef up their Oscar prospects, this week’s Off the Carpet column wondered if this could be the year of the underdog.

    • Speaking of which, Sony Pictures Classics acquired “The Last Station,” a potential awards vehicle for Helen Mirren amongst others.

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  • SUNDAY CENTS: Great ‘Balls’ on fire

    SurrogatesAmerica lined up for seconds as “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” topped the box office for the second weekend in a row, dropping only 19% to $24.6 million. That’s a fantastic hold for the only family film out in the market and makes $100 million a very real possibility, if not a formality.

    It was an otherwise slow and disappointing frame at the multiplex as audiences found some other way to entertain themselves. Did football season just start?

    Second place went to Disney’s “Surrogates,” which grossed $15 million. While that might sound a little soft, it’s actually better than Willis’s average for this type of film in recent years as “Perfect Stranger,” “Lucky Number Slevin,” “16 Blocks” and “Hostage” all did less than $13 million. The trailer was great but the posters featuring robot models were pretty weak and I think Disney missed an easy chance to take the top spot.

    MGM released its first film since “Valkyrie” amidst reports of possible bankruptcy and the $10 million pulled in by “Fame” is probably not going to help matters much. When dance films like “Stomp the Yard” and “Step Up” can pull in $22 million each, a remake of a well-known classic shouldn’t pull in less than half of that. Of course, I use the term “classic” as loosely as they use the term “remake.”

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  • WEEKLY WRAP: Festival pick-ups, the season’s fetes and the PGA’s 10

    Robert Duvall in Get Low• We wrapped up Toronto as Lee Daniels’s “Precious” took the festival’s audience award, putting it on a solid track for Oscar.

    • We got a look at the first trailer for “Harry Brown,” which may or may not be an awards film for actor Michael Caine.  John, you’ll recall, isn’t feeling it.

    • We saw ‘Meatball’ dominance at the box office in this weekend’s Sunday Cents column.

    • This week’s Off the Carpet column kicked off our weekly Oscar coverage with a call for perspective on the perceived Best Picture frontrunners, while a new weekly column from across the pond — The Long Shot — introduces a different perspective mid-week.

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  • SUNDAY CENTS: ‘Cloudy’ clears up box office

    Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs(EDITOR’S NOTE: My fault on the belated nature of Chad’s column.  Back on track next week.)

    *All historical figures cited are adjusted to today’s dollars.

    It had been almost two months since a PG-rated film hit the marketplace and parents were desperate for something to take their kids to. The result is “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” topping the chart with $30.1 million and the seventh-biggest September debut of all time.

    It also tops the $25.9 million of “Open Season” to become the biggest animated debut ever for Sony, which is not really considered a major player in that arena. The real money here should be in fast food tie-ins, though. Why haven’t I seen a correlative toy in my happy meal? Somebody dropped the (meat)ball there.

    A distant second place is where “The Informant!” landed with a $10.5 million gross. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: 2009 is the year of the mustache and the proof is in the pudding. Anyway, this performance is more or less identical to the $10.8 million debut of “Michael Clayton” and I see no reason why this can’t perform with similar legs, reaching $40-$50 million total. That’s plenty enough to buy Matt Damon some Slim-Fast shakes and keep him on the lips of Oscar voters come January.

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  • SUNDAY CENTS: ‘Do Bad’ does good!

    I Can Do Bad All By Myself*All historical figures cited are adjusted to today’s dollars.

    Another day, another dollar for Tyler Perry. The man has released two films a year since 2006 and can’t seem to be unsuccessful if he tried. “I Can Do Bad All By Myself” is an easy candidate for worst title of the year, but it opened to the tune of $24 million and first place by a mile.

    That ranks as Perry’s third-biggest debut as director and his best outside of February. If you are looking for one of the most unique and successful box office stories of the decade, look no further than the rise of the Perry Empire. He is the Pixar of religious cable-TV drama meets fat suit comedy.

    Second place goes to “9,” which earned $10.9 milion over the weekend and $15.3 million since opening on Wednesday. For a PG-13 rated animated flick with seemingly very little appeal outside of young males, that’s a great result. The best thing about this success is that all you need is a potato sack and a highlighter and you’ve got a recognizable Halloween costume. You’re welcome.

    “Inglourious Basterds” holds firm in the top three and passes the $100 million mark in the process. Tarantino was in very real danger of making a series of films that diminished his audience rather than expanded it, but he has turned it around here. Now all you need is a Clark Gable mustache and some prop scalps and you’ve got a recognizable Halloween costume.

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