The UK's movie ratings body has taken the unusual step of refusing outright to classify a new horror film - and warned there was a real risk of harm to viewers.
Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) is the sequel to 2009's stomach-churning German movie about a mad scientist who grafts three kidnap victims together by stitching them mouth to anus.
The sequel - which was shot in London with an all-British cast - deals with a man who becomes 'sexually obsessed' with a DVD recording of the original film and wants to put the idea into practice.
Sick sequel: The British Board of Film Classification has refused to grant a certificate to the follow-up to 2009's The Human Centipede.At the helm: Tom Six, Dutch director of both Human Centipede films, said the original gorefest was like 'My Little Pony compared to part two'. He is seen here in the teaser trailer for the sequel
Three years after his last blockbuster, bus conductor turned Indian film megastar Rajinikanth returned to the silver screen Friday with a movie expected to break all box-office records.
The 60-year-old’s latest film, the Tamil-language “Endhiran”, has a budget of 1.65 billion rupees (RM108 million) according to the movie’s official website, making it the most expensive Indian film ever made.
Billed as an exhilarating, visceral tale about the founding of Facebook, “The Social Network” gave the opening of the New York Film Festival on Friday an aura of anticipation and a touch of controversy.
The film has attracted widespread attention with its assertion that it tells the true story of the birth of the website — which now boasts more than 500 million members and is worth tens of billions. Yet, it is based on a book criticised for its reporting methods.
One of the most talked about films of the year, “The Social Network” was transformed into a movie by Hollywood heavyweight director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin. It has brought an unusual pizzazz to the 17-day film festival, which typically emphasizes the art of cinema over Hollywood-style premieres.
Eisenberg arrives at the premiere of ''The Social Network'' in New York, September 24, 2010
Standing on top of a statue with an arm and a leg held aloft a naked young woman strikes a pose.
The rather provocative young woman in question is artist Dora Carrington, who in the early part of the 20th century was linked with the Bloomsbury Group.
Such was their impact on history that one small corner of central London - Bloomsbury - is now indelibly linked with the Bohemian circle of friends, which included Virginia Woolf, EM Forster and critic Lytton Strachey.
Today the Bohemian group of writers, artists and intellectuals are remembered as much for the complicated romantic entanglements that led to them being described as 'artistic lions' who 'lived in squares and loved in triangles'.
As these images show, members of the group did not live by more traditional constraints of the time, and were at ease in each other's company - with or without clothes.
But perhaps significantly, Woolf is invariable clothed.
The photographs are part of a remakable archive featuring hundreds of intimate letters photographs of the group, which helped define British culture in the inter-war period.
Open to the public for the first time, the unique archive comprises of thousands of pages of previously unseen correspondence between Bloomsbury luminaries and 30 albums of photographs, many of them nude shots.
The archive, on display at King's College, in Cambridge, is charted through the letters and photographs of two lesser known members of the group - the writers Frances Partridge and Rosamond Lehmann.
But through them it gives a insider's view of pivotal events such as Virginia Woolf's suicide in 1941 and that of of the artist Dora Carrington in 1932.
Woolf, author of Mrs Dalloway and To The Lighthouse filled her overcoat pockets with stones and drowned herself at the age of 59.
After her death in spring 1941 her brother-in-law, Clive Bell wrote to Partridge: 'I'm not sure whether The Times will by now have announced that Virginia is missing.
'I'm afraid there is not the slightest doubt that she drowned herself about noon last Friday ... Her stick and footprints were found by the edge of the river.
For some days, of course, we hoped against hope that she had wandered crazily away and might be discovered in a barn or a village shop.
'But by now all hope is abandoned ... the loss is appalling; but like all unhappiness that come of 'missing', I suspect we shall realise it only bit by bit.'
The archive also offers a glimpse of history in the making.
The group started as a circle of intellectuals who had studied at Trinity and King's Colleges, Cambridge, and began meeting at a salon in a house near Bloomsbury Square, central London.
Their friendships were to last a lifetime despite the complicated tangle of love affairs between them.Many of them were quite free with sex as a reaction against their Victorian upbringing and seemed to have a very selective conscience,' said archivist Patricia McGuire.
'The letters are very revealing because everyone wrote to Frances Partridge and confided their secrets and intimate thoughts.
'There are also lots of pictures and almost everyone in the group is naked at some point in a least one shot, apart from Virginia Woolf.'
Lehmann and Partridge first became friends at Cambridge University after World War I.
Lehmann, a famed beauty, became one of the most celebrated novelists of the 1920s and 1930s.
Partridge, once described as having the 'best legs in Bloomsbury', infiltrated one of the group's infamous love triangles.
She married Ralph Partridge, who was the ex-husband of artist Dora Carrington.
In a bizarre and ultimately tragic triangle, Carrington was besotted with open homosexual Strachey, who in turn was in love with Ralph.
When Strachey died of stomach cancer in 1932 a heartbroken Carrington shot herself two months later.
But the bullet missed its mark and she was still alive when her ex-husband and his wife arrived at the house hours later, a 'horror' also documented in one letter in the collection.
Miss McGuire added: 'In a way, these two women belonged to a generation that could only have existed between the wars.
'They had education, training and rights but they also had lots of free time and didn't necessarily have to keep a house.
'They had well-developed points of view, were articulate about their emotions and at the same time struggled with their bohemian lifestyles and the more conservative, older generation.'
Frances Partridge, in a picture from the rare archive
A clothed Frances Partridge (left) on her way to Cambridge in 1920 and Rosamund Lehman
The Bloomsbury group continues to fascinate and in 2002 Nicole Kidman played Virginia Woolf, right, in Stephen Daldry's film The Hours
This image shows critic Lytton Strachey (right) taking tea Rosamond Lehmann and her brother, John Lehmann, a publisher and author, at Ham Spray House in Wiltshire
From left, group members Ralph Partridge, EM Forster, Lytton Strachey, Pierre Lancel and Francis Partridge, pictured some time between 1922 and 1924
In the 1995 film 'Carrington' Emma Thompson took the role of Dora Carrington and Jonathan Pryce as the openly homosexual Lytton Strachey with whom she was in love with
A portrait of her beloved Lytton made in 1916 by Dora Carrington
Bloomsbury set member Dora Carrington naked on a statue in a picture from the archive at Kings College Cambridge
For all the fiction in which the world's fate hangs in the balance, a real event — the Second World War— may be the most dramatic of all.
"World War II was a crossroads that would spell the difference between freedom or oppression, probably forever," Steven Spielberg says. "It's not Hollywood hyperbole, just fact."
That's a big reason Oscar winners Spielberg and Tom Hanks, who collaborated on the film Saving Private Ryan and the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers, are teaming up again for a different take on that epic conflict: The Pacific (HBO, premiering Sunday, 9 ET/PT).
The $200 million, 10-part miniseries is the biggest movie to date for all involved, says Gary Goetzman, an executive producer along with Hanks and Spielberg. More than 1,000 people worked on the project, which filmed for 10 months in Australia.
Veterans, including Spielberg's father, Arnold, and uncle, Irvin, inspired the executive producers to embark on their third joint venture into WWII.
"We determined we needed to acquit the other side of the world. It was really important to us, and also based on the very positive response of veterans to Band of Brothers. Many veterans who were applauding Band of Brothers were also saying, 'But I fought in the Pacific and wonder if you are going to tell our stories,' " Spielberg says.
He and Hanks, history buffs with a strong interest in the war, didn't need much persuading. Both talk passionately about the project, which is based on a mountain of research, including two Marine memoirs. Hanks becomes animated simply by explaining the workings of a WWII-era flamethrower.
Spielberg already was pushing the idea backstage at the 2002 Emmys, when they were honored for Band, a phenomenon that has become HBO's best-selling DVD and the highest-grossing TV-on-DVD release ever.
"We're just coming off stage, and Steven turns around and says, 'Listen! Listen! We've got to do something on the Pacific, we've got to do something on the Pacific!' 'OK! OK! All right! We'll try, we'll try, we'll try,' " Hanks says.
In his urging, "I almost stabbed myself in the eye with the Emmy's wing," Spielberg says.
The Pacific touches on everything from boot camp to brutal battles on tiny islands that brought the Allied forces closer and closer to Japan. Its length allows time to show the Marines on a rare break in Australia; the mood on the U.S. mainland, where Sgt. John Basilone (Jon Seda) went on a war bonds tour; and the aftermath of the war, when servicemen tried to adjust.
Retired Marine Capt. Dale Dye, a senior military adviser who put the actors through a 10-day mini-boot camp, says Pacific raises the high bar set by Band. "It's a more psychological, emotional look at men at war," he says. "It takes (the) time to spend time with these guys when they're not on the battlefield slugging it out. ... It really gives you a look up under the helmet of what's going on."
A different 'hell'
The battle against the Japanese was a far different type of conflict from that taking place in the European theater, where Ryan and Band took place.
The war in Europe, a continent with world cities familiar to many Americans, was "oddly glamorous, strange as it is to call it that," in comparison to the Pacific, with its obscure islands, Hanks says. Both were "hell beyond hell," but in some ways the Pacific "was the opposite of what did happen in Europe."
The miniseries, told from the American point of view, details a horrific environment with seemingly endless battles on such islands as Guadalcanal, Peleliu and New Britain; rat-infested, illness-inducing living conditions in the jungle; and instances of barbaric behavior by both sides. In one episode, a Marine pulls gold-filled teeth from the mouth of a dead Japanese soldier.
"One of the things I'm really proud of is there's not a single act of gratuitous violence in the series," writer Bruce McKenna says. "Every act of violence, every horrible moment has a direct impact on the psyches of our characters."
The Pacific war, with heavy hand-to-hand combat, was a more savage conflict, he says; Japanese soldiers would fight to the death rather than be taken prisoner. There was a racial animosity that differentiated the Pacific war from that in Europe. Producers say it's their responsibility to portray the whole story.
The Marines and their stories "are what lead you to the truth. We don't make it up," Goetzman says. "They're telling you about it and facing what happened. It's our place to represent it."
The enormity takes a toll on the fighting men.
"It brought out in them the horror of war, and what they saw, and friends dying left and right and broken limbs, and all the atrocities that affected them so greatly that that hatred was built up," says actor Joe Mazzello, whose character, Pfc. Eugene Sledge, hardens over time. "War is a brutal, ugly mess, and the emotions that came out of them were whatever was going to be able to get them through it."
The Pacific is specific about the moral cost of WWII, but its themes also apply universally to war. "It was always our intention, and Tom and Steven and Gary were very clear about that: 'Yes, we're doing the Pacific war, but make sure this is as timeless and as epic as we can make it,' " McKenna says. "It should speak to the Peloponnesian War, the Gulf War, the Civil War, young men who are in the trenches and what they go through."
Real-life characters
Pacific veers from Band in how it tells its story: While Band followed one group of soldiers, Easy Company, Pacific weaves together the separate stories of three real-life Marines, two who wrote memoirs and one who received the Medal of Honor for heroism.
Pfc. Robert Leckie (played by James Badge Dale) wrote Helmet for My Pillow, and Sledge (Mazzello) wrote With the Old Breed, memoirs that are "fiercely honest," McKenna says. A detailed historical record tracks the experience of Medal of Honor winner Basilone. The three, all members of the 1st Marine Division, have passed away.
"They're very different takes on the memoir itself. Sledge is a very proper, gentle soul who ends up going through hell and never had a scratch on him," Hanks says. "And Leckie was the absolute opposite, a debauched guy who hated authority and went on his own extensive and pretty profound crisis of faith."
Sledge's best friend, Pfc. Sidney Phillips (Ashton Holmes), served in Leckie's unit, which provided the bridge to connect the stories, Hanks says. "History allowed us to bring Sledge into the story on the same battlefield, same island that Leckie leaves."
Though Pacific is not a documentary, the producers sought authenticity. In addition to the memoirs, sources included 50 books, McKenna says, and extensive interviews with veterans. It was an education for the actors.
"We all did so much research. There was so much paperwork and documentaries just from boot camp," Seda says. "We had to learn what Marine jargon was like. We had to learn weapons and about the camaraderie, too."
The Pacific also has a different look from Ryan and Band. Spielberg desaturated the color in those but oversaturates it in Pacific, reflecting a bright sky and ocean that contrast sharply with bloody island battles. "It was like hell in the middle of a lush jungle, with blue sky just poking out between palm fronds. The things we associate with vacation and relaxing is the hell they have to endure," Spielberg says.
As with the earlier projects, the look of the battle scenes was inspired by Robert Capa's famous D-Day photos. Spielberg developed the style of filming on Ryan as a contrast to depictions in earlier war films.
"If you suddenly lock the camera down the way they used to in a lot of old World War II films and shoot the explosions in slow motion, it's glorifying and beautifying the reality. We're much more likely to use handheld cameras, a device called a shaker lens, which vibrates the image, and a full-open shutter to capture pieces of debris without blurring. All this adds up to a sort of neurotic nature of combat."
If the miniseries succeeds, Spielberg would be open to another WWII project with HBO. Before that, however, he also would like to do another feature film on the war starring Hanks.
"We have an idea we've been kicking around," Spielberg says. "I don't want to go into it right now, but it's another area of World War II that I'd like to do very much with this guy."
Past and future
For the producers, Pacific, as a story about real men, transcends the usual making of a film. (Separate documentary pieces will feature interviews with surviving vets. The producers started researching the project by filming interviews conducted by late historian Stephen Ambrose. His son, Hugh, also interviewed veterans.)
"The investment we have is raised up a bit more because we're impacting generations that lived through it — hopefully, they say, 'Wow, that was pretty authentic' — and generations to come that are going to be looking at this (and saying), 'Wow, I wonder what I would do if I was in that situation,' " Hanks says.
The actors feel a bond with the individuals they portrayed. Dale, who met Leckie's wife, Vera, several times, says he feels like he has lived with the Marine for the past three years. Mazzello says it's important to get it right.
"You're playing their dad, their husband, and they're protective of his legacy," he says. "It took a big leap of faith for them to say, 'We'll let you tell the story.' "
As years pass, fewer veterans are alive to tell the story, and new generations grow more distant from the conflict. Spielberg asked his children about the island of Peleliu, which is not as well known as Okinawa and other battle sites, and they knew it as a setting for an edition of Survivor (Peleliu is part of Palau).
He and Hanks hope Pacific inspires young people to learn more about the war. "When a young person can Google Leckie, Sledge, Basilone or Bougainville, Tarawa or Peleliu, all of a sudden it has a relevance that fiction and science fiction do not have in the same way," Spielberg says.
And there was no need to add drama to make the film compelling, Hanks says. Just the sight of Sledge and company disembarking a beach-landing vehicle amid a fusillade of bombs and bullets conveys the jeopardy. "You don't have to make up something else."
War bonds: Steven Spielberg, left, and Tom Hanks are executive producers of HBO's The Pacific, premiering Sunday (9 p.m. ET/PT). They also teamed for World War II projects Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers.
Right from the source: PFC Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale, right, with Tom Budge) wrote a memoir that producers used for research for The Pacific, which follows three real-life Marines on and off the battlefield.
BC debauchery: The series is loosely based on the historical figure, who led a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic
Tuning in: More than a million viewers watched the show in the U.S.
'Soft porn': Four Weddings and a Funeral star John Hannah as Batiatus with Erin Cummings, who portrays Sura
Controversial: Campaigners want Spartacus: Blood And Sand, which stars Lucy Lawless (centre), banned from UK screens
lood bath: Spartacus (Andy Whitfield) battles an opponent (Karl Drinkwater) in a violent scene from the programme
Rewriting history: The TV series Rome, which aired between 2005 and 2007, was also criticised for being too gratuitous
There's a lot to thank the ancients for... roads, the calendar, astronomy, our mathematical system, philosophy, town planning, plumbing, wine - and a plethora of raunchy films and TV series.
Ever since Caligula in 1980 - a movie so blue Oscar-winner Helen Mirren refuses to talk about it - producers have seized on the chance to rewrite history with as much blood, gore and sex as they can cram in.
Gladiator and Troy maintained the tradition but it was the TV series Rome in 2005-07 which used BC debauchery most flagrantly to sell millions of box sets for HBO.
Ciaran Hinds played Caesar, Polly Walker an unforgettable Atia of the Junii and there was more naked flesh on show than a Spencer Tunick photograph.
Now even that seems to have been surpassed by a new sword-and-sandals epic, Spartacus, which is so rude campaigners are trying to block it from British screens.
Set once again during the time of the Roman Empire, the TV series features full-frontal nudity, extreme violence and explicit scenes of orgies.
Surprisingly at the centre of this, well, orgy of sex and violence that is Spartacus: Blood And Sand is the popular Scottish actor John Hannah, star of Four Weddings And A Funeral and Sliding Doors.
He plays Batiatus to Welshman Andy Whitfield's Spartacus in a drama based only loosely on the historical character and depicting violent gladiator scenes with large amounts of nudity.
It pulled in more than a million viewers in the U.S. and has already been snapped up by Australian, Canadian and Dutch networks.
The news that UK independent broadcasters are also keen to buy the series comes in the wake of a report from the Home Office which said children are over-exposed to violent and sexual imagery.
MediaWatch UK, the lobby group campaigning for higher standards in broadcasting, believes Spartacus should not be allowed in Britain, even late at night.
'We can no longer ignore the fact that what viewers see on television has an impact on society,' said director Vivienne Pattison.
'Even the Government is asking the producers of soap operas to include safe-sex messages in their programmes now. There are numerous studies linking exposure to violence on TV with violent behaviour at large and if there is the slightest possibility that explicit sex and violence on screen can cause this harm, is it worth the risk in the interests of entertainment?'
The show, which airs on the U.S.cable network Starz, is described the makers as 'graphic and visceral' and a mixture of 'live action, graphic novel effects and brutal battle sequences'.
It is loosely based on the historical figure of Spartacus – a Thracian gladiator who led a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic in 73BC.
In the drama, slave Spartacus, played by Australian actor Andy Whitfield, is purchased by ruthless Batiatus (Hannah) and his wife Lucretia (Lucy Lawless) and forced to fight in the gladiatorial arena.
The cast often appear fully naked acting out graphic sexual scenes, such as a recent episode where Sliding Doors and Four Weddings And A Funeral actor John Hannah stripped off with Lucy Lawless, of Xena: Warrior Princess, for a bathing scene.
An episode due to be aired next week is titled 'Whore', while the final show in the series is 'Kill Them All'.
It was described as 'soft porn' by the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper, while the LA Times described it as 'brutal' and employing 'seas' of blood as 'bodies are stabbed, slashed, sledgehammered and variously dismembered'.
The Boston Herald said the show 'fetishises violence even more than it depicts sex and nudity, which is often.' And USA Today said of the American screening: 'Were it broadcast free over the air where children might find it, one might blanch.'
MediaWatch's Ms Pattison said they also feared that once the programme was aired on television, children could easily gain access at video-on-demand services online.
'Ofcom research shows that fewer than a third of parents use the password-protected services available to screen what their children can access,' she added.
James Cameron's 3-D epic rakes in an estimated $232 million worldwide, despite snow on the East Coast that held its North American box-office sales to $73 million.
Snow on the East Coast put a dent in the domestic opening of "Avatar" but wasn't enough to keep the hugely expensive movie from the global launch it needed.
The 3-D epic from director James Cameron, which cost $430 million to make and market, launched with a studio-estimated $232.2 million in worldwide ticket sales. It was the biggest debut ever for a movie that wasn't a sequel.
In the U.S. and Canada, bad weather limited the haul for the film to a solid but far from spectacular $73 million.
Depressed attendance in the snowy Northeast and mid-Atlantic region Saturday probably kept it from beating the December record of $77.2 million set by "I Am Legend" two years ago.
Overseas, however, audiences plunged in. Despite frigid weather in northern Europe, "Avatar" collected $159.2 million internationally, the biggest ever simultaneous foreign launch for a non-sequel, behind only installments in such mega-franchises as "Harry Potter," "Spider-Man" and "Pirates of the Caribbean."
Most important for distributor 20th Century Fox, the prospects for huge returns in the coming weeks are very strong. Japan and China, two of the biggest markets for effects-laden adventure movies, will get the movie Wednesday and Jan. 2, respectively.
In the U.S. and Canada, "Avatar" will benefit as those who saw it start talking to those who haven't. Audiences gave it an average grade of A, according to market research firm CinemaScore. And with Christmas falling on a Friday, Fox executives are buzzing that "Avatar" could gross about as much in its second weekend as in its first and hit $200 million by the end of the year.
"You don't often get a massive event movie like this that combines spectacle and scale with great reviews and word of mouth," Fox co-Chairman Jim Gianopulos said. "That's why we have such wonderful anticipation for the rest of the holiday season and well into the new year."
Gianopulos said he's particularly hopeful that more women will come out as positive buzz about "Avatar" spreads. Females made up only 43% of the film's opening-weekend audience. Stronger attendance by women in coming weeks will be key to the movie's long-term success.
If they do turn out in bigger numbers, "Avatar" could easily end up with more than $250 million domestically and more than $600 million overseas, based on the performance of comparable films. It might even become just the fifth movie to top the $1-billion mark.
A final gross in that range would put Fox and its financing partners Dune Entertainment and Ingenious Film Partners close to profitability based on theatrical revenues alone. Future sales from DVD, television and other markets would put them well into the black.
Studios typically receive half of a movie's domestic and 40% of its international box-office revenue. The three companies spent about $280 million to produce "Avatar" after tax credits. Fox spent an additional $150 million to market and distribute it worldwide.
The largest factor in its performance beyond word of mouth was 3-D. Domestically, theaters with 3-D screens accounted for 71% of the movie's gross despite representing only 59% of those playing it. Overseas, the disparity was far more dramatic, with 25% of screens and 56% of ticket sales in 3-D.
The difference was large enough to demonstrate that higher ticket prices weren't the only reason that 3-D screens generated higher revenue -- they also drew bigger audiences. The availability of 3-D screens was one of the key risk factors in the production of "Avatar": Disputes between theater owners and studios over financing their installation put the movie, whose appeal is premised in large part on the technology, in jeopardy. Although the total number of screens was not as high as Cameron and Fox had hoped, it was enough to drive the opening they needed.
"It was not a 3-D phenomenon everywhere, but in the places where theaters were available, it overwhelmingly leaned that way," Gianopulos said.
The romantic comedy "Did You Hear About the Morgans?" starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant, opened to a weak $7 million. Sony Pictures and Relativity Media, which spent $58 million to make the movie, are hoping it will play well over the holidays, an unlikely prospect because audiences graded it B-minus.
Walt Disney Studios' animated feature "The Princess and the Frog" and Warner Bros.' Clint Eastwood drama "Invictus" declined 50% and 52%, respectively. The two companies had hoped for smaller drops after so-so starts last weekend.
Many in Hollywood were also focused on the limited box office this weekend, as smaller movies jockeyed for attention after Tuesday's Golden Globe nominations.
The musical adaptation "Nine" got off to a very strong start despite mixed reviews, opening to $246,933 at four theaters.
Despite better reviews, country music drama "Crazy Heart" debuted with a much softer $84,204 at four theaters. Fox Searchlight plans to expand its low-budget movie starring Jeff Bridges slowly in hopes of building momentum.
Weinstein Co., meanwhile, hopes to use this weekend to jump-start its $64-million production of "Nine" and will take it nationwide Friday.
Paramount is doing the same with its critically acclaimed George Clooney drama "Up in the Air," which continued its impressive run with $3.1 million at 175 theaters in its third weekend.
Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are good, solid choices to host the Oscars, but it's hard to make sense of why they were tapped — and combined as a pair. Lately, Oscar chiefs have seemed eager to lure younger viewers and add song-and-dance entertainment to the ceremony. Martin is age 64, Baldwin is 51. Neither is known as a musical showman a la last year's emcee Hugh Jackman.
But they're both stars of the upcoming comedy directed by Nancy Meyers, "It's Complicated," which opens this Christmas featuring them as dueling love interests of Meryl Streep. If either nabs a bid for acting, he'll be the first Academy Awards host to be nominated while presiding at the ceremony since Paul Hogan was nommed for writing "Crocodile Dundee" as he hosted the Oscars with Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase in 1987 (honoring films released in 1986).
That was the last time that the Oscars had multiple hosts, which rarely occurs nowadays. A trio also presided one year earlier — Alan Alda, Jane Fonda, Robin Williams. Notice that both of those examples included something missing from this year's combo: a woman. Why don't they add Meryl Streep to this year's mix? If they want a dash of musical panache, let's recall that the two-time Oscar champ recently crooned successfully in "Mamma Mia!" and earned one of her record 15 nominations for her singing performance in "Postcards from the Edge." Oh, wait -- that's right: last year there were reports that producers wanted her to join Hugh Jackman in a musical duet on stage, but she declined.
A gay Austrian's dream to become "uber-famous" came true, as Sacha Baron Cohen's new mockumentary, Bruno, topped the box office on Friday, according to early estimates. Bruno, which pushes its R-rating to places never before thought possible, grossed $14.2 million on Friday. By comparison, Cohen's previous mockumentary, Borat, made $9.2 million on its first day; however, Bruno debuted on more than three times as many screens as Borat (2,756 versus 837). Second place went to the third Ice Age movie, which consumed $8.7 million on Friday while evolving past the $100 million mark. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen dropped 58% in its third week for a gross of $7.6 million. While that steep of a drop would spell trouble for most movies, Transformers has already tallied $323 million in the U.S. (not to mention more than $330 million overseas), so we doubt Paramount is shedding any tears. In fourth and fifth place were Public Enemies and The Proposal, which picked up $4.3 million and $3.5 million, respectively. Also opening wide this weekend was the teen comedy I Love You, Beth Cooper, which clearly could have used more love -- it registered a dweebish $2.1 million. Friday's figures are below. Be sure to check back here on Sunday for the complete weekend box office report.
1. Bruno -- $14.2 mil 2. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs -- $8.7 mil 3. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen -- $7.6 mil 4. Public Enemies -- $4.3 mil 5. The Proposal -- $3.5 mil
Crazy funnyman extraordinaire Sacha Baron Cohen comes back from his stint as a Kazakhstani television personality to present us with a whole new running joke, Bruno. Can lightning strike twice for Cohen? Let's take a look.
Bruno is a fashionista par excellence who brings his own unique brand of Austrian fashion to the United States, and finds himself neck-deep in stylemakers and major names. Look for Bruno to run into, among others, Rachael Ray and presidential candidate Ron Paul. Check out the trailer!
I almost had a coronary watch the new Bruno trailer. You MUST watch it below!!!!! But be warned, it’s NSFW and the film might be slapped with an NC-17 rating. And to watch the trailer, you have to enter your birthdate!
Bruno is a hilariously gay Austraian reporter played by British actor Sacha Baron Cohen, who brought us 2006’s Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
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Chuck the Movieguy interviews Borat for the movie Borat : Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
