2007
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Director/writer Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep (1977), a low-budget film (a UCLA thesis project) shot on location in the ghetto Watts area of Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, finally received an official international and theatrical release after being restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Shown only sporadically, it received the Critics' Award at the 1981 Berlin International Film Festival, and was named to the Library of Congress' National Film Registry in 1990.
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2007
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At the 2008 Golden Raspberry (Razzie) Awards, the laughably gory horror film I Know Who Killed Me (2007), starring Lindsay Lohan, had a record 9 Razzie nominations - with 8 wins, including Worst Picture - a new record! It surpassed the previous two record-holders for the most Razzie Award "wins" by one film in a single year -- Showgirls (1995) with 7 wins (out of 13 nominations), and Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (2000) with 7 wins (out of 8 nominations). It was honored as Worst Picture, Worst Actress (two wins for Lindsay Lohan as look-alikes Aubrey Fleming and Dakota Moss), Worst Director (Chris Sivertson), Worst Excuse for a Horror Movie, Worst Remake or Rip-Off, Worst Screen Couple (Lindsay Lohan again twice), and Worst Screenplay. Only one nomination failed to win: Worst Supporting Actress (Julia Ormond).
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2007
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The first broadband movie ever distributed by a major studio was Paramount's prankster sequel Jackass 2.5, which was available for online viewing to U.S. residents in late December of 2007 (for two weeks) before the DVD was released, through a teaming up of Blockbuster and Viacom. It marked a new age of online-first movie distribution.
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2007
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Two influential, inspiring art-house filmmakers, whose careers spanned at least four decades, both died on the same day, July 30, 2007. They were Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, a director with over 50 feature films, including landmark classics such as The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957), Persona (1966), Cries and Whispers (1972), and Fanny and Alexander (1982). The second was Italian Michelangelo Antonioni, who was credited with masterpieces such as L'Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), L'Eclisse (1962), Blow-Up (1966), and The Passenger (1975).
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2007
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The film magazine Premiere, which first began publishing in the US in the pre-Internet world of 1987, issued its final print publication with its April 2007 issue.
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2007
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In 2007, pioneering comedian Will Ferrell created a streaming video comedy website, www.FunnyOrDie.com, in which he provided for the uploading of short films by professionals and other users, beginning with its first video, The Landlord. ("Funny or Die" referred to the interactive voting feature of the site -- users would vote a video as either "funny" or not.) The site announced a partnership with HBO in mid-2008, specifying that the site would develop at least 10 half-hour episodes for HBO for viewing.
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2007
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The powerful Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) by writer-director Cristian Mungiu won the Palme d'Or at the 60th Cannes Film Festival in 2007 (it beat No Country for Old Men and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award as Best Foreign Language Film. It was better known as the Romanian Abortion Film - its title referred to the length of the unwanted pregnancy of the roommate of Otilia (Anamaria Marinca), who helped her clueless friend Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) obtain an illegal, black-market abortion.
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2008
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Forbes reported that 23 year-old actress Keira Knightley became the second highest-paid Hollywood actress with earnings of $32 million in 2007 for her roles in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End and Atonement, behind Cameron Diaz with earnings of $50 million for her roles in Shrek and What Happens in Vegas. Will Smith was the highest-paid Hollywood actor earning $80 million, while second place went to Johnny Depp with earnings of $72 million. Will Smith was the first actor to have eight straight movies take in more than $100 million at the box office.
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2007-2008
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The Writer's Guild of America (WGA) went on strike in early November after a stalemate in negotiations occurred with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). Issues included increased compensation for the film and TV writers for DVD residuals and compensation for "new media" distribution (content distributed through emerging digital technologies, such as the Internet, including downloads, streaming, smart phones, and video on demand, etc.). When the 3-month strike ended in mid-February 2008, it was estimated that it resulted in a total loss of $2.5 billion show-business.
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2008
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As a result of the Disney's Channel wildly popular and wholesome telepic High School Musical (2006) that was popular with a new demographic of 'tweens' or 'tweenagers' (early teens between childhood and pubescence), a spinoff was released titled High School Musical 3: Senior Year - the first 'High School Musical' to open in cinemas.
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2008
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Actor Will Smith scored his eighth straight $100 million hit movie (his fifth for a July 4th release), with the release of Hancock. He became the only actor in history to have eight consecutive films gross over $100 million in the domestic box office.
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2008
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Jada Pinkett-Smith had the most consecutive $100 million gross movies for an actress: 4 films. Her seven $100+ million films included: The Nutty Professor (1996), Scream 2 (1997), The Matrix Reloaded (2003), The Matrix Revolutions (2003), Collateral (2004), Madagascar (2005), and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008).
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2008
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Established film-maker, writer/director Joss Whedon's independent short film Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, a supervillain musical, was released exclusively for online viewing, in three 14-minute episodes or segments. The inexpensive short online film was conceived and produced during the writer's strike. After debuting in July of 2008, it became a cult hit -- and the series reached # 1 on the iTunes' video chart, with 2.2 million downloads a week. When it was successful, an iTunes soundtrack (of 14 songs), CD and DVD were also created and made available. This development was the next evolutionary step from Will Ferrell's pioneering "Funny or Die".com site established the previous year.
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2008
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28 year-old Heath Ledger, found dead of a drug overdose in late January 2008, was the second performer to win a posthumous acting Oscar, for his Best Supporting role as The Joker in The Dark Knight.
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2008
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The Dark Knight made box office records in its first weekend, making it the biggest three-day opening weekend of all time with $158 million, beating the previous year's Spider-Man 3 (2007) at $151 million. The movie set a new record for the biggest opening day gross at the box office with $66.4 million. It also had the biggest number of opening theaters when it appeared on 4,336 screens, as well as setting a new mark for money earned from midnight showings when it grossed $18.5 million.
Eventually, The Dark Knight succeeded in attaining worldwide grosses of just over $1 billion. Most impressively, The Dark Knight became only the second movie in history to break the $500 million barrier in domestic box-office (at $533 million), the first being James Cameron's Titanic (1997) with a domestic gross of $601 million. And the latest 'Batman' film hit the $500 million mark in just over 6 weeks (45 days) -- less than half the time it took Titanic to reach the same milestone (at 98 days). The Dark Knight became the decade's top-grossing film (domestic), supplanting Shrek 2 (2004) at $441 million.
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2008
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According to the top 100 Celebrity List on Forbes, film producer Jerry Bruckheimer's earnings of $145 million for the year put him in 4th place, one step ahead of Steven Spielberg (at $130 million). The prolific producer's ranking was partially due to Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007), the third and final installment in the series that was the top-grossing movie in 2007.
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2008
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With the recessionary decline of revenue by newspapers and magazines, full-time professional film reviewers and columnists (at Time, Newsweek, The LA Times, Newsday, and The Village Voice, plus others) lost their positions, as the activity of film criticism moved from print form to online. In all, almost 30 reviewers left, were bought out, contracted, or fired during a two year period. That meant the ascendancy and explosion of online film criticism (and personal opinion) on blogs, Amazon, Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes, and other sites.
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2008
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Summer of 2008 (defined as the first Friday in May through Labor Day Weekend) was a record-setting, box-office season, with $4.2 billion in US box-office. Super-heroes contributed about 30% of the $4.2 billion gross. The top five films of the entire year, with plots about comic-book and other super-heroes or other-worldly figures, were all released in the summer. They included: The Dark Knight (at $533.3 million) (opening in July, 2008), Iron Man (at $318.4 million) (opening in May, 2008), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (at $317.1 million) (opening in May, 2008), Hancock (at $228 million) (opening in July, 2008), and WALL*E (at $224 million) (opening in June, 2008).
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2008
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Director Spike Lee's Miracle at St. Anna was the first Hollywood feature film about African-American soldiers (portrayed by four black actors) who fought during World War II in the US Army (the all-black 92nd Infantry Division of Buffalo Soldiers) in the European theater.
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2008
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The romantic comedy Sex and the City (2008), based upon HBO's 1998-2004 cable TV series, was the biggest 'chick flick' on record at $153 million (domestic) and $415 million (worldwide).
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2008
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High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008) broke the U.S. record for the highest-scoring musical opening (at $42 million domestic), due mostly to its 75% female audiences.
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2008
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The gory series of Saw films, including Saw (2004), Saw II (2005), Saw III (2006), Saw IV (2007), and Saw V (2008), surpassed the Friday the 13th series of 11 films (with a total domestic gross of $315.6 million), as the highest-grossing horror series in film history, at $342.5 million (domestic). This would change, however, in the next year, with the release of Friday the 13th (2009).
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2008
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Female director Catherine Hardwicke's vampire romance Twilight (2008) earned $70.6 million in its opening weekend box-office, breaking the record for the biggest opening for a female director, previously held by Mimi Leder for Deep Impact (1998) at $41.1 million. At the time, it was the highest-grossing film by a female director, at $193 million (domestic) and $385 million (worldwide), soon to be suprassed by its own sequel The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009), with $143 million in its opening weekend, and grossing $293 million (domestic) and $703 million (worldwide). The success of the Twilight films was attributable to the vastly female audiences that attended the showings. Catherine Hardwicke became the only female director to launch a successful franchise - so far. Demographically, 75 percent of the movie’s audience were female - and half were under 25, indicating that box-office success was due to this new fan-girl contingent of young "tweens".
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2008
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The 22nd official Bond film Quantum of Solace (2008) reached the $100 million mark faster than any other film in the 47 year-old 007 franchise - in only 9 days. (Die Another Day (2002) took 10 days to reach $100 million.) With its opening weekend of $67.5 million (domestic), it also shattered the previous best opening in the Bond franchise held by Die Another Day (2002) at $47.1 million. Quantum of Solace became the highest-grossing (domestic) Bond film ever at $168.3 million, besting Casino Royale (2006) at $167.4 million.
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2008
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Waltz with Bashir (2008, Israel) was the first animated film to be nominated in the Best Foreign Film Oscar category. Functioning partially as an oral-history documentary, the introspective, dream-like anti-war polemic was a confessional account of director Ari Folman's devastating and traumatic experience as a young Israeli soldier during his country's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and its massacre of Palestinian refugees. It took two years to animate, and was completed by a team of artists who based their drawings on staged and videotaped interviews. The results were thick-lined, near-monochromatic animated images frequently seen in strange yellowish light.
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2008
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20th Century Fox announced that it would produce a sequel to its hit film Wall Street (1987), with both Oliver Stone back as director and Best Actor-winning Michael Douglas reprising his role as greedy Gordon Gekko. It was speculated it would be titled Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps (2010). The announcement occurred in October of 2008 during the country's major financial crisis, a week after the Dow suffered its worst weekly drop ever - a five-day 1,874-point decline (or 18% of its value), ending at a new five-year low of 8,451.19.
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2008
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From 1986 to 2008, actor Tom Cruise appeared in the most $100 million dollar-grossing films (15 blockbusters), making him the most 'over-paid' actor in big-budget movies. [Top Gun (1986), Rain Main (1988), A Few Good Men (1992), The Firm (1993), Interview with the Vampire (1994), Mission Impossible (1996), Jerry Maguire (1996), Mission: Impossible II (2000), Vanilla Sky (2001), Minority Report (2002), The Last Samurai (2003), Collateral (2004), War of the Worlds (2005), Mission: Impossible III (2006), and Valkyrie (2008).]
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2008-2009
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DreamWorks, which had been acquired by Viacom's Paramount in 2005, ended its troubled 2 1/2 year partnership with the studio in late 2008. A few months later in early 2009, DreamWorks realized its intentions to reinvent itself as an independent company. It signed a long-term, 30-picture distribution deal with the Disney Company for five-years. Future films would be released by Disney's Touchstone Pictures division.
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2009
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The DreamWorks sci-fi spoof of 50s monster movies, Monsters vs. Aliens was the first computer-animated feature film to be shot directly in stereoscopic 3-D -- dubbed the Ultimate 3-D. Previously, 3-D CGI films were made in a non 3-D version and then dimensionalized. Other 3-D computer animated films would also debut in the new format: 20th Century Fox's and James Cameron's Avatar (2009), Fox's Ice Age 3 (2009), Disney's motion-capture A Christmas Carol (2009), and Pixar's Toy Story 3 (2010).
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2009
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Director Patrick Lussier's 100% live-action film My Bloody Valentine 3-D was the first R-rated film to be projected in Real D technology. It was a remake of the 1981 slasher film of the same name.
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2009
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The reimagined or rebooted Friday the 13th, a remake of the original 1980 film of the same name, became the slasher/horror film with the largest weekend debut on record, at about $41 million, besting the previous record holder The Grudge (2004) with $39 million and Freddy vs. Jason (2003) at $36.4 million.
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2009
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The surprise hit comedy The Hangover (2009), was the fastest R-rated youth comedy to reach the $200 million mark (it took 30 days). Bucking the trend of big-name stars ensuring success, it featured a trio of unknowns (Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms and Bradley Cooper). It became the top-grossing (domestic) R-rated youth comedy, earning $277 million.
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2009
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The Friday the 13th series of horror films regained its prominence as the highest-grossing horror film series, with the release of Friday the 13th (2009), surpassing the Saw franchise of 6 films, the previous record holder. The latest Saw film (Saw VI (2009)) took in $27.7 million, giving the Saw franchise a grand total of $370.2 million by the year 2009. The total domestic gross for the 12 Friday the 13th films was $380.6 million, boosted by the $65 million box-office gross for Friday the 13th (2009).
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2009
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The latest movie gimmick was the D-Box, a vibrating movie theater chair, invented by a Montreal-based company. The first major theatrical release to use the system was Universal's Fast & Furious, with the Motion-Code technology written into it. Chairs were installed in LA's Grauman's Chinese Theatre, and in a theater in Surprise, Arizona, and the enhanced seating was available for a $5 surcharge. The chair would vibrate, move, lean, and shake based upon action on the screen.
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2009
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Disney's and Robert Zemeckis' 3-D A Christmas Carol (2009) was an adaptation of Dickens' 1843 classic story that was told using "performance capture," in which Jim Carrey played multiple roles, including old miser Scrooge (at different stages of his life) and the three Christmas ghosts; it was released in both Disney Digital 3-D and in IMAX 3-D (it was the first Disney animated film released in this format). Performance capture-advocate Robert Zemeckis had previously experimented with the technology in his own The Polar Express (2004) and Beowulf (2007), and extensively used the technique in this film. It was Zemeckis' first film with Disney since Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988).
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2009
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Hollywood studios realized that they could leverage the popularity of social networking sites (such as Facebook and Twitter) to market films, encourage positive word-of-mouth, raise awareness and stimulate ticket sales. Warner Bros. and director Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are (2009), adapted from Maurice Sendak's classic children's tale, had more than 1.5 million devotees on its Facebook page as it was first debuting in theatres. The movie's website also offered an iPhone app. Millions of Facebook fans also signed on to be followers of the Twilight sequel, The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009), and an official Twitter page was also established for the film. The first screening of director Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009) from Universal Pictures at the annual Comicon convention in San Diego was packed by people who won admission via Twitter.
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2009
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The breakout independent horror film hit of the year, Paranormal Activity was budgeted at only $15,000 and filmed in 2007 in only ten days. It was first shown in limited release, in college towns at midnight shows. The studio launched a campaign using the Eventful feature developed by a San Diego company known for promoting concerts. With the Internet feature called "Demand It," Paramount asked fans and would-be watchers to help determine the film's fate and see if it warranted a potential wide-release. When one million frenzied fans demanded to see it, the film was expanded to 160 screens, and grossed $7.9 million in box-office revenue, breaking the record for highest grossing weekend ever for a film playing in less than 200 theaters. It eventually made estimated earnings of $107.9 million (to date), an almost 720K% return on investment. [In comparison, ten years earlier, The Blair Witch Project (1999) was budgeted at $65,000, and made earnings of $140 million, only 215K% return on investment.] Part of the reason for the film's financial success was a grassroots Internet campaign that included a "Tweet Your Scream" promotion using social-networking site Twitter.
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2009
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100+ year-old Portuguese auteur director Manoel de Oliveira released his 15th feature of the 21st century - a doomed romance entitled Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl (2009). Reportedly, since the decade's start in 2001, Oliveira was the oldest movie director still making films. This was undoubtedly the first film made by a hundred year-old director.
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2009
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In director Zack Snyder's Watchmen (2009), a filmed adaptation of Alan Moore's graphic novel (a 12-issue publication by DC Comics between 1986 and 1987), the photo-realistic, all-CGI character of the all-powerful, blue-glowing "atomized" scientist Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) was created with the process of motion capture. Dr. Manhattan's character appeared in approximately 38 minutes of the entire film. Crudup wore a specially-designed motion capture suit covered with pattern markers and face markers - he was filmed with two to four HD "witness" cameras (in addition to the film's master camera) to capture his overall full-body movements and facial expressions. All the cameras were synced so animators could then triangulate Crudup's performance in-frame. The number of black facial markers on the suit was a record 165 spot points, allowing the animators to track his expressions through video and then use that data as a jumping-off point to hand-animate Manhattan's face. Crudup's suit was also equipped with 2500 LEDs to create Manhattan's diffuse blue glow.
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2009
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