the day after

Shellshocked Weinsteins Find New Enemy in the ‘Zack and Miri’ Aftermath

2:55AM STV | The only words you’ll hear more than “It’s your fault” today at Weinstein Company HQ: “It could have been worse,” the unofficial new TWC battle cry after Zack and Miri Make a Porno opened over the weekend to a disappointing $US10.7 million. Indeed, it probably will be worse — Universal and Lionsgate accused the Weinsteins of inflating their gross by as much as a million dollars, and just for fun, another potential lawsuit threatens the brothers’ follow-up this week. So who is to blame, anyway, and what’s next?

Madonna/Guy Ritchie Wreckage Offers Many Clues, No Answers in Couple’s Crash

4:50AM STV | The radioactivity of Madonna and Guy Ritchie’s combustion has settled nicely around our culture since Wednesday, yielding glowing little piles of second-guesses, third-guesses and other detritus helping us make sense of the biggest matrimonial disaster of the year. Here to help you with your wasteland exploration, Defamer’s Biohazard Squad suited up this morning to map the terrain; their findings are after the jump. More »

The Greatest Movie Ever Made (Or Something): Six Instant Implications of ‘The Dark Knight’

2:10AM Defamer Hollywood | The Dark Knight’s record-breaking opening left us entranced by not only its tsunami of cash, but also by the news, commentary and other unclassifiable phenomena we spotted in its wake around the Web. For your Monday morning convenience, here’s a glimpse at what the biggest three-day box-office weekend in history will get you: More »

End-Of-Monday Tallies Put ‘Racer’ At Third, UTA Minus One Emile Hirsch

10:10AM Seth | It seems as if our reconnaissance on Speed Racer—quickly shaping up to be one of the biggest turkeys in recent Hollywood history—proved correct: The film was indeed third at the box office this weekend, taking in $18.6 million, $1.6 million short of the bloated studio estimates released yesterday. (What Happens in Vegas actually $200k more than its $2 million estimate.) And there’s more Racer roadkill: More »

Guilt, Blame and Other Wreckage From the Picturehouse/WIP Crash

3:05AM Defamer Hollywood | The eulogies are on following Thursday’s twin killing of Picturehouse and Warner Independent Pictures by the executioners at Warner Bros. — or perhaps more accurately, by hooded, high-ranking Time Warner axeman Jeff Bewkes, to whom some today are attributing the death penalty that ended in nearly 75 lost jobs between the two mini-majors. While we still suspect that WIP’s demise in cosmically linked to its acquisition of the poisonously atrocious Alan Ball film Towelhead (another blogger disagrees, citing Funny Games instead), at least a few other observers have more official diagnoses from the murder scene.

Tom Cruise’s Career In Flames As ‘Valkyrie’ Melts Down

3:30AM Defamer Hollywood | Yesterday, the troubled Tom Cruise/Nazi vehicle Valkyrie got pushed back — for a second time — from October to February 2009. MGM is painting the film’s new release date as a golden holiday-weekend opportunity for the $90-million-plus historical drama, but it goes without saying this is beyond bullshit; no amount of spin from any of MGM boss Mary Parent’s necktied monkeys can reclaim whatever traction Valkyrie might have had once upon a time. Its Cruise/Bryan Singer pedigree took its first hit when it was pushed back from summer ‘08 to fall (”Better Oscar chances!” we were told as Singer’s reshoots pushed his budget and his star past their respective limits), and it now threatens to overtake Charlton Heston as this week’s highest-profile celebrity casualty. “Valkyrie is dead,” wrote David Poland at The Hot Blog. “There is no such thing as a good movie that gets moved from summer to fall to spring.”