This week’s code for the “Beauty and the Beast” contest is: Stage.
Be sure to visit the Certain Songs blog to get the other code, and visit Artpark’s Web site for more information on the musical, coming Aug. 14-24.
Not sure what this means? Then you’ll need to pick up the July 17 edition of Night & Day inside the Tonawanda News, Niagara Gazette and Lockport Union-Sun & Journal.
With “The Dark Knight” opening Friday, summer 2008 will see five superhero movies have come through the box office.
All of the first four – “Iron Man,” “The Incredible Hulk,” “Hancock” and “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” have held their own at the box office. At $313.5 million, “Iron Man” is the year’s top-grossing movie to date, while all four of those films appear on the top 15 list of the highest opening-week earners of 2008.
“The Dark Knight” is expected to challenge for the top mark on both lists, which is music to the ears of Hollywood executives, according to Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media by Numbers LLC.
“I think Hollywood … is really on a roll,” he said. “I think the movies this summer, as a whole, the audiences are very satisfied.”
After several years of steady decline, box office receipts have increased slightly the past two years compared to the year before (ticket sales, however, actually decreased 0.91 percent in 2007 compared to 2006). A runnig tally compiled by Media by Numbers shows the running summer box office gross ($2.44 billion) to be donw 1.97 percent from the same point in 2007 (attendance is off 4.74 percent), but “Dark Knight” should play a big part in turning that negative into a positive.
“Dark Knight” has been preceded by a nearly unprecedented level of hype (read more about the buildup here). When it’s all said and done, Christopher Nolan’s incarnation of the Batman franchise could rival the “Spider-Man” series for all-time supremacy.
What it proves once again is that audiences love (most) heroes – even ones they might not have heard of before.
” ‘Iron Man’ is great in its own way, but it’s totally different,” said Dergarabedian, who cited the variety of the differing stories behind each of the five superhero films this summer as a reason why so many people have gone to each of them. “It’s emblematic of how good the season has been so far that all these superhero movies have all done well at the box office.”
Indeed, I couldn’t tell you where to buy a “Hellboy” comic book, but I saw “Hellboy II” last weekend and enjoyed it a great deal. That’s the key to a good superhero movie – don’t make non-comic fans feel like outsiders by including too much insider material. That’s one of the main reason the “Spider-Man” and “X-Men” franchises have done well, because you feel a part of the story right from the beginning instead of having to catch up when you hit the Internet at home.
I am going to see “Dark Knight” tonight, and I can’t wait, as “Batman Begins” was perhaps my favorite of all the “Batman” film franchise. Look back Friday for my thoughts on the blockbuster.
William Petersen is leaving "CSI" midseason in 2008-09.
Exponentially more than David Caruso on “CSI: Miami” or Gary Sinise on “CSI: New York,” William Petersen is the face and heart of the original “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.”
that’s why it will be very interesting to see whether the CBS thursday night mainstay can maintain its top 10 standing in the Nielsen ratings when Petersen’s Gil Grissom is gone from the show in early 2009.
The show’s producers announced Tuesday that Petersen, whose Grissom has been head of that series’ Las Vegas CSI squad since the series begain in 2000, will leave in the middle of the 2008-09 season. He will still make occasional guest appearances and serve as an executive producer, but otherwise little is know about why he’s leaving or who will replace him.
Petersen is perfect for the role of the team leader, whose dry humor helps break things up and whose stern, intelligent leadership is perhaps the most believable part about the series (ask real-life police about the “CSI effect” and what the series has done to the public perception of what cops are capable of).
People don’t generally relate to science, but Petersen and “CSI” made a drama that largely deals with scientific elements into a long-standing hit (it was the ninth-ranked show on television last season with an average 17 million viewers).
Producers are confident that someone else can step in and the show won’t miss a beat, but I’m not so sure. Where a series like “Law & Order” truly is about the cases and not the people, “CSI” has always had a bit more of a personal feel to it, much like “Criminal Minds” does (which was still good but NOT QUITE as good after Mandy Patinkin left last season).
That’s not to say that “CSI” is doomed. Petersen took a short leave during 2006-07 to work on a play, and Liev Schreiber stepped in as a guest investigator and the viewers remained. But they also knew at that time that Grissom was going to return atop the saddle at some point.
Nobody can replace Petersen, so maybe CBS’ best strategy would be to introduce a character that brings an entirely different element. The last thing they should seek to do is bring in anyone who would have to be compared to Petersen, because they’d be likely to lose that argument (just ask Aaron Rodgers about that).
Will “CSI” be as good? that remains to be seen, but come 2009 it definitely won’t be the same.
Life in the Slow Lane 