BOP Daily News
March 15, 2005
The spirit of BOP News lives on in
This is So Last Week,
our pop culture week-in-review,
presented in a pleasing quiz form.
|
Justin Timberlake’s latest beard took a tumble yesterday. Charlie’s Angel Cameron Diaz took time out from her busy schedule of providing voice work for DreamWorks and ignoring Drew Barrymore's calls to bust open her head. It seems the actress was climbing around in her closet trying to store some camping gear. Her legs went out from underneath her, causing the actress who will forever be known as Mary to eat the floor. The pratfall tumble would have made the Farrelly Brothers proud, but it left the actress in need of a whopping 19 stitches. Of course, none of this was the worst thing that happened to Diaz this week. She had just returned from a pretend-romantic camping vacation with her gay boyfriend. A scar-inducing headshot followed by a ton of morphine is night and day better than being stuck in tight quarters with a man who likes looking at himself in the mirror as much as Timberlake does.
|
|
|
|
|
Princess Fiona was not the only starlet to take a spill in recent days, either. Christina Applegate, last seen being punched in the babymaker by Will Farrell, also has suffered through a recent bout with clumsiness. It seems that the actress turned Pussycat Doll diva-in-training was attempting to live out her professed lifelong dream of performing on Broadway. Unfortunately for the former Married with Children ingénue, a performance of Sweet Charity proved to be her undoing. Applegate twirled around a lamppost, accidentally kicking the set piece in the process. An audible crack was heard, and the actress discovered she had broken her foot. To her credit, she followed the maxim that the show must go on by playing through the play for another 20 minutes before the director stepped in and shut her down. Applegate will be on crutches for a few weeks, during which time she can spend much of her Anchorman money. This is a cautionary tale for other actresses, though. These things happen in threes, ladies. Don’t try to be a hero on the set tomorrow. Let that stunt woman earn her pay, dammit!
|
|
|
|
Despite the recent bad rap that foreign markets have gotten with regards to movie piracy, 2004 proved one fact about these other box office outlets. They carried Hollywood films, preventing many unnamed titles (nobody here is saying Troy) from being considered financial failures. In actuality, 2004 was the first time that foreign markets were more lucrative than Normal American ones in terms of ticket receipts. 51.6% of all revenues came from outside markets while North American receipts comprised only 48.4%. Exemplifying the evolving global nature of the box office economy, these numbers represent a dramatic change from the 2001 split of 57.4%/42.6% in favor of North American business. That’s right, each side of this enterprise has seen a 9% shift in split in a mere three years. At this rate, worldwide box office will wholly devour our part of the globe by the year 2010. Oddly enough, this means the only box office analyst who saw such behavior coming was Arthur C. Clarke.
|
|
|
|
|
Finally, in a story we don’t understand at all due to its highly technical nature, Landmark Theaters did something noteworthy at ShoWest. The indie chain owned by BOP fave Mark Cuban will be re-modeled with something called SRXR110. This magic box will somehow allow Landmark Theaters to be better equipped for full conversion to digital cinema. In order to accomplish this goal, the group has purchased six SXRD Sony 4K projectors (is that the new handheld videogame system Sony is releasing next week?). Like Cuban’s previous championing of the high definition television format through his HDNet, this idea is something of a gambit as there is currently no real plan in place for other movie chains to convert to digital. Many exhibitors are waiting to leverage their bargaining position to force studios to offset the cost of these expensive new machines (Cuban says his company is paying over $100,000 per unit). Also, Sony has failed to demonstrate the technical advantages of their expensive new setup. Frankly, BOP does not understand any of this, but we do know two things for sure. We were the only group of people watching Cuban’s wildly underrated reality contest, The Benefactor. And these projectors only offer Cuban any real personal value if they somehow help the Dallas Mavericks learn to play defense. Also, SXRD sounds like the call letters for Playboy Radio.
|
|
|
"I'm not against technology, doctor. I'm against the men who deify it at the expense of human truth."
Previous edition's quote: The Simpsons
Box Office Prophets offers quality, reliable news about the entertainment industry. BOP is also entertaining. To that end, please be advised that some content in this column is intended to be humorous and should not be considered factual.
|
|
|
|
