April 14th, 2009
Not a busy week on the home market with the least number of new releases on this week for a number of weeks. (It seems busier than it is, because of all of the spotlight reviews. In fact, there are as many spotlight reviews as there are simple mentions. Additionally, there are more spotlight reviews for late arrivals than there are for this week's releases.) Looking for the best of the best, there's not a lot on top worth of the DVD Pick of the Week. The release I'm looking forward to the most is Lost in Austen - Buy from Amazon, which I'm awarding the DVD Pick of the Week. Thanks to the number of spotlight reviews, this week's list had to be split into two with the second part found here.
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January 7th, 2007
None of half-a-dozen
new releases were able to make a big splash on rental charts, but that doesn't mean there wasn't anything interesting to report. Every film in the top five was within $540,000 on each other with
The Devil Wears Prada claiming top spot with $6.87 million.
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December 27th, 2006
It's Boxing Day up here in Canada, and for those Americans who don't know what that is ... I can't help you. I have no idea what Boxing Day is, other than the start of post-Christmas sales. While there are a lot of people shopping this week, there is still a huge downturn in the DVD market and little of what I would consider must have DVDs. The best of a weak bunch is
The Descent - Original Unrated Cut -
Buy from Amazon, but while I recommend picking it up, it doesn't reach the level of a DVD Pick of the Week. On the other hand, we do have a
Canadian DVD Puck of the Week, Eh! -
Bon Cop, Bad Cop -
Buy from Amazon.ca.
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September 26th, 2006
The weekend numbers were mixed, with more films beating expectations than not, but overall business still weak.
Granted, the total box office hit $98 million over the weekend and that was up a huge 25.9% over last weekend, but more importantly this was still 2.1% lower than the same weekend last year.
Hopefully this coming weekend will perform better, helping 2006 end its mini-slump against 2005.
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September 19th, 2006
Not a single film in the top five beat expectations by any significant margin.
Even so, with the terrible result last weekend the overall box office was still able to rebound a little, up 7.7% to $78 million.
However, that was still 9.0% lower than the same weekend last year.
So far the fall season has not kept up the winning ways we saw throughout the summer, but 2006 still has a bit of time to turn things around before we need to worry again.
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September 16th, 2006
High quantity on sites this week, but many of them were for new releases, most of which haven't had any updates in a while. Those that did have updates were generally quite small, but one site stood above them all,
Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny -
Official Site, which is easily the winner of the Weekly Website Award.
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September 14th, 2006
With the football season just under way, it seems the NFL is the biggest hurdle for new movies to overcome.
This is especially true for the odds-on favorite, Gridiron Gang, but all the films playing this weekend will have to deal with divided attentions.
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September 8th, 2006
After a very busy month, the number of site on this week's list dropped off dramatically. The decline in quantity was accompanied by a decline in quality with no site jumping out as the obvious choice for the Weekly Website Award.
The Guardian -
Official Site came the closest, but it will have to wait till more features are added for that honor.
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September 2nd, 2006
Another busy week with plenty of top-notch films to chose from In the end, however, it was a two-way race between
The Black Dahlia -
Official Site and
Stranger than Fiction -
Official Site with the former site winning out by a narrow margin.
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September 1st, 2006
I've said it before and I'll say it again, September is the worst month of the year for movies.
Not only are there usually very few hits released at this time of year, but the average is dragged way down by the large number of movies simply dumped on the market.
This year the September dumping ground doesn't look quite as bad as years past.
In fact, several low-level hits and maybe even an Oscar contender are opening wide.
However, those few bright spots will be buried due to the sheer number of releases -- an average of 3 and a half films are opening wide each week.
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August 26th, 2006
It's another busy week with nearly three dozen films being represented here. Taking top prize is
Invincible -
Official Site, although there were a few others that could take that claim before all is said and done.
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August 11th, 2006
The torrid pace of website updates continues with more than 30 films on this week's list. There were a few sites that really caught my eye, but it was
Trust the Man -
Official Site and its interactive map of New York City and its more than 2 dozen clips that won the Weekly Website Award.
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July 28th, 2006
Another big week for movie sites with several excellent entries. In this crowded field there were a lot of sites that showed promise and could be just one big update away from winning the award. But this week the best of the best was
World Trade Center -
Official Site. Let's hope that the movie can live up to the site.
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