Word: star
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...summer weekend, a movie usually needs a star name or an action-film punch, or it needs to be a sequel to or the remake of a blockbuster. Except, that is, for new Pixar releases. Rising on the propulsion of a brand name known for quality entertainment, the studio's 10th animated feature, Up, surpassed most predictions by earning $68.2 million this weekend, according to official projections. Buoyed by higher ticket prices in theaters showing the 3-D version and rhapsodic reviews that tallied a 98% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Up scored the strongest Pixar opening since The Incredibles...
...other debut film, the gypsy-curse shocker Drag Me to Hell, looks to come in an O.K. third, with $16.6 million. Like Up, it's a film with no stars, but a star director of sorts: Sam Raimi, who did the Spider-Man movies and, ages ago, the Evil Dead cult trilogy. Credit Drag Me to Hell's success to a generous PG-13 rating and to the loyalty of genre fans who haven't been able to go to a new horror film in, gee, almost two months. (See TIME's video "Making Drag Me to Hell More Hellish...
...lost about 53% of its steam, coming in second with a still decent $25.5 million. Smithsonian did what sequels often do: pull a great first weekend from brand recognition, then subside more severely than the original. That's the rule to which there are few exceptions. The current exception, Star Trek, was the only one of the session's top six holdovers to drop less than 50% from last week, enabling it to become the first 2009 release to cross the $200 million mark at the North American box office...
...action film, Watchmen, which earned more than half its total domestic take in its first weekend. In plain English, that means the hard-core fans saw it immediately but didn't go back or convince others to buy tickets. It also suggests that certain action franchises do need a star. Given the tarnished fiscal state of the Golden State, Arnold Schwarzenegger may wish he were a movie star again. Indeed, he's spoken of getting back into films after his term is up. Big question for Californians: Would you want Arnold back as the Terminator if you had to take...
...least as expressed in Bale's obscene, YouTubed rant on the set of Terminator Salvation. But he wasn't the lead in last year's top-grossing film, The Dark Knight, either. That's Pixar for you. Unlike its rival, DreamWorks, the studio doesn't sell its movies with star voices. And the films' plots? At a typical Hollywood pitch meeting, the story of a rat let loose in a French restaurant (Ratatouille, 2007) or a lonely robot trash collector (last year's WALL-E) or, this time, a cranky old guy who won't leave his house would...