"An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted." - Arthur Miller

Monday, February 23, 2009

Links of the Day - Mostly Movies Edition

Academy Award Winners - Another year, another 4 hours of Hollywood breaking its arm to pat itself on the back. Some decent highlights, but as I write this hours later, no memorable ones come to mind.

Weekend Box Office - If your Tyler Perry, it has been a great weekend with a $41.1M take for Madea Goes to Jail. Taken lands second with $11.4M, Coraline $11M for third, He's Not That Into You for Fourth with $8.5M and fifth for now Oscar winning film Slumdog Millionaire with $8.1M. Last week's winner Friday the 13th took a massive 81% drop to sixth with $7.8M indicating the (crappy) film will flame out in theatres pretty quickly and a lesson that word of mouth will kill you or help you every time.

Dark Knight Breaks $1 Billion - It took about three months longer then expected but The Dark Knight finally broke the rare barrier thanks to a $533 million domestic take and $567M take overseas. The film joins Titanic, LOTR: Return of the King and Pirates of the Caribbean 3 in that elite club. I also see it as proof that overseas sales are more critical then ever for the long term success of any franchise.

Obama Hopes to Slash Deficit - In what I can only call a neat trick if he pulls it off, Obama is shooting to cut the $1.3 trillion deficit from Bush in half to "only" $533 billion by 2013. Most of the plan relies on tax increases for the rich only. Considering Democrats continued inability to control the message, the GOP will easily sell this as tax increases on small business and everyone else and turn it into another tax cut.

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