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I BEAT THE ODDS From Homelessness to the Blind Side and Beyond By Michael Oher with Don Yaeger Gotham.
250 pp. $26 By the time Michael Oher got around to telling it, The Michael Oher Story was already well-known and seemingly devoid of new angles. Oher, an African American who plays offensive … My nominee for most effective whistleblower in the D.C.
school system, Erich Martel, has finally gone too far
in the eyes of some school administrators. Fantasy film continues to work its wizardry while Side Effects and Welcome to the Punch follow the yellow brick road to the topThe winnerFacing relatively weak fresh competition from new releases, Oz the Great and Powerful managed a decent hold, declining 30% from the previous weekend for a 10-day total of £7.7m.
That’s enough for eighth place among 2013 releases so far, behind Les Misérables (£39.9m), Wreck-It Ralph (£22.0m),
Django Unchained (£15.4m), The Impossible (£13.2m), A Good Day to Die Hard (£10.6m),
Lincoln (£8.5m) and Quartet (£8.2m). Oz is certain to overtake the last three in that list, and Disney will be hoping for a lot better than that, especially with Easter still to come. But it’s clear that the film is nowhere in the same league commercially as Oz producer Joe Roth’s Alice in Wonderland, which reached a hefty £37.8m here in 2010.Not
recorded in the official takings for the weekend are Saturday and Sunday previews of The Croods, from DreamWorks Animation. Believed to be in the £1.7m zone, the caveman film will have provided strong competition to Oz in matinee slots. Comic Relief on Friday also presented a challenge to all films in the market, especially family-skewing fare such as Oz.The
casualty listNot counting The Croods previews, three new titles arrived on 300-plus screens, and all disappointed. London cops-and-robbers thriller Welcome to the Punch did best of the bunch, which is remarkable given that it debuted on just £460,000. That’s the lowest tally for a third-placed film since July 2010, when World Cup football was still laying waste to UK cinemagoing.
It’s also the weakest box-office for a new entry since Christmas 2011, when Bollywood picture Don 2 led a notably meagre field of fresh product.Distributor Momentum will be disappointed with the result for Punch, which stars James McAvoy and Mark Strong, but it could have been worse.
Warners had an even lower number to contend with for its warring-magician comedy The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, starring Steve Carell and Jim Carrey.
Delivering weekend takings of £306,000 from 386 cinemas, and a puny screen average of £793, the result suggests that in the notoriously fickle market for big-screen comedy, affection for these toplined stars has significantly waned.
The premise and cumbersome title may also have represented negatives for audiences.Taking up the rear is Red Dawn, a remake of the 1984 US invasion actioner, arriving belatedly having filmed in 2009 and then
become stuck in legal limbo. Despite a cast including Thor’s Chris Hemsworth and The Hunger Games’ Josh Hutcherson, this slice of gung-ho US patriotism always looked a tough sell in the UK, and new player Koch Media may not be
too disappointed with £255,000 from 341 cinema, and a £749 average.The survivorWhile the new entrants floundered, and most existing titles fell by significant amounts, the shining exception proved to be Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects, down just 15%. Either, uniquely in the market, its audience was not at all interested in Comic Relief or Six Nations rugby or, more plausibly,
the film is enjoying strong word of mouth among cinemagoers.Crash and burnHaving landed in 33rd place on its opening weekend with just £19,200 from 105 cinemas, Fire with Fire
predictably plummeted in its second session. Now languishing in 77th place, having shed the majority of its initial sites, the Josh Duhamel action film fell by a calamitous 96%, with second-frame takings of £850 from 13 venues, delivering a £65 average. The transfer to DVD can’t arrive soon enough.The alternativesWhile the wide releases fared pretty dismally, films arriving on fewer than 100 screens in many cases performed just as badly.
The Paperboy achieved a screen average of £1,730, which on a typical weekend would hardly be a cause for riotous celebration, especially since you would expect decent numbers when the rollout is limited to 82 carefully selected cinemas. However, since that’s the third highest average in the market, credit is due to distributor Lionsgate. A debut of £142,000 was enough for 13th place, with 58% of the total earned in the generously defined London and West End regions.
Strong marketable elements included stars Zac Efron, Matthew McConaughey and Nicole Kidman, while an attractive poster successfully communicated a sexy, lurid, steamy drama with strong critical endorsement.
In fact, reviews were highly mixed, with a Metacritic score of just 45/100.A documentary about the 1945 Labour government’s creation of the welfare state may not suggest itself as an easy sell at cinemas, but add the cachet of esteemed director Ken Loach and The Spirit of ’45 had more than a fighting chance.
Released on 17 screens, the film took around £18,000 on Friday and Saturday before surging on Sunday thanks to a live post-screening Q+A with Loach, beamed into 49 cinemas from London’s Ritzy Brixton. That was enough to deliver a healthy three-day tally of £78,000 (or £83,000 including previews).Other
limited releases fared less well. Horror remake Maniac, shot from the POV of killer Elijah Wood, disappointed with £21,400 from 53 sites, plus previews.
Vinyl, based on the true story of veteran Welsh rockers the Alarm inventing a fictitious band to front their latest recordings, floundered, with £9,800 from 60 venues, plus previews.
Best results were in Wales. In arthouses, Beyond the Hills, with £16,100 from 15 cinemas, plus £2,800 previews, failed to match the debut of Romanian director Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, which began its run in January 2008 with £67,000 from 22 sites, plus £13,000 in previews.
Beyond the Hills may have fared better via the Curzon
on Demand home-viewing platform, but those figures are not released. The admired Shell, with £9,700 (plus previews) from 12 cinemas, arguably represented one specialised release too many.
Scotland, where the intimate drama is set, delivered 51% of the total.The futureSince
those Croods previews were not included in official tallies, the frame overall placed a dismal 51st out of 52 in the league table of weekend takings for the past year.
Box-office
is 34% down on the equivalent
session from 2012, when The Devil Inside, 21 Jump Street, We Bought a Zoo and Contraband all re-energized the market. It’s also a troubling 53% down on average weekend box-office for the past year.
Cinema bookers are now pinning their hopes on Melissa McCarthy comedy Identity Thief, which has already grossed $124m in the US. And of course The Croods, the first DreamWorks Animation title to go out through 20th Century Fox, already
looks a slam-dunk. Joining the fight for the Easter audience is Bryan Singer’s pricey Jack the Giant Slayer, starring Nicholas Hoult and Ewan McGregor, while Nicolas Cage vehicle Stolen aims to challenge the notion that cinema audiences are generally looking for something fresh and different.Top 10 films1. Oz the Great and Powerful, £2,609,465 from 539 sites. Total: £7,683,6992.
Side Effects, £759,363 from 371 sites. Total: £2,277,8613.
Welcome to the Punch, £460,250 from 370 sites (New)4. Wreck-It Ralph, £426,343 from 458 sites.
Total: £21,995,9495. Parker, £308,335 from 276 sites.
Total: £1,229,8896. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, £305,936 from 386 sites (New)7.
Mama, £266,521 from 299 sites. Total: £5,054,6838. Red
Dawn, £255,448 from 341 sites (New)9.
Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, £221,452 from 270 sites. Total: £3,178,31710. The Guilt Trip, £157,016 from 284 sites. Total: £814,530Other openersThe Paperboy, 82 sites, £141,881The Spirit of 45, 43 sites, £77,717 (+ £5,511 previews)Maniac, 53 sites, £21,384 (+ £6,943 previews)Paradesi, 20 sites, £19,635Beyond the Hills, 15 sites, £16,148 (+ £2,803 previews)Vinyl, 60 sites, £9,758 (+ £3,547 previews)Shell, 12 sites, £9,724 (+ £5,111 previews)Earthbound, 11 sites, £2,676Michael H Profession: Director, 6 sites, £950Science fiction and fantasyAction and adventureFilm industrySteve CarellJim CarreyJames McAvoySteven SoderberghSam RaimiJames FrancoMichelle WilliamsCharles Gantguardian.co.uk
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All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Lord Armstrong’s monumental estate at Cragside, the first house in the world to have electric power, notches up its 150th birthday this year.
It’s getting a new hydro-electric power station as a present.William
Armstrong’s Cragside home in Northumberland celebrates its 150th birthday this year by reinstalling a hydroelectricity system originally established by the house’s first owner. Cragside, which now belongs to the National Trust, was built over more than 20 years from 1853, mostly by the architect Norman Shaw, in a partially Tudor style. Set in the Northumberland landscape near the market town of Rothbury, it was called by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner “the most dramatic Victorian mansion in the North of England.” He added:The site is Wagnerian – and so is Shaw’s architectureThe new hydro system will provide enough energy to light the house again. Andrew Sawyer, who is the National Trust’s conservation and interpretation officer at Cragside, said: Lord Armstrong was an exceptional man with a genius mind and the prospect of bringing his vision for Cragside into the 21st century is a dream come true.
Hydroelectricity is the world’s most widely used form of renewable energy, so we are looking forward to sharing this very special part of its heritage. In the year of building dreams at Cragside, as well as powering the house by Hydroelectricity once more, later
in the year we plan to open a new exhibition in the house which tells how the Armstrongs ensured their dreams had a legacy.The
Tyneside industrialist ploughed some of the vast profits from his Elswick armaments works – which employed 25,000 people at its height – into building his huge “palace of a modern magician”. In the 1860s, Armstrong dammed streams on the estate to create three lakes. He originally used water power to run a spit for roasting in the kitchen, as well as laundry equipment and a lift, and one of the country’s first flushing lavatories. By 1878 he had installed a turbine and dynamo to power an arc lamp in the house’s gallery, making Cragside almost certainly the first house in the world with electric light, powered by the world’s first hydro-electricity station. The early arc lamps were highly unsatisfactory and were replaced in 1880 by 45 of Joseph’s Swan’s newly invented incandescent bulbs – not cheap at 25/- each.
In October 1880, electric light had first been publicly demonstrated by Swan at a lecture at Newcastle’s Lit & Phil, of which Armstrong was the president. Although Swan’s
house in Gateshead can claim to be the world’s
first to be lit by electric bulbs, Swan himself wrote about installing his lights with Armstrong:As far as I know, Cragside was the first house in England properly fitted up with my electric lamps. It was a delightful sensation for both of
us when the gallery was first lit upThe house had Pre-Raphaelite pictures and stained glass alongside a large number of pictures of dogs and works which Pevsner rather sniffily says show “what was permissible to the Victorian nobleman in the way of erotica.” Amongst his better paintings were two important Turner watercolours, and Millais’ Chill October, for which he paid £945 at Christie’s in 1875 and which was much admired
by van Gogh, who wrote in 1884 I for my part always keep thinking about some English paintings – for instance Chill October by Millais. The collection was mostly dispersed after Armstrong’s death.
Chill October was sold again in 1991, fetching £370,000 at Sotheby’s – it now belongs to Andrew Lloyd-Webber.Also taking place at
Cragside in 2013 is an exhibition, Captured on Camera, which will show images from a personal photograph album of Lord Armstrong’s great nephew and his family, who took over as owners of Cragside when Lord Armstrong died.
In June, a number of temporary artworks will be installed at various locations on the Cragside estate as part of the Festival of the North East.
The artworks will “give a modern interpretation of the pioneering vision of Lord and Lady Armstrong.”Alan
Sykes is the Guardian Northerner’s roving arts specialist and a sheep farmer in the high Pennines. He Tweets here.NewcastleEnergyHeritageHeritageNorthumberlandThe National TrustAlan Sykesguardian.co.uk
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