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March of the Penguins Tops Box Offices
Zinside writes "Yahoo News is running a story stating that March of the Penguins may become the No. 2 documentary of all time at U.S. box offices." From the article: "The film, which follows a pack of Emperor Penguins during an arduous mating season, had grossed $18.4 million by Wednesday and was poised to surpass the $21.6 million for Michael Moore's anti-gun documentary Bowling For Columbine. For 13 months, Jacquet and his crew braved Antarctic temperatures as low as 70 degrees below zero - and winds up to 150 mph - to capture astonishing images of thousands of emperor penguins engaging in a mating and child-rearing ritual that is nothing short of astonishing. The Penguins are a miraculous species, capable of extreme heroism, self-sacrifice, sorrow and unshakable love."
In the meantime, the R-rated "The Wedding Crashers" is a summer sleeper as well, running at #2 for it's first two weekends, then up to #1 in its third weekend, then back to #2 this weekend, putting it's tally for less than 4 full weeks at over $144 million. And while "March..." did really well this weekend, it's because it nearly tripled its screen count. Yet vs. "The Wedding Crashers" it had a lower per-screen gross ($3709 vs. $5312) on fewer screens (1867 vs. 3106).
We'll have to watch it longer term to see if it's legs keep up.
What's neat to observe is that Warner Bros. is rolling in the dough this weekend with the gamut of ratings.
This Weekend's Top Grossers
#1: Dukes of Hazzard (Warner Brothers) - PG-13
#2: The Wedding Crashers (Newline - owned by WB) - R
#3: Charlie and the chocolate Factory (Warner Brothers) - PG
#5: Must Love Dogs (Warner Brothers) - PG-13
#6: March of the Penguins (Warner Independent) - G
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
from the article: "to surpass the $21.6 million for Michael Moore's anti-gun documentary Bowling For Columbine"
Obviously whoever wrote that never watched "Bowling For Columbine" or is trying to distort what it's about. Say what you want about the documentary but any honest person can tell you it's not anti-gun.
It you watch it, weather you agree with it or not, it's final premis is that the culture of fear and violence perpetrated by our foreign policy and the mass-media that supports it, that seems to cause the staggering amount of gun deaths in the US...not guns. In fact there are arguments made that it's not the guns (I remember the comparison to canada). Michael Moore himself is a member of the NRA.
This may be taken as flamebait or trolling or whatever but that statement made there about "Bowling for Columbine" is simply not correct.
I don't know if anyone has mentioned this or not (/me is lazy), but if you liked this film, you might wanna also check out Winged Migration, by Jacques Perrin. It's good on details, and incredibly beautiful. If you suffer a bit from add (/me again), you'll like it cause it's split into regions of the world, so you can take it bit by bit, if you don't think you can stand 2 hours straight of birds flying...
No trespassing. Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
Another excellent documentary is "The Blue Planet" series from the BBC. They also cover penguins, but not in as much detail, but then you get to see polar bears, whales, and the weird things deep down. It really gives an insight into the amazing variety of life on "our" planet.
...one of the best GBP30 I spent on DVDs.
The quality of the video is stunning - it's almost as if you have a window into the undersea.