Monday, April 30, 2012

'Think Like A Man' Takes Box Office For Second Week

'The Pirates! Band of Misfits' and 'Five-Year Engagement' also made the top five, with highly anticipated 'The Avengers' opening next weekend.
By Ryan J. Downey


Meagan Good in "Think Like a Man"
Photo: Screen Gems Productions

It was the calm before the storm at the box office over the weekend. "The Avengers" smashed records as the Marvel/Disney powerhouse flick began to open overseas, but in North America (where it has yet to open), "Think Like a Man" was able to top the box office for a second weekend with a relatively soft $18 million.

"The Avengers" was #1 in all 39 foreign territories where it opened, taking in $178.4 million around the world. The superhero team-up flick that unites Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Black Widow and Hawkeye set box-office records in places like Mexico, Brazil, Taiwan, the Philippines and Hong Kong. "The Avengers" is now #9 on the all-time foreign-openings chart despite the fact that it has yet to open in China, Russia or Japan. It opens this weekend in the U.S.

Domestically, "Think Like a Man" faced competition from four new movies that all underwhelmed with their debuts.

"The Pirates! Band of Misfits" was #2 with $11.4 million. The stop-motion animation movie is the latest from Britain's Aardman Animation, whose "Arthur Christmas" opened at $12.1 million in November of last year. In positive news for the film, "Pirates!" has already recouped its estimated $50 million budget worldwide. At press time, it also enjoyed a 86 percent "Tomatometer" score on Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates reviews from film critics. "It makes for an experience that, while geared toward younger, more fidgety audiences, has enough humor to keep Mom and Dad from falling asleep," The Washington Post reported.

"The Five Year Engagement" was a dud at fifth place with $11.16 million, much lower than director Nick Stoller's "Get Him to the Greek" ($17.5 million) and his previous collaboration with Jason Segel, "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" ($17.7 million). "Engagement" producer Judd Apatow's "Bridesmaids" opened with $26.2 million last spring.

Jason Statham's "Safe" was #6 with $7.7 million, which was lower than the opening weekends for both his "The Mechanic" ($11.4 million) and "Killer Elite" ($9.4 million). Rounding out the weekend's new wide releases, "The Raven" was #7 with $7.3 million. The movie stars John Cusack as a fictionalized version of Edgar Allan Poe.

"Think Like a Man," featuring a story based on the self-help book from comedian Steve Harvey, has earned $60.9 million in two weeks against an estimated production budget of just $12 million. Zac Efron's "The Lucky One" dipped to #3 on the box-office chart with $11.3 million in its second weekend for a two-week gross of $39.9 million. "The Hunger Games" was #4 with $11.3 million. The first entry in the planned trilogy has made $372.5 million domestically to date.

Of the movies in the top seven, only "Pirates!," "The Hunger Games" and "The Five-Year Engagement" have done well with critics. Reviews for "The Raven," which was directed by James McTeigue ("V for Vendetta"), have been particularly harsh. "It's just a bore; quoth the raven, 'Go see something else,' " wrote Associated Press movie writer David Germain.

Which movies are brave enough to do battle with "Marvel's The Avengers" this weekend? Smaller, limited-release films like "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" (starring Tom Wilkinson, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench and Bill Nighy), horror flick "Mother's Day" (from the maker of the second, third and fourth "Saw" movies) and Miley Cyrus' "LOL" will be the only movies attempting to sneak in under the radar alongside what is sure to be one of the year's biggest movies.

Critics are already heaping praise on "The Avengers," which follows on the heels of the already well-reviewed precursor Marvel movies "Iron Man" (94 percent Tomatometer), "The Incredible Hulk" (66 percent), "Iron Man 2" (74 percent), "Thor" (77 percent) and "Captain America: The First Avenger" (79 percent). Christie Lemire of The Associated Press proclaimed, "The dialogue sparkles as brightly as the special effects; these people may be wearing ridiculous costumes but they're well fleshed-out underneath. And so in every regard, this movie truly fulfills its hype." Justin Chang of Variety agreed: "Like a superior, state-of-the-art model built from reconstituted parts, [director/co-writer] Joss Whedon's buoyant, witty and robustly entertaining superhero smash-up is escapism of a sophisticated order."

Check out everything we've got on "The Hunger Games," "Think Like a Man" and "The Avengers."

For young Hollywood news, fashion and "Twilight" updates around the clock, visit HollywoodCrush.MTV.com.

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Google Maps 'Cube' game rolls out, back, up, back again

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Cast your mind back to January if you will. Head full of steamy CES action? Of course, but you may also remember Google teased us about a new tilt-and-roll Maps game. Well, it looks like the creators may have missed the original February deadline, having finally snuck it out this week. The browser-based game is a series of maze challenges, that'll take you through the streets of San Francisco, downtown Tokyo and beyond. All atop Google's iconic 3D textured maps, naturally. Eight levels in total are on offer, making it an ideal lunchtime -- or if the boss is away -- afternoon time kill. Roll down to the source link below to give it a spin, nudge and roll.

Google Maps 'Cube' game rolls out, back, up, back again originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 28 Apr 2012 07:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sunday, April 29, 2012

Origin PC joins the 11-inch, rebadged gaming laptop party, outs the EON 11-S

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Last week may have drawn to a close, but the march of Clevo news continues. On the heels of Maingear announcing an 11-inch gaming notebook, Origin PC is throwing its own ultraportable into the ring: the EON 11-S. Though this is a new model for the company (the smallest laptop it's ever sold, in fact), it's not quite fresh to us: this is the same exact Clevo-made notebook Maingear unveiled two days ago, only re-badged under Origin PC's brand and available in a wider range of colors. As far as performance goes, then, that means you can expect Ivy Bridge processors, a 2GB NVIDIA GT 650M GPU, Optimus graphics-switching technology and a battery rated for 6.5 hours of runtime. In Origin PC's case, the laptop starts at $999 (compared with $1,099 for Maingear), though you'll have to head over to Origin's site for a breakdown of what specs you'll be getting at that lower price. (Spoiler alert: adding an Ivy Bridge CPU instantly bumps the price to $1,294.)

Continue reading Origin PC joins the 11-inch, rebadged gaming laptop party, outs the EON 11-S

Origin PC joins the 11-inch, rebadged gaming laptop party, outs the EON 11-S originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Maps 'Cube' game rolls out, back, up, back again originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 28 Apr 2012 07:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Fusible  |  sourceGoogle Cube  | Email this | Comments

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Panasonic teams up with NHK on 145-inch 8K Super Hi-Vision plasma TV

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We thought the 8K 85-inch Super Hi-Vision LCD we saw during CES was impressive, but Japanese broadcaster NHK is already looking to surpass that by going even bigger. To that end it worked with Panasonic (above: that's Panasonic's Keishi Kubota on the left, Yoshio Ito of NHK on the right) to create this 145-inch prototype plasma, unveiled today as an example of the kind of displays we can expect to see once broadcasts jump to the higher resolution some day. The world's first self-illuminating Super Hi-Vision TV, it features every pixel of its expected 8K resolution -- 7,680 x 4,320. After working for months on smaller (only 85- or 103-inch) 4K plasmas, the two companies had to come up with an entirely new drive method for the display that works by scanning the pixels vertically to achieve a uniform picture quality. The NHK plans to show off the new display at its open house in May, although we're a bit more interested to see if we can watch the Olympics on it this summer. Check the gallery below for a few more pictures from DigInfo.TV's Don Kennedy, or hit the more coverage link for a breakdown of the difficulties encountered in building a high resolution display that's this massive.

[Image Credit: Don Kennedy, DigInfo.TV]

Panasonic teams up with NHK on 145-inch 8K Super Hi-Vision plasma TV originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Apr 2012 08:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Saturday, April 28, 2012

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