Tree of Life for Pitt & Penn

Tree of Life is sublime. It is the film any and every studied filmmaker who laud cinema and cinema theory would want to make. It is smart, academic, personal and artsy filmmaking can be without being at all amateur, nor alienating. In fact, you could hear a pin drop in the theater. The audience was completely engaged and stimulated with what was happening on the screen. Tree wants and acts like it wants to be a coming of age movie; however, it is more about the genesis of coming to be and existing.

Written and directed by Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life stars Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain and chronicles life through the eyes of a 1950's Texas family with sci-fi features, surrealist themes and impressionistic imagery through space, oceanic waves and human anatomy. Tree easily conjures up comparisons to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey; however, this would simply be homage as Tree is so strikingly original in glueing all of the elements of the narrative together like you have never seen before.Premiering in competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, The Tree of Life won the celebrated Palme d'Or and has since garnered overwhelmingly positive reviews for its technical and artistic merits, yet also received polarizing reactions in response to Malick's directorial style, in particular, film's fragmented and non-linear narrative.

Finally a movie to truly get excited about and inspired by at the cinema. Hollywoodteurs take note!

A Woody In Paris

Woody Allen's latest film, Midnight in Paris, starring Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams, is doing so well that Sony Pictures Classics is moving the film into a total of 944 theaters this weekend. Can you believe this is the widest play ever for an Allen pic after Anything Else in 2003? Truth is, I don't even recall Anything Else, which opened in 1,033 locations to begin with, and quickly vacated theaters cuming $3.2 million domestically.

Making its world premiere at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, Midnight in Paris opened in only six theaters on May 20th with one of the best location averages of all times with $99,834 at the domestic box office. The following weekend, Midnight expanded into 58 theaters, and then into 147 locations last weekend.

Midnight in Paris has done stellar business all along the way, cuming $7.4 million to date and landing on the top 10 chart for the past three weekends, despite its limited release. Sony Classics’ Tom Bernard and Michael Barker said they didn’t intend to expand nationwide until June 24th, but once they counted the gross receipts they quipped, "the film is working with audiences," and their plans quickly changed.

“Not only is this one of Woody Allen’s best films, it has this magical element which lends itself to be the alternative entertainment to the big studio picture. It has tremendous crossover potential,” Barker said. In Midnight in Paris, Wilson’s character discovers an alternate reality while in Paris with his wife. Wilson plays the sort of “everyman” character that a moviegoers tend to see in more mainstream films, versus in arthouse titles or in an Allen film. Critics across the country, and not just in New York have given Midnight in Paris great reviews.

Midnight in Paris has done great business in more commercial multiplexes and has even broken a number of house records in arthouse theaters, including the Landmark in Los Angeles. Allen’s top grossing film in recent years was Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which earned $23.2 million domestically. At its widest point, the film played in 726 theaters. Match Point grossed $23.2 million, and, at its widest, was in 512 theaters.

Get Paris on your weekend calendar.