Tuesday, 20 January 1998

WEEKEND REVIEW

It was a long, long weekend. Long enough for Titanic to rack up another $35 million. Fallen beat out Hard Rain, $10.4 million to $8.3 million, and Half Baked did better than expected with $8 million over the four days (You can just imagine how much popcorn they sold). Meanwhile, Gudmundur Breidfjord e-mailed me this perspective on Titanic's box office. "If you don't believe your domestic box office, what about Iceland? (Don't laugh) Here in this tiny island in the north, Titanic opened on Jan 1 and on the first five days on three screen in three theaters, Titanic took in $135,000! (That is close to 10 million Icelandic kroners!) Mind you, Iceland is a nation of only 260,000 people and has only seven movie theaters with total of 28 screens. This number is UNBELIVABLE! Snow or no snow! Rain or no rain! They will come."

The family of William Murdoch, the Titanic watch commander who is shown committing suicide in the film, is ticked off. His nephew, Scott Murdoch, now 80 years old, says that the moment is "completely fictional," insisting that his uncle "went down with the ship after showing great heroism." No lawsuit seems to be on the horizon. No such luck for Steven Spielberg, who can't seem to avoid litigation these days. The court is allowing Stephen Kessler to go to trial with claims that Twister was ripped off from his script, Catch The Wind. Kessler, who is based in St. Louis, says that he delivered his script to companies that represent Spielberg and writer Michael Chrichton. Sounds more like Kessler is passing the wind.

Not nearly as concerned about the bottom line, Sir Alec Guinness ( a.k.a. Obi-wan Kenobi) tells a story in his upcoming autobiography about meeting a child who claimed to have seen Star Wars over 100 times. Guinness told the child to stop seeing the movie so forcefully that the child burst into tears. "I just hope the lad," Guinness writes, "now in his thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of secondhand, childish banalities." Nope. He'll have to wait until Memorial Day 1999, when the Star Wars prequel hits theaters.

From Iceland to La-La-Land, e-mail me your questions and comments.