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Good Time “Fockers” is Pronounced a Success by Mike Snider and Cesar Soriano (USA Today)

Posted by Ed and Lois

What’s in a name? If the name is Focker, it means that a movie based on a takeoff of the F-word becomes the family hit of Christmas weekend.

Meet the Fockers, the sequel to 2000’s hit Meet the Parents, set a record for Christmas Day, $19 million, and eventually took in $46.1 million to be the No. 1 movie of the weekend.

And Fockers focuses even more than Meet the Parents on plays on the family name, with characters named Dom and Orney Focker (pronounced “fawker”). How did the moviemakers get away with the joke and keep a PG-13 rating?

After it submitted Meet the Parents, Universal Studios was asked by the ratings board whether it had made up the name Focker. In response, the studio submitted a list of real people named Focker. That film earned a PG-13 rating, and the studio aimed for the same rating for this one. Meet the Fockers is rated PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, language and a brief drug reference.

Christine Rodriguez of Miami watched Fockers with her two teens, Emmanuel, 13, and Jose, 18. She says the F-word humor “was innocent. (But) I felt uncomfortable with quite a few of the sexual references. Throughout the movie, I kept asking, ‘What is this rated?’ I thought it was PG-13, but it felt like I was watching a rated-R movie.”

Nell Minow, editor of MovieMom .com, warns, “Parents should know that there is a lot of R-level humor in this movie,” citing the film’s graphic sex talk.

Music

Posted by Ed and Lois

Critics gang up on the world of music, (USA Today)

This year, we decided to try for a consensus. Well, getting Edna Gundersen, Steve Jones, Elysa Gardner, Brian Mansfield and Ken Barnes to agree on anything made threading that proverbial camel through the eye of a needle seem like a breeze in comparison. But the result, we think, provides a varied, intriguing and occasionally provocative look at the past year.

USA TODAY album of the year

U2, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Gundersen labeled it U2’s best album; others on the panel weren’t quite as laudatory, but it did garner the most mentions. Also rock album of the year.

The rest of the top 10

2. Alison Krauss & Union Station, Lonely Runs Both Ways (best country album)

3. Loretta Lynn, Van Lear Rose

4. Green Day, American Idiot

5. Kanye West, The College Dropout (best rap album)

6. Brian Wilson, Smile

7. Prince, Musicology (best R&B album)

8. Elvis Costello & The Attractions, The Delivery Man (best singer/songwriter album)

9. Patty Griffin, The Impossible Dream

10. Usher, Confessions

Best live performer

Prince, who sold the most concert tickets in 2004. Madonna’s higher prices earned her the top concert gross (not to be confused with top gross concert, which was — at least according to the FCC — Janet at the Super Bowl).

Best dead performer

Jerry Garcia. The Grateful Dead guitarist hasn’t been alive since 1995 but managed to release three major live collections of solo work this year.

Best comeback

Brian Wilson.Smile, which might have been the best pop album of 1967, is many people’s choice for best pop album of 2004.

Lowering of standards

Rod Stewart. One album sleepwalking through the Great American Songbook is a misdemeanor; three is approaching capital-crime territory.

Best reissue

The Clash, London Calling. Classic 1980 album now fleshed out with DVD and demos.

Worst reissue

The Beatles, The Capitol Albums, Vol. 1. Cheap and flimsy replica of the inferior, truncated and sonically doctored albums delivered to U.S. fans in the mid-‘60s who weren’t aware they were being shortchanged.

Full Post:http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/reviews/2004-12-27-critics-music_x.htm

Monster Burger Dares To Be Eaten (Fox News)

Posted by Ed and Lois

In a direct challenge to American pride, the world’s biggest cheeseburger has been cooked up 5,000 miles away in Glasgow, Scotland.

The massive sandwich weighs 10 pounds, is 18 inches across and contains 12 slices of cheese and a mere 7,000 calories, about 3½ times the recommended daily intake.

It’s yours for free if you can polish it off in three hours, says the Baloo Burger Company . Otherwise, it’ll set you back $125.

Not only does the slab of beef itself weigh 7 pounds, almost as much as a newborn baby, but eating the burger will inject 200 grams of fat into your system.

The previous record-holder had been a 6-pound slider at a pub in Pennsylvania, which Johnson saw as a challenge.

Full Post:http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,142660,00.html

Smart Money’s On Family by Gary Strauss (USA Today)

Posted by Ed and Lois

Uncle Nino, a little movie about moral values, is finally getting its due.

Principal filming on the movie about a long-lost relative who reunites a troubled family wrapped in 2002. But Uncle Nino, which stars Joe Mantegna and Anne Archer, languished after distributors passed on the $3 million film made outside the studio system, dismissing it as too limited in appeal and marketability.

Nino bounced back onto the industry’s radar after test-market screenings in Grand Rapids, Mich., produced enough word-of-mouth praise to extend an initial two-week run in December 2003 to 56 weeks. Nino has since gained a distributor and is scheduled to roll into major markets in February.

Hollywood, whose concept of family entertainment has evolved from tearjerkers such as National Velvet to costly adventure films such as National Treasure, is taking notice
To some, the timing smacks of knee-jerk Hollywood response to the cultural divide illustrated in red and blue states. To others, the movies are efforts to cash in on the Christian-infused success of The Passion of the Christ. But studios say they’re not pandering to conservatives; they’re simply responding to market forces. And in a nation still squeamish over wardrobe malfunctions and violence, studios are willing to bet that quiet, wholesome entertainment films like Nino will attract multi-generational audiences, especially preteens and the 40-plus crowd, the industry’s fastest-growing demographic.

Full Post:http://www.usatoday.com/life/2004-12-27-pop-main_x.htm

Top Grossing Movies 2004

Posted by Ed and Lois

Mel Gibson’s gamble on “The Passion of the Christ” paid off in a major way, grossing more than $370 million and making the Aussie re-import Forbes’ most powerful celebrity.

1. “Shrek 2” — $436.7 million

2. “Spider-Man 2” — $373.4 million

3. “The Passion of the Christ” — $370.3 million

4. “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” — $249.4 million

5. “The Incredibles” — $232.6 million

6. “The Day After Tomorrow” — $186.7 million

7. “The Bourne Supremacy” — $176.1 million

8. “Shark Tale” — $159.3 million

9. “I, Robot” — $144.8 million

10. “Troy” — $133.3 million

Source: EDI FilmSource, 12/12/04