Canadian box-office stats -- July 18

Here are the figures for the past weekend, arranged from those that owe the highest percentage of their take to the Canadian box office to those that owe the lowest.

Piché: Entre ciel et terre -- CDN $1,700,000 -- N.AM $1,700,000 -- 100%
Knight and Day -- CDN $6,400,000 -- N.AM $69,117,400 -- 9.3%
Grown Ups -- CDN $11,730,000 -- N.AM $129,165,357 -- 9.1%
The Sorcerer's Apprentice -- CDN $2,130,000 -- N.AM $24,708,059 -- 8.6%
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse -- CDN $22,130,000 -- N.AM $264,791,897 -- 8.4%
Predators -- CDN $3,270,000 -- N.AM $40,300,543 -- 8.1%
Inception -- CDN $4,700,000 -- N.AM $62,785,337 -- 7.5%
Toy Story 3 -- CDN $27,080,000 -- N.AM $362,965,378 -- 7.5%
Despicable Me -- CDN $7,980,000 -- N.AM $118,434,555 -- 6.7%
The Last Airbender -- CDN $7,520,000 -- N.AM $115,138,607 -- 6.5%

A couple of discrepancies: Piché: Entre ciel et terre was #9 on the Canadian chart (it wasn't on the North American chart at all, though if it were, it would be #16), while The Karate Kid was #10 on the North American chart (it was #11 in Canada).

The Voldemort gallery -- a quick update.

Just a quick note to say that I finally picked up a copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) the other day, and I have now updated my earlier post with the pictures of all the actors who have played Tom Marvolo Riddle, AKA the Dark Lord Voldemort, in the various Harry Potter movies.

The Arts & Faith Top 100 -- a couple of blurbs

As some of you know, I've been an active member of the Arts & Faith discussion board since it was created seven years ago -- and I happened to start this blog during a period of some, uh, political upheaval there about five years ago.

Last year, however, the board was sold to the good folks at Image magazine, and they've been doing some great things with the site -- the most notable of which is that they brought back the Arts & Faith Top 100, a list of favorite films that the A&F community votes on from time to time.

This year's selection is a bit artier than previous versions of the list, but there's still a lot to appreciate, and on a design level, the webpages dedicated to each film are a definite step up from what we had before.

Among other things, each entry has its own special blurb, written by a member of the A&F community -- and yes, I wrote two of them myself, namely the ones for Jesus of Montreal and Crimes and Misdemeanors. (The fact that both films came out in 1989 is purely coincidental, I swear.)

Check 'em out, and while you're at it, feel free to join the board itself and take part in the conversation there.

The Brave Little Toy-ster?

Tim Jones, one of the bloggers at JimmyAkin.org, notes that there are several striking parallels between Toy Story 3 and The Brave Little Toaster, a children's story that was first published in 1980 and then became an animated film in 1987.

The most interesting thing about Jones's observation is that Pixar chief John Lasseter, who personally directed the first two Toy Storys (1995-1999), actually pitched a computer-animated version of The Brave Little Toaster to the powers-that-be at Disney when he was an animator there in the early 1980s -- and he was promptly fired for his efforts. Lasseter himself describes the experience in the following clip from The Pixar Story (2007), starting at the 1:38 mark:



Of course, as Jim Hill noted a few years ago, if Lasseter hadn't been fired, he might have missed his chance to join Pixar in its early days, and he might not have gotten around to revolutionizing the industry so thoroughly that Disney ended up buying Pixar outright and putting Lasseter in charge of its animation division. (Add to this the Oscar that Lasseter won for 1988's Tin Toy, and the nominations he got for a few other computer-animated films, and his story brings to mind a great line from Francis Ford Coppola to the effect that "the things you're fired for when young are often the same things you're given awards for later in life.")

So it's striking that Toy Story 3 -- the first Pixar film that was conceived after the company's merger with Disney -- might be an homage of sorts to the story that caused the original rift between Lasseter and Disney nearly 30 years ago. The animator and the studio have come full circle, as it were.

Of course, this also raises, once again, the question of whether Pixar movies, despite their reputation for originality, tend to recycle the plots of other movies, especially those produced in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Canadian box-office stats -- July 4 & 11

Here are the figures for the past weekend, arranged from those that owe the highest percentage of their take to the Canadian box office to those that owe the lowest.

Piché: Entre ciel et terre -- CDN $854,313 -- N.AM $854,313 -- 100%
The A-Team -- CDN $6,950,000 -- N.AM $73,971,000 -- 9.4%
Knight and Day -- CDN $5,570,000 -- N.AM $61,939,000 -- 9.0%
Grown Ups -- CDN $9,680,000 -- N.AM $111,315,000 -- 8.7%
The Karate Kid -- CDN $13,200,000 -- N.AM $164,600,000 -- 8.0%
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse -- CDN $18,440,000 -- N.AM $237,000,000 -- 7.8%
Toy Story 3 -- CDN $24,360,000 -- N.AM $340,200,000 -- 7.2%
Predators -- CDN $1,730,000 -- N.AM $25,300,000 -- 6.8%
The Last Airbender -- CDN $6,080,000 -- N.AM $100,227,000 -- 6.1%
Despicable Me -- CDN $3,010,000 -- N.AM $60,117,000 -- 5.0%

A couple of discrepancies: Piché: Entre ciel et terre was #8 on the Canadian chart (it wasn't on the North American chart at all, though if it were, it would be #13), while Cyrus was #10 on the North American chart (it was #16 in Canada).

And here are the figures for the previous weekend, arranged from those that owe the highest percentage of their take to the Canadian box office to those that owe the lowest.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time -- CDN $9,790,000 -- N.AM $88,144,671 -- 11.1%
Get Him to the Greek -- CDN $6,380,000 -- N.AM $57,474,815 -- 11.1%
Shrek Forever After -- CDN $23,240,000 -- N.AM $232,278,641 -- 10.0%
The A-Team -- CDN $6,500,000 -- N.AM $69,280,974 -- 9.4%
Knight and Day -- CDN $4,220,000 -- N.AM $45,751,847 -- 9.2%
Grown Ups -- CDN $6,920,000 -- N.AM $77,631,117 -- 8.9%
The Karate Kid -- CDN $12,090,000 -- N.AM $151,523,517 -- 8.0%
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse -- CDN $11,190,000 -- N.AM $157,577,169 -- 7.1%
Toy Story 3 -- CDN $20,380,000 -- N.AM $289,106,193 -- 7.0%
The Last Airbender -- CDN $3,370,000 -- N.AM $57,836,116 -- 5.8%

A couple of discrepancies: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was #9 on the Canadian chart (it was #12 in North America as a whole), while Letters to Juliet was #10 on the North American chart (it was #11 in Canada).