Box Office: Rusty "Chappie" Tops Weak Chart

Hi everyone! Anne Marie here with the weekend box office. We're about a week away from the first big releases of the year, so the news is mostly underwhelming. We had a handful of new releases this weekend with mixed results. Chappie, South African director Neill Blomkamp's third scifi film with a social message, underperformed in its opening weekend, making it Blomkamp's poorest opening yet. This probably won't affect his involvement in the Alien reboot, but I'm sure there are some sweating execs out there at Sony right now. The world gave a collective shrug to Unfinished Business, the Vince Vaughan vehicle that I kept forgetting about, even though it's been aggressively marketed. Other than that, things mostly faded, with Focus and Kingsman maintaining their unsteady hold, while post-Valentine's Day 50 Shades of Grey went soft and Jupiter Ascending finally crashed.

TOP OF THE BOX OFFICE
Click on the highlighted titles for past articles on that film

01 CHAPPIE $13.3 NEW
02 FOCUS $10.2 (cum $34.6)
03 SECOND BEST MARIGOLD HOTEL $8.6 NEW 
04 KINGSMAN $8.3 (cum $98)
05 SPONGEBOB MOVIE $7 (cum $149)
06 50 SHADES OF GREY  $5.6 (cum $156.4)
07 MCFARLAND USA $5.3 (cum $29.4)
08 THE LAZARUS EFFECT $5.1 (cum $17.4)
09 THE DUFF $4.8 (cum $26.1)
10 UNFINISHED BUSINESS $4.8 NEW 

In bolder news: American Sniper became the #1 movie of 2014 outgrossing the second Hunger Games sequel and Guardians of the Galaxy's franchise launcher.

In happier news:  Second Best Marigold Hotel opened in only 1,573 screens this weekend, but managed to make it to the #3 spot on the Box Office charts with the highest per screen average: $5,467. This is wonderful news for the Judi Dench and Maggie Smith fans of the world, though considering its low $8.6 opening, we can safely conclude this was an off weekend for movie watching. 

What did you watch this weekend?

but is it a link post?

Awards Daily takes on the unfortunate phrase "but is it an Oscar movie?" in relation (partially at least) to Gone Girl.
Empire Leonardo DiCaprio continues to have a bajillion movies in development. He's now bought the rights toAmerican Wolf which Robert Zemeckis wanted, too
i09 Be careful what you wish for. We've always wanted Christopher Walken in another movie musical. But this picture of him as Captain Hook is TERRIFYING
The Stake good piece on the casting of Vince Vaughn in True Detective 2 and what has happened to the actors original gifts
/bent 10 great queer films by straight directors. This was not prompted by Pride -- which you should totally see in theaters now -- but that also applies 

My New Plaid Pants Frankenstein is so hot right now
Telegraph Profile of Luke Evans who headlines Dracula Untold. This time he actually acknowledges that "Noted Homosexual" business albeit in a very Jodie Foster way
Salon suggests that Woody Allen's Magic in the Moonlight (which I weirdly have not yet seen) could have been way more fascinating based on the real life magician that inspired it
Guardian so many film festivals happening at the same time. This is a recap of Fantastic Fest in Austin
BadAss Digest investigates why some trilogies will never split up their last film into two parts as is currently the trend. For this we must profusely thank The Four Musketeers?
AV Club really smart scathing review of the new series Stalker and the general problem of victim exploitation on television
/Film The film adaptation of Y: The Last Man is still in Development Hell. Here's what's going on...
In Contention the only SNL actors to win Oscar nominations - can you name all 9 without looking? 
The Guardian on Emma Watson. She continues to have the press hopeless enamored. And I heard random old ladies on the street talking about her UN speech the other day.
AV Club celebrates incest! Perhaps that was a poor choice of words. They're selecting famously incestuous pairs from recent movies & tv from Game of Thrones to August: Osage County

Viola photographed by Graeme Mitchellicymi
Last week the New York Times had fine ass profiles of two of our favorite creatives, director P.T. Anderson and  actress Viola Davis who is our unofficial 'star of the week' since she keeps inadvertedly being brought up in every post lately. Love her quotes in this piece, like...

“I always got the phone call that said: ‘I have a great project for you. You’re going to be with, hypothetically, Vanessa Redgrave, Julianne Moore, Annette Bening. Then I get the script, and I have a role that lasts for a page or two.”

I wish I'd written this
I was trying to voice my frustration about a new terrifying age of lost old movies post-streaming technology on twitter then other day but this KQED Arts article is way more articulate than I was being "For Cinephiles, Netflix is less and less an option." If anyone has a solution or a silver lining to any of this, please speak up!