New Halloween Movie Opens To A Huge Box Office Number

The new Halloween movie starring Jamie Lee Curtis opened in the United States and Canada over the weekend, and it was a massive success. The movie pulled in an estimated $77.5 million over the Friday-Sunday period, according to Entertainment Weekly. That’s good for the second-biggest October opening in history, only behind Venom, which made $80.3 million for its first weekend earlier this month. It’s also the second-highest start for an R-rated horror movie, behind only the killer clown movie It ($123.4 million).

Halloween, which is a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s 1978 classic, had a reported budget of only $10 million, so it’s already a huge commercial success, it would seem. Jamie Lee Curtis responded to the box office numbers with a tweet that also mentions that Halloween is the biggest opening for a horror movie with a female lead and the biggest start for any movie with a female lead over 55. She also points out that Halloween set a new franchise record for how much money it made on its first weekend.

The new Halloween is directed by David Gordon Green, who previously helmed the Seth Rogen stoner movie Pineapple Express, as well as the Sandra Bullock film Our Brand Is Crisis.As mentioned, Jamie Lee Curtis returns to play Laurie Strode as she yet again fights against the masked murdered Michael Myers. John Carpenter, who directed 1978’s Halloween, is attached to the new film as a creative consultant.

GameSpot’s review of the new Halloween was mostly positive.

Halloween doesn’t reinvent the wheel or create a new subgenre of horror. What it does is take the best parts of all the films in the franchise, and deliver the ultimate companion piece to Carpenter’s 1978 masterpiece,” reviewer Rafael Motamayor said. “It’s a film that not only has something to say about trauma and PTSD, but also delivers a bloody, fun time at the theater. Will Michael Myers return again? Who knows, but we sure as hell welcome him home.”

For more on the Halloween franchise, check out GameSpot’s ranking of the Halloween films. You can also check out GameSpot’s interview with producer Jason Blum where he talks about how they were able to convince John Carpenter to return.

The new Halloween movie crushed the competition at the US/Canada box office this weekend. You can see the full Top 10 list for October 19-21 below.

  1. Halloween — $77.5 million
  2. A Star Is Born — $19.3 million
  3. Venom — $18.1 million
  4. Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween — $9.7 million
  5. First Man — $8.6 million
  6. The Hate U Give — $7.5 million
  7. Smallfoot — $6.6 million
  8. Night School — $5 million
  9. Bad Times at the El Royale — $3.3 million
  10. The Old Man and the Gun — $2.1 million

Halloween: Jamie Lee Curtis Has A Second Role In The New Movie And It’s Hilarious

A new Halloween movie is in theaters, giving Jamie Lee Curtis the chance to rule the big screen once again as her iconic character Laurie Strode goes toe-to-toe with psychotic killer Michael Myers one more time. It’s the first time that Curtis has been in the role since 2002’s Halloween: Resurrection, which saw the death of Laurie come early in the film. Thankfully, the new Halloween pretends that–and every other movie after the first–never happened. The following contains spoilers for Halloween, so stop reading here if you haven’t seen the movie.

Interestingly, Laurie isn’t the only character Curtis is playing in the new film. While she’s not credited for it, the film legend also did a bit of voice acting work. In one scene, early in the film, Michael is killing people on–when else–Halloween. In one scene, he goes into a house and kills a woman with a hammer, before walking into her living room and pausing when he hears a crying baby.

Audiences are left in suspense, wondering if Michael is actually enough of an evil entity to murder an infant, before he simply moves on and continues his killing spree down the block. That crying baby, though, is Curtis.

No Caption Provided

Director David Gordon Green revealed as much to GameSpot and a few other outlets during the Halloween junket. “She does this f***ing baby cry, and so when we got really close, we used a real baby cry,” he said. “As you hear it coming around, you can hear a baby’s cry softly in the background. It’s her. But that was just a last minute idea.”

It was so last minute because originally, this moment wasn’t in the script. Instead, it was suggested by a crew member when they realized there was a blank spot in the living room Michael was walking through.

“At the last minute, we’re like, ‘there’s this boring gap here,'” Green remembered. “So it was going to be her husband asleep on the sofa and it’s like, ‘Who gives a s*** about her husband sleeping on the sofa? Whatever.’ But a baby crying, you’re like, ‘Oh, there’s an ethical choice here.'”

Naturally, we had to ask Curtis to demonstrate her hidden talent, which she was able to do on cue and to perfection. “That’s called an Easter egg,” she said.

Halloween is in theaters.

The Walking Dead: “Warning Signs” Review

Warning: Full spoilers for The Walking Dead’s “Warning Signs” follow…

Welp. I don’t know how you side with Rick, as idealistic and optimistic as he is, after “Warning Signs.”

I’m not saying this guy needs to go down, or anything that drastic, but the ending here, which sort of wrapped up a three-episode arc involving everyone needing the Saviors to build a bridge and many of said Saviors going missing, made a very convincing case for eliminating these a-holes and salting the soil behind them.

Sure, there’s a balanced debate to be had about second chances and moving past the violence. I get that. I’m just saying that maybe something should be done, judgment should be weighed, on a case-by-case basis. Bring all the Saviors out for individual trials. Rick would love everyone to forgive (and possibly forget) just because he has, basically. And he’s right to a certain extent about there needing to be a unified front of mercy, along with a charter (that Michonne is currently cooking up), for society to move forward. But maybe this generation can’t do that. Or, in the very least, it’s foolish to expect them to without much more than a rousing speech to guide them.

Continue reading…

Lex Luthor’s Imminent Arrival Looms Large in Supergirl

This week, the stakes of Supergirl Season 3 became all the more clear as the zealous Graves siblings revealed they have not been acting alone and tipped their hand regarding their plans for the future. It’s pretty simple, really: Together with the mysterious masked Agent Liberty, Otis and Mercy Graves plan on exposing and destabilizing the entire alien population of America, all in the name of–well, making it great again.

The political allegories in this one are anything but subtle.

What’s more, Agent Liberty himself spent a bit more time in the spotlight, thanks to he and Mercy’s partnership. That gave us our first real look at his civilization followers, the “Children of Liberty,” as they’ll soon be known according to series producer Robert Rovner. “We learn more about Agent Liberty’s backstory in episode 4,” Rovner teased when speaking with GameSpot and a group of reporters at The CW earlier this week. “It’s an origin story, which I think adds a lot of depth to our villain. You get to see where he came from and how he got to be the way he is.”

But perhaps more interesting that Agent Liberty alone is his partnership with Mercy Graves, which was explored in this episode, along with Mercy’s former partnership with Lex Luthor, who was announced this week as an upcoming addition to the season. Mercy was, according to Lena, Lex’s right hand for quite some time before their partnership came to a rather disastrous end. Apparently Mercy wanted to push Lex and his ideals even further than he was comfortable with–which seems a bit difficult to believe, considering Lex’s reputation as one of the worst of the worst over in the comics.

Speaking of the comics–Mercy’s connection to the Luthor name won’t come as a surprise to DC fans. In the comics, Mercy was brought in (a transplant from the Animated universe, like Harley Quinn) as Lex’s personal secretary and bodyguard. She’s a cybernetically enhanced Amazon who has all the ruthless cunning of her boss, with added superhuman strength and invulnerability, making her quite the force to be reckoned with. We saw a small sample of that this week as Mercy went toe-to-toe with Lena using pieces of Lena’s own L-Corp exosuit–a nod to Lex’s comic book power armor.

Significantly, a large part of Mercy’s comic book history revolves around Lex Luthor’s campaign (and eventual tenure) as President of the USA, and considering how up-in-the-air the presidency is in the Supergirl universe right about now, that may be something to keep an eye on in the future. Rovner was, of course, unable to confirm or deny whether a President Luthor plotline was in the show’s immediate future, but there are certainly political seeds being sown.

Agent Liberty, too, was shown conducting a town hall-like meeting with his soon-to-be “Children of Liberty” promising the tides of change for those humans who feel disenfranchised by the aliens on Earth. Along with exposing the alien threat, Liberty also seems to want to make a power play of his own–to what end, we can’t be sure. But let’s just say there’s a chance that the man behind the mask isn’t a total stranger to Mercy or to Lena after all, and that maybe Mercy and Lex’s partnership isn’t as over and done with as Lena would like to believe.

Of course, a Luthor reveal for Agent Liberty would be a left turn for the character. His comic book counterpart is a man named Benjamin Lockwood, a former CIA agent turned tech-based superhero. That incarnation of Liberty was more frequently a morally ambiguous anti-establishment figure who rallied against the government and occasionally teamed up with the Justice League.

Regardless of whether Agent Liberty is, in fact, Luthor in disguise, another member of Team Supergirl is about to find themselves in the crosshairs of the conflict. James Olsen’s editorial with CatCo Worldwide Media is going to make some waves, Rovner explained, that may or may not bring some unwanted attention to him. “His relationship with the Children of Liberty is an interesting one. It has its roots in this episode, but it’s going to get much more complicated as we get deeper into the season.”

What, exactly, constitutes “complicated” for James Olsen is certainly up for debate, but with the chaos Agent Liberty has already wrought in National City this season–and the promise for more to come, best practice seems to be paying close attention to the possible clues about whoever is behind the mask. Luthor or not, he’s certainly not a threat to be taken lightly.

The Simpsons Misses the Mark This Halloween

Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.

The Simpsons has been dropping new “Treehouse of Horror” specials annually for almost 30 years straight now. You’d think there would be absolutely nothing left in the horror genre for the series to lampoon at this point. That’s what makes this year’s special so surprising. Somehow, we’ve made it this far without a “Treehouse of Horror” tackling either Invasion of the Body Snatchers or Jurassic Park. Then again, after watching this year’s special, you have to wonder if those movies should have remained off-limits.

This year’s special started out well. Rather than attempt an elaborate, horror-fied version of the usual opening theme, the show gave us a shorter Halloween vignette to kick things off. It turns out that Lovecraftian horror and New England stereotypes make for a pretty effective combination. The fact that there was so much opportunity for clever sign humor (the one area in which this series still never fails to deliver) certainly didn’t hurt.

Continue reading…

All The Games Xbox Is Bringing To PAX Aus

PAX Aus takes place this week in Melbourne, and now Microsoft has joined PlayStation and Ubisoft in announcing all of the games it will bring to the mega-show.

Microsoft’s booth on the show floor will include more than 80 Xbox One X consoles, with unreleased games like Ori and the Will of the Wisps and Battlefield V available to play. For Battlefield V, this will be 32-player multiplayer on the Rotterdam map for Conquest mode.

PUBG will also be playable, featuring the War mode on the new map Sanhok. What’s more, Microsoft will have Forza Horizon 4 available to play, while the company is also bringing an actual McLaren 720S to its booth to show off.

A number of indie games will also be playable in Microsoft’s booth, including Tunic, Bendy and the Ink Machine, Supermarket Shriek, and Ashen.

Outside of the playable games, Microsoft is hosting an briefing called “Xbox Presents: Gaming for Everyone” at the EB Live Stage on Friday, October 26 at 1 PM. What’s more, ID@Xbox boss Chris Charla will be on panel called Indie Dev Support: THE CSR of the Industry at 6 PM that day.

Additionally, Xbox is partnering with the NEXT Exhibit to show off its new Adaptive Controller. The controller will also be available at the Diversity Lounge, where streamer Hand Solo will give a presentation.

PAX Aus kicks off on October 26 with a keynote address by Rhianna Pratchett, who worked on the Tomb Raider reboot and its sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider. She also wrote Mirror’s Edge, Heavenly Sword, and the Overlord series. During her PAX Aus keynote, she’ll be engaging directly with fans, answering questions about any number of topics.

GameSpot’s theatre, the GameSpot Dropbear Theatre, will have programming running Friday through Sunday. We’ll be hosting panels on Fortnite’s coverage in the mainstream media, voice acting featuring actors from Telltale’s The Walking Dead and Fallout 4, and hacking a video game, among other topics. You can see the full programming lineup for the GameSpot Dropbear Theatre here, while a full list of every PAX Aus panel can be seen here.

Also new for this year is that PAX Aus and another big-time Australian gaming show, the EB Expo, are joining forces. PAX Aus three-day tickets are sold out, but you can still buy single-day tickets for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday here on the event’s website.

Xbox PAX Aus Games Lineup

Xbox One Games

  • Ori and the Will of the Wisps
  • PUBG
  • Battlefield V
  • Forza Horizon 4

ID@Xbox

  • Tunic
  • Supermarket Shriek
  • Ashen
  • Bendy and the Ink Machine

Xbox Game Pass titles featured in the Xbox Lounge

  • Shadow of the Tomb Raider
  • Rocket League
  • Human Fall Flat
  • Halo 5
  • The Division
  • Quantum Break

Stan and Ollie Review

This is an advance review. Stan & Ollie opens in limited release December 28.

It’s hard to articulate just how successful and famous comedians Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were in their heyday. Together, Laurel & Hardy starred in over 100 films, many of them box office smashes. Their cartoonish personae and impish schtick, with the rotund Hardy constantly at the receiving end of the sticklike Laurel’s oblivious gags, fit in practically any situation. They were master comedians working at the top of their game.

But all stars must fall. Jon S. Baird’s new biopic Stan & Ollie finds the two legends at the end of their careers, still as funny as ever but struggling to find an audience now that comedy has moved on, and acts like Abbott & Costello rule the entertainment world. It sounds melancholy, and sometimes it is, but Baird has nothing but warmth in his heart for these two comedy maestros. The film is as funny and charming a Hollywood biopic as you’re ever likely to find.

Continue reading…