Showing posts with label Men in Black 3’ ousts ‘The Avengers’ as top of box office this Memorial Day weekend. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Men in Black 3’ ousts ‘The Avengers’ as top of box office this Memorial Day weekend. Show all posts

Monday, May 28, 2012

MOVIE REVIEW : Men in Black 3’ ousts ‘The Avengers’ as top of box office this Memorial Day weekend ,Men in Black 3' exhibit at Museum of the Moving Image shows work of award-winning special-effects artist Rick Baker

(L-R) Actors Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin pose at a photo call for Columbia Pictures' "Men In Black 3" at the Four Seasons Hotel on May 3, 2012 in Los Angeles, California.  (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin made waves at the box office this weekend with 'Men in Black 3.'

Black suits and shades beat out heroes in tights at the box office over the holiday weekend.
Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones’ “Men in Black 3” opened as the No. 1 movie over Memorial Day weekend, bumping Disney’s “The Avengers” to No. 2.
“MIB3” took in $55 million domestically from Friday to Sunday.
“The Avengers,” which spent three weekends on top, took in $37 million to push it to $514 million, making the superhero smash the fourth movie ever to top half a billion dollars.
Sony, distributor of “Men in Black 3,” estimates that by the end of Monday the newest installment in the series will pull in $70 million domestically and $202 million worldwide.
“Battleship,” a Universal movie, was No. 3 in its second weekend with $10.8 million, raising its domestic earnings to $44.3 million.
“Men in Black 3” sold fewer tickets than the previous two installments. The original “Men in Black” debuted in 1997 and “Men in Black II” in 2002, when admission prices were much lower than they are today.
The third in the series brings Smith’s Agent J and Jones’ Agent K together again to battle a new alien menace that travels four decades back in time to do away with the younger Agent K (Josh Brolin).

Alien masks and intergalactic weaponry used in the film "Men in Black 3" is on display at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens.


Alien masks and intergalactic weaponry used in the film "Men in Black 3" are on display at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens.

You don’t have to travel to another galaxy to get up close and personal with the gruesome aliens and intergalactic guns seen in “Men in Black 3.”
The Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, is exhibiting a collection of masks and props from the film in “Aliens, Gadgets, and Guns: Designing the World of Men in Black 3,” on display through Sept. 23.
The extraterrestrial masks and creatures were created by Oscar-winning special-effects makeup artist Rick Baker, who led a crew of 50 in designing more than 125 aliens for the film — each of which could take months to complete.
“I got to make a lot of big, bug-eyed, big-brained aliens, which were the kind of aliens I grew up with,” Baker says. “I hope the audience understands the love that I put into these creatures.”
He was a big fan of
horror movies as a kid, and turned his parent’s kitchen into a monster-making laboratory, he said.
Baker went on to win seven Academy Awards — including the first Best Make-Up Oscar for “An American Werewolf in London.”
In addition to a selection of extraterrestrial weaponry, an alien passport and a pair of shades worn by star Will Smith in the movie, the exhibit also includes a video of the four-hour daily ritual of turning actor Jemaine Clement into alien villain Boris.
“He was a really good sport about it,” Baker says of applying silicone gel-filled appliances to Clement to make him resemble “a Hells Angel from the ’60s.”
The grueling process often required Baker and his team to start their often 18-hour days at 2 a.m.
“It’s tough for everyone,” he says. But “I had a lot of fun.”
Barbara Miller, who curated the museum exhibit, said she was impressed by the craftsmanship that went into the masks — which range from bulbous brains with ears sticking out like antennas to scaled, reptilian creations.
“It blows you away how beautiful they are — even in their creepiness,” Miller says. It’s “even more amazing that the actors wearing these masks were only on camera for a few seconds.”
Museum Executive Director Carl Goodman was particularly excited about “MIB 3” because much of it was filmed across the street at Kaufman Astoria Studios.


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