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March 16th, 2008

Top Movies for 3/16/08

hortonwho.jpg Horton Hears a Who, the latest computer animated feature film from Blue Sky Studios, was a huge box office winner over the weekend, capitalizing on family audiences to earn an estimated total of $45.1 million. Based on the Dr. Seuss book of the same name, Horton Hears a Who features the voice work of Jim Carrey, Steve Carrel, Carol Burnett, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, and Will Arnett, and provided 20th Century Fox with the biggest opening of the year thus far.

Last weekend’s box office champ, the prehistoric saga 10,000 B.C., slipped to a distant second with $16.4 million in ticket sales, bringing its 10-day total to a solid $61.2 million.

Other new entries into the top-10 this week included Never Back Down (No. 3), the story of a troubled teen who finds new direction in the sport of mixed martial arts, and the horror thriller Doomsday (No. 7), about a modern-day epidemic that forces the entire nation of Scotland to be quarantined.

Here’s the complete Top 10 for the weekend of 3/16/08:

  1. Horton Hears a Who, $45.1 million
  2. 10,000 B.C., $16.4 million
  3. Never Back Down, $8.6 million
  4. College Road Trip, $7.9 million
  5. Vantage Point, $5.4 million
  6. The Bank Job, $4.9 million
  7. Doomsday, $4.7 million
  8. Semi-Pro, $3 million
  9. The Other Boleyn Girl, $2.9 million
  10. The Spiderwick Chronicles, $2.4 million
March 16th, 2008

Short Films

prideofbriarville.jpg A few days ago I came across a website for something called the Small Town Film Festival. After browsing around, I figured out that the Small Town Film Festival is a special competition for short films written, directed, and produced by people from small towns (with a population under 75,000).

I’ve been wanting to start watching short films, but can’t figure out where to get them from. This website seemed like a good place to find some interesting shorts, as I reviewed the synopses of past winners. They included The Pride of Briarville, which I bet doesn’t make use of any famous Branson hotels despite being filmed in that location; Broken, which I heard is 15 minutes of nonstop action; and Super-Anon, which I believe focuses on a support group for relatives of superheroes.

However, I was disappointed that none of these films were available for viewing on the site, nor did I see any additional information about where to find the films.

That leaves me with the question: how do you find these 15- to 30-minute shorts to watch? They’re obviously not at Blockbuster, so what’s left? YouTube?

If anyone knows, please tell me!

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