Woman Power

Religious fervour

“It’s been a while for a female-driven comedy like this,” he said, noting the movie had become something of a “girls’ night out” experience and had played well in all areas of the country. Heaven Is for Real, the story of a young boy who claims to have visited heaven during a near-death experience, continued to build strength among moviegoers who this year have flocked to see faith-based films.
Starring Greg Kinnear, Heaven Is for Real has totaled $51.9 million in ticket sales since its April 16 release. The movie is the fourth faith-based film this year to generate impressive box-office returns, including Noah, which stars Russell Crowe as the Biblical figure and is approaching the $100 million mark.
The animated film Rio 2, also from Fox and featuring the voices of Jesse Eisenberg and Anne Hathaway as blue Spix macaw birds, was fourth with ticket sales of $13.7 million. It follows recent hit animated films like Frozen and The Lego Movie that have drawn both kids and their parents to movie theaters.
Brick Mansions, an action film starring the late Paul Walker, rounded out the top five with ticket sales of $9.6 million. The 40-year-old Walker, a star of the Fast and Furious car racing movie series, was killed on November 30 last year in a fiery single-car accident while driving with a friend after leaving a charity event in Valencia, California.
Brick Mansions marked the directorial debut of Camille Delamarre and was written by French film-maker Luc Besson, who based it on his 2004 film, Banlieue 13. Walt Disney Co distributed Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Heaven is for Real was distributed by Sony’s TriStar studio. Brick Mansions was released by Relativity Media.

The Other Woman serves up revenge in comic female fantasy

The Other Woman is a somewhat rare species in today’s film fauna— a comedy by women, about women and for women. But not just for women star Cameron Diaz said, even though the film is a tale of three women who band together to take revenge on the cheating cad and reduce him to a whimpering mess. “Everyone can relate to feeling betrayed,” said Diaz, dismissing any notions that The Other Woman is solely a ‘chick flick’. If men don’t buy into that line, then there’s the allure of a screwball and slightly raunchy comedy with Kate Upton, the curvaceous Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover model, who makes her first serious foray into acting as the second other woman. The film from Fox, which opened on Friday in U.S. and Canadian theaters, follows in the footsteps of female-driven comedies Bridesmaids in 2011 and The Heat, which was the top-grossing comic film in 2013. The Other Woman is expected to bring in $18 million at the box- office in its first weekend, according to Boxoffice.com, less than Bridesmaids with $26 million and The Heat with $39 million, although those films opened in the busier movie-going months of May and June, respectively. Diaz, 41, plays the cool, competent lawyer Carly, who lets her guard down when she falls for Mark, a suave businessman played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, the Danish actor who stars in HBO’s medieval fantasy Game of Thrones.
Carly discovers Mark is married. His wife Kate, played by Leslie Mann, turns to Carly for support when she finds her world turned upside down by her husband’s infidelity. Together, they discover him cavorting with the much younger Amber, played by the 21-year-old Upton, who agrees to join the team —known as the lawyer, the wife and the boobs— and take Mark down. For Diaz, the film, written and produced by women, is unique because instead of a story, “about three women getting in a catfight over a man, they actually become friends.”