As expected, X-Men: First Class easily took the weekend box-office prize with an estimated $56.0 million in tickets sold, and it did so without the decided advantage of 3-D that shall give a ridiculous advantage to many of this summer’s releases. I fully agree with Kaiser in her assessment that it was a very solid movie and quite the promising vehicle for mainstream stardom when it comes to the lovely (and quite bangable) Michael Fassbender. First Class also did something rather unprecedented by crossing genre and gender lines in its comic book appeal, which is rather interesting since a lot of the ladies undoubtedly went for the mutant eye candy provided by Fassbender and James McAvoy. However, none of this positive news will stop certain outlets from wringing their hands at the disappointing fact that this movie pulled the smallest opening weekend out of all of the X-Men movies.

As if on cue, Deadline calls First Class a “risky reboot” before going forth with the doom and gloom prophecy:

Wolverine’s $85M opening weekend (from 4,099 locations) swamped X-Men: First Class‘ debut — Friday’s total North American gross was $54 million for the weekend. This will be the lowest opening of a Marvel-branded movie in a long time — not to mention less than the $60M opening which Hollywood expected. Internationally, X-Men: First Class has already opened in France and Australia but broke no records and will roll out in 75 international territories on over 8,000 screens.

“Given that we are reinventing the X-Men franchise with a critically acclaimed director and top actors who are not really widely known to audiences, we’re hoping to be somewhere around Batman Begins ($48.7M) and X-Men ($54.4M). That seems to be a good target area for us,” said a Fox exec who was right on the money. The studio is hoping this prequel sticks around as moviegoers discover it. With a fresh cast including James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, and Rose Byrne but no big stars like Hugh Jackman in a signature role like Wolverine, tracking had been slow to build, especially considering how massive The Hangover Part 2 was impacting other movies in the marketplace. But Fox saw steady growth in the core audience, and then growth with females which was surprising because X-Men movies are more typically male. Meanwhile, a word to the wise to the arrogant [Matthew] Vaughn: stop bad-mouthing other directors publicly. Sure, it’s fun to bitchslap Brett Ratner and boast you could have outgrossed his X-Men 3 if only you’d been helming it — but not when your Kick-Ass didn’t do squat its opening weekend.

With it’s [sic] see-how-it-all-started angle, X-Men: First Class successfuly avoided the trap of most reboots like Batman and The Hulk and no doubt the upcoming Spider-Man (and Superman?): repeating the same storyline that’s all-too-familiar by now to moviegoers. Instead, it’s more like J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek by presenting the early backstory. Even so, this First Class (which is not 3D) can’t muster the same money as the original X-Men movie which made $54.5M, or $79M adjusted for ticket price inflation, back in 2000. Fanboys have expressed unhappiness that Wolverine is not part of this prequel which relies instead on the strength of the Professor X and Magneto charcaters [sic] as part of the new ensemble. Knowing it would be difficult for this reboot to become a blockbuster, Fox kept sending journalists a lot of early review reaction to show that the movie was being well received.

[From Deadline]

Don’t you just love the “ZOMG!” angle in regard this reboot not doing the same numbers as the drivel that was Wolverine? As if First Class were somehow a worse movie than Wolverine, when the latter’s awfulness probably left so many audience members feeling so tricked and underwhelmed that they simply didn’t want to give another X-Men movie a chance? One can only hope that the positive word of mouth for First Class will boost the next couple of weekends and prove to movie studios that we do like our comic book movies to be smart and critically well-received (still holding with a 87% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes); and, above all, not to be directed by the likes of Brett Ratner.

Meanwhile, a couple of two-week holdovers, The Hangover Part II and King Fu Panda 2, won second and third place with $32.4 million and $24.3 million, respectively speaking. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides continued forth with $18.0 million in its third week of release, and Bridesmaids pulled in another $12.1 million in its fourth week. Now, we’ll see whether J.J. Abrams’ Super 8 decimates them all next weekend.

Movie stills courtesy of AllMoviePhoto

With the impending arrival of X-Men: First Class, there has definitely been an influx of Kevin Bacon-related publicity that we haven’t seen since the days of Footloose. Interpret that however you will, but it can never be a bad thing to hear more about an actor who doesn’t suffer from the disease of specialness. This particular story, however, is both amusing and bittersweet; it seems that, once upon a time, Bacon had enough of the trappings of fame and made arrangements to disappear for a while or, at least, for a few hours at a time behind a disguise. Fortunately, the results were not to his liking:

A couple of years ago, Kevin Bacon needed a few degrees of separation from his fame. He daydreamed of a crowded place where people didn’t tug at his sleeve to gush about Footloose or quote Diner. Finally, he went to a Hollywood makeup specialist and invested in a custom-made disguise that was weirdly simple but completely effective. He paid the $500 and then, with an anxious glee, he took his new rubber face to the Grove shopping center to experience an afternoon without autographs.

“You wouldn’t have recognized me if I was standing next to you,” Bacon said with a faraway expression. “It was really bizarre and I didn’t really like it. I didn’t like it at all. People cut in front of you and when you’re at a check-out counter it’s just … different. People weren’t all that nice to me. I’m just not used to it.”

Sitting in a quiet corner of a Brentwood restaurant, the actor shook his head, perhaps surprised at his own candor and then laughed at himself. “I can’t imagine life without it,” he added, referring to fame, which started to come his way after he left moved to New York at age 18 to pursue theater. On screen he found foothold roles in Animal House in 1978 and on “The Guiding Light” in the early 1980s and, eventually, so many movies that they invented a game about it.

[James] McAvoy said the presence of Bacon on the set added a crackle to the production. “I don’t use this term but it just seems right — Kevin Bacon is just a cool cat. For me, as a moviegoer, if you tell me Kevin Bacon is playing a villain in a summer superhero movie, I’m there man. I’’ be excited, too, to see a film that is bold enough to go with that unexpected choice.”

For an actor with credits such as Mystic River, Apollo 13, The Woodsman, Frost/Nixon and A Few Good Men, stepping into a superhero film wasn’t going to happen unless there was a compelling reason. He cited the presence of producer Bryan Singer and director Matthew Vaughn and the chance to play a dark character who wants the world to burn but rarely raises his voice as his reasons for joining the mutant franchise.

“I haven’t been this guy before,” said Bacon, who studied years of comic books after taking on the role. “He’s a little bit Ted Turner, a little bit Hugh Hefner, a little bit Donald Trump. That’s how I see him. I wasn’t interested in him as scary evil. It was more about control. His power is a metaphor for who he is; he can be different things to different people and he also takes whatever energy you have and throws it back at you.”

[From Hero Complex]

The Bacon nearly left us! For some reason, I’m dying to know what this disguise looked like, but I guess we’ll never know unless Bacon decides to cart it along during his next visit to the Late Show with David Letterman. Bacon’s description of the Sebastian Shaw character only makes me want to see this movie more than I already did, which is really kind of embarrassing since I didn’t enjoy the other X-Men movies at all.

It’s also rather interesting that McAvoy popped into this interview as well; while he had nothing but insightful things to say about Bacon, he’s really doing a lot of the talking on this publicity tour, but I always figured him as the socially-awkward and retiring type instead of, you know, poor, shy Michael Fassbender.

Photos courtesy of WENN and AllMoviePhoto

The lovely Scottish James McAvoy has taken a bit of time during the X-Men: First Class promotional tour to toss a bone (so to speak) to the Yanks, who McAvoy claims aren’t nearly as pedestrian as British filmmakers would hope. According to McAvoy, British filmmakers knowingly “dumb down” their movies to make them much more accessible to American moviegoers, and he believes that this approach backfires. Well, I’m not sure that the effect is as detrimental as McAvoy suggests, but he deserves some serious points for stating the matter as such:

“We dumb our movies down because we want Americans to understand them. The Americans watch it and go ‘[T]his is a really unsophisticated dumbed down movie. Why would we want this? Why do we like this? We don’t’.

“It’s like we’re patronising them and short changing ourselves,” said McAvoy.

McAvoy plays a young Charles Xavier in the latest X-Men installment.

It is a prequel to the previous four films which have taken over $1.5bn (£900m) worldwide. In it we find out how the mutant superhero saga started.

“It was a big responsibility. The fifth X-Men needs to be different. You can’t keep putting out films with the same tone and vibe. I think this does that.

“It;s about what might have been. It’s about brothers and then them tearing each other apart.”

The film was made at Pinewood studios and was directed by Matthew Vaughn. His previous films include Kick Ass and Layer Cake.

It may have the British stamp all over it but it is backed by US studio Twentieth Century Fox who will see the profits.

Jason Flemyng plays a demonic teleporting character called Azazel in the film.

Commenting on American franchises being made in the UK he said: “Filming this at Pinewood was fantastic because it was like the old 1950′s studio. It was packed. I’ve never seen a studio that busy and I loved it. But it’s difficult. It’s great everyone’s working but we kind of need to develop and work up our own stuff so that some of that money comes back into the British film industry.”

The stellar cast list also includes Michael Fassbender, Mad Men star January Jones and Kevin Bacon.

He had some advice for British filmmakers: “I think the whole thing is to keep trying to make the best possible movie that you can and hopefully the cream rises to the top. And sometimes you know you look at something like The Kings Speech, which is made for relatively little money compared to X-Men and it just keeps making money, making money, making money.”

[From Sky News]

It’s difficult to tell (from the way that Sky News arranged this article) whether some of these quotes are coming from Jason Flemyng or Kevin Bacon, but the copy would lead one to conclude that it’s all McAvoy here. To a degree, I believe that he’s correct about Brit perceptions of U.S. audiences, but the tricky thing is that these assumptions are dead on when it comes to most summer popcorn movies. Just look at the success of the previous X-Men movies, which even most American comic book fans admit are really horrible pieces of cinema, yet they still went and watched them (sometimes even more than once). Perhaps McAvoy is really trying to tell us that X-Men: First Class is merely smarter than the rest of the movies, which is already pretty clear from the trailer itself.

In any case, McAvoy’s gesture of goodwill for U.S. audiences is appreciated. Now, if only he would take off those jeans for the ladies too.

Photos courtesy of AllMoviePhoto and WENN

If you don’t like Michael Fassbender by now, there’s probably no hope for you. Well, that’s not true. I suspect that once X-Men: First Class comes out (next week!), all hell is going to break out with the old-school Fassloonies and the newly-formed Fassloonies. Thankfully, Fassbender seems to be actively trying to disengage our interest. These are photos of the X-Men: First Class dudes at the NYC premiere, with a special emphasis on my beloved Fassdong and his newly blonde hair. For the premiere, all of the stars were driven to the theater in vintage cars (the film is set in the 1960s). My Fassbender didn’t take off his f#@%$ sunglasses, and he smoked throughout the whole car ride and red carpet. I’m not like CB – I don’t mind a dude who smokes. That being said, my lover is coming across kind of smug and full of himself with his cigarettes and his sunglasses and his lovely Fassdong. Yeah, I would still slap it up, flip it, rub it down (OH NOES!), but I’ve seen him look better.

Oh, and he and Zoe Kravtiz didn’t pose together. And they didn’t arrive together. And they’ve increased the buffers in between them when posing as a cast. OMG!! What does it mean?!? Here are a crapload of Fassbender pics. My lover really needs to take off those sunglasses.

Did you think I was going to forget James McAvoy? I’m not! James was there too, wearing his favorite jeans that he will just NOT TAKE OFF. I really like his hair now. He’s so adorable.

And here’s a little extra Bacon for those who haven’t had their breakfast. That’s all we’ve got! Nicholas Hoult didn’t show up and Lucas Till is a child. I’ll have the X-Men ladies’ fashion in a moment!

Photos courtesy of WENN & Pacific Coast News.

As you know, I’ve been obsessed with the January Jones pregnancy story. She announced it on the eve of the royal wedding, probably because she hoped it wouldn’t get attention. Meaning that the baby-daddy drama was something more interesting than “Meh, Jason Sudeikis.” As the drama goes on and on and weeks turn into months, we’re getting more (utterly unreliable) information. Sources seem to all be convinced of one thing: the baby-daddy is definitely not her boyfriend of record at the time of conception, Jason Sudeikis. Some sources have randomly suggested various dudes that we know January has boned at various times over the past few years: Jeremy Piven, Adrien Brody, Bobby Flay…? Even David Beckham’s name was thrown around.

And then something magical happened! A source went to E! News and dropped one of the best live-action blind items I’ve ever heard: January’s baby-daddy was someone in X-Men: First Class. We already discussed it here. It pained and excited me to think that her baby-daddy could be my lover Michael Fassbender. But there were lots of other possibilities too: James McAvoy, Kevin Bacon, Nicholas Hoult, Ray Wise and my personal favorite potential baby-daddy, Oliver Platt.

Anyway, we’ve got a new wrinkle to The Best Blind Item of the Year. The Daily reports that not only was the baby-daddy someone related to X-Men: First Class, the dude is also MARRIED. Oh, JOY!!!! You knew it was going to be epic, right? The actual meat of The Daily’s claims is pretty slim though: “It’s no wonder January Jones won’t reveal the identity of the father of her unborn baby. Sources say the dad-to-be is married….[And] sources say Jones had an affair on the set of X-Men: First Class.” That’s it.

So… who was in or around X-Men: First Class AND wears a wedding ring? The list: James McAvoy, Kevin Bacon, Oliver Platt, Jason Flemyng, and Ray Wise. But I think the biggest contender is probably the director, Matthew Vaughn. He’s married to Claudia Schiffer. They have three kids together. He’s rich… and it’s a combination of old money and new money (his family is aristocracy, but he’s a successful producer and director). And I find him rather sexy, and hell, we know January is up for it. She was up for Bobby Flay, why not Hottie Von MoneyDong? Crumpets McCastingCouch? I think Vaughn’s sexy voice would be good enough for me:

So… my money is on Vaughn. But if you want to get freaked out over the possibility of baby-daddy drama with James McAvoy or Kevin Bacon (or bless his heart, Oliver Platt), go ahead. Meanwhile, I’m weeping tears of joy that Fassbender is out of the line of fire.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Thankfully, the studio behind X-Men: First Class has realized that January “Deep-Thinking Diamond” Jones alone will not sell their movie, so they’re giving a little something to the ladies by sending out Michael Fassbender to do some publicity rounds. The gracious and lovely Fassdong (yes Kaiser, he still belongs to you, but I’m allowed a few conjugal visits on occasion) has responded in kind by speaking upon all sorts of topics concerning to not only his own character, Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto, but also things that are particularly relative to Professor Charles Xavier/Dr. X (James McAvoy) and Dr. Shaw (Kevin Bacon). Fassdong also takes great care to praise the previous work of Ian McKellen as Magneto while asserting his own decision “to paint a new canvas” with his role, which immediately makes me think of Fassbender rolling around in body paint just like Farrah Fawcett did for Playboy. As you can see, Fassbender posts are a quickly becoming danger to me, so let’s just add an obligatory SPOILER ALERT here and swiftly move onto a titillating overview of the movie’s hot mutant sex as revealed to IGN:

IGN: James McAvoy was talking about Charles and Erik being like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X in their approach to the problem of humans and mutants living side-by-side – would you agree with that?

Fassbender: If that’s what he said, then yeah, I like it. That sounds good. It’s actually a good way to summarise it. But also, I think that Charles is just horny, and just trying to get laid. Throughout the film. He’s like ‘human beings are cool, give them a chance’ because he just wants to have human being sex. He doesn’t want to have mutant sex. Whereas Eric really gets off on mutant sex.

IGN: So is there any romance for Erik in this film?

Fassbender: You know, there are seeds of something there, but once again, he is so driven. He’s blinkered. It’s like, there is Shaw in his sights, and that is all he is really going for.

You know, the Fassdong should never be allowed to speak any derivative of “seed” lest he spontaneously father an entire generation of mutant babies. Wait, where were we again?

IGN: Was there a scene when you got the script that you were particularly excited to shoot?

Fassbender: For sure, but I don’t want to give too much of the story away. There were two scenes. One’s fairly early in the film, when you are introduced to him and he’s on this sort of hunt. He’s on a trail blaze of Nazi killing. He’s trying to tighten the screws to pinpoint where Shaw is.

IGN: Why is he after Shaw?

Fassbender: Shaw had him in these concentration camps and as we know, the Nazis were doing lots of experimentation – all sorts of things, like measuring skull and brain size and running experiments on human beings. So Shaw is trying to unleash this power in him – he’s recognized that he can manipulate metal and so we catch up with Erik on a quest to hunt him down.

IGN: So what should we expect from Kevin Bacon as Shaw?

Fassbender: You’ve got an actor who finds the truth in everything he does and has just a wealth of experience. I don’t know how many – 70-something films that he’s done, you know? It’s great to see that sort of person has survived in the business for so long and is really nice and easy to talk to and just wants to get the job done. Trying to find the truth in the scenes. Because that’s the thing – it is a fantastical world but you want the illusion, the bubble, to remain intact as much as it can. I don’t know if I’m explaining myself very well, but everything in the story is there for a reason. A component is not just there as filler – each thing is there to drive the next thing and interlink to maybe three scenes later. It’s just trying to find those things within a scene… we work through each scene and figure out if there are any weak points or things that we really like and need to accentuate. And with the relationship between Charles and Erik – how do you get the best juices out of that relationship?

[From IGN]

See, there he goes again with “juices.” Quite simply, the Fassdong doesn’t know his own strength, but he does drop the little detail that there might be second and third First Class movies if the first one succeeds with the geek crowd. If that happens, the Fassdong plans on returning (and, quite suggestively, intends on coming in at “ground level”) just to give us another reason beyond James McAvoy to watch this drivel. I’ll be totally honest here in that I never read the X-Men comics and (like a great many others) really disliked the preexisting installments of this franchise. Although, I definitely appreciate that the Fassdong has continued the Nazi-hunting legacy that he previously forged in Inglourious Basterds, and I’ll watch anything that he does. I would even watch him watching paint dry on a wall. So good job, Marvel Studios, for I’m sold!

Photos courtesy of WENN, Entertainment Weekly, NYT.

Last night was the New York premiere of The Conspirator, after this past weekend’s Washington, D.C. premiere. Robin Wright, the star of the film (she plays Mary Surratt), is going though a skinny-pantsuit phase. I didn’t care for yesterday’s funky gray suit, but I’m kind of liking this white Julien Macdonald one. The jacket is awesome, but the pants… well, I’m not a skinny pants person. I would enjoy seeing this suit with straight-leg pants. But as for Robin’s face… it’s exquisite. Just gorgeous. And I love that it looks real and untouched.

Alexis Bledel wore Oscar de la Renta. I know some of you like her, but to me she’s just a boring chick in a boring dress. If you’d like to see photos of Evan Rachel Wood’s premiere dress, go here.

And lastly, my lover James McAvoy, wearing THE SAME PANTS. The same pants as the previous premiere, the same pants he’s been wearing for every public appearance for months. The boy is cheap, and he LOVES those pants.

Photos courtesy of Fame & WENN.

These are photos from the Washington, D.C. premiere of The Conspirator, the story of what happened immediately after Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre. The film stars Robin Wright as Mary Surratt, one of the “conspirators” to the assassination, who was (spoiler) tried and convicted, and then hanged. Robert Redford directed the film, which follows the trial of Mary Surratt. Evan Rachel Wood plays her daughter, and I believe James McAvoy plays Surratt’s lawyer. Anyway, Robin wasn’t at the premiere, but McAvoy, Redford and Wood made it. Guess where the premiere was held? Ford’s Theatre! Where Lincoln was shot, for those who don’t know. According to Page Six, the premiere almost had to be called off because Ford’s Theatre is a federally protected historical site, and the potential government shutdown might have closed it down.

Anyway, Evan Rachel Wood in Jill Stuart. I thought this was vintage at first, but it’s not. It still feels very dated, and I think the fabric is fug as hell… and yet ERW kind of pulls it off.

James was adorable, as always. He’s wearing his favorite pair of jeans – the same ones he’s been wearing for the past six months or so. The boy CANNOT dress. I love it.

Mm… Redford.

Here’s the trailer for The Conspirator. I always thought that Clive Owen should play John Wilkes Booth if they ever made a movie just about Booth. If you look at the old photos, there’s definitely a resemblance.

UPDATE: Robin Wright was at the premiere, I just missed the photos! Whoops, my bad. Here she is in a horribly cut grey suit:

Photos courtesy of WENN.

Okay, I just covered some of the fashion from the Jameson Empire Awards (Keira, Lily and Noomi), and here are some of the hot guys from the ceremony. My top guy, of course, is James McAvoy and his sexy little ginger beard and his gorgeous blue eyes. This boy is such an unconventional heartthrob, isn’t he? He has a nice body, but he’s kind of small and wiry, and he’s handsome, but so, so boyish, and he’s got that thick Scottish brogue… and somehow, all of it combined is exceedingly erotic. He’s delicious. I enjoy his style too – he’s not really fashionable or anything, but he always looks comfortable. Sigh… I’m in love with him.

Gary Oldman was at the Empire Awards too – I think he won something. Whatevs. I can’t say I really care for his glasses, but I do like his hair these days. Remember when Oldman used to be crazy? And now he’s so… establishment.

A little Mark Strong, for those who enjoy him (as I do). For the past few weeks, Mark Strong has been a contender to make Hot Guy Friday, but he ends up getting pushed aside. Mark Strong for HGF?

And finally, Colin Firth. I’ve missed him so much since the awards season! I had gotten used to seeing photos of him all the time and reading so many of his interviews. I hope he’s enjoying his Oscar win.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

I spent much of Thursday waiting for my beloved Michael Fassbender to materialize, like a shining Irish Dong, glittering in all his glory in the stark winter light. Yes, My Fasslove has taken a poetic turn. Anyway, I was waiting for the first trailer for X-Men: First Class to appear, and finally it has. There’s lots of good Fassbender action, and enough James McAvoy (doing a weird accent… English with Scottish lilts?) to appease the McAvoy-loonies. Here you go:

There are some new promotional images to along with this, but I just screencapped the junk, so hopefully the studio won’t wet themselves and yell at me (fingers crossed). The roll-out from the studio has been tortured, to say the least, what with those craptastic first images that looked extremely budget. After that, both James and Michael were sent out to soothe the fanboys and the accent-fetishist ladies. This trailer helps, I think. The quality looks solid, and I’m actually getting a bit excited to see this.

Also, you should read Bedhead’s take on it. I think she’s talking about me! “ORGASM!!!! Can’t wait. Michael Fassbender can do NO WRONG!”

Screencaps.