• brokebackmountain.jpgBrokeback Mountain expanded to 69 screens (heh, heh) and moved into 8th place this weekend, earning as much as $70,000 per screen in gay-friendly (not to mention, cowboy-friendly) cities such as Los Angeles, but still acquitting itself more than adequately in conservative markets such as Phoenix ($50.000/screen). Looking at these numbers, Focus is willing to gamble that they can sell this thing far beyond the gay/girl market; they'll expand to 100 screens ahead of schedule next week.
  • Deborah Young watches Albert Brooks' latest, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. "With a plethora of good lines and absurd situations, Brooks can afford to play smart and straight as a self-deprecating detective in search of comedy", she writes. "A more serious puzzle is what the film, which was shot in India, has to do with the Muslim world."
  • It looks like Warner Brothers is about to lose its status as Wal-Mart's DVD "category captain". What the hell does that mean, you say? It's a practice, apparently employed by many large retailers, in order to obtain "exhaustive number crunching" that can then help them determine marketing, pricing, placement, etc, and the captain in turn "enjoys a unique relationship with the retailer that can be exploited if the studio suggests a strategy that is part of a favorable agenda for that studio." It's unsure why Wal-Mart would drop WB at this time – they're currently the leader in DVD market share – but it's thought that Fox, who is currently captain at Wal-competitor Target, is in line to take Warners' place.