BuzzSugar

Journey at the Center of the Earth

GiggleSugar — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 11:00:00 -0700

While everyone else is at that Brendan Fraser movie out in July called Journey to the Center of the Earth, I'll be watching Journey at the Center of the Earth. Because I love me some Steve Perry!

Box Office: The Batman Still On Top

BuzzSugar — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:30:28 -0700

For the third weekend in a row, The Dark Knight was No. 1 at the box office, narrowly beating The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor for the top spot. The Mummy earned about $42.5 million while The Dark Knight earned $43.8 million. Thanks to this win, The Dark Knight has just about crossed the $400 million line in domestic ticket sales.

Variety notes that most box office watchers had predicted this would be the weekend Batman would lose his crown, but I'm not all that surprised. The third addition to the silly action-adventure Mummy franchise failed to meet even the lowest critical expectations earning far worse reviews than the two before it.

Somewhat hilariously, Brendan Fraser now has two movies in the top five box office earners this week, as the 3-D adventure Journey to the Center of the Earth is holding strong at No. 5. So that would make him. . . a fairly hot box office commodity. Wow.

Elsewhere in the top five, Step Brothers came in third place and Mamma Mia! took fourth.

Photos courtesy of Warner Bros.

Box Office: The Dark Knight Continues to Reign

BuzzSugar — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 09:30:00 -0700

In its second week in theaters, The Dark Knight continued to trample both the competition and box office records. According to Variety, it brought in $75.6 million from the 4,300 theaters screening it. This means that the Batman sequel brought in $300 million in less than 10 days, and grossed more than any other film has in its second weekend, a record previously held by Shrek 2.

Batman's competition mostly came from Step Brothers. The R-rated comedy took in $30 million which secured it the no. 2 spot. It seems that much of America did not have Will Ferrell fatigue after all.

Mamma Mia! grabbed the third spot with $17.2 million, bringing its total to $62.7 million.

The rest of the top five included The X-Files: I Want to Believe, which brought in $10.2 million, a very small number for what was expected to be a Summer blockbuster. To put that into perspective, the first X-Files film earned just over $30 million its first weekend during June of 1998. Journey to the Center of the Earth took fifth place, earning $9.4 million.

Photos courtesy of Warner Bros.

Box Office: Hellboy and Friends Kick Box Office Butt

BuzzSugar — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 08:15:15 -0700

Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy II: The Golden Army won the weekend box office with an estimated $35.9 million, not only handily beating the current competition, but also surpassing the first Hellboy's opening weekend earnings ($23.2 million). Yippee! I'm happy for that ragtag group of superheroes.

On the other end of the spectrum was Meet Dave, which Variety described as "one of the worst opening grosses ever for an Eddie Murphy pic." The details are even more painful. Consider this: It cost $60 million to make Meet Dave and it only earned an estimated $5.3 million over the weekend. That's not a pretty picture.

Hancock remained a draw (fun aside: at the movie theater over the weekend, a group of young boys sped past me while one yelled, "Hurry up! I don't want to miss a single second of Hancock!"), coming in second place, followed by the 3-D action flick Journey to the Center of the Earth. Pixar's Wall-E came in at No. 4 followed by Wanted to round out the top five.

Photos courtesy of Universal Pictures

Would You Pay $20,000 For a Cup of Coffee?

YumSugar — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 10:47:04 -0800

Would you pay $20,000 for a pot of coffee? James Freeman did.

When the man behind San Francisco's cult favorite Blue Bottle Coffee decided to open his first café - a step way above the original kiosk - he took the plunge and purchased a $20,000 halogen-powered coffee siphon bar. The bar, which is imported from Japan, is the only one like it in the US and is really a sight to behold. In fact, it doesn't really look like a coffee maker; at first glance you might even think it's some sort of gadget from Journey to the Center of the Earth - or perhaps some weird device found on the Lost island.

However, I'm here to tell you that it is indeed a coffee maker. It uses a technique known as siphon or vacuum, where water rises from the bottom chamber to the top. We recently met up with Freeman and he and his crew gave us the lowdown on how it works. To find out just what a $20,000 coffee bar can do, read more.

Oh and as an added bonus, I should mention that they also serve Kyoto iced coffee, which is a cold-filtered coffee - it takes eight hours to make one pot - that is also created in another retro sci-fi-styled machine. It was amazingly smooth and had a sort of whiskey or tobacco hint to it. I was actually able to drink it straight without any cream or sugar. But don't take my word for it. If you find yourself in San Francisco, make sure Blue Bottle finds its way onto your must-see list.

Blue Bottle Café - San Francisco