Spider-Man 3 Still On Top In Busy UK Chart

With the movie also at the top of the UK box office chart, Activision’s Spider-Man 3 has unsurprisingly remained at the top of the UK games charts, with sales up 26 percent on its opening week.

The PlayStation 2 version of the game has claimed the greatest number of sales this week, though, up 73 percent compared to the Xbox 360 - which is down by 18 percent. The PlayStation 2 version now accounts for 56 percent of all sales for the title, compared to 27 percent for the Xbox 360 and 9 percent for the Wii.

Despite the small number of new releases during the week, the rest of the chart has not been without incident, with Command & Conquer 3 springing nineteen places back up the chart to number two, following the release of the Xbox 360 version. The title has performed so strongly it actually tops Spider-Man 3 on the Xbox 360 only chart.

Wii stock levels have remained high this week, with Wii Play moving down only one place and Cooking Mama moving up seventeen places to number six. However, although the Wii version of the game is newly released this week, the Nintendo DS version accounts for 78 percent of all sales for the title. Released to only mild success at Christmas, the portable version of Cooking Mama has been more heavily promoted in recent weeks – alongside the new console version.

There has also been success for Square Enix’s European release of Final Fantasy III on the Nintendo DS, which moves up four places to number seven, following its debut just outside the top ten last week.

The other prime mover in the top ten is Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer 6 (aka Winning Eleven: Pro Evolution Soccer 2007) which moves up twenty-one places to number four following the Platinum budget re-release of the PlayStation 2 and PSP versions. This again puts the title in direct competition with Electronic Arts’ FIFA 07 which also recently re-entered the charts following retail promotions, particularly for the £9.99 ($20) PC version.

Technically, there are no new entries in the charts this week, although a number of older titles have reappeared at the bottom reaches of the top forty, including World Snooker Championship 2007 and Football Manager 2007 from Sega at numbers twenty-eight and thirty-one, respectively. Tomb Raider: Legend appears at number thirty-seven, Sega Mega Drive Collection at number thirty-eight and PlayStation 3 exclusive Resistance: Fall of Man at number forty.

TW	LW	Title	Publisher	Formats	Weeks
1	1	Spider-Man 3	Activision	PS2/360/Wii/PC/DS	2
2	20	Command & Conquer 3	EA	360/PC	7
3	2	Wii Play	Nintendo	Wii	18
4	25	Pro Evolution Soccer 6	Konami	PS2/360/PC/DS/PSP	29
5	7	FIFA 07	EA	PS2/Xb/GC/360/PC/GBA/DS/PSP	33
6	23	Cooking Mama	505 Games	Wii/DS	4
7	11	Final Fantasy III	Square Enix	DS	2
8	4	SingStar Pop Hits	Sony	PS2	3
9	5	The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion	Ubisoft	360/PS3/PC	25
10	8	Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07	EA	PS2/Xb/Wii/PS3/PC/PSP	28

Leisure software charts compiled by Chart Track, (C)2007. ELSPA Ltd

PIRATED SPIDER-MAN 3 DISKS SHOWING UP IN ASIA

Although the MPAA had originally denied an Associated Press report last month that pirated copies of Spider-Man 3 were already being hawked in China days after the movie's overseas release (it said that in reality copies of Spider-Man 2 were being included in DVD boxes labeled Spider-Man 3), the film organization told the Associated Press Monday that it had seized 14 recordings of the movie in Malaysia.

The announcement came as the film organization unspooled a trailer in Singapore urging movie patrons to shun illegal DVDs. It said that local versions of the trailer would be shown before screenings of movies in other Asian countries as well.

"Spider Man-3" Movie Review

Review: 'Spider-Man 3' packs a punch

SAN FRANCISCO - “Spider-Man 3” is an everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink production, a narrative mess that thrives on its boundless energy and the sheer audacity of its vision. It’s the best-looking “Spider-Man” yet — clearly, director Sam Raimi favored style over substance for this installment, elevating the visual effects to a point where they overshadow his characters, who are too often neglected for long stretches. Still, it remains an invigorating distraction, even if Spidey’s web has never seemed so tangled.

Supervillains abound in “Spider-Man 3” though none are afforded the depth of Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin or Alfred Molina’s Doc Ock. They are rough sketches, blunt instruments with which to challenge Spidey’s mettle. There’s the Sandman (Thomas Haden Church), an escaped convict who stumbles onto a particle-physics test facility and is transformed, in one of the film’s most impressive sequences, into a malleable pile of sand; Venom (Topher Grace), an insidious creep who derives his superpowers from an alien symbiote; and New Goblin, son of the Green Goblin, who resolves to avenge his father’s death.

The New Goblin needs little introduction — he is Harry Osborn, the erstwhile best friend of Spider-Man’s alter ego, Peter Parker. He is consumed by his desire for revenge to the point of tedium, though he is hopelessly outclassed when he takes on his father’s old nemesis. Sandman is a different sort — he steals (and kills) to provide for his daughter, but beyond that, he is a virtual nonentity. He surfaces, quite literally, when Spidey needs a new bad guy to pummel, and makes himself scarce otherwise.

Venom is similarly enigmatic. He arrives late in the movie, first as Eddie Brock, an upstart photographer angling for Peter’s job at the Daily Bugle, and then as Venom, an unscrupulous villain who is Spider-Man’s mirror image, save for his razor-sharp fangs. His transformation is explained away by a mysterious black goo that attaches itself to his spindly frame. The same goo finds its way onto Spider-Man’s suit and, we learn, “amplifies the characteristics of his host” — a good thing if you’re Mother Teresa, a bad thing if you’re an egotistical brat.

Beneath Peter’s nice-guy persona, we learn, Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire) is no Mother Teresa. Decked out in his new black duds, he is goofily charming at first, strutting through Manhattan like Travolta in “Saturday Night Fever,” winking at all the pretty passers-by. But his personality shift has a serious downside. He grows sullen, as evidenced by his new goth get-up, and violently unpredictable, driving longtime sweetheart Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) into Harry’s arms. He wins her back, of course, and the sequence ultimately proves a diversion, typical of an anything-goes plot that plays fast and loose, heaping one transient event on another.

In that sense, “Spider-Man 3” lacks the sophistication of its predecessors. Those movies had confidence in their characters, not just their superpowers, and proved that even tales of comic-book heroism could be both poignant and compelling. “Spider-Man 3” seems to forget that — it is an entertaining distraction with a sharp sense of humor, but the conceptual thinking behind it is shoddy. As lightweight, campy fun, it works, but this is more a pleasure for the eyes than the mind.

Spider-Man 3 ***
Starring: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, James Franco, Thomas Haden Church, Topher Grace
Written by Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi and Alvin Sargent
Directed by Sam Raimi
Rated PG-13
Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes

Spidey 3 Leaps to Blockbuster Status

LOS ANGELES (AP) - "Spider-Man 3" cast a worldwide web with a blockbuster first day, hauling in $29.15 million in 16 overseas markets and beating the debuts of the previous two "Spider-Man" flicks in each locale.

The film had the best opening day ever Tuesday in some countries, including France, Italy, South Korea and Hong Kong, distributor Sony Pictures said.

"Spider-Man 3" opens over the next couple of days in dozens of other countries, including the United States on Friday.

"`Spider-Man' is a worldwide franchise, and the thing we're most excited about is that in two pretty completely separate parts of the world we've gotten off to a great start," Jeff Blake, Sony vice chairman, said Wednesday. "We certainly hope for the same in North America."

Domestically, 2002's "Spider-Man" opened with $114.8 million in its first weekend, a record debut that stood until "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" shattered it last year with a $135.6 million weekend.

"Spider-Man 2" opened on a Wednesday before the Fourth of July weekend in 2004, pulling in a record $180.1 million in its first six days.

The two previous films combined for a total of $1.6 billion worldwide, about half of that coming in the United States.

In France, "Spider-Man 3" took in $6.8 million on opening day, more than the first-day grosses there for "Spider-Man" and "Spider-Man 2" combined.

It grossed $4.6 million in Germany, $4 million in Italy, $3.7 million in Japan, $3.4 million in South Korea, $1.1 million in the Philippines and $1 million each in Hong Kong and Thailand.

The third installment in director Sam Raimi 's superhero series, "Spider-Man 3" reunites Tobey Maguire as the web-slinger, Kirsten Dunst as the love of his life and James Franco as his old pal turned enemy.

Adapted from the Marvel comic books, the film also introduces two new villains, Thomas Haden Church as the Sandman and Topher Grace as Venom.

Along with bad guys, Spidey ends up battling his own dark side as he fights the temptation to use his powers for evil after an alien entity infects his superhero outfit.

'Spider-Man 3' shows a dark side

Spider-Man 3 faces many new villains, including himself, in the franchise’s third film. His bright red suit eventually turns a dazzling black.

A huge budget doesn't buy a better chapter of 'Spider-Man.'

The opening credits for "Spider-Man 3" showcase moments from the 2002 original, pieces of time that remind us that once upon a time the story of a spider-bit boy turned love-struck crime-fighter was just another movie hoping to be a hit.

What a difference a few years and more than $1.6 billion in worldwide Spidey and Spidey 2 theatrical receipts makes. All that money means that it wasn't in the cards for "Spider-Man 3" to be a tale that demanded to be told in any artistic sense, a story that anyone burned to make for anything like purely creative reasons.

Rather, this is a film that commerce mandated, a marketing puzzle that insisted on a solution, an über-franchise whose north of $250-million budget and sky-high expectations make it a master that must be served, a monster to be fed, an imperious creature with its own needs and drives.

In the face of those unbending commercial imperatives, it is simultaneously encouraging that this "Spider-Man" actually attempts to bring some originality to the table and disheartening that those attempts are not enough. Certainly acceptable as a sequel to a sequel, "Spider-Man 3" misses an opportunity to be a movie that could be wholeheartedly recommended to those not already ensnared in its web.

Without doubt, anything that money can buy was provided for returning director Sam Raimi (who, with a brother as a credited co-screenwriter and children in cameos, is turning the franchise into a bit of a family sinecure). More than a thousand people worked on the production, some of them putting in the 8,000 hours it took to construct the film's 40 Spider-Man suits and others writing ultra-complex CGI software that we are told "required 10 man-years to code." That's a heck of a lot of code.

Unfortunately, all that money also allowed spendthrift "Spider-Man 3" to acquire too many villains. It is one of the weaknesses of the Sam Raimi & Ivan Raimi and Alvin Sargent script that our hero has to contend with so many menaces — Sandman, Venom, New Goblin, even some especially toxic gook from outer space — that none of them gets the traction the wonderful Doc Ock did in the last film.

First among equals is the Sandman, both because of Thomas Haden Church's performance and the special effects involved. Church, best known for his wacky work in "Sideways," spent a year bulking up for the role of a troubled troublemaker named Flint Marko who claims "I'm not a bad person, I've just had bad luck." The film's ability to turn Marko into a creature of sand — ground corncob was used after 16 varieties of the real thing failed to pass muster — is wizardly.

One reason Church is effective is that he's excited by this, his first "Spider-Man" appearance. Conversely, the weakest performances come from the film's two stars, Tobey Maguire as the overly earnest webbed hero and Kirsten Dunst as frustrated girlfriend Mary Jane Watson.

Though both performers endeavor to be heartfelt, the film's emotional component — the strength of the original "Spider-Man" — feels unmistakably pro forma by this point in time. Even supplying both protagonists with potential new romantic interests, including Bryce Dallas Howard as hotshot blond Gwen Stacy and Topher Grace as her beau, doesn't stop the nonaction parts of the film from feeling as if they're running on fumes.

To their credit, Raimi and company seem to be aware of this problem and, though they stumbled in the way it is presented, they have come up with a potentially effective new kind of opponent for Spider-Man. That opponent would be Spidey himself.

We get a hint of this dynamic in the film's opening, as we hear Spider-Man's voice-over boasting that he's come a long way in how he stands in New York's esteem. In fact, he practically gloats, "they love me." Just the way it's said indicates that public acclaim is going to this man's swelled head, that he's getting stuck on himself to a potentially dangerous extent.

As anyone who's heard anything about "Spider-Man 3" knows, Peter Parker's bright red spider suit eventually turns a dazzling black, as his character gives in to his dark side and, in the film's most amusing moments, gets downright nasty as he hits a jazz club in his wanderings around town.

But rather than take the more adventurous route of having a superhero with a legitimate nervous breakdown — something the original Marvel comic would have relished — the movie opts to lay it all at the feet of that nasty substance from outer space. It's by far the safer choice commercially, which means it is the only choice in town.

Though aspects of it are entertaining, the presence of all these mismatched pieces give "Spider-Man 3" an ungainly, cumbersome feeling, as if its plot elements were the product of competing contractors who never saw the need to cooperate on a coherent final product.

"We always have a choice," Peter says at one point, delivering one of this film's numerous uplifting messages. Here's hoping that the choice about whether to make yet another "Spider-Man" is based on more than the almighty bottom line.

"Spider-Man 3." MPAA rating: PG-13 for sequences of intense action violence. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes. In general release. Opens Friday, with midnight shows in some theaters on Thursday.