Surprise box office tie for "Cowboys", "Smurfs"

Costumed ''Smurfs'' characters stand on the main trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange, after ringing the opening bell for the Exchange's session July 29, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Mike Segar

Costumed ''Smurfs'' characters stand on the main trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange, after ringing the opening bell for the Exchange's session July 29, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Mike Segar

The tiny blue "Smurfs" battled big-name, big-budget "Cowboys & Aliens" to a surprising tie at the domestic weekend box office with each film ringing up an estimated $36.2 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates on Sunday. "The Smurfs" live-action and animated 3D film drew families to the latest adventure of the classic Belgian cartoon characters and grossed higher-than-expected sales. "Cowboys & Aliens" fell short of pre-release estimates from box-office watchers.

watch now




The totals are estimates of ticket sales from United States and Canadian theatres for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The leader will not be known until actual sales are tallied on Monday.
Going into the weekend, "Cowboys & Aliens" was seen easily topping box-office charts with starpower from James Bond actor Daniel Craig and "Indiana Jones" star Harrison Ford, plus director Jon Favreau from the hit "Iron Man" series and Steven Spielberg among the producers. The film is set in the Wild West in 1873, when a spaceship arrives in Arizona and runs into a posse of cowboys.
The movie offered "a fresh and unique concept," said Nikki Rocco, president of distribution for Universal Pictures, a division of Comcast Corp that released the film. "It was a bet worth taking with these filmmakers."
A lower-than-expected total for "Cowboys & Aliens" collided with a bigger draw from "The Smurfs," a movie that revived characters that debuted more than 50 years ago.
"In the summer, family films are a hot commodity," Paul Dergarabedian, box office analyst with Hollywood.com, said of the "Smurfs" success.
Rory Bruer, president of worldwide distribution for Columbia Pictures, said the "Smurfs" film "performed beyond our expectations." Columbia Pictures is the unit of Sony Corp that released the movie.
Third place for the weekend went to superhero flick "Captain America: The First Avenger" with $24.9 million in domestic ticket sales during its second weekend in theatres.
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 2," hitting its third weekend, finished fourth with $21.9 million. The final installment of the popular boy wizard series topped $1 billion in worldwide sales to date, the ninth film in history to hit that mark, distributor Warner Bros. said.
"Crazy, Stupid, Love," a new romantic comedy starring Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Julianne Moore, took the No. 5 spot in the U.S. and Canada with a solid $19.3 million.
"Captain America" was released by Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom. Time Warner Inc unit Warner Bros released "Crazy, Stupid, Love" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- Part 2."

Read More

Family fights government over rare ‘Double Eagle’ gold coins

Eagle gold coins

A jeweler's heirs are fighting the United States government for the right to keep a batch of rare and valuable "Double Eagle" $20 coins that date back to the Franklin Roosevelt administration. It's just the latest coin controversy to make headlines. Philadelphian Joan Langbord and her sons say they found the 10 coins in 2003 in a bank deposit box kept by Langbord's father, Israel Switt, a jeweler who died in 1990. But when they tried to have the haul authenticated by the U.S. Treasury, the feds, um, flipped.





They said the coins were stolen from the U.S. Mint back in 1933, and are the government's property. The Treasury Department seized the coins, and locked them away at Fort Knox. The court battle is set to kick off this week.
The rare coins (pictured), first struck in 1850, show a flying eagle on one side and a figure representing liberty on the other. One such coin recently sold at auction for $7.6 million, meaning the Langbords' trove could be worth as much as $80 million.
The coins are part of a batch that were struck but then melted down after President Roosevelt took the country off the gold standard in 1933, during the Great Depression. Two were given to the Smithsonian Institution*, but a few more mysteriously escaped.
The government has long believed that Switt schemed with a corrupt cashier at the Mint to swipe the coins. They note that the deposit box in which the coins were found was rented six years after Switt's death, and that the family never paid inheritance tax on the coins.
A lawyer for the Langbords counters that the coins could have left the Mint legally since it was permissible to swap gold coins for gold bullion.
Authorities in the Roosevelt era twice looked into Switt's coin dealings, including his possession of Double Eagle coins. In 1944, Switt's license to deal scrap gold was revoked.
The battle over the Double Eagles is hardly the only recent coin contretemps. Two British metal-detecting enthusiasts are said to be locked in a bitter dispute over how to divide the profits from a horde of Iron Age gold coins that they unearthed together in eastern England in 2008.
And an 80-year-old California man was jailed in 2009 after allegedly hitting another man in the head with a metal pipe and firing a gun at a third man during a dispute over missing gold coins.
Some coin disputes involve more than wrangling over valuable collectors' items. In 2007, Secret Service and FBI agents raided an Indiana company called Liberty Dollar, in a bid to stamp out illegal currency. The firm was making "Ron Paul Silver Dollars," in honor of Rep. Ron Paul, whose presidential campaign advocates bringing back the gold standard.
And since we're talking about coins, here's a list of the ten most valuable coins you might find in your pocket change.
* This sentence previously referred incorrectly to the "Smithsonian Institute."

Read More