'Fool's Gold'

Matthew McConaughey portrays Ben "Finn" Finnegan, and Kate Hudson portrays Tess Finnegan in a scene from "Fool's Gold

Moviegoers fall for 'Fool's Gold'

Despite poor reviews, the adventure romance benefits from Valentine's Day and a wide release.

Warner Bros. got a jump on Valentine's Day with the Matthew McConaughey-Kate Hudson adventure romance "Fool's Gold," the weekend's box-office leader with an estimated $22 million in ticket sales.

Heavy marketing and appealing stars helped the movie, produced for about $65 million, open toward the upper end of expectations despite harsh reviews from critics.

"Love is in the air and it helped us hit box-office gold," said Jeff Goldstein, the studio's executive vice president of distribution. "This was the date movie for people in the mood for light entertainment."
The Martin Lawrence comedy "Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins," from Universal Pictures, opened at No. 2 with an estimated $17.1 million, matching pre-release expectations.

Walt Disney Co.'s 3-D movie "Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour" ranked third in its second weekend, taking in $10.5 million with a steep 66% drop.

Overall revenue for the weekend was down about 1% from the same period in 2007, according to data tracker Media by Numbers, as box-office results cooled off a bit after this year's hot start.

"Fool's Gold," which reunited its sexy, sunbaked stars for the first time since 2003's "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days," and "Roscoe Jenkins" both averaged about $7,000 per theater.

But the Warner Bros. movie benefited from a wider release, with an additional 700-plus theaters. The audience for "Fool's Gold" was 62% female, as expected, and 57% was older than 25.

In CinemaScore surveys, patrons rated the movie a moderate "B-minus," but Goldstein said the calendar set the picture up for a solid run. With Valentine's Day falling on Thursday, the movie will compete for customers on three "date nights" this week and get a boost from the President's Day holiday weekend, he said.

"Roscoe Jenkins," produced for about $35 million, drew crowds that were fairly balanced between males and females, young and old, said Nikki Rocco, Universal's president of domestic distribution.

The audience was 32% non-African American, which Rocco took as an indication the movie was "playing beyond its core audience."

She said she was encouraged that business for "Roscoe Jenkins" jumped 51% from Friday to Saturday, versus 22% for "Fool's Gold," and that CinemaScore respondents graded it an "A-minus."

"Hannah Montana," produced for about $7 million, fell sharply after its $31.1-million opening weekend, a Super Bowl record. Still, it continued to benefit from the higher ticket prices exhibitors can charge for 3-D movies, in some cases $15 to $20.

The pop concert movie, whose star has a huge fan base among teenage and younger girls, averaged $15,000 per theater for the weekend -- by far the best in the top 10. It has grossed $53.4 million through 10 days of release.

Most of the 687 theaters showing the movie will keep it for a third week, said Chuck Viane, Disney's distribution president. "Hannah" was originally billed as a one-week-only event.

National Geographic Cinema Ventures, which released the rock concert movie "U2 3D" at 61 Imax theaters Jan. 23, now must wait until Feb. 22 for a broader nationwide expansion to hundreds of non-Imax, digital 3-D theaters. National Geographic originally planned a "national break" this Friday.

Many Imax theaters will switch to Paramount Pictures' fantasy "The Spiderwick Chronicles" on Thursday, when this week's new films come out, while most digital 3-D venues will hang on to "Hannah," so the U2 picture is likely to lose screens this week.

Even so, "U2 3D" is faring well with adult audiences. It averaged a solid $12,000 per theater over the weekend and has grossed $3.1 million to date.

Friday's other nationwide release, "Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show," bombed with an estimated $507,000 at 962 theaters, or $527 per location.

The concert movie featuring up-and-coming comedians was produced for about $5 million and distributed by Time Warner Inc.'s Picturehouse.

Among the weekend's limited releases, Focus Features' comedy thriller "In Bruges" fared best, averaging $17,000 per theater at 28 locations.

Along with the family-oriented "The Spiderwick Chronicles," this week's major releases include 20th Century Fox's science-fiction thriller "Jumper," Disney's dance sequel "Step Up 2 the Streets" and Universal's romantic comedy "Definitely, Maybe."

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McConaughey, Hudson Find $22M in 'Gold'

"Fool's Gold" found real treasure as the romantic adventure starring Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson led the weekend box office with a $22 million debut.Martin Lawrence's family reunion comedy "Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins" opened at No. 2 with $17.1 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.

Disney's "Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert," the 3-D concert film that was the previous weekend's top movie, fell to third place with $10.5 million, a sharp drop from its $31.1 million opening. The movie has grossed $53.4 million after 10 days.

Released by Warner Bros., "Fool's Gold" came in a bit under the $23.8 million opening of McConaughey and Hudson's hit romance "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days," which debuted over the same pre-Valentine's Day weekend in 2003.

With Valentine's Day on Thursday, the studio is counting on "Fool's Gold" to hold up well, said Jeff Goldstein, Warner vice president of distribution.

Critics hated "Fool's Gold" but audiences were eager to catch McConaughey and Hudson, who play a divorced couple reunited in a quest for 18th-century treasure lost at sea.

"A great marketing campaign, two appealing stars, and reviews be damned," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers. "Heading into Valentine's week, it's sort of a natural."

Universal's "Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins" features Lawrence as a talk show host who reluctantly heads back to the family homestead for his parents' 50th anniversary.

This weekend's other new wide release, Picturehouse's "Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights - Hollywood to the Heartland," tanked with just $507,000. Playing in 962 theaters, the documentary of Vaughn and other comics' standup tour averaged just $527 a cinema, compared to $7,043 in 3,125 locations for "Fool's Gold" and $7,175 in 2,387 theaters for "Roscoe Jenkins."

In narrower release, Paris Hilton's comedy "The Hottie and the Nottie" did even worse, bombing with around $25,000 in 111 theaters for an average of about $225, according to an estimate from Media By Numbers. Distributed by Regent Releasing, the movie stars Hilton as a bombshell who refuses to date until her ugly best friend finds love.

Focus Features' action comedy "In Bruges," with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as hit men laying low in Belgium, opened solidly in limited release, pulling in $471,200 in 28 theaters to average $16,829.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. Final figures will be released Monday.

1. "Fool's Gold," $22 million.

2. "Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins," $17.1 million.

3. "Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert," $10.5 million.

4. "The Eye," $6.6 million.

5. "Juno," $5.73 million.

6. "27 Dresses," $5.7 million.

7. "The Bucket List," $5.3 million.

8. "Rambo," $4.1 million.

9. "Meet the Spartans," $4.075 million.

10. "There Will Be Blood," $4.073 million.

'Fool's Gold' story unbelievable

The Plot:
Ahoy! Matthew McConaughey's pecs have earned yet another screen credit.
McConaughey stars as Finn, a lovable surfer dude who's looking for a bout of not-so-fool's gold. He's after the Queen's Dowry, a loot from 1715 with enough gold to fund a small city.
Kate Hudson plays Tess, Finn's newly ex-wife. As they struggle with their relationship, they find financial support in the form of multi-millionaire Nigel Honeycutt (Sutherland) and his Blackberry-toting, room-temperature-IQ boasting daughter, Gemma (Dziena).

The Good:
There are very pretty landscapes. For a second, I thought I'd stepped into a Bond film, with the exotic location, the crystal blue seas, and enough guns to make "Rambo" look tame.
Escapism at its best, it was wonderful to snuggle into my warm theater seat and pretend for 1 hour and 50 minutes that I was in Key West.

The Bad:
I really tried, but I couldn't believe in the story. Seriously, can one guy drag an anvil that's anchoring him to the ocean floor several feet before he finds a gun to shoot it off with? Remember, he's underwater.

Or how about later when he climbs up a flying Cessna with his bare hands? I'm sorry, but they're going to have to do more than that to get me to believe he's acquired monkey qualities. That and he needed a haircut. Maybe that was the monkey link ...

The Lowdown:
I didn't expect much from this movie. I even counted the minutes until I saw McConaughey's naked torso (15!). And while I actually enjoy Kate Hudson in chick flicks, there was no way I was going to connect with her character and feel sorry for her; she has sexy man-candy and is "forced" to live in Florida.

Just because a casting director slaps these two together again does not make another "How to Lose A Guy In 10 Days." Bad try, but nice abs.

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diet plan,LIFESTYLE,life,health,human,fat,

The way to lose weight is pretty simple: Eat less and exercise more. So why are there so many diet books and plans?

Most of these plans have a gimmick. Many have catchy names "-Intuitive Eating," "Good Mood Diet," "Fit for Life," "The New Sugar Busters!" - but choosing or rejecting a diet based on its name isn't the best path to fitness.

Just in time to prop up those waning New Year's resolutions to get into shape comes "The Diet Selector: From Atkins to The Zone, More Than 50 Ways To Help You Find the Best Diet for You" by Judith C. Rodriguez (Running Press Book Publishers, 192 pages, $19.95). Rodriguez, a clinical dietitian and professor at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Fla., enlisted colleagues in her department to evaluate 50 weight-loss diets and 25 disease management or healthful eating plans.

PROMOTING GOOD HEALTH

The author and her team used criteria that double as questions a person should ask when choosing a diet plan. One key question is "Does it have a multi-component approach, related to foods, behavior and physical activity," Rodriguez asked in a telephone interview. "The other piece is, does it fit your lifestyle and your (food) likes and dislikes?"

While most of the diets in the book cover weight loss, Rodriguez included plans that promote good health. "If you follow a health program, you almost don't need a weight-loss diet," she says. She also recognized that "there are people who have special needs outside of weight loss. I thought it was important for them to have a sense of what the diets are."

The Diet Selector" is easy to use. Each plan merits two pages, including a brief history and description of how the diet works, pros and cons, and a sample menu. Rodriguez also rates each diet on the strength of its long-term plan, flexibility, cost, family-friendly aspects and whether the plan is rooted in science.

The introductory chapters clearly outline how to use the book and also take a practical look at what to expect.

BEHAVIOR, LIFESTYLE VALUES

The book presents the facts rather than recommending one diet over another, although Rodriguez has her favorites. "There are some diets that I thought had healthier approaches, such as the French Woman's Diet, which doesn't talk about dieting but about behavior and lifestyle values," she says. "The Mayo (Clinic Healthy Weight Program) diet is another one." She also singled out D.A.S.H. (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) and the Mediterranean diet because they are eating plans for life.

She prefers plans that aren't restrictive, although she acknowledges that "some people really like a rigid 'tell me what to do'" approach.

In choosing a diet, Rodriguez advises looking at the big picture - a plan that melds changes in eating, behavior and activity.

Even those who don't plan to embark on a diet or health program such as those outlined in the book can still make small changes that will make a difference, the dietitian says.

"Try a few small things and forgo the big dramatic changes," she says. "Figure on two or three things you can do every day - replace soda with water; park a little farther (from a destination) and maybe cut back on dessert in the evening. These are things you can easily do for the rest of your life."

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Lowering blood sugar are unlikely to change the way most people with Type 2 diabetes manage their illness

Diabetes Health Goes Beyond Blood Sugar
The startling findings of a major federal study on the effects of lowering blood sugar are unlikely to change the way most people with Type 2 diabetes manage their illness, doctors said Thursday.

The study, announced Wednesday, showed that an intensive program to lower blood sugar actually increased risk of death. The findings were so surprising that the study was stopped early, and they seemed to undercut the accepted wisdom that people with diabetes should do everything possible to get their blood sugar down to normal.

But the methods used in the study, called Accord (for Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes), bear little resemblance to the techniques most doctors and patients use to manage blood sugar levels. And the patients in the study were typically far sicker than many people with diabetes today.

"The intensity of what we did is done virtually nowhere on the planet," said Dr. John Buse, vice chairman of the study's steering committee and the president of medicine and science at the American Diabetes Association. "It's far beyond what's common in clinical practice." Dr. Buse called the study's regimen to lower blood sugar a "brutal program."

Still, doctors are likely to reconsider their emphasis on lowering blood sugar at all costs, because it is becoming clear that other factors influence the overall health of patients with diabetes.

The New England Journal of Medicine published a study this week showing that a three-pronged approach of managing sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol - combined with low doses of aspirin - prolonged the lives of people with diabetes. The patients who did best in that study did not reach the nearly normal sugar levels that were the aim of the Accord study. Instead, their levels were just slightly higher than normal.

In the Accord study, the group of patients who were randomly assigned to lower their blood sugar levels to nearly normal had 54 more deaths than the group whose levels were less rigidly controlled. The patients were in the study for an average of four years when investigators stopped the intense regimen and put all of them on the less intense one.

"When we look at mortality in patients with Type 2 diabetes, it's not only the blood sugar," said Dr. Joel Zonszein, director of the Clinical Diabetes Center at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. "What the study shows is that just lowering blood sugar is not protecting you from dying sooner. Blood sugar is important, but so is blood pressure and cholesterol."

Patients with newly diagnosed diabetes still appear to have much to gain by keeping their blood sugar levels as close to normal as possible through healthful eating and exercise. But patients who have had a heart attack and have other risk factors need not feel guilty if they cannot get their blood sugar to normal levels, Dr. Buse said.

"The most important thing is get your blood pressure controlled, cholesterol controlled, and do a reasonable job on your diabetes, but don't go wild," he said. "We are backing away from notion that we always have to push, push, push to get blood sugar lower."

Today, many patients with diabetes take two or three drugs to manage their blood sugar levels. In the Accord study, many patients took multiple drugs and insulin shots, adhered to strict diets and regularly met with counselors and doctors who monitored them. No single drug treatment was prescribed; doctors used whatever combination of various treatments that appeared to work best in each patients.

The researchers still have to sift through the data on those who died to find out whether there was any pattern that might help explain why patients in the intense treatment group fared worse. It may be that they were simply sicker to begin with. It may have been the number of drugs they used or the pace at which their blood sugar dropped.

Dr. Buse said one little-discussed issue was the sheer stress of the treatment program itself. He noted that the program demanded a lot of effort from patients but that it was still exceedingly difficult for any of them to achieve the blood sugar levels that had been set for them. Many patients with diabetes feel stressed when they fail to meet blood sugar goals set by their doctors.

"At some level I just wonder if some of them were just overwhelmed by this psychologically," Dr. Buse said. "Could it be the stress of 'I'm trying so hard, but I can't get it done'?"

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February 7 2008 - Results of a major government study find that aggressively driving the blood sugar of diabetes patients back to normal levels can increase their risk of dying from a heart attack or stroke.

This news resulted in many type two diabetes patients being switched from aggressive blood sugar management in a clinical trial to safer methods of managing their glucose levels.

"As always, our primary concern is to protect the safety of our study volunteers," said Elizabeth G. Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which is sponsoring the study.

It is unknown why aggressively treating blood sugar poses increased risk of death in high risk diabetics, but the researchers claim that there is a definite link that should not be ignored.

Over the average treatment of 4 years, there were 3 deaths per 1,000 more in the intensive treatment group compared to the standard treatment group.

"It's profoundly disappointing," said Richard Kahn, chief scientific and medical officer for the American Diabetes Association. " This presents a real dilemma to patients and their physicians. How intensive should treatment be?

Type 2 Diabetes and Excessively Low Blood Glucose may Increase Risk for Heart Attack or Stroke

The aggressive intervention of lowering blood glucose below the current recommended standards in adults with type 2 diabetes may be at a higher risk for heart attack or stroke deaths.

A clinical trial called, ACCORD (Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes) study is being conducted in North America by The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health of 10,251 participants, there was more deaths in the intensive treatment group than the standard treatment group. This has prompted the halt of the intensive treatment group 18 months earlier because of the current data. They will continue collecting data for the standard group for the remainder of the study and those in the other group will now be receiving the standard treatment as well.
The data showed out of the 10,251 participants there were 257 in the intensive treatment group that died compared with 203 that were in the standard treatment group. The researchers do point out that the death rates in both groups were lower than seen in similar populations in other studies. The study has been going on for around four years.

The ACCORD trial will conclude in June of 2009. The intensive group had an A1C goal of less than 6 percent. The current standard in the United States is an A1C of 7 to 7.9 percent.

The researchers do point out that those in the patients in the study are with a high cardiovascular risk factor and that it would be unlikely that you would have blood sugar levels that low as in the study. They also caution that if you have diabetes never adjust your treatment plan without first talking to your doctor.

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