It's Presidents' Day weekend, folks and in anticipation of the day commemorating revolutionary ass-kicker his Excellency George Washington, the American moviegoer showed some love to another cool, though historically less significant Washington.  The actioner Safe House starring Denzel Washington is squeaking out a victory in its second weekend of release, as current estimates have it making just a bit more than fellow holdover The Vow.  Both films managed to best three new releases, though.

As the nation recovered from last weekend's Super Bowl festivities, it sought entertainment through the movies, resulting in a very busy weekend, resulting in a few minor records being broken.  So far in this young year, the box office has been surprisingly robust, particularly considering the often feeble showings throughout 2011.  This particular weekend, no less than four major movies opened to well over $20 million, quite an accomplishment on a seemingly unremarkable February frame.  Strong showings all around meant that, overall, there was a 30% increase from the comparable weekend last year.

The weekend of the Super Bowl is generally a pretty quiet one at multiplexes across this great and strange nation of ours, as the annual NFL championship game completely hijacks national attention.  Nobody's really thinking about movies, since there's too much anticipation for commercials interrupted by spurts of football.  Accordingly, with the New England Patriots and the New York Giants squaring off in Indianapolis, nobody expected much from this weekend's new releases, but lo and behold, two of the three newbies surprised.  Both Chronicle and The Woman in Black debuted to over $20 million, with the former edging out the latter for first place.

It probably needs no explication, since his first feature as a writer-director was titled Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane, but Joe Carnahan makes masculine movies.  His latest movie, The Grey, is currently the number one movie in America, having made an estimated $20 million in its opening weekend, and now that Carnahan has put Liam Neeson in a fistfight with vicious wolves, where does he go from there?  It looks like might venture into Bronson territory, as he's apparently on board to write and direct a remake of Death Wish, the 1974 revenge tale starring the one and only Charles Bronson.

"If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you."  With those lines in 2008's Taken, Oscar-caliber actor Liam Neeson began a new phase in his career as a leading man who can carry and action movie.  With his gravitas and imposing 6' 4" physicality, he'd played formidable figures before, but now he's a straight-up actionhero.  The Grey, which is more commonly known as "That movie where Liam Neeson fistfights wolves," continued his strong showing, debuting in first place this weekend.

Opening in theaters on January 27th is the new action-packed, wilderness-survival thriller from director Joe Carnahan (The A-Team) called The Grey. The movie features an exceptional cast of veteran actors including Liam Neeson (Taken), Dermot Mulroney (Abduction), Frank Grillo (Warrior), James Badge Dale (Shame), Dallas Roberts (3:10 to Yuma), Joe Anderson (The Crazies), and Nonso Anozie (Conan the Barbarian).

IAR's Managing Editor Jami Philbrick recently had an opportunity to sit down with actors Dermot Mulroney, Frank Grillo, James Badge Dale, and Dallas Roberts to discuss their work on The Grey. The exceptional group of actors talked about the new film, their characters' arcs, working with director Joe Carnahan, the movie's physically taxing demands, and why Frank Grillo actually got himself arrested to research his role.

Opening in theaters on January 27th is the new action-packed, wilderness-survival thriller from director Joe Carnahan (The A-Team) called The Grey. The movie features an exceptional cast of veteran actors including Liam Neeson (Taken), Dermot Mulroney (Abduction), Frank Grillo (Warrior), James Badge Dale (Shame), Dallas Roberts (3:10 to Yuma), Joe Anderson (The Crazies), and Nonso Anozie (Conan the Barbarian).

IAR's Managing Editor Jami Philbrick recently had an opportunity to sit down with director Joe Carnahan to discuss his work on The Grey. Carnahan talked about the new film, why he chose to depict the wolves as abnormally large, human nature's willingness to adapt and survive, reuniting with Neeson after The A-Team, and the production's extremely difficult weather conditions. 

With just a few days until the film actually hits theaters, a new trailer for The Grey has made its way online.  This trailer is notable for two things, being an age-restricted red band deal, and also being thoroughly badass.  It quite effectively exploits several very basic fears both modern and instinctual, from the fear of being in a place crash to the fear of freezing to death to the altogether more immediate fear of getting eaten by f*cking wolves. 

Opening in theaters on January 27th is the new action-packed, wilderness-survival thriller from director Joe Carnahan (The A-Team) called The Grey. The movie features an exceptional cast of veteran actors including Liam Neeson (Taken), Dermot Mulroney (Abduction), Frank Grillo (Warrior), James Badge Dale (Shame), Dallas Roberts (3:10 to Yuma), Joe Anderson (The Crazies), and Nonso Anozie (Conan the Barbarian).

IAR's Managing Editor Jami Philbrick recently had an opportunity to sit down with Academy Award-nominated actor Liam Neeson to discuss his work on The Grey. Neeson talked candidly about the new film, human nature's willingness to survive, his character's own sudden desire to live; the mantra that kept him going, what Neeson learned about himself from making the movie, and why in his opinion Joe Carnahan was the only man capable of directing the film. 

Three new images from The Grey have popped up online today, and if you're wondering what The Grey is exactly, it's the movie where Liam Neeson fights a feral wolf, using only a little knife and some jagged mine booze bottles affixed to his fist.  Sadly, these images do not contain Neeson engaging in fisticuffs with a wild animal, but they do remind us that The Grey is also a tense survival thriller about a group of oil-drilling roughnecks who find themselves stranded in the remote Alaskan wilderness following a plane crash.  And because that situation isn't quite horrific enough, they're being picked off by a pack of rogue wolves who presumably love the taste of roughnecks.  So check out the pictures below, knowing in your heart that once The Grey will include an  Oscar caliber actor wrasslin' with a wolf.*