`Knowing' tops at box office with $24.8 By DERRIK J. LANG AP ENTERTAINMENT WRITER Audiences knew what they wanted this weekend: Nicolas Cage and the apocalypse. . Summit Entertainment's supernatural thriller "Knowing," which stars Cage as an astrophysics professor who figures out how to predict monumental catastrophes, debuted as the No. 1 movie at the weekend box office with $24.8 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday. "Knowing" easily foiled "I Love You, Man" and "Duplicity," the other films opening in wide release. "I Love You; Man" was second with $lB million and "Duplicity" was third at $14.4 million. The victory was another affirmation for Summit Entertainment, the small studio behind the vampire saga "Twilight," which opened last year with more than $69 million and went on sale Saturday on DVD after fans lined up at midnight. • Richie Fay, the studio's president Poet Sylvia Platte's son commits suicide in Alaska By HILLEL ITALIE AP NATIONAL WRITER When Nicholas Hughes was in his early 20s, his father, poet Ted Hughes, advised him on the importance of living bravely. "The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated," Hughes wrote to his son, who committed suicide at 47 last week at his home in Fairbanks, Alaska, 46 years after Nicholas' mother, poet Sylvia Plath, killed herself. "And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all." From the time that Plath died, in 1963, Ted Hughes had tried to protect and strengthen their children, Frieda and Nicholas, from their mother's fate and fame. He burned the last volume of his wife's journals, a decision strongly criticized by scholars and fans, and waited years to tell his children the full details of Plath's suicide. And only near the end of his own life, in his "Birthday Letters" poems, did he share his side of of domestic distribution, said there are several reasons for the studio's successes. "We've got great creative talent at the studio, veterans on the marketing side and I've got a few years under my belt on the distribution side," said Fay. "It's the right people coming together at the right tune. We're lean and mean, but we pack a punch. We can deliver on all levels. With the DVD coming out so well, we're obviously a fully functioning studio." The "bromantic" comedy "I Love You, Man" attracted equal 1. "Knowing," $24.8 million 2. "I Love You, Man," $lB million 3. "Duplicity," $14.4 million 4. "Race to Witch Mountain," $l3 million 5. "Watchmen," $6.7 million modern poetry's most famous and ill-starred couple. "What I've been hiding all my life, from myself and everybody else, is not terrible at all. Though you didn't want to read it," he wrote to Nicholas in 1998, months before Ted Hughes died of cancer. "And the effect on me, Nicky, the sense of gigantic, upheaval transformation in my mind, is quite bewildering. It's as though I have completely new different brains. I can think thoughts I never could think. I have a freedom of imagination I've not felt since 1962. Just to have got rid of all that." "But I tell you all this," Hughes added, "with a hope that it will let you understand a lot of things. ... Don't laugh it off. In 1963 you were hit even harder than me. But you will have to deal with it, just as I have had to." Nicholas Hughes, who was not married and had no children, hanged himself March 16, Alaska State Troopers said. He was a man of science, not letters, the only member of his immediate family not to become a poet. A fisheries biologist, he spent more than a decade on the faculty of the University of Alaska Fairbanks as a professor of fisheries and .i7' - 11 107 M numbers of men . and women, according to the studio. It stars Paul Rudd and Jason Segel "I think the movie debuted at expectations," said Don Harris, Paramount's vice president of distribution. "We had the advantage of opening at the beginning of college and high school spring break, so the audience for this film is going to continue to be available. We think the movie will . have good legs. There are no other comedies coming out for the next couple of weekends, so that bodes well for the film." ocean sciences. Marmian Grimes, the university's senior public information officer, said he left about a year ago. Hughes' older sister, poet Frieda Hughes, issued a statement through the Times of London, expressing her "profound sorrow" and saying that he "had been battling depression for some time." "His lifelong fascination with fish and fishing was a strong and shared bond with our father," Frieda Hughes wrote. "He was a loving brother, a loyal friend to those who knew him and, despite the vagaries that life threw at him, he maintained an almost childlike innocence and enthusiasm for the next project or plan." Nicholas Hughes graduated from the University of Oxford in 1984; and received a master's of arts degree from Oxford, in 1990, before emigrating to the United States and getting a doctorate from the University of Alaska. Hughes' family history was an "urban legend" that was passed around from student to student. But it was a subject no one discussed with him, said Kevin Schaberg, a former student in a fish ecology class taught by Hughes. "It was obviously something March 25 2009 The weekend's other major debut, Universal's romantic comedy "Duplicity," was written and directed by "Michael Clayton" director Tony Gilroy and stars Julia Roberts and Clive Owen as romantically entangled former spies who scheme to steal millions of dollars from their rival pharmaceutical companies. "I liken 'Duplicity' to cinematic fine dining," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box office tracker Media By Numbers. "I think 'Knowing' and `I Love You, Man' were more like fast food. They were fun and he did not want to talk about," said Schaberg, who added that he knew Hughes struggled with depression. "I never brought it (his family) up. He never brought it up." Mark Wipfli, an aquatic ecologist at the University of Alaska and a good friend of Hughes, said that Hughes never spoke of his mother to him, but he talked warmly of his father, who sometimes visited Hughes in Alaska. Even though he had left the university, Hughes remained active in research and was a key scientist in an ongoing study of king salmon. "I would really like to see him recognized in his own right, not just as the son of two famous people," Wipfli said. "In his own right, he was an incredibly wondeiful person." Hughes not only taught about fish, he also enjoyed fishing and other Alaska pursuits, such as skiing, boating and hunting moose and caribou. What stands out the most for Schaberg, however, is Hughes' vast knowledge of fish, his instant recall of authors, titles and journals on even the most obscure subjects. "Nick was probably one of the smartest guys I've ever met," he said. "When it came to fish, he was a walking bibliography." million easy. 'Duplicity' was just a little bit more of a challenging film for audiences. I think audiences were looking for a different kind of escapism." Factoring in 2009's higher admission prices, the box office total was down 5 percent compared with last year, the second straight weekend of decline. Dergarabedian doesn't believe the decline indicates the end of an otherwise stellar year at the box office, however, saying next weekend's debut of Dreamworks' "Monsters vs. Aliens" should be strong. "Being only 12 weeks into the year, every weekend makes a huge difference," said Dergarabedian. "We're still doing great this year, but it just shows you that the business is extremely cyclical. I'm not ready to signal any kind of doom and gloom just yet. We have 'Monsters vs. Aliens' opening Friday, and I think that will get us back on track." Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. Hughes was only 9 months old when his parents separated and was still an infant when his mother died in February 1963, gassing herself in a London flat as her children slept. A few months earlier, she had written of Nicholas: "You are the one/Solid the spaces lean on, envious/You are the baby in the barn." Not widely known when she died, Plath became a cult figure through the novel "The Bell Jar," which told of a suicidal young woman, and through the prophetic "Ariel" poems "I shall never grow old," she wrote she had been working on near the end of her life. The immediate cause of her breakup with Hughes was his affair with Assia Wevill. Plath's legacy haunted her husband, hounded for years by women who believed he was responsible for her suicide and by a procession of biographers and fans obsessed with the brief, impassioned and tragic marriage between the two poets. Ted Hughes relived the tragedy not only through the constant reminders of Plath, but also through the suicide of Wevill, his second wife, who in March 1969 killed herself and their 4-year-old daughter.
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