&#39;Hero&#39; Holds Off Rivals at Weak US Box Office
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Chinese martial arts thriller &quot;Hero&quot; logged a second weekend at the top of the North American box office during the US Labor Day holiday, while four new entries failed to make much of an impression.
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LOS ANGELES The acclaimed Jet Li martial-arts epic &quot;Hero&quot; took in an estimated 17-point-eight (m) million dollars to rank Number One in the weekend box office.
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Two years after opening in China, the martial arts thriller &quot;Hero&quot; set a record for an Asian film in North America, kicking off at No.
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Moviegoers are not following the  script written for them by the Hollywood studios. In a sign  that big-budget sequels may be losing their allure, North  American ticket sales for the first three big films of the  lucrative summer season have not kept pace with their  respective predecessors.
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The Chinese martial-arts epic Hero, starring Jet Li, has topped the US box office in its first weekend. The film, which was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar in 2002, grossed $17.
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In the battle of computer-animated cartoons, "The Incredibles" held onto the top slot at the weekend box office in North America, while the costly Tom Hanks holiday movie "The Polar Express" pulled in at a distant No. 2, according to studio estimates issued on Sunday.
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Chinese martial arts thriller  "Hero" logged a second weekend at the top of the North American  box office during the U.S. Labor Day holiday, while four new  entries failed to make much of an impression.
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Zhang Yimou is bemused by the surprise response from American moviegoers to "Hero," which broke box-office records for an Asian film released in the United States.
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North American box-office performance as of Sunday for Oscar best-picture nominees:
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The proliferation of action-adventure movies can be explained by our collective craving for heroes. They need not come from other planets or have super powers, for we have all-too-mortal creatures worthy of hero worship in our firefighters.
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Jet Li's Chinese martial-arts epic "Hero" relegated four new movies to the nether regions of the box office in what ended up as one of the most feeble Labor Day weekends in memory.
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&quot;The Polar Express&quot; got a relatively chilly reception at the box office this weekend, pulling in far behind the season&#39;s other highly touted, animated family flick, &quot;The Incredibles.
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The Incredibles continues to rule the US box office.
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All it took to beat back Satan and an army of oversized snakes at the box office was some Zen-like concentration. Quentin Tarantino may be the real hero of the #1 Jet Li film &quot;Hero.
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&quot;Superman Returns&quot; leapt in a  single bound to the front of the box office in its first  weekend, but the man of steel found the iron women of &quot;The  Devil Wears Prada&quot; standing next in line with a dazzling debut.
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Animated autos retained the pole position as &quot;Cars&quot; came in No. 1 at the box office for a second weekend with &#36;31.2 million, holding off the wrestling comedy &quot;Nacho Libre&quot; and another car tale, &quot;The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.&quot;
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After a month of  high-octane, A-list tent poles, the North American box office  gets a breather of sorts this weekend as not one sequel enters  the marketplace. It will be a brief respite, however, as  &quot;Ocean&#39;s Thirteen&quot; hits theaters June 8.