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Post by Desert Dweller on Nov 23, 2016 23:21:32 GMT -5
And I am back to not knowing any of the films. I don't even know if I knew "Spy Game" was a real movie or not. It sounds vaguely familiar from your post, but I may just think I should have known about a Brad Pitt movie?
So far, "Harry Potter" is the only one of these I saw in theatres. There was only one movie theatre in my college town. There was no online ticket sales. So, my roommate had to drive over at 9am to buy tickets for the 11pm showing on Opening Day. The lines were incredible. I'd never seen anything like it.
I liked the first Harry Potter movie, pretty much. It was a solid translation. I didn't think it exactly captured the spirit of the book. But, oh well. I don't really love any of the Harry Potter movies, but I like them all. Except #6, which I think gutted the story so badly that it actually is missing the main thematic idea. I still like all the books much better.
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Nov 24, 2016 13:11:26 GMT -5
Desert Dweller I guess Spy Game was not the most heavily-advertised film of the year in said college town.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Nov 25, 2016 22:50:41 GMT -5
Desert Dweller I guess Spy Game was not the most heavily-advertised film of the year in said college town. Who knows? End of my last semester in college. I was definitely not watching much tv. The only thing I remember watching on tv that Fall was the World Series. I may have heard about "Spy Game". But if so, I quickly forgot that it ever existed. |
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Nov 25, 2016 22:58:46 GMT -5
Desert Dweller I guess Spy Game was not the most heavily-advertised film of the year in said college town. Who knows? End of my last semester in college. I was definitely not watching much tv. The only thing I remember watching on tv that Fall was the World Series. I may have heard about "Spy Game". But if so, I quickly forgot that it ever existed. It's something of a plot point in The Disaster Artist. I'm bored. No more reviews until Wednesday. Feh. |
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Nov 30, 2016 11:46:47 GMT -5
The Affair of the Necklace
Dir. Charles Shyer
Premiered November 30, 2001
The Affair of the Necklace might be the worst prestige film in living memory, with a RottenTomatoes score of 15%. Lower than Pay it Forward, lower than Lions for Lambs, lower even than The Life of David Gale. Like many other awards-baity movies, The Affair of the Necklace is based on a real incident; unfortunately the film that came out was Hollywood’s worst mangling of modern history since Anastasia. And while not as insufferable a film as some others on this thread, there is so much wrong with it that I find it difficult to even talk about.
Both the film and the true story are thus: in 1780s France, Jeanne de Valois, Countess de la Motte (Hilary Swank) is an impoverished nominal member of the French aristocracy who conspires with her husband from a marriage of convenience (Adrien Brody) and her bastard gigolo lover (Simon Baker) to defraud both church and state and steal an insanely expensive diamond necklace.
The necklace was originally commissioned by King Louis XV for his mistress the Madame du Barry. As the King died before the necklace was finished, and as he did not have the best relationship with his grandson and successor (Simon Shackleton), the new Queen Marie Antoinette (Joely Richardson) refuses to accept it, bankrupting the jewelers. To acquire the necklace, Jeanne de Valois approaches Cardinal de Rohan (Jonathan Pryce), a greedy lech who seeks counsel with the occultist Count of Cagliostro (Christopher Walken). By posing as a confidant of the queen, Jeanne and her lover forge letters from Antoinette insinuating that she has a crush on Rohan, and that she will make him Prime Minister, a position for which he has longed, if he will buy the necklace for her. They take the necklace for themselves and Jeanne’s husband sells the diamonds piece-by-piece.
It’s classic mail fraud, through-and-through, and should have inspired a cracking thriller not unlike The Sting. But whatever intrigue the film may have had is ruined by a persistent and frankly bizarre attempt to make Jeanne into a sympathetic victim out for revenge, which is the source of most of the historical butchery. In the film, Jeanne’s father was a kindhearted nobleman who spoke out in Parliament on behalf of the poor and starving, a rejection of the status quo for which he lost the family estate that Jeanne hopes to repurchase by selling the diamonds from the necklace. In real life, however, the Comte de Valois was a penniless drunkard with only a title to his name. Even if he had been an upstanding advocate for the poor, he could not have spoken for them in Parliament, since no Parliament ever met in his lifetime.
When the film isn't bending over backwards to turn con artist Jeanne into a saintly martyr, it is straining to make the story seem as important as conceivably possible. The film’s narrator, Jeanne’s eventual prosecutor (Brian Cox), is adamant that the events depicted were the direct and immediate cause of the French Revolution, and is quick to cut to common rabblerousers painting graffiti of “Liberté! Egalité! Fraternité!” or burning Marie Antoinette in effigy.
Where do we begin? First, the French Revolution was caused by the government’s attempt to recover its finances from two long, costly wars with Britain by imposing draconian and regressive taxes just as the country was hit by famine, and just as American independence was promoting Enlightenment ideals among wealthy professionals who were excluded from government due to their lack of aristocratic title. It was not caused by a fucking 419 fraud, nor was any revolutionary sentiment yet being sown at this particular time.
While The Affair of the Necklace was a great scandal and a source of embarrassment for the French Royal Family, they were the victims. What’s more, you may be surprised to hear that King Louis and Marie Antoinette were actually seen as supportive of the Revolution; the revolutionaries envisioning a constitutional monarchy and the public only turning against the royals when they attempted to flee escalating violence in Paris and the surrounding countryside years after the revolution began.
And in perhaps the most bizarre deviation of all, Cardinal de Rohan is repeatedly referred to as “Cardinal of all France.” In addition to not being “Cardinal of” anything, “Cardinal” being a title rather than a position, Rohan was archbishop of Strasbourg, one of sixteen Catholic archdioceses in France, and one that was only partly French and predominantly German-speaking.
So it’s bad history. But don’t worry, it’s also bad cinema. In contrast to similarly set films like Barry Lyndon, Amadeus, and even Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, The Affair of the Necklace is strikingly gloomy and cheap-looking, making no use whatsoever of the famously opulent period setting. The dialogue, meanwhile, is simultaneously obtuse and blunt; screenwriter John Sweet seems to believe that the characters can get away with expositing their every thought as long as they sound like Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire read aloud. If that were not enough, every line of this gibberish is variously chewed and giggled out in a manner suggesting that director Charles Shyer was inspired by a version of Amadeus in which every character was played by Tom Hulce.
The Affair of the Necklace is not merely a bad film because it is historically inaccurate. It is bad because its inaccuracies are manufactured in service of an irritatingly precious and simplistic outlook, one that requires the invocation of falsehood to ring true– and that it fails even to do that.
Signs This Was Made in 2001
David Newman’s dreadful opening fanfare, caught somewhere between opera and New Age– complete with a lone woman screeching in a language that definitely isn’t French. The erotic novel-cursive credits.
How Did It Do?
Earning just $471,000 against a $30 million budget, The Affair of the Necklace was the second-lowest grossing wide release US film of 2001 (the lowest of all was Wet Hot American Summer). Critics abhorred the film as dour, formless, and oddly moralistic, resulting in a 15% rating on RT.
It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Costume Design but did not win, placing it in the rarified company of Toys, Dick Tracy, and When Time Ran Out, and officially making it less deserving of an Oscar than Norbit.
Next Time: Behind Enemy Lines
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Post by MarkInTexas on Nov 30, 2016 16:28:46 GMT -5
Director Charles Shyer had previously directed crowd-pleasers like Baby Boom and Father of the Bride. I wonder if the fact he had gotten divorced from his wife and long-time partner Nancy Meyers led him to think he could direct something clearly out of his league. He would go on to write and direct the remake of Alfie, starring Jude Law during the year that Jude Law was starring in pretty much every movie, and hasn't done anything of importance since.
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Nov 30, 2016 22:23:13 GMT -5
Director Charles Shyer had previously directed crowd-pleasers like Baby Boom and Father of the Bride. I wonder if the fact he had gotten divorced from his wife and long-time partner Nancy Meyers led him to think he could direct something clearly out of his league. He would go on to write and direct the remake of Alfie, starring Jude Law during the year that Jude Law was starring in pretty much every movie, and hasn't done anything of importance since. I don't blame him for thinking that. I can't stand Nancy's Home for Retired Celebrities (which is what I call her movies). |
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Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Dec 1, 2016 2:33:47 GMT -5
Black Magic, an Orson Welles vehicle where he played Cagliostro, also deals with the affair of the diamond necklace. It is also probably not historically accurate (it’s explicitly based on Dumas’s Cagliostro novel, Joseph Balsamo, not actual history), but it’s also lot of fun—while it has the bones of a typical 1940s period piece, Welles ended up doing some uncredited direction on it and his performance as Cagliostro really propels the film into a fun and memorable space.
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Dec 1, 2016 11:07:28 GMT -5
Behind Enemy Lines
Dir. John Moore
Premiered November 30, 2001
The Last Castle was the first military film to come out after 9/11, and it went over about as well as Jerry Falwell’s remarks blaming American liberalism for provoking the attacks. If you wanted your fill of combat and patriotism, you’d have to tune into HBO’s excellent Band of Brothers, which ran from September 9, two days before the attacks, until November 4. I highly recommend you check it out; I mentioned a while ago in my article on Playtone miniseries and might eventually review the series on this site (no promises though).
But for those who wanted to see wartime recognized on the big screen (or didn’t have HBO), Behind Enemy Lines was not only an actual war movie, but one which producer John Davis, in recognition of the changing times, promised to be “a new kind of war movie.”
Behind Enemy Lines takes place in 1995, shortly after NATO’s swift occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina; peace has been declared (oddly, the the Dayton Agreement which ended the war is referred to here as the “Cincinnati Accords”) but the US Navy is still on high alert. After several years with the fleet, Fighter pilot Chris “Longhorn” Burnett (Owen Wilson) realizes that the age of heroic ace pilots is over, and is eager to leave the Navy. Rear Admiral Reigart (Gene Hackman) understandably dislikes Longhorn’s attitude and sends him on a reconnaissance mission on Christmas Day. But trouble arises when Longhorn uncovers and photographs a secret Serbian base accompanied by mass civilian graves in the demilitarized zone. Quickly shot down in supposedly neutral territory, Longhorn sees his partner (Gabriel Macht) captured and executed by agents of the war criminal Miroslav Lokar (Olek Krupa) and must escape to safety, while Reigart mounts an effort to find him despite the protest of the irritatingly European NATO Admiral Piquet (Joaquin de Almeida).
I don’t wish to say that a movie inspired by real world events has to stay true to the letter of those events in order to be compelling, but whatever changes the filmmakers make should have narrative and visual purpose, and when it comes to living memory, certain concessions have to be made out of respect. ˆ does neither. The story is not a bad one, but it combines some of the worst tropes to be found in other action movies of the era. The main culprit in this regard is a laughable understanding of imaging satellite technology (complete with product placement for Northrup Grumman, a company that would benefit little from product placement); as well a seeming ignorance of how the Navy works: stationed in the Adriatic, Longhorn has a past of partying too hard in Hong Kong, and Admiral Reigart makes reference to being parked in San Diego Bay, all of which are served by different fleets. Most bizarrely, the film contains an Animal House-style epilogue falsely implying that this is a true story.
At the very least, Behind Enemy Lines was a much easier watch than the dull-as-dishwater movies I’ve mostly fidgeted through for this project. But first-time director John Moore treats what might have been a salvageable chase film like a video game, with incomprehensible closeup cinematography, hyperactive Michael Bay-esque editing (such as an pornographic ultra-slow-motion shot of a Serbian soldier being pulverized by a landmine), and an abundance of atrocious and unnecessary CGI, framing the horrors of war as an astonishingly distasteful gee-whiz spectacle– and the Drum & Bass score doesn’t help. Hackman as Reigart gives one of the worst performances of his career, and Wilson seems not to have been given any direction at all. And while we may tire of the muted grey look of many war movies today, it’s nothing compared to the chintzy Cold Case-blue filter that accompanies nearly every shot of this film.
Signs This Was Made in 2001
When Burnett loses his football in the ocean, he cries out “Wilson!” This is a reference to the 2000 Robert Zemeckis film Cast Away, in a movie set in 1995. Another anachronistic oddity: France being a member of NATO in 1995.
How Did It Do?
Behind Enemy Lines grossed $92 million against a $40 million budget. With this record of success, John Moore would go on to an unblemished career of crap, directing Flight of the Phoenix, the 2006 remake of The Omen, Max Payne, the franchise-killing A Good Day to Die Hard, and this year’s I.T.
With a RottenTomatoes score of 37%, Behind Enemy Lines was not as universally hated by critics as some other films that fall, but those who hated it absolutely loathed it. Roger Ebert bemoaned the film’s lack of stakes, as the Serbs are depicted as incompetent. More critics lambasted it as hideously jingoistic, which in November 2001 was really saying something. At first I didn’t get that from the film– as far as American patriotic imagery goes, it’s more Tim McGraw than Toby Keith– but the film’s treatment of our NATO allies through the political hack Piquet, of French forces as cartoonishly cowardly, and of foreign media as overeager to depict the Serbs as the good guys (which was never close to being the case) was incredibly ugly at a time when we were depending on our European friends, and just as ugly now in a resurgent Cold War.
True to John Davis’ vision, Behind Enemy Lines was indeed “a new kind of war movie.” But it was the worst kind, the kind that has ever since decorated the straight-to-DVD bargain bin at Walgreens, between copies of Cruel Intentions 2 and Stealing Sinatra. Good riddance.
Next Time: Ocean's Eleven
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Post by Powerthirteen on Dec 1, 2016 12:09:04 GMT -5
Next Time: Ocean's Eleven
Now you're talking. The narrator's voice in that trailer is tonally jarring. |
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Dec 1, 2016 12:18:16 GMT -5
Powerthirteen I totally agree. It's not a good trailer. I have no memory of seeing theatrical trailers with voiceover, but apparently I saw a lot of them. The transition to our current mode of trailers happened, I think, over the next couple years.
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Post by Powerthirteen on Dec 1, 2016 12:24:10 GMT -5
Powerthirteen I totally agree. It's not a good trailer. I have no memory of seeing theatrical trailers with voiceover, but apparently I saw a lot of them. The transition to our current mode of trailers happened, I think, over the next couple years. As someone who's seen the movie about 50 times, I quite like the actual pieces they put together for the trailer, but that voice sounds like it's selling Without A Paddle. Putting the "You practiced that, didn't you?" exchange at the end is a particularly good way of demonstrating the tone of the film, and that's a film that's 90% tone, so it's great. |
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Dec 1, 2016 18:26:24 GMT -5
Powerthirteen The good news is that December is a complete reversal of fall 2001 up to that point. The movies go from "overwhelmingly awful" to "mostly tolerable," with (by my estimation) three truly great films; and theater attendance skyrocketed from unusual lows to unusual highs.
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Post by Powerthirteen on Dec 1, 2016 18:37:11 GMT -5
Powerthirteen The good news is that December is a complete reversal of fall 2001 up to that point. The movies go from "overwhelmingly awful" to "mostly tolerable," with (by my estimation) three truly great films; and theater attendance skyrocketed from unusual lows to unusual highs. I'm relieved for your sake. |
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Dec 1, 2016 18:39:15 GMT -5
Powerthirteen The good news is that December is a complete reversal of fall 2001 up to that point. The movies go from "overwhelmingly awful" to "mostly tolerable," with (by my estimation) three truly great films; and theater attendance skyrocketed from unusual lows to unusual highs. I'm relieved for your sake. Keep in mind that I write these way in advance and only have three reviews (out of fifteen) left to write after tonight. Consider your relief retroactive to about a month ago. |
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Post by MarkInTexas on Dec 2, 2016 12:20:58 GMT -5
What struck me while watching the Ocean's Eleven trailer was how superfluous the narration was. The film clips and dialogue in it set up the premise and the plot just fine (maybe too fine, as it pretty much gave away that they successfully broke in). Even if the narrator had the perfect vocal tone, lines like "but these guys are just crazy enough to pull off the con of the century!" doesn't add anything. That's probably why trailer voiceovers have largely vanished. It's rare that a film is going to have such a complicated plot that a 2 1/2 minute trailer can't summarize it with just clips and dialogue.
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Dec 3, 2016 3:53:12 GMT -5
What struck me while watching the Ocean's Eleven trailer was how superfluous the narration was. The film clips and dialogue in it set up the premise and the plot just fine (maybe too fine, as it pretty much gave away that they successfully broke in). Even if the narrator had the perfect vocal tone, lines like "but these guys are just crazy enough to pull off the con of the century!" doesn't add anything. That's probably why trailer voiceovers have largely vanished. It's rare that a film is going to have such a complicated plot that a 2 1/2 minute trailer can't summarize it with just clips and dialogue. You're telling me. I just came back from seeing Nocturnal Animals only to see a trailer for it with voiceover, and said voiceover totally misrepresents the film. |
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Dec 7, 2016 13:14:43 GMT -5
 Ocean's Eleven
Dir. Steven Soderbergh
Premiered December 7, 2001
Goddamn, Ocean’s Eleven is cool. A remake of a poorly-received 1960 Rat Pack film, this movie could easily have been a similarly smarmy mediocrity had it not been for the expert direction of the enedlessly eclectic Steven Soderbergh, then fresh off becoming the first director ever to have two films nominated for Best Director in the same year.
After being released from a prison sentence for his only conviction, slippery con-man Danny Ocean (George Clooney) runs off to Hollywood to plan a heist with his former partner in crime Rusty Ryan (Brad Pitt). The plan: to rob a single vault used for three separate Las Vegas casinos owned by sleazy developer Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia). Needless to say, this would be their biggest and most difficult job ever, so Ocean and Ryan bring along a retired veteran thief (Carl Reiner) and a young upstart (Matt Damon), a former casino owner eager to get back at Benedict (Elliot Gould), an inside man (Bernie Mac), a demolitions expert (Don Cheadle), a security expert (Eddie Jemison), an acrobat (Shaobo Qin), and twin Mormon getaway drivers (Scott Caan and Casey Affleck). But things get complicated when Rusty discovers that Benedict has taken up with Danny’s ex-wife Tess (Julia Roberts) and suspect that Danny has more at stake than just $150 million.
What can I say about this movie? I don’t think it’s anyone’s favorite, but there’s a reason everyone’s seen it. It’s tight and controlled. It has a sense of humor but moreso it has a sense of fun. Ocean’s Eleven especially stands out in 2001, when even basic plot and logic were not a given in any film, so for Soderbergh to not only produce a coherent, thrilling heist film, but a genuinely enlivening star-studded spectacle must have been an enormous breath of fresh air. None of the performances are surprising, everyone’s playing to their typical personas, but they do it well, and the sense of fun they’re having is infectious, with nary a trace of smarm or self-indulgence to be found. I saw the film a couple of times as a teenager, but I like it even more as an adult and am keen to check out the sequels.
Sign This Was Made in 2001
Rusty’s day job involves teaching “celebrities” to play poker. As the film begins, his students are Holly Marie Combs, Topher Grace, Joshua Jackson, Barry Watson, and Shane West.
How Did It Do?
The twelve weeks following the September 11 Attacks brought the film industry to its knees, but when December came, the crowds thronged to theaters as if making up for lost time. After nearly every film flopping in the rest of the fall, it was the rare film in December that didn’t make it’s money back –don’t worry, we’ll get to those. Ocean’s Eleven is no exception, raking in a truly massive $450.7 million against an $85 million budget. Critics were similarly generous to the film, praising all but Don Cheadle’s affected Cockney accent.
Next Time: Not Another Teen Movie
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Post by ganews on Dec 7, 2016 15:10:40 GMT -5
Ocean's Eleven
Dir. Steven Soderbergh
Premiered December 7, 2001 The most re-watchable movie of its decade, like The Shawshank Redemption before it and The Martian after it. |
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Post by Powerthirteen on Dec 7, 2016 15:19:19 GMT -5
As discussed elsewhere recently, I've always felt that Cheadle's accent is supposed to be an affectation; someone mentioned that the original plan was for him to change his accent in ever movie, without anyone else ever mentioning it, like everyone's apparently unremarkable familiarity with Mandarin.
As a movie, Eleven might be the best of the three, but I actually think it's the *least* cool of them. Some of the clothes are a bit off, since Danny's just out of prison (his suits are a little gross early in the movie). Not that it isn't still a hundred times cooler than most other movies.
Also, I will stand up for the sequels any day. Twelve has some really technically great directing/cinematography in it.
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Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Dec 7, 2016 15:24:34 GMT -5
As discussed elsewhere recently, I've always felt that Cheadle's accent is supposed to be an affectation; someone mentioned that the original plan was for him to change his accent in ever movie, without anyone else ever mentioning it, like everyone's apparently unremarkable familiarity with Mandarin. As a movie, Eleven might be the best of the three, but I actually think it's the *least* cool of them. Some of the clothes are a bit off, since Danny's just out of prison (his suits are a little gross early in the movie). Not that it isn't still a hundred times cooler than most other movies. Also, I will stand up for the sequels any day. Twelve has some really technically great directing/cinematography in it. I remember being disappointed by 12, but I don't think I've re-watched it since I saw it in the theater. 13 was pretty fun, though. |
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Post by Powerthirteen on Dec 7, 2016 15:36:02 GMT -5
As discussed elsewhere recently, I've always felt that Cheadle's accent is supposed to be an affectation; someone mentioned that the original plan was for him to change his accent in ever movie, without anyone else ever mentioning it, like everyone's apparently unremarkable familiarity with Mandarin. As a movie, Eleven might be the best of the three, but I actually think it's the *least* cool of them. Some of the clothes are a bit off, since Danny's just out of prison (his suits are a little gross early in the movie). Not that it isn't still a hundred times cooler than most other movies. Also, I will stand up for the sequels any day. Twelve has some really technically great directing/cinematography in it. I remember being disappointed by 12, but I don't think I've re-watched it since I saw it in the theater. 13 was pretty fun, though. The plot cheats like crazy, insofar as there even is a plot. Your ability to appreciate the many things about it that are cool is directly dependent on your tolerance for that, and for the "Tess looks like Julia Robert" thing. |
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Post by MarkInTexas on Dec 7, 2016 18:04:52 GMT -5
Goddamn, Ocean’s Eleven is cool. A remake of a poorly-received 1960 Rat Pack film, this movie could easily have been a similarly smarmy mediocrity had it not been for the expert direction of the enedlessly eclectic Steven Soderbergh, then fresh off becoming the first director ever to have two films nominated for Best Picture in the same year.
I haven't seen 12 in a long while, but remember being disappointed by it. I'll have to give it another go sometimes. Both 11 and 13 are movies that I pretty much will stop at when I come across them on cable and watch until the end. Given that Casino is another one I do that with, maybe I just have a thing for films involving crime and gambling. Incidentally, I need to call you out on your claim above. In 1974, Francis Ford Coppola directed both The Conversation and The Godfather, Part II, and both were nominated for Best Picture. In 1939, Victor Fleming directed both Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz and both were also nominated for Picture. What Soderbergh did was become the first director to get nominated twice the same year, for both Traffic and Erin Brockovich, winning for Traffic (Coppola was only nominated for Godfather 2, and Fleming was only nominated for GWTW. Both won). |
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Dec 7, 2016 18:11:48 GMT -5
Goddamn, Ocean’s Eleven is cool. A remake of a poorly-received 1960 Rat Pack film, this movie could easily have been a similarly smarmy mediocrity had it not been for the expert direction of the enedlessly eclectic Steven Soderbergh, then fresh off becoming the first director ever to have two films nominated for Best Picture in the same year.
I haven't seen 12 in a long while, but remember being disappointed by it. I'll have to give it another go sometimes. Both 11 and 13 are movies that I pretty much will stop at when I come across them on cable and watch until the end. Given that Casino is another one I do that with, maybe I just have a thing for films involving crime and gambling. Incidentally, I need to call you out on your claim above. In 1974, Francis Ford Coppola directed both The Conversation and The Godfather, Part II, and both were nominated for Best Picture. In 1939, Victor Fleming directed both Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz and both were also nominated for Picture. What Soderbergh did was become the first director to get nominated twice the same year, for both Traffic and Erin Brockovich, winning for Traffic (Coppola was only nominated for Godfather 2, and Fleming was only nominated for GWTW. Both won). Fixed. |
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Post by MarkInTexas on Dec 7, 2016 18:17:06 GMT -5
Incidentally, what was up with the scheduling during December 2001? Behind Enemy Lines was the only wide release the weekend after Thanksgiving weekend. That's acceptable, as that's usually a fairly dead weekend. Ocean's 11 getting the next weekend all to itself is less justified. Then the next weekend, the only wide releases are Vanilla Sky and Not Another Teen Movie, which probably would have been more at home coming out in mid-January (this is not to say I didn't like the movie, as I'll discuss next week, but it seems oddly out of place as a Christmas release). Then, the Friday before Christmas, it's a dogpile with 5 wide releases, and then two more arriving on Christmas Day. Four wide releases throughout the first three weekends, then 7 in one 5-day period. I'm sure you'll discuss it, but at least partially why some of those movies flopped is because the studios collectively forgot how to schedule.
We're kind of seeing it happening again this year, with only one release last weekend, one major release this weekend, two major releases next weekend, then a pileup from Wednesday the 21st through Christmas, with five wide releases scheduled (and it was even worse before The Space Between Us and Gold moved to 2017). Granted, I can see everyone being nervous about Star Wars, but still...
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Dec 7, 2016 18:24:27 GMT -5
Incidentally, what was up with the scheduling during December 2001? Behind Enemy Lines was the only wide release the weekend after Thanksgiving weekend. That's acceptable, as that's usually a fairly dead weekend. Ocean's 11 getting the next weekend all to itself is less justified. Then the next weekend, the only wide releases are Vanilla Sky and Not Another Teen Movie, which probably would have been more at home coming out in mid-January (this is not to say I didn't like the movie, as I'll discuss next week, but it seems oddly out of place as a Christmas release). Then, the Friday before Christmas, it's a dogpile with 5 wide releases, and then two more arriving on Christmas Day. Four wide releases throughout the first three weekends, then 7 in one 5-day period. I'm sure you'll discuss it, but at least partially why some of those movies flopped is because the studios collectively forgot how to schedule. We're kind of seeing it happening again this year, with only one release last weekend, one major release this weekend, two major releases next weekend, then a pileup from Wednesday the 21st through Christmas, with five wide releases scheduled (and it was even worse before The Space Between Us and Gold moved to 2017). Granted, I can see everyone being nervous about Star Wars, but still... It's dumber, actually. The Shipping News was released on Tuesday the 18th, and LOTR came out the next day. Then you get the Dec 21 clusterfuck. I've noticed while prepping for my 1977 retrospective that Friday releases appear not to have been a rule back then. You're from back then. Is that true? |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 7, 2016 19:58:49 GMT -5
I never liked 12, ive also only ever seen it once. 13 though, it isn't as good as the first but is just really fun. It is just more of the same, but that certainly isn't a bad thing.
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Post by MarkInTexas on Dec 8, 2016 10:50:38 GMT -5
I've noticed while prepping for my 1977 retrospective that Friday releases appear not to have been a rule back then. You're from back then. Is that true? Technically, I"m from "back then", but given that I spent 1977 either in utero or doing not much more than crying, eating, sleeping, and pooping, I couldn't tell you for sure. One source you might want to take a look at is Google's newspaper archives. I know they have the archives of papers from Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, and Tampa going back that far, and you can check them to find out what day movies actually opened back then. It's important to remember, though, that distribution was different back then. It was changing from the old system, where pretty much every movie opened exclusively in New York and LA, and then spread around the country, almost always playing exclusive engagements in each city before going to the neighborhood theaters, to the current one, where every major release opens everywhere on the same day. Star Wars, for example, was largely limited to its initial list of cities from its opening in May though late June, when it finally begin to expand. Meanwhile, Smokey and the Bandit, which opened the same weekend, opened pretty much everywhere. Just from my own eyeballing, it looks like most movies did open on Friday, at least outside NY/LA, where they could have opened a day or two earlier. There did seem to be more Wednesday releases, though, and for random movies on random weeks, not like today when a Wednesday release is usually reserved for holiday weekends. |
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Post by Ben Grimm on Dec 8, 2016 12:21:24 GMT -5
Incidentally, what was up with the scheduling during December 2001? Behind Enemy Lines was the only wide release the weekend after Thanksgiving weekend. That's acceptable, as that's usually a fairly dead weekend. Ocean's 11 getting the next weekend all to itself is less justified. Then the next weekend, the only wide releases are Vanilla Sky and Not Another Teen Movie, which probably would have been more at home coming out in mid-January (this is not to say I didn't like the movie, as I'll discuss next week, but it seems oddly out of place as a Christmas release). Then, the Friday before Christmas, it's a dogpile with 5 wide releases, and then two more arriving on Christmas Day. Four wide releases throughout the first three weekends, then 7 in one 5-day period. I'm sure you'll discuss it, but at least partially why some of those movies flopped is because the studios collectively forgot how to schedule. We're kind of seeing it happening again this year, with only one release last weekend, one major release this weekend, two major releases next weekend, then a pileup from Wednesday the 21st through Christmas, with five wide releases scheduled (and it was even worse before The Space Between Us and Gold moved to 2017). Granted, I can see everyone being nervous about Star Wars, but still... It's dumber, actually. The Shipping News was released on Tuesday the 18th, and LOTR came out the next day. Then you get the Dec 21 clusterfuck. I've noticed while prepping for my 1977 retrospective that Friday releases appear not to have been a rule back then. You're from back then. Is that true? Box Office Mojo has dates going back at least to 1980; Friday appears to have been the rule back then, but Wednesday wasn't unusual, and other days happened, too. I don't know how old I was when release dates being Friday began to register, but it was well after 1977, when I turned two. |
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Post by MarkInTexas on Dec 8, 2016 15:39:44 GMT -5
These days, other than Christmas Day, when movies get released no matter what day of the week it falls on, it's rare to get films opening on days other than Friday or Wednesday. To be fair, for most major films, "Friday" releases now start on Thursday evenings, which is a fairly recent development. I know at least one Star Wars prequel opened on Thursday (with matinee showings) so it could open around the world on the same day. The Omen remake opened on a Tuesday to take advantage of the 6/6/06 release date, and Brother Bear opened on Saturday, November 1, 2003 to avoid Halloween. Going back a bit further, The Silence of the Lambs opened on Thursday, February 14, 1991, because something from the novel tied into Valentine's Day (it's been so long since I've read it I don't remember exactly what). Other than those and various Christmas Day releases, I can't think of anything else that opened on a day other than Friday or Wednesday.
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