Links for Tuesday

A slow starting week for the blog here- apologies.

What's been happening? Well, Ethan and Joel Coen won the Director's Guild award, making NCFOM's Best Picture chances just that much higher. It also won the ensemble SAG award (and then apparently Josh Brolin forgot that Tommy Lee Jones was much more important than he was and hogged the mic), and honestly we should just stop wondering now.

Also winning SAGs- Daniel Day Lewis, Julie Christie, Javier Bardem, and Ruby Dee. One of these things is not like the others...

The song "Falling Slowly" from Once, as I anticipated, is now in danger of having it's Oscar nomination revoked because it may not have been written for the film (duh!). I'm not saying forget the rules, I'm just saying get it right the first time, Academy. My take- they should revoke it (because if it beat 'original' songs it would seem unfair), but replace it with...another song from Once! "If You Want Me" was the only other song on the shortlist, but since that list was apparently also a piece of crap they could also go with "Fallen From the Sky," "Once," or "The Hill." (Or this!).

Meet the Spartans rules the Box Office, because we as a people are mentally incompetent. I would have been fine with Rambo, I really would have.

New Line finally settled with Peter Jackson awhile ago, so he's going to exec produce a 'Hobbit' movie (and another, blatantly unecessary LoTR film. Let's not get carried into nineties-era Lucas terriority here, people). So who's going to direct said film that wouldn't be a big step down from Jackson? Maybe... Guillermo Del Toro?

Speaking of which, beyond sequels like LoTR and The Dark Knight, I try not to scan crazy far ahead into movie news, because who wants to wait forever when they're excited about something? But get this- there's a 2009 movie called Public Enemies, about FBI agent Melvin Purvis tracking down John Dillinger.

Sounds cool enough already. But there are also three details that make it completely awesome, and I will list them in order of their excitement factor:

1. Michael Mann is directing it (Heat, Collateral, The Insider, The Last of the Mohicans)
2. Who will play Dillinger? Johnny Depp, that's who.
3. Oh, and the FBI Agent? Christian fucking Bale! Christian Bale is so awesome these days that a couple of months ago I had a conversation with Dave that went something like this...

Dave: There's making a fourth Terminator movie...
Me: Ugh.
Dave: It's directed by McG...
Me: Ugh.
Dave: and Christian Bale might be in it.
Me: Sold.

Crash, will now be a tv series. Yeah, there's really no need for that. The Onion's headline says it all. I felt, immediately after seeing that film, that it was pretty good, but why is it a modern masterpiece all of a sudden? Now I hate it to the point of revulsion, like a pretty good pop song that I can't go to any public restroom without hearing twice. The only good thing that has ever resulted from Crash is this list at McSweeney's internet tendency.

The WGA has agreed to provide the Grammy's with lame banter and uneccessary introductory monologues. Where's the waiver for The Oscars, already? Does anyone give a Belgian weasel about the Grammy's anymore? No!

My problems with the Grammy's: First of all, there's about eight billion different, gratiuitous, and hard to distinguish on the best of days categories. Second, in the major categories, all that ever gets nominated is what's all over the radio and at the top of Billboard charts anyway- I'm not saying it's not good music, but come on- we all know that popularity is not the basis for artistic merit.

This would be like if The Oscars nominated Spiderman 3 and At World's End and Transformers for everything, simply because they sold the most tickets.

Box Office Trends: September

So for some reason, people always seem to be obsessed with comparing the box office numbers of this year to other years, as if that's somehow relevant. Box Office Mojo, one of my favorite resources/time wasters, always makes it a point to say whether business is up or down from the same weekend last year- because we all know the third weekend in September never changes in national movie-going affinity. Duh.

So I figure I'll only recap the months-that-were by relating the performances of one movie to another: inflation and changing economics in Hollywood will probably render these numbers meaningless in a couple years, but the relative grosses of different movies is a good indicator of contemporary taste, if nothing else.

1. Staying Power

3:10 to Yuma has to feel good about its long-term chances. It opened with a modest $14 million, but never dropped more than 36% week to week, which is pretty extraordinary, no matter the release pattern.

Consider this: 3:10 and Shoot 'Em Up both opened on September 7th- Shoot 'Em Up pulled in a lower than expected $5.7 m. But while 3:10 only took modest hits and stayed in the top five all month long, Shoot 'Em Up dropped 54, 69, and 80 percent in consecutive weeks, and will probably stop being tracked before October's out with a meager $17 million.

Hopefully James Mangold's winning western will continue to stay around this fall, and make a Million Dollar Baby-style push over $100 million after Oscar nominations are announced.
2. The Game Plan vs. The Kingdom

I wasn't really sure which one of these to root for last weekend, which is to say I was rooting for neither, but America has decided: we'd rather see The Rock have an allergic reaction to strawberries than see some hypothetical Saudi Arabian terrorists get blown up. The Game Plan made $22 m to The Kingdom's $17 m. This almost makes me feel better, in a way.

Also, as I said I love b.o.m. for reference, but they employ the worst professional film critic I have ever read on the internet. Ever. Most of the reviews for The Kingdom felt uneasy about the sort of xenophobic, country-full-of-terrorists undertones, but this guy (Scott Holleran) thinks it wasn't racist enough. The title of his review? "The Kingdom: Action Blaster Suggests Osama was Right."

3. Good Luck Chuck opened higher than Stardust

Yep. And people ask me why I'm an atheist.

Other than that, people liked zombies, and sort of liked Jodie Foster shooting people, but September is traditionally a slow month, I hear. A bunch of award hopefuls did okay on a handful of screens, but October will be the big test, when everything goes wide.

What makes a Blockbuster?

The term 'blockbuster' means several things, but usually it means a financially successful film.

Some say this is a reference to long lines that used to gather for popular stage productions, lines inherited by the event films of the eighties and beyond. Others think it was inherited from a type of bomb capable of leveling an entire city block (a paltry measure of destruction in this day and age).

But regardless of the etymology, the classification of films as blockbusters was for many years very simple: if it grossed $100 million in the U.S., it was a blockbuster. If it didn't, it wasn't. But what do people mean when they use the term these days, thirty years after the first of the blockbusters hit the screen?

As it was recently pointed out to me, inflation renders past box-office figures essentially moot, and so it does to that $100 million benchmark as well. But finding an appropriate new one is difficult: there are movies that gross $200 million, but cost $200 million (like Superman Returns), and even a couple (reported) $300/$300 million club members (Spiderman 3, Pirates 3). So the rapidly inflating movie budgets (and public interest in them) is a factor.

This is not to mention the tracking of foreign grosses clouding the picture. There are plenty of films that disappoint in the States, only to break the bank overseas: Troy, for example, mostly flopped here ($133 m), but amassed nearly $500 million overall.

And then there's movies that don't break any records, but have a phenomenal budget to earnings ratio. The most famous example of this is the Blair Witch Project with $248 million on a $60 thousand dollar budget, but this summer's Knocked Up ($200 million on a $30 mill budget) and Superbad ($119 m on $20 m) both broke $100 million on relatively cheap expenses.

So I think, for movie nerds like me at least, when we say 'blockbuster' what we're really getting at is profit, and we need a benchmark for the 'blockbuster' that keeps that in mind.

I propose that to be referred to as a blockbuster, your film needs to make $100 million or more over its budget domestically, with the addendum that a $200 million worldwide profit also qualifies. This takes care of obvious hits on reasonable budgets (like Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which cost $150 m and made $289 in the US alone), and our more problematic features with escalating costs (like Batman Begins, which barely outdid its $150 m budget here, but made $371 m worldwide).

A further sub-clause for films smaller in scope entails that if you gross five times your budget, it gives your film tentative blockbuster status, or at least makes it a "box office hit."

Glad we got this settled. These are the sorts of things that keep me up at night.

Top Ten Non-Franchises

As I mentioned, my friend Dave and I discuss box office grosses a lot (he predicts The Brave One in first with $16-19 Million, by the way). Yesterday we pondered an interesting trivia question:

What are the top ten original movies of all time?

That is to say, films with no sequels, prequels, spinoffs, or anything. After further thought, I decided that future sequels also disqualify a film (sorry Transformers), as well as direct-to-DVD sequels/etc. (no dice, Lion King!).

Seeing as the all time box office lists are peppered with numerous trilogies, and even films normally thought of as singular have knockoff sequels (Jaws III: The Revenge is a good example), we had a lot of trouble thinking of the whole list.

Boxofficemojo, of course, held the key. Here's the list. Grosses are worldwide.

10 (Actual Rank 40). Night At The Museum $573.4 million

It was amazing to me that I had to scroll down to number 40 to find the tenth highest member of this apparently exclusive club.

And to top it off, it's a hammy children's movie that I didn't even care to see. It's probably because Ben Stiller's career has been the cinematic equivalent of pancakes at this point, which in the words of the late great Mitch Hedberg are "all exciting at first, but by the end you're f*cking sick of 'em!"

9 (38). War of the Worlds $591.7 m

This is the Spielberg remake from last summer, not the campy Rod Taylor version. I wondered about remakes, but I figured they didn't represent the same production company or filmmaker willingly going back to the well for more cash- they just represent the collective creative exhaustion that causes everyone to remake everything these days.

8 (36). The Passion of the Christ $611.9 m

Meh. Didn't see it. But since when is it "The" Christ? Isn't that his last name?

7 (34). The Incredibles $631.4 m

6(30). The Sixth Sense $672.8 m

Will M. Night Shyamalan ever reach these lofty heights again? Will there be a Seventh Sense: He's Still Dead and Stuff? Or maybe this movie?

5(29). Forrest Gump $677.4 m

The DaVinci Code was going to be on here, but they're making a prequel to that. So here's your requisite Tom Hanks movie.

4(20). E. T. $792.7

Here's one everybody can get behind. But with the superfluous new Indiana Jones sequel, it may not be long before Spielberg loses it entirely. In the words of Zach Galifianakis: "I'm writing a screenplay. It's called Schindler's List 2: Let's Get This Party Started!"

3(18). Independence Day $817.0 m

2(15). Finding Nemo $871.4 m

A confession: I nearly cried when he found Nemo. Just thought you should know who you're dealing with.

1(1). Titanic $1,845.0 m

Saw this one coming. But who knows what the future may hold...

See you tomorrow, with my overdue review for 3:10 to Yuma.