Predicting the Movie Hits and Bombs of 2014

Coincidentally I am reading the novel right now, and I was just wondering whether anyone had ever given consideration to doing a film adaption. I think it could work; Helprin's style is quite rich, and evocative, which I hope will be met with a lush visual style. I have no idea who Jessica Brown Findlay is . . . She's to be Beverly Penn. I'd have loved to see Jennifer Connelly in that role, but perhaps we're 10 or 20 years too late for that.

Anyhow, there are at least three of us now looking forward to it.

 

Even if the war were actually as unpopular as suggested by the misleading CNN poll you cited above (which is misleading because it makes no attempt to measure intensity of preference, which in this instance is clearly low), it wouldn't tell us much about how the film will perform at the box office. There's no correlation between the "popularity" of a war and its suitability as film subject-matter. "Lone Survivor" looks like a quality picture.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/box-office-specialty-lone-survivor-667861

 

I think it's a tough sell. And it doesn't help that the title gives away the story. Let's just say that not all the lead actors are going to live to see the end of the film. One guess who does.

 

Kind of how I felt sitting down to watch the Texas Chainsaw prequel they made a few years ago. "No point rooting for any of these poor sods!" I thought.

 

How do you know "intensity of preference" is "clearly low" if "no attempt to measure" it was made?

 

The big difference between a conflict like Afghanistan and Vietnam is that Afghanistan is pretty easy for the general public to ignore, since there's no draft. My sense is that increasingly war weary Americans would prefer to go on ignoring it. Have any films based on the Iraq War been big hits at the box office? I believe that The Hurt Locker was one of the poorest performing Oscar winning films ever, despite all of the positive reviews.

 

only $49.2 million worldwide at the box office - production budget of $15 million

 

The producers' excuse was that illegal downloads hurt video sales, but I'm not sure how that also kept people out of the theater. I suspect the subject matter was seen as kind of a downer, so that's why audiences stayed away.

 

one could say that about every movie released since high speed internet downloading has been available

it's not exactly a feel good movie, I enjoyed it for what it is, I'm not sure how it won best picture though

 

It also had, despite the literally explosive subject matter, the whiff of "worthy but dull" about it - which may have been triggered to some degree by the sorts of positive reviews it was getting.

 

Step outside. Do you see anyone carrying signs? I'm being a little glib, but I think you know what I mean. The CNN poll is interesting in that it tells us what many Americans think of the war when asked to think about it. But nobody says or does anything about it; no one is thinking about it.

I think you're quite right; the war is basically ignored, forgotten. When Americans are asked about it, their responses will suggest they've soured on it, likely for many different reasons. But the question has prompted them to think about something they've otherwise don't think about. I suspect you are correct in attributing some substantial portion of that to there being no draft. Nor is the war covered each night on the news, as Vietnam seemed to be; there is infrequent reportage elsewhere; it just rarely is part of any discussion.

I actually hadn't known or had forgotten just how little money "The Hurt Locker" made. Apparently it was around $17M. I take it that number goes up when you account for home video, etc., and that it ultimately was not a money-loser. But you're right, in terms of box-office, it is one of the poorest Oscar-winners ever.

We'll see with "Lone Survivor." It does seem to have started out fairly well, based on the Hollywood Reporter article I posted above.

 

The water-cooler consensus at work this morning regarding Godzilla overwhelmingly skewed towards "that looks awesome: can't wait to see it," so I'm going all-in on "hit" there.

Of course, the next topic of discussion was who would win a fight between Thor and Voldemort, so that's the demographic you're dealing with at my job.

 

A true geek would need to know if we're talking about the movie Thor or the comic book Thor here...

Shalom, y'all!

L. Bangs

 

I think we're done with large scale sci-fi-digital effects-movies. Ditto for large scale historical drama's (also 80% digital stuff).
I hope for some good stories and fine acting, some surprise hits and a really funny movie would be nice.

 

Movie Thor. Then we came up with a can't-miss idea for a movie: Gandalf vs. Voldemort. I'll be joining the screenwriter's guild tomorrow.

 

I initially thought that said "Garfield vs. Voldemort" - which would probably be a better movie!

 

Lord knows Bill Murray needs the work.

 

I don't watch CNN on a regular basis anymore, but when I do tune in [usually only if something catches my eye for a minute or two while channel surfing - and rarely at that] I notice many "poll results" on the scrawl or in the graphics on the screen. There usually is no citation nor any on-screen explanation as to the methodology or exact questions used to get the results. The results always appear to me to be suspiciously unrealistic [certainly surprisingly] and disproportionately skewed to one result [usually representing one social or political position] over another, and simplistic - and I mean that in the most pejorative way possible. The poll results also seem to support the editorial stance/ slant of the particular story being reported. It almost appears to be to be made up to suit their own purposes.

This is fresh in my mind as I caught a bit of a CNN broadcast this evening and noticed one of these polls accompanying a report. Just plain bad "journalism" - actually, not journalism at all.

 

No idea how the Hurt Locker won best picture except as an expression of guilty by the academy. Besides being a downer, it's not even that good. The story meanders around. Its certainly no where the caliber of great antiwar films like Apocalypse Now, or The Deer Hunter. I seriously doubt illegal downloads tanked its popularity. It's just nobody wanted to see it. An eminently forgettable film.

 

The Hurt Locker had perfect high quality version of the film hit the net before it had even gone into wide release though. I think the excuse is BS but it was far from just the normal case of people downloading bad Russian audience shot copies of a film.

 

In the 'big' categories - the ones that get televised - of best picture, best director, and the acting categories [and sometimes the writing categories], I find the Academy rarely awards the Oscars on merit. There's a series of criteria that have nothing to do with the actual films or performances, themselves, that I've noticed [help] determines the winners. In the case of 'The Hurt Locker': (i) at the time of the nominations everyone had narrowed the race between it and 'Avatar', between Kathryn Bigelow and her ex-husband James Cameron, and within the context of the politics and campaigns of the nominations/ award winners voting there was a strong sentiment of not letting Cameron win again; (ii) there was a trend of the Academy superficially recognizing and awarding 'indie' type films at Oscar time; and (iii) the Academy/ Hollywood/ the movie industry was making a political, antiwar statement by awarding it 'best picture'.

And you're right - it isn't a good film.

 

Or, noting that The Hurt Locker is the highest scoring film of 2009 on Metacritic, I wonder if it is possible some people enjoyed the film.

Shalom, y'all!

L. Bangs

 

I'm sure some people did - the film generally got favourable press - low budget so even if with a low box office take it made a profit. But it was not a great or even a very good film, let alone the best film released that year. YMMV, of course.

BTW, that metacritic score is based upon 34 positive reviews by critics and 227 positive reviews [presumably non-critics/ non industry types] laymen. So, that's 261 people - one medium sized movie theatre with plenty of empty seats to spare.

 

That's only the first part of the movie, though, right? Doesn't the movie also cover the hiding of the survivor by the Afghan villager and the extraction mission to rescue him?

 

I believe the Metacritic scores are calculated using only the critics, which in this case ran 34 positive to 1 mixed and 0 negative.

It scored a 97% at Rotten Tomatoes.

My point is simply that while some people might not like the film, enough critics did enjoy it to make it feasible that some Oscar voters might have simply thought the film was good, great even.

The Avatar competition was certainly a strong factor also.

Shalom, y'all!

L. Bangs