Box Office Blather: Spectacles, Star Vehicles, Subtitles and Easy $

Year in Review Pt 1 of Many
It's time to wrap up 2010. You'll have to have patience since The Film Experience likes to do this piecemeal... and often! Let's do it every day at 10 AM or 10 PM or both when we magically have free time. How about that? We'll start with the US box office.

Box office hits get much coverage in the media so let's just dispense that basic "smash hit" list quick-like and move on to more interesting less covered seat-filler topics. All figures on all lists are up until the December 18th. And please go easy on any errors as I am unskilled at math is not my strong suit.



US Top Dozen

1. Toy Story 3 $415
2. Eyesore in Wonderland $334
3. Iron Man 2 $312
4. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse $300
5. Inception $292
6. The Commercial For Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt 2 $265
7. Despicable Me $250
8. Shrek Forever After $238
9. How to Train Your Dragon $217
10. The Karate Kid $176
11. Clash of the Titans $163
12. Grown-Ups $162

The list proves again - as in every year - that the American moviegoer has an extremely limited palette. There are only four types of films he/she will go to in droves: animated features, sequels/remakes (i.e. "franchises"), action/visual spectacles and broad comedies. It doesn't get more diverse until much further down the list. The only film in the year's top 25 that doesn't fit neatly into one of those four categories is Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island. So well done, Marty. That is a true accomplishment.

Subtitled Features
(I've included worldwide figures too for the sake of provenance)

1. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo [Sweden]  $10 (worldwide: $104)
2. The Girl Who Played With Fire [Sweden]  $7 (worldwide: $66)
3. The Secret in Their Eyes [Argentina]  $6 (worldwide: $33)
4. I Am Love [Italy] $5 (worldwide: $10)
5. The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest [Sweden]  $4 (worldwide: $40)
6. My Name is Khan [India]  $4 (worldwide: $41)
7. A Prophet [France] $2 (worldwide: $17)
8. Dabangg [India] $2 (worldwide: $3)
9. Kites [Miscellania] $1.6 (worldwide: $3)
10. Raajneeti [India] $1.5 (worldwide: $12)
11. MicMacs [France] $1.2 (worldwide: $16)
12. Golmaal 3 [India] $1 (worldwide: $2)

Beyond interest in the Swedish "Millenium" trilogy -- which dropped steadily with each film here and elsewhere in equal percentages -- it was tough going for international fare yet again. It seems like a different world entirely than when we regularly had a couple of substantial breakout hits a year (as recently as the mid Aughts). The only steady market seems to be Bollywood features, which regularly gross about a million with barely any media coverage. Oscar nominees are a far less stable subcategory. Despite more media coverage their grosses tend to be all over the place, ranging anywhere from $10,000 (Peru's Milk of Sorrow) to just over half a million (Israel's Ajami) to the $2 million range (France's A Prophet and 2009 holdover Germany's White Ribbon) to $6 million (the winner, Argentina's The Secret in Their Eyes). In other words it's a bit hard to imagine that the Oscar nomination does all that much more for the films than they could have managed on their own... unless they win. It's tough to quantify so it's aggravating that the studios seem to think that the first quarter is the only time to release the high profile foreign contenders. (It's like how the English language Oscar contenders all have to compete with each other for the same limited seasonal dollars from November through February. It's so weird.)

Next...?
Well, I was going to do a list based purely on original material but the list was so depressing (it was basically original material that could easily be confused for a remake) that I screamed abort! abort! and changed course immediately. Let's try this. Which DRAMAS, i.e. the things audiences mostly only want to see on their TVs now, were hits with moviegoers?

Top 12 Dramas (reality based i.e. no supernatural, genre or primarily action-focused stuff)

1. Shutter Island  $128 [debatable classification - remove it if you will]
2. The Town $92 [an action movie in a sense but mostly a drama]
3. The Social Network $91
4. Eat Pray Love $80
5. Dear John $80
6. The Last Song $62
7. Why Did I Get Married, Too $60
8. Secretariat $58
9. Letters to Juliet $53
10. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps $52
11. For Colored Girls $37
12. The American $35

On this list we see that quality matters far less than having a star in your movie; just don't expect big returns on investment since big stars cost $10+ million. Also: Amanda Seyfried and Tyler Perry are good bets for non-gargantuan but sturdy profits. The Social Network, a film without any action sequence, gooey romance or crime-angle, is a true anomaly. It's only here because it's awesome and topical. But being awesome and topical will only get you to around $90-100. It's interesting that The Social Network's box office is so similar to Brokeback Mountain's, another anomaly that had quality as its chief selling point. (GASP. What a crazy thing to bank on!)

Best Return on Investment???
This list is haphazard / insufficient using only production budgets vs. US distribution returns from box office mojo. In other words it's not so accurate (merchandising, foreign markets, DVD sales and the potential windfall of sequels all contribute to insanely costly movies making a lot of money... eventually. While marketing costs subtract from that profit margin all the while.) But I think the following list is interesting as a very blurry snapshot as to what films are profitable even before you factor in these other things.

1. Paranormal Activity 2 $84 gross = 28 times its budget.
2. The Last Exorcism  $41 gross =22.7 times its budget.
3. Easy A $58 gross  =7.25 times its budget.
4. Jackass 3-D $116 gross = 5.8 times its budget.
5. The Kids Are All Right $20 gross = 5 times its budget.
6. Twilight Saga: Eclipse $300 gross = 4.4 times its budget.
7. The Karate Kid $176 gross = 4.4 times its budget.
8. Diary of a Wimpy Kid $64 gross  = 4.2 times its budget. 
9. Despicable Me $250 gross = 3.6 times its budget. 
10. Dear John $80 gross  = 3.2 times its budget.

Black Swan, budgeted at $13 million may well join this top ten since it's already earned $15 million and it's only just finished its first weekend of wide release and once it wears off its opening week energy, presumably it'll get that Oscar nominee boost to keep it going.

If you include worldwide revenues and franchise potential the numbers would change. How to Train Your Dragon, for example, which cost $165 million to make and grossed $217 million doesn't sound that profitable until you factor in the foreign gross (another $277 million) and the eventual sequels ordered up, which will come into the world market with the most cost efficent marketing tool possible: familiarity. And some movies are far more profitable overseas: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was budgeted at $13 million and has grossed $104 million worldwide, so only 10% of its gross is coming from America. But I was trying to make this as easy on myself as possible hence the US totals.

The year in box office. Crazy numbers. I'd be happy just making a really crappy "per screen average" figure this week. How 'bout you?

Finally..

It would... oh never mind. This post is long enough. What's the last movie you paid to see? Did you get your money's worth?

By: Unknown On 19.00

Continue Reading

I Am Love Sour Grapes

Have you seen I Am Love yet? The Globe nominee is available for rental so get on that.

Director Luca Guadagnino with Marisa Berenson & Tilda Swinton

I read the following quote over at Hollywood Reporter and I found it both amusing, right-on and the kind of thing you shouldn't say out loud. Seems Luca Guadagnino, the man behind the brilliant Globe & BFCA nominated I Am Love is not happy with the treatment of his film back home in Italy. They chose another film for their entry in the annual Oscar Foreign Film race.

He says...

Italy has been a sort of strangely cruel mother to the film. I feel like Rapunzel in Tangled. They didn’t pick the film for the Oscars. I don’t think the movie is the kind that sells in Italy now, which is basically dramedies about men that are not able to grow up. Vitteloni syndrome without Fellini. This [Golden] Globe nomination is a sort of really strong warning for the Italian culture. Beware! When you don’t support what’s good ... then the image of your country goes down and down and down. They chose another movie, instead of one that was internationally well received, particularly in the U.S. But it’s all right. Right now the moment is cheer, and I’m very cheerful. It’s a great day!

Points for honesty but obviously someone's feelings got hurt along the way.

<--- Micaela Ramazzotti and Sergio Albelli, the super sexy but unstable parental figures in La Prima Cosa Bella.

For what it's worth, I recently spent time with the actual Italian Oscar submission La Prima Cosa Bella (The First Beautiful Thing) and it was good. It's a somewhat absorbing memoir story (half of it being in flashbacks) about the grown children of a dying but still ridiculously vibrant woman (Micaela Ramazzotti in youth / Stefani Sandrelli in old age) who was once a wild flighty gorgeous young thing dragging her wee children from home to home and sometimes to homelessness while falling in and out of love with their father (and other men).

You can trace the damage done in the generally strong performances and the film definitely gathers some cumulative emotional steam (the climactic act is entertaining, funny and unexpectedly endearing), but it's stretched a little thinly across numerous life episodes. And even though you "get" him, you do wish the sour grown man at its center would grow up a little bit.  B

I enjoyed it. But no, it's not a patch on I Am Love. Since Luca brought up Tangled, let's get our hair did in Italy.

The First Beautiful Thing has follicular drama of all varieties from deliciously lustrous (Micaela Ramazotti) to balding to sickbed wigs to plainly pretty to unruly to generic ... the hair, like the movie, has plentiful ups and downs.

I Am Love, on the other hand has magic locks just like Rapunzel's. Everyone's hair is epically beautiful; their golden, red, brown and pure white crowns (even the oldest characters have thick headfulls) are enough to make your arm hairs stand on end.

If there were an Oscar for hairstyling...

By: Unknown On 11.24

Continue Reading

LFF 2010: And It Hurts With Every... Cannon

David from Victim of the Time, reporting from the 54th BFI London Film Festival.

I've been engrossed in this festival for so long now, it already feels like it's winding down; in fact, there's another week to go, with Danny Boyle's 127 Hours the closing night gala next Thursday evening. Perhaps my feeling comes from the fact that my most anticipated film is just around the corner: yes, I too fell under the spell of the Black Swan trailer, and it hits my eyeballs tomorrow. I'm at fever pitch. Today, though, we visit Italia and Quebec, but not before a British perennial delivers once again...


Lesley Manville.

I realise I have a tendency to waffle, so I thought I’d get straight to the point.

I had my problems with Another Year, but, as you’ve heard (and heard, and heard), Lesley Manville is absolutely superb in it. I’d heard that too, but it still didn’t prepare me for the density and devastation mustered by Manville in this character. Manville’s Mary is so magnificently imagined that, despite Leigh’s insistence in the post-screening Q&A that what you see is what was shot, and nothing more, there is the strong suspicion that the film shifted during its realisation to centralise on her. (Echoed by this review – I didn’t set out to focus it so immediately, but it felt honest to do so.)

Perhaps it's reductive to talk solely of Manville. The rest of the cast, from the connecting contentedness of Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen to the chirpy Karina Fernandez, give assured performances just the same, and surely only boost Manville’s power through Leigh’s famous workshopping process. The cinematography expressively, if rather obviously, differentiates the seasons the film shifts through. The editing is extremely deft within the restraints of Leigh’s improvisational approach, notably giving a sparky energy to scenes like Broadbent and Sheen’s first meeting with their son’s new girlfriend that contrast with the more sober, gentler feel of much of the film. But I can’t escape that it is Manville, her mousey, skittish walk, her nervous, misdirected laughter and her sad, defeated glances that are what struck me most heavily, and what continue to live mostly strong in my head. (B+)

If only he wasn’t gay! That seems to be the central lamentation of Ferzan Ozpetek’s dunderheadly jaunty Loose Cannons, which doesn’t just have one gay son of a traditional Italian pasta-making family to pretend to support; it has two! Oh yes; before Tomasso (Riccardo Scamarcio) can make his shocking announcement, his brother Antonio taps his glass and is promptly thrown out, leaving Tomasso to run the business and suffer suggestions he should get it on with the business partner’s daughter Alba. Of course, with its longing musical montages of the pair drinking, eating and laughing together, you could be forgiven for thinking the film is even more desperate for the heterosexual harmony than Tomasso’s oddball family are – even when Tomasso’s boyfriend Marco and their camp friends crash the… well, you can hardly call it a party. Framed with a seemingly irrelevant flashback device involving the wise, accepting grandmother, the unexpectedly poignant finale almost redeems things by not tying up every loose end in a neat little farfalle, but it can’t erase the tiresome, laboured schematics of what precedes it. (C-)


I confess. I have a weakness for young, attractive French people giving themselves over entirely to their lustful urges. Xavier Dolan himself is a young and attractive Canadian person, but he’s from Quebec, and I do believe that’s included in Subsection 1B of my confession. After his vaunted J’ai tue ma mere, Dolan again directs himself in Les amours imaginaires (feel free to explain the disastrous English title, Heartbeats). Dolan’s style boldly cribs from Wong Kar-wai – they may not be accompanied by In the Mood for Love’s striking musical theme, but you can almost see a pot of noodles swinging from the hand as we follow a posterior in slow-motion down the street. Dolan doesn’t merely copy but adapts the techniques he apes, sexualising the characters in saturated single-colour sex scenes; but there’s also a sense of irony and pity in the fierce emphasis on the desperation of the two friends both in lust with the same man. Dolan consumes you in sensuality and focuses you on the mistrustful dynamics of love, so that while you might not match the lust for the particular figure, you lust for this mood in general. It isn’t about liking these characters – the sneering ending makes that clear – but about identifying with how low these familiar feelings have made them, and can, have, and will make you. (B) [edited from full review]

By: Unknown On 13.30

Continue Reading

Foreign Film Oscars: International Beauty Pageant.

If you'd like to read about the now official Oscar submissions for Best Foreign Language Film,  click away. But because you -- make that we -- can't see most of the films, due to the hideous state of international distribution, let us use this Academy press release as an excuse to take a different view, a sexytime view... a Beauty Break if you will. Let's gawk at the actors and actresses who are in the submitted films. We'll pretend it's like a Miss Universe pageant (how do you say "shallow" in Finnish?). Randomly selected hotties follow (it's not easy to find info/photos.) whether you're into the men, the women or other. Don't judge!

Beauty Knows No Borders
I presume you'll let me know your very favorites in the comments. Do I presume too much?

Handsome Guys...

Left:  Bill Skarsgård a.k.a. Alexander's lil brö (20) for Sweden's Simple Simon.
Right: Oscar Guerrero (age unknown) for Puerto Rico's Miente / Lie.

Oh the imperfections of the web: Guerrero is obviously famous having been in several films and soap operas and yet he has neither a wikipedia page nor any personal information on the IMDb. Weirder still, the IMDb does not even list him as appearing in Miente, a film in which he plays the lead role!

Left: Mark Chao -- or Zhao depending on your info source -- (26) for Taiwan's Monga (see previous post). He also sings.

Right: George Pistereanu (19) for Romania. Some people think he looks like...

Left: Gael García Bernal (31) for Spain in Even the Rain. He's from Mexico and the most familiar face in this year's submission list outside of Javier Bardem, who is from Spain representing Mexico with Biutiful. They've flip-flopped countries, submission-wise. I sat two rows behind them -- they were together so I assume they're friends -- in Toronto for The Sea Inside premiere back in 2004. Memories ♫
Right: Boris Ler (25) for Bosnia Hersegovina in Danis Tanovic's Cirkus Columbia.

Left: Coco Martin (26) who stars in Noy for The Philippines. (see previous post)
Right: Santiago Cabrera (32), who you'll remember from the TV show Heroes (first season only -- the tortured artist) who is the romantic lead of Chile's The Life of Fish. The Chilean actor was born in Venezuela, speaks four languages and lives in London. International!

Left: Pablo Derqui (34) for Costa Rica's Of Love and Other Demons. He was born in Barcelona and is a TV star in Spain.
Right: Asser Yassin (29) for Egypt in Messages From the Sea.

Left: Aarif Lee (23) for Hong Kong's Echoes of the Rainbow. He won the Best Newcomer Award in the Hong Kong Film Awards for this role. He's starring in a Bruce Lee biopic next. Here's more info on the Lee picture.
Right: Mateusz Kościukiewicz (24) for Poland. He stars in the punk rock drama All That I Love. At least one website names him the Polish Robert Pattison !

Gorg' Ladies...

Left: Maria Bonnevie (37) for Norway in Engelen (Angel). See previous post for more on Maria.
Right: Lubna Azabal (age unknown) for Canada in Incendies (it's one to watch for the finalist list, I think). She's from Belgium and of Moroccan descent.

Left: Sibel Kekilli (30) for Germany's award winning When We Leave. We are fond of her.
Right: Blanca Lewin (36) for Chile in the romantic drama The Life of Fish. She's a television star there.

Left: Takako Matsu (33) for Japan in Confessions (see previous post for exciting trailer). She won several best actress awards recently for the melodrama Villon's Wife.
Right: Micaela Ramazzotti (31) for Italy in The First Beautiful Thing. She plays the young mother of two kids in this nostalgic memoir. (The role is shared with award-winning Stefania Sandrelli when the mother gets older). Lotsa photos of Micaela... she currently has darker hair.

Left: Jana Zupančič (age unknown) for Slovenia's 9:06. Like Guerrero up top she's also not listed on the IMDb as part of her submitted film, but she's one of only three actors on the poster. You may remember her from last year's submission Landscape No. 2 (previously reviewed right here).
Right: Mariana Santángelo (34) for Puerto Rico's Miente / Lie. She's from Argentina.

For Specialized Tastes...

Left: Jenny Larrue & Cindy Scrash who play rival transsexual cabaret stars in Portugal's To Die Like a Man.
Right: Various for Hungary in what must be the oddest Oscar submission this side of Uncle Boonmee. It's called Bibliotheque Pascal.

*

*

If you'd like to read more uh... professional and totally official info on the Best Foreign Language Film Submissions, click for whichever country you're interested in. On the charts you'll see posters, official site links for further exploration, distribution status (US based only, sorry) and basic trivia. As always the best way to see any of them is to pay close attention to festival schedules in cities closest to you.

• Albania to France
  23 films: East West East, Outside the Law, Carancho, La Pivellina, The Precinct, Third Person Singular Number, Illégal, Cirkus Columbia, Lula the Son of Brazil, Eastern Plays, Incendies, The Life of Fish, Aftershock, Crab Trap, Of Love and Other Demons, The Blacks, Kawasaki's Rose, In a Better World, Messages From the Sea, The Temptation of St Tony, The Athlete, Steam of Life, and Of Gods and Men.
• Georgia to Nicaragua
  21 films: Street Days, When We Leave, Dogtooth, Nuummioq, Echoes of the Rainbow, Bibliotheque Pascal, Mamma Gogo, Peepli Live, How Funny This Country Is, Farewell Baghdad, Son of Babylon, The Human Resources Manager, The First Beautiful Thing, Confessions, Strayed, The Light Thief, Hong Kong Confidential, Mothers, Biutiful, Tirza and La Yuma.
• Norway to Venezuela
  21 films: Angel, Undertow, Noy, All That I Love, To Die Like a Man, Lie, If I Want to Whistle I Whistle, The Edge, Besa, The Border, 9:06, Life Above All, A Barefoot Dream, Even the Rain, Simple Simon, La Petit Chambre, Monga, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Honey, A Useful Life, and Hermano.

By: Unknown On 09.35

Continue Reading