The Watercooler: Box Office Shmox Office
Why so serious?
The whole concept of the Watercooler was predicated on the idea of a bunch of people showing up for work or school on Monday morning and talking about the interesting things that happened after a weekend apart. Since this is the Internet, we’re not bound by job or school and since the weekend effectively ends for most people late Sunday afternoon to early Sunday evening, I’ve been toying with the idea of running the Watercooler late Sunday instead of early Monday. It’s still the same old Watercooler, but you can start the conversation a little earlier if you want to. Let me know what you think.
So what’s been going on? Well, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen sure made a crapload of money over the last 5 days. Admit it. Even those of you who saw it and liked it have to feel weird hearing Michael Bay’s latest spoken of in the same breath as last summer’s The Dark Knight, but that’s what you get when you use box office numbers as evidence of goodness. The box office haul of Transformers has little to do with whether it’s any good and it didn’t have anything to do with The Dark Knight’s greatness either.
If you made a list of the top 10 grossing restaurants over the weekend, McDonalds or something like it would be at the top. Do you ever hear any Monday morning crowing about the awesomeness that is McDonalds? Of course not, and I say that as a fan of their sausage and egg biscuit. They’re possibly the most nutritionally damaging item they sell, but I’m a fan. Nevertheless, if they stopped selling them tomorrow, I’d agree that the world would probably be a better place.
What about the divergence between the $200+ million opening weekend box office for Transformers and its Metacritic score of 36? That has to be some kind of record (Update: Indeed it is. I was too lazy to run the numbers, but luckily THR’s Risky Biz Blog wasn’t), but does it mean critics are irrelevant? Not really, though I’m sure more columns to that effect are being written as we speak. They may be irrelevant when it comes to measuring the opening weekend of cinematic fast food, but even then we’ll never know how much better Transformers would’ve done with Dark Knight like critical numbers. If the movie trails off dramatically in the coming weeks and fails to catch up to The Dark Knight as I expect, will it be lack of critical support or will it be bad word of mouth? I don’t know. The latter is difficult to measure; though Paramount has been trumpeting statistics saying something like 90% of people polled opening weekend liked it better than the original film.
On the other hand, I’m happy that Kathryn Bigelow’s terrific The Hurt Locker pulled in $144,000 this weekend. That’s nothing compared to Transformers‘ estimated $112.2 million weekend (since adjusted down to around $109 million), but Bigelow’s film only played in 4 theaters for an average of $36,000 per location. By comparison, Transformers pulled in just under $27,000 per on over 4000 screens between Friday and Sunday. It’s comparing apples and oranges and Transformers blew some if its wad on Wednesday and Thursday, but The Hurt Locker has to be considered a relative success. Will it hold up when it expands? That remains to be seen.
Is it hypocritical of me to get excited about The Hurt Locker’s box office success when I’ve just finished arguing that box office is meaningless? Yep. It sure is. I’m not arguing that ticket sales mean that The Hurt Locker is a good movie though. I already know it’s a good movie and I’m just glad that audiences are finding it and that it will hopefully encourage more films like it in the future.
I suppose this is really no different than last summer with The Dark Knight. Everyone liked that movie and it was fun to see critics and box office in agreement. It felt like an affirmation and it was a kind of shared experience. It felt like we were on the winning team. This morning, everyone who loved Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen feels the same way and who am I to argue with that?
This is all a long way around saying I didn’t see any new movies this weekend. How about you? Did anyone here add to Transformers‘ $200 million? I’m curious to know how the opening weekend audiences responded to it. Sometimes watching a movie that delivers exactly what is expected from it by a hyped up opening weekend audience is a lot of fun.
Filed under: Watercooler
Tags: The Dark Knight, The Hurt Locker, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
I like it. It used to be that the post went up after midnight Pacific time and I was in bed already. Now I can be first. :)
Once again I didn’t get to a theater near me. I totally fail.
However, I watched Control on DVD. Really good movie, Sam Riley was excellent. The black and white conveyed a sense of the time and mood perfectly.
Also revisited Notorious on TCM, my second favorite Hitchcock, and saw In the Heat of the Night for the first time on Friday night. From the taut mood to the excellent cast to the sublime music written by Quincy Jones and performed by the incomparable Ray Charles this movie was a winner in all ways. I’d read the book but never saw the movie – and I read the book long enough ago to not make comparisons. :)
Michael Jackson’s death has been devastating in this house, and I frankly have not been able to shake thinking about him 24/7. Some say it is unhealthy and ludicrous to think this way about someone you never met, but I don’t need to repeat what I’ve said before. I saw two films:
Food Inc. *** 1/2 (Fri. night)
Moon ** (Sat. afternoon)
In a correspondance with Craig he rightly asserted that my depression probably caused me to downgrade MOON sverely, as I only liked Clint Mansell’s score amidst what I saw as cliches and exceeding tediousness. But perhaps a second viewing at some point will alter my perception.
FOOD INC. was rather disturbing, even if it’s “revelations” were nothing we didn’t already know. It appears that all our food comes from corn. Ha!
I saw Lilian Hellman’s THE LITTLE FOXES Saturday in a fine production from the N.J. Shakespeare Society at the lovely campus at Drew University, and THINGS OF DRY HOURS with Delroy Lindo at the Theatre Project. It was well acted but static.
The Watercooler is about more than theatrical movies Alison. It’s about anything movie related at all so catching Control on DVD keeps you from being a failure :)
You know how I feel about Notorious. I could watch it anytime.
In the Heat of the Night captures a nice sweaty, Southern kind of vibe that I like. You can almost feel the thick air and the way it seems to slow everything down. Plus there’s Sidney Poitier…
Sorry to hear Sam that the last week’s bad news has hit the Juliano household particularly hard. I’ve stayed away from the news all weekend because the vulturism depresses me.
You may never come around on Moon. I liked it more than you did, but I didn’t love it. I felt it didn’t live up to its potential but it had a lot going for it, especially the performance of Sam Rockwell.
“cinematic fast food” — that’s good.
Sam, dear, hugs. I’m not as affected by the death as you are, but that doesn’t have anything to do with what you’re going through. I used to work at a hospice, and I learned there that there is no rhyme or reason to anything related to grief. Emotions will be what they will be, and occasionally they will have their way with us. Rationality and grief are two languages with little in common. Not that you’re being irrational. You’re grieving the unexpected loss of a talent you loved and there’s nothing in the world wrong with that.
Wanting nothing to do with Transofrmers 2 or any of the other dreck in our local multiplexes in this triple-digit heat wave, I stayed in and watched a few films in the air-conditioned comfort of my home.
I watched Cabaret for the first time. Loved it unapologetically. It’s so weird that I’d never seen it, as much as I love musicals and the film’s creative team. Liza and Joel Grey were out of this world entertaining. I never got them before. Now I do. Great stufff.
Keeping with that theme, I then watched large, disjointed chunks of Moulin Rouge, first on TV, then by popping in my DVD and enjoying select scenes. Still love it.
I watched The Lady Eve next. It was pretty good Preston Sturges, but not his best, I think. We recorded it off TV and somehow the DVR split it into three separate recordings, missing several minutes of scenes between each one, so it was not the ideal way to watch the film. Entertaining, though.
The Incredibles was on TV and I got sucked into watching the first 30-40 minutes of it. Even better than I remembered. I would have popped in my DVD of that one, but we already had a final film lined up for the night, What’s Up, Doc?
I’d seen parts of it before, but I believe this was my first time to see it all the way through. I thought it had held up pretty well, considering how different comedy today is from such all-out 70s farces. I particularly liked Babs in it. Probably the funniest role I’ve seen her do. Ryan O’Neal was particularly hunky, too. Not my type, but my eyes weren’t complaining any.
I think having the Watercooler start Sunday night is a great idea. Since starting this job, I rarely have time on Monday mornings anymore. Besides, I hate Sunday nights generally, as they are all full of Monday morning anticipating and more busyness than relaxation. This gives me something to look forward to on Sunday night.
Great idea.
I like the analogy of cinematic fast food in considering box office versus quality. It nicely dovetails into uppity, pandering politicians mocking how elitist it is to eat arugula.
And I don’t mind the Watercooler opening on Sunday, although I still prefer to post Monday (usually). It’s your show, dude. Do as you please.
So Friday night was fun with drinks and friends. In my post-libations joy I decided to celebrate cinematic guilty pleasures by watching one of my favorite GPs with From Dusk Til Dawn. See, many people will defend watching Transforminators 2 by defining it as a guilty pleasure. You have your bullets, boobs, and explosions love affair and I have mine. It was still 31 flavors of awesome.
Saturday I watched Point Blank, which I’ve seen once before but I’m going to pretend like this was my first go at it. It continued my streak of awesome by kicking my ass and delighting my cinematic senses. I also listened to the commentary track featuring Steven Soderbergh and John Boorman. They had to invent new flavors of awesome to describe that.
Then I watched The Searchers, which improves with each viewing. The extras on the recent SE are excellent. Highly enjoyed it.
Finally I finished off the weekend with more Buffy season 4 and Hell in the Pacific, which I happened to have on the DVR. More Boorman and Lee Marvin, with the added joy of Toshiro Mifune. Again with more flavors of awesome being invented, again with the good. I had a hard time with seeing Mifune playing the straight man to Marvin’s lead, but this was a great little movie. The ending is an odd denouement, but Boorman couldn’t film the more intense ending he planned so I like the one he came up with.
Anyway, it was a great weekend.
Oh hey, whoops! Forgot to mention I saw Revanche on Sat too, which was pretty good but a little slow paced and (for me) mildly predictable. I still liked it though.
@jennybee: I agree that The Lady Eve is not Preston Sturges’s best (though it is entertaining) but that movie is very special to me because that’s the movie in which I discovered Barbara Stanwyck. She is so fabulous in that (and she looks amazing – her costumes in that movie were stunning). Of course I moved onto bigger and better Stanwyck fare post-haste, like Double Indemnity, etc.
JB, I love Cabaret too. I think some of the themes – abortion and homosexuality in particular – probably don’t pack the same punch they did back in the early ’70s, but the movie has aged really well, particularly with the treatment of Nazism.
I think Cabaret was the first time I realized musicals could be dark…I’d always thought of them as fluff before that, but looking back there’s even a high degree of cynicism in something like Singin in the Rain.
Cabaret I think is also a good gateway musical for people because the songs are all in the context of a performance and therefore less jarring than openly emoting on a street somewhere. They provide a point and a counterpoint to the action, but it’s much more subtle.
And damnit, it’s entertaining. Like you, I never really got Liza before Cabaret, but she really clicked for me there.
Joel, how did Dusk to Dawn hold up? I haven’t seen it in years.
Point Blank has really stuck with me since I reviewed it last year or whenever that was. A rare retro review that I’d planned on continuing with, but never really got it off the ground.
I might have to sit down and rewatch Hell in the Pacific one of these days.
I saw Revanch at a film festival which seemed like a weird place to see it. It didn’t feel like a film festival movie, but then again it brought kind of a european arthouse flavor to a gritty revenge thriller. A good companion with Point Blank in a way, though they’re two totally different films.
Alison: Double Indemnity. That’s up there with Cabaret as an all time fav of me and the monkeys.
You and the monkeys have impeccable taste, Craig. :)
Cabaret is definitely up there among the best musical movies ever made, along with Singing in the Rain and Easter Parade. And Singing in the Rain isn’t the only movie from back then that had some cynicism in it. Even Easter Parade had a bit of it, as did Bandwagon of 1940. Maybe that’s why those remained as some of the most memorable. There’s singing and dancing and fluff, but there’s that something else too.
I find b.o. talk as irritating as awards talk, but it isn’t hypocritical to wish financial success on The Hurt Locker, because, in those terms, box office is far from meaninngless. Those types of movies need money and support, and it would be nice for a good movie to be a hit, or for any movie to be a hit that’s actually reflective of something other than what the studio dictates to be successful. (How many millions did it cost to get that 200 million dollar opening?)
With all those art pictures you kids like to crow on about unavailable to me until DVD, I’m staying out of the theatres until they Mann up (couldn’t help myself) this Wednesday.
From Dusk til Dawn is actually a really dumb movie in many respects, but that’s part of the reason why I love it. It’s completely self-conscious, over-the-top, gratuitous insanity, but everyone is having a great time and it delivers on the premise. Plus it has an excellent cast, some hilarious dialogue, and a lot of great (but silly) practical effects.
In my mind, it’s the perfect anecdote to a bloated, ponderous, glossy mess like Transformers 1. I’m 99.9% certain it was 10 times better than Transformers 2 as well.
I was hoping the new Woody opened in Portland while I’m here, but alas no…so not much moviegoing. I have a bike to ride and PBR to drink. And load up on cool cheap film books at Powell’s…
“….and PBR to drink.”
True dat.
PBR for one dollar at a nice outdoor cafe! ONE DOLLAR BEER!
I go to this bar that has 24 oz PBR for three bucks, so I’m close to it. A few of my friends pretend to be above it, but a few of my friends aren’t contending with the amount of bread I’m bringing home either.
And also please note that I deleted the bike part of your sentence. I need to be more outdoorsy but it hasn’t taken yet.
as a guy who is fond of using words like “dig”, I like how Chuck just used the word “bread” without a hint of irony.
Dusk. That might be just the ticket Joel. I’ve been in the mood lately for stuff that owns its own foolishness without trying to be cooler than it is. Maybe I should watch Big Trouble in Little China again too.
Big Trouble in Little China is one of those films that it seems to me all guys get, while I do not. I’m sure there are exceptions, but I know at least a dozen men who have watched that movie a dozen times and laughed through it all.
Forget the PBR, you had me at Powells. I so need to go to Portland.
I’d argue that all the best musicals have at least a hint of darkness and cynicism to them. They get misidentified as Pollyannas just because they have catchy tunes and peppy choreographed numbers. But there’s often much more there.
Either one of those would be a good fit.
JB, I know it’s unintentional but you’re dangerously close to “Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars” territory there.
Lol, I know it, Joel, and rather hate it! I try to stay far far away from gender generalizations, but it’s just something I’ve noticed with that film. I’m pretty sure I’m wrong–it probably has scads of female fans as well as men who could care less about it.
No, you’re right. I’m fairly certain the audience for that film is skewed one way. But then again, I’ve never heard of a fangirl.
I found one of the loves of my life when I showed her BTILC and she LOVED it.
I don’t think the sample size of people I know who like Big Trouble is large enough to be able to break it down accurately along gender lines. Traditionally most women don’t seem to be drawn to the genres the movie is riffing on, but of course there are always lots of exceptions.
This is a long way of saying I don’t think the movie is everyone’s cup of tea, but I’m not sure it’s a boy/girl thing.
I’ve been offline for a bit and I haven’t even been to a theater in like two weeks. Pretty strange, but it appears I haven’t missed much. What bothers me most about the Transformers crowd is the charge that the critics “got it wrong”. If this were a voting bloc or something it might make sense, but otherwise I’m confounded by that logic. Anyway, I didn’t see it and have little interest. From what I’ve heard it’s impossible to follow anyway.
I did see a few movies on DVD last week, all for the first time – Rififi, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Cadillac Records, and The Order of Myths. I’m sure everyone else has seen the first two, but I’d recommend the second two with some reservation as well.
I think what struck me the most about Rififi, despite the obvious influence on Reservoir Dogs (this coming a few weeks after I saw the original Pelham 123 – did Tarantino think of anything original in that movie?!?), is how much the heist scene owes to The Asphalt Jungle. That was another I hadn’t seen before I wrote on it for MZ’s noir month last summer. Pretty interesting stuff – I just wish I’d have seen Rififi in the 50’s, when I hadn’t already seen so many parts of it in later movies.
I also wanted to see Notorious on TCM when Alison saw it, but we weren’t done cooking our fish tacos at the time, and I refused to watch a Hitchcock movie without full concentration from start to finish. So I didn’t watch it, but did see the first hour or so of Rear Window again later on. I’d forgotten how much of that excellent movie revolves around the romance.
And it looks like the polls closed on this one, but I’d vote for the WC remaining on Monday morning. It’s like a crisp, clean copy of the newspaper to start the week. And a nice Monday morning escape.
Oh yeah, and JB, What’s Up Doc? is, quite literally, one of my top 10 Favorite Movies of All Time. Has a lot to do with how young I was one I first saw it (probably 12 or so), but it remains hilarious everytime I see it. My brother and sister and I still quote lines from Hugh: “I find that as difficult to swallow as this potage au gelee.” and “But REALLY, music from rocks?!?”
Daniel: re: Reservoir Dogs, “did Tarantino think of anything original in that movie?!?”
Sure, dialogue and characters I know he cribbed but I’ve seen most of the movies he cribbed from in RD specifically and the elements he borrows from are rendered fairly new in Reservoir Dogs. Other movies of his the cribbing is far more overt, but his characters and dialogue are all his own.
Transformers crowd vs. critics: The problem here is that the Transformers crowd (at least the positive comments I’ve seen) didn’t give a whit about the things the critics found fault with. In general, the Transformers 2 fans were in love with the action sequences and the effects and the basic reality of Big Robot Smackdown. Critics actively criticized the directing, editing, story, and characters while applauding the effects. I’ve actually seen numerous comments of “sure the story sucked but the movie was great” or “you’re taking this too seriously…it’s a Summer blockbuster.”
The two factions are interested in two different things. Even talking about it is pointless because they’re not even debating the same things.
There’s nothing original in Reservoir Dogs in the way there’s nothing original in John Coltrane’s rendition of My Favorite Things from Sound of Music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_n-gRS_wdI
Wow, did I just sound like a knee jerk fanboy there? Jeez Kennedy, simmer down.
I admire all of Tarantino’s movies to one degree or another, and I’ve accepted that they are all gonna spring from a similar creative place. But I would like to see, even if its in the context of his super movie-movie universe, Tarantino convey a single emotion that isn’t a reaction to another movie. He might formally play around like Godard, De Palma and others, but they reacted to movies AND other stuff. I would like to see in a QT something count for more, or at least something else.
He came the closest in Jackie Brown and audiences rejected it and he seems to have retreated a bit from emotion.
I think there were also moments of genuine emotion in Kill Bill. Moments mind you, not extended sequences.
But yeah, I see what you’re saying.
Maybe I’m getting soft, but I’ve found myself responding more lately to emotional depth than technical brio in films.
I wonder if I just discovered movies today, if I’d admire Stanley Kubrick so much. On the other hand, in his most underrated works I think there’s a strong emotional current: Lolita and Barry Lyndon.
Jackie Brown is very poignant (I love it), but its still rooted in QT’s love for Pam Grier and Robert Forster(understandable) and blaxsploitation (more elusive for me, in general) etc. And the moments many cite in Kill Bill don’t feel felt, they are there because Tarantino has the intelligence to understand that they are supposed to be. There’s little feeling to the Bill/Bride stuff – its mechanical and there out of obligation, which is why the second picture goes to sleep in its last third. There is far more feeling in the final moment between the Bride and the Liu character, when Liu, facing the Bride, is allowed to bloom into her ultimate self one more time. That moment – Liu spreading out, raising her sword – is possibly the most authentically moving in QT’s filmography, because you sense this is what this director actually CONNECTS to. But even that is rooted in movies, he never goes further. And Death Proof, even taken as some sort of ironic feminist deconstruction of the slasher (which is valid) is still about people watching movies. De Palma (which I think is really, all said, Tarantino’s closest cinematic cousin) used movies to go further.
Lolita is my favorite Kubrick movie.
I don’t know, I think there’s a lot of power in moments of Death Proof, especially Vanessa Ferlito’s performance.
The feeling for me is between Tarantino and Uma Thurman more than between the character of Bill and the character of the Bride, but I see what you’re saying.
I also agree the Liu moment is a great one and that in general Tarantino’s stuff is covered in layers of protective cinefan covering.
Interesting comparison between De Palma and Tarantino.
De Palma is a lot of referential flash, but maybe because of the nature of the movies he’s riffing on, he has the ability to cut deeper emotionally.
Interestingly, you could look at Blow Out as being about a certain detachment through media. Travolta engages with the world and gets involved in this mystery through his head phones, but **spoiler** he’s ultimately unable to save the girl because of the same limitations.
Ok, I’m talking out of my ass right now.
Ferlito is another good example, though I think like Tarantino’s connection to Thurman, it’s a connection for him to women in general. I’m having a hard time saying what I’m trying to say.
And again, I’m not going after Tarantino, I like his movies, and love some of them. But, I’m ready for something….else. And I think this mild irritation comes from the fact that I see many filmmakers of that and the new generation doing the same thing.
Well I didn’t mean to start a QT discussion here, because the last thing I’d want to call the guy is an unoriginal copycat. For me it was just the double whammy of the Pelham names and the Rififi ending within a matter of weeks.
That being said, I’m afraid to admit that I STILL have not seen Death Proof/Grindhouse and, to be quite honest, I greatly prefer the QT movies from the 90’s.
I kinda agree with everything since my previous comment. Nice work, gents.
I knew we were kind of running with a single small point you’d made Daniel, but this is a good thing. It was a fun discussion.
I found Liu so unengaging as character and actress, that moment had no emotion for me outside the striking imagery. Gimme Pamela Grier!
No ferocious arguments against from me, you lovely young men.
I’ve seen everything Quentin’s ever done except Death Proof…and loved it all.
Chuck, your favourite Kubrick is LOLITA? I’m so impressed. Great minds and all that…
Danny, what did you think of CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF???
It’s one of ELIZABETH’S most powerful performances. She is an electric force of nature in that part. But then that role is an embarrassment of riches for any woman.
I have the play here in this room with me now. But I’ve been working on monologues from other works that are more provocative, shall we say.
In other news…
DUPLICITY is coming back to our gorgeous jewel like 30s discount cinema. So I can squeeze in a couple more screenings before I buy the DVD.
I just heard (and I can barely breathe…) that our plush showpiece of a film festival theatre has got DOCTOR ZHIVAGO and BONNIE & CLYDE lined up for next month.
I’m a Lean fanatic (BIG TIME) so I saw DR. Z twice at screenings during the 90s. The cinema that had a lot of those events is no longer in existence.
But this is great. I have NEVER seen B&C in a cinema. So that will be a milestone.
Plus…
The avant garde dive is running their FILM NOIR series exactly the way they did last summer. It’s annoying because some of the showtimes are not exactly the most convenient – Sundays, late nights during the week etc.
My schedule has always been far more flexible than the people that I’m close to.
They’ve got a screening of PANDORA & THE FLYING DUTCHMAN upcoming. I’m such an enormous AVA GARDNER fanatic that it kills me to miss that. I’ve never seen it either.
BUT FILM NOIR will have (among others) THE KILLERS, LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN and…GILDA.
Well, I’m not passing up GILDA for anything in this world. She and I have too much in common.
Rita rules…
Looks like it will be an interesting summer. If I don’t get a chance to get the hell out of Dodge, I guess I’ll live.
Let’s just say that this makes me very, very happy…
Sorry for the belated reply to your lovely comment towards me Jenny Bee. I thank you very much, fine lady for the compassion and understant. You are the best!