Movies N Music N Stuff

Movie Slump?

2005-08-04T10:25:00.000-07:00

Box office slump? That's what they're saying. Well, some aren't saying it: a few voices out there say there is no slump, that in fact box office revenue is as high as ever, that comparing it to the slightly unusual year of 2004 (or didn't you hear that every Christian in increasingly right wing America was duty bound to attend "The Passion..." and bring three heathens with him?) isn't a fair comparison, and so on. And hey, movie grosses are all estimates anyway; who says the studios have to estimate high when it might be in their best interest to estimate low?

Of course, all this has to do with movie grosses, or the amount of money taken in at the box office. On a number of tickets sold basis who knows what we'd find out. We might find that, say, "Gone With The Wind" is still the all-time movie champ and nothing has ever come close to it, not "Titanic" not "Jaws" and certainly not "Ghost" or "Beverly Hills Cop," both of which are at least 10 places high than GWTW in the list I consulted. "Tickets sold," I think, is a fair indicator of both popularity and quality while "domestic gross" as a comparative-across-years statistic mostly measures how much you have to pay to get into the show at any point any time.

How does "tickets sold" translate into quality? If you assume that people are going to attend good movies in larger numbers than poor movies -- however you define good and poor -- then tickets sold tells you how many people bothered to get off the couch and take in the show. "Domestic gross," on the other hand, only tells you that someone paid a whole bunch of money to go, and for all we know, one guy with a lot of money and a lot of time on his hands bought all the tickets to a particular movie on a particular weekend. (This isn't as farfetched as it sounds: Howard Hughes used to buy up all copies of particular magazine or newspaper issues when it was to his benefit to do so.) If this mythical one-man domestic gross really existed, the movie industry would just make movies that please the one man and not pay much attention to the rest of us.

But let's assume there is a slump of some type, and there certainly seem to be enough people out there saying it these days to lend at least some credence to it (and let's face it, it doesn't exactly fly in the face of the common sense view of the serious movie observer). What of it? What does it say?

Movies that don't do well in theaters still do well in DVD release. What this tells me is that most movies have some type of audience. The movies that do well in theaters have the type of audience that likes to hang out at movie theaters. And that, to me, means teenagers. Who else would put up with the hassle of trying to find a place to park, or paying relatively big bucks for the right to enter the theater and eat the snacks they provide, or really care much what's on the screen? No offense to the teen crowd, a group I last belonged to in the 70s, but to them a movie is just part of the experience of hanging out with your friends. They'd probably hang out at ball parks if the prices were such that it didn't require mortgagable property to do so, and they certainly hang out at concerts or school events. All of these -- concerts, movies, school events, even ballgames -- provide a backdrop to what teens really want to do, which is be with their friends.

To go back to that theoretical guy who buys every ticket for a particular movie. I mentioned that if he really existed the movie studios would just make movies to please him and ignore the rest of us. In real life, movie studios do ignore the rest of us. That is, that "rest of us" that is not a teenager. Teens buy the tickets, teens call the shots. Billions of dollars are spent to make movies each year, and the hundreds of movie executives who direct this flow draw either their pay or their unemployment based on the decisions of thousands of teenagers. Teenagers basically make the decisions for one of our major cultural industries. That's not something to make the average investor in the entertainment industry start bidding up shares.

The slump, then, if there is such a thing, is the rest of us NOT going to the theaters. But we're still watching movies, we're pay-per-viewing and cable-gazing and DVDing. We're just not going to the theaters.

The upshot to me is that Hollywood has their wires crossed. The studio executives (and the entertainment press, can't forget them) are stuck on the box office as a measure of the success of a film, even though their products generate most of their revenue from DVDs. And the studio suits are using success at the box office as an indicator of what movies to make. In the view I have of all this, the money is being made outside of the theaters, but its the people inside the theaters who are driving the green light machinery. This is a major disconnect.

Hello, let's get put the circuits back in order. Hollywood: who's buying your DVDs? And what are THEY buying? And are THEIR tastes being catered to? If you told me that the percentage of teens in the theaters is the same as the percentage of teens making the DVD purchases, then you have a case for continuing to pander to the under 20 market. And I'll eat a tasty sugarcoated hat. But I doubt that that's the case. Can we get the box office gross out of the news and direct the attention where it belongs, to DVD sales?

By the way, I'm sure theater owners are flummoxed by whatever box office slump there might be. But basically they're running the soda fountain or the high school hop or the teen surfing party of the 21st century. And guess what? No one over 20 wants to go to those things. You live by the sword, you die by it. Theater owners: lets get the movie equivalent of the good old adult swim in place here and there. Maybe with a little adult participation all that over-investment you've made in newer and bigger and fancier theaters can pay off after all.

'Nuf said.

DANGER! Men at Work Testing Blogging Software

2005-07-19T12:15:00.000-07:00

Hey, Dale the new media writer here. This is the very first test of a new piece of blogging software. Don't want to mention any names. Yet. But let's see how it does.

Here goes...

Chuck and the Chocolate Factory

2005-07-18T17:47:00.000-07:00

OK, so this new movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory came out over the weekend. Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, Willie Wonka, Golden Tickets, irritating kids, the whole nine yards.

I've read one review and heard two others. All three negative. I heard about another (haven't read it yet but my source is unimpeachable). Positive but with negative overtones.

I attended a showing on Saturday morning in the company of my wife and two four year olds. It was a significant concern that these kids would be scarred for life or would completely lose interest about fifteen minutes in. Or both. As a kid I saw the original Willie Wonka movie, the one with Gene Wilder playing the eponymous chocolatier, and I've seen it several times since. Gene Wilder's Wonka (sounds dirty, doesn't it?) was one mean, kid-hating sonuvabitch. Compared to that version you figure Tim Burton and Johnny Depp would go for a characterization that was, what, satanic with a fondness for torture? Stalinesque? (Or to take a more modern, topical direction, Saddam-y?) A combination of the worst teacher you ever had and Michael Jackson?

Because that's the Tim Burton trademark, right? Dark, that's the operative word when it comes to describing his movies in reviews. Tim Burton, Dark Movie Maker. With Danny Elfman creating the soundtrack for hell and Johnny Depp being, well, Johnny Depp. I don't know why but Tim Burton is on the critics bad list and when that happens, he becomes a one word sound bite. And that word is always "Dark."

Given that this is ostensibly a kids movie that is based on a classic of kids literature, Dark isn't generally the word you want associated with the ads. Take your kid to a movie by the same guy that put scissorhands into the vocabulary, had Santa kidnapped while his replacement distributes snakes and spiders instead of toys, filled us in on the life of a cross-dressing auteur responsible for, arguably, some of the worst movies ever to see the light of day? Yeah, that's going to happen.

But guess what? This new Willie Wonka saga is about family. It's works in a subtle, clever, unsweeted but not unpleasant way. This Wonka is a man who got left in the 60s and has thus never grown up. Depp's character is not mean but befuddled; he expects bad behavior to obtain the logical consequences; and he has a backstory that involves a mythic but ultimately not-quite-grounded-in-reality sense of abandonment by a father engaged in that most sadistic of professions, dentistry. Whereas the Wilder Wonka always seemed to me to have set up the punishments for each little brat way in advance of their arriving on his premise, the Depp Willie has no such forethought; the brats in his custody simply carry their act one step too far against reasonable admonishments, and they inevitably fall into a punishment of their own making. Further, for reasons I won't mention here, we KNOW that the punishments were survived -- although not without a significant loss of dignity and hygiene on the parts of kids and parents.

The Bucket family, whose favorite son is the Charlie named in the title, is dirt poor and then some... just like in the first movie. And yet they are obviously not lacking in love, a cliche, I know, but one that is subtlely displayed in various scenes scattered throughout the film. Helena Bonham Carter and Noah Taylor should be singled out in their portrayal of Charlie's mom and dad. The quality of their performance is such that they turn their handful of script pages into a fully realized representation of a loving mother and father and, just as important, a loving husband and wife. Charlie lives in a house that lacks everything and lacks nothing, and without highhandedness he walks the family walk while talking the family talk.

There are obvious similarities between the Wilder and the Burton/Depp films. For example, the scenes in the current movie of the grandparents all tucked into bed together could have been filmed on the exact same set as the first Wonka. But, in fact, nothing is really the same. There's a backstory here. There's a much more satisfying ending. This movie really has a conviction about the importance of family. The Wonka's could not be more different in their attitudes: one clearly hates kids, the other has been out of circulation for too long to be anything but clueless about them.

Any review of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that stresses "dark" was formulated long before the reviewer saw this film. Dark? Not really. It may be getting on towards dusk but there's a beautiful sunset.

N Stuff

2005-04-08T17:03:00.000-07:00

Here's a little non-music and non-movie article.

The NCAA men's basketball tournament just ended. And it did so just as I feared it would, with that miserable Tarheel team winning.

Now some of you will say that this is just sour grapes 'cause they beat my Illinois team, me being a native of the Land of Lincoln (although not a U. of I. alum). But, in fact, UNC is one of those teams that I root against, a team that makes me a fan of just about anyone who plays them. Why?

First, there's the Billy Packer factor. This guy has been a shill for the ACC since as far back as I can remember. You'd think they play THE GAME OF BASKETBALL there and everyone else is just a hanger on. The dagger that an ACC loss must drill through that guy is reward enough.

But there's more. When I first got into college hoop (around '72 or so) UNC was coached by the redoubtable Dean Smith. What a bogus jerk. First off, the guy made a career of holding the ball. In the pre-shot clock days, his team would get a lead and then hold the ball. Literally, just hold it. For the rest of the game, if they could get away with it. They didn't even have to dribble the ball unless the guy with possession of the ball was challenged by an opposing player, and more than likley he'd just pass it to the next UNC statute to hold onto for a while. I've heard stories of them holding the ball for something like five minutes at a time. For this they build and name a stadium for the guy?

The Deanster was also a notable loser when it counted. For a long time Smith, who year in and year out had highly ranked teams of ball holders, had won only a single NCAA title while cross-state and much, much, much less heralded NC State had won two.

Back to this year's tournament, I saw this final game coming a long way off (many did) and dreaded it. It pains me that the Illini lost. But pains me a whole lot more that those damn Tarheels won.

Movie Reviewers

2005-01-10T17:46:00.000-08:00

A movie review can be judged on its information content. Reviews that are predictable well ahead of time (how many times have your turned to your local paper's movie reviewer knowing that he/she will almost certainly "love" or "hate" a particular movie?or that spew superlatives (or negatives) with little discernable rhyme or reason are, in my view, useless, a waste of paper and ink.

My "theory," if you will, on movie reviewers is that they fall into two classes. On the one hand you have people so snobby that their reviews offer little useful information to the masses. In a scholarly magazine or in a trade journal these reviews might find a receptive and utilitarian home. But in the daily paper, they completely miss the audience.

The chain of thought of one particular reviewer (who used to be in Chicago and was, last I heard, on the west coast) seemed to be (a) is the movie in a foreign language? If so, it can still get four out of four stars; (b) is the movie in English but from a foreign country? If so, it can earn three stars, maybe, assuming, of course, that the subject matter is suitably obscure; (c) is the movie from the US but not from Hollywood? If so, it won't get totally trashed; and (d) is the movie typical mainstream Hollywood fare? One star tops. Thus foreign language movies only rarely got less than luminous reviews while the movies that pack the weekly box office top ten (that is, the movies that most newspaper subscribers actually attend) were disparaged as product of assembly lines and hacks.

In other words, his reviews were predictable and as such, they weren't worth reading.

The second type of movie reviewer acknowledges that there can be some merit in a movie that
appeals to a mass audience. Whereas the first type of review pretty much confines itself to museum pieces, the second type sees the value of the lesser artists and the graffitos. The first reviewer believes you need a fine arts degree to see a movie; the second is aware that movies can and probably should appeal to those of us who didn't get into the Ivy League. The first reviewer attends the cinema, the second goes to the movies.

One of my favorite reviewers is Roger Ebert, a type 2 reviewer and thank goodness for that. He doesn't talk down to his audience. Instead, he admits to sharing many of our private pleasures as far as movies go. He'll tell you right out that a movie isn't that good but will also admit that it'll keep your attention or that it scratches one of our deliciously unsavory itches. Usually his reviews are informative and even educational. (Even more so his Movie Answer Man column and books.)

Roger Ebert presumably attends a mind-mushing number of movies every year and therefore can be forgiven for having long ago figured out what he likes and dislikes and for knowing only minutes into a screening if a particular movie is going to work or not. Yet he clearly is in touch with what the movie-going public likes and dislikes and what they think is working or not working.

I guess you can say there's a third type of reviewer: afterall those hacks whose glowing praise tells us this movie is the "feel good movie of the year" or that movie is "a laugh riot" are movie reviewers, too. Of course, these reviewers are only such in the sense that they (presumably) attend screenings and write about them. The truly critical element, the analysis, the dispersement of useful information is missing. The less said about this class of animal the better.

Opening Act

2005-01-08T11:41:00.000-08:00

Hi...

Movies and music. That is, classy movies and classical music. Or rockin' movies and rockin' music. Or frames and notes. Video and audio. Waves, both light and sound. We're into the whole thing here.

And there's also the N Stuff. Politics. History. Science and technology. Religion (which, by the way, drives one helluva lot of politics and history and which is often drawn as the counterweight to the science and technology).

And don't forget sports, mainly college but we keep a warm spot in our hearts for the Cubs.

We'll be posting our thoughts on cinema, music and those other things that touch our fancy during the upcoming days and weeks.

Who are we? I am a programmer/accountant/neuroscientist (the first is my job, the second and third are my education) who plays the piano and reads voraciously. My other half is a business professional who is an indie film junkie, a cinesthe and .... reads voraciously. We're Christian but open minded, involved and curious.

Who are you? Anyone with a thought and something to back it up. Share with us what's on your mind and we promise to do the same.