Welcome to Movie Musings with Laremy, a weekly feature that dives into the weekly happenings around the cinematic landscape.
1. Tron Legacy gets a poster.
Is it wrong to hope for Tron Legacy? Are we too far into the age of cynicism to think that this could end up being great? Because the footage at San Diego Comic-Con was solid. And Jeff Bridges being involved means they’re heavily invested in homaging and doing something cool (because “The Dude” is both). Plus, Olivia Wilde! It’s hard not to like her. We’re about a year away and I’m optimistic, like Red at the end of Shawshank. Lord help me, I don’t know why, but I think this is all going to work out swimmingly.
Bonus Random Thought: People recording the Tron footage off their flip-cams at Comic-Con was high comedy. Yes, a 3-D image of Tron is going to look just zippy on your shaky hand-held. Clever!
2. The Weekend Hollywood Forgot.
Mr. Cargill detailed the full-court press of marketing that’s being doled out for Avatar. And Jeff Wells has Sherlock Holmes tracking even stronger than the James Cameron film. But did you know that movies are coming out this weekend too? No, seriously. The Princess and the Frog is getting 3,000 theaters, and will win the weekend. Invictus is set to show off Oscar contenders Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon. So why does this weekend feel like an afterthought? Because the $30m Disney’s “last gasp at 2-D animation” makes is going to be dwarfed by the giants that come after it. I suppose we should all just finish up our Christmas shopping this weekend?
Bonus Random Thought: There’s a chance that Avatar is only going to carry the box-office crown for a weekend, which is staggering. Forget what the film cost to make and factor in that we’ve been hearing about it around the clock for three straight years. It only gets one weekend off of that? We’re not too far away from a time where 52 different films take a weekend at the box-office. There’s no such thing as “legs” at the theater anymore, making the studio-favored initial weekend deals the theater chains cut all the more dispiriting.
3. The Academy’s Rules Continue to Defy Logic and Reason
Sad Brad Smith’s song from Up in the Air (“Help Yourself”) has been given the shaft because certain portions of the song existed previously. The song, by the way, is a little slice of awesome. Touching, endearing, poignant, and relavant to the action on-screen, it helps make the film what it is. It would almost certainly win for “Best Original Song” in March if it were in fact eligible. But it’s not, because the same exemption awarded to Once‘s “Falling Slowly” has yet to be applied to “Help Yourself.” And it likely won’t be, because nominations will be out before people discover the song (Once had seven months in theaters to plead its case). Does this make sense? No, of course not. It also didn’t make sense that Kate Winslet was considered a Lead Actress for The Reader. Nor did it make sense that Forest Whitaker was honored for the lead in Last King of Scotland when James McAvoy was clearly the main character. Very little makes sense about the arbitrary rulings handed down The Academy, which leads to a very convoluted Oscar season. Every. Single. Year.
Bonus Random Thought: Are The Academy and the BCS are birds of the same feather? They purport to be fair, but they generate tons of buzz for their medium simply by being inscrutable. Perhaps it’s all part of their master plan, this lack of clarity?
4. Amazon launches online “disc on demand.”
For years consumers have said “We’d like to play/store copies of our DVDs on our laptops, please sir.” And for years studios have thought “Well, we’d rather you just buy another one after you lose/break the original, thank you very much.” When you think about it, that’s pretty smart, and you and I would probably try the same thing if we had the power of the studio system. But technology and demand eventually carry the day, and we’re rapidly entering the period when physical media ceases to exist, and the “right” to digital media is what you actually paying for. This will be a glorious time, a time with less dust collecting DVD collections, a time with more access for a wider range of people. The studio system will adopt this method slowly, until they realize digital content costs them a fraction of physical matter, doesn’t need to be shipped, and with a lower price point can be offered to more markets. Then they’ll love it!
5. Children’s “Whimsy” Might Be On Its Way Out
There’s a chance that you loved A Christmas Carol or Where the Wild Things Are. Which is fine, I have no argument with your taste. This is purely a financial conversation, and an interesting one at that: Which film was a bigger financial failure? Here are the facts, as pieced together from BoxOfficeMojo: A Christmas Carol cost had an estimated production budget of $200m. Given its current box numbers, it will be fortunate to make $250m in worldwide cume, which means, given the studio/theater split, it will end up at least $70m in the hole. By the way, this number is before the marketing budget is factored in. Sure, they’ll make some back on DVD and rentals, but being $100m down going into mid-December isn’t ideal. Which brings us to Where the Wild Things Are. It had a much more reasonable production budget of $100m. But it’s only made $75m domestically, and it’s hard to say how international audiences will receive it. They also had to have spent some serious dollars getting awareness up. So which film is worse off? Which would you rather be doing the spreadsheets on? It’s a legitimate horse race of doom, and you’ve got to wonder if producers are thinking “Is PG really where we want to be?”
Laremy is the lead critic and senior producer for a website named Film.com. He’s also available on Twitter, a “new-ish” technology.
