TNMC

24 June, 2003

I caught Hollywood Homicide today and I have to say, the negative reviews are unwarranted. Now don't misunderstand me, it isn't a great film. It's merely a fairly good film but it doesn't deserve the abuse being heaped on it. I'm pretty sure I know what the problem is though. The score. In the early parts of the movie I just couldn't settle into it. Something was off. It didn't seem to be Ford or Hartnett. They seemed reasonably confident in their characters. It didn't seem to be the editing or directing. Finally, in a scene where Ford is questioning a big time record producer, it hit me. The scene was playing fairly serious. The suit was giving us some nice background on the music business that was adding texture to the film. But the scene just lies there like a dead fish because the score playing underneath the dialogue is a goofy little bit that suggests comedy. Only the very last part of the scene is actually meant to be funny but this music chortles away happily underneath, quietly telling us that this is funny stuff when in fact it's not. That mismatch of music and tone throws off a lot of scenes and gives the viewer mixed signals on how to react. Yes the movie is funny but the humor is a side effect of the characters interaction. It isn't the focus of the story but the music tries to tell us otherwise. Look at a movie like Lethal Weapon. It treads a similar line between comedy and drama. But in that film, the sax accompaniment always knows how to play it to augment the scene. Hollywood Homicide's score is clueless and it throws off most of the movie. I bet that if the movie was re-released with an all new score, it would get a much better reaction.

30 June, 2003

It was inevitable. Someone would open a movie to less than $50 million in the first weekend and be labeled a disappointment. Never mind that only 8 movies managed that feat last year and that we had already seen it happen 7 times this year. The movie industry is becoming more and more focused on that opening weekend and the recent success pretty much guaranteed that expectations would quickly get distorted. Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle was pushed hard by Sony. The ads were everywhere and the actresses were seemingly on every magazine cover in the universe. But the film opens to an estimated $38.4 million and it thus seems likely to be viewed as a disappointment. It's opening weekend is a tiny bit below that of the original movie which would seem to indicate the franchise has a limited potential. Or maybe it means that there is such a thing as media overload. Or perhaps what the marketers failed to do was explain what the sequel could offer us that the original didn't. While I consider the original to be a guilty pleasure, a bad film rescued in the editing room, my expectations for similar or better pleasure from a sequel were low. Sony wasn't offering me any screenings, so it was a matter of spending my own money on seeing it. I found my self instead looking for the nearest showing of 28 Days Later.

7 July, 2003

I think it's safe to say that a teetering economy has gotten the better of the box office. Last week CA2 underperformed significantly and this week's three newcomers all felt the same collective yawn from audiences. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was the runaway winner but not as spectacularly as expected, managing $44 million over the weekend and $72 million since its Wednesday release. That makes it the second highest opening of an R rated film, so it certainly performed respectably. Just not to the standards everyone was expecting. Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde, playing on slightly fewer screens managed only $22.9 million for the weekend. That's a bit better than the original movie but not a significant increase. MGM may have over-estimated the appeal of this franchise. Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas crashed and burned with a paltry $6.6 million, landing in sixth place. Not a good sign for Dreamworks Animation. Disney/Pixar absolutely flattened them this time around with Finding Nemo which outgrossed Sinbad despite being in its sixth week of relase. Nemo took in $11 million and in doing so passed by The Matrix Reloaded for the title of highest grossing film of the year with $274 million to date.

11 July, 2003

I'm stuck. I haven't been able to think of a decent topic for this column for days now. So I think I'm just going to ramble. If it turns out badly, let me apologize in advance.

14 July, 2003

It wasn't exactly a monster weekend at the box office but yet it was an improvement over recent weeks. Pirates of the Caribbean did fair business, racking up about $46 million in its first weekend to claim the top spot and approximately $70 million since opening on Wednesday. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen did better than expected with about $23 million for second place. T3 was next with about $20 million, dropping 55% from it's first week. Landing in fourth, Legally Blonde 2 dropped 45% to earn about $12 million. Finding Nemo did a respectable $8.3 million as it creeped awfully close to the $300 million mark. Charlies Angels 2 took another nasty dive, dropping 46% to take in 7.4 million. At this rate it will struggle to reach $100 million, far short of the original film.

23 July, 2003

I know, I know. I'm slipping. I'm not getting these out anywhere near as quickly as hoped. Last week I just couldn't find much of interest to talk about. This week I have a better excuse. I threw out my back. It's strange, I've seen this happen countless times on TV but I always thought it was exagerated for comedic purpose. I couldn't have been more wrong. I literally spent an entire morning lying on the floor because moving was agony. Toss in a nasty storm that knocked out power to the area for an entire evening and I have a built excuse for making this the first column of the week. Luckily my inbox is filling up with stuff so let's get right to it.