comment #1

otakuhouse says ...

Now I'm really convinced you need time off. I can't believe you didn't like Hellboy II.

comment #2

Balthazar says ...

Soooooooooo many people simply don't have money to go to the movies in this economy. It's taking a bite out of even the best films.

comment #3

gruver1 says ...

Wells to Otakuhouse: Yeah, I really hated Hellboy II, you bet. Trashed it all to hell. Let's see, the opening graph reads, "Seeing Hellboy II the other night reminded me that the films of Guillermo del Toro are as good as it gets in the fantastical horror realm. They've got first-class effects, wit, invention, soul, visual economy, emotional gravitas. The monsters are beautifully particular, the performances have warmth and authority, and the camerawork and the cutting are grabby and fast but this side of hyper."

Also: "Guillermo does everything he can to add feeling and humor and humanity to Hellboy II, and he succeeds nicely from time to time..." And: "I loved (okay, liked) the sequence in which Ron Perlman's Red and Doug Jones' Abe Sapien drunkenly sing along to Barry Manilow's "Can't Smile Without You." And I'm a pretty big fan of Tecate beer. And I liked the bit with Perlman protecting the baby from the madness and other stuff along these lines."

http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2008/07/lose_your_mind.php

comment #4

MikeSchaeferSF says ...

$34M for Hancock is a much bigger drop than 35%, isn't it? I thought last weekend's 3-day was $66M.

On the other hand, I'm checking it out tonite out of sheer curiosity -- 3 weeks ago I had no desire whatsoever to see it.

comment #5

hollyman says ...

Is Eddie Murphy box office suceess dying? He opened at #7 with Meet Dave.... Unreal.... I figured it was going to be bad but no this bad... Wells you saw it.. Was it that bad??? Anybody else?

comment #6

Rothchild says ...

Hellboy 2 hitting 100 million is a huge victory and guarantees a sequel.

comment #7

Edward says ...

What surprises me otakuhouse, is the Jeffrey never said anything negative in this post about Hellboy II. Can I have some of what you're smoking?

comment #8

iamwhoiam says ...

Wall-E is just not for kids. It's an adults film, and a seriously brilliant one. It may just be too smart for these days.

comment #9

Joe Leydon says ...

Balthazar:

Actually, I think there'll be an uptick in b.o. numbers this summer precisely because of the bad economy. First off, never underestimate the allure of escapism. (Go back and check the b.o. numbers during the Great Depression.) Also, if families have to chose between a day trip to a theme park or a night at the movies right now, well...

comment #10

Balthazar says ...

Sure, on the list of things to do, movies are pretty expensive.

But movies are more expensive than just staying home.

comment #11

D.Z. says ...

Jeff: "Of course, sequels are always hot the first day."

But what makes it impressive is it's a sequel to a movie released four years ago, and which disappeared off the map after less than a month. I guess those viral campaigns really helped boost interest. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgQjdTjj3-w

Surprised no one's seriously commented on Journey to the Center of the Earth's low take, though, since that might bode badly for the new Mummy movie.

As for Hancock, it sounds like a Wild Wild West-style bomb, given both movies had similar budgets and returns.

comment #12

Balthazar says ...

Make that "pretty inexpensive"

comment #13

D.Z. says ...

hollyman: I thought his career was over with Pluto Nash, and the only thing he had left was Shrek, but don't underestimate him making a "comeback" with the next Norbit.

comment #14

Rothchild says ...

Journey to the Center of the Earth is only 3D on 800 screens. No one wants to see it in 2D. Blame the theater chains.

comment #15

actionman says ...

Hancock bears no resemblance to Wild Wild West, in either execution or box office returns.

I am so glad that Hancock is going to make over $200 million. It's easily the best big-budget action movie (that I've seen) so far this summer. No other movie said fuck-you to formula the way that it did, and I can't wait to check it out again. Peter Berg is the most underrated director working at the moment.

Hellboy 2 is one I will catch on a matinee, maybe this coming week. Not rushing out for it or anything but it looks cool and fun and I am sure it will be an interesting action flick.

Meet Dave doing less than $5 million is absolutely hysterical.

comment #16

D.Z. says ...

actionman: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=hancock.htm

Production Budget: $150 million

Domestic: $142,284,000 64.4%
+ Foreign: $78,635,353 35.6%
= Worldwide: $220,919,353

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=wildwildwest.htm

Domestic: $113,805,681 51.2%
+ Foreign: $108,300,000 48.8%
= Worldwide: $222,105,681

comment #17

Balthazar says ...

Speaking of Peter Berg, I wish Keith Gordon would return to directing feature films.

comment #18

JeffGP says ...

DZ, HANCOCK's been out for a WEEK!!! A WEEK!!!

comment #19

Discman says ...

Jeffrey: "Wall-E" is one of the two or three best films of the year? I must've missed the other one or two, because nothing I've seen comes even remotely close to the achievement of "Wall-E."

But you see more movies than I do, and obviously must see better ones. The ones I've seen -- and I've seen several for review purposes -- have been mediocre or downright awful, with literally one or two pleasant surprises. Nothing in the ballpark of "Wall-E," however.

comment #20

thevisceral says ...

I still think Hancock could've worked with a decent villain who was followed through his own storyline from the beginning of the film instead of dropping this guy in from out of nowhere. It would've meant a two-hour movie probably but so what.

comment #21

D.Z. says ...

Jeff: So it went down faster than WWW....

comment #22

breadlymoore says ...

" I figured it was going to be bad but no this bad... Wells you saw it.. Was it that bad??? Anybody else? "

DAVE is really not that bad. Critics have it out for the thing becuase of Murphy (which he deserves), but is nowhere near as crude as his previous family work suggests, and it has a certain "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" charm about it.

Nothing major, but not the abomination the few reviews make it out to be.

comment #23

actionman says ...

D.Z., you're out of your element with the Hancock/WWW box office comparison.

Hancock will make at least $500 million worldwide before all is said and done.

thevisceral: what I loved and admired most about Hancock was the distinct lack of a super villian. The film was about the hero, and the people around him, not some back and forth between another all powerful creature or some shit like that. **SPOILER WARNING** Granted, the "twist" starts dealing with multiple individuals with super powers, but it was clear to me that Peter Berg and his writers were more interested in the ideas and implications of having a superhero in the real world. I loved the film, I have only minor problems with it, and I hope they make a sequel.

comment #24

The Pope says ...

Balthazar and Joe Leydon,
In these times, I don't think it is so much the cost of a movie ticket that pinches peoples' wallets. It is the getting to the theatre that really hurts. The price of gas is going to have a knock on effect.... so I'm not too sure that the comparison to the Great Depression of the 30s is appropriate. In the 30s there was no such thing as TV, rock 'n' roll, PlayStation, theme parks, or the internet. In the 30s, the studios owned the entertainment dollar. These days, they don't so much as share it as FIGHT for it.

comment #25

actionman says ...

also, Discman, check out The Fall, In Bruges, Snow Angels, Shine A Light, Cloverfield, Stop-Loss, Recount, and The Bank Job from earlier this year. All of those were excellent in one or many ways by my standards.

comment #26

D.Z. says ...

actionman: If Indy 4 couldn't make $500 million(profit), I doubt Hancock will be any luckier.

comment #27

Arran says ...

Indy has made $740m worldwide thus far.

DZ, just shut up.

comment #28

D.Z. says ...

Arran: I said profit.

comment #29

Josh Massey says ...

"Speaking of Peter Berg, I wish Keith Gordon would return to directing feature films."

Good lord, I was thinking the exact same thing a few days ago. Granted, the train of thought might have been a little different than yours.

The Legend of Billie Jean on TV -> thinking Keith Gordon was a better director than actor -> remembering what an underrated classic A Midnight Clear is -> wondering if Peter Berg learned anything from actor-turned-director Gordon -> reading the gossip pages about Trask Industries and thinking "Radio!" -> remembering how much I liked Waking the Dead too -> wishing Gordon would direct a feature again.

comment #30

Terry McCarty says ...

For whatever reason, the real-life tele-tubbies in the hinterlands aren't going for it the way they could. Too arty, too adult? Are they hip to the satire element and not coming due to an undercurrent of resentment? "Make fun of us and our high-starch, high-cholestoral Jabba lifestyle?," etc. "We'll show you, Disney/Pixar!"

Compared to the much more scathing (and more crappily executed) blue-collar putdowns of Mike Judge's IDIOCRACY, I thought WALL-E (one of my favorite films of this year) was filled with the milk of kindness.

comment #31

Admiral82 says ...

I always have enjoyed Gordons work. I even thought The Singing Detective was interesting.
Was anyone else pissed when A Midnight Clear was released on DVD in full-screen? I need to watch Waking the Dead again. I remember liking it, but I hardly remember it...

comment #32

BurmaShave says ...

Jesus, to this day no one gives IDIOCRACY the credit it's due. Not a perfect film by any means but smarter than almost anything that's tried to do what it did in recent memory. Still haven't seen WALLE, but I dont like the thought of kind satire, especially with the filmmakers pussying out about it in the press.

comment #33

D.Z. says ...

Burm: I was ok with Idiocracy, but would have liked it more, if it hadn't ripped off a dozen other sci-fi plots. Apparently, someone on IMDB was also arguing that the main story swiped from "The Marching Morons". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons

comment #34

The Winchester says ...

I'm glad I wasn't alone in the Idiocracy/Wall-E comparison. I thought they were almost the same movie, but I didn't actually think that.

Massey, did you just throw a Working Girl reference in there? I don't know whether to be proud or sad.

comment #35

Discman says ...

Actionman wrote: "also, Discman, check out The Fall, In Bruges, Snow Angels, Shine A Light, Cloverfield, Stop-Loss, Recount, and The Bank Job from earlier this year. All of those were excellent in one or many ways by my standards."

Agreed on "The Fall," "Shine a Light" and "The Bank Job," but those films, as good as they were, didn't have the ambition and execution, or vision, of "Wall-E." "The Fall" is the most visionary, but something -- I'm still not sure what it was -- holds it back from 4-star territory. I did like it, however. Very much.

"Snow Angels" and especially "Stop Loss" were disappointments overall, with some good performances.

comment #36

otakuhouse says ...

Dude I'm smoking good Afghan kush.

To wit from Wells' piece: "I hate the rigid big-studio FX formula that insists upon confrontation and chaos and ruination happening ever 20 or 30 minutes, like some stupid whammy chart. Windows exploded, buildings decimated, cars doing aerial triple-flips, fire hydrants spewing tons of city water, industrial clutter everywhere....what the fuck is this? It's the same shit in every movie, and it vacuums your soul.

What kind of cretin do you have to be to find this stuff interesting after it's been repeated 25 or 30 times? How many times can the dumbest moviegoer out there go "whoa!" after seeing a super-hero wallop a slime-covered monster and send it flying several hundred yards into a building or a wall of glass or a concrete bunker, or vice versa?"

Hellboy II vacuums your soul? What kind of cretin do you have to be - to watch a master visualist cut loose and have some fun?

I really meant that sincerely, as in there where some grumpy digressions in your Hellboy II write up that made it sound a lot worse than i suppose you felt.

Every single trailer I saw before HB2 had beats and lines of dialogues in every single second that I've seen in a hundred other movies. No matter how much money was spent on CG spectacle I'd seen it all before.

One of the reasons I loved Hellboy 2 far more than I thought it would and put it second only to Wall-E this summer is that as far as its spectacle went there was a lot of stuff I had never seen before put on film there - maybe inside baseball geeky stuff about creature prosthetics or what have you, but the film had some truly masterful stuff for the optic nerve. I think I realized why Guillermo's stuff is so amazing despite being cheaper than mosts - the overall aesthetic sense is so finely attuned. Even when he has an FX shot that was a little cheaper and a little rougher than what an army at ILM could cook up, the initial designs behind the shot and what you're seeing elevate. People always talk about CG looking fake - maybe its not the fakery at all but the initial design that's the problem.

Anyway, apologies if I misconstrued, but your HB2 piece awhile ago sounded like you thought it was Del Toro for morons. Which I don't agree with at all.

comment #37

otakuhouse says ...

The difference between Idiocracy and Wall-e is that Wall-e is a great movie that actually attempts to engage emotionally and isn't so direly nihilistic. Idiocracy is so weird - it's actually a terrible, terrible film with some hilarious stuff in it, and strangely it gets better the more you see it.

Problem one though is Dax Shepard. Please revoke acting license.

It'd be interesting to see Judge's revoked Director's Cut. It's pretty obvious that there's some major level inteference - sometimes the voiceover tells you exactly what you're seeing, which is pretty ironic.

comment #38

Chicago48 says ...

to the POPE and all--I am taking a writing class and our subject is the movies. This weekend alone I have watched three movies (the grapes of wrath, chinatown and American gangster--again!) and it was all on the internet. I downloaded Grapes FREE, it saved me $5 Blockbuster and $1 Library cost.
Ii cannot afford $5 from Blockbuster for all the movies (That's $15) and I have a time constraint because the papers have been to be written every week, hitting deadlines or else I lose points.

Hollywood must begin to realize there are other means of distribution to the public (for cost) than the movie house. They will get more revenue if they make it available via the internet and/or pay per view, or cable or wherever. There are thousands of students like me who have to watch movies every week, and we cannot afford the time and money to go to the movie house for first-run releases.
I hope that gives my POV clearly. I am happy to watch a movie online, just I watch TV shows online.

comment #39

otakuhouse says ...

One last thing: Hellboy 2 confirms for me that we really really really need to have some kind of Del Toro intervention and pull him off at least the second Hobbit film. It's extraneous and bizzare and a cash grab anyway. After seeing him cut loose from Hellboy 1 and really go for broke with his own aesthetic for fun I'm depressed as all get out that he's going to be stuck doing 6 years of Northern European swords and forests - especially given he has to emulate the LOTR trilogy with the second film. This is a filmmaker in his prime who maybe is lining up financial freedom with these two, but it still hurts. I think the best solution which makes perfect sense is that Del Toro does The Hobbit, and someone else does the second stopgap film. Seriously, who wants to see Del Toro "bridging" Peter Jackson. It's like asking Alejandro Jordorowsky to make a Resident Evil movie.

comment #40

Pinko Punko says ...

God, A Midnight Clear was wonderful. Also, the forgotten film, Mother Night was wonderful (for me at least I haven't read the book).

Waking the Dead was also quite good.

comment #41

Mgmax says ...

1) I'm sad I knew instantly what Trask Industries was in reference to. On the other hand, the perfectness of the name Trask for the company it represents-- it has exactly the feel of some midwestern media company nobody ever heard of-- was one of the few really well-executed things in that movie.

2) A Midnight Clear was great. Hell, The Chocolate War was pretty damn good. Where's John Glover these days, does he have a TV show? Oops, so he does, Smallville.

3) Count me underwhelmed by Wall-E. I wanted more of the Tati gags, more of the nastiness of Idiocracy-- and a whole lot less of a fat guy in a chair arguing with a dental lamp. Really, how did a movie about robots in love turn out to be 25 minutes of an uninterestingly voiced fat guy arguing with nobody? It's like if Toy Story forgot about Buzz and Woody and spent a half hour with the assistant manager of Pizza Planet.

comment #42

Drew says ...

Jeff, just an observation. Maybe you should ease up on the "mocking the dyslexic Tarantino about spelling" when you, a non-dyslexic, just posted "cholestoral". The difference, of course, is that you actually publish your writing in a public forum to be read, while his is just an internal document to be used making a film, where spelling doesn't remotely count for anything.

If I were you, I'd watch it with the whole "shitting on his spelling" thing in the future. After all, spell-check is easy to use. Hell, even in this comment box, there's a red line under your misspelling. Fascinating.

comment #43

BurmaShave says ...

Pretty sad I thought he meant Bolivar Trask and got really confused. Speaking of which, in my delerium I wonder when am I going to get my god damn Sentinels in a Marvil comics movie?

comment #44

D.Z. says ...

Burma: They were kind of in X Men 3.

comment #45

Rich S. says ...

I just caught Hellboy 2. I disagree about the Middle Earth films. If Jackson allows del Toro to take off the gloves just a little bit, they are going to be incredible.

Warner's is going to be mightily sorry that they didn't pursue del Toro for the final two Potter films and left them to that clown who did Order of the Phoenix. Just imagine what del Toro would do with the Gringott's vault sequence.

And I'm now fully on board with del Toro's Lovecraft film, if he can ever get to it.

comment #46

Josh Massey says ...

Sorry, whenever I spell out a train of thought, I always think of that scene in Working Girl.

It's a curse.

comment #47

The Winchester says ...

No worries, Massey, I just wish you completed the whole thought. Trask... Radio.... Trask....RADIO!

comment #48

The Winchester says ...

PS- I do the same thing when someone asks me what the plan is, and I'm on a train of thought, I inevitably will always throw in "Kill Phillip, Get Liz, go to the Winchester".

comment #49

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