SPEARE'S TIPS - THE FILMS OF 11/6

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Shrykespeare
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SPEARE'S TIPS - THE FILMS OF 11/6

Post by Shrykespeare »

Ahh, winter. There’s nothing like the anticipation that the beginning of November brings. Whether you personally call it “winter season”, “holiday season” or “Oscar season” or whatever, it’s the point in the year that carries with it more expectations than possibly even the start of the summer season. This is the time of the year that showcases many potential blockbusters, but it also reveals the highest-quality films the year has to offer, with show business’s best stars, best directors, and best writers, plying their trade in the hopes that their work will end up in one category or another beginning with the word “Best…”

Over the next few weeks, there will be three movies coming out that represent major investments on your part, as it will cost you at least $29 in Ultimate ($30 in Box Office) to have them on your slate, so picking the right one is vital, unless you’re planning on short-stacking your Box Office studio by picking three biggies and calling it a day. A lot of people do that, for the record, but it usually takes a wilier strategy than that to win…

We were all forced to read Charles Dickens in school. If you’re like me, you dreaded having to pore through hundreds of pages of boring storyline in Victorian or Elizabethan England to write that damned book report. Great Expectations? A Tale of Two Cities? Oliver Twist? To a ten-year-old boy, this was not exactly gripping material. At least with A Christmas Carol, there was a ghostly, otherworldly aspect that made it cool to experience. Strangely enough, I was never assigned to read the book; why bother, when there are over twenty theatrical and made-for-TV versions of the story, not to mention many, many variations on the theme, that have been made since the Age of Film began.

The 2009 version of A Christmas Carol is not even the first animated version, but it is the first one that has been adapted in full 3-D, to be shown in regular 3-D and IMAX theaters. It is the third animated film to come out featuring the much-improved “motion-capture” technique, the first two being 2004’s inspired but tedious The Polar Express and 2007’s woefully mistold Beowulf. All three films, ironically, were directed by veteran helmer Robert Zemeckis, who was also in the big chair for many memorable past films like Romancing the Stone, Back to the Future (all three), Forrest Gump and Cast Away.

You all know the story: the crotchety, curmudgeonly miser Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey), an elderly Victorian-era banker spends his days counting his money, shunning most human contact and oozing contempt for the riffraff of London. But when visited by the ghost of his former partner Marley (Gary Oldman), he is told that he will be visited by three spirits, representing Christmases of the past, present and future, in the hopes that he will change his ways before it is too late.

Like I said, this is a story that has been told and retold many times over the decades. About the only thing that I can see detracting from this version’s potential audience is the rather thin line between a story being a “classic retelling” and “just another retread”. And while Jim Carrey is certainly a very popular actor (whose last animated fare, Horton Hears a Who!, earned over $150 million last spring), most people could care less who the voice talents in animated movies are.

Of course, when you look at the upcoming roster, this would appear to be the ONLY film this winter that has an actual “Christmas” theme, and that could very well help to boost its bottom line, like it did with the incredibly-average Four Christmases last year. $100 million seems virtually certain, though it’s past to $150 million seems a little less clear. It will run you $30 in the November Ultimate leagues ($31 in Box Office), which means that unless this film tracks like a mother, you may want to exercise caution before taking this.

Scheduled for release in over 3,500 theaters, it will certainly win its OW, by a huge margin, and then probably only drop to #2 the following weekend. That means probably eleven Top 5 points, a smattering of PTA, a reasonable User Rating (say, high 6’s-low 7’s at the minimum), and anywhere from $130 to $180 million, depending on word-of-mouth. I would certainly recommend this film over next week’s 2012, but perhaps not as much as Twilight: New Moon which, after all, costs a few dollars more.

Up next we have The Men Who Stare at Goats, which officially wins my prize for the best movie title this year. Directed by Grant Heslov (who has done far, far more acting than directing) and based on the book of the same name by Jon Ronson, this film stars four extremely popular and well-seasoned Hollywood actors – George Clooney, Ewen McGregor, Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges.

As premises go, this one is “out there” on almost a Coen Brothers level: when reporter Bob Wilton (McGregor) tries to lose himself in the romance of war after his marriage fails, he finds himself in a strange place when he meets a special forces agent named Lyn Cassady (Clooney), who claims to be a member of the U.S. Army’s First Earth Battalion, which uses paranormal powers to fulfill their missions. (The title refers to the Battalion’s attempts to kill by just using their minds, and they practice by using goats.)

I’ve read some of this film’s reviews over at RT, where it has a very respectable score of “80% Fresh” on 8/10 positive reviews. Most critics agree that it is “irreverently funny”, “highly entertaining” and “wildly unconventional”. Its humor would seem to be so sharp-edged that it often comes off as satire, which may or may not go over the head of some of this film’s less-than-knowledgeable filmgoers. Most of the film’s negative points would seem to be that the film’s less-than-humorous parts tend to drag on.

However, with a cast like this, many people may not care. The trailer and commercials make the film look funny as hell (particularly the Spacey/Bridges trial scene), and that alone might be enough to fill theaters. Speaking of which, it is scheduled for release in about 2,200 theaters, slightly fewer than other new releases like The Fourth Kind and The Box. Plus, it’s rated R, which means that it is mature adults who will make up most of this film’s patrons. Add all that up, and I’m not sure that The Men Who Stare at Goats will live up to its price tag.

It will run you $9 in Ultimate leagues, but given that I have doubts that it will even finish at #3 on its OW, I would definitely eschew it in the Ultimate game, despite the fact that it might have a very good UR (like, in the 8’s – it’s already got an 8.0 rating at IMDb). It may serve you better in the Box Office, where it will only run you a trim $5. I think it can definitely earn $25 million all together, which makes it definitely worth it.

The Box is a film with a much more checkered past. It has been postponed numerous times in the last year, which almost never is a recipe for success. Plus, the fact that it looks to be a horror movie coming the week AFTER Halloween makes me wonder if this film has any audience at all.

Directed by Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko), the film takes place in 1976 and centers around married couple James and Norma Lewis (James Marsden and Cameron Diaz), a formerly well-off couple who have fallen on hard times of late. On the brink of losing their house, they are intrigued when a box arrives on their doorstop, a box that seems to have no features save a large, red button on top. The next morning, they are visited by a strange, scarred man named Arlington Steward (Frost/Nixon's Frank Langella), who tells them that they can solve their financial woes in one fell swoop by pushing the button. However, the $1 million they would receive for doing so comes with a price – one person, somewhere in the world, will die as a result.

An interesting moral quandary, to be sure. I mean, how easy would it be for any of us to do it? Tens of thousands of people die on this planet every day, after all. But, this being a movie, nothing is ever, EVER that simple. Pushing the button (which you KNOW they will) will have consequences both frightening and unexpected, if the trailer is anything to go by.

The critical response to The Box has been split right down the middle, as evidenced by its 50% score on RT. Honestly, it looks to me like a less-than-stellar Twilight Zone episode, which, coincidentally, it was, back in 1986. But despite the rather hackneyed-looking plot, the ill-timed release date and whatnot, it has had a decent advertising campaign, and between that, its PG-13 rating, and the soft OW from This Is It, it could have enough juice to get to #2 on its OW, behind Christmas Carol. For $8 in Ultimate, you could get anywhere from five to seven Top 5, maybe one PTA and a UR in the low 7’s. Which, when you think about it, ain’t too bad.

Finally, we have The Fourth Kind, a tense-looking supernatural thriller directed by African-born Olatunde Osunsnami (a former protégé of Joe Carnahan, the man behind Narc and Smokin’ Aces) and starring Resident Evil actress Milla Jovovich. Based on actual events that took place in Nome, Alaska at the turn of the millennium, The Fourth Kind deals with the rather unsettling subject of alien abductions.

As it turns out, Nome has, for the last four decades, an alarming number of disappearances, and conspiracy theories abound as to why the government seems hell-bent on keeping the facts of those disappearances quiet. Jovovich plays Dr. Abigail Tyler, who comes to town to interview and film some of the town’s residents who claim to have experienced such abductions.

For me personally, this is the type of tense horror film that I like. Much like Paranormal Activity, it uses the unknown as its antagonist, and that, for me, is the scariest thing there is. Much like one of my favorite thrillers, the 2002 film The Mothman Prophecies (which was also based on true events), The Fourth Kind looks to succeed dually in both ratcheting up the tension and telling an entertaining story.

Sadly, however, I cannot recommend it for your slate, even for $6 (in both leagues). The two main reasons for this are 1) unlike The Box, I have barely seen any advertising for it at all, and 2) because of this reason, people seeking a good tense thriller may simply opt to see Paranormal Activity again. It will probably brining in no more than one Top 5 point and no PTA. It has a very good UR (8.0 with 200 votes), but I can’t see this film making more than $25 million, can you?


My predictions for the weekend of November 6-8, 2009 (again, excluding Paranormal Activity):

1. A Christmas Carol - $49 million
2. The Box - $15 million
3. Michael Jackson This Is It - $12 million
4. The Men Who Stare at Goats - $10 million
5. The Fourth Kind - $9 million


Well, that will do it for me for another week. Next week, my docket is considerably lighter, given that I only have two films scheduled to go wide, which are: 2012, the latest Roland Emmerich destroy-the-world-spectacularium starring John Cusack, Amanda Peet and Chiwetel Ejiofor; and Pirate Radio, a period comedy starring Philip Seymour Hoffman as a DJ who takes his rock-and-roll radio broadcast to the high seas when land-based means become untenable. I might even say a few words about The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which is scheduled for limited release this weekend but may go wide around Thanksgiving.

Later!
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Re: SPEARE'S TIPS - THE FILMS OF 11/6

Post by Buscemi »

The Box is set in the 1970's? The trailers look pretty modern-day to me in terms of setting.
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Re: SPEARE'S TIPS - THE FILMS OF 11/6

Post by Shrykespeare »

That's what it said in Wikipedia.
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Re: SPEARE'S TIPS - THE FILMS OF 11/6

Post by undeadmonkey »

I totally agree with everything you said this week

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Re: SPEARE'S TIPS - THE FILMS OF 11/6

Post by Brockster »

If you're looking for accurate info, look no further than Wikipedia!

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Re: SPEARE'S TIPS - THE FILMS OF 11/6

Post by BanksIsDaFuture »

The Box IS set in the 70s, I don't the exact year though.

Great article as always Shryke. I don't think A Christmas Carol will open that big, but it should play well all throughout the rest of the year. I can't believe there is not ONE other movie with a Christmas theme this year, that doesn't seem smart at all.

I read the story Button, Button that the Twilight Zone episode is based on, and therefore The Box, and I'm wondering if Kelly will change the ending at all. It's good, but I don't think it's a big enough twist to satisfy a whole 100 minutes before it.
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Re: SPEARE'S TIPS - THE FILMS OF 11/6

Post by Donte77 »

I am actually quite excited to see The Box. One of my favorite authors and a great director. Not thrilled about the actress choice though. She annoys me.
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Re: SPEARE'S TIPS - THE FILMS OF 11/6

Post by Brockster »

The only thing I've enjoyed her in was Something About Mary. I could never take her seriously as an actress. To me, she'll always be the girl w/ splooge in her hair.

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Re: SPEARE'S TIPS - THE FILMS OF 11/6

Post by transformers2 »

i dont really mind Cameron Diaz. She is an alright actress. I got to say though I think The Box looks like complete shit then again im not really excited for very many films the rest of this year.
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Re: SPEARE'S TIPS - THE FILMS OF 11/6

Post by Shrykespeare »

undeadmonkey wrote:I totally agree with everything you said this week
Excellent. One step closer to global domination.... :twisted:



Hmm. Only 36 different players remain in the four Super Leagues put together, and a whopping ELEVEN players are still alive in all four tournaments. They are:

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Re: SPEARE'S TIPS - THE FILMS OF 11/6

Post by Geezer »

That's a regular whose who of Fantaverse All-Stars if I do say so myself.
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Re: SPEARE'S TIPS - THE FILMS OF 11/6

Post by undeadmonkey »

JackO is still playing? he hasnt been around much.... i miss him, lol

Wow, great job guys, im honored to be up in the list

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Re: SPEARE'S TIPS - THE FILMS OF 11/6

Post by W »

Geezer wrote:That's a regular whose who of Fantaverse All-Stars if I do say so myself.
The first time I played the S/Ls, I lost in the first round... Since then I haven't been put out. Somehow I've been surviving the Ultimate Leagues... I'm not sure exactly how as I'm never satisfied with them. I can never make them fit together.
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Re: SPEARE'S TIPS - THE FILMS OF 11/6

Post by Shrykespeare »

I'd be very interested to see who's on that list one month from now....
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Re: SPEARE'S TIPS - THE FILMS OF 11/6

Post by Donte77 »

W wrote:I'm not sure exactly how as I'm never satisfied with them. I can never make them fit together.
It is a conspiracy. If I pick 6 movies I like I can't get the other 2 to mesh perfectly. So then I pick 5 I want and then 3 crap ones that flop. Grr..
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