For all those who still ‘don’t get’ Twitter, check out this recent talk by its founder Evan Williams at TED.
Category: Interesting
The dance sequence to A.R. Rahman‘s Jai Ho at the end of Slumdog Millionaire has been getting some heavy remix action on the web recently.
Here are some of the more notable tributes:
(Jay Leno with A.R. Rahman on The Tonight Show)
(By composer/music programmer Darrel Mascarenhas)
(Filmed in Tim’s Jazz 101 class at Dance101 in Atlanta, GA)
(Mick Hagen and Rachel Hagen. Follow them on Twitter: @mickhagen and @rachelhagen)
(Justine and Lizzie of FOAMproductions)
[Links via Buzzfeed)
> See the lyrics to Jai Ho translated into English
> Instructions on how to do the dance at The Age
> Check out our interview with Danny Boyle on Slumdog Millionaire
> See other related posts on Slumdog Millionaire
Yes, that is the real David Lynch on Twitter.
Or, as he puts it, ‘the Twitter page’.
Categories
The Perils of an Oscar Hoax
Some prankster has released what is almost certainly a fake document detailing the ‘Oscar winners’ on Sunday.
It is purportedly a ‘memo’ from AMPAS President Sid Ganis, but not only does it look fake, they have also made the mistake of listing Ben Burtt as working on The Dark Knight (he didn’t).
Academy spokesperson Leslie Unger has issued a stern denial to Entertainment Weekly, saying:
”The document is a complete fraud.
PricewaterhouseCoopers is still counting the ballots and there are only two people there who will know the complete list of winners in advance of the envelopes being opened during the ceremony.
The Academy’s president is not advised of the winners in advance and no such list is created with his name on it.”
However, in some respects, it is a sly hoax as the purported ‘winners’ in the big categories are heavily tipped to win anyway (Slumdog Millionaire for Best Picture, Danny Boyle for Best Director, Mickey Rourke for Best Actor and Kate Winslet for Best Actress).
So, the nightmare scenario for the Academy will be the (highly unlikely) event in which all these ‘predictions’ come in.
Even if it was a fake, a lot of people might not believe protestations to the contrary.
But it is worth remembering how the voting process actually works.
Once the ballots are in, the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers tabulates the nominee ballot votes in secrecy.
The Academy then announces the nominees in an early morning press conference and soon after the Academy mails the final ballots to all members.
They then have two weeks to return their final votes and then polling is closed.
PricewaterhouseCoopers tabulates the votes in absolute secrecy and seals the results.
After all the ballots are in, and the votes are counted, it all comes down to the actual night itself.
There is an urban myth that in 1992 Marisa Tomei was wrongly awarded the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress because the presenter Jack Palance read the wrong winner out.
However, one of the reasons this isn’t true is because, since 1953, two representatives from PriceWaterhouseCoopers are waiting in the wings when each award is announced.
If, for some reason, the presenter announced the wrong winner then they would come on stage and re-announce the real winner.
But if the hoax winners correspond to the real ones, expect the conspiracy theories to begin in earnest.
> The full list of this year’s Oscar nominations
> Snopes on the Marisa Tomei myth
> How Stuff Works on The Oscars
> A Slate article questioning whether PWC can be trusted with the Oscar results
Categories
New Watchmen Clips
These are 3 new clips from upcoming Watchmen film.
Watchmen opens in the UK on March 6th
> Official site for the film
> Find out more about the original comic at Wikipedia
I just got this email from The Prince Charles Cinema, which for those who don’t know, is repertory cinema located in Leicester Place, just north of Leicester Square in London’s West End.
It is a fantastic venue for any film lover as it shows a wide variety of films including cult, arthouse and classic films alongside recent Hollywood releases.
One thing that has always been startling about the place is the cheap tickets prices and in the email they just sent me is a reminder of how cheap they are compared to the average cinema in the West End.
| Cinema Name | Weekday Matinee | Weekday Evening | Weekend |
| The Prince Charles | £1.50 / £4 | £3.50 / £5 | £3.50 / £5 |
| The Curzon | £8 | £12 | £12 |
| The Vue | £11.90 | £13.50 | £11.90 – £13.50 |
| The Empire | £9.95 | £9.95 | £9.95 |
| Odeon Leicester Sq / Mezzanine | £9 – £14 | £9.50 – £19 | £9.50 – £19 |
The differences are pretty remarkable, especially given that it is the only truly independent cinema left in Central London.
If you are planning a trip to London and haven’t yet discovered the Prince Charles, then it is well worth a visit.
> Official site
> Find out more about the cinema at Wikipedia
Categories
Mickey Rourke on Charlie Rose
Mickey Rourke sits down for an hour long interview with Charlie Rose.
Fingers crossed he wins the Oscar a week on Sunday.
Claude Lelouch – C’etait un Rendezvous (1976) from vtg on Vimeo.
The above short film was made in 1976 by Claude Lelouch and is a one take shot of a high speed drive through Paris.
It starts in a tunnel of the Paris Périphérique at Porte Dauphine, with an onboard view from an unseen car exiting up on a ramp to Avenue Foch.
It was shot on a gyro-stabilised camera mounted on the bumper of a Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9 and makes the car chases in Bullitt and The French Connection look tame by comparison.
[Link via HE]
Categories
Richard Nixon on All in the Family
A strange tape from April 1971 of Richard Nixon discussing Archie Bunker, CBS and homosexuality.
In comes from the middle of a discussion with his aides HR Haldeman and John Ehrlichman on how they should shape their public relations in regard to what the ‘average man’ cares about.
They talk about the new television show All in the Family and the recent episode Nixon had seen, which leads to a larger and more surreal discussion.
Benicio Del Toro was on The Charlie Rose Show recently discussing Che.
Categories
The ‘I Can Read Movies’ Series
Spacesick is a design blog that has done a marvellous series that features features cult movies reimagined as vintage paperback covers.
Highlander, Face/Off and Ghostbusters are excellent but you should also check out more at his blog and Flickr account.
> Spacesick design blog
> 70 Years of Penguin design at NotCot
[Link via GrainEdit]
Categories
The Making of HBO’s John Adams
HBO’s John Adams got released on DVD in the UK this week.
Here is a 20 minute behind-the-scenes video from HBO’s YouTube channel:
There is also a video examining the life of John Adams:
It is a remarkable piece of television and if you didn’t manage to catch it on Channel 4 recently or More4 back in October, then it is an essential purchase.
> Official site for John Adams at HBO
> Find out more about the real John Adams at Wikipedia
> Buy David McCullough’s biography of John Adams at Amazon UK
Notice the similarities between John Carpenter’s score for Escape From New York (1981) and Harold Faltermeyer’s music in Beverly Hills Cop II.
Listen to Carpenter’s track when the Duke arrives at the library:
It was also used in the trailer:
Now listen to Faltermeyer’s track for the opening bank robbery in Beverly Hills Cop II (1987):
Very similar don’t you think?
David Denby of The New Yorker and A.O. Scott of the New York Times discuss this year’s Oscar nominations with Charlie Rose.
Categories
C-SPAN Interview with John Updike
A lengthy C-SPAN interview from 2005 with author John Updike, who died recently.
> C-SPAN Booknotes
> Find out more about John Updike at Wikipedia
An hour long interview with Martin Scorcese on the Charlie Rose show from 1997 where they discuss Kundun.
Categories
Barack Obama on Charlie Rose
Two interesting interviews with the soon to be US President on the Charlie Rose show.
This one is from 2004:
And this one is from 2006:
Categories
Jim Jarmusch on Stealing
I came across this quote by director Jim Jarmusch today and it was too good not to pass on.
The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown talks about his favourite film.
You can download the video here (just right click and save to your computer).
> Official site for the PM
> More on Gordon Brown at Wikipedia
The latest issue of The New Yorker has an interesting article by Tad Friend on movie marketing with a focus on Lionsgate’s resident guru Tim Palen.
If you have ever wondered how film marketing works in Hollywood then this is required reading.
One section of particular interest is when Friend mentions five ‘unofficial rules’ that studio marketers have in order to make their films seem broadly ‘relatable’:
- Can’t we all get along? In “Stomp the Yard,” which was about an urban street dancer who goes to college, the poster showed the African-American hero with his back turned, leaving his race indeterminate. The campaign for “Bring It On” portrayed the story as a rivalry between white and black cheerleading squads, even though more than eighty per cent of the film was about the white squad. The first marketing materials for Fox’s X-Men franchise showed only an “X.” Why exclude half your audience?
- If the poster shows a poster child, the movie is for kids. Posters are intended to tell you the film’s genre at a glance, then make you look more closely. Horror posters, for instance, have dark backgrounds; comedies have white backgrounds with the title and copy line in red. Because stars are supposed to open the film, and because they have contractual approval of how they appear on the poster, the final image is often a so-called “big head” or “floating head” of the star. Every poster for a Will Smith movie features his head, and for good reason: he is the only true movie star left, the only one who could open even a film about beekeeping monks.
- Everybody’s a comedian. Any drama with at least three funny moments in it will be portrayed, in the trailer and TV spots, as a comedy. The trailer for the 2005 film “The Squid and the Whale” conveyed a measure of the film’s delicate unease, but it was basically a series of wry exchanges. A joke, particularly a pratfall, is self-contained, whereas a sad or anxious moment is hard to convey briefly and out of context.
- If it’s called “The Squid and the Whale,” it’s somebody else’s problem. That movie was produced by Samuel Goldwyn Films, an independent studio, and grossed seven million dollars—quite good for a small film, but not for a studio release. If a movie’s title and stars don’t tell you almost everything you need to know about a film—“Get Smart,” starring Steve Carell, say—marketers worry. Fox had to spend a little extra to sell “The Devil Wears Prada,” because casual moviegoers wondered what Meryl Streep was doing in a horror film. When a movie under performs, an awkward title is often seen as the culprit.
- Always cheat death. People die in movies; they almost never die in trailers. They are courageous (“The Express”) or missing (“Changeling”) or profoundly alive (“Revolutionary Road”). “If a movie is completely, one hundred per cent about death, then it’s also about life, right?” Fox’s co-head of marketing, Tony Sella, told me. The only thing marketers can’t pull off, Sella acknowledged, is “selling old to young”—persuading kids to see a movie like “Driving Miss Daisy.” “You can try with”—he adopted a baritone voice-over—“ ‘You don’t know where you’re going, but here’s what it’s going to look like when you arrive.’ But they usually say, ‘Screw you, I’ll wait.’ ”
There is also an observation about how marketing dictates what kind of movies get made:
Marketing considerations shape not only the kind of films studios make but who’s in them—gone are lavish adult dramas with no stars, like the 1982 “Gandhi.”
Such considerations account for a big role being written for Shia LaBeouf in the most recent “Indiana Jones” (to attract youthful viewers as well as Harrison Ford’s aging fans).
They also account for the virtual absence from the screen of children between the ages of newborn (when they appear briefly, to puke on the star for the trailer) and that of the Macauley Culkin character in “Home Alone.”
It explains the arc of a campaign for an average movie:
Modern campaigns have three acts:
- A year or more before the film debuts, you introduce it with ninety-second teaser trailers and viral Internet “leaks” of gossip or early footage, in preparation for the main trailer, which appears four months before the release;
- Five weeks before the film opens, you start saturating with a “flight” of thirty-second TV spots;
- At the end, you remind with fifteen-second spots, newspaper ads, and billboards.
Plus, we also get a breakdown of the average costs:
Studios typically spend about ten million dollars on the “basics” (cutting trailers and designing posters, conducting market research, flying the film’s talent to the junket and the premiere, and the premiere itself) and thirty million on the media buy.
Between seventy and eighty per cent of that is spent on television advertising (enough so that viewers should see the ads an average of fifteen times), eight or nine per cent on Internet ads, and the remainder on newspaper and outdoor advertising.
The hope is that a potential viewer will be prodded just enough to make him decide to see what all the fuss is about.
Read the rest of the article at The New Yorker’s website.
> Find out more about Lionsgate at Wikipedia
> Tim Palen’s official site
David Fincher, Brad Pitt and Greg Cannom discuss the makeup effects in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
This CBS News piece also describes how Brad Pitt performed alongside the visual effects:
The film opens in the UK on Friday 6th February.
Sam Mendes talks about directing Revolutionary Road on The Charlie Rose Show.
An interesting video of Andy Warhol interviewing Steven Spielberg, while Bianca Jagger occasionally chips in.
[Link via Buzzfeed]
> Find out more about Andy Warhol, Steven Spielberg and Bianca Jagger at Wikipedia
> The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh
The director and star of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button talk to Charlie Rose for an hour about the film.
The film opens here on Friday 6th February.
> Official site for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
> David Fincher and Brad Pitt at the IMDb
Categories
Harold Pinter on Charlie Rose
Harold Pinter died yesterday after a lengthy bout of cancer.
The playwright gave this interview to Charlie Rose in December 2006 where he discussed his life and work.
> Harold Pinter at the IMDb
> New York Times report on his death
> John Lahr profile in The New Yorker from 2007
> Find out more about his life and career at Wikipedia
French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma have compiled a list of the 100 greatest films of all time.
It is published this month in an illustrated book and was put together by 76 French film directors, critics and industry executives.
Here are the 100 films:
- Citizen Kane – Orson Welles
- The Night of the Hunter – Charles Laughton
- The Rules of the Game (La Règle du jeu) – Jean Renoir
- Sunrise – Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
- L’Atalante – Jean Vigo
- M – Fritz Lang
- Singin’ in the Rain – Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
- Vertigo – Alfred Hitchcock
- Children of Paradise (Les Enfants du Paradis) – Marcel Carné
- The Searchers – John Ford
- Greed – Erich von Stroheim
- Rio Bravo – Howard Hawkes
- To Be or Not to Be – Ernst Lubitsch
- Tokyo Story – Yasujiro Ozu
- Contempt (Le Mépris) – Jean-Luc Godard
- Tales of Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari) – Kenji Mizoguchi
- City Lights – Charlie Chaplin
- The General – Buster Keaton
- Nosferatu the Vampire – Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
- The Music Room – Satyajit Ray
- Freaks – Tod Browning
- Johnny Guitar – Nicholas Ray
- The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain) – Jean Eustache
- The Great Dictator – Charlie Chaplin
- The Leopard (Le Guépard) – Luchino Visconti
- Hiroshima, My Love – Alain Resnais
- The Box of Pandora (Loulou) – Georg Wilhelm Pabst
- North by Northwest – Alfred Hitchcock
- Pickpocket – Robert Bresson
- Golden Helmet (Casque d’or) – Jacques Becker
- The Barefoot Contessa – Joseph Mankiewitz
- Moonfleet – Fritz Lang
- Diamond Earrings (Madame de…) – Max Ophüls
- Pleasure – Max Ophüls
- The Deer Hunter – Michael Cimino
- The Adventure – Michelangelo Antonioni
- Battleship Potemkin – Sergei M. Eisenstein
- Notorious – Alfred Hitchcock
- Ivan the Terrible – Sergei M. Eisenstein
- The Godfather – Francis Ford Coppola
- Touch of Evil – Orson Welles
- The Wind – Victor Sjöström
- 2001: A Space Odyssey – Stanley Kubrick
- Fanny and Alexander – Ingmar Bergman
- The Crowd – King Vidor
- 8 1/2 – Federico Fellini
- La Jetée – Chris Marker
- Pierrot le Fou – Jean-Luc Godard
- Confessions of a Cheat (Le Roman d’un tricheur) – Sacha Guitry
- Amarcord – Federico Fellini
- Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête) – Jean Cocteau
- Some Like It Hot – Billy Wilder
- Some Came Running – Vincente Minnelli
- Gertrud – Carl Theodor Dreyer
- King Kong – Ernst Shoedsack & Merian J. Cooper
- Laura – Otto Preminger
- The Seven Samurai – Akira Kurosawa
- The 400 Blows – François Truffaut
- La Dolce Vita – Federico Fellini
- The Dead – John Huston
- Trouble in Paradise – Ernst Lubitsch
- It’s a Wonderful Life – Frank Capra
- Monsieur Verdoux – Charlie Chaplin
- The Passion of Joan of Arc – Carl Theodor Dreyer
- À bout de souffle – Jean-Luc Godard
- Apocalypse Now – Francis Ford Coppola
- Barry Lyndon – Stanley Kubrick
- La Grande Illusion – Jean Renoir
- Intolerance – David Wark Griffith
- A Day in the Country (Partie de campagne) – Jean Renoir
- Playtime – Jacques Tati
- Rome, Open City – Roberto Rossellini
- Livia (Senso) – Luchino Visconti
- Modern Times – Charlie Chaplin
- Van Gogh – Maurice Pialat
- An Affair to Remember – Leo McCarey
- Andrei Rublev – Andrei Tarkovsky
- The Scarlet Empress – Joseph von Sternberg
- Sansho the Bailiff – Kenji Mizoguchi
- Talk to Her – Pedro Almodóvar
- The Party – Blake Edwards
- Tabu – Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
- The Bandwagon – Vincente Minnelli
- A Star Is Born – George Cukor
- Mr. Hulot’s Holiday – Jacques Tati
- America, America – Elia Kazan
- El – Luis Buñuel
- Kiss Me Deadly – Robert Aldrich
- Once Upon a Time in America – Sergio Leone
- Daybreak (Le Jour se lève) – Marcel Carné
- Letter from an Unknown Woman – Max Ophüls
- Lola – Jacques Demy
- Manhattan – Woody Allen
- Mulholland Dr. – David Lynch
- My Night at Maud’s (Ma nuit chez Maud) – Eric Rohmer
- Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard) – Alain Resnais
- The Gold Rush – Charlie Chaplin
- Scarface – Howard Hawks
- Bicycle Thieves – Vittorio de Sica
- Napoléon – Abel Gance
The reaction from some outlets in this country is surprise that there are no British films on the list.
The Telegraph say:
The list in the publication Les Cahiers du Cinema features films from the USA, Germany, Russia, Italy and Sweden but there is no place for some of the biggest British directors including David Lean, Ken Loach and Peter Greenaway.
British-born Alfred Hitchcock and Charlie Chaplin are both mentioned but only for the movies that they made in Hollywood.
The nearest the British cinema industry comes to a mention is the 17th (equal) place given to 2001: A Space Odyssey, made in 1968, by the American director, Stanley Kubrick, partly with British money and with British technicians.
The 1962 classic Lawrence of Arabia came seventh in a recent list of the best 100 movies drawn up by the American Film Institute in Hollywood but is perhaps the highest profile omission.
Jean-Michel Frodon, the editor of Les Cahiers du Cinema, has pointed out that the lack of British-made films was “striking” but not part of any Gallic conspiracy:
“It does not reflect an anti-British bias. It is simply the result of the individual choices of 76 people in the French industry. Each was asked to name their 100 best films and this was the result.
Yes, it is surprising, maybe, that there is no Lawrence of Arabia, or no film by Ken Loach or Stephen Frears (The Queen).
But there are many other national film industries which are also missing. There are no Brazilian films, for instance.”
Some British films that should have made the list would surely include:
That said, if you were to ask me what are the truly great British films of the last 20 years, then I would struggle to come up with one.
In May 1957 a former editor of Cahiers (and later director) Francois Truffaut once remarked:
“The British cinema is made of dullness and reflects a submissive lifestyle, where enthusiasm, warmth, and zest are nipped in the bud. A film is a born loser just because it is English.“
Maybe nothing has changed in 50 years.
> The Telegraph on the list
> Official site for Cahiers du Cinema
> Geoffrey MacNab of The Guardian in 2001 on Cahiers du Cinema
Categories
40 Great Independent Film Posters
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Smashing Magazine have compiled a terrific list of 40 Exquisite Independent Film Posters.
I think my favourites are: Zoo, Primer, Taxi to the Darkside, Brick, The Descent and Son of Rambow.
Also great are: Half Nelson, Sideways, Requiem For a Dream (possibly my favourite), Transamerica, Hard Candy and Grizzly Man.
It goes without saying that all of these films are worth buying.
> Original post at Smashing Magazine
> Empire’s list of ‘the greatest Independent films ever made’
> Find out more about indpendent film at WIkipedia
> Indie Film section at the IMDb
Jinni is a new search and recommendation engine for movies and TV shows whose aim is to help viewers find stuff they will like.
I signed up and will give it a go, after all the idea is a good one.
Apart from ‘what is your favourite film?’, the question I’m most frequently asked is something like:
What’s a good film I should see?
This is a trickier question than it might seem, because although I have my views on what’s good, my taste isn’t always going to chime in with who’s asking me.
Sites like this and Flixster appear to offer a solution to the ‘what should I see’ problem but the main drawback is that it is a pain to rate lots of films.
Obviously, the more you rate the better the recommendations will be (or that’s the theory) but I don’t know if a scientific approach always works best.
Just because on film is like another (e.g. same genre or director) doesn’t mean it will always have the same effect on the viewer.
I think what people crave is a film that hits the sweet spot, in other words a special movie that ticks a lot of boxes all at once.
But that is pretty hard to calculate, no matter how much data you have.
Categories
Channel 4 launch in 1982
The opening minutes of Channel 4 when it launched on November 2nd 1982.
Categories
Slate on AXXo and BitTorrent
Josh Levin of Slate has written an interesting article on movie piracy and the web’s most famous BitTorrent filesharer aXXo.
> Read the full article at Slate
> Find out more about how BitTorrent works at Wikipedia
> Read two conflicting PDF reports about movie piracy from the MPAA and the IPI
Categories
How films are released in the UK
I recently came across an interesting post over at Big Picture Research that pointed to all sorts of interesting data published by the UK Film Council.
They have made two spreadsheets available about UK film production and distribution from January 2003 to September 2008.
One details UK film production by quarter, Q1 2003 to Q3 2008 with data on the different types of UK funded films, trends over the last few years, the different types of production and four graphical charts dislaying the information.
The other is a list of films from 2003 to 2008 which is a list of all films produced in whole or part in the UK that have been tracked by the UK Film Council. These are the films that underlie the production data reported elsewhere on their site. (UPDATE 17/11/08: Thanks to David Steele of the UK Film Council for leaving a comment below correcting an earlier post).
Actual budget numbers are harder to come by, but it is a still pretty illuminating set of statistics.
The also have some basic facts about distribution in 2007:
- The top ten distributors had a 95% share of the market in 2007, down 1% on 2006.
- Weekends (Friday to Sunday) accounted for 64% of the box office.
- Opening weekends represented 29% of the total box office.
- Estimated total advertising spend was £179.5 million, an increase of 5% on 2006.
- Approximately £48 million was spent on advertising British films.
One other set of stats on the site also caught my eye, which was a table showing the different film distributors in the UK & Ireland, and how they did in 2007:
It lists their market share, how many films they released and the grosses at the box office:
| Distributor | Market share (%) | Films on release 2007 | Box office gross (£ million) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Warner Bros | 15.6 | 32 | 141.5 |
| Paramount | 14.7 | 31 | 133.7 |
| 20th Century Fox | 13.9 | 27 | 126.3 |
| Universal Pictures | 13.9 | 24 | 126.3 |
| Walt Disney Studios | 10.7 | 23 | 97.3 |
| Entertainment | 9.5 | 25 | 86.7 |
| Sony Pictures | 8.2 | 28 | 74.4 |
| Momentum | 3.4 | 18 | 30.9 |
| Icon | 2.3 | 13 | 21.1 |
| Lionsgate | 2.3 | 22 | 20.9 |
| Sub-total | 94.5 | 243 | 859.1 |
| Others (63 distributors) | 5.5 | 329 | 49.6 |
| Total | 100.0 | 572 | 908.7 |
They also the box office percentage share by weekday/weekend over the period from 2003-2007.
In other words, which day of the week audiences like to go the cinema:
| 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Friday | 16.0 | 15.3 | 18.0 | 16.5 | 16.4 |
| Saturday | 26.6 | 24.5 | 27.0 | 25.1 | 27.8 |
| Sunday | 18.7 | 19.9 | 19.0 | 18.7 | 19.3 |
| Weekend | 61.3 | 59.7 | 64.0 | 60.3 | 63.5 |
| Monday | 8.9 | 9.7 | 8.0 | 9.5 | 7.2 |
| Tuesday | 10.0 | 10.1 | 8.0 | 9.5 | 9.0 |
| Wednesday | 9.8 | 10.7 | 10.0 | 10.9 | 11.6 |
| Thursday | 10.0 | 9.8 | 10.0 | 9.7 | 8.7 |
| Weekday | 38.7 | 40.3 | 36.0 | 39.7 | 36.5 |
| Total | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 |
As they themselves put it:
In 2007, 64% of the box office was taken at weekends (Friday to Sunday), up from 60% in 2006, as Table 8.4 shows.
This reflects the stronger performance of the blockbusters and their proportionately higher opening weekend box office gross figures.
They also have a chart showing a breakdown of the estimated advertising spend on a film in 2007:
| TV | 74.1 |
| Outdoor | 65.3 |
| Press | 27.0 |
| Radio | 8.4 |
| Internet | 4.7 |
| Total | 179.5 |
The total of £179.5 million was a rise of 4.8% from £171.3 million in 2006.
Sometimes people I speak to in the UK are bemused by the US obsession with opening weekend grosses, but the inescapable reality is that, for any kind of film in the UK or US, the opening weekend is critical.
Though there are exceptions (The Shawshank Redemption and Donnie Darko leap to mind) the opening weekend is vital at establishing the film in cinemas and on subsequent releases on DVD, pay TV and other platforms (e.g. iTunes).
This means that distributors spend a lot of money on advertising in order to create awareness across a range of different media. These include ads on TV, outdoor posters, print, radio and online.
All of this made me think not only about how films are released but also about how I cover them. Generally, for my radio outlets I list the big 2 or 3 releases and discuss them.
If a more limited release (e.g. one that is screened in ‘key cities’) is of particular note then I’ll also talk about that too.
That’s fairly normal and generally all critics do is give their opinion on what’s out there. But I think there is some value in digging a bit deeper and exploring individual releases, how they are released and why people go to see them.
A few months ago I made the conscious decision to list all the UK cinema releases each Friday, splitting them into national and selected sections.
You’ll see that alongside the big films from major studios and more arthouse releases are Bollywood films (that tend to get very limited coverage in UK national media) and quirky releases that you’ve probably never heard of that get released in just a handful of cinemas.
Part of the reason for the lists is to create a snapshot of each weekend but also to be useful to readers of this site, as it can be difficult to get decent archived listings data with some type of context.
The national releases are the ones at multiplexes up and down the land (e.g, Quantum of Solace, Saw 5) and the selected releases are films such as Hunger (which got released on about 50 screens across the UK in major cities) and more esoteric fare like OSS 117: Cairo – Nest Of Spies, which screens at a London arthouse cinema like the ICA.
But for the rest of this month I want to do something a little bit more and not just review the actual film but also how they get released.
Why? Well, I think it might be illuminating to explore the different aspects of how we see a film from the how it got green lit, produced, marketed, how the UK distributor handles the actual release and how well it does at the box office.
Over the next few weeks I’m going to select a cross section of films and write about them in more depth with these factors in mind.
Next week I’ll start by examining the release of Body Of Lies (a big budget studio thriller with Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe) and then explore a film each week after that.
I’ll write about each one in a separate post but I also want your opinion, be it a general vibe from the advertising or your verdict after seeing it at your local cinema.
At the end of the two week period, I post links to all the individual posts and hopefully we’ll have some interesting impressions on how different films are released in the UK.
> Check the Big Picture Research blog
> Find out more facts about British films and distributors at the UK Film Council site
> Our list of all the cinema releases in November 2008
Wired magazine have an interesting feature on six real gadgets that Minority Report predicted correctly.
The 2002 sci-fi thriller stars Tom Cruise as a Washington cop in a special unit called ‘Precrime’ that apprehends criminals based on foreknowledge provided by three psychics termed ‘precogs‘.
Set in 2054, it features all kinds of interesting technology, partly because in pre-production director Steven Spielberg convened a think-tank to brainstom details of what a future reality might look like.
They included: Long Now Foundation president Stewart Brand, author Douglas Coupland, Cybergold founder Nat Goldhaber, biomedical researcher Shaun Jones and virtual reality expert Jaron Lanier.
The Wired article points out that the film suggested the following developments:
- Gesture-based Computer Interfaces
- Flexible Displays
- 3-D Holograms
- Identity-Detecting Advertisement Cameras
- Robot Scouts
- Predicting Mistakes
I remember seeing the film in June 2002 (if I remember correctly Frank Skinner and Graham Linehan were also there) and the tech aspect that struck me most was the multi-touch hologram display Cruise’s character manipulates in order to view images.
Were Apple’s engineers influenced by this when the created the iPhone multi-touch interface?
This video points out that the sound on an iPhone appears to be some reference to the film.
UPDATE 14/11/08: Engadget have a video of the interface developed by one of the science advisors from the film (along with a team of other visionaries).
Dubbed g-speak, the OS combines “gestural i/o, recombinant networking, and real-world pixels,” to deliver what the creators call “the first major step in [a] computer interface since 1984.”.
g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.
> Read the full article at Wired
> Minority Report at the IMDb
Digg founder Kevin Rose interviews Al Gore for Current TV.
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Crawford on Hulu
The new documentary Crawford, directed by David Modigliani, explores about the impact of President Bush’s relocation to the small town of Crawford, Texas, shortly after announcing his candidacy for president.
If you are in the Unites States you can now watch it on Hulu or buy it on DVD via Amazon.
> Official site for Crawford
> IMDb entry
> Find out more about the town of Crawford at Wikipedia
This is the 30 minute campaign ad for Barack Obama that ran on most US TV networks last Wednesday.
Entitled Amercian Stories, American Solutions, it was directed by Davis Guggenheim, who also made the Al Gore documentary An Inconvenient Truth.
It was simulcast on NBC, CBS, Fox, Univision, MSNBC, BET and TV One and Fox even asked for Game Six of the 2008 World Series to be delayed by 15 minutes in order to show it.
The ad got just over 30 million viewers across all the networks on which it aired and currently has 1,542,234 views on YouTube.
> Find out more about the Obama Campaign at Wikipedia
> Davis Guggenheim at the IMDb
This montage of synced-up footage from all three US presidential debates suggests that they were a bit similar.
It is one of the quirks of film history that the man who made Citizen Kane ended up appearing in the 1986 animated film Transformers: The Movie.
> Transformers The Movie at the IMDb
> Find out more about Orson Welles at WIkipedia
> The infamous outtakes from the peas advert with Orson Welles
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Beached by Keith Loutit
Beached from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.
The above short film is actually Tamarama Beach in Sydney, shot as though it was a model.
The music ‘I Feel Fine‘ by Sonido Lasser Drakar.
AdULTHOOD is the sequel to the 2006 hit Kidulthood and follows the story of Sam Peel (Noel Clarke) six years on from the events of the last film.
After returning home, Sam struggles to deal with life on the outside and is pursued by Jay (Adam Deacon)
The film was also written and directed by Noel and I recently spoke to him and Adam about the film which is out on DVD this week.
Listen to the interview here:
[audio:http://filmdetail.receptionmedia.com/Noel_Clarke_and_Adam_Deacon_on_AdULTHOOD.mp3]You can also download it as a podcast via iTunes by clicking here.
AdULTHOOD is out on DVD now from Pathe
> Download this interview as an MP3 file
> Noel Clarke and Adam Deacon at the IMDb
> Official UK website for AdULTHOOD
> Buy AdULTHOOD on DVD at Amazon
[Image courtesy of Pathe © 2008]
Russell Crowe was on Letterman recently discussing his new film Body of Lies, a contemporary thriller directed by Ridley Scott and co-starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
However, the interesting part of the interview is at 1.27 when Crowe talks about how the film’s producer Donald DeLine got him to change his favourite ad-libbed line in the movie, which was eventually cut out anyway because it upset executives at Warner Bros.
> Body of Lies at the IMDb
> Russell Crowe at Wikipedia