For the third straight year, the U.S. box office totals have been declining. Why? Hollywood is actually turning out entertaining movies. So that's not it.
The answer is a combination of things. Home theater leads the way. Affordable home theater has made the home viewing experience pretty darned good. You can get better sound than you'll ever experience at the theater. And larger screens and cheaper projection systems give a viewing ratio and sharp detailed picture that is starting to rival the big screen experience. Blue-ray DVD's capable of HDTV quality will put it over the top.
Meanwhile, the theater experience gets worse and worse in most cases. Kids wont sit quiet and still. Teenagers are constantly up and down. Cellphones ring. Stupid people point out obvious details to their equally intellectually challenged mates at volumes that the entire row can hear. The movie is loud, so they have to speak up to be heard ya know. And dont even get me started on babies at the theater again.
I've said it before, I'll say it again, the movie going experience is no longer special. It's either a safe place to go with a date, a time killer or a babysitter for the kids.
As the viewing quality at home gets better, why put up with it? In my own house, I can set the rules. Talking during a movie at The Billy Bob Bijou and you'll find yourself waking up in the yard wondering why your butt hurts and you taste shoe leather.
The various reactions around our offices regarding War of the Worlds has been amusing, with some of us wowed by the special effects and others just too ticked off at the ending to care. I'm in the latter camp.
If you've read the book (and you have, haven't you?) then you already know how the aliens are defeated, so the only questions remaining for the Spielberg/Cruise version of the story are what the fluff will look like, and how the movie will deal with the conclusion. With the level of SFX technology these days we expected the aliens to kick some ass, and we weren't disappointed. The computer generated tripods looked wickedly cool and the "laser" beam weapons rock. The sense of scale is consistent, so you aren't seeing a "small" tripod in one scene and a big one in the next, they're always big. The aliens themselves look good as well, though not as menacing as you might think.
But that ending. Ouch. Here's the story in a nutshell... Cruise has kids for the weekend, aliens attack... yada yada yada... run from aliens... yada yada yada... aliens die. Roll credits. It's as if Spielberg ran out of money and had to shortcut the ending. Seriously, the aliens die, and the credits roll. We're left hanging on several plot points, and we realize that as cool as the aliens were we never really got to see a good fight happen with them.
I would have given the movie 2 stars if I'd written the review. Lots of hype for the movie for a really lame payoff. I do look forward to the DVD though, this thing will rock the sound system.
Hopefully everyone got out to see Land of the Dead over the weekend. It pulled in $10M and ranked #5 overall... pretty awesome for a zombie movie. I thought that LotD was a solid effort from Romero. Remember, he hasn't made a zombie movie in 20 years. Hopefully LotD will do well enough at the box office to encourage Romero to make a few more.
Since June is Zombie Month, what are everyone's favorite zombie movies? Here are my top five, in order:
1. Dawn of the Dead (1978) 2. Shaun of the Dead 3. Dead Alive 4. The Stink of Flesh 5. Zombie
We're about 24 hours from the opening of Batman Begins. I have not seen it yet. There will be midnight screenings just like Star Wars, but circumstances are such that I will not be able to show up and taunt anyone who shows up dressed as Robin. We will get a review online for opening day however.
In terms of acting ability, this is by far the strongest cast a Batman movie has ever had. However, having Christian Bale in the lead role may screw me up. You see, I'm a huge fan of the movie American Psycho. So I'm thinking that if you show Batman a business card that is better than his, you may find yourself tied up in the bat cave listening to Huey Lewis and the News. And for those of you who have not seen American Psycho, you're wondering what I'm smoking long about now.
We're quite stoked to see the Dark Knight. And we're also very happy he's not longer in Joel Schumacher's care. We liked the Tim Burton movies. But in the last two Schumacher seemed to think all that was necessary for success was some high profile casting and a lot of neon colors.
Billy Bob's Ranking of the Batman movies, excluding Batman Begins:
Batman (1989) - Nicholson as The Joker steals the show
Batman Returns (1992) - Keaton returns, but again the villains steal the show with DeVito as a very gross version of The Penguin
Batman (1966) - Ok, so I grew up on the campy 1960's version, and still like it today, so what
Batman Forever (1995) - Only Jim Carrey's over the top version of the Riddler keeps this one from being the worst Batman movie, both of the bottom two are horrid.
Batman & Robin (1997) - Alicia Silverstone in tight leather cant save this from being one of the worst big budget big cast movies ever made.
Alex drew short straw and had to go see it. And he comes back and gives it a 4 star review. Can anyone else corroborate that?
We're a bit concerned about Alex because ever since he returned from the movie, he's been rubbing his nipples complaining about how tender they are and being all sensitive.
We took a look at the "uncensored and unrated" version of Team America: World Police on DVD this week. We've been wondering for months what could they have possibly censored about the puppet sex scene. First off, they're puppets, how can puppets be obscene? Second, what more could they do with them than what we already saw in the theatrical release. Our response after watching the uncut DVD was simply "oh, that's what!".
We wont spoil it, you just need to see it.
Trey and Matt are truly twisted. We love 'em. However, we do wish they'd quit turning their movies into quasi-musicals by padding them out with songs.
