Weekend Estimates by A Game of Kladys
Nothing much has changed since Friday. Sherlock 2 did just under 3x Friday. Alvin 3 did just over 3x Friday. Mission:Impossible: Ghost Protocol‘s IMAX stunt did great and should build word-of-mouth, just as Paramount intended. WB won too with the Dark Knight passion being stirred.
The awards season push is suffering. For all the heat around Hugo, Young Adult, The Descendants, My Week With Marilyn, The Artist, A Dangerous Method, Carnage, and Like Crazy, it just hasn’t converted to box office gold (though each of the films has a different bar for what could be considered “success”). The most hopeful signs at the box office right now are for Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, with $28k per on 16 screens. Will the picture work as well in expansion? Time will tell.
As noted with fire and brimstone elsewhere, the holiday season has, so far, been disappointing. It looks like we may end the year $600m – $700m behind last year’s #2 all-time box office, which was only off #1 by $30 million. That’s a 6% – 7% drop. That’s still a massive comeback from the 20something percent business was off as of last March. And it’s still 2 or 3 movies away from being equal to or better than last year. But it is, admittedly, not an upbeat story. But the slump talk… sorry, but there is no institutional indication of “slumping.” It is, simply, stupid to micro-obsess on what amounts to a few titles and to talk about an industry-wide problem. That said, exhibitors need some hits. They are the ones in the most vulnerable position. We’ll know how Cruise, Spielberg, and Fincher do for them shortly.
It’s an okay year but we live in a world with a faulty set of expectations. We expect, more like the stupid markets people still believe, that there’s going to be growth every year. Unfortunately, this year of all years, has featured decisions that hindered growth. You had the family movie massacres in the Spring and the Fall, you have the AWARD PICTURES that don’t seem to be exciting anyone, and you have BIG PICTURES that failed to be BIG PICTURES (that’s right GL, I am looking in your direction)! This is the perfect recipe for a decline.
Stupid business decisions make these things happen and looking at the release schedule for the year, demonstrates how epically the studios all FAILED to get the best grosses from their films. Hopefully in 2012, the studios don’t fuck themselves so hard, but you never know with those folks.
Now, with Shirley, that franchise screams INTERNATIONAL. If it doesn’t gross close to 400 internationally, I’ll be shocked. It’s a Kung Fu Panda 2 situation.
I can think of a whole lot of people who’d be thrilled if their pictures grossed $40 million lifetime, let alone one weekend. How much higher is the “disappointment” bar going to be set before it becomes totally unrealistic?
Saw The Descendants. I liked it; wife was bored. I get why it’s up for so many awards, but in an intellectual I-know-how-you-people-think way, not in a I’m-right-there-with-you way. Though yes, the acting by the entire cast was excellent.
What does that last comment even MEAN?
I’m fascinated by the WB/Paramount enmity around “Dark Knight Rises”/”Mission: Impossible.” I think every IMAX screening of “M:I,” EXCEPT the advance screenings critics attended, was preceded by the “Dark Knight” prologue. I get that WB was annoyed to be goosing the take of a rival studio, especially since that rival studio was opening against WB’s own similar-audienced “Sherlock” and that maybe Paramount didn’t want the story about their movie to be “How about that amazing WB trailer” but it seems odd they couldn’t work it out so the preview audiences could at least see the prologue everyone was talking about the way it was meant to be seen, instead of on Youtube, where it’s not as cool.
Chris… only 10% of the IMAX screens with M:I:GP this weekend had the Dark Knight prologue.
And why would you think WB was anything but happy to do this? It was a very specific choice, not like sending out trailers in cans and hoping the exhibitor will play what you sent.
The “Dark Knight Rises” trailer is impressive, but that prologue isn’t that great. It really did feel more like the opening scene to a Bond movie (sans a Bond) than anything else. Any who didn’t see the surprise coming as soon as the guys in the hoods came into the frame? I can’t believe the CIA character didn’t say “OH HELL NOOOOOOOO – like I didn’t just watch this shit on Hawaii Five-O last night!” and open fire on everybody immediately.
Saw both MI:GP and SH:AGOS this weekend (if you can’t figure out the acronyms, don’t know what to tell you) and Mission Impossible won by a landslide! It’s been said time and time again, but Bird REALLY knocked it out of the park with those action sequences – that climax in the parking garage actually seemed like it right out of a Pixar movie (Toy Story 2 or Monsters Inc, though neither of those were directed by Brad Bird).
Villain was the weakest part and am I the only one who didn’t buy it for a second that he could do any damage to Tom Cruise?? I mean, dude brawls his way out of a Russian prison in the first scene. Still just a blast of a film and yes, probably the best action movie of the year. Have to wonder if Paramount left money on the table by going limited IMAX off the bat, but they had to do something unique against this much competition – they had Sherlock this weekend and TinTin and ‘Dragon Tattoo next weekend – some overlapping audiences there, believe it or not.
SPOILER ALERT
Sherlock…eh, it was better than the first one, but that’s not saying much. Jeez, when did Guy Ritchie get it in his head that he had to make a freakin Sherlock Holmes drama that would rival Arnold films from the ’80’s when it came to scenes that fetishized guns and ammo??? Completely out of left field. I found it diverting, don’t get me wrong. But the plot doesn’t even really kick in until after 90 minutes and what really kept it from being a completely mediocre entertainment was the last 20 minutes FINALLY featuring a battle of wits between Moriarity and Holmes. Noomi Rapace was wasted completely and the whole thing was just too damn long.
Seriously, this has happened with Sherlock, Transformers, Pirates, etc. too much the past several years – why do all of these movies based on diverting/light source material always have to make it so damn EPIC?? Three hours, convoluted plots, fate of the world in their hands – blah, blah, blah….if you can’t make a fun romp about battling toys or pirates at 105 minutes, then please do no bother at all!
Hallick – Yeah, I’m kinda with you on the prologue. As a set piece it looks fucking amazing (including invoking the imagery of the iconic lunar rocket seperation footage). As a piece of storytelling – what the balls?
It would have worked just fine if Bane had lead the assault. The stated reason for running an “inside man” ploy – to find out how much they knew – didn’t even occur.
ETA – Hardy’s accent for Bane reminds me of Jeremy Irons in Die Hard 3.
Fell asleep during “Sherlock 2.”
The Ritchie-ish freneticism that made it seem so refreshingly atypical for a Holmes movie two years ago simply exhausted me this time.
Wasn’t crazy about Rapace in her Hollywood debut either.
Hope her English has improved by “Prometheus” next summer…and the dozen (or more) other H’wood movies she’s signed up for.
I did like the final 20 minutes, though. (Jared Harris and Stephen Fry were my favorite parts of the movie.)
The audience I saw it with seemed to have a better time than I did, however–and it did get an “A” rating on Yahoo.
Positive WOM should sustain it through the holidays; even with all of the competition.
I thought Rapace’s English was excellent. Maybe you didn’t like the accent she was doing?
And DP: Because of what pr folks in the market told me. The theater I saw “M:I” at was playing the prologue but did not play it before “M:I.”
Wasn’t that her (natural) accent, Chris? I never got the sense that she was doing a character accent.
Chris… I assume you aren’t in LA, where the prologue and its placement was feted.
By no fault of their own, the regional PR people tend to be working on a very different wavelength than the actual studio people. This fact sucks for everyone.
I guess this gives credence to the rumors that the first Sherlock only did well because people couldn’t get into sold out Avatar screenings.
Geoff, I love that you call one of the greatest literary characters of all time and the material that involves him; “diverting/light source material.” This blog never fails to deliver the chuckles and that one is chuckle worthy, and Shirley is only two hours and nine minutes. How is that long?
She was doing an accent, movieman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgvXvYAYWBA
fwiw i understood krillian’s comment
(eta noomi is such a cutiepie. i haven’t seen ‘game of shadows’ tho, i don’t know if i can be bothered)
Color me impressed (and corrected), Chris.
I guess it was her character accent that I didn’t like, lol.
Most Nordic types seem to have an easier go of it speaking unaccented English than other Europeans.
Does anybody know why?
Was just about to ask the same thing, movieman. Even their accented English is usually perfectly understandable to Western ears.
JSP, I should have phrased that differently. Yes, Sherlock Holmes is one of the greatest literary characters of all time – it’s really not fair to lump him in with Hasbro toys or Disney rides, my mistake.
However with Guy Ritchie directing and Robert Downey Jr. starrring and the way it has been marketed, you would have thought they could maintain a light touch. The movie was still overlong and way too epic in its feel to be purely enjoyable. I find it hard to believe that you can’t pull off a fun mystery thriller that is worthy of the character in less than two hours time without all of the hullabaloo.
It was too epic to be purely enjoyable? This may be snarky but, it’s not like what Moriarty wanted to happen in this movie didn’t happen in real life. It happened and it indeed happened to be epic, and disliking a film for being somewhat true to those realities is a bit off to me.
Again though, it’s 2h and 9m. Did that 9 minutes really bother you? When did a 2h and 9m movie become overly long? Did you feel that way about the LOTR: EE? Seriously, that’s a puzzler.
None of these Sherlock Holmes movies need to be more than 100 minutes MAX. Any more than that and severe BLOAT sets in. Case in point – this film.
Nah, for a tentpole movie, 100 minutes seems low-rent. It’s not just Sherlock Holmes, but this argument comes up a lot for big-dick action movies, whether it’s Bond or Transformers or Iron Man or Batman, some asshole always opines, “There’s no reason for a popcorn movie like to be be 2.5 hours! There was no reason for it be longer than a tight 90 minutes!”
Frankly, that’s usually disingenuous bullshit and code for, “I wouldn’t have liked it at any length, but at least my precious time being a boring whitebread motherfucker NOT SITTING IN A MOVIE THEATER” would be extended. Pardon me, but Die Hard wasn’t 90 minutes. Thunderball and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service weren’t 90 minutes. Lethal Weapon wasn’t 90 minutes, James Cameron movies aren’t 90 minutes, etc etc etc. Like, people who complain about long running times, maybe DON’T GO TO THE MOVIE THEATER in the first place if your TIME IS AT SUCH A PREMIUM, O Doctor/President who’s ON CALL every second and could be out SAVING THE WORLD with that extra 30 minutes you’d save with a 90-minute Sherlock Holmes.
90-100m seems underwhelming when you’re paying 14-19 dollars for a movie ticket. But economics of that aside, a BIG MOVIE should be BIG. 90 minutes is for something like DUCK SOUP or a ’70s Woody Allen movie. Think of MEN IN BLACK or JURASSIC PARK 3 and how cheesy it seemed when those wrapped up in under 90 minutes. Movies of that scale and scope need to be LONG… They didn’t spend 200 mil to make a SHORT FILM.
what? what does being white have to do with the fact that when you’re bored in a movie 2 hours seems an eternity and if you’re grooving 2 hrs flies by
“Whitebread” doesn’t literally mean white. It means suburbanized, generic, mundane, having a family and kids and checking your cell phone the split second a movie ends (or during it), as if you’re in ANY WAY IMPORTANT.
IE, 99% of Americans.
And I’m not saying I expect anyone else but the hardest of hardcore fervent Cinemania-level movie theater geeks to go see everything and be OVERJOYED to sit thru a 2.5 hour BAD MOVIE (I like ANY AND ALL MOVIES and am just HAPPY TO BE IN A MOVIE THEATER), but if your time is at SUCH A PREMIUM that 30 minutes of extra Robert Downey MINCING is the deal-breaker, a) don’t go b) you wouldn’t have liked the movie at any length.
Sad that Young Adult died in its expansion. Maybe it’ll find an audience over the Xmas corridor? My audience was laughing throughout.
Yancy- Remember the (Danish?) chick from “High Fidelity” (whatever happened to her? with her flawless “English speak” she could have had a nice career in H’wood movies). Or the (also Danish?) dude who played the second lead on “The Killing”?
However they do it, my hat is off to them!
Btw, “Sherlock 9” runs 2 hours–not counting the interminable, fx-indebted end credits.
As tiresome as I found most of it (hence that, uh, mini snooz-et), it didn’t really feel aggressively long to me.
except nobody indicated their time was at a premium or that rdj fluffing around in extra time was the deal-breaker, they said they were bored. people can and do get bored in movies, it’s allowed.
One thing to keep in mind re: “YA”‘s $3-million-and-change opening weekend. It was on less than 1,000 screens, and it’s per-screen average was decent.
I still say it should have been released by a boutique label (hey, Para Vantage was still in business this fall to release “Like Crazy,” wasn’t it?), been platformed for more than a week (not as lengthy a platform interment as “The Descendants,” though: geez!) and opened at a different time of the year (spring might have been an optimum time).
But really.
It’s the type of film that has “cult” written over it. Why anyone thought it could/would ever be a “Juno”-scaled blockbuster is beyond me.
That guy on THE KILLING is awesome– he’s not only doing an American accent, but a full-on Eminem-style suburban-white-gangster faux-blaccent, and it’s flawless. When he showed up, I was like WHERE did they find this crazy asshole, thinking he grew up in Detroit as a Juggalo or something… turns out he’s some Danish/Scandinavian dude doing a SPOT-ON “Hey little man” put-on white-kid-acting-black voice that would shame 1992 Wahlberg.
Hey, I was plenty “bored at the movies” during A DANGEROUS METHOD any time Keira wasn’t showing the li’l top or getting treated like Sasha Grey, but I ain’t complaining that it should’ve been 65 MINUTES so it would be done faster. It’s a bad argument.
LexG – sorry, I call bullshit on that argument about being “whitebread” and not wanting to be in a theater in the first place. Complete bullshit!
Did you actually see the movie?? Did it have any real plot or story to it for the first hour?? The first act setup – basically figuring out what the hell Holmes was looking for and what Moriarity was planning to do almost took 90 minutes – too fucking long!
Comparing it to Lethal Weapon or Die Hard is ridiculous – with McTiernan and Donner helming those movies, they fucking flew faster than any ‘Holmes/Downey movie and you know it to be true! And this is coming from some one who digs Guy Ritchie.
Avatar was almost 3 hours long and that movie left me wanting more. Same with Inception. Some directors know how to pull this shit off and some don’t, plain and simple.
Spare me about the epic content – you didn’t need scene after scene of trees getting shredded and close-ups of missiles to convey that message – I get it, industrialization is coming and the Great War is coming…..Moriarity expresses that thought with 2 minutes of dialogue. You didn’t need of 30 plus minutes of action wankery to show it, too.
It’s called story construction and editing and this movie was purely lacking in that area. 2 hours and 9 minutes long? Wow, it felt much longer than that….
I didn’t see it.
nope, boredom in a movie like the Descendants is not allowed, one is not supposed to speak of such experiences. Heresy will not be tolerated!
But boredom in a movie like Sherlock Holmes is totally hip and cool and the louder you say you were bored by it the more one is praised for being brave
And another message to the LexG’s or JSP’s out there about length – take your favorite Tony Scott action epic and he’s done some good ones. Crimson Tide, Enemy of the State, Days of Thunder, Top Gun, whatever…..
Now add about 30 minutes of screentime of unnecessary characters riffing or poncing or whatever or uncessary slo mo shots with every action scene…or whatever bullshit can be thrown in. Just add 30 minutes of the most indulgent content you can think of…..
Better movie or worse movie?
And Movielock, it’s perfectly acceptable to be bored in an Alexander Payne movie, though it’s usually for different reasons. That said, I really enjoyed The Descendents.
Interesting overseas results…MI4 doing gangbusters all over the globe….SHERLOCK doing comparable biz to the first film in the few markets it was released….CHIPWRECKED way off from the last two films (what a horrible post-summer it has been for Fox)…and PUSS IN BOOTS making a killing while HAPPY FEET TWO flounders.
Geoff, but like movieman said, Holmes 2 is around 2 hours… it’s not like it’s MEET JOE BLACK (which is what you’re hypothetically describing, only in a drama, not a Scott adventure movie.)
The more DOWNEY MINCING, the better. Actually I know perfectly well what you guys are whinging about, because I’ve sat through four excruciating Pirates of the Caribbean movies and each time wondered why they needed to be that far over the 2-hour mark, the middle two almost hitting 3 hours. But I sure as hell wouldn’t say they needed to be a LEAN MEAN 91 MINUTES.
I am MERELY SAYING that people overrate this idea of efficiency, which all too often means they just want the movie to be over and done so they can go to Applebee’s with the kids. To which I say, just skip the movie in the first place if it’s such a temporal burden on one’s life.
It is totally based on them not liking the movies. It’s not based on the length of the film. How you folks can be bored with Shirley is beyond me but you know, I saw Avatar, and didn’t want anymore. So, you know, life.
LexG, I get your poin but I am not the average moviegoer – I actually went out of my way to see Lock, Stock….in theaters all of those years ago. I came into this movie thinking I would get a Guy Ritchie romp and I was pretty cool with that. No desire to go to Applebee’s afterwards, I can assure you…
Seriously, how many directors can TRULY pull off the big 2 hour plus action epic nowadays WITHOUT it feeling a bit bloated?? Cameron, Nolan, Scott, not many….
I kind of enjoyed Transformers 3, but you take out the Malkovich/Jeung/Witwicky’s parents scenes and trim out about 35 minutes, do you not have a better movie?
JS, there really is no middle ground on this, really???
Let’s go back about 12 years and see if you were NOT among the bloggers saying that Phantom Menace would have been better without the Jar Jar scenes – does that make you an automatic hater of Star Wars movies?
Great movies can turn to merely good or even mediocre with too much bloat, plain and simple. We have heard this discussion about The Dark Knight as well, but I’m not even going to go there with you….
129 minutes is not too long, it’s just that Game of Shadow’s midsection is poorly paced and too lumpy. I know I’m repeating myself, but considering that we’re told 100 times how brilliant Moriarty is and how this is the most important case Holmes has ever worked on, there should have been more showing the evil genius and less telling. Talk is cheap. Jared Harris is a great actor and I wanted more of him, more evidence to support that this guy is Sherlock’s equal. A movie like this is as good as its villain, and Moriarty in this movie is just another second-rate bad guy. He isn’t memorable. You don’t love to hate him. There are no hallmarks of a great movie villain. He’s forgettable, and that sinks the movie. As does the excessive slow-motion, which by the forest chase seems like self-parody.
Paul, I disagree with everything you write, but that’s life.
Geoff, not that kind of middle ground because I disagree with every point that you have made and instead of ripping into them, I am just stating that I disagree, and that’s it because you know, life.
Now, if you have problems with Jar Jar, then you have problems with Jar Jar. I personally like the stooge that brought about tyranny to the galaxy, but that’s me. You are a hater if you supported the fan edit because again, it had nothing to do with the movie, and everything to do with flipping off Lucas.
I wonder — seriously — how many of the posters here would be complaining about bloat, irrelevant scenes and overall excessive running time if, tomorrow, they saw Rio Bravo for the first time.
Are you comparing Rio Bravo with Sherlock Holmes 2?
I can’t — haven’t seen Game of Shadows yet. But I think there is something to the theory that contemporary audiences have increasingly diminished attention spans. Put it another way: I don’t think a first-generation 007 film like You Only Live Twice would play all that well with people whose first experience with James Bond was Pierce Brosnan.
Maybe so, but I don’t think many of the posters here have that problem. I am perfectly fine with slow movies and slow, long movies.
yes, this is s weird discussion, one that would appear to have no solution because it’s entirely subjective. maybe i’m just stating the obvious, but for me 129 mins IS too long IF i’m bored/not engaged (and thus 129 as ‘bloated’ is an apt description from my pov), but 129 is just fine if i’m feeling it — including slow, quiet moments/scenes, which do not necessarily translate to ‘boring’. it all depends, and the stickler is, until you sit down in the cinema and give yourself over to the movie, you never know, it’s the crap shoot of the cinema (one that is getting more and more expensive every day, for many going to the movies cost the gdp of a small country, perhaps increasing the ‘this better be worth it’ mind-set of today’s movie-goers)
It’s a valid discussion, but I’m gathering I got too hung up on the actual numbers – 2 hours and 9 minutes is NOT automatically too long for a mystery/thriller. But Sherlock 2 did feel way too bloated, I don’t care the running time.
And JS, I wasn’t implying that I was one of those who felt that chopping Jar Jar out of Episode One was an automatic fix; guess I was assuming you were. That movie did have pacing issues, but my point was that there was a middle ground…
Just because I’m saying that Sherlock was too long or bloated does NOT mean that I was automatically dismissing the movie outright or that I was eager to get to Applebee’s right after the credits rolled. Basically, you and LexG have been making this a black-and-white discussion that any complaints about length are just from people who are being “haters” or have low attention spans.
A lot of these movies are just too freaking long and I’m sure lot of it comes from egos and nothing to do with artistic integrity. I’m even a huge fan of Judd Apatow and I think a lot of us can agree the guy doesn’t know how to cut his movies down to a more agreeable size.
Of course, it’s subjective and there is no obvious solution. However, I do feel like there has been one factor in recent years that has definitely contributed to it: home theater, DVD, the idea that a “perfect” cut of the movie can still be saved eventually for the home viewer. Of course, these are usually longer cuts but it does to absolve a lot of directors from making the tighest, most perfect version of their film possible before it hits theaters. Even with the best like Ridley Scott, as we have seen. I’m telling you, you read read interviews about Prometheus and it’s super-obvious that the dude is already hedging on the theatrical release.
How does this allow for overlong movies to hit theaters? Just a presumption, but I’m gathering that the waters are REALLY muddied – Apatow can probably cut out 30 minutes of any comedy he’s working on, saving them as clips for the DVD, and just assume he’s got it paired down enough….even if the result is still a 2 hour comedy!
Just making assumptions here, putting this out there, not an expert by any means….thoughts?
Hmmmm, Joe.
The 2006 “Casino Royale” ran 144 minutes; 1967’s “You Only Live Twice,” 116.
(Movie) length has always been completely relative to me.
Some of my all-time favorites have been marathon sits like “Berlin Alexanderplatz,” “1900,” “Satantango” and (most recently) “Mysteries of Lisbon” among others.
Many of my least favorite (recent) movies were well under two hours:
“Priest,” “Mars Needs Moms,” “A Serbian Film,” “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold,” “Love, Wedding, Marriage,” “Atlas Shrugged: Part 1,” etc., etc.
a lot of comic book movies are usually 2 hours long
2012 was way too long like 2.5 hours .
try watching youtube clips for 30 minutes then try watching any movie – its kinda hard cause people are so used to clicking on things . mostly the play and pause button….can’t pause movies at theatres .
Geoff, if you dislike the film, then you are more prone to find it’s faults. This is the same argument we always have around here, where people feel like they can hate something, and yet share with us objective criticism. I disagree and that’s why when you or anyone brings up a film’s length as a negative, that’s screams you didn’t like it.
Seriously, I love both Holmes movie, they are perfect to me in damn near every way (Yeah, Noomi should have had more of a role but her being in a big tentpole picture is tremendous), and changing the length messes with the flow of films that I love. Subjective? Sure, but that’s life. You know?
ALSO why isn’t Woody Harrelson a shoe-in for an acting nomination for Rampart? Does anyone actually watch these screeners? What a great performance. Clooney Pitt blabla, the usual myopic choices. Everyone got the Rampart screener right? Instead of 95% of the useless screeners we all get (Carnage, Ides of March, every freaking cartoon MADE THIS YEAR), why don’t we concentrate on some GOOD performances?
That unintelligible comment on the Descendents by Krillian still has not been explained. Even if “Leahnzhatesmovies” “understood it”.
And how many more commentors here will misunderstand Lex’s
Statements?
Just a few weeks ago, I screened North By Northwest (136 minutes) for a class — and some students complained that it moved too slowly. Same thing has happened — not often, but sporadically — when I have screened Rio Bravo (141 minutes). But, oddly enough, I’ve never heard a single complaint about either All the President’s Men (138 minutes) or Rosemary’s Baby (136 minutes).
Movielocke – the reason being bored during Descendents won’t be tolerated is that it wasn’t boring. It was a very good film. Simple. Unlike Sherlock Holmes which was trite, way too long and simply bad.
geoff, just to be clear my post above @4:25 wasn’t directed at you at all, just a general observation/thoughts after catching up on the thread and trying to wrap my head around it
(fwiw i agree about all the different cuts of movies and the impact of the home theatre market/’dvd cut’ on film-making, i find it frustrating and lazy. tell the cleanest, most propulsive story possible – with effects that serve the story and not the other way around – and let it stand. i sometimes like ‘director’s cuts’ and have mixed feeling about them, but i think the concept of the ‘director’s cut’ has somewhat corrupted how films are made; for instance i’ve witnessed first-hand during production shots/scenes being filmed with no intention of including them in the completed theatrical cut, but rather SPECIFICALLY shot for inclusion as a dvd extra/added footage for a ‘director’s cut’. this kinda reeks if you ask me, has implications)
“That unintelligible comment on the Descendents by Krillian still has not been explained. Even if “Leahnzhatesmovies” “understood it”.
wait, i’m leahnzhatesmovies? do tell, OSCARFAN, how i hate movies (and how one can’t comprehend what krillian was getting at is beyond me, oscarmeyer)
Arisp, they apparently want a silent movie to win Best Picture. Seriously, I do doubt these people watch these movies, but here’s hoping Lisbeth Salander pulls a knife on The Artist this week. It needs to happen for no other reason than to prove AL JOLSON HAD A POINT!
Lex, I kind of agree with you about fetishizing the 90 minute running time, and I love a nice crisp tightly paced movie if it works. But yeah, cutting (say) Cowboys & Aliens down to 90 minutes isn’t going to improve it any more than adding back 15 minutes for the Blu-Ray extended version helped it (which is to say, it addresses some problems but can’t fix some more basic lack of inspiration with the movie). I bristle with the Apatow complaints, too. Comedies don’t have to be 90 minutes. If a movie is funny, I don’t much care that it runs 10 or 15 or even (gasp) 30 minutes longer than, say, Alvin and the Chipmunks. Knocked Up was pretty much fine at two hours. Bridesmaids was fine at two hours. Funny People was fine at over two. Pacing isn’t just moving stuff along as fast as possible — I really like the way Apatow and some of his collaborators take their time both for comedy (letting scenes develop with improv) and character (including scenes that serve character even if they aren’t actually plot-necessary). Why treat comedy as if it has these iron-clad rules about being short, especially when Apatow isn’t really making nonstop laughers that are just trying to distract you from life and get out? 80-minutes-and-out works for 30 Minutes or Less, works for The Sitter (totally underrated movie already), but you know, it takes all running times.
THAT SAID: the movie this year I felt I really would’ve felt differently based on running time was The Artist. I liked it fine at 90something minutes. But at 70, I think I would’ve found it a nonstop delight, instead of a delight that sort of peters out for awhile before a nice finish. The story this movie tells just didn’t fill even 90 minutes for me.
@movieman:
I know I’m late to the discussion, but you asked why certain non-Anglophone Europeans are better at affecting an authentic American accent than others. Lex was also wondering about some Danish dude.
In my experience, the Europeans who speak accent-free and fluent English usually grew up watching English-language content on TV and in the cinema with subtitles (e.g., the Dutch and the Swedish — I’m guessing the Danish, too), so they developed an ear for the language early on. Germany, on the other hand, has an entire industry devoted to dubbing English-language content in German without subtitles (and, correct me someone if I’m wrong, this may be the case with France, too). Germans tend to speak English with German accents, even if they’re completely fluent, unless they’ve actually spent some time in the States.
I think this really limits the roles German actors are offered when they hit it big — see Juergen Prochnow, Franka Potente, Thomas Kretschmann, and Til Schweiger (his appearance in NEW YEAR’S EVE notwithstanding). Schweiger in particular has been screwed by his accent — he’s been a huge star in Germany for 20 years, and has the chops to be Rutger-Hauer-level huge — but Rutger’s Dutch, and no one’s bothered by his vaguely internationally-accented English.
The Artist: The story this movie tells just didn’t fill even NINE minutes for me.
Fair enough, arisp. I found the shtick and cuteness and pathos quite appealing for a chunk of the running time… but no, a cute 95-minute movie that should’ve been 80 minutes tops doesn’t scream Best Picture to me.
Well, if we’re going to talk about actors limited by their mastery of English — I sometimes wonder how much more the great Daniel Auteuil might have done by now if he’d taken a Berlitz course or two.
Length in and of itself obviously means nothing. As many others have said, if you respond to the content, length isn’t an issue.
I agree with jesse about Apatow’s films — improv material that isn’t essential to the story is often kept in because it’s funny or reveals character. This pushes the running time over the “ideal” 90 minutes for comedy — but if I’m laughing (or even just amused), I don’t care. And of course if you’re NOT laughing, you DO care. But it’s the material, not the length. Presumably, if that extra length consisted of material you thought was good, you’d have no complaint.
TRANSFORMERS 2 was 2 1/2 hours long. Despite nearly non-stop cutting, camera movement and action, it felt like watching paint dry because it never pulled me into the story. Way more boring, to me, than something like HEREAFTER, which many found deadly dull at 129 minutes. But since it held my interest throughout, I didn’t find it overlong.
RIO BRAVO is full of narrative digressions (including songs), but the characters and writing are so great I never check my watch. You could go through and trim out “extraneous” scenes and make a lean and mean western machine out of it, but it wouldn’t be RIO BRAVO. And I bet it would be admired, but not loved.
Tintin is open? And has been for two weeks? Where is it playing? I live in NYC and it’s nowhere to be found. Where are these 148 screens?
I don’t think anybody else said this above so forgive me if they have, but isn’t there an Ebert quote that is like, “good movies are always too short, and bad ones are always too long”? THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY, CASINO, and JFK, some of my favorite films, fly by at over three hours, while I’ve seen eighty minute movies that are a true endurance test. I also really doubt that the cultural attention span is bringing some kind of new movement towards shorter running times, considering that the best-liked big, pop movies of the last decade like THE DARK KNIGHT, AVATAR, HARRY POTTER, or THE LORD OF THE RINGS are all over 2.5 hours.
tophertilson…Tintin opened in Québec on the 9th. The distributors figured that North America’s only mainly Francophone market would know the original material better than the rest of the continent, so they opened it here.
There’s something to be said for immersing yourself in a long, deliberately paced movie.
It’s like discovering a new country and getting the full lay of the land.
You can’t get that kind of pleasure from a short-ish film.
One of my happiest moviegoing experiences was surrendering to 3 hours-plus of Rivette’s “Celine and Julie Go Boating.” The fact that I braved my way to the theater in the middle of a New York City snowstorm just made it all the more delicious. When I stepped back out into the winter wonderland of the Upper West Side I was practically floating on air. I could have flown back to my NYU dorm room, no subway necessary.
Ah! Thanks, Bill The Bear.
The Ebert quote says it all, for sure. However, I still don’t see how there is enough entertaining content to make up a 2.5 hour Transformer movie.
Oh and the problem with the Apatow movies up until Funny People is that they DID feel a little choppy with their editing – as if Apatow left some good improv stuff in there, but it didn’t really flow.
I remember there was one scene in 40 Year Old Virgin (which I still love) where Carrell does the great bit with his friend’s girlfriend about a note he wrote from the Date-a-palooza – hysterical stuff, ends with “bitch’s running wild,” then the very next scene the friend isn’t even angry at him and telling him to hit on a woman at a store.
If it matters, the quote is “No bad movie is too long and no good movie is too short”. It’s generally attributed to Ebert and he uses it from time to time, but I swear I remember reading that he was quoting Gene Siskel the first time I heard him say it. No matter, it’s generally true although I would argue that certain good movies could have been great with a token amount of trimming (Green Mile comes to mind), while some bad movies were possibly hurt by being too short (compare the two cuts of Daredevil). I do love Siskel’s line where he used to ask “Is this film more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?”
“compare the two cuts of Daredevil”
no thanks.
Scott: That doesn’t really track. I think the quote is “No good movie is too long, and no bad movie is too short.”
A two hour movie is “too long” if it’s a boring piece of shit. The Social Network is two hours long, with no train explosions, no super slo-mo of people running through a weird forest as bullets fly by them and exploding the trees, no four-against-one would be king-fu in a back alley or any of that other crap, but is vastly more entertaining than Sherlock 2: Victorian Boogaloo.
Yeah… no, it’s a lesser Fincher work, but always good to know it has fans. I do wonder after you see The Girl with all it’s ACTION and what not, if you will make the same snarky comments? Questions questions questions.
Chris, seriously, the director’s cut is a considerably better movie.
Sherlock Holmes 2 was pretty terrific, didn’t feel overlong at all, although I liked the first half better than the 2nd (loses some momentum during that dark, gloomy munitions factory interrogation before rallying with that EXPLODING FOREST slo-mo setpiece.)
Also THE SITTER is so minor, but a pleasant surprise and people are WAY too harsh on DGG for indulging his obvious and relatable affection for late 80s action/comedies AND early 90s hip-hop. It was a fun movie, and that surreal stuff with Rockwell at his gay gym is sort of inspired… And again, glad to see EARLY ’90S NOSTALGIA hitting in a big way, even though I’ve been clamoring for it for five years, so I feel kind of left out that someone else is making all these 4 Non Blondes and Biz Markie and Color Me Badd jokes in movies.
Ah crud… Yes, I got the damn quote backwards. Too busy obsessing on the whole ‘lunch with actors’ thing. Apologies and thanks for the correction.
Saw both Sherlock Holmes and Mission Impossible this past weekend, and agree that MI4 was an amazing action film. Sherlock was fun too but did drag some. The argument that a Sherlock Holmes should have more action and less dialogue probably hasn’t read Sherlock Holmes.
Lex, agree on THE SITTER. I love David Gordon Green’s indies, but his comedies are worthwhile, too, and even though The Sitter isn’t laugh-out-loud hilarious, it is pretty amusing and a lot of the weird details make it pretty fun. But then, I dug Your Highness, too.
I liked Sherlock Holmes 2 just fine and my problems with it really had nothing to do with length. Just how they dealt with parts of the beginning and the end. They really did do a good job of translating the Holmes intellect into an action movie and when it gets to that point with Moriarty, it’s amazing. Ridiculous, but amazing. Still doesn’t beat out Zero Effect as my favorite movie adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, though. “Would I have to GO THERE?!”
Thinking of buying an HP TouchPad 32 GB. Anyone out there with horror stories or favorable reports?
Joe – just search video reviews on youtube for hp / acer / ipad – playbook tablets .. then try to find the best price .
+ you can maybe save money by getting 16 GB version ..
if they all do the same thing – then get one with a nice screen for all those videos – i don’t have any of these.
Er… Joe, how? HP Touchpad was discontinued and are only available 2nd hand or on the occasional HP firesale when they get enough unsold stock together (it’s unlikely there will be any more firesales, the last one was about 2 weeks ago for refurbished ones that had been returned for servicing).
Basically they’re “worth” $150, and they’re worth that little because HP doesn’t provide support for them. If you’re a geek aficionado who wants to tinker around with the inner workings, then go for it. Otherwise get another touchpad that’s going to be provided with official OS and hardware support.
Evidently, Amazon.com got hold of a truckloasd or something through one of its partner dealers…
http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-TouchPad-Wi-Fi-32GB-Refurbished-FB359UAR-ABA-/170746761866?pt=US_Tablets&hash=item27c14cd28a
That was the last of the “official” stock. If you want to buy one from Amazon, go ahead, but be aware that HP have discontinued it and there wont be any upgrades and only limited support.
Actually, ZERO EFFECT was a knock-off of Nero Wolfe; Pullman played the housebound sleuth (Nero = Zero) and Stiller played the legman (Archie in the original, Arlo here).