Weekend Estimates by Dud Fireworks Klady
I am so irritated by being put in a position to defend Transformers 4’s box office. But here I am. Facts…
1. Tr4 is the first of the series to open on a Friday, making comparisons of previous Transformers openings Friday-to-Friday and 1st weekend vs 2nd weekend all but meaningless. Am I saying that Paramount is thrilled? No. But let’s be fair, not pile-on asses, burning down films we don’t like with bad stats (while invariably overstating indies we love with outsized exclusive releases).
2. July 4 is not a strong day at the box office. Historically, it is the December of summer, without the massive opening weekends, but with longer legs and some stronger weekdays.
3. Of all the July 4 Weekends bigger than Transformers 4, there are only two that were in the market for at least a week (7 days) on or before July 4. One was Transformers 2, which did $10.7m on July 4 (day 11, a Saturday) and Superman Returns, which did $10.5m (day 7, a Tuesday).
4. X-Men: DoFP, Godzilla, and Fault all had bigger second weekend domestic drops than Transformers 4 did this weekend… with release dates that didn’t include an “off” day like July 4 as one of the three 2nd weekend days.
5. Tr4 has the smallest domestic gross at the end of its second weekend of the series. Yes.
6. Tr4 is on pace to be the #1 movie of the year (at least through summer) domestically and internationally, it is already the #5 film of the year with $575 million. More to the point, after 2 weekends, it is at the aforementioned $575 million ww, while the other big summer movies were at $500m (X-Men), $366m (Cap 2), $336m (Mal), and $279m (ASM2) after two weekends of worldwide and domestic.
In other words, don’t cry for Bay, Hollywoodland.
And stop smirking like “you” beat him. Financially, he’s beat the crap out of us all again, even if he doesn’t hit $300m domestic.
I still feel that if Michael Bay directs Transformers 5, he will destroy whatever legacy he has… except as a CG schlockmeister. Some think he is that anyway and will never escape this in their eyes. I disagree. I think he is a singular, compelling talent… who has made some real shitty movies. But this is another conversation from another day.
Tammy landed right between two output deals, The Nut Job and RoboCop, amongst 2014 opening weekends. (RoboCop is a little more complicated, yes… but still, in essence, Sony distributing MGM.) It’s also, by a good margin, the worst launch for “a Melissa McCarthy movie” since people knew her name.
It’s been fascinating to watch the whiplash created by a film that is, apparently, more complex than most broad comedies, but still being sold exclusively as “fat, stupid, drunk idiot runs amuck.” People love Ms. McCarthy – and with good reason – and don’t want to see her or her career suffer. I get it. I kinda fall in line with it. But this was her free kick, like it or not, and she blew it. Now it’s back to being the scene-stealing sidekick for 5 years or so until she gets another shot. Or until she comes up with a great script for an indie that will get her raves at Sundance. And before anyone throws out the bait, this is not about her being a funny woman or being heavy. This is the way business always works, male or female, fat or thin. If this was a big hit, she would have 3 shots to fail afterwards before being sent back to the ($8 million a film) minors.
The scariest thing about Deliver Us From Evil – besides Screen Gems poaching the title of a great, Oscar-nominated documentary for a crap horror film – is that Jerry Bruckheimer’s name is on it. Has he made a film this “small” since Defiance in 1980? Anyway… the standard for a successful opening of a horror film is $20 million. Half of that this weekend. Happy holidays!
Earth To Echo… is it a floor wax or is it a desert topping? (Most of you over 40 should get that joke.) Why did an ET rip-off try so hard to look like a Wall-E rip-off? I don’t know. Not a good start. But don’t be shocked if you see some pretty good legs on this one in a very thin market for films for the under-10 set.
LionSummitsGate apparently is in need of cash, so it took on America, Dinesh D’Souza‘s second opus on fearing the black man. His first piece of trash, 2016: Obama’s America generated $33.5 million in hate-dollars for Rocky Mountain Pictures. So it’s back with a grown-up distributor trying to rape and pillage fear. $2.6 million is less than half of what the much more clearly racist first film opened to back in 2012…. though I LOVE watching Drudge try to spin it as a big explosive hit because it went from $39k on 3 screens to $2.6m on 1105 screens. UP ALMOST 7000%!!! Idjuts.
Let me be clear… I have no problem with right-leaning filmmaking or filmmakers. I have defended films considered to lean too far right (the one that jumps to mind is We Were Soldiers, but there are more recent ones) that don’t exist just to stir up shit. I have a problem with fact-disregarding hatemongers on either side of the aisle… always… period. And I was not a fan of Fahrenheit 9/11 for the same reason… and still feel it contributed to Bush having a second term as president. I embrace the ideas behind F9/11 a lot more than D’Souza’s junk, but I feel that righties deserve honest opposition the same as lefties. Anyway…
Funny to see 2 Weinstein Company films next to one another on the chart. Begin Again has all the classic audience draw stuff for an indie (actors, pedigree, irony-laden feel-good romance) but Snowpiercer is still right there nipping at its heels. One wonders whether either film will get the audience they might have with more aggressive releases.
I should point out, once again, that I was wrong about the box office upside of X-Men:Days of Future Past. Not domestically, of course, but internationally. Give credit to the new marketing chiefs at Fox, who built the studio into an international powerhouse. Look at the percentage of total gross coming from international for the series and it is quite telling. In order of the release of each film, starting in 2000… 46.9%, 47.3%, 49%, 51.8%, 58.6%, 68%, and 68.7% for DoFP. You can see the leap between Origins: Wolverine in 2009 (51.8%) and First Class in 2011 (58.6%). But then the big leap again to 2013’s The Wolverine.
I should also point out, again, that $750m worldwide is at the bottom of positive hopes for this film. It’s ahead of another weak sister whose success against expectations of failures caused it to be overhyped as a commercial smash, Man of Steel (which performed better than X:DoFP domestically, and teasing WB with hope to really break through internationally by adding Batman this next time). Don’t misread me… this film will be profitable. But it’s still small change in the Marvel universe.
On the indie side, no fireworks, but a nice launch for Life Itself, a good expansion for Third Person and the inferior Saint Laurent movie, Yves Saint Laurent, and good hold for Words & Pictures. Adults do go to the movies. But they take a while to settle in and they don’t make for wildly flashy numbers. But there is a market and it is being serviced pretty well this summer.
Looks like Warners might need a re-release (or Paramount style numbers fudging) to get Godzilla to squeak past $200 million.
One reason WOLVERINE had such a big international jump is that it was set in Japan with a mostly Asian cast. How much of that bump came from the Far East?
I knew McCarthy’s one-note schtick was gonna hit the wall eventually, but didn’t think it would be this soon. Fortunately, she still has her TV series, and plenty of time to think about moving back toward her more “Gilmore Girls”-type characters. Her career is far from over, but it’s time to give the fat-stupid-asshole bit a nice, long nap.
A modest proposal: When studios attempt to hype int’l b.o. numbers in an attempt to get bragging rights in the weekly worldwide dick-measuring contest that now constitutes industry boxoffice reporting, publications should automatically cut the China number in half to reflect the fact that the Chinese only pay, at best, 25% film rentals, as opposed to the customary 50%+ for the rest of the world. A much better way to do head-to-head comparisons and analyze profitability, which is the only stat that actually matters.
Also, has anyone ever done an analysis on how much it actually costs to market a Hollywood film in a territory the size of China? Even if an outlier like T:4 breaks Avatar’s record and winds up with, say, $300M from China, that equals an extra $75M to the studio minus how much for marketing? $25M? $30M? An extra $40-50M in actual realized money to the coffers is nothing to sneeze at, to be sure, but, in the case of movies whose budgets exceed $200M+, isn’t necessarily the Holy Grail that makes all the compromises in content and quality that come with focusing so much on China worth outweighing everything else.
Godzilla begins subrun July 18 should be enough to get
it to 200 by itself
There’s no way F 9/11 had any significant effect on the 2004 reelection of Bush. Not enough people saw that movie to make a dent at all.
People were too busy trying to figure out what happened to Bobby Shmurda’s hat to go to the movies this weekend.
Hold up: a $22 million opening weekend for a relatively small-scale and oddball (to its detriment in the sense that it doesn’t have a strong sense of what it’s going for) sold EXCLUSIVELY on Melissa McCarthy sends her back to “sidekick” roles? Not so sure about that. Even with a big drop, this movie is winding up with, what, $60 million or so? Could go a little higher? What would a movie like this do with almost any other star? It would probably look a lot like Girl Most Likely: a quiet flop.
I didn’t care much for the film; actually, it plays a lot like an indie version of Identity Thief in terms of how McCarthy’s abilities are supposed to rescue the muddled conception of her character (not so with The Heat, which used her perfectly). More on that here: http://bit.ly/1xmPimW
But DP, I feel like you’ve often used the argument (correctly) that a movie star is supposed to get people out opening weekend, and after that, it’s up to the movie.
Is $22 million ($32 million over the long weekend) really so bad as a sampling? Considering Identity Thief came out with a MUCH stronger buddy-ish hook (even though the idea that it wasn’t “McCarthy solo” is pretty silly — does Bateman add THAT much box office value??) in a lower-competition slot, and The Heat also had Bullock? I can’t imagine this is a major bump in the road for her, any more than Kevin Hart’s post Ride Along movies “only” doing in the $50-60 million range hurts him, any more than Will Ferrell’s Casa de Mi Padre being tiny and weird hurts him, any more than any number of OK-not-great plays hurt other careers.
I’ll second the idea that the Tammy opening is far from a flop. The movie cost $20M and is at $32M after five days. It’s doing great.
Her work does great on video. On his podcast, Craig Mazin even claimed the video numbers on Identity Thief outstripped those of Hangover 2 and 3. The thing’s going to make plenty of money.
Yeah, even if we’re to accept the assumption that Tammy is a box office failure (marketing was pretty aggressive, so maybe), it seems pretty silly to say it’s the end of McCarthy’s run as a star when her two previous lead roles were huge hits. And even if we’re to give most of the credit for The Heat to Bullock, McCarthy still gets pretty much all of the credit for Identity Thief’s success, unless someone plans on seriously claiming that people went to see it for Bateman.
I rented it for Bateman.
Since I haven’t had cable since ’05, I had no idea who McCarthy was and perhaps that’s why I hated her character so much and the direction the movie went–make the criminal sympathetic and the victim an asshole–so I shut it off halfway through.
If the crime had been rape instead of identity theft, do you think that whole bashing-the-victim strategy would’ve still worked?
Yes, I hated the movie that much.
“Now it’s back to being the scene-stealing sidekick for 5 years or so until she gets another shot”
She won’t have to wait 5 years. She’ll be getting another shot next year when she stars in Paul Feig’s Spy.
Only because principal photography has already wrapped.
Might want to read up on women in Hollywood–actresses don’t get as many chances to fail as actors, so if SPY fails McCarthy will be lucky to get TV work…though maybe she could appear on “Dancing With The Stars”.
My point is she won’t have to wait 5 years to get another leading role. We’ll see how Spy goes.
“McCarthy will be lucky to get TV work”
You might want to read up about McCarthy. She’s already on a network sitcom. Not a particularly good one, but it is watched by about 9 million people each week and is going into its fifth season.
$300 million in China is massive no matter how you slice it, and it’ll probably wind up with at least $325 million. Amazing, considering that the current record for any movie in a single foreign territory is FROZEN’s $235 million haul in Japan. How bizarre would it be if TRANS4MERS’ China gross tops any gross in the states this summer? $1 billion worldwide is well within reach.
Speaking of Japan, great start for MALEFICENT. The way the market plays now, $700 million worldwide looks pretty likely. The only live-action Disney movies to break that threshold (excluding Marvel) are the PIRATES sequels, the first NARNIA and ALICE IN WONDERLAND. Also, it looks like it could be the #3 grosser “”top-lined by a woman”” behind the last TWILIGHT and the second HUNGER GAMES…and I think no one would argue with the idea that Jolie was muuuch more of a draw factor than K-Stew or J-Law.
McCarthy is a star, plain and simple.
EtGuild2 — Your breathless cheerleading sort of proves my point. International gross numbers are meaningless if they’re inflated by China figures without taking into consideration the greatly reduced rentals received by the studios from China. In terms of tangible bottom-line, FROZEN’s $235M Japan haul is worth at least 44% more to Disney than TRANSFORMER 4’s $325M China haul will be to Paramount. And I’d also venture to wager that marketing to a country of 1.3 billion people costs a shitload more than marketing to a country of 130 million, which also effects the bottom line. The boom in Chinese box office for Hollywood films is a lot better for the state-run Chinese middlemen than it actually is for Hollywood.
Re: TAMMY — McCarthy’s so-called “bomb” cost a hell of a lot less and is going to make a hell of a lot more than, say, “Cable Guy” and “Little Nicky,” which certainly didn’t tank Carrey or Sandler’s careers at similar points in their star trajectory.
Wow, Sam, it’s almost as if identity theft isn’t as serious a crime as rape.
@film fanatic, FROZEN is a once in a generation event that broke a 13 year old record. “Transformers 4” will generate more money for Paramount than any single territory has for any studio since AVATAR other than Britain’s 2012 SKYFALL haul, and FROZEN’s Japan performance. $325 million is such a high number, regardless if you slice it in half, that I can’t imagine anyone was expecting a number this high. It’s going to blow past the China AVATAR record by 9 figures and will double IRON MAN 3, which also shamelessly pandered to the territory.
Also film fanatic, the vast majority of Chinese cinemas that play Hollywood movies are limited to fewer than 10 cities–Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Tianjin, etc. So in reality, you’re only marketing to 100 million people. Xinhua News Agency and national channels aside, most Chinese citizens still don’t have a television, and most don’t live within 100 clicks of a theater.
All the examples thrown out are still men. Any examples of women who stumbled and survived?
Keep in mind the two handicaps actresses face: sexism (worse now than ever before since their last safe haven–rom coms–has been supplanted, thanks to Apatow & Co., by dick flicks), and ageism (how many leading men were kicked to the curb when they turned 40?). I can’t begin to list all the popular actresses playing leads who were stricken by middle age and condemned to wacky aunts, then killjoy moms, then nothing at all.
And if we’re talking about crimes that destroy lives, are you really willing to argue that having your life financially destroyed for years on end isn’t just as bad, if not worse? After all, getting raped doesn’t prevent you from buying a house.
I had to file for bankruptcy, and based on all the shit I’ve had to deal with in the years before and after, I’d rather have been raped.
So Sam, for the sake of argument I’ll assume you’re a man, and lets say you have a daughter that just turned 18. She has her bank account, a job, establishing her own credit history. Are you saying you’d prefer to get the call that she was raped as opposed to someone stealing her identity?
cadavra says:
July 6, 2014 at 3:25 pm
“One reason WOLVERINE had such a big international jump is that it was set in Japan with a mostly Asian cast. How much of that bump came from the Far East?”
The bump was largely due to $40 million coming from China, where the previous X-Men films apparently were not released. But the Japan setting probably had little to do with any bump. Japan itself is relatively indifferent to the X-Men franchise, and South Korea and China are not greatly enamored with their neighbor these days.
Some identity theft involves utter destruction of credit and inability to buy a house. Some identity theft involves mere (albeit terrible) inconvenience.
All rape involves someone getting raped.
So yeah, I’d say the second one is worse.
Personally, I’d have preferred the rape. I can’t make that decision for others, but I’d sure be a much happier person if I’d been raped instead.
Plus, it’d give me the opportunity to kill someone with my bare hands without consequence.
Or little consequence; the law tends to go easy on revenge killings. On a totally unrelated note, I had a PS2 stolen from my locked car nearly 14 years ago and I still keep fantasizing about kidnapping the person responsible and slowly cutting off his fingers, and then his toes, and then his limbs, and burying the rest of him alive. The only thing that kept me from doing it is not knowing who, precisely, had done it.
But I had a short list.
Needless to say, IDENTITY THIEF would’ve been a much shorter movie if I’d been in Bateman’s shoes.
You still didn’t answer my question Sam. What if you had a daughter? Still prefer rape to the identity theft?
With current technology we shouldn’t have to worry about the possibility of such a scenario, which may be why I’m writing a novel where trillions of robotic insects are deployed to watch over humanity and instantly punish anyone who steps out of line©.
The hive mind behind the insects is actually the good, err, girl in the story; as the Republicans have repeatedly told us, anyone who is bothered by surveillance must have something to hide.
What’s the name of your novel, Minority Rapeport?
“Utopia”, actually.
It’s ironic; the protagonist, trying to cross a decaying U.S., searches one “perfect” community after another for a MacGuffin only to see each one torn apart by his presence: road warriors outside Kingman, a technological wonderland in Kansas City, a vampire enclave in Chicago, Miskatonic U., the radioactive ruins of Atlantis, and finally an Amazonian valley occupied by talking jaguars.
He and his companions travel in a blimp, for a while, until Leviathan destroys it. Bastard.
This guy, SamLowry, ban him.
It’ll give me more free time.
Sam: “Man, this discussion isn’t nearly derailed enough.”
David, I am at a loss for how you can draw the line on Michael Bay so precisely. Four Transformers movies, and he’s got a legacy as a talented guy. Five, and he’s a CG schlockmeister. It’s an odd delineation with (as near as I can tell) no real precedent to call one way or the other.
As you say, many people already think of him as a schlockmeister (full disclosure: I do — and did even before the first Transformers movie), which should demonstrate that the line is already a lot blurrier than the sharp one you’d draw right between Transformers 4 and 5.
There is just so much goodwill from T1, which was such a perfect for its subject material entry. It hit all the right notes.
They may have seen Pirates 4 and thought that going with a different Director is no guarantee that you will creatively rescue your franchise so stick with what works to bring in the dollars.
You know who I would have loved to see direct T4? Tony Scott. Give him that $165m budget and a more grown up sensibility and likeable star in Wahlberg and lets see what he would’ve come up with. He might have even got Denzel to cameo.
I’ve been reading this blog for eight years and I mean this without hyperbole – this comparison of identity theft to rape is the most tone deaf thing I’ve read here to date, which in my opinion is saying a lot. It is an abominable point of view. And Lowry’s replies seem willfully ignorant to boot.
My identity has been stolen several times and each time I’ve been able to shrug it off thanks to the resilience of my creditors. Rape is the worst, most unjustifiable of all crimes and the psychological effects can last a lifetime. There is no comparison.
Really hope Paramount brings a man back from the dead to direct the Hungry Hungry Hippos adaptation.
i think melissa mcarthy will be fine after ‘tammy’ because she has all the freakin’ amazeballs (i haven’t seen it yet but i will, i could care less what ‘critics’ think, i’ll watch her in anything because i love her, LOVE HER – i want to be her friend and hang around her shininess and laugh and drink beer, hopefully she’d hug me and tell jokes and swear at me and make me wash my hair and pick me up off the floor when i’m down; she has that thing i think many great comic performers have and that’s the ability to play beyond vanity into uncomfortable, sometimes downright cringe-worthy human places with a relatable vulnerability under the surface; i think for some people this is not acceptable territory for a woman and plays into engrained societal double-standards, but who gives a shit, mccarthy clearly doesn’t. i hope she rocks on doing whatever the hell she feels like. i may not love all her movies but she’s all kinds of special, and has some interesting-sounding roles coming up so i’m stoked to see what she does. when i hear people say she’s the same in every movie i don’t get it, makes me wonder if they’ve actually watched the movies – for instance there may be some superficial similarities in her characters in ‘identity thief’ and ‘the heat’, but her rather schizoid clownish orphan in ‘I T’ and hard-nosed love-em-and-leave-em cop mullens in ‘Heat’ are very different roles, which are different again from her clueless whacky perv megan in ‘bridesmaids’ etc; i think she has the ability to pull off many different aspects of character, so hopefully that’s how she’ll carry on.)
SamLowry, here’s hoping you never have to face the destructive, perhaps devastating effects of a sexual assault or serious identity theft, apples and oranges really in terms of victimisation – seriously comparing a physical violation of your body to a violation of your privacy/financial security is the type of tone-deaf thing someone who may have an inkling of what it’s like to have something stolen from them but is clueless about the effects of a sexual assault might say.
Yes, Melissa McCarthy is a star. But, then again, so was Jan-Michael Vincent — for a while. It remains to be seen whether McCarthy will have a longer run at the top.
Incidentally: McCarthy is 43. John Candy was 43 when he died. I hope McCarthy is taking better care of herself.
I think of that whenever I see an ad for Mike & Molly – those two have to stay overweight to have their jobs. Sad to me, seems dangerous, but what can you do, I’d do the same thing if I were them.
I’m probably beating this McCarthy thing stone dead, but Joe, doesn’t that seem like kind of a crazy comparison in a world where there aren’t a lot of dependably bankable movie stars?
This actually made me curious about star-driven movies so I’m looking at a list of movies that have made or will make over $50 million so far in 2014 where the star seems like more than a value-added proposition (e.g., one of the major reasons the movie hit, rather than responsible for a little extra oomph).
I see:
–Maleficent (which is a little arguable because the Disney live-action fairy tale brand seems strong, but it was marketed heavily on Jolie)
–22 Jump Street + Neighbors (22 was sold on the first movie, yes, but no question if one of them had been replaced it wouldn’t work; and Rogen seems like a big part of the Neighbors sell)
–Ride Along + About Last Night (Kevin Hart)
–Non-Stop (Liam Neeson)
–Tammy (Melissa McCarthy)
And that’s it! Last year had a few more star-dependent franchises (Downey in Iron Man, J-Law in Hunger Games) but a similarly select few of real demonstrable Movie Star Attraction: several movies from Bullock, DiCaprio, The Rock, and… Melissa McCarthy.
I’m not saying she’s the #1 box office attraction in America, but in today’s environment… pretty damn good.
Please draw a clearer line between Melissa McCarthy and Jan-Michael Vincent.
There have always been “stars” who are considered bankable for a while. Some last. Some don’t. Come back in 10 years, and we’ll see if Melissa McCarthy is more bankable then than Jan Michael Vincent was after his TV series Airwolf.
BTW: What is Pauly Shore up to these days?
The Weez: Beyond Biodome, alternating weekends in Elko and Reno.
joe, maybe you’re just playing devil’s advocate but jan michael vincent was a mediocre teen idol pretty boy who never had a big movie career (and i lived the JMV era so not imdb-ing or some such), and pauly shore was in some shit movies, none of which were big money spinners that i can remember, so it seems like you’re grasping at straws a bit with bizarre comparisons
My last Houston Post review ever to get blurbed on a VHS package was my review for Pauly Shore’s In the Army. The blurb: “Genuinely funny.” Taken from this sentence: “Surprisingly, some of what they do is genuinely funny.”
ha oh those blurb people, can live with em can’t shoot em
Leahnz: OK, how about Andrew McCarthy? Or Rob Lowe? Robby Benson?
Are those actors from the twentieth century?
Well, they’re still alive and working. I think.
BTW: There are close to 100 million more people living in the US now than there were when Jan Michael Vincent was considered a hot property. (No, that’s not an exaggeration.) The average movie ticket price has more than tripled since the heyday of White Line Fever and Buster and Billie and Baby Blue Marine. So if you adjust for inflation, and factor in the percentage of the population buying tickets… yeah, it looks like Melissa McCarthy likely still is the bigger star. But again I ask: How long will her run last? As long as Julia Roberts? Barbra Streisand? Jill Clayburgh?
And meanwhile: Zac Efron is still living the dream.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/lyapalater/why-michelle-rodriguez-hooking-up-with-zac-efron-just-isnt-f
You know who I think of when I see McCarthy doing her fat doofus schtick? Zach Galifianakis. And like him she’s got waaaaaaaayyyyy more talent at her disposal, yet somehow she’s going down the same road of doing the fat slob/living sight gag ad nauseum. She could KILL in a whole movie where she’s well composed and her weight is never a joke or even fucking mentioned.
Dammit to hell, just put her and Galifianakis together in the next “True Detective” series.
At the end of the day, she and her husband just made their studio a decent amount of money with Tammy. It was low risk, with I believe a guaranteed upside, only question being how much. How come no one is asking whether Seth McFarlane’s career is over?
I don’t think was the vanity project however. I think it will be some role that potentially puts her in front of the Academy again. Melissa’s on the right track. She surrounded herself with Susan Sarandon and Kathy Bates. She’s getting good acting advise and she already has a nom in her back pocket. Like Bullock, people want to like her and be on her side, root for her. She’s just one down trodden mom role, or upstart lawyer role away from her second nom.
Hallick I swear I was thinking that when you wrote it. My idea is a kind of update of Midnight Run with her and Zach as a couple under the protection of somebody like Denzel Washington. Get a good action director who can also do comedy and boom, your next $100m action comedy. Copyright pending.
Maybe McCarthy and Galifianakis in a do-over of Elmore Leonard’s Killshot? God knows, not too many people saw the first screen version. (Though it might be nice to bring back Mickey Rourke.)
the only thing i remember about ‘killshot’ was Joseph G L doing his best fred ward impersonation, hilarious (not really in the good way, though distracting from the rest of it, so perhaps not without merit)
speaking of galifinia…galifianakis (thank you above posts for the correct spelling), i was watching twohy’s ‘below’ on cable late the other night – not for the first time – and it took me about half the bloody movie to realise Zack played the bearded submariner without his now trademark portliness and idiosyncratic mannerisms and inflections, thin zack not so much with the funny weirdo-ness. (speaking of twohy, another genre director who sort of shit the bed after early promise). and a writing and producing credit on ‘below’ for darren aronofsky, random, who knew
“Leahnz: OK, how about Andrew McCarthy? Or Rob Lowe? Robby Benson?”
joe, i’ve lost the plot re the question/analogy – i mean how long ‘fame’ will stick around is always an unknown quantity, who manages to linger like a bad smell and who’s flushed away in the notoriously fickle ‘show business’ world seems so often arbitrary and unfair, who knows what McCarthy’s fate will be? (i got my crystal ball and my bowling ball confused in a fit of Duderness and cracked it) but M McC’s got skillz, that’s more than many
Transformers 4 was not THAT bad. It was silly fun.
Good job internet avenger Don Murphy.
If I could, I would like to apologize for something I said yesterday that was horribly wrong and completely out of line:
“Jaguar” is the accepted plural of jaguar, not “jaguars”.
I’m sorry.
@SamLowry
So did these jaguar achieve the ability to speak naturally, or were they scientifically enhanced? Curious minds want to know.
They were cattle ranchers and other bad eggs who dared to oppose a Dr. Moreau-style genetic engineer that chose their valley to begin the process of restoring the Earth. All the good people were allowed to flee and retain their humanity, but unwittingly helped “Moreau” spread a fungus that eats metal and plastic.
So you can understand why I was a tad-bit torqued when “Depp” released nanomachines at the end of TRANSCENDENCE that eat pollution. But at least I came up with the idea of “Moreau” releasing rapidly-reproducing hydrogen-filled jellyfish at the end of the novel that remove CO2 from the air and drop the carbon as pearl-shaped “diamonds”; there are soon so many Floaters that powered flight is impossible, even if the fungus didn’t eat the planes first. (of course this is all ©)
Oh, and if you want a spoiler, “Moreau” was the MacGuffin since he released a nanomachine-packed virus at the start of the novel that turned everyone infected young, healthy and sober; it was the enforced sobriety that caused civilization to crumble, since I figured that many people put up with their shitty lives only as long as they can get wasted everyday.
[I just deleted a zinger that was way too easy; sorry, Lex.]
Now if you’ll please excuse me I have to get back to polishing a short story about Hitler’s great-grandson.