Inception

You can play with this jack at the website…
And you can watch the trailer here…

(Edit – 10:57p, switching to Yahoo! embed)

What Is This Thing Called 3D?

3D re-launched itself as a mass-ish medium in 2003 with Spy Kids 3D: Game Over, after a 12-year drought since the last 3D movie. The Polar Express went IMAX 3D in 2004, reviving its box office fortunes. There was another Robert Rodriguez film released in 3D in 2005 and Disney experimented with Chicken Little. There were three films released in 3D in 2006, one a re-format of The Nightmare Before X-Mas, one a low-budget rip-off of Night Of The Living Dead (copyright evaded by adding

EXCLUSIVE: MGM Sold To Coca-Cola & Apple!!!

April 1, 2009
As evidenced by the new outdoor campaign for Fame, which uses Coca-Cola’s dynamic ribbon lettering and Apple’s famous iPod shadows, the company did not announce today that it is being bought by Coke and Apple. “Don’t you have anything better to write about, you idiot?,” said a insider source who asked not to be named because he’s really shy and would stop buying me lunch if I named him.

You Might Be A Twittiot If

It

Avatard Press Release

The first thing that makes this release interesting to me is that the trailer streams were not just “the most ever, ” but allegedly more than doubled the previous record. Of course, a part of that is that it is an original film, not a sequel, that this trailer is very visual and made QT downloading more attractive than just watching the streaming video that was also all over the place, and that we haven’t really had a movie of this magnitude and hard core interest since Spider-Man and the The Phantom Menace launched… back when a lot fewer people were downloading hi res files. (I do wonder what happened with The Dark Knight trailer premiere… did it launch on Apple.com?)
The other thing is that the number of people at Avatar Day is not mentioned. Most likely, it’s because the number is probably less than 250,000 people actually going, which just doesn’t sound that impressive… though it is. It is a number that could only have been matched in recent years by free Dark Knight previews in IMAX had they had them.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AVATAR TEASER TRAILER MAKES HISTORY, BECOMING THE MOST-VIEWED TRAILER EVER ON APPLE.COM
MUCH-ANTICIPATED FIRST-LOOK AT THE EPIC ADVENTURE FROM

Weekend Box Office by Klady

So… the claim out there is that Inglourious Basterds opened to an estimated $37.6m, which coincidentally is $259k more than District 9 opened to last weekend. Hmmm….
On the other hand, Klady’s estimate has IB at $38.4m.
Either way – since beating D9 is a meaningless victory – a great weekend for The Weinsteins and another chance for the media to not fall of their hype swords… just to wipe them down, waiting for the next chance to declare the boys dead.
It looks like QT will have his second $100 million movie. And Brad Pitt’s muscle at the box office still has to make you scratch your head and wonder who wouldn’t want a $58 million Brad Pitt movie.
D9 had a perfectly reasonable hold. In fact, the only Sony movies to hold second weekend better this were Fired Up (against a $5.5m opening) and the family phenom known as Paul Blart: Mall Cop. The film will easily best $100m and could pass Angels & Demons‘ $133m to become Sony’s #2 domestic movie of the year.
The Time Traveler’s Wife isn’t going to quite get to the number for The Notebook, but it’s going to get a lot closer than anyone really thought.
Disney’s efforts on behalf of Miyazaki are bearing fruit. Ponyo is looking like it will get into the teens, which is not terribly impressive out of context, but is another big step on terms of seeding a young audience to accept the feel and look of his legendary animation.
The Hurt Locker is in the much-discussed-here freefall, losing screens weekly, and now looking like $13m is a far-away goal.

iPhone Camera Clean Out

My favorite ad for Quentin Tarantino

The true spirit of Comic-Con

(Your Caption Here)

BYOB Weeekeound

More on Twitter

The discussion that started on “Unbelievable” led to something that I think is worthy of having its own entry…
Movie marketing frontloading happened BEFORE all these social networks. Coincidence or Fate, that is what happened.
As it turns out, that frontloading has devalued word of mouth as a driver, positive or negative, for all but maybe 5% of studio releases. So then all these easier ways in which word of mouth is generated – but keep in mind, they are all simpler and less informational than any conversation of more than 20 seconds – but they are fighting an uphill battle to impact the marketing machine.
People who “troll the Internet for blogs & reviews a la 5 years ago” are not people for whom word of mouth means a lot. They are already committed, in or out.
The impact that can matter is broader than the core group. And that core is still the group using Twitter to buzz.
But let’s not overlook the issue of how much info Twitter conveys. Twitter is pretty close to a “thumbs up, thumbs down” level interaction on movies. People naturally need more than that to change a view on whether or not they are going to the movie… because we are not talking about setting the agenda, we are talking about CHANGING agendas after opening Friday.
The idea that “most folks get these messages instantly and from mobile devices” is not true. Some small percent of folks get messages from Twitter. Estimates suggest that it

Happy Birthday To B

The hot Button launched 12 years ago today.
It’s be about a year and 4 months since I posted the last column on the site.
The fifth birthday of The Hot Blog is a couple weeks away.
This gif from the last real entry on the first incarnation of Hot Blog seems to sum up the daily activity of last five years pretty well

Friday Estimates by Klady – Inglaugust23

There are various ways to chew over this opening for Inglourious Basterds. You can put it on Pitt’s doorstep, though it would be his best opening n the last couple of years. You can put it on Tarantino’s doorstep, though it is his best opening ever. You can put it on the space that a late August opening gives a movie with profile, though it will be, if it opens to more than $36.4m, the #1 all-time opening after the second weekend of August. (If not, it will still be only the third $27m+ opening in the second half of the month/after 2nd wknd/Aug 15 or later.)
The world didn’t change for The Weinstein Co yesterday. They did a very good job with what they have to work with. As I have written before, the “life and death” angle was well overstated. This may be Tarantino’s biggest opening, but the movie still has a long way to go before it pays to run Nine through the Oscar labyrinth with the goal of a win.
One thing is clear… Inglourious Basterds will be profitable. The math works out to breakeven – considering all revenue streams – being somewhere around $130m worldwide. Even with $100 million domestic not assured – and it’s not – $130m worldwide and better seems quite likely. This is clearly not Grindhouse, on which the company swallowed $20m – $30m.
But keeping perspective, this opening looks to be between G-Force and District 9.
Ironically, WB chose to roll out a Robert Rodriguez film, Shorts, on the same day as QT’s latest. All they need is a short in between with Jordan Ladd being comedically raped by a Nazi with a CG instrument to make it a Grindhouse 2 double feature. Anyway… the opening didn’t work, though WB didn’t spend a ton advertising it. Chicken/Egg.
Fox dumped Post Grad on Avatar Day. One IMAX screen got more attention from the studio than this wannabe Prada. Zzzzzzz…
There’s a lot of strong indie stuff at the theaters right now, but while Art & Copy did pretty well for a doc, World’s Greatest Dad and its one screen didn’t break out much, perhaps suffering for its VODness. X Game 3D opened wide… and averaged about 20 people per screen seeing it yesterday.

Avatards Avatared

Avatar Day went pretty well for me.
The footage was not, in fact, the same as Comic-Con or as long as Comic-Con. There was a lot less of the opening “live-action set-up,” fewer sequences shown, and notably, less hanging around in the colorful forest.
On the other hand, the images in IMAX 3D were much, much more impressive. It reminded me, given the trailer this week, of hearing a sound mix in process on a CD… and then hearing it on the studio speakers. Now we have a better idea of what the filmmakers are experiencing and why they are so excited.
Whoever designed the package for Avatar Day is very, very, very smart. It was enough to give it to you without being enough to start picking at the material, which is obviously going to be incomplete in this round of 12, 13 minutes of footage.
Watching it in IMAX, I went from like to love on some of it. The action is not only relentless, but light years beyond similar attempts at action in previous CG films. Sorry if you want to think of it as a video game. The argument wasn’t strong after the Comic-Con footage. In this format, it’s just silly.
The sequence in which Jake acquires his “flying horse” was also much, much better seen in this format.
Another notable thing that I don’t really know was evident or not at Comic-Con, was Neytiri’s nakedness. The same is basically true of Jake. Both wear loincloths of some kind, but in this format, we could see that Neytiri is not thinking much about exposing her long, athletic body – small, athletic, clearly accentuated breasts included – to her fellow Navi. The point is not that she is naked, but that there is a layer of natural sensuality in this work – think Kate on the couch in Titanic – that is clearly going to be included.
My basic takes remains the same… we need to see the movie to see if we can see past the CG of it all. But this experience took me one step closer to that. And assuming I will not be alone in that, it seems like a win for Cameron and Fox to me.
ADD: 10:20p – I completely forgot to note… part of the presentation at Universal Citywalk was an offer to sell attendees at Avatar Day tickets to the very first Avatar IMAX screening at the theater, 12:01a at the crack of December 18. One Night Offer Only. (They also, cleverly, offered matinee priced tickets to any movie that evening at the 18 screen multiplex, as well as free popcorn with a large soda purchase.) So ticket sales for the film have officially begun! (And in an hour or two… they will be officially ended.)

Unbelievable

This ongoing bullshit about The Twitter Effect is bad enough. Michael Sragow, who leads with the proposition and then mostly disproves it, is being used as a frontman for every hack who wants to sell this crap at the end of yet another August.
But the worst thing I have read so far comes from Ad Age’s Simon Dumenco , who seems lost in his own blizzard of excrement.
Let’s start with his chart of Top 5 Grossing Summer Movies 2009: transformers 2, the hangover, star trek, ice age, harry potter.
Did you catch it yet?
The #2 movie of the summer, Up, is not on the list.
Next, he claims, “the Twitter peaks correlate with where each movie stands in regard to gross.”
In what way? Here’s the chart:

Looks like potter, trannys 2, ice age 3, star trek, hangover to me.
The actual order is trannys, up, potter, hangover, trek, ice age.
Twitter is just another form of information traveling. There is not a SINGLE piece of real evidence – even circumstantial evidence – that Twitter is changing anything regarding marketing.
This is destructive hackery.

TV Porn Parodies

I had not run into these before Movieline ran the one below – Office Safe except for porniphernalia and language – that really only starts a “trailer” half way through… for one of my favorite shows, 30 Rock. After the jump, Friends, The Office, and Scrubs.
These things are pretty clever. Some are closer to the mark than others, but the ease with which they are imitated by pretty mediocre actors and mediocre directors to boot, reminds one how iconic these shows become.

Read the full article »

Academy Tidbits

The Thalberg will go to either Alan Ladd, Jr or John Calley – or both – this year.
The leading candidate to produce the telecast is an explosive choice with some elegant habits.
Up In The Air, The Informant!, and The Lovely Bones are the three films most likely to benefit from the exit of Scorsese this season.
Seacrest out…