Weekend Estimates by Klady

Well, there’s another new event to try to parse if we see it happen again… Thor going from a Friday drop of 65% to a Weekend Estimate of 50%. Not sure what more to say about that at this time.

Very good hold for Thor by big opening standards.

Terrific number for Bridesmaids too, which is doing its best to get to the $25m mark, falling short, but still impressing with a weekend estimate to be more than 3x the Friday number. And more good news for Universal, with Fast Five holding at an estimated 40%.

As it turns out, our own Leonard Klady is one of the sky-is-falling people. He complains about this weekend, comparing it to last year. Now… who would want to consider the actual movies and not just stats-by-date? If you had Iron Man 2 and Russell Crowe in Robin Hood and Letters to Juliet topping the second frame of summer VS this year’s Thor, Bridesmaids, and Priest, and someone told you the former would outperform the latter by 5%, would you think that was bad? When you considered that the trio from 2010 cost at least 40% less to produce than the trio from 2011, wouldn’t it look pretty great, really?

And if you pull out just these wide summer openers from the group, you see an even healthier situation. The second weekend of Iron Man 2’s second weekend grossed almost as much as Thor and Bridesmaids combined did this weekend. Using the three movie group, 2010 did $102.4m in the second weekend of May and this year, it is estimated at $73.4m (and that may go down). That’s a 28% drop-off. But the rest of the market (mostly in the form of Fast Five), knocked that number down to 5% or so.

Yes, Klady is right. There is something else to learn from Pirates 4 and Hangover 2 and Kung Fu Panda 2. If Pirates 4 opens to less than $90 million, that would be of real concern. The last one opened to $115m. Reviews will be lousy, but they were for last one as well. The first Panda opened to $60m… less than $75m would be an unhappy surprise. And Hangover Part I opened to $45m… less than $60 would be worrisome. But even if the trio opens to just $225m million between them, does it tell us something new and tangible about the theatrical business? No. If they open to $280m between them, does it tell us something new and tangible about the theatrical business? No.

The one pattern we have seen that does seem to be consistent is that in the place of blockbusters, we are seeing the middle class rise to fill seats at theaters. This really started being a clear trend line in December. And so far, though the total box office take has been off, we have not seen a single film that anyone really thought was going to be a blockbuster underperform. What we have seen is a lot of films that were expected to do business under $50m overperform. And even the summer so far… start a weekend behind the summer with an overperforming Fast Five… Thor has done all the business is could ever have been expected to do and a little more… and now, Bridesmaids.

If there is anything utterly apparent in Pirates 4, it’s that they were trying to spend a lot less money on production. Whether they did or did not, I don’t know. They may have inexplicably spent as much as they did on Pirates 2, but less than the profligate Pirates 3. But the movie looks like it was shot on a lot of big stages with a lot less time on locations, a lot more “in-camera” effects, and relatively little CG (the effects shot counts have gone up, for many films, on the little things… I’m talking about the big showy stuff… a lot more sails billowing and a lot fewer computer-created faces, for instance). Of course, this shouldn’t change their opening weekend, which is still marketing-dependent and will be driven by less than 3 minutes of footage from the 130 minute film.

Anyway…

In light of no new product for little kids, Rio had an estimated 8% hold. Soul Surfer had a 23% drop weekend.

Lionsgate’s apparent assumption that wild postings of Madea sayings was enough to open the film to similar numbers to the last one turned out to be wrong. The film passed $50 million this weekend, which is a pretty great return against production cost, but who knows how much Tyler Perry took home up front? Still, a strong core audience… just not as easy as last time.

The Weinstein Company has to be licking its wounds over Hoodwinked Too!, which is on target to generate 20% of the domestic box office of the first one. Between that, Scream 4, and Oscar season holdunders The Company Men and Miral, the glow of The King’s Speech has already been tarnished a bit.

None of the limited releases over 5 screens managed to do as much as $3000 per screen. Ouch. While I believe that VOD is a useful tool for that niche, you have to look at these numbers and consider whether VOD can do for the majors what it has done for the indies.

The Horrible Bosses Trailer…

I’m kinda diggin’ it. It feels off the rhythm… no home run jokes in the trailer… but somehow feels like its may be more the sum of its parts…

Of course, “maybe not” is another possibility…

Friday Estimates by Klady (analysis by poland)

It looks like everything in the Top Five will slightly underperform the guesstimates out there going into the weekend. But nothing shocking. There is still a tiny chance that Bridesmaids will end up beating Thor over the course of the weekend, despite what is now – scarily – a decent hold for a big opener. This puts Thor, again, in position as comparable to Hulk (69.7%), The Incredible Hulk (60.1%), and another Marvel classic, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (65.5%).

It’s a weird feeling when a 60% second weekend drop is no longer seen as a disaster. But that is how things have changed. Frontloading, as designed by the distributors. C. Nikki has been told by her keepers at Paramount that Thor will drop only 51%… oy. 58% is possible, but 59% or 60% seem more likely. I can’t find a movie with numbers that suggest a Friday drop of 65% leading to a weekend drop of 51%. We’ll see when the dust clears.

Back to Bridesmaids… a big Saturday uptick is what may or may not happen. It could surprise, if women can convince their boys that it’s going to be fun and make it a date night event. Thor is still probably a couple million beyond its grasp. But still… a solid start for a small movie in the second weekend of summer dumping ground. It’s interesting to see how the sales pitch of this being a female Hangover has worked for audiences, but irritated some self-hating feminists on principle.

A decent hold for Fast Five. It became the biggest domestic grosser of all the Fast/Furious films yesterday and was already the leader internationally. And it has at least another $50 million worldwide in it after this weekend… perhaps $100m, closing in on the $500 million worldwide mark where the big franchises live. Only the last two Bonds will have grossed more.

Something Jumping The Borrowed Broom has identical Friday-to-Friday drops.

And Priest 3D couldn’t be so bad… except that the birth of this thing was so very long and hard and expensive over time (adding 3D, etc). But Sony is pushing the movie hard overseas and it will be interesting to see if that pays off. It could be a case where it does $35 million here and $80 million overseas and everyone at Sony is pleased.

On the smaller release front, more soft numbers (thanks to VOD?) with Everything Must Go and Hesher doing about $3k a screen. Lionsgate’s Go For It is a complete tank.

Woody Results

So with 96 people filling out the complete poll, here is the ranking, based on the rating most often given each movie.

The film with the fewest ratings among the 96, aside from the still unopened Midnight in Paris (still getting 25 ratings), was You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger with 76 people rating it. The only two other movies with fewer than 8 ratings were September (75) and What’s Up Tiger Lily? (78).

Annie Hall had the most “10” ratings with 71.

Here is the entire chart

Review: Bridesmaids

It’s funny.

It’s a mess of a movie. But it’s funny.

Kristin Wiig is a funny person and would do really well to have a strong director or producer helping her to color inside the lines a bit more. A movie is not a sketch show. However, she is very funny.

If they gave out Oscars for comedy performances, you couldn’t find a better nominee than Melissa McCarthy, who has been a dangerous, scene-stealing comedic actor all the way back to Go in ’99. She kills in this film… worth the price of admission all by herself. In great part it’s because of what she gets to play… the fat girl who doesn’t know and doesn’t really care that she’s fat. Really, this is her Jackie Gleason role… light on her feet, completely convinced of her ideas in the world, and profoundly sincere. She was written as the Zach Galifianakis of this movie… but she is better than that… because she isn’t out of control, she’s remarkably grounded.

Maya Rudolph is the straight man here and does a nice job with it.

Wendi McLendon-Covey was the surprise in this core cast for me. I don’t recall seeing her before, though she has a long resume. But she’s dry and funny with some wonderfully raunchy and truthful dialogue here. Underused.

Rose Byrne was pretty perfect in her role… but that is where the movie goes a little off the rails for me. The story is basically Wiig’s character vs Byrne’s, fighting for the “soul” of the bride. But because this is really a Kristin Wiig movie, the balance is way off. That said, the third act for the Byrne character is quite smartly written.

The film also really rocks the secondary characters. For me, the small turn by Matt Lucas an Rebel Wilson was glorious. Chris O’Dowd was interesting and unexpected as Rhodes. Seeing Franklyn Ajaye as Maya Rudolph’s dad was very cool, as was Jimmy Brogan as the priest. And Jon Hamm has a good old time as a pig man who says what he really thinks.

I laughed a lot in this movie. I recommend it. But I wish I could say that I thought it was up to the best of the Apatow: The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Superbad, Talladega Nights… even Anchorman. The problem with Apatow as a producer is that he doesn’t seem to rein anyone in. So this film, which would have improved significantly by cutting 10 minutes or so, is allowed too much rope. Paul Feig is a competent, but not outstanding feature director. He’s a terrific TV director. But the writer is in control of the television show set. Here, the buck stops with the director. And with two very talented, but new-to-features screenwriters (Wiig and Annie Mumolo), someone needed to fight for the filmmaking even when it made the crew laugh.

I don’t think the film lives up to some of the pretensions being hoisted onto it. Nor does it deserve some of the brickbats. It’s just a pleasant, funny couple of hours at the movies with a few great moments. It’s not as daring as The Hangover… or even The Hangover Part II. But it doesn’t have to be. It is likely to make you laugh… often. Duh! Winning!

Is Deadline’s David Lieberman The New “Sky Is Falling” Hack?

It’s one thing for SNL Kagan to project, head firmly up ass, the entire summer box office and claiming to have foresight into all distribution channels, to reduce it into a profit and loss statement. Moronic, as anything but sport. But it is another thing to report it as though it had any validity… or to bother checking the report’s complete failure to do a decent financial analysis on a month of movies that have already launched.

“The forecast follows Kagan’s estimate that only 2 out of 16 releases in April clearly will be profitable: Fox’s Rio and Universal’s Fast Five. Three others could be profitable for distributors, depending on the terms of their deals with exhibitors: Universal’s Hop, FilmDistrict’s Insidious, and Summit Entertainment’s Source Code.”

Oy.

So this organization is claiming to be able to project the entire box office of the summer… but they can’t accurately estimate the terms with exhibitors? Huh?

They don’t know enough to know whether a $170m worldwide grosser against a claimed $63m budget will be in profit? How about a $95 million grosser against a $35m budget? How about $50m (domestic only) against $1.5m in production?

How about Tyler Perry… and Soul Surfer. Did I miss something? Geez… even Scream 4 may find its way to a small profit.

And did I mention again how utterly idiotic it is for SNL Kagan to be pretending to be able to project the bottom line of the entire summer through all media? Almost as idiotic as taking it seriously and you haven’t been cut in on the hustle.

Pretty much every story David Lieberman has written so far for Deadline has been ass backwards. He’s really the first person hired by Nikki Finke who is notably less competent than Nikki in covering the industry. But he’s the Executive Editor. Oy. Can’t wait until she snaps up Zeitchik!

Ranking Woody

For the survey to be counted, you need to rate at least 35 of the titles.

Story Of The Day: Ben Fritz on WB/Legendary

The LA Times Story, “Dark Knight Rises’ creates tension between Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures.”

The first question I always have when I see a story like is, “Who wants this floating into the media?”

In this case, both sides have some upside in this becoming a public issue. From the WB side, it shows that Jeff Robinov is trying to protect his studio’s interest aggressively. On the Legendary side, there is pressure to be put on WB by announcing that the studio (aka Robinov, for the purpose of this article) is trying to screw over their business partner of multiple years.

Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures have done 23 movies together – as of the end of this summer – since their financial partnership started with 2005’s Batman Begins. That was their only film that year… so 22 pictures in 6 years, 23 total .

In that same period, Village Roadshow’s done 28 films with WB.

BY the time of Harry Potter’s last launch, WB will have released 101 new features (excluding NL, re-releases, and IMAX) since the start of 2006. So of those 101, 50 were co-funded by one of these two companies.

Though both companies have invested in some of the less expensive pictures, most of their investments have been on more expensive films. Legendary got a piece of The Hangover and Roadshow got a piece of Gran Torino. But the viability of these funds comes from the major hits they get occasionally, which make up for the many losers. For Legendary, it’s the Dark Knights and Inceptions that make up for the Jonah Hexes and even Superman Returns, in which they took the loss, while WB got away pretty much clean because of the advantage they have over funding partners in getting a distribution fee from first dollar.

Is there pretty much a guaranteed $100 million in profit for every $50 million invested in the next Bat movie? Something like that, very roughly. So if WB wants to cut Legendary’s investment in the film to $100 million, it will still be a great return for Legendary. But the more WB shares, in this rare case, the more profit WB doesn’t get.

If you were Paramount, you wouldn’t want a new partner on Transformers as you head into their third movie, would you? Of course not. Nor on Potter 7 (unless the budget was way out of control). But in Legendary’s case, they were there for Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, when there wasn’t a guarantee of mega-profits. Getting cut out after taking the risk early on does not make for happy relations. (Frankly, I’m shocked that this wasn’t covered contractually… seems like first right of refusal for the same percentage an investor put in on the prior franchise film would be basic.)

My insta-read is that Legendary has a lot of money to invest, WB needs partners on their big movies (as do the other studios), and the threat of Legendary taking their ball of green and going elsewhere should be enough to get this deal done on their terms. But it also seems that Legendary likes the relationship they have, believe in the kind of product that WB likes making. To whom would they take their money? (Calling Jerry Bruckheimer!)

Giving some credence to the general idea that Robinov’s WB is searching for “tentpole” product to fund in-house is that the studio is going solo on Green Lantern funding. But don’t look for the same on the next Superman or many other future DC projects… except for Batman, as long as Nolan is involved. If Legendary pulled out tomorrow, for instance, the next Superman movie would be looking for alternate co-funding and the studio would be hard-pressed to go into production without it (at least until after Green Lantern can prove to be a positive experience).

The reason I find this so interesting is that co-funding has become the rule, not the oddity. And the Potter franchise has been one of the last big examples of a mega-franchise without co-funding in the last few years. (Paramount ended up with Transformers all in-house when they bought DreamWorks… and it’s paid off royally.)

I would actually applaud Jeff Robinov loudly if I thought this was going to be a new trend at WB. Studios getting out of the funding of movies is another element that has changed the film business significantly. And the Green Lantern, which added another $10 million to its effects budget in the last couple of months, is an example. More risk inspires more aggressive efforts… which is not to say that there are many movies on which the studio just doesn’t try very hard. But if you’re just as happy with a first weekend killing and a standard drop-off, do you push as hard as you would if you were invested until the bitter end?

The big budget pictures are the ones that can change the future of a studio, for better or for worse. Avoid the risk… avoid the reward. I’m not saying that studios should be all-in on every movie or that anyone can be sure which one will work and which one won’t. But an industry in which studios are mostly invested in distribution and marketing and have hedged on the films themselves is a cold, cold industry.

NATO Not Shutting Up About The Thoughtless Destruction Of The Theatrical Window

I am not one for conspiracy theories.

But there are conspiracies of stupidity.

The media tends to lead the way down these ugly roads, so anxious to encapsulate every single thing that they/we overreach and then, too arrogant to admit being wrong, keep pushing false ideas. In the movie business, there has been no worse example of this in the last decade-plus – which just happens to be my lifetime on this beat – than the coverage of distribution models. Why? Perhaps because there is no area of the business in which there is less experience on the beat and a demand for perspective than there.

The thing is, all the technological changes combined with all the models that have been developed out of those changes, do not require – as many love to argue – the removal of all history about past models. Quite the opposite. History can help tell us what the future will bring.

Think about the Iraq War. There are three entirely separate conversations. First, there is the issue of the military power to take over a large country in weeks. Second, there is the military and political issue of what to do after destroying that nations military. Third, there is the political issue about whether we should really be considering the first two questions.

Technology, in the movie business and most others, is about the first question only. New tech enables the industry with the power to act. And people get giddy with that excitement of unleashing that power. But even more so than in the political world, the long-term consequences are a lower priority than potential short-term gains, as there is no threat of the ballot box… only the bottom line… and that bottom line arrives quarterly, which ramps up the urge to push forward with anything is perceived as being of a financial benefit.

Ironically, if it weren’t for the willful participation of the distributors in the mythology that the media holds so dear that the theatrical market is in serious decline, I would probably give the distributors more credit. Media was too ignorant to report on the serious decline in DVD for theatrical released movies for the first couple of years it was happening, accepting the overall numbers, which were driven by television product being put on the market in massive numbers. Talk to some Home Entertainment execs and they will tell you that the bosses at the studios didn’t understand this clearly either, not really sounding the warning bell until it was too late. They saw the gross number on Home Entertainment and thought things would be okay.

Since then, Netflix (and then, Redbox) became the poster children for The DVD Problem, when in obvious fact, they were just businesses doing a good job of working with the model that existed, not constrained by the inertia of giant corporations. There was nothing that Netflix was doing that the industry could not have done itself… while getting control of the price point. And indeed, there is nothing Netflix is doing now that the studios cannot do… and I think, will do… but the price point is long gone and never coming back.

In any case…

This all speaks to the public statements of Jeff Bewkes and Les Moonves (who really isn’t in the movie business) claiming that exhibitors were overreacting to Premium VOD and should just adjust to whatever the studios shove down their throats come up with as a plan. National Association of Theater Owners’ John Fithian took an aggressive stance in his response…

“Forgive us if we decline to take business lessons from the end of the industry that enabled the erosion of value in the home market,” said National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) president and CEO John Fithian. “The creation of $1.99 kiosk rentals and $7.99 monthly subscriptions have undercut the sell-through model in the home—not theatrical release windows.”

I actually disagree a little. I would say the success of $1 rentals and $7.99 – $18.99 a month Netflix came out of “the end of the industry” that didn’t anticipate the maturation of the sell-thru DVD business and start to make adjustments earlier, instead of greedily sucking up every dollar they felt was there for the taking and then panicking and cutting retail pricing to single digits, reducing the value of the format and the content. Instead, they took the buy-off from Netflix in the form of stock in exchange for disc pricing deals and then sold the stock before Netflix matured, so arrogant and unconscious of the potential of the subscription model as DVD sell-thru was thriving.

“Your problem is in the home window: fix it there. You will not create extra revenue by introducing in the theatrical window the same self-cannibalizing channel confusion that has decimated the home market.”

Dead on.

There is a lot of confusion when it comes to the current push. There is this notion out there that if the public wants something, they should get it. This is absurd. And it has never been the way studios sold movies. The average studio release is an investment of over $100 million with marketing included. And the average major release (eliminating the dumps each studio throws away with lower marketing $s each year) is over $150 million. And “tentpoles” (which are not tentpoles at all anymore) start at $250 million and go as high as $500 million per title.

What “the public wants” is cheaper and more accessible. But “the public” is only really a sliver of the overall population that turns out for all but a few $150m+ domestic hits every year. And in that sliver is the revenue base for most movies. We know, over the years, that people who have already seen a film in a theater make up a significant percentage of the people buying DVDs and paying for other a la carte deliveries of a film. It’s as though studios take this so for granted that creating new ways for these same people to pay only once for product, instead of multiple times, isn’t really considered.

And as for expanding the reach of already ubiquitous product, there is no evidence to suggest or reason to believe that audiences not driven to theaters are not going because of price point or availability. (This is another popular media myth.) If they aren’t going to the theaters, how do you drive people to spend theatrical prices (and more) just to consume the same product that will be available to them at 10% of the cost or in a subscription model they are already paying for a couple of months later?

And if the price point is more competitive with theatrical and post-theatrical, then it is, in fact, competing with theatrical and post-theatrical. It is not another bit of the apple, it is – logically -an apple replacement.

Time after time, marketing execs – including in the movie business – experience the fact that too many choices equal no choice at all. But we all seem to forget this – or choose to forget it – when it doesn’t fit into our personal feelings about an argument. Right now, including Premium VOD, there are six windows in the first year of a movie’s commercial life, not counting international as a seventh. Theatrical, Premium VOD, Traditional VOD, DVD sell-thru, Netflix/Redbox (for those with a 28 day delay), and pay-TV. $10/$30/$5/$20(blu)/$8mo-$1/$10mo

Insanity.

“Combat piracy by charging $30 for a rental? Really? You can’t compete with free. Early VOD release will only exacerbate theft by giving the pirates a pristine digital copy of the movie much earlier than they have with DVDs.”

The piracy argument is a false argument. And the studios know it. It cannot be combated by shorter theatrical windows and there is ZERO reason to believe it can. The only possible defense against piracy is full on day-n-date… and there are a lot of reasons why that is bad business. Moreover, piracy is driven by price point and unavailability. Unless you’re going day-n-date with $5 DVDs, much of piracy will remain in place, except with better copies of the films.

60 Day VOD as a dodge on piracy is just a lie.

The history of DVD is a near-perfect example of how this industry starts down a hill and then can’t stop rolling, even as it loses control and becomes a projectile rather than a runner.

The myths that “people don’t go to the movies anymore” or that “everyone wants to watch everything on their TV at home” or “you can better control piracy by releasing things outside of theatrical more quickly” must stop being perpetuated. That is, unless you want to see the end of theatrical distribution and high budget movies.

What is true for independent cinema – that day-n-date VOD expands the market significantly – is the opposite for wide-release distribution. Theatrical is a strong, consistent segment of revenues for wide-release distribution. Home Entertainment is significantly bigger, in terms of revenues and eyeballs. But they are symbiotic markets, not interchangeable markets. And the margins in the movie business are not strong enough to sustain shrinkage in theatrical.

When Les Moonves says that theater owners, “are going to have to change a bit to prevent a crisis,” he has it exactly wrong. The crisis comes – and has come before – from corporations trying to fix what’s broken by taking too much advantage of what is working. Fantasies of economies of scale are what brought us AOL/Time-Warner and packaged mortgages. Time-Warner wasn’t broken. The housing market wasn’t broken. So what do they do? Try to find a way to suck them dry, aka break them.

So back to the 3 arguments. 1. The technology is pretty much here. Not going away. Okay. Done.

3. Should we go there? This is the big one here. Do you care if theatrical dies? Do you care if the industry shrinks by another 40%? If not, you should be happy to go with the current wave of thought. If you do care about these things, you should not.

2. What happens once we get there? I think it’s very clear. The best we can hope for is a bubble. But when that bubble bursts, it will be much worse than the DVD bubble, because revenues will shrink much faster than they did as the air came out of the DVD bubble. It is likely to leave much of the industry as rubble.

Some people are good with that. Some people anticipate a freer, more creative industry as a result. Burn the village to save the village.

Sigh.

BYOB for a very, very long (but productive) day

Review – Midnight in Paris Is Okay

In the 11 years of the new millennium, Woody Allen has made 11 films. Up until his latest, Midnight in Paris, one (Vicky Cristina Barcelona) is very, very good, but still couldn’t break into his personal Top 10 all-time. One is good (Match Point). And the other eight range from passable to horrible.

The standard is higher for Woody Allen. He’s earned that. The actors are always strong, as actors are drawn to the opportunity to work with the man. The stories… more and more recycling.

His new film, just premiered in Cannes, has a premise that reflects back on the best days of Woody Allen, when intellectual demands on the audience were equaled by belly laughs from the audience. However, in the execution, there is more reliance on the gimmick and the “you’re well educated if you get all these references” than there is in the core story, which is woefully undernourished and centered on Wes Anderson’s favorite underplayer, Owen Wilson, who does disappointed well, but can’t really muster sincere enthusiasm as a movie star actor.

Imagine on of those witty banter quiz shows on NPR, but without the audience to tell people where to laugh. All that would be left would be people who think they are terribly witty awaiting confirmation.

This is how Woody used to present these kinds of shows…

Now, he’s made one.

That said, it isn’t a BAD movie. It has some good jokes. The gimmick of the film does have its charms… for a while. Kathy Bates is solid and Adrian Brody is actually kinda brilliant in his cameo. And male audience will enjoy Rachel McAdams embrace of the shirt dress and Allen’s taste in French women (Léa Seydoux and Carla Bruni amongst them). But it can’t sustain its own enthusiasm for its central conceit, the heft of the message gets blurred in the mess, and as stated before, Owen Wilson just isn’t an interesting central figure. It would have been great for Woody, back in the day. Of the cuff, I think Hanks, Damon, Downey, Eckhart, or Giamatti would all have done it better.

I’m not going to spoil the movie by giving away the premise. Suffice it to say that the message is, “enjoy what you have, live your life, the grass is never as green elsewhere as you think.”

Sure.

Maybe this is the best we should expect from Woody Allen’s fourth act as a filmmaker (Act I. Funny and silly, Act II. Funny and intimately reflective, Act III. Funny and bitter) I’d stop going to his movies, but besides hope, I still need the eggs.

DP/30 Short Ends: Cinematographer John Bailey on Digital Cinema & 3D

Bailey was the Director of Photography on The Anniversary Party, which I consider a landmark in digital cinema… he made it look more like a celluloid movie than anyone had done until that time. A decade later, he’s not too thrilled with how things have moved forward.

Trailer: Screwloose Lactrec

I know NOTHING about this film other than the trailers I have seen. This makes Real Steel look like solid family entertainment with a PG-13 flare thanks to this Family trailer, replacing the gritty Geek/MMA trailers from before.

But after watching this trailer, I’d be shocked if “winning by losing” was not the Rockyesque moral of the story. It screams of it. But you tell me… (But only if you don’t know, please. And if you do know more, please use SPOILER WARNINGS if you offer anything that no one really needs to know before seeing the movie.)

The Academy of Art University

So I get an e-mail… do I want to go up to San Francisco for a few days to attend the Academy of Art University’s Epidemic Film Festival, where they will honor Roger Corman and Eva Marie Saint?

Hmmm…

We like to make at least one trip a year to SF, so sure… would love to go. But what is this school again?

The answer was more clear once I saw the logo, which is about as ubiquitous in the streets of downtown San Francisco as the homeless or GAP ads.

As it turns out, this organization now has over 18,000 students studying in 17 fields of artistic endeavor. A key philosophy for the school, now run by the granddaughter of the founder, is that they have instructors who have legitimate professional experience. It’s not just an academic exercise. Our experience was with the Motion Picture & Television program, whose acting department is being run by veteran actress Diane Baker.

As it turned out, the Honorary Doctorates for Mrs. Saint and Mr. Corman were, in part, bait to draw attention to the school’s student film festival. But they duo and another 18 well-known actors, directors, producers, editors, and cinematographers who came to the school over the weekend, also were there to spend time with the students, discussing the real world workings of being in the business of show. I was surprisingly impressed by the whole effort. Who knew?

The student film festival felt like an event for the students, not like L.A., where they feel like a pitch meeting for 200. The films – and we saw every nominated film in 15 of the 16 award categories, with 2-4 nominees in each – were a lot like student films from any top film program, aside, perhaps from USC and NYU, where the money and access floats more freely. Three people made a strong impression on me.

First was actress Wei Ren, who won “Best Actress in MPT Acting Class” with an iron control of the frame as she did what was mostly a monologue. She was one of the many Asian actors we saw in films, which may be an issue for her when she lands in Los Angeles, but I can imagine her being the special sauce for some action directors who love the idea of an Asian dominatrix character in every film. And who knows where she can go from there?

Second was writer (and director) David Moutray, who wrote 2 of the 4 nominated screenplays in competition and won for the one film we didn’t see in full that I really wanted to see, Nobody’s Laughing, about an intervention with a clown (though the lack of other nominations for the film made me wonder if the idea wasn’t better than the film).

And last but not least, writer/director Marcio Gonçalves, who lost in his two categories (Best Director -Comedy and Best Narrative – Comedy), but while raw, has something going on. He obviously loves film. He has a vivid imagination that pushes him past his ability to deliver in some ways. His shorts (that I’ve seen) are all at least a third too long. His humor can be, well, sophomoric. But his work feels like a precursor to a career.

Here’s his film, The Booty Call, which got the best reaction of the night from the audience. The second half is especially good. He commits to his idea and the visuals so strongly that it could air on Funny or Die tomorrow. (Also, note Anthony Breznican’s separated-at-Asian-birth twin.)

Interesting experience. A reminder about judging things from a place of ignorance. And some great dim sum to boot.

Disney’s Digital Tools For Pirates

It’s really quite clever.

I assume they got my e-mail address from some consumer-side Disney e-mail for which I am signed up. (I sign up for a lot of consumer stuff, just to keep up with what the studios are doing.) The request for me to fill out a survey came on April 21. It wasn’t presented as a traditional survey, but it was. It wasn’t even very Pirate-y. It was a lot of the stuff that NATO and MPAA survey about, regarding movie viewing frequency, post-theatrical spending, etc… a few Disney questions, including about the parks.

On May 4, the “acceptance” note you see below. I didn’t “claim my cut,” as I was traveling.

Then, this morning, the invitation at the bottom of this entry, to a special free screening of Pirates on Saturday. To go, I’d need to pick up tickets on Thursday, demanding another level of commitment. And then, there is the request in the note: “And remember, Captain Jack is recruiting only those dressed in their pirate finery for the advance screening, so don your best Captain Jack, Blackbeard or other pirate garb to ensure your rightful passage to the Fountain of Youth.”

I would assume that no one will be kept from going for not being in costume. But not only does Disney build word-of-mouth with its base, but it gets the opportunity to create an advertising image – hundreds of pirates on line for the movie – and perhaps a press op as well.

At every level, they just keep getting more information and creating more opportunities to build the brand. Very, very smart.

The fourth note, which I’m not bothering to post, offers: “As a new member of Pirates Fans First, ye likely be wondering how we will keep ye abreast of the news from the high seas. A message in a bottle? A flair fired into the sky? A telegram delivered by parrot?”

Of course not. It’s their Twitter pitch with a prompt to follow @PiratesFF.

This stuff understands the web… targeted pitches to an audience that fits tightly… feed them happy juice and reap the rewards at a very low – compared to a few years ago – cost. Arrrrrrr…