Travis Yanan Goes to the Movies - Oscars Predictions

First off... highest rated Oscar telecast in years (should the whole ABC thing get worked out in NY). Avatar is nominated for 9 categories. And, well, when Titanic, then champion of the popular / box office ticket vote, was up for its awards, Oscar hit something like 55 million viewers. And, in unadjusted box office, Avatar is bigger than Titanic, not to mention appealing to viewers Oscar doesn't usually reach so well: men. I see no reason Oscar shouldn't sail past 40 million viewers this year (especially with this year's trend of big award show ratings). Not to mention the bigger Best Picture field with other crowd pleasers like Up and The Blind Side.

Now, my "official" predictions... mostly so I have some record, somewhere, of what my ballot is at the viewing party I'm attending. Which I have to head off to, so no time for explanations except that I have not seen any of the short subject films and many of the technical categories are based on guild award winners. As for Best Picture... well... that's the big question of the evening, isn't it? Hurt Locker or Avatar? For the record, I loved The Hurt Locker and HOPE it wins... but I have serious doubts and thus put my money elsewhere.

Best Picture: Avatar

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker

Best Actor: Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart

Best Actress: Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side

Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Inglorious Basterds

Best Supporting Actor: Mo'nique, Precious

Best Animated Feature Film: Up

Best Foreign Film: The White Ribbon

Best Original Screenplay: Quentin Tarantino, Inglorious Basterds

Best Adapted Screenplay: Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner, Up in the Air

Best Documentary Feature: The Cove

Best Original Score: Up

Best Original Song: "The Weary Kind," Crazy Heart

Best Film Editing: The Hurt Locker

Best Cinematography: Avatar

Best Costume Design: The Young Victoria

Best Art Direction: Avatar

Best Makeup: Star Trek

Best Visual Effects: Avatar

Best Documentary Short Subject: China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province

Best Short Film, Animated: A Matter of Loaf and Death

Best Short Film, Live Action: The Door

Best Sound Editing: Avatar

Best Sound Mixing: The Hurt Locker

Late Night at the Movies

Went to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at midnight at The Grove with a bunch of friends. Going to be a late morning... I can tell...

Opinion of the movie... well, it was about damn time it came out, what with the extra delay. Almost two years since Order of the Phoenix! HBP is getting AMAZING reviews (95% last I looked at rottentomatoes.com) and I'm hard-pressed to understand why, versus the other HP films (which, in release order, are at 78%, 82%, 89%, 88%, and 77%). It's a very slow, methodical, well-made film. Lots of character and relationship stuff and comedy. But to be honest, it doesn't have the magic and thrills of the last two adventures (which were adventures) or the first three films, which were far more magical and kids-y entertainment... and then, y'know, people started DYING. My favorite remains Prison of Azkaban of the movies.

In fact, a lot of the action from the book was removed entirely! And I damn well want to know why. I wouldn't be so sodding ambivalent about HBP if Deathly Hallows were being released all at once. But as it's being split into two parts, HBP is no longer the prelude to the end. In the films, it's not, with DH being two parts (rather than making a five-hour long movie... I totally get it...), and we all remember the stop-and-go search that was the first half of DH... I'm not going to be getting a full serving of my Potter magic and amazement fix until 2011 (and, oh boy, does that final movie installment have to deliver in spades). Perhaps some of the action from HBP was saved to spice DH: Part I up?

Technically, and story-wise, HBP is the most filmic since PoA. The pervading sense of doubt and confusion and fear and loss couples brilliantly with muted color tones, tons of fog and mist and clouds, and some very stark black-and-white lighting contrasting. So, um, go Bruno Delbonnel (the director of photography)?

Acting continues to improve with age on the part of the young leads (including Tom Felton's Draco), while having more Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix is always, always, always a welcome thing.

But the fact of the matter is, this movie is all about "the snogging". Harry and Ginny. Ron and Lavender. Hermione and Cormac. Ron and Hermione. Which, okay, they're 16... of course it's about the snogging. Surprisingly little is actually made of the Half-Blood Prince itself in the film (though, to be sure, the prop gets tons of screen time). Voldemort's presence is felt less in this film than in any besides PoA (which was, of course, more about the Dementors and Sirius than about Mr. V). Odd, considering his resurrection at the end of Goblet of Fire and his overwhelming presence that pervaded OotP. Ralph Fiennes is nowhere to be seen (besides a quick flash / glimpse of footage from OotP), though we are, of course, treated to a few scenes of Tom Riddle (which may have been enthralling in the book, but on the screen they, of course, play purely as exposition so thankfully there are only three Pensieve memories). Considering what's to come, I'd have preferred a far more ominous tone.

To sum it up... a friend found it incredibly boring while another felt herself nodding off halfway through.

Yeah.

But, hey, at least it's not incredibly stupid like Transformers 2 (which, despite it's seeming mission statement to be nothing more than a barely connected series of massive explosions, chases, and giant CGI robot battles, ALSO managed to be boring for a sizable chunk).

I've rewatched, in theaters, PoA, GoF, and OotP. I won't be making the return trip for HBP.

Can it be Summer 2011 yet?

TV Movie to Feature Movie... how's HSM3 doing?

So a bit over a year ago, HSM2 shocked-ish the ratings world with a then-record-smashing 17.2 million viewers and something like an 80 share in female kids/tweens. And with all of the "viewing parties" there was really no tracking exactly how big it was. The date of the movie premiere was also considered "genius" as it was a Friday night after many kids are back from summer camps and before they go to school.

Then Disney decided the third installment wouldn't be seen for free on TV, but people would have to pay (what Box Office Mojo claims in 2008 is) an average of $7.08 per ticket to see it. Oh, and it came out towards the end of October when kids are still in school.

So the question is... how many would show up?

Estimates for Friday are in. $16.9 million That's 2.387 million people based on average ticket prices. That's certainly a decent sized audience immediately going out to buy for something they used to get for free. Oh, and of course we have no idea what Saturday and Sunday (with their matinees) will bring. In fact, I have a feeling that the kiddie matinees are going to be huge.

The only thing that's going to stop HSM3 from reaching Iron Man and Indiana Jones 4 is that it doesn't cross over very well to adult audiences. However, I suspect it's going to get pretty close. After all, the teenage girl repeat audience is largely responsible for Titanic's $600M domestic take (that film, however, had massive crossover appeal, huge drama, and a cartload of Oscars). Repeats of the original HSM and HSM2 continue to put much on The CW to shame for sheer audience size (certainly for repeat audience size)... so there's definitely going to be some longevity in HSM3. The question is how much. And we talking about a film that plays in the Top 5 through the winter holidays? Or will November 21st's Twilight take a, er, chunk of the teen audience away?

BTW, Saw V for about $14 million, and certainly won't catch HSM3 because horror movies typically have their best day on Friday (date night). So it'll go down a bit tomorrow, and severely on Sunday.

The Dark Knight

Placeholder while I go to the ArcLight (sigh, not that one... the Sherman Oaks one... I'm doing the CineDome on Sunday). It'll probably be at least 4am when I get back... but reactions will follow. Mostly, though, I'm excited to see WTF the crowd is like. This is gonna be guano bananas.

The idea of this film beating Spider-Man 3 when SM3 grossed about 3x what Batman Begins did in their respective opening weekends... well, it's just all sorts of astounding. But there's a swell and it may be all hype and buzz... but, man, I feel like this one is going to shatter everything. And if it's as good as they say? Well... it's too soon to talk Titanic isn't it... afterall, multiples aren't what they used to be. But there isn't another truly big movie coming out until, what, Tropic Thunder? We could be talking complete and total pwn.

OKAY

So, first off... not the "best movie ever". A really, really, really good movie. It doesn't actually feel like a comic book movie... aside from the crazy guy with the weird costume choices and crazy makeup and the billionaire vigilante in the batsuit. It plays a lot closer, really, to a classic crime movie. As it should - the Batman comic books are littered with mob plot lines and organized crime characters.

Interestingly, though this is a Batman movie... the protagonist is Harvey Dent. At least in the classic film sense of the word protagonist. The biggest arc is his. He is the catalyst for change (though he says that Batman is).

And the movie is about choices.

But, really, it's a showcase for Heath Ledger who absolutely and completely disappears into the backstoryless Joker character. I mean, entirely.

Unlike other midnight screenings I've been to... there was a reverence at this movie. On the outset there's usually a lot of hooting and hollering and "whoo!" etc. There were one or two in my theater who did that.

And they were promptly hushed. A silence came over the crowd even as the Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures logos played.

It was eerie.

And, of course, Ledger got cheers when his name flashed on screen at the end.

This movie is going to be a massive, smash hit. And it's going to have more to do with Heath Ledger's death than anything else in or about the movie (after all, Batman Begins got great critical marks... but no one was talking about it breaking box office records... which makes me wonder what to expect for the box office of the inevitable third film... okay, that's not fair, Begins had to deal with a viewing audience that have Batman & Robin aftertaste still in its mouth 8 years later, and The Dark Knight was riding a brilliant marketing campaign well before Ledger's death... I digress). The tragedy of his death, the curiosity of seeing his final completed film... that is, ultimately, what's driving the massive audience to this movie. I'm not sure if it extends beyond my generation. Like most blockbuster midnight screenings, the crowd was young and very male-skewing. So I don't know if the feeling of loss (of a star, not just of a great actor) extends to even Gen X, let alone the Baby Boom. But the James Dean analogies are spot on. Heath is going to live on pretty much close to forever (as long as the film medium lasts), and his last film was his best performance.

SO

Apparently we're looking at $18.48 million from the midnight showings. Which doesn't include the 3am or 6am showings (yeah, I know).

Batman Begins "only" grossed $15.1 million on its opening day.

BTW

There's a nice cameo I forgot to mention in the opening minutes that helps frame the scale of this movie versus the first one... at least in terms of the villains. I'll let you see it for yourself, but I appreciated the literary device employed.

Yeah

Iron Man is amazing. Stay for the end of the credits. You'll love it (especially if you're a Marvel fanboy). I wasn't so big on the inevitable final, climactic showdown... but it was better than a lot of other movies' obvious, big budget final climactic showdowns. The rest of the movie? Spot fucking on. Seriously.

Heck, I'm even glad I went to see it instead of watching the hours and hours of TV I now have waiting for the weekend (or, perhaps, during a lull at work... will there ever be one???)

That includes new Lost.

Yeah. That good.