Screenwriter »

• How easy was it to guess the biggest films of 2011?

  May 13, 2012 @ 10:26 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  I know I am a bit late on this, but I recently remembered that, back in December 2010, I made an attempt to predict the most successful films of the looming year. I could have done better. But it is still faintly chilling that there was so much correlation between my guesses and the eventual winners. Here’s what I said:

  1. PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES

  2. HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2

  3. TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON

  4. CARS 2

  5. ADVENTURES OF TINTIN: SECRET OF THE UNICORN

  6. KUNG FU PANDA 2

  7. THOR

  8. THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 1

  9. THE HANGOVER PART II

  10. SHERLOCK HOLMES 2

  And here’s the eventual winners with my predictions in brackets.

  1. HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2 (2)

  2. TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON(3)

  3. PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES (1)

  4. THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN PART 1 (8)

  5. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE — GHOST PROTOCOL (N/A)

  6. KUNG FU PANDA 2 (6)

  7. FAST FIVE (N/A)

  8. THE HANGOVER PART II (9)

  9. THE SMURFS (N/A)

  10. CARS 2 (4)

  What do we learn from this? Well, it proves that, when it comes to predicting the takings of Kung Fu Panda films, Screenwriter is your only man. I got everything else wrong. Forgetting how big Tom Cruise remains in Rest of World, I failed to anticipate the huge success of Mission: Impossible. I also — foolishly, I now realise — didn’t quite grasp the number of parents who, distraught on bank holiday afternoons, would return to the bosom of The Smurfs. It should have been obvious that the throwaway cartoon would slip past the more prestigious Cars 2. My biggest mistake was, however, surely a mad belief that Tintin would lay all before it. It is easy to forget that Herge’s reporter remains a fairly obscure character in the United States. That film eventually wobbled towards the number 16 spot.

  But I would still maintain that the fact that one can, in an idle half hour, predict seven of the following year’s top 10 says something rather unhappy about the current state of cinema. It’s not as if any of the entries I didn’t mention were from beyond left field: the fourth Mission: Impossible, the fifth Fast and the Furious, the first Smurfs. None of my own failed predictions were particularly eccentric.

  The temptation is to say: “Oh it was ever thus”. It was not. Let’s go back 50 years to lovely old 1962. Here is the US top ten for that year.

  1. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

  2. THE LONGEST DAY

  3. IN SEARCH OF THE CASTAWAYS

  4. WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?

  5. THE MUSIC MAN

  6. DR NO

  7. THAT TOUCH OF MINK

  8. MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY

  9. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

  10. GYPSY

  Yikes. It seems even longer ago than half a century. I hardly need to point out the most obvious point. There is not a single sequel in the list. Unless I’m wrong there is only one remake — Mutiny on the Bounty. A smart fellow might have guessed that two of the era’s biggest musicals — Gypsy and The Music Man — would generate massive hits. I suppose Lawrence of Arabia, a weighty epic, always looked to make a significant amount of money. Dr No was based on a very popular novel, but, then again, it didn’t even manage to break the top five in the US. The third biggest picture, In Search of the Castaways, is an almost forgotten Disney live-action picture.

  Now, it would be wise not to get to dewy eyed. The 1962 list is not exactly packed with classics. Lawrence of Arabia (though I have reservations) fits the bill. To Kill a Mockingbird is durably solid. Dr No is a throat-clearing exercise for From Russia With Love and Goldfinger. The Longest Day is a bit bloated. We will, however, give out an unqualified cheer to celebrate the presence of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Now, there’s a movie.

  The important point is that the films form an eclectic list that appealed to a wide variety of demographics. This year it’s very hard to imagine anything that’s not a prequel or a sequel making the top spot. It’s going to be The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises or The Hobbit. Isn’t it? The only non-sequel that looked like having a chance was The Hunger Games, but it underperformed outside America and has already been pummelled by those pesky Avengers.

  I would have a guess at 2012. But this game is just too dispiriting.

  

   

• The Hunger Games breaks the franchise drought.

  March 25, 2012 @ 9:27 pm | by Donald Clarke

  As I noted in my review for the nifty The Hunger Games, all Hollywood — not just the film’s backers at Lionsgate — were keenly hoping that the adaptation of Suzanne Collins’s hit novel would eat the box office alive. There have been far too many failed attempts to launch new franchises in recent years. If things had gone differently, we would currently be anticipating the fourth Eragon film and the third Golden Compass movie. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: for all the sales of the corresponding books, those flops proved that there are only two J K Rowlings (one of whom is called Stephenie Meyer). Harry Potter is no more. Twilight is about to expire. Somebody, somewhere has to demonstrate that it’s possible to launch a new franchise.

  

  Where do you think you’re going, 21 Jump Street?

  The Hunger Games seems to have achieved that feat. It looks as if Gary Ross’s picture has taken about $155 million at the US box office this weekend. Quite a few records have been broken. That’s the highest ever debut for a non-sequel and it’s the best result for a picture opening outside the summer blockbuster season. It is the third-biggest opening of any sort. So, barring catastrophe, Lionsgate will get to adapt the remaining two books in Ms Collins’s trilogy. With staggering cynicism, the studio has already suggested that the final volume — a mere 390 widely-spaced pages — will spawn two films. When the Harry Potter guys split Deathly Hallows (admittedly a huge book) they unleashed a monster.

  There are a few obvious reasons for the film’s success. The books were seriously big sellers (even if Suzanne hasn’t quite matched the achievements of either Ms Rowling). The film is actually pretty darn good. And, most importantly, it is the sort of entertainment that crosses demographics. Twilight is hampered by the glass ceiling imposed by the series’ near-exclusive appeal to teenage girls and younger women. Why does Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 1, one of the decade’s most successful films, register only 4.7/10 with visitors to the Internet Movie Database? Because teenage boys love to hate it and that demographic votes often on IMDb. The Hunger Games might have a female protagonist, but there’s very little of that drippy hugging, kissing and mooning. People get gutted with knives, blown to smithereens by mines and attacked by killer bees. Cool! (In an aside, expect outraged, conservative parents to start an anti-Hunger Games campaign anytime now.)

  A few warning notes should be sounded. As is often the case with the American trades, much of the attention has been focussed on the US figures. The Hunger Games has not performed nearly so well in the rest of the world. In a sense, we are experiencing the exact opposite of what occurred two weeks ago when John Carter opened. That film bombed in the US, but did perfectly well in Russia and China. In fact, it looks as if the Disney “flop” made about $10 million more than The Hunger Games in ROW on its opening. Hang on a moment. We expect a film to make at least 55 percent of its money outside the US. The Hunger Games is lagging behind John Carter. So John Carter is the hit. Right?

  Well, not quite. Word of mouth matters. Carter is slipping. The Hunger Games will probably hold up very well in future weeks. Moreover, the US opening is so huge it will compensate for the relatively soft “overseas” figures. But Lionsgate should not sleep too comfortably in their beds. Remember Narnia. The first film in that cycle opened spectacularly well. Subsequent adventures slipped badly at the box office. Fox, who took over from Disney when part two failed in the US, are still maintaining that The Magician’s Nephew is on the way. Time has moved on. The juvenile actors are all now adults. I would urge C S Lewis fans not to hold their breath.

  So what does it all mean? Well, you don’t get through many such musings without quoting the most famous of William Goldman’s maxims. Wait for it. Wait for it.

  NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING.

  Ah, that feels better.

• The strange story of the Jack and Jill press show.

  February 6, 2012 @ 10:04 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Here’s an odd one. Every now and then, some distributor will fail to screen a film for the press in this territory. More often than not the movie will be shown to our cousins across the Irish Sea. A good example is the recent Liam Neeson thriller The Grey. It is not unreasonable for readers to assume that the film in question must stink like last week’s socks. They’re usually right. But, quite often, the reason is pure meanness. The Grey, for example, has actually got fairly decent reviews. What a nuisance!

  

  But not for viewers in the UK.

  In over a decade at this job I cannot remember an instance where a mainstream film was screened for the Irish critics, but not for their UK colleagues. Until now. Look about the British papers this week and you will find no notices for Jack and Jill, Adam Sandler’s latest atrocity. Yet the fine people at Sony Ireland (good for you, folks)  unspooled the picture for your current correspondent and his fellow hacks. I really wanted to reward their professionalism by giving Jack and Jill a good review. But, well, it’s a film in which Adam Sandler plays an annoying man and his more annoying sister. It would have been an appalling dereliction of duty to lead you astray.

  What’s up? Well, it is worth noting (and regretting) that Mr Sandler’s pictures do significantly better on the island of Ireland — they particularly love them in Larne and Lisburn, incidentally — than they do in what Peter Robinson calls the mainland. Even though the reviews were bound to be awful, it may have been deemed worth the risk to make sure Irish Sandlerphiles were aware he was doing his awful thing in the nation’s blameless cinemas.

  Different rules apply in different territories. Note, for instance, that studios very often fail to screen horror films for American critics, but show them to Europeans. This surely stems from an interesting distinction between the reviewers on either side of the Atlantic. American pundits have never taken horror seriously. We are — in that regard at least — a bit more open minded.

  Obviously, domestic readers will be furious that they are left unable to peruse fascinating reviews in their soaraway Ticket. But does the lack of screenings have any effect on box-office returns? Not at first. But, as Tara Brady pointed out in a recent Rotten Potatoes column, such films do tend to flag after a few weeks. You watch. Jack and Jill will do much better here than it does in the UK. Oh, hang on. That would have happened anyway. We’re bleeding idiots in that regard.

• The Artist is a silent film? You’re kidding me!

  January 18, 2012 @ 7:30 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Here’s one of those delightful non-stories. The sensationalist version of the headline goes like this: PUNTERS DEMAND REFUNDS AFTER DISCOVERING THE ARTIST IS SILENT FILM. A more accurate translation of the facts would run: A FEW PUNTERS IN ONE CINEMA HAVE DEMANDED REFUNDS BECAUSE THEY’RE BLEEDING HALF-WITS.

  

  Huh? Huh? I can’t hear anything!

  Yes, as the Guardian reports, it seems that one or two “guests” at a Liverpool cinema have asked for their money back.The story tells us that (even more bizarrely) the disappointed scousers were also unhappy to discover that the film was presented in the narrower academy ratio. I imagine if you phoned around every cinema in Britain and Ireland you’d find tales of bizarre complaints concerning virtually every picture. Shame had too much sex in it. Mrs Thatcher wasn’t really made of iron. Remember that woman who sued because Drive was insufficiently idiotic? Remember the complaints about Bad Santa being unsuitable for toddlers? There’s no accounting for the weirdness of some people.

  As it happens, The Artist has done very well in the UK and Ireland. Its per-screen average went up last week and the word-of-mouth is uniformly positive. But the film has not taken off in the United States. It is currently way behind where Slumdog Millionaire — that year’s presumed Oscar winner — stood at the relevant point in 2009. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, a pretty tricky sort of film, is beating the pants off Michel Hazanavicius’s picture at most locations. This news offers, perhaps, the only barrier to The Artist winning the Oscar in a month’s time. Everybody (not least the Weinstein brothers) had assumed the picture would be a small smash by this point. The Academy does want to be seen to be supporting vaguely mainstream films.

  Since The Artist is hardly “difficult”, we must grumpily assume that the US public is being turned off  by the picture’s lack of spoken dialogue (and, perhaps, the smallness of its frame). If, by any chance, you are reading this in Portland or Pittsburgh, bop your pals on the head and cart them off to a screening. The poor wee film does deserve to do better. Mind you, I reckon it will still take the big prize.

• The strange business of Hollywood and its seasons

  September 15, 2011 @ 4:51 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  When knocking up the Autumn movie preview for tomorrow’s Ticket, I was again struck by the way Hollywood stubbornly insists on thinking in seasons. That is to say a certain time of the year is regarded as suitable for a particular type of film. This is a classic example of William Goldman‘s Nobody Knows Anything syndrome. The urbane screenwriter explained that the studios repeatedly  convince themselves that, if something works once, it will work forever more. Sounds sensible. But the problem is isolating that “something”. Until 1975, Hollywood tended to favour low-budget schlock in the summer. Then Jaws broke and, ever after, summer became the season to release big-budget event movies. Never mind the fact that in countries where air conditioning is not commonplace in cinemas — or at least not highly desirable —  the hot season has never been a particularly busy time for movie-going. The moguls have decided that summer is superhero time.

  We are currently drifting into Oscar season. It has become a commonplace that Academy voters — being such old fools, you see — can’t remember anything that happened more than three months ago. So, all the supposedly classy films emerge in the late autumn and early winter.

  Now, there are certain rules that make sense. Releasing kids’ films during school holidays is obviously a smart idea. Films whose plots are firmly tied to a season — the upcoming New Year’s Eve, for example — seem a bit stranded when released away from that period.

  But the other rules are surely self-fulfilling prophecies. Of course, most films that win the best picture Oscar are released in winter. Most films that are — as we’ve explained — likely to win that award emerge in the gloomy months. The same logic undermines the summer blockbuster dictum.

  And yet. The Hurt Locker, winner two years ago, came out in June. Alice in Wonderland, currently the ninth biggest film of all time, was released in March. America, despite its great tradition of freedom, can be a very hide-bound place. Try and buy a deck chair in October and you will, most likely, leave the mega-store disappointed. Entire lines of clothing are shuffled into the warehouse during supposedly unsuitable months. Patterns help the world make sense. When you are running a multi-billion dollar industry, the last thing you want to consider is a world that fails to abide by easily digestible rules.

  Expect the seasonal nonsense to continue for some time to come. Nobody knows anything.

• The Guard is a smash (and those Fleadh results in full)

  July 12, 2011 @ 7:23 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  This weeks’s box-office news brings interesting tidings.  Both The Guard and The Tree of Life have gone bananas. To deal with the Irish beast first, John Michael McDonagh’s film hoovered up in excess of half a million euro at the nation’s cinemas over the weekend. To put this in perspective, the film managed to make it to the number five spot in the combined UK and Ireland chart on its domestic takings alone. (The picture does not emerge in the UK for another month or so.) Indeed, it was the highest new entry in the chart. A great many movie slots on UK radio shows are going to be very confused by that news. Box-office experts may contradict me, but I would be astonished if an Irish-only release has ever charted so high in the combined territories hit parade.

  So, how did they manage it? It’s a good movie, but plenty of  good Irish movies have bombed. People adore Brendan Gleeson (why wouldn’t they?), but he’s been in his fair share of commercial disappointments. It helps that there’s a movie star in the thing. Don Cheadle may not be all that famous, but his presence assures punters that this is a proper film. It also helps that the distributors picked their release date very cannily. With the decks cleared for some wizard film next week, there was plenty of space for a smaller picture to stretch out and breathe.

  One assumes that — following that kerfuffle we won’t mention again — 2oth Century Fox had a similar plan for The Tree of Life. That also paid off. The picture’s limited release had been a roaring success. Despite the fact that the thing doesn’t really have a story and the characters spend a great deal of time chatting with God, Malick’s confounding picture took £406,000 in the UK and Ireland. That works out at a stonking per-screen average of £5,414. The Guardian reports that the Curzon Soho — by no means an enormous cinema — somehow managed to draw in £18,000. It will be interesting to see, once curiosity wanes and word gets out about its oddness, whether the film develops any serious legs.

  The Guard also managed to pick up the audience prize for best Irish film at the Galway Film Fleadh. The best first feature was shared between Darragh Byrne’s likable Parked and Terry McMahon’s plain barmy Charlie Casanova. The results in full are below. Congratulations to all. This list is pasted from an early press release, so please excuse slightly messy formatting.

  The Best Irish Feature Award:

  Winner THE GUARD

  Director John Michael McDonagh

  Producer Andrew Lowe & Ed Guiney

  The Best Feature Documentary in association with Eugene F. Collins presented by Andrea Martin

  In Second Place: DON’T ASK DON’T TELL

  Director: John C Walsh

  Producer: Tara Power, Joselyn Allen, Daryl Roth

  Winner: BERNADETTE: NOTES ON A POLITICAL JOURNEY

  Directed & Produced by Lelia Doolan

  The Best First Feature has been awarded to joint winners:

  PARKED

  Directed by Darragh Byrne

  Produced by Jacqueline Kerrin & Dominic Wright

  CHARLIE CASANOVA

  Directed & Produced by Terry McMahon.

  Winner of the Galway Film Fleadh Pitching Award

  Rioghach Ni Ghrioghair “Death Rattle”

  SHORTS JURY AWARDS

  The Best First Animation Award in association with the Cartoon Saloon – Presented by Paul Young

  Second Place: The Art of Making Friends

  Directed & Produced by Paul McNulty

  Winner: SIGNS

  Directed & Produced by Vincent Gallagher

  The James Horgan Award for Best Animation in association with Telegael

  Special  Mention: Children in Direct Provision

  Director – Galway Refugee Support Group

  Producer – Sharon Lynch and children resident in Direct Provision Centre’s

  Second Place: The Gentleman’s Guide to Villainy

  Director: Aidan Mcteer

  Producer: Aurelie Gauthier

  Winner:  THE BOY WHO LIVED IN A BUBBLE

  Director: Kealan O’Rourke

  Producer: Brian Willis

  The Tiernan McBride Award for Best Short Drama sponsored by Waveform Studios:

  JOINTLY AWARD TO:

  ASAL

  Director: Tom Sullivan

  Producer: Aislinn Ni Chuinneagain

  AND

  EVEN GODS

  Director:  Phil Harrison

  Producer:  Lisa Barros D’Sa, & Phil Harrison

  The Best First Short Drama in association with Mazars presented by Paul Mee:

  Winner:  PENTECOST

  Direcctor:  Peter Mc Donald

  Producer:  Eimear O’Kane

  The Best Short Documentary Award in association with Studio Solas Teo

  Special Mention

  Halls Without Walls

  Directed & Producer by Mia Mullarkey

  Winner: Needle Exchange

  Director – Colm Quinn

  Producer – Andrew Freedma

  The Donal Gilligan Award for Best Cinematography in a Short Film.

  Michael Lavelle for Mummy’s Little Helper

  The International Federation of Film Societies is proud to award for the first time the Don Quixote Award:

  WINNER: The Boy Who Lived In A Bubble

  Director: Kealan O’Rourke

  Producer: Brian Willis

  30 Second Film Festival Judges Award

  Winner:  RUTH MEEHAN

• How do you make a hit documentary?

  June 9, 2011 @ 10:18 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  Make it about cars. That’s how. Thank you and good night.

  The market for documentaries has fluctuated wildly over the last decade. All the computer screens went green in 2004 when Michael Moore’s entertaining, wildly unreliable Fahrenheit 9/11 took the Palme d’Or, the Academy Award and — most importantly — over $200 million at the world’s box offices. Jeez! People really did hate George Bush. Didn’t they?

  In the aftermath, films such as  Super Size Me, March of the Penguins, and An Inconvenient Truth all took serious coin and it was decided that the multiplex had, against all odds, become a welcoming place for factual cinema. The supposed boom didn’t last. In the years following the release of An Inconvenient Truth, no documentary managed to become anything like a sizable hit.

  Over the last few months, however, two films have shown reasonable resilience at the combined British and Irish box office. Asif Kapadia’s superb Senna, biopic of the Brazilian motor racing driver, opened last week to comparatively furious enthusiasm. Playing in 67 screens in the two countries, the picture took £375,000 at a massive average of £5,600 per screen. Meanwhile TT3D: Closer to the Edge, a dynamic 3-D study of the Isle of Man TT races, continues to play to almost equally packed houses.

  Aside from noting the continuing drawing power of motor sports, this information reminds us how wise it is to manage resources and expectations when marketing fringe entertainments. During the over-inflated boom period for factual films, two many distributors propelled too many documentaries into something like a wide release. TT-3D and Senna were both released on a reasonably modest number of screens. Punters sought them out and the cinemas became agreeably stuffed.

  Alas, it seems that — the freak one-off that is Michael Moore aside — documentaries are never going to draw droves of punters towards the cinemas. It’s a peculiar thing. Somewhere along the line it was decided that documentaries belong on the telly. And yet. Consider the healthy business achieved in these territories by His & Hers. Anything is still possible.

• Why do the Irish like comedies?

  May 29, 2011 @ 11:03 pm | by Donald Clarke

  It looks as if The Hangover Part II and Kung Fu Panda 2 might have — in financial terms, at least — saved the year for cinema. Despite being little more than a pallid relocation of the first film to Southeast Asia, H2 has, apparently, just delivered the biggest ever opening for a comedy in the US. Its four-day figures are somewhere in the region of $118 million. KFP2 also delivered with a decent, if not spectacular, $62.4 million.

  

  “Ha ha ha! She’s on, like, fire, dude. Genius!”

  The Hangover Part II will undoubtedly eat up the Irish box office. How do we know? Well, for some obscure reason, American comedies always do disproportionately well in this territory. The first Hangover film was a case in point. Despite going up against a Harry Potter picture, that amusing comedy took more money in this territory than any other release during 2009. Back in 2005, we pushed an even less likely entity to the top of the charts. Yes, virtually alone among the world’s cinema-goers, the Irish made Meet the Fockers their favourite film of that year. Really?

  It’s an interesting and peculiar phenomenon. Adam Sandler might struggle in Cambodia or South Korea. But, in Ireland, Grown Ups will play to packed houses throughout the summer. If Kevin James gets a bucket stuck on his head. We’ll turn out in droves to see him attempt a removal.

  Assessing the roots behind any supposed national trait is a tricky business. Before long you’re indulging in national stereotypes and making quips about Germans depositing towels on beach loungers. So, rather than offer an answer to the conundrum, I’ll leave it as a hanging question. There is no doubt that, more than most nations, we seek to find humour in the most unlikely entertainments. You find this most often at the theatre (if you are eccentric enough to attend such a space). Again and again punters will force out laughs at even the most tepidly amusing gags. At a recent trip to a play (which I was paid to attend) I was amazed and annoyed to hear people snorting with laughter at positively tragic turns of events. It’s as if we don’t feel we’ve been entertained unless we’ve been given a laugh.

  I guess it’s a post-colonial thing. My Big Book of Facile Answers informs me that all such phenomena are post-colonial in origin.

• Thor is a conservative film.

  May 8, 2011 @ 5:26 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  As I may have mentioned before, I am a great fan of the eccentric right-wing website Conservapedia. Established by one Andy Schlafly, son to well-known liberal-bashing blowhard Phyllis Schlafly, the site sells itself as a Conservative alternative to the notoriously Trotskyite Wikipedia. As Mr Schlafly sees it, Wikipedia is worryingly in thrall to such pseudosciences as Darwinism and dangerously enamoured by militant “socialists” such as Comrade Barack Obama (who seems to be simultaneously a secret Muslim, an atheist and inclined towards leftist Afro-centric Christian sects).

  Conservapedia does occasionally move from kicking liberals to bigging-up rare examples of right-wing incursion into the leftist-dominated media. One such case is their attempt to detail great “Conservative Movies“.

  The list is an absolute hoot. I suppose it’s hard to argue with — current number one — the recent, panned version of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (though the author’s militant atheism can’t please the Conservapedians). It’s true to say The Exorcist seems, at its heart, to be a Christian (not to say Catholic) picture, but William Friedkin, the director, has always come across as an old-school Hollywood liberal. Spider-Man is a still more baffling choice. Sam Raimi, director of The Evil Dead and once a target for anti video-nasty campaigners, would, I’m sure, be surprised to hear that his film “pokes fun at liberals (entertainers and journalist)”. The version of J J Jameson, editor of the Daily Bugle, presented there — different to the incarnation in the comics — seems far closer to Kelvin MacKenzie, red-blooded former editor of The Sun, than he is to Ben Bradlee or Harold Evans.

  It’s true to say that superhero movies do often — though not always — uphold traditional values of justice and retribution. So it’s not altogether surprising that Conservapedia has, this weekend, decided to celebrate the fact that “Thor — a candidate for Best Conservative Movies — wins big at the box office, while a Jodie Foster-directed movie nearly strikes out”. Ms Foster, director of The Beaver, is, of course, a dangerous liberal. Mind you, Ms Foster’s bizarre drama does star Mel Gibson, an actor who is rarely confused with Rosa Luxemburg. The box-office figures can, perhaps, be seen as a Rorschach Blot. Screw up your eyes and, depending upon your affiliation, you can see them as evidence of growing reactionary feeling or confirmation that Obamunism is infecting today’s cinema-going youth.

  Anyway, for the record, here is Conservapedia’s list of the top ten Conservative Movies.

  Atlas Shrugged (2011) Well, d’uh.

  Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Arguably.

  The Exorcist (1973) At a stretch.

  Dark Matter (2008) What now? Virtually unseen indie featuring, of all people, Meryl Streep.

  Spider-Man (2002) Hardly.

  Gone With the Wind (1939) Yeah, okay.

  Ben-Hur (1959) Just about.

  Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008) Well, d’uh.

  Hillary: The Movie (2008) Blame the left-wing entertainment establishment for the obscurity of this fair and balanced study of the current US secretary of state.

  Indoctrinate U (2007) Again, liberal distributors have kept this film from you.

• All hail Box Office Quant!

  April 11, 2011 @ 10:23 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  It is only fair, now and then, to laud film “blogs” that, in their diligence and originality, put this piece of pap to shame. The chap at Box Office Quant deserve particular praise. Box office statistics are, of course, something that only interests nerds such as myself. But, even if you are totally uninterested in that field, you can’t help but be impressed by the work Edmund Helmer puts in. Some oddity about the film business strikes him and, rather than filing it away into an unused frontal lobe, he grabs every available digital tool and analyses the issue into exhausted submission.

  One recent post considered the way studios inflate their opening weekend figures. Are you interested which major studio is most guilty of overestimating their film’s takings? Probably not. You almost certainly have better things to do with your time. Our Edmund sat down and tabulated the results and eventually determined that Sony Pictures are the guiltiest in this field. DreamWorks, by way of contrast, appear to be impressively scrupulous.

  Ever wonder what a map that detailed the sites of film locations throughout the last century would look like? Wonder no longer, my friend. Here is the beast. At first glance, the map seems moderately impressive. But click on any sample dot and you will see a list of all the films that were shot in the relevant locations. Click near Cellbridge and you find mention of Barry Lyndon. Dally near Ma’am Cross, County Galway and the dread words “Far and Away” appear. What’s that single dot in deepest Siberia? Bizarrely, it’s Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer. And you thought it might be Stalker.

  This man’s an international treasure.