Deadlines? What Deadlines?

Titanic and, to an extent, Avatar opened soft. Word of mouth was so good that they just kept on going and going and going... titanic also went horribly over budget. The consensus at the studio was that it was going to be a massive failure, even after the first weekend. Having James Cameron at the helm helped a lot I think. It's an incredibly well made film. Titanic also did the clever trick of treating the disaster movie elements as a sub plot and instead focused on the romance and class conflict parts of the story. I don't think anyone had done that before. The gem was a clever maguffin that was handled in an interesting way. I may have had something in my eye when Rose dropped it into the sea and you're a bad person and you're monster if you didn't and you make me sad and it's the greatest movie ever made and everyone should totally stan Leo and Kate and try to blame me!

This is a more interesting source. They actually graph the box office cume over time and you can even compare movies. They also get super granular with the data; like ranking all time domestic performance on individual days (e.g. 5th Monday, Tuesday, etc.). For example, Top Gun: Maverick not only has the best legs of any movie this year, it has some of the best legs of all time. After the first week, there are a lot of individual days where it's top ten, top five, or top 3 all-time. This is only for domestic and unadjusted for inflation. Here's TG: M Vs Black Panther, which is next up in the all time ranking. I kind of guesstimated based on how the curve is trending to arrive at $700 million in a week or so. That might sound conservative, but if you look at Dr. Strange 2, it hemorrhages screens in the 9th week (shortly after the streaming release) and the box office goes from 2.6 million in week 8 to needing almost 3 weeks to make its next million. TG:M had its digital release last week. If TG:M can make it to $696-697 million by Monday morning, $700M+ seems pretty certain. Regarding Thor, that film had a BvS production budget and it isn't going do BvS's box office; and that was a film that was criticized pretty heavily for underperforming. Thor 4 probably didn't have quite the same hype, but the hype was still pretty considerable. Thor 4 isn't a bomb by any means, but you don't spend $250 million in the 3rd Thor sequel without expecting it to join the billion dollar club; especially since this is Thor's first appearance post-Endgame. As it stands, when you account for the lack of a Chinese release, it'll do roughly the same business as the Thor: Ragnarok.

I'm watching it sloooowly claw its way to $700 million domestic. That'll probably be late next week or the week after if it doesn't fall off a cliff. Jurassic World did Way better than I thought it would. Asia Pacific definitely loves its dinosaur movies. Am I the only one who's puzzled at the lack of commentary regarding Thor 4's under-performance?

Regarding the Krista Freidland incident: "Duuurrr. Hey Krista. What the fuck you doin' in Alberta?" Seriously? That's the best "own" this dipshit lunkhead dumbkoff could come up with? Pathetic. We should all be embarrassed; as a province and as a nation. She has 70k followers. I just want to see how these freedom loving suburban dipshits handle prison. One day in big boy jail and they'll chill the fuck out, I promise.

So much repressed sexual energy in the latest episode of Lower Decks. Raisin farming is kind of awesome, actually.

It's been a while for me but yeah, Enemy Mine was great.

I had no idea we had this kind of technology. Trudeau's been working on this? Good on him.

Are you familiar with the Manhattan Project or HUAC? A sausage festival from start to finish. Turkey sausages slathered in mayonnaise.

The original report from Indiana news: https://youtu.be/Bxm1c2LcE0Y

This is wild.

Nuh, uh. Several dimensions. At least five. And the facets; sweet merciful Jesus, so many facets. If it bleeds it leads, regardless of political leanings. It should be noted, People somewhat left of the mainstream absolutely love this film. Michael Moore called it brilliant. Chapo Trap House does a panel discussion about the film and the controversy around it that's absolutely spot on. Slavoj Zisek has also talked at length about it, although he may not have actually seen it . Social media cultural critics who's bread and butter is clicks, whether they identify as progressive or conservative; they just react. "Angry white Incel", this and "SJW" that is about as deep as their commentary gets. At best it's entertaining. If it's ever informative or thought provoking is purely incidental. You seem to be putting a fair amount of energy into finding ways to not see this movie. Maybe don't see it then.

Without spoiling too much, This is a joker who is thouroughly alienated from society at large and even the people around him. What he wants is human connection. He wants friendship, love, solidarity, respect. Whatever that is, it isn't nihilism. That's Ledger's joker, not this one. The how and why he, "inspires a violent countercultural revolution" are the themes commentary I was talking about. And, "countercultural" is totally not the right word here. Just watch the gosh darn movie already.

Joker is definitely not that. This version of the Joker is very different from previous takes. Orthogonal to that, it amazes me that so many film reviewers, who I would guess align more to the progressive end of the political spectrum, based on the stuff they share on their twitter feeds, either never mention or are totally oblivious to the themes and commentary in this movie. And we're not talking about "subtlety" here. If anything it's kind of heavy handed. Recommend.

It had to do with the Aurora, CO theater shooting and some unconfirmed reports of social media activity. The press just ran with it. This is a good article. ETA: I would have been open to the possibility that the controversy was ginned up by the studio to juice the film. but this doesn't quite jibe with a red carpet premiere with just cast and crew and photographers. The press were frozen out. These days it isn't a matter of whether or not it's "derivative"; but can it be derivative in an interesting way. We agree it was a cool idea. And what came out was a brilliant film. I don't know your brother. How dare he? An Actor who, "acts". Pretty much. Although there's a distinction to be made between a studio driven film (which the marvel and current crop of DC films are), and a director driven film. But yeah, I've said before I think the genre is on life support creatively. Time was, if a studio wanted to make a blockbuster, they had to put themselves and a pile of their money in the hands of a Cameron, or Coppola, or Lucas, or Spielberg, cross their fingers, and hope for the best. The thing is those guys are a pain in the ass to deal with because they have funny ideas like, "creative control", "final cut", and, "getting paid". Plus, what if they fail? The real secret of the Marvel formula is to reduce the director to the role of hired hand. Chloe Zao directed Eternals? Well, she probably directed most of it. Scenes that involve people talking in rooms were probably hers. Everything else? Who knows? And how much input did she have in editing the thing? I doubt she had final cut. Why do all marvel films feel so uniform? That's why. This is also why they could never make a film like Joker. And I guarantee you there's some group deep in the bowels of the Disney marketing department who's sole job is figuring out what combination of film moments makes (fill-in-the-blank) movie review aggregator go up. There are billions of dollars at stake here. They'd be negligent not to do that. I agree with this. "Joker" is almost a skin they put on an otherwise un-comic book movie. Yeah it makes no sense. Nostalgia? Definitely. Remember that one of the criticisms of Affleck around JL filming was the he was too old for the role. Not just from CBM nerds, I'm pretty sure I could find the panel discussion from Collider Heroes or whatever where they're saying the same thing. Michael Keaton is 70 BTW. Now, if "Batgirl" was actually a multiverse "Batgirl Beyond", With Grace playing a gender swapped Terry McGinnis and Michael Keaton playing her grizzled old mentor? Maybe even with an R rating? I'd totally be down for that.

Piastri is driving for McLaren next year.

I've determined that I'm reluctant to bash WW84 because I'm literally embarrassed for the people who made it. Thor: Love and Thunder is verging on that. How? Just how? I'm also convinced that if we lived in a parallel universe where Covid never happened and WW84 hit its original June 2020 theatrical release, the critical discourse would have been way more brutal. The Green Knight would have opened 1 week before and in the weeks after, Greyhound, Soul, and Top Gun Maverick all hit theaters. We know how those turned out. Birds of Prey is similar to the majority of CBM's in that, regardless of rating, it falls into the category of action-comedy. The problem is it isn't that interesting because it's just not that funny. But it has its fans and that's fine. It was OK I guess.. I'll probably watch Joker again soon.

Yes it is. You have just stated it. An R-rated CBM-ish film; loosely based on a comic book villain; that isn't feel-good, goofy escapism; that draws inspiration from two Scorsese films (one of them a failure), was not exactly an obvious move when that film was pitched to WB. Hence the two years they took to green light it and WB's refusal to pay for it; meaning that WB would miss out on one of their biggest paydays in a decade. Brilliant. Those films you mention are 46 and 40 years old respectively. Perfectly fertile ground inspiration and adaptation. And the film is great. Glitter is 78 years old and will likely die in jail. And supposedly he won't get shit because he sold the rights to the song a long time ago. Man, for a DC films centric thread, there sure are a lot of people who haven't seen one of it's most interesting films. The 11 Oscar nominations didn't sway you?

I'm not defending anything. I'm suggesting a bit of precision when we talk about the accusations and I'm pointing out some of the complexities. I'm sorry the alleged victim coming forward and refuting the story is inconvenient for you.

It was brilliant. Although I didn't think it was the kind of film that would benefit from a sequel. I'm still scratching my head at that. I hope they can do something interesting with it. It got praise from movie goers, the Academy, and the European press. The American press, particularly the entertainment media that revolves around CBM's, less so. And reading a lot of the commentary about, "Incel" this and, "angry white guy" that, and not a single word about the actual themes in the film (which are not subtle) some of these people shouldn't be reviewing films.

They already did with the first one didn't they? Better question, all those American media outlets that lost their shit over the first one, are they going to be all like, "Hi. Yeah, it's me. Sorry we went all "PMRC" with the last one. Could we get some passes to the premiere?"

Um, no. There's a big difference I'd say. The accusation itself is disturbing enough. You don't need to add to it. And didn't Tokata Iron Eyes (who is now an adult) come out recently and say the allegation was bullshit?

I thought the accusation was grooming, not molestation. And the "likelihood" is an open question.

They'll have Ezra do some soul searching and rehabilitate his rep before the film comes out. If they could rehabilitate Robert Downey Jr's career, this'll be easy. Some fantastically unreliable internet sources are reporting that the Green Lantern Corps series is dead. ETA: There are also rumors that Aquaman 2 and Shazam 2 are being pushed back. These are just rumors, but in the case of Shazam 2 it's actually a good idea I think. Again, "rumors", but apparently test audiences were confused by Michael Keaton's inclusion as Bruce Wayne in Aquaman 2 and this triggered Affleck's return. Why the hell would they put Keaton in Aquaman 2?