Needless to say, the one film I'm happy to see succeed is THE INCREDIBLES


That means ~225,000 had the good sense of picking what is clearly the best blockbuster out there.


Sometimes, Americans and Canadians do make the right choice. Mind you, they screw up all too often, but to hell with that

Saw The Incredibles last week.

Wasn't impressed at all. Toy Story 2 rules.

It might perform like What Women Want over here. That movie was an immense hit here and it opened right against Hannibal. That was one of the biggest weekends ever in Germany, both hit 1,000,000+ admissions over that weekend and Cast Away was also still going strong. The lines at my theatre were insane.

Did you also like Shrek 2 and The Phantom of the Opera???

Did you????

haven't seen either

Consider yourself blessed. Stay away from both. As far as possible.

Early 2001 was indeed huge, those 4 movies really pumped up the international box-office.....i doub't we'll see that this year....

Alexander is too weak, Elektra, hardly, Lemony snickets is so so......while incredibles, polar express, ocean's 12 have unloaded in most countries already....

Have you seen both?

National Treasure:

Fri: 2.32m +22%

Sat: 3.48m +50%

Sun: 2.44m -29%

Wknd: 8.24m +108%

Wow, even though I believe you're overprojecting as usual, man, I'd love to see it happening!

The Polar Express:

Fri: 2.05m -11%

Sat: 2.67m +30%

Sun: 2.28m -15%

Wknd: 7.00m +7%

That seems about right actually. Incredible run for this movie.

I know you will see Phantom for me, right my friend? :wink:

Spanglish:

Fri: 1.61m -10%

Sat: 3.54m +120%

Sun: 2.12m -40%

Wknd: 7.27m +55.5%

Probably a bit high on that one. WOM isn't too great (I can see why after watching the film this past week). It really isn't that great of a movie, and I think audiences are realizing this.

The Phantom of the Opera:

Fri: 1.53m +17%

Sat: 2.37m +55%

Sun: 1.54m -35%

Wknd: 5.44m +35.5%

The Incredibles:

Fri: 1.40m +4%

Sat: 1.75m +25%

Sun: 1.38m -19%

Wknd: 4.53m +85%

well thats it for the top ten 8) I expect big increases as shown. lets get ready for an exiting wknd 8)

It increased 180% last saturday, most of this boost is due to the great wk days the film had they realy made up for the near 50% drop the film had 8)

awesome I cant wait to see this happen to 8) any way whats wrong with this prediction :?: it was one of the films i took some time on.

I'll see both. I never let reviews or WoM prevent me from seeing a movie (I checked out Alexander recently )...so, yeah, I watch pretty much all movies that come along.

Well, it looks all reasonable. I can even imagine a higher Saturday increase. But just the fact that it'll increase 100% over last weekend seems unlikely to me. However, the projection seems right on :?

I'll download it and have the file open so that as many people s possible can upload it instead of having to go see it.


I'm only half-joking; I don't think it's worth the space on my comp *shudder*


The idea of judging a film only upon viewing is a long-held myth. The viewing experience itself is not nearly as important as the experience, but the experience is not exclusive to the viewing experience, but entails previous encounters with similar films, directors, etc.


To repeat, by and large, the idea of judging films solely based on viewing experience is a mistaken assumption. A more correct way to state it is to say that it is based on experience, but experience entails much more than simple viewing, and it a lot of cases can be sufficient without viewing.


Why do you think people's comments after viewing a film are so often along the lines of "It wasn't as good as I hoped" or "Man, I totally did not expect that" or "the film was so predictable!".

When you've seen enough films, and looked into the various components thereof, it is surprisingly easy to determine how you will respond to a film.


Before I saw The Day After Tomorrow, I wrote a list of things that would happen:

-a disaster will strike, and it is unexpected

- the film will be used as a means of showing human determination, etc., comes with cheesy dialogue

-a love story is a must; without much essence or depth, just added to please female auds

- state of the art sfx, but less than you'd expect (I've noticed that with Emmerich films before, esp. Godzilla)

-the film will be unnecessarily long; that is because the basic plot will seem painfully simple (as it is, since its been done a million times before); so to waste time, add more drama (TDAT: that kid with cancer)

-the government is somewhat involved, and is, of course, ignorant; blah blah blah

- millions die, but the heroes remain alive...wow


You understand why I fastforwarded most of TDAT, don't you? I knew what would happen, and was right on all counts. I knew htis because I've seen Emmerich's previous efforts. I know that they leave much too much to be desired. Yet, I also know they can be entertaining if you shut your brain off. I couldn't with TDAT--I had seen the film too often before in different ways.


Part of the reason why films like Memento are so praised is because they're surprising. Also, that what makes Collateral a good film; it's got very good dialogue, and is not the typical action film at all.


Musical are as painfully obvious to predict as disaster films; the music is almost always the centerpiece, so much depends on it. If you know the music is bad, that is an alarm bell ringing right there. It does not help when you know the director to have directed terrible films before; so you've got a pretty bad rack record added to some atrocious music, in addition to some things you can make out from the general plot (will the characters be fleshed out? Well, it seems Christine is only in the business of weeping, over whatever there is to weep over; not much depth there, nothing much that an 18 year old can do about it), etc.

To give you some other examples:

Mean Girls was painfully easy to predict; I knew all the general plot lines before I watched it; a sexy teen girl who acts like a nerd, becomes popular, falls out of favour, and a popular but bitchy girl who is redeemed, and in between of course plenty of fighting over boys and other such commodities. So why is it a god film? Because it's got an edge (thanks to Tina Faye, really), and it's not overly ambitious; the film knows its place, and is fine with that.

Epics can also be predicted, but the routine is so obvious, all that matters anymore, I think, is whether it is well executed or not. Alexander wasn't, The Two Towers was, etc. Actually, what makes a film like Alexander so bad is that it does NOT meet people's expectations, since in Alexander's case, people expected a good film. Another way of saying that is that Alexander the movie did a good job of adapting the epic cliches to the life story of Alexander the character. In yet other words, the film was expected to do what a good epic is expected to do. Of course it did not.

The first time I noticed that something was off was when critics and viewers mentioned narration. Narration in an epic is a huge no-no. It cannot ever be used for an extended period of time. This is to a certain extent true with plays as well; you should not expect to have something described to you, you should be shown what is going on. As I understand it, in Alexander, the narration was continuous, rather than a prologue or epilogue.

Now why is something like that worthy of notice? The reason is because it gives an indication of what the filmmaker, in this case Stone, intends the epic to be. It's troublesome because it suggests that Stone will have the audience be observers, rather than participants. That in turn means that the audience will have a hard time being engaged, that the characters will be distant, etc. From everything I've heard about Alexander, that is exactly the case. And it doesn't help that there are suggestions that the timing was off and that the film seemed to move slow. That's another big no-no in an epic. Because epics by their nature have to cover much ground, they will have to move swiftly. A mastery of the epic genre implies a mastery over a vast network of relationships, events, and places. If the film is not well-paced, that spells huge trouble. Part of what makes a film like Ben Hur good is that it is well paced; it's a long film, but you don't really ever lose sight of things.


Anyways, if anyone wishes to discuss this further, I'd be happy to continue the discussion somewhere else

great thanks :wink:

I won't get into a deep discussion right now considering it's past 5 AM over here, but all I want to say is that you think too much about a movie box before seeing it making the viewing experience to so pleasurable. If I started thinking about what movies I will like and what movies I won't like before seeing them and only seeing those I would like, then where is the point of actually seeing the movie then. If you predeterming the fact that you will like it, then why bothering to see it? Reviews haven't ever influenced me in my willing to see movies, neither did they influence me in my preception of films. I give you an example. Dreamcatcher (yeah, that overall disliked Stephen King adaptation) ended up in my TOP 5 of the year 2003. When I walk in into movies I do not think about whetehr I'll like them or not at all. Exceptions are franchises where I can determine if I'll like the movie or not upon my perception of the original.