Movie Make-out

Whatever you think of his movies’ stories, Jim Cameron is a master of his craft — an absolute technical genius. Variety has posted a very long interview with the man behind the sixth (not first) biggest money-maker in film history on 3-D, or “stereo,” filmmaking — obviously centered around his highly anticipated 3-D sci fi flick, Avatar. While I’ll spare you any editorializing, since if you have any interest in this sort of thing, you really should just go read the thing, here are a few bits of interest for those of you who aren’t as interested as I am in the technical side of movies:

“As for 3-D in the home: The only limitation to having stereo viewing in the home is the number of titles currently available. When there is more product, the consumer electronics companies will make monitors and players. The technology exists and is straightforward.” (The Variety article on the other side of that link is also very interesting reading, by the way.)

“I plan to shoot a small dramatic film in 3-D… after Avatar.”

After a fairly technical discussion of frame rates in 3-D and such: “I’d love to have done Avatar at 48 frames. But I have to fight these battles one at a time. I’m just happy people are waking up to 3-D.… Maybe on Avatar 2.”

“I would go so far as to say that 10 or 15 years from now, stereo displays will be ubiquitous, from cinemas to open-air advertising, to home screens and down to handheld devices. iPhones will be in stereo. Small displays will especially benefit from stereo because the small size of the screen can be offset by using Z-depth to stack information, which will reduce visual clutter, or conversely increase the density of information held within a single visual field. It may be that eventually all of our news and information, as well as our sports and entertainment, will come to us in stereo.”

Related posts: Monsters vs. Aliens to be first true 3D animated film (updated), Sam Worthington to star in Terminator 4

The New York Times has a really cool article about the woman who founded Film Streams, not-for-profit art house movie theater in Omaha, Nebraska. Rachel Jacobson, a 29 year old Omaha native,

said in an interview, [that] though there are certainly more of them being made nowadays — (the showing of small films) is not great business. “That’s why a nonprofit is the way to go,” she said. “Because that’s the only business plan that allows you to show good movies. The multiplexes have just taken over, especially in cities like this.”

Later in the article Jacobson says that they needed to sell about 30,000 tickets per year to "meet our expectations"; they’ve sold 30,000 since they opened on July 27, 2007. Not too shabby.

A recent Variety article discussed the huge growth in the "mid-budget" ($20–60 million) film. One very interesting chunk (and there’s much more to the article):

In 2002, about 450 films were released in the U.S. In 2007, the tally was about 600. "All of that growth is independent film," Glickman trumpeted.

But those 150 extra pics mean distribs are fighting for smaller pieces of the box office pie, and it’s gotten tougher and more expensive to grab moviegoers’ attention.

"We’d like to get the titles spread out better over the year," admits NATO prexy John Fithian. "If we didn’t have four blockbusters competing on the same weekend, the titles would spread out and the theaters would put in a smaller art picture and not keep eating each other’s lunch."

Update (3/17/08): The Hollywood Reporter has broken the news that one of the largest movie theater chains in the country, Regal Entertainment Group, has decided to allow red-band (R-rated/restricted) trailers to play in its theaters, after an almost industry-wide moratorium on them following a damning 2000 FTC report. The chain had ruled them out for fear of offending customers and concerns that an R-rated trailer might accidentally get screened before a PG- or G-rated flick. (The widespread adoption of digital projection systems has apparently allayed this second concern.) Other major chains are expected to follow suit.

The good? R-rated comedies like Superbad and Pineapple Express will once again be able to show trailers that more accurately and effectively market their films. The bad? Those god damn horror movie trailers that plague me every time I see movies are probably going to get a whole lot worse.

Update (3/22/08): The New York Times has a kind of snapshot of the turbulent times in the movie theater business: "At Cineplexes, Sports, Opera, Maybe a Movie" by Brooks Barnes. Many of you regular movie-goers have already seen ads for the Metropolitan Opera, and I’ve covered the 3D phenomenon in other posts, but apparently tickets to a Mets simulcast sold out quickly enough to encourage the team to do more this summer.

As the article states, "Operators want people to think of theaters as vibrant, busy places. But when weekends account for 70 percent of movie ticket sales, multiplex parking lots spend a lot of time sitting empty." How theaters choose to cultivate their Mondays through Thursdays in the next few years is going to be interesting.…

Related post: 2007 box office breaks a record, ticket sales flat; Monsters vs. Aliens to be first true 3D animated film (updated)

Every now and then I’ll see or hear people complain about celebrity activists, as if it’s all empty rhetoric and self-serving posturing, which is troubling. In spite of all the stars who do come off like asses (some of the time), it seems to me that people dying to find some sort of perceived hypocrisy with every star really just want to believe that nothing good can be accomplished in the world, and their attitude is merely one of justifying the apathy they live their own lives by.

The New York Times has a great article about celebrity activism, largely about Natalie Portman’s involvement with FINCA, a microfinancing organization Portman for which serves as "ambassador." Portman states, "(It) seems totally nuts to me… that in our country I can get a meeting with a representative more easily than the head of a nonprofit can." And it is nuts, but when she makes millions per film for a few months of dedicated work and a few rounds of promotion, all to make two-hour entertainments; if, in her copious time off, she can help promote a worthwhile non-profit that’s trying to make a difference in third world countries or get a few people to switch to compact fluorescents, simply by being who she is, why should she not?

Another celebrity the article touches on is George Clooney, who was recently named the UN’s "messenger of peace" and is a co-founder of Not On Our Watch, with Brad Pitt, Matt Damn, Don Cheadle and Jerry Weintraub.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, 2007 had box office returns of $9.63 billion, citing data from the Motion Picture Association of America’s annual "state of the union" report. This new record represents a 5.4% increase over 2006, according to the article, but that’s failing to factor in the insane amount of inflation we had last year (thanks, Republicans). Inflation for consumers was around 4.1%, 6.3% for wholesale; all these numbers being in the same ballpark mean that it’s all just business as usual.

Taking the average US ticket price of $6.88 (a 5% increase over 2006’s $6.55) into account, "actual admissions in 2007 were flat. The year’s total of 1.4 billion admissions was just 0.3% above 2006’s 1.395 billion admissions. And neither year challenged the modern-day record of 1.6 billion admissions set in 2002," when Spider-Man, The Two Towers and Attack of the Clones rocked the multiplex.

This average ticket price may be skewed by the rise of high-profile IMAX and 3D releases, a factor that will play even larger in the future. The recent Disney Digital 3D hit Hannah Montana: Best of Both Worlds concert movie had an average ticket price of $15, for instance, over twice the regular ticket price, while Beowulf pulled in $3.58 million of its opening weekend on the giant screen.

Variety’s take on the report focuses on the 60% jump — to $74.9 million — in the average cost of producing and marketing for "specialty firms" (independents), with average spending on production. "Production costs spiked 60% over the previous year to $49.2 million, while the average cost of advertising increased 44% to $25.7 million.… By comparison, the average cost of producing a studio film last year was up 8% over 2006 to $70.8 million, while the average cost of advertising was up 4% to $35.9 million."

This more attests to the blurring line between indie and studio productions than any real increase in costs, though; as the Variety article points out, "The rise in the specialty-division numbers reflect the fact that their films are more directly under the purview of the parent studio."
 

Okay, so everybody likes lists. Here’s my Top 20 Favorite Films of 2007, with commentary on the top 10:

20) Eastern Promises 

19) Charlie Wilson’s War 

18) Juno 

17) Ratatouille 

16) Hot Fuzz 

15) King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters 

14) Knocked Up 

13) Once 

12) Gone Baby Gone

11) The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford 

10) Zodiac This intense triptych of character studies is David Fincher’s most restrained and accomplished film to date, as well as a sobering balance to the endless serial killer films that seem to glorify their villains more than condemn them, of which Fincher’s own Seven is a sterling example. Although Jake Gyllenhaal’s baby face is incapable of feigning the extra years his Robert Graysmith needed to really look beat down by life in the films later sequences, it’s not just an engaging story, it’s also an incredible acting showcase for three of the best male actors working today. (Robert Downey, Jr., and Mark Ruffalo co-starred.)

9) Michael Clayton – Another film where a host of acting powerhouses elevated a smart, solid script to greatness, Clayton is a taut, realistic thriller for people who don’t need chase scenes and explosions every other minute…

8) Bourne Ultimatum – … not that there’s anything wrong with taut, realistic thrillers for people who doneed chase scenes and explosions every other minute, as Michael Clayton screenwriter Tony Gilroy’s thirdBourne film exemplifies. Paul Greengrass managed to tame his shakey-cam a little bit, and he didn’t forget to keep up the strong characterization and tight (if thin) plotting that sets the Bourne franchise apart from all the other actioners out there today.

7) Lars and the Real Girl – The best film of the year by a director responsible for one of the worst films of the year. It’s hard to believe that the Mr. Woodcock helmer could be responsible for Lars, as well. With its bizarro premise, it’s all the more impressive that Craig Gillespie could nail the tone of the film so well. I was sure this film would be annoying when I was walking into the theater, but it won me over within minutes and kept me right where it needed me the rest of the show. Ryan Gosling does an admirable job selling a guy so fucked up from loneliness that getting a sex doll for non-sexual reasons is almost believable, but for my money, Kelli Garner’s intoxicatingly sweet turn as Lars’s flesh-and-blood romantic interest was the real stand-out performance in a film stuffed with them.

6) Rocket Science – Jeffrey Blitz’s 2002 documentary Spellbound was one of my favorite films of its year, and I’m happy to say that his debut feature, Rocket Science, is as well. Perhaps I’m partial to quirky indie comedies about nerdy high school kids, though. Although Rocket Science certainly follows in the footsteps of Rushmore, it has its own distinctly awkward flavor. Structured deceptively like a typical high school romance/sports flick, Rocket Science upends almost every one of its genre’s clichés. Thanks in large part to its terrific cast (headed by stars-in-the-making Reece Thompson and Anna Kendrick), Rocket Science may not be the funniest comedy of the year (that would be Knocked Up), but it’s the smartest, most human, and most surprising comedy of the year.

5) Death Proof – Audiences seem really mixed about Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof based on its unveiling (in truncated form) as the second half of Grindhouse. After the splatter-happy ridiculousness ofPlanet Terror, Death Proof’s two-act structure and languorous clip outside of the two major car sequences was probably too weird of a shift for mainstream audiences, but taken on its own, DP’s hot cars, hot music, and hot girls make for one hell of a ride.

4) Diving Bell and the Butterfly – I was afraid I was going to be walking into The Sea Inside, Part Two, with this film, but instead I was met with one of the most beautiful, viscerally engaging films I’ve seen in ages. Aside from the obvious paralysis parallels, the only other similarity between the films is that it will be seen as future Bond villain Mathieu Almaric’s breakout role, as with Javier Bardem in The Sea Inside. Diving Bell is a less stoic, more passionate film, and these passions permeate every frame and every note of its pop song-filled soundtrack.

Now, my top three was giving me trouble. Truth is, I would rather watch all three of these films again before I really broke them down into rankings, because they are all three masterpieces, each with a remarkably different tone. But, without the time to see them all again, I just decided to go with my initial thoughts after seeing There Will Be Blood on Saturday:

3) There Will Be Blood – If There Will Be Blood has any flaws at all, it’s that it can be so easily described in terms of other great films: it’s Citizen Kane meets The Treasure of Sierra Madre, with a dash of Giant. Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic character study of Day-Lewis as a complete prick may not have the freshest themes, but the expert storytelling behind it all manages to keep Blood a gripping, shocking film at every turn.

2) No Country for Old Men – The Coen Brothers step back into Blood Simple mode and turn Cormac McCarthy’s pulpy novel into one of the finest crime thrillers ever filmed. The script is a perfect balance of story and character, performed by an absolutely fantastic cast, with an innovative use of music to add to the sense of imminent doom that permeates much of the film. Ultimately, No Country may not really have much of substance to say about the human condition — it’s not deep as some of its fans make it out to be — but what it still is, is breath-takingly awesome.

1) The Lives of Others – Last year’s Best Foreign Language Film is the best film released in the US in 2007. If the virtuosic central performance by Kevin Spacey’s evil twin, Ulrich Mühe, were the only great thing about The Lives of Others, it would still be a great film. It it weren’t set in a richly detailed and complex portrait of Communist East Germany in the mid ’80s and of the stifled art world within it… if it weren’t accompanied by a Gabriel Yared & Stéphane Moucha’s gorgeous score… if the pacing of the story were not so mathematically perfect, The Lives of Others would still be a fantastic film. It’s the combination of all these elements and the film’s potent, still-relevant warning against allowing a regime to hold or gain power at the expense of the peoples’ right to speak the truth that make this one of the finest films I’ve ever seen.

And just because I’m a big nerd about movie scores:

Best Soundtrack of the Year: Atonement by Dario Marianelli – I’ve been listening to the scores forThe Assassination of Jesse James (by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis) and Atonement lately, and have to say it’s a tough call between them. While Assassination’s is achingly beautiful, almost otherworldly (if nothing else, check out the tracks "Rather Lovely Thing" and "Song for Jesse" at iTunes), Dario Marianelli’s score for Atonement is more varied, more sweeping, and more moving than the film itself, and never moreso than in the film’s 5 1/2 minute tracking shot, set to "Elegy for Dunkirk" from the soundtrack album. (The title track is the other must-buy from Atonement’s soundtrack album.) I can’t claim to be a fan of the movie as a whole — it suffers from the Bad Shit Happening Syndrome that so many romantic tragedies do: there is no real story, just a series of bad shit happening to good people — but this film’s score is superb.