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Maxwell Lord posted:Well, I've got a thread above where a $5 million dollar sequence got cut completely, so it makes sense to me that sometimes, something looks great on paper but plays terribly. It doesn't necessarily make you a bad producer/director, it's just that you can't forsee everything. The difference here though is that the plane crash was most likely an action scene that wouldn't mesh well but could have had story elements possibly written around it. Or, they could have looked at the script and made sure that the scene was needed before filming it. The 5 million dollar ending of Little Shop HAD to be scrapped because audiences despised it. It would have hurt the film has it been kept in. The reason it was put in was also more logical because it was the original ending to the play. OldTennisCourt fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Sep 19, 2011 |
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Sep 19, 2011 21:15
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OldTennisCourt posted:The difference here though is that a the plane crash was most likely an action scene that wouldn't mesh well but would have story elements possibly written around it. Or, you look at your script and make sure that the scene is needed. Well, I don't know Sahara or what the script looked like at various stages.
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Sep 19, 2011 21:18
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Maxwell Lord posted:Well, I don't know Sahara or what the script looked like at various stages. As the article points out, Sahara was one of those blockbusters where they hired/dismissed ten or so writers at various stages of production.
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Sep 19, 2011 21:20
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I'd love for someone to come out in defense of Kurt Russell's "Soldier" (currently at 10 percent). I rather enjoyed that one and felt it really didn't deserve all the hate it got.
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Sep 19, 2011 21:40
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Rather than look at biggest losses I decided to find what movie made back the smallest portion of its budget.Cutthroat Island, while having the highest net loss after inflation adjustment, made back 16% of the budget. I give you Revolution a 1985 drama set in the American Revolution starring Al Pacino and Donald Sutherland. It holds an 8% on RT but the money numbers are what makes it for me.The movie cost $28 million but only took in $358,574 at the box office meaning it only recouped 1.3% of its budget.
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Sep 19, 2011 21:58
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OK Octopus posted:I'd love for someone to come out in defense of Kurt Russell's "Soldier" (currently at 10 percent). I rather enjoyed that one and felt it really didn't deserve all the hate it got. I feel like the only CineD poster on Earth who is not in love with BADASS KURT RUSSELL.
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Sep 19, 2011 22:02
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jisforjosh posted:Rather than look at biggest losses I decided to find what movie made back the smallest portion of its budget.Cutthroat Island, while having the highest net loss after inflation adjustment, made back 16% of the budget. I've always thought that a strictly box office numbers approach to whether movies are bombs or not to be somewhat disingenuous since the advent of VHS. Sure, DVD sales probably didn't turn Pluto Nash into a sweet river of cash. On the other hand I'm sure through TV licensing and DVD sales it made a dent in its losses. Maybe I'm just missing some obvious place to look up how much movies make after they exit the theaters.
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Sep 19, 2011 23:27
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Gyges posted:I've always thought that a strictly box office numbers approach to whether movies are bombs or not to be somewhat disingenuous since the advent of VHS. Sure, DVD sales probably didn't turn Pluto Nash into a sweet river of cash. On the other hand I'm sure through TV licensing and DVD sales it made a dent in its losses. From what I understand, the vast majority of films don't turn a profit until they hit DVD. Of course this was told to me from my film professor in college, so take that as you will.
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Sep 20, 2011 00:24
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Weird that they covered this, since it didn't flop financially or criticially. It was unquestionably a flop in that it was billed and marketed as one of the big summer blockbusters and underperformed considerably once word-of-mouth got out. While many critics did give it positive reviews, most viewers hated it because it promised "HULK SMASH" and instead was a psychodrama punctuated with action scenes. A cursory check at Rotten Tomatoes puts it at about 55% for Top Critics, 62% for All Critics, and 34% for audience rating. For a subgenre wherein even X-Men Origins: Wolverine can get a 77% from the Audience rating on RT, that says a lot about how it performed culturally, which is a big measure of whether a film is a flop or not. mind the walrus fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Sep 20, 2011 |
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Sep 20, 2011 02:26
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Considering Hollywood accounting practices, I would not be surprised if some of these budgets were deliberately inflated so they could be written off as a loss for the studio (which was actually making money hand over fist in other areas but didn't want to pay taxes or any percentage of the gross). Is there any good place to read about how Hollywood actually does these sorts of shell games?
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Sep 20, 2011 02:31
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I'm going to have to recommend Fiasco: A History of Hollywood's Iconic Flops. It goes into great detail on how certain movies fail, and how budgets go out of control. My favorite tale was that involving Ishtar. It was actually filmed in the desert; the director, Elaine May, thought the desert should be a bleak, Death Valley-like wasteland, instead of a rolling Sahara-esque landscape. So, what does she do? Bulldozes a square mile of dunes flat.
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Sep 20, 2011 04:43
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Gyges posted:I remember that I saw this in the theater, and at the time thought it was good. Of course I remember absolutely nothing that happened in it other than Geena Davis and Matthew Modine at one point dramatically had to do a high dive to escape one of the explosions. It is also a known fact that I had absolutely horrible taste in drat near everything when I was a Freshman. I actually enjoyed the movie at the time as well. I had a bit of a crush on Geena Davis back then. Like most people are saying, it really isn't a super memorable film. I remember the evil Pirate walking around while there were explosions going off and yelling "I love it!" and I thought that was cool. I also remember the diving scene Gyges mentions. And Gina Davis at some point leaps onto a horse and I remember it looked really weird because she's so tall her feet almost touch the ground while sitting on the horse.
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Sep 20, 2011 06:52
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:I feel like the only CineD poster on Earth who is not in love with BADASS KURT RUSSELL. I also think Paul W.S. Anderson is a lovely director.
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Sep 20, 2011 07:06
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doctor 7 posted:I'm not in love with BADASS KURT RUSSELL. I don't like Big Trouble, Escape from Anything but gently caress me I really like Soldier. 
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Sep 20, 2011 07:27
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blakout posted:How can you like Soldier and hate Big Trouble?
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Sep 20, 2011 07:30
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OldTennisCourt posted:The thing that I find most fascinating about Cutthroat Island is how much of a gigantic bomb it was. Can we chalk that up to reviews? What happened to cause the film to fail in such a massive way? Maybe people didn't buy into Geena Davis as the lead in an action movie. She looks kind of ridiculous in that trailer to me at least. Also it seems like Hollywood power couple movies tend to get scrutinized a lot more than the average movie.
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Sep 20, 2011 08:05
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VanSandman posted:Considering Hollywood accounting practices, I would not be surprised if some of these budgets were deliberately inflated so they could be written off as a loss for the studio (which was actually making money hand over fist in other areas but didn't want to pay taxes or any percentage of the gross). EDIT: Here you go. quote:As paradoxical and absurd as it sounds, it's cheaper for a Hollywood studio to make a big-budget action movie than to make a shoestring art film like Sideways. Consider Paramount's 2001 action flick Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. On paper, Tomb Raider's budget was $94 million. In fact, the entire movie cost Paramount less than $7 million. Small Strange Bird fucked around with this message at 11:58 on Sep 20, 2011 |
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Sep 20, 2011 08:58
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doctor 7 posted:Carpenter's humour in the film never seems to work with me at all. It just feels so forced to me. I don't know what to tell you, I honestly gave it a good hour. I even watched it with friends who enjoyed it and I had a beer too. Even so I just couldn't finish the movie. The biggest joke is that Jack is a really ineffectual hero despite having guts.
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Sep 20, 2011 12:33
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Despite never having watched the movie in my life, and thus have no connection to the context of the music for certain scenes or anything, Cutthroat Island has a really, really great soundtrack. Just listen to this and tell me you aren't pumped for swashbuckling action: http://youtu.be/WqSebZKVe70 Sahara, too, is notable for having a soundtrack composed by Clint Mansell, better known for his soundtracks to Pi, Requiem For A Dream, The Fountain, and Moon. Although I found the soundtrack pretty forgettable, it's interesting to hear how much diversity that man has, as Sahara fills in the "action adventure" soundtrack niche. On a tangential and topical note, I'll throw in my vote for The Fountain. RT rates it at 51% and Wiki says that it made ~$16 million off a $35 million budget, so I think it qualifies for this thread. I can understand it if people think that the story was rather disjointed and pretentious, I can understand if people felt no emotional connection to Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz's character, I can understand if people didn't think the three time period thing didn't mesh together that well. The movie is flawed, undoubtedly. But I forgive all of that in the climactic scene, when "Death is the Road to Awe" is playing and the screen is filled with scintillating gold. That is just a beautiful, beautiful scene, yet wrapped in the torment that this guy feels for (not sure if it's really a spoiler, but erring on the side of caution) his inability to save his wife. I know I can't speak for everyone, and I make no attempts to change other's opinions on this movie, but I felt that that scene was wonderful enough to overcome the rest of the movie's flaws.
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Sep 20, 2011 16:18
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Schweinhund posted:Maybe people didn't buy into Geena Davis as the lead in an action movie. She looks kind of ridiculous in that trailer to me at least. The next year she starred in "The Long Kiss Goodnight" which is definitely a pretty awesome 90's action movie imo.
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Sep 20, 2011 16:25
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GrandpaPants posted:Despite never having watched the movie in my life, and thus have no connection to the context of the music for certain scenes or anything, Cutthroat Island has a really, really great soundtrack. Just listen to this and tell me you aren't pumped for swashbuckling action: http://youtu.be/WqSebZKVe70 The Fountain is one of my favorite movies ever and it really bums me out to learn it did so lovely 
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Sep 20, 2011 17:00
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GrandpaPants posted:Despite never having watched the movie in my life, and thus have no connection to the context of the music for certain scenes or anything, Cutthroat Island has a really, really great soundtrack. Just listen to this and tell me you aren't pumped for swashbuckling action: http://youtu.be/WqSebZKVe70 I'm actually pretty shocked The Fountain has that low of a score, I always figured it did badly with audiences but that critics adored it. I think I might check it out now.
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Sep 20, 2011 17:06
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The Fountain is a really weird movie, for me, and probably for a lot of people. I watched it once, and I really loved it, but then I didn't see it again for like 6 or 7 years or something. And I had opportunities to watch it, but I somehow didn't want to enter such an intense emotional space. It's an issue I have with pretty much every Aronofsky film - he does such a great job, but every one of them is a HARD film to watch. Requiem for a Dream is the most extreme example, but The Wrestler and Black Swan also fall into a similar category. And I think The Fountain, while really different from everything else he's done, is hard to watch in its own unique way. It's much softer and less severe than his other films, and much more sweet, but it's just not a movie that you sit down and go "Oh this will be a nice and fun way to spend two hours!" or anything like that. But I truly love it as a film. It feels more like an opera to me, than a film. Not just because it's operatic in scope and tone, but there are like... repeating phrases and images that come up again and again, almost like choruses or refrains, and the movie keeps going back to them as if to constantly reinforce the different scenes and settings. I don't quite know how to describe it. Honestly, I'm shocked that any Aronofsky film winds up being commercially successful at all, in some ways.
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Sep 20, 2011 17:22
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Black Swan is enormously entertaining and compulsively watchable, for a film that some speculate is about mother/daughter sexual abuse. So is Requiem for a Dream, for that matter; it's composed like a music video and has a fuckton of energy. I've only seen The Wrestler once, but I keep promising myself I'll get around to it, and I've seen Pi twice in the last year. Nevertheless, I can't seem to stay awake for The Fountain. It's a weird movie, in a bad way; there's no entry point for the viewer. Unlike Solaris, a similarly meditative exercise in alien filmmaking that uses its strangeness as an advantage, I don't thirst for answers when I start watching The Fountain; I get what's going on, but I don't give a poo poo about the central relationship because I feel like Aronofsky is trying to eye-rape me with forcible profundity. Here's these characters I don't care about doing things I don't care about in three time periods I don't care about. Yawn. Maybe I'll finish it someday, but after three naps, I've pretty much written off The Fountain as an ill-conceived aberration in an otherwise impeccable filmography.
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Sep 20, 2011 18:08
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kaworu posted:The Fountain is a really weird movie, for me, and probably for a lot of people. I watched it once, and I really loved it, but then I didn't see it again for like 6 or 7 years or something. And I had opportunities to watch it, but I somehow didn't want to enter such an intense emotional space. It's an issue I have with pretty much every Aronofsky film - he does such a great job, but every one of them is a HARD film to watch. Requiem for a Dream is the most extreme example, but The Wrestler and Black Swan also fall into a similar category. And I think The Fountain, while really different from everything else he's done, is hard to watch in its own unique way. It's much softer and less severe than his other films, and much more sweet, but it's just not a movie that you sit down and go "Oh this will be a nice and fun way to spend two hours!" or anything like that. But I truly love it as a film. It feels more like an opera to me, than a film. Not just because it's operatic in scope and tone, but there are like... repeating phrases and images that come up again and again, almost like choruses or refrains, and the movie keeps going back to them as if to constantly reinforce the different scenes and settings. I don't quite know how to describe it. I absolutely agree with you. Aronofsky's movies are absolutely amazing, but I have no urge to rewatch them because they are so draining. I would have loved to have seen what he would have done with Robocop and Wolverine, as they are so far out of his "zone"
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Sep 20, 2011 18:10
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I have a question I want to float to the people who are participating in this, and seriously the amount of people willing to try this is awesome: How new should the movie be that we look at? Should there be a certain time buffer for people to sort of wipe the mental slate clean/lose some of the stronger emotions of the first viewing? I had a couple of films in mind that are pretty recent.
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Sep 21, 2011 03:26
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Honest Thief posted:The biggest joke is that Jack is a really ineffectual hero despite having guts. I always saw it as Jack being the bumbling sidekick to Wang, but we're just seeing everything through Jack's eyes, so nothing makes any sense and he just wants his truck. Wang's out there fighting for love against the forces of evil. He's the hero of the story. But we're watching Jack, who doesn't know a god drat thing about this Lo Pan guy, but some guy just rode in on a bolt of lightning and that's messed up. BTiLC is an action movie as told by the ineffectual sidekick who thinks he's the hero.
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Sep 21, 2011 03:38
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OldTennisCourt posted:I'm actually pretty shocked The Fountain has that low of a score, I always figured it did badly with audiences but that critics adored it. I think I might check it out now. The Fountain was an almost religious experience for me. I was in awe by it. I saw it 7 times at the theater. It's not a linear movie so that probably affected audience views. Most people left not even understanding what they just saw.
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Sep 21, 2011 03:47
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Reviewing newer movies will put to rest that niggling thought of "was it worth it seeing XXXX over YYYYY that night?". As for suggestions.   All this and World War II A retelling of World War 2 via the juxtaposition of 40's war films and a backing soundtrack of Beatles covers. Released in 1976 the word is that producers seriously thought that everyone would be too stoned to care about the content, possibly thinking it would achieve some sort of cult success that The Holy Mountain did. Perhaps with the strong anti-war sentiment at the time they were also trying to think up a way to make WWII sexy for the youth of that generation so tied it in with the recently split Beatles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx_Wa-hpbjI The result is something that is fascinatingly tasteless as you watch montage after montage of scenes like Hitler at his Bavarian retreat as "Fool on the hill" plays in the background. Or wince as "Golden Slumbers" plays over the Blitz and "I am the Walrus" plays over Pearl Harbor. The mix of 40's films and newsreel gives the whole thing this horrid feeling of being trapped in some sort of 40's timewarp as cringe inducing portrayals of the Japanese as they were stereotyped back then with Charlie Chan and other unfavorable portrayals or bizarre 40's humor as a ventriloquist dummy sneezes during the announcement of war against Japan stating "he was caught in a draft". The covers aren't that stunning, they sound pretty rushed with not much standing out or having much direction to what the song would be visually married to furthering the bizarre nature of what's on screen. Consequently people avoided this, FOX pulled it two weeks from release and shelved it with it only making the occasional appearance at midnight screenings or finding its way onto BBC TV where the bootlegs came from.
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Sep 21, 2011 04:28
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I know Cutthroat Island was sooooo 2 days ago but I wanted to chime in and say that it might have one of the biggest gaps between "Badness of Film" and "Greatness of Film Music" ever. At least in my opinion. John Debney's is brilliant. It's engaging in a way that the Remote Control boy's "Pirates of the Caribbean" only dreams about (and is superior to that score on nearly all fronts), and it so outclasses the film it's set to that it's almost distracting. Then again, I was *looking* for a distraction when I saw the film.
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Sep 21, 2011 04:51
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I'm almost tempted to suggest something like Xanadu, though. It was considered a horrible failure at release, and in this post-Glee, post American Idol atmosphere, it might be up for a revisit. What about something like "Teaching Mrs. Tingle." There was a lot of hype for the film while it was in production, then there was a was a lot of the negative reaction to the film due to backlash from Columbine? Taken out of the post-Columbine mindset, is it a better film than critics said?
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Sep 21, 2011 13:07
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Parachute posted:The next year she starred in "The Long Kiss Goodnight" which is definitely a pretty awesome 90's action movie imo. I loved it when I was a kid.
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Sep 22, 2011 02:36
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JediTalentAgent posted:I'm almost tempted to suggest something like Xanadu, though. It was considered a horrible failure at release, and in this post-Glee, post American Idol atmosphere, it might be up for a revisit. I've seen Xanadu and all I can remember was that it was like watching a marathon of ABBA videos with a very thin plot framing it.
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Sep 22, 2011 02:37
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May I suggest... 1941  I have a bit of a soft spot for this movie. I'm actually proud to own the monstrous, four-platter LaserDisc package and would gladly shell out money if it ever came to Blu-Ray. Let's get one thing out of the way first; this is a flawed, flawed film. The gags are very hit and miss, Spielberg is focused too much on characters who don't drive the comedy forward, and there's a disjointed feeling to the whole picture. But there are some incredible gags, some of the best visual effects ever committed to camera (the miniature work here is stunning), and some jaw-dropping set pieces. Also, it has Christopher Lee as a Nazi and Toshiro Mifune as a Japanese submarine captain. And a cast that includes John Candy, Ned Beatty, Nancy Allen, Slim Pickens, Dan Aykroyd, Robert Stack, and Warren Oates. If you've got patience and a fast-forward button ready, give it a whirl. Also, here's an awesome teaser with John Belushi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJzKZ3CuBrc WebDog posted:All this and World War II Y'know, this would have been an OK idea had it been 20 minutes max. As it stands, it's too bonkers of a concept, and has too much of a potential for tastelessness at 90 minutes. I can't believe I've actually seen it all the way through. If you want to see stock footage used well, watch "Atomic Cafe". Parachute posted:The next year she starred in "The Long Kiss Goodnight" which is definitely a pretty awesome 90's action movie imo. This is very true. Second best $5 I've ever spent. Robert Denby fucked around with this message at 02:57 on Sep 22, 2011 |
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Sep 22, 2011 02:54
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ComposerGuy posted:I know Cutthroat Island was sooooo 2 days ago but I wanted to chime in and say that it might have one of the biggest gaps between "Badness of Film" and "Greatness of Film Music" ever. At least in my opinion. John Debney's is brilliant. It's engaging in a way that the Remote Control boy's "Pirates of the Caribbean" only dreams about (and is superior to that score on nearly all fronts), and it so outclasses the film it's set to that it's almost distracting. I'm a big proponent of bad movies with good scores. Another example is the score to the lovely Wing Commander movie - the themes were composed by David Arnold, and fleshed out wonderfully by Kevin Kiner, really allowing the bombast to go full throttle in a way that reminds you of over-the-top war films. It was the very first CD I ever got. Another great example: Alan Silvestri's Van Helsing score.
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Sep 22, 2011 03:48
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Elliot Goldenthal's "Sphere" score is pretty drat good. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuQF-0jw1wU
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Sep 22, 2011 04:43
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Robert Denby posted:Elliot Goldenthal's "Sphere" score is pretty drat good. I re-watched this movie because of this post (because it's on Netflix Instant). Spoilers ahead (I don't recommend it). I think the last time I watched this was the year it came out. It deserves its 12 on Rottentomatoes. The most remarkable trait of the movie is how much it encourages you to yell at the screen. The movie almost follows a consistent un-logic in how characters act and react to situations. Not a single thing that Peter Coyote says or does makes any sense, starting from his first scene, where he's wearing sunglasses indoors. In basically every scene he either gives or relieves command from Dustin Hoffman. It's really a shame to watch four A-list actors work with a C-grade plot, where any bewildering conjecture a character makes immediately becomes deduced fact ("The ship must have passed backward in time through a black hole!") Then it gets surreal when characters watch with abject disinterest while Queen Latifah dies horribly, coffee cups in hand. The film's plot also opens itself to relentless fun at its own expense, including the ending, where the surviving characters agree to literally forget the entire episode. Finally, there's really no attention to detail. It's the discovery of an alien spacecraft by the military--so they send, oh, five people to go look at it. Little is explained and the movie just assumes that you assume that everyone on screen is smarter than you, and that's how things are handled. There's no real effort or budget put into breathing life into the universe, either above or below water. Oh, 1998. Your movies were all over the place. Name Change fucked around with this message at 10:21 on Sep 22, 2011 |
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Sep 22, 2011 10:18
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Hewlett posted:...lovely Wing Commander movie... This movie was actually the first that sprang to mind when I read the thread title. The fact is that I unironically enjoy watching the Wing Commander film. Sure, it's nothing like the Wing Commander games, and the space physics are rather comically replaced with what appear to be underwater physics, the whole 'pilgrim' plot they shoehorned in is almost as pointless as it is nonsensical and the lead actor is apparently incapable of ever breathing through his nose... ...but even so, I found it fun to watch. There are fun space battles, fun emotional outbursts, fun tense moments... even a good "YEAH!" moment when the Tiger's Claw broadsides a Kilrathi capital ship with torpedoes at almost point blank range. I think this movie is certainly not great, but I still found it entertaining. It got a worse rep than it actually deserves.
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Sep 22, 2011 10:37
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Soul Reaver posted:
There is a nice little energy that everyone but Prinze gives to the movie (even Lillard has his good moments), and I liked the production design, as cheap as it was sometimes. I even think the CGI is not that terrible, and hasn't dated much. But all the complaints you brought up are totally valid. (A spaceship actually FALLS OFF the deck.) Basically, a lot of the plot holes would have made more sense had they kept in the original subplot: The captain was supposed to be a traitor, and just spends the rest of the movie in the infirmary instead of dead (which is how Jurgen Prochnow gets command of the ship). There is a fistfight between Prinze and Prochnow on the Kilrathi ship because each thinks the other is a traitor, and Prinze kills a Kilrathi with the Pilgrim cross. That's why Tcheky Karyo needs to give him his cross for luck, even though he never lost it in the real movie.
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Sep 22, 2011 10:53
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I love The Happening. I'm not even going to pretend I love it "unironically" because the simple fact is that it earns every bit of its 18% rating on RT. It's a terrible, terrible movie in every way, but it just gets funnier every time I watch it. I've seen it at least once every few months since it's been available on DVD. Including the flurry of multiple viewings while subjecting all my friends to it in the first week it hit stores, it's gotta be at least a dozen times. I've honestly lost count at this point. I'll probably watch it again before the year is out. And I will enjoy every goddamn awful second.
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Sep 22, 2011 11:46
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