IndustriousAngel

Yep but since Germany's weekend includes Thursday that shouldn't be too far off. I'd go with the 3 multiplier from Wed-Sun, more than 2mil admissions would be very ok for DH5 I think after the horrible reviews.

Friday trend for Germany's weekend: DH5 opens with about 700k admissions Kokowääh2: 400 - 500k DU: 250k Schlussmacher and FF2: 125k each. That's a half-decent opening for DH5; DH4 opened to 990k in June and had a multiplier of about 2.6; with a 3 multiplier it might cross 2mil.

One of very few fantasy films that really breathe some life into "history". And one of those Disney films (like "Tron" or "The Black Hole") that expanded their portfolio in an unexpected direction. Imagine a Disney film where the princess gets eaten (and we see even one of Vermithrax' offspring chewing on her leg ) - unconceivable! What I like most here - apart from the nice sets and cinematography and, of course, the dragon - is an undercurrent of cynicism often missing from fantasy films. We meet members of different social groups - peasants, a wizard, the wizard's apprentice, a King and his daughter, the king's bullies, a priest - and basically most of them with the exception of the priest are really selfish men going each after his or her own advantage. That makes for a story we can relate to very well. Also, Peter MacNicol as Galen and Caitlin Clarke as the boyish Valeria are a very sweet couple. Probably everyone here has already seen this film, but if not, highly recommended!

As always with Kubrick, the production values are top-notch. The interior sets are simply incredible, and the light and camerawork are exceptional. This was one of the first productions making use of the then-new Steadicam, and it's used for many scenes where we follow the protagonists from behind (a recent example for a very similar kind of visuals would be "Black Swan"). Concerning genre, "Shining" plays mostly like a psychothriller, and I'm curious how some of today's audiences, grown up on splatter, gore and torture porn, would react if you'd try to sell them "Shining" as a horror movie. There would be a lot of walkouts I guess - the pace is slow. Very slow. And even slower in the longer cut which runs for about 2:20. And there's really not that much happening at all, and the body count is nearly the lowest of all Kubrick films. As usual with psychothrillers, they live and die by the actors, and Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall do a decent job, even if Nicholson's performance is everything but subtle (he is capable of excellent acting, I really like "One flew over the Kuckoo's Nest" and "About Schmidt" for example). Many scenes work, but others are ridiculous - if you watch the scene where he's axing his way through the door to get at Wendy and she's sitting in the corner screaming her lungs out - you can't believe it took over 100 takes to shoot that. Danny Lloyd was six when he playd Danny and he had a good sombre or pensive look; his fear moments were not that good (it seems he didn't even know that it was a horror film or what it was about at all until years later). My favourite performance here is that of Scatman Crothers, otherwise completely unknown as an actor (apart from lending his voice to Swingy in one of my all-time favourites, "Aristocats"). A sidenote: This is an adaption, and author Stephen King was very unhappy with the result. I have to partially agree; as mentioned I also think this fails as a horror film. Kubrick seems to have been difficult to work with, as Brian Aldiss had to learn the hard way - here's a short overlook over the disagreements between them concerning A.I.

Opens today here and in Germany; presales look good but not overwhelming and it remains to be seen how critic-proof it is; reviews were from lukewarm to scathing ("an affront"; "the spectator suffers more than McClane"). In Germany admissions for DH1-4 were: DH1: 1,3mil DH2: 2,0mil DH3: 3,2mil DH4: 2,6mil If I look at presales, beating DH1 should be possible but DH2 numbers will be hard to beat. In Austria, DH4 had 340k admissions in '07, atm I'm expecting half of that for DH5.

Yes it will, these are official numbers. It was the same thing with RotK. And it goes the other way round, too. In Germany, Intouchables was already at over 80mil US$ last year when the Euro hit some air pocket or whatever and the next week it was at 78 (despite having made another 200k or so).

I didnt know the comics and didn't even catch it in theaters, but I liked it a lot. That is, I liked the setup, the characters, the style and so on, although the story lost some drive the longer the film continued. With more than 1:50 running time, SP overstays his welcome a bit, this would be a perfect 1:30 or even shorter film.

Germany + Austria Top 13 Feb 07 - 10 TW LW Movie Studio Weekend Change Gross Week 1 N Kokowääh 2 WB $ 5.858.933 - 6.735.387 1 2 1 Django Unchained Sony $ 4.520.593 -36,9 41.025.882 4 3 2 Schlussmacher Fox $ 1.671.654 -46,1 21.684.980 5 4 N Parker Constantin $ 1.359.795 - 1.490.626 1 5 3 Fünf Freunde 2 Constantin $ 1.175.421 -34,3 3.508.946 2 6 4 Flight Constantin $ 990.252 -38,0 5.548.526 3 7 5 The Hobbit 1 WB $ 750.050 -40,2 100.185.384 9 8 7 Lincoln Fox $ 728.114 -23,9 3.346.339 3 9 6 Life of Pi Fox $ 567.440 -43,4 28.450.900 7 10 9 Zero Dark Thirty UPI $ 415.504 -49,5 1.659.698 2 11 12 Ritter Rost Universum/Const. $ 341.915 -41,6 3.923.551 5 12 10 Gangster Squad WB $ 337.704 -46,7 2.449.458 3 13 8 The Last Stand Splendid/Fox $ 328.255 -64,3 1.624.613 2 As expected, Kokowääh2 took the lead, even if it opened much lower than its predecessor. "Parker" had an ok opening too, especially compared to the absymal performance of "The Last Stand". Bad drops for mostly anything else, but we had some weeks with very good holds in a row so that was to be expected somewhen. The US$ seems to make a dive (or the € is showing strength) and so the totals in US$ made a jump from last week, especially notable for "The Hobbit 1" which now crossed 100mil US$ in Germany+Austria combined. This weekend, there's only one wide opening - "Die Hard 5" - while 3D re-issue "Finding Nemo" gets a semi-wide release. DH5 wil surely kill off TLS and Parker, and I suppose Kokowääh2 will lose a few of its many screens after the softer-than-expected opening, but everything else should'nt get hit too hard.

With Haneke, I don't think I would apply "pretentious". He tackles serious and dark themes and so his films are not very appealing, but they're well-constructed if a little "teachery" and dry. The only thing close to pretentious in his films are many of his characters which are not characters in themselves, but serve as manifestations of, say, a religion or an attitude. That's rather patronizing because that way he forces some of his themes on the audience instead of letting them connect the points themselves.

Yep that was a nice read, and should be pretty scriptable too, it's rather straightforward for Dick. As of today, there were a lot of interesting films realised after P.K.Dick-stories but few that dared to take him serious. As good as "Blade Runner" or "Total Recall" were, they didn't scratch the skin of his tales. "The Plan" dared to scratch but cooped out into a sentimental love story. And other films that "went Dick", like the Matrix, never came near the disturbing precariousness of Dick's tales.

That's one of those films that only work because of chemistry between the actors. Nothing else about this film is exceptional or even worth mentioning, but the chemistry is there and so it was an enjoyable experience. Though I don't feel an urge to watch it ever again.

Friday trend for Germany: Kokowääh 2: 625k (pre-start included, so maybe 575k for the weekend proper) DU: 350k FF2: 200k Schlussmacher: 150k Parker: 120k While "Fünf Freunde 2" stays basically flat from its opening weekend and will end up much higher than part 1, DU and Schlussmacher were hit harder than expected. I guess Kokowääh2 took too many evening screens. Still nice for both, DU will cross 3mil admissions this weekend and Schlussmacher 2mil. I'm a bit shocked how much higher "Parker" opens compared to last week's "Last Stand" - Arnie isn't a draw any longer.

For Germany + Austria combined, very possible - for Germany solo, nearly impossible. To date, it has made 29,9mil US$ from Germany and 4,2mil US$ from Austria. Still, Germany is the biggest OS market for DU!

Germany + Austria Top 13 Jan 31 - Feb 03 TW LW Movie Studio Weekend Change Gross Week 1 1 Django Unchained Sony $ 7.168.185 -19,2 34.118.925 3 2 2 Schlussmacher Fox $ 3.099.514 -3,3 18.592.083 4 3 N Fünf Freunde 2 Constantin $ 1.788.351 - 1.788.351 1 4 3 Flight Constantin $ 1.596.599 -11,9 4.027.768 2 5 4 The Hobbit 1 WB $ 1.253.800 -18,1 95.917.820 8 6 5 Life of Pi Fox $ 1.002.548 -17,7 26.682.104 6 7 6 Lincoln Fox $ 956.252 +10,7 2.207.099 2 8 N The Last Stand Splendid/Fox $ 920.328 - 1.001.072 1 9 N Zero Dark Thirty UPI $ 822.341 - 937.433 1 10 7 Gangster Squad WB $ 634.125 -24,4 1.859.978 2 11 8 Movie 43 Constantin $ 607.705 -22,4 1.618.484 2 12 9 Ritter Rost Universum/Const. $ 585.575 -1,5 3.297.629 4 13 12 Quartet DCM/Filmladen $ 440.280 +0,3 1.194.737 2 Most films with very good holds, some even with an increase (Lincoln!) - again better than the corresponding 2012 weekend. 2013 looks much better than expected until now! Fünf Freunde 2 in the Top3 as expected; ZDT and TLS opened a bit lower than I thought they could - at least Arnie was #3 in Austria. This weekend, a sequel to a successfull Til Schweiger comedy, "Kokowääh 2", will easily top the BO but I expect decent holds for DU, Flight and FF2 since the target demos don't overlap much. The fantastic run of "Schlussmacher" should hit its first bump though. On a much smaller scale, "Parker" will go for the Action crowd and french fish-out-of-water comedy "Bowling" for the arthouse demo.

With drops like these, it might get higher.

Looks at an about 20% drop this weekend in Germany. It may be in part thanks to Christoph Waltz who dubs his own english and does a very good job, he's hilarious.

It seems we had a terrific Saturday, last estimates see everything higher than with first trends, DU might drop only about 20%, Schlussmacher 5%. Really fantastic holds everywhere!

No, it's the other way round. First came the racial theories (that was not a german domain, they were state of the art in the scientific world, together with phrenology), plus there has always been christian anti-semitism. When politicians begann searching for scapegoats during the economy crisis after WW1, the jews were an easy target, together with other, smaller groups and intellectuals (nobody likes a wise guy). A lot of jews left Germany on a more or less voluntary base during the 20s and 30s, many of them hailing from the then big german film industry - most of those emigrated to California where many ended up very successful. Only then the german film industry was taken over by the nationalists, and then the production of propaganda films started (the most notorious one is "Jud Süß" btw).

Friday trend for Germany's weekend: DU: 425k (<30% drop again, wow!) Schlussmacher: 275k (<10% drop omg ...) FünfFreunde2: 200k (very good opening if true) Flight: 115k (down 20%, ok after a soft opening) the Last Stands opens with probably a bit below 100k admissions. Very good weekend again, especially for german films. Django Unchained is simply a monster. It may be in part thanks to Christoph Waltz who dubs his own english and does a very good job, he's hilarious. (Just heard Arnie on his promotion tour for The Last Stand and it's a good thing he gets dubbed by a professional; his austrian is nearly as bad as his american ...)

It's doing ok for a Spielberg history drama I'd say, but not exceptionally so. It will end up higher than Munich (I hope), but a lot lower than Schindler's List. Outside the US, Lincoln simply is not that big a figure.

imho, Intouchables was the BO-story of the last years; it just went a little below radar because it had its releases spread over a whole year between 2011 and 2012. But what a run! On a 10mil budget!

This film had some nice actors, some nice and funny scenes, some cute dogs, but as a whole, it was a mess, especially the second half. And Colin Farrell couldn't carry a film when his life depended on it, sorry.

Germany + Austria Top 13 Jan 24-27 TW LW Movie Studio Weekend Change Gross Week 1 1 Django Unchained Sony $ 8.873.648 -14,0 23.969.980 2 2 2 Schlussmacher Fox $ 3.204.789 -20,4 14.640.483 3 3 N Flight Constantin $ 1.812.332 - 1.898.078 1 4 3 The Hobbit 1 WB $ 1.531.246 -37,6 94.270.693 7 5 4 Life of Pi Fox $ 1.218.827 -39,2 25.297.064 5 6 N Lincoln Fox $ 863.530 - 868.384 1 7 N Gangster Squad WB $ 838.839 - 941.359 1 8 N Movie 43 Constantin $ 783.468 - 801.920 1 9 5 Ritter Rost Universum/Const. $ 594.472 -15,2 2.609.992 3 10 6 Celal ile Ceren Kinostar $ 502.796 -26,3 1.355.334 2 11 9 Vampirschwestern Sony $ 439.375 -5,6 5.711.599 5 12 N Quartet DCM/Filmladen $ 438.798 - 505.351 1 13 10 Hannah Arendt NFP/Filmladen $ 339.365 -25,7 1.757.165 3 Django and Schlussmacher with a spectacular hold, and behind them five wide openers made it into the Top12. Movie43 even was #3 in Austria!! The 6th major opener, Tankenweenie, franked with about 160.000 US$. It was, again, a very strong weekend, even up from last year when "Intouchables" was in full steam. This weekend, there are three wide openings: "Fünf Freunde 2" (sequel to the german Enid-Blyton adaption, could get to #3), plus "The last Stand" and, still wide but on a smaller scale, "Zero Dark Thirty". Both will not make much impact I guess, Osama is not that big a theme here and the general anticipation level for Arnie's latest could be described as somewhere between mildly interested and non-existent. But with DU and Schlussmacher safely leading the pack, it will be a good weekend again!