IndustriousAngel

BI missed this in theaters and just bought the Directors Cut on BD (with Ridley Scott, always trust the Director's cut!). Not bad at all, but a little lacking in what we expect from a Robin Hood film (most of all the fun!). This feels more like a history epos, and there's very little here from the RH legend - why call it Robin Hood at all? Obviously just to sell it because history films tend to underperform at the boxoffice.Production values are excellent (as is to be expected); the greens are vibrant, the sets good, CGI blends in seemlessly most of the time, costumes are good, camera and light excellent (night scenes to bright) and the acting is ok, Kate and Russell stand out. The battle scenes and their choreography show a strong Lord-of-the-Rings influence; not bad. The music is fitting, nothing exceptional.One major disappointment in this otherwise very watchable film: The villains. If you try to infuse some history and seriousness into the RH-legend, why such cardboard villains? Not a single redeeming quality anywhere to be found; those are the most leering, lying, cruel, stupid and conceited cowards you can imagine. No, really, even in Disney's Robin Hood the villains had more dimensions than those bastards.

Germany + Austria Top 13 Dec 27-30 TW LW Movie Studio Weekend Change Gross Week 1 1 The Hobbit 1 WB $ 18.030.690 +17,1 66.484.843 3 2 N Life of Pi Fox $ 6.569.072 - 9.303.987 1 3 2 Pitch Perfect UPI $ 2.775.823 +23,2 6.491.886 2 4 3 Skyfall Sony $ 1.841.641 +16,9 90.328.371 9 5 5 Jesus liebt mich WB $ 1.781.762 +43,0 3.940.315 2 6 N Vampirschwestern Sony $ 1.590.391 - 1.794.143 1 7 7 Sammy 2 StudioCanal/Const. $ 1.381.628 +64,6 2.948.896 2 8 4 Breaking Dawn 2 Concorde/Const. $ 1.324.670 +2,7 42.329.270 6 9 6 Wreck-it Ralph Disney $ 1.209.532 +10,0 7.828.789 4 10 8 Rise of the Guardians UPI/PPI $ 612.482 -18,8 6.708.501 5 11 10 Anna Karenina UPI $ 579.749 +29,3 3.001.346 4 12 9 End of Watch Tobis/Const. $ 574.191 -5,0 1.612.710 2 13 N Red Dawn Concorde/Const. $ 430.783 - 484.238 1 The last weekend of 2012 was excellent for nearly everything. Despite only one big opener (LoP), this weekend was, at least dollar-wise, the biggest since Dec.2003 when "Return of the King"opened. The only films running out of steam were BD2 (which got bloodsucking competition by opener "Vampirschwestern") and RotG which was obviously very christmassy.

no,The Hobbit had one more pre-holiday weekend - you have to compare the same dates( Jan 11-13).

I have it at 11mil. FotR made about 16.2mil that weekend.

Somehow this felt lifeless ... no soul. And while that's ok with some actioners, it's not okay when your story is centered on a family. Definitely a miss for Spielberg.

A mess. And why cast Sean Connery? With all the character and charisma onscreen, CGI puppets would have done the job as well.I really wanted this to be good as I like the comics, but this failed on many levels.

Gremlins on IMAX?! wow

Tickets are extremely cheap there.

MarkG from insidekino.de with some critical observations on the German market (same problems apply for Austria). While 2012 was a comparatively good year (considered it was a football championship year), there were only 25 productions with >1mil admissions; the year was saved by just 4 blockbusters. Ticket prices are at an alltime high which is bad for medium-sized production it seems, and it's illustrative of the problems that the 2 biggest blockbusters this year (Intouchables, Skyfall) were good old 2D-films; among the Top10, only ranks 3 to 5 are 3D films.Many of his observations are true for other markets; I never understood why movie theaters take the "high ticket price"-option instead of trying to attract as many admissions as possible. Concession and advertising are not-to-be-neglected additional incomes and they depend on admissions, not 3D - it might even be argued that someone who already bought 2 tickets at 3D-premium rate will be less inclined to add some equally overpriced nachos than someone who, say, took advantage of a take-2-pay-1 promotion. Actually, I'm pretty sure about that last point

I liked The Dictator, especially the love story. Seldom did two characters so deserve each other

http://www.lemonde.fr/a-la-une/article/2012/12/28/les-acteurs-francais-sont-trop-payes_1811151_3208.htmlInteresting ... I knew that France has a voluminous subvention system for its film industry but I didn't know just how big this is ... with France as Europe's single biggest market, I would have thought that more productions were in the black without public money, but seemingly even the french blockbusters can't survive on their own. And it's funny that French actors get more for rôles in France than if they participate in Hollywood films

That depends on the film. For a blockbuster, the effect might be minimal (+5% maybe) - for smaller productions without much awareness, it's perfect promotion and may easily double the BO potential. And for foreign productions it's even more important!.

What was that? La Luna? If yes, they played that in theaters as well.

Fake blood often looks bad, but it's better than in earlier times. If you want real fake blood, I recommend "Emperor of the North", the fight between Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine looks as if they're throwing red varnish around, it's that red - even on their jackets

That was pretty much a given, given the release date ... that's why i made my own showdown, aligned for date, not days in release.

I did. May ladyfriend too. We even bought it on DVD (not BD)!

You don't have to feel bad about it, most of the referees and linesmen don't get it either

Ted and Intouchables were great. Also from France, "Comme un Chef" was a nice comedy.

I don't see any problems with WOM, in fact it showed better holds than expected. But of course drops will be steeper from now on, it's losing IMAX screens and 3D share will be lower, but it still should do more than the SH1-multiplier. There's a part of Tolkien fandom that seems to watch these films again and again, leading to exceptional "late" legs, and they will keep H1 in theaters throughout February.

Yep, same as the LotR-films, which partly explains the weak opening. Seems to be tied to christmas - which leads us to question the wisdom on WB's side to release H3 in summer. Of course, it might work (Harry Potter films were very stable in attendance despite different release dates). (From my personal POV, H3 can't be here soon enough, I want to watch them back-to-back as just seeing the first 3rd is a bit of a disappointing experience! - especially as H1 has a much lower sightseeing factor than FotR had)

I see it at >290mil after MLK weekend, don't think they'll pull it from theaters just then. So 300 are locked.

You forgot FotR:6.8mil on Fri and after that an additional 124mil - 18.3xof course I know that H1 won't match FotR's legs, but the fact that it's very close on weekdays shows that it won't just disintegrate.

India should be in the Top 10 too, no?

Saturday trend - no big changes, except H1 700k instead of 725k. So, while 6mil admissions are locked, 7mil are a bit harder now - I had hoped for 800k this weekend.(Of course, 700k would still be a better 4th weekend than TT and RotK but they had much bigger openings and 4th wekend was 1 week later in January)

300 in North America are locked. 700 OS not yet. It had two very strong holiday weeks and 3 fine holiday weekends, but from now on January weekdays will work their curse and it's more a crawl than a run