IndustriousAngel

Not doing big numbers here; attendance is lower at my theater than for Tinker, Tailor ..., Hugo ot The Artist.

I didn't downgrade it ... I give A's only to films I do or will rewatch on a regular schedule. If "Drive" grows on me on rewatches, then it'll be an "A" for me, but chances are slim since I'm not that much into crime thrillers. Same with horror or agent thrillers or romcoms. I'm a big Aronofsky fan but "Requiem for a dream" is "only" B for me too; it's just a too depressing film to watch say every few months, but it's brilliant nontheless.On the other hand, there are some films I like to watch which are really not that good at all (call them guilty pleasures), those might get a "B" too - cases in point: Films like "Your Highness" or "Hudson Hawk".

DriveFri 23:00about 20 (run is finishing here)Trailers:Contraband (irritating trailer, didn't sell anything to me)John Carter (laughing in the audience when the Disney logo came up)Fantastic film (see review), had a mediocre run here but it has a rather limited audience too. I will catch this on BluRay once it gets cheap.

Finally had time to watch Drive (and luck ... its run was already finished at my theater but they wedged in two night screenings this weekend). Fantastic film. The actors are perfect (casting: A; Ron Perlman!!), the music and soundtrack fitting (A), the cinematography a visual feast (A). The director takes his time in establishing the Driver's small world, but boy does this film get into gear once the story begins! The violence is ugly (which is ok with me - violence IS ugly and should be shown as being so) - reminded me of some of the bloodier french police thrillers of the 80s. At the moment I give it only a "B" because it's a genre I generally don't like very much, and the principal story point seemed rather forced*, but maybe it'll grow on me on rewatches on BluRay. Highly recommended if you can stomach the violence and have an adult attention span.* The forced story point was Standard's after-jail-story. While Standard himself was portrayed as maybe not very bright, but brutal, and so maybe too easily talked into a last job, the Driver was shown as non-violent and intelligent - while I watched Ryan Gosling mull over Standard's story and Irene's involvement, the thought crossed my mind why he didn't at least bring up the possibility of seeking legal or police assistance.

In Germany+Austria, this is dying a quick death. After a lackluster opening weekend, today's numbers are even worse.

Yes, don't know why that came about but nearly every shit gets dubbed here. It's a bit better in my theater, we got lots of students here so they offer original versions at least for english films, and we also got an arthouse playing 3 screens. In France or Italy or the Netherlands, there's nearly no dubbing and everything works fine, but in Germany+Austria, you would lose a lot of custormers if you try to sell them Robert Downey jr.'s real voice

Not hits, but enough to generate a good weekend. There are about 3.5million of turkish origin (meaning, they speak Turkish) in Germany and Austria. Usually they have turkish satellite TV for their films but in the last years theaters and distributors have discovered them as a target group and present turkish films in selected urban theaters. Most of the films are melodrams or rom-coms but also some comedies and action films. Since these events are 1) rare and 2) exclusive to the Turkish community (your average german is about as allergic to subtitles as your average US citizen), these are real events for them. The legs however are usually very short since the core audience is so limited."Fetih 1453" is even more of an event - it's the most ambitious turkish film ever made - or at least, the most expensive - however that translates to quality . And it's about the conquest of Constantinople by the osman empire, so it caters to the patriotic side too - my theater is selling out its biggest screen for 9 shows this weekend. It's doing about as much business today as all the other films combined - including "The Vow", "Intouchables", "War Horse", "Underworld" and so on. But keep in mind, it's only in about every third theater (if not less) at all.

100.000 seems very low ... last year's "Tal der Wölfe - Palästina" did about that much and that was FSK18 (like an R-rating in US)

For me, this was much better than BTTF2 - back to the lean editing of part one, plus some romance, and I love trains!

I have not much love for this one ... we just bought the bluray set and watching them back-to-back BTTF2 just looks like a mess. Maybe that's unfair because it's crushed by two excellent films but in comparison it's convoluted, overdone and, worst of all, boring. Plus, there's not even romance in it. It just lives on its gimmicks (which are really nice btw).Edit: There's also a rather large plothole in BTTF2: By using the almanach Biff creates a new timeline ("B") which is radically different from Marty's timeline A - but the almanach describes sports results from timeline A. While Biff's wins might not have much influence during the first couple of bets, the almanach's results will show an ever-increasing difference to the "real" results from timeline B as time goes on and the worlds drift apart.

In Germany+Austria trends, "Fetih 1453" is missing. It's a turkish historical epos opening this weekend, playing very well to the turkish communities in urban areas and it's taking the biggest screens and will easily come in nr.1 at my local theater (it's making more than 5x the presales of Intouchables). It's doing so well that I wouldn't be surprised if it's nr.1 for the weekend in Germany, even if it's not playing in that many theaters.

Nice review! And you're right, it's not only verrry funny but also warm and touching. My favourite scene is after the car goes up in flames and they both sit there, in the middle of night and nowhere, and start this uncontrollable laughter. Talk about the human condition

Yep, Steve Martin at his best A

HugoTuesday 6pm30 people in a 300seater. It just opened here on Friday and there are school and university holidays, so that's really poor.Trailers: Big Miracle and something similarily forgettable which I have forgotten and Journey 2 which was cringeworthy bad.The film: Excellent (review in review section) but not really suited for children. The 3D was excellent.Hugo won't do big numbers here even if the audience clearly loved it. Same as with "The Artist": You can't build WOM on such small crowds. The marketing and whole conception for "Hugo" are very questionable; this is in heart a very adult film with much bitterness and sadness. Highly recommended to everyone in love with cinema!

ABeautifully realised, in a kind of hyper-realism reminding me of Jean-Pierre Jeunet. The acting was uneven, as already mentioned (the best parts were the dogs) but the imagery, light and sets were brilliant and I found the story touching. Much as "The Artist", it's also a love declaration to the medium film. The only question is why they wanted to do this as a children's film? This is adult fare; the bitter taste and death theme won't please most kids. If the goal was to present the beginnings of filmmaking to children, the straight approach would have served much better (see the scene with Tabard as a child - that's what I mean).I really liked S.B.Cohen here; hope he does more work in "classical" cinema, he's got an impressive presence on the screen. Ben Kingsley is ok; sadly, his role is very limited. If this was an "adult" film, Meliès could have been a much more present and tragic character; as it is, Kingsley is a bit wasted here. Christopher Lee commands the screen whenever he looks into the camera - I expected his character to have a bigger role.Wholehearted recommendation for everyone in love with cinema! We'll buy this one on Bluray.

Nice site and of course there were plotholes in the LotR-films alright, I was talking about the book.

I don't think the weather had much influence; there were no blocked roads or snowstorms. In cities it might even had positive influence since it was too cold for outdoor activities. "The Vow" was doing good numbers which might have taken some of the audience away, as might "Hugo" which opened here this weekend. And on Saturday, the Met Live HD was taking the biggest screens in many theaters from 6pm until midnight.

Actually, I don't know if there are real plotholes in LotR. A plothole means that there is an actual contradiction somewhere in the story - as for instance the famous Ocean's-11-plothole with the bags full of trash papers which appear out of nowhere. In last year's "Source Code", they constructed a "virtual" train out of the brainwaves of the passengers after it exploded - including the bomb hidden in a car - but the bomber had left the train before the explosion?! That's a plothole.The closest thing to a plothole in LotR would be the elvish inscription on the west door of Khazad-Dum: "Moria", meaning "Black Pit" - why would the dwarves put this derogative on their door even if the elves used it? And not simply an elvish translation meaning Dwarf-mine?

Sad, but look at the bright side: this is doing way better than the previous Muppet films.

Since I'm watching "Götterdämmerung" today and it's my first contact with the Met Live HD program, I delved a bit into it and saw that this is playing at more than 1500 theatres WW (about 150 - some with multiple screens - in german-speaking countries, about 100 in France). With ticket prices up to €30 (about US$ 40) here in Europe this does some serious business. If you count 300 only seats per theatre (that would be the absolute low end - i guess there are some where this sells >1000), this are about half a million seats sold. If you take an average US$25 per seat (presales were cheaper) this will do nearly 15mil US$ this weekend - probably a lot more though. Now I know this is not a film but nontheless it would rank high on this weekend's international BO scale. Does anybody here know what percentage goes to the theatres? And how is it priced in Noth America?

For what it's worth, here in my cinema at 8pm TPM3D (playing on 2 screens) is selling a little less seats than "Intouchables" (coming from its 5th weekend ) and considerably less than "The Vow" (each playing one screen only, the Vow has a sellout which is rare midweek) ... they should have put "The Vow" on their biggest screen instead of TPM.

Yep, "Towering Inferno" is nearly the definition of disaster film! And the effects were mostly spectacular, too - look at the size they made the model! - it was over 20m high!Somehow this is missing from todays tv evenings, in the 80s this was playing at least once every year. Really have to rewatch this one of these days, must be more than 10 years since I last saw this.

That's an impressive list ... I was thinking along the same lines but a Top-3-list is useless anyway because you have to leave so many brilliant films out. "Rio Bravo" and "High Noon" should be on such lists, and "Little Big Man", and "Butch Cassidy ..." or even "Dances with Wolves" ...

I think you misunderstood the thing about the metaphor; I'm not looking for such things in a film but the story itself didn't catch me and the metaphor gets forced on you by the director. And what's missing in the story is, maybe, scale: There was the Lord of Darkness eating up all the light and warmth - sounds like a truly epic theme to me but all we get are a beautiful wood, farm and meadow and about 10 actors. This would fit a smaller story like "An evil sorcerer tries to take over our beautiful valley" and there would be nothing wrong with that too (think of Dragonslayer).

I'm a fan of the original "TRON" and had some hopes for this - and the result is not as bad as some reviews would make you believe. This is a very visual film and the visuals are really good. The design references the original in a nice way; they even put in similar (but evolved) games as in 1982. Of course, TRON was full of gaudy colours; T:L is kept grey and black with few marker colours - but that fits the darker theme. The story is more ambitious than in the original but that's the main shortcoming of the film. Concept-wise, this is a B-action-movie with good production values, but they tried to make a bit more out of it - call it the "P.J.'s King Kong - syndrome". T:L would really profit from tighter editing and a shorter running time, throwing the philosophical themes and quiet moments away. If you have female software running around in high heels, you are obviously in B-movie-land and should stay there. Big surprise: As well as I liked the visuals, the one thing I liked most was the music. Being one of the older posters here, I had no idea who or what "Daft Punk" are, but the soundtrack is simply superb. I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere but it reminds me strongly of Philip Glass, especially his soundtrack for "Kooyanisqatsi". And if you liked T:L, give "Kooyanisqatsi" a try, it's a film without a story but visually brillant on a very similar level! PS: What's up with all those Ducatis? Are they that aggressive into product placement or is there a deeper reason why those bikes always show up in the last years? I would have liked Sam riding something nostalgic, maybe even from '82 - the year of the original TRON!