BadAtGender

Yeah, it was a surprise in degrees, but not in scope. (And, FWIW, Whedon probably was only a small part of it getting that big.)

It wasn't too surprising at the time. Or Joss Whedon?

Akira, at least for the manga. GItS is fun, but Shirow's earlier work (Appleseed, the Dominion series) is better. For the anime, still probably Akira, if you're just comparing films. GitS was good, but Akira is one of the most visually interesting animated films ever. (And if you get the newer version that isn't the Streamline translation, it actually makes sense.) The newer GitS TV series (Stand Alone Complex and Arise) are pretty keen, though. I like them better than Akira.

Holy shit. The Cinerama showed up? It only has one screen!

Umm... Home Alone certainly was one of the biggest ever. If I meant to check its adjusted marks I would have done that. I didn't, because the box office run was fucking amazing. Home Alone was #1 at the box office from its opening until February: almost three months where it was on top. It was in the Top 10 until April. And showed up in the top 10 as late as June. It is, I will note, a film with a Christmas setting. Such things usually die on December 26. That did not happen here. The box office run of Home Alone is unbelievable. Just like it says in the title. Do other films adjust above it? Sure. But so the fuck what?

It was mentioned before, but Home Alone. Seriously. It was the third biggest movie of all time after its release. That's crazy. It remained in the top 10 until Star Wars Episode 1 bounced it down to 11th in '99. (Fun fact: Until The Lion King broke in there in 1994, all of the 5 biggest films had scores by John Williams: ET, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Home Alone, and Return of the Jedi. Jaws was 6th, too.)

A better sequel to Cap1 than TWS.

I did say ScarJo's awesome. But she is not right for this at all. You cannot remove the Japanese element from GitS and make it work. It undermines the story. There's too much that tied to Japanese culture and history to allow for the plot to shift locales and still be GitS. It's bad for the story and it's whitewashing racism. This is terrible casting. The financial argument is bullshit.

As cool as ScarJo is, this casting choice is terrible.

That's 1.182, not 1.82. WiR was about 9.2x the post-NYD weekend. Frozen earned ~104m after a 19.58 weekend (5.3x) Tangled earned either 33 after a 9.8 weekend (3.4x) or 25 after a 5.1 (4.9x). However in that case NYE/NYD happened on Fr/Sa so it's difficult to pinpoint the "post-New Year's Weekend". Probably best to ignore either case, although the 4.9x might be a good point for NEXT weekend. My guess is that it ends up somewhere in that range of 5-10x. At least 25m more, but probably not anything more than 45m. So it could pass DoFP, but it's definitely not guaranteed.

Oh, wait. I think you're right about that. I think the narrator does play someone else, though.

until the dialog mentioned it. Also, couldn't the witch just I think the main reason people are having an issue with the last act may be that we have seen so many better fairy tale deconstructions in the past decade. The last act does have some questionable choices, because there are a few details that are cut out. For instance, More importantly, though The play also has a few more things that make it apparent they're playing with the tropes of the genre. There's an actual narrator character (who technically also plays the wolf). At one point the cast gets angry at the way he's telling the story and accosts him.

Since it seems to be the thing to mention, and because I want something special for my 4000th post, here's my story abou the 1 2/3rds times I've seen Interstellar. I'd wanted to see it for a long while. Seattle's got a nice 70mm IMAX theater at the Pacific Science Center. However, the runtime is pushing close to 3 hours, which makes it a bit more than inconvenient to fit into a schedule. Also, it had a November release date, which meant I was totally embroiled in NaNoWriMo. On more than a few occasions, I said to myself "Hey, if you get your daily wordcount done, you can go see Interstellar." Did I get my wordcount done? No. No, I did not. On one occasion, I managed to find the time. The early showing on a Saturday would work, as I'd be able to meet people afterwards to get the writing done. So I hopped on my bike (we were a bit before the cold had really set in) and pedeled my way over the PacSci to try and catch the show. Just a bit over halfway, I realized that my backpack felt unnaturally light. I'd forgotten my lock. At this point it was less than ten minutes to showtime, not nearly enough to return home and ride back again. On another some friends and I planned to catch it in the evening, only to find out that it was sold out, despite being in theaters for a few weeks at that point. Plans switched and I bowed out. Finally, November ended and I had more free time. On a Sunday after work, I walked down to PacSci, bought my ticket and settled in. The theater is large, but it was also quite full: the earlier sellout that had prevented me from attending made sense: 70mm Interstellar is an event. (So much so that PacSci didn't abandon it for The Hobbit.) And the movie was good. I'd heard about the music and sound, which was strong but I began to understand why Nolan and set it up this way. The visuals were great, especially the decision to do all the space shots in 70mm. It didn't quite have the visceral impact that the opening sequences of TDK and TDKR had, but that didn't bother me. So, very, very pretty. And then, a moment of confusion. At one point the sound suddenly cut out. The overhead lights came on. People looked up, murmuring in confusion. Had someone committed such an egregious error as this? But, no, then the chirping of a siren accompanied by the flashing lights by the door told us the truth. In the middle of Interstellar, we had a fire alarm. There were sighs. There were laughs. There were, thankfully, no shouts of real anger. Dutifully we gathered our things and filed out as instructed. We got a neat trek through the bowels of the Pacific Science Center, until we emerged in the drizzle and the grey of the Seattle afternoon. After some confusion we were informed that they needed to figure everything out, but we might possibly be let back in and the film restarted from a slightly earlier point. This would have been acceptable, as there was still some time for me to burn. At one point, as we waited outside, the alarm cut out. Would we be let back in? Would we be able to see the culmination of Nolan's space exploration vision? No, I'm afraid we would not. That brief moment of hope was dashed when the sirens started up again. The Pacific Science Center staff informed us that there would be no more Interstellar for us that day. We were directed to customer services, where they issued refunds for our tickets and gave us vouchers to a free IMAX movie. It did so happen that I used that voucher to go see Interstellar several days later. I walked down to catch the final showing of the night, on a day that turned out to have quite a windstorm blowing through the area, so much so that I didn't entirely feel safe as I walked home. But I saw all of Interstellar, without interruption, and it was good and enjoyable. Ultimately, due to the refund, it didn't cost me anything, either. Now, for the curious, the moment the fire alarm started and the first viewing was cut short happened to be just after Cooper and Mann left for their little walk.

Helen Mirren may disagree.

The Queen?

If only there were some way we could look at aggregate data to determine when the effect came to pass.

ATLA is mid-1800s. The world is on a cusp of an industrial revolution, which has already started and is affecting some areas. LOK is early 1900s. The industrial revolution has happened and spread everywhere, and there have been decades of innovation. The specific technology involved is colored by the fictional world, which has 1) superpowered people and 2) a pretty strong steampunk flavor, but the development cycle is sound. If you want a real world comparison, look at the technology used in the American Civil War vs. World War 1. ATLA is arguably earlier than the former, and LOK is almost later than the latter, but still.

Competition is overrated. It has some effect, but it tends to be less than people expect in most cases. Films that suffer the most from competition are the underdogs. In all the head-to-head matchups Frozen had (except one, possibly), it was viewed as the stronger film, thus it didn't suffer, even if it ended up grossing less that weekend. The same seems to be true for Big Hero 6.

Right now it seems like there are six movies vying for the five spots: The Lego Movie Big Hero 6 How to Train Your Dragon 2 The Book of Life The Tale of Princess Kaguya Song of the Sea The Boxtrolls is probably #7, but it doesn't feel as strong as previous Laika efforts so I don't think it'll be contending. Which of those six misses the cut? I can't see Lego or BH6 not getting NOMs. They're both strongly regarded and successful, which helps a lot. Of the remaining four: HTTYD2 - Very well regarded and following up a previous nomination (so there's some narrative that it might be due). However, despite the worldwide success (well beyond that of Lego) it's a bit of a disappointment domestically, and there's discussion that it's not an improvement over the first. The Book of Life - A bit of a left-field surprise, but it seems to be pretty warmly regarded, especially the visuals. And has something of an up-and-comer status. Not super successful, though, and I don't know if anyone thinks it's really great. The Tale of Princess Kaguya - Very well regarded, and it's possibly Takahata's final film. On the other hand, Takahata has never had the regard or success Miyazaki does, and the final film narrative didn't help The Wind Rises. Song of the Sea - Something of a followup to The Secret of Kells, so like HTTYD2 it has the previous nomination narrative. Very strong regard, too. Business is very slight, though, but in this case I don't know if that matters. If I was betting, I'd say Book of Life is probably the one that misses a nom, but I could see a case where HTTYD2 is unfortunately slighted.

It's not that BH6 has done poorly. It hasn't. It's more that it had potential to be bigger. What I think happened here is that Disney has an idea that Thanksgiving is better for girl movies and early November better for boy movies. So Frozen, Tangled, and Moana get Thanksgiving, while Wreck-It Ralph and BH6 get early Nov. It seems to ignore the relative strength or weakness of the release date.

In no particular order: Avengers 2 Star Wars 7 Inside Out Minions Furious 7 Mockingjay 2 Cinderella Spectre Mission Impossible 5 The last slot is probably a fight between Jurassic World, Ant-Man, The Good Dinosaur, or The Peanuts Movie. At best, I can see four films crossing $300m. It's probably going to be just 3, though.

The point isn't that they should have put it in the T-Day slot to start, but that they should have moved it there. The conventional wisdom is that the weekend before Thanksgiving is the best release date in the month. It's the Harry Potter release date, the Twilight release date. The Hunger Games release date. And for a good portion of the '00s, animated films have tried out the slot. It seemed like actually taking Thanksgiving was bad because of the second weekend drop. But as Disney themselves proved in '07 with Enchanted, Thanksgiving can be a great release date. Then in '08, they grabbed the pre-Thanksgiving weekend for Bolt and ran into Twilight, which possibly can't have been predicted, but it did handicap a good portion of their target audience. Then they decided to avoid it entirely in '09 with the TPATF catastrophe. Then in '10? Thanksgiving again and success. The early November slot has always felt like a bit of a consolation prize. It can generate big openings, like early May, but the distance between it and the holiday, combined with the inevitably large films that take the pre-Thanksgiving slot, mean there's a large hurdle to overcome. So you've got films like Thor 2, and Wreck-It Ralph and Big Hero 6 and even The Incredibles which did well, but perhaps not as well as they could have with a different release date. (I'm not sure if Thanksgiving itself would have been better for Bolt. If there's an argument that any competition with the first Twilight would have been bad, so if there's a film that should have gone for early November, this might have been it.) At this point, with pretty much anything, Disney is the big man on campus. Even if they'd given BH6 the early November slot ages ago, they could have changed it to Thanksgiving pretty much up to any point until Penguins was moved there back in May. Maybe such a move wouldn't have caused the film to earn more, but it's highly unlikely it would have earned any less.

Hindsight is 20/20, but if they'd decided to move it early enough, they wouldn't have been trying to muscle in on PoM, but instead would have been going head-to-head with Home. Even if I'm feeling a lot more anticipation for that than possibly anyone else around, I don't think DWA would have left it up in a direct competition. The PoM/Home switch still would have happened, but they'd have dropped PoM into the early November slot. It probably would have done better, too.

She's not too old if they animate it. They could get back Cheno, too, that way.