BadAtGender

Well, that's because they need a separate uniform for each screen of the Barco Escape format.

I wonder how it compares to the old Cinerama format.

Oh, right. There is a theater that has that over in Bellevue. Now that I am employed, I have the option to try out a few more things, I guess. A few places have non-IMAX laser, too. Not sure if any projectors besides the Christie 6p, though.

I hope I don't need to state that this is my opinion for every declaration I'm making about the film. There is no objective stance, really. All critique is opinion.

It's kinda astounding that even after 32 days, Frozen still wasn't on your charts, yet. Only at 239m. Still had another 160m to go.

I don't think it's about Erin being more pure than Venkmann. She's clearly motivated by man-candy, after all. It's more that from a story construction standpoint, you've got one character who in one scene has the "what do they want and why can't they have it?" question posed and answered and the other just doesn't. Venkmann is funny, but that funny is why I want to watch him, not because he's got compelling character depth.

I like the original a lot, too. And it's difficult to really compare them because the new film is really trying to be its own thing. But we can still go with comparison points. Take the characters, for instance. If we look at their direct comparisons, I have to say that the new characters are quite a bit more compelling. Much of Venkmann's character is Bill Murray doing his improv thing. And he's great at it, but Venkmann doesn't have much more than being kinda a creeper. In his very first scene we see him abusing a position of power to sexually advance on a younger woman. And that's pretty much his mode of operating throughout the film. Why does he push to investigate the things at Dana's apartment? Not because he particularly believes, but because he wants to get in her pants. Now, contrast that with Erin. Her first scene establishes what she wants (tenure and to be respected as a scientist) and immediately provides a personal conflict that's again that. And this friction remains throughout the movie. I'll take Holtzmann's slightly unhinged (and gay) brilliance over Egon's archetypal quiet nerd any day. And Winston barely has a motive, while Patty is the driving force of the plot. (Yes, there was more in the scripting stage for Winston, but they excised that from the final film. I feel bad for that happening to Ernie Hudson.) (Abby is probably the one who hews closest to the original. She and Ray are both the enthusiastic ones.) The original Ghostbusters was funny guys being funny in a nice genre mashup. The new Ghostbusters is similar, but it has more character depth. Also, I really love how just by casting four women (all over 30 and three over 40) is in and of itself a transgressive act.

Better than the original, really.

Nerd culture doesn't exist. Nostalgia culture does, though, and it has an extreme fixation on being true and honest to the things that one remembers fondly from the younger years. The problem with nostalgia is that it's entirely subjective. The aspects of some old property that appeal to one person can be completely different than a second person. Thus it can't be said that there's one true vision that can be applied to an update of a property so that it's paying the correct amount of respect. So there's no way to truly "deliver what the fans want". Being a fan is entirely a self-defined label. There are no requirements or limitations to becoming one. There are no prescribed and proscribed activities. Someone could have watched every episode of Doctor Who and someone else could have only watched "Blink" and both of them could call themselves fans and be perfectly correct. Neither is a better or worse or more or less true fan than the other. Nostaltia culture is bullshit. If you're so concerned about the loss of "future stories" that feed into the feelings and expectations you had long ago, well, I feel bad for you. There are so many new things to see and get interested in. Why limit yourself? Few things are as cool as talking to someone who has discovered something and found that they really like it. That fresh enthusiasm is far better for MY nostalgia than to see people try to fit things into specific molds of when I was a kid.

From the earlier 17-19 estimate? You have a strange definition of "big".

June/July animated film Saturday bumps in July, excluding opening weekends & holidays: June: FD: 31.9 IO: 27.2, 42.5, 33.1 HTTYD2: 32.6, 48.4, 39.5 MU: 29.8, 35.8, 36 Brave: 24, 33.9, 18.2, 36.7 Mad3: 29.6, 36.6, 10.5, 33 Cars2: 24.3, 42.5, 34.7, 32.4 TS3: 38, 35.9, 36.2, 38 July: Minions: 38.8, 32.2 Planes2: 33.3 DM2: 29.6, 34.3, 31.4 Turbo: 31.5 IA4: 14.9, 32.2 Pooh: 26.1, 25.5 DM1: 25.6, 24.2, 29.5 I've bolded all the ones that were above 40%. You'll note that every one of them was a June release.

That's, uh, a very specific weekend number when they have a $1m range for Friday.

They may get blamed, but they aren't blamed because they are men.

40% would be an extremely strong Saturday bump for a July animated film. It's more likely to hover somewhere between 25-35%. Which probably means an 18-20 Saturday off a 15m Friday.

Saw a 9pm showing. It wasn't full (probably 20% or so?) but the audience really seemed to be into it. Lots of smiles and pretty much everyone stayed through to the end of the credits.

Didn't have time to think about it. Abstain.

1. Will Ghostbusters open below $60M? YES 2. Will Ghostbusters open below $50M? 2000 YES 3. Will Ghostbusters open below $40M? 3000 NO 4. Will Ghostbusters open below $30M? NO 5. Will the Infiltrator reach $6M by the end of the weekend? YES 6. Will the Infiltrator reach $9M by the end of the weekend? NO 7. Will the Infiltrator reach $12M by the end of the weekend? NO 8. Will Secret Life of pets make more than $50M this weekend? YES 9. Will SLOP's weekend gross make more than both openers combined Sunday cumulative totals? 3000 NO 10. Will Purge stay above Central Intelligence? 2000 NO 11. Will Tarzan pass $100M by Saturday? NO 12. Will BFG finish above Independence Day? YES 13. Will The Shallows cross $50M domestic total? YES 14. Will Tarzan overtake Conjuring 2's Domestic total by the end of the weekend? YES 15. Will the Hilary Clinton documentary thing have a PTA above $4,500? YES 16. Will Our Kind of Traitor finish in the top 12? NO 17. Will Sultan drop more than 55% this weekend? YES 18. Will NYSM2 have a PTA above $1,000? YES 19. Will Mike and Dave have a larger percentage drop than Free State of Jones NO 20. How many shits is Bill Murray going to give I his Ghostbusters cameo? He seemed to give a few. 14/20 - 2000 15/20 - 4000 16/20 - 6000 17/20 - 8000 18/20 - 10000 19/20 - 15000 20-20 - 20000 Part 2 1. What will Ghostbusters OW be? 5000 53.1m 2. What will SLOP percentage drop be? 48.12% 3. What will be the PTA of BFG? $1,682 Part 3 3. Finding Dory 6. The Purge: Election Year 8. Infiltrator 10. Independence Day: Resurgence 13. Sultan 16. Our Kind of Traitor 3/6 - 2000 4/6 - 5000 5/6 - 8000 6/6 - 12000

I think the thing about STID is that it works at the level that Abrams is very good at, by creating that enjoyable atmosphere that really is fun. And that means that, yes, most people will like it. I don't think it should be construed that consensus "I like this" means that it's a loved film. The problem with it is that as the film goes on, it gets weighed down with the efforts to be referential and reverential to very specific moments in an earlier film. This is, honestly, the same problem that TFA has. The more the film goes on, the more it's insistent on being very much like the OT, which undermines its ability to stand on its own. ST09, despite being really, really bad in terms of science, was pretty clear that it just wanted to be a fun ride, mostly in the vein of Star Wars (rather than Star Trek), so it felt fresh and new. I suppose, in an oblique way, the Super 8 runs into the same problem as STID and TFA. It's pretty consumed with being Spielbergian, though not so much with specific references.

This isn't a summer movie?

FUCK!

I built my list based on what I could find as a credited source. If the film didn't name any, and wasn't a sequel, I assumed it was original. Based on that, Titanic would be original, but Frozen (which does cite HCA's The Snow Queen as a source in the credits) would not. I don't have a problem basing something off a historical event, though it can be fuzzy. Much of how we know about historical events is based off of records in books. Are film in those things based on those books? The further back we go into history, the more likely that we'd only have one surviving source of an event. A Night to Remember probably served as some sort of antecedent to Titanic, but Cameron was able to go and research other things and fill out details that the book did not contain, thus we can argue that Titanic is original. But if you're talking about something that happened 1000 years ago or more, rather than 100, that's considerably different. Say you want to make a film about Jesus. There are possibly some historical records and other sources to consider, but The Bible is going to weigh very heavily into the narrative of your story. Is it possible to say you're making a movie that isn't based on it? (I pondered about The Passion of the Christ while building my list, but ultimately decided against it.) Additionally, when we're talking about very old events, the questions of fact and fiction become murky. If we have a source, is it the work of a reporter or an author? Was Jesus even real? And if so, how closely did the reality of his life come through in the sources we have about him?

They don't seem to operate that way. Actually, I think a significant part of the Academy doesn't vote on Best Animated Short, so the votes that are counted tend toward more offbeat choices. In fact, Pixar hasn't won the Short award since For the Birds in 2001. Since then they've had nominations in 2002 (Mike's New Car), 2003 (Boundin'), 2005 (One Man Band), 2006 (Lifted), 2008 (Presto), 2010 (Day & Night), 2011 (La Luna), and 2015 (Sanjay's Super Team). That's often enough it should be clear that the Academy isn't prone to just going with the big name in animation for the award. (Somehow World of Tomorrow did not win, either, which is a far greater crime than snubbing Pixar.)

Updated original opening chart with SLoP: Title Date Weekend Increase $ Increase % Duration (Days) Star Wars 8/7/1977 $7,195,573.00 - - 350 Star Wars 7/23/1978 $10,166,336.00 $2,970,763.00 41.29% 154 Every Which Way But Loose 12/24/1978 $10,272,294.00 $105,958.00 1.04% 910 The Cannonball Run 6/21/1981 $11,765,654.00 $1,493,360.00 14.54% 721 ET: The Extraterrestrial 6/12/1983 $11,835,389.00 $69,735.00 0.59% 364 (Gremlins) 6/10/1984 $12,511,634.00 $676,245.00 5.71% 0 Ghostbusters 6/10/1984 $13,578,151.00 $1,066,517.00 8.52% 182 Beverly Hills Cop 12/9/1984 $15,214,805.00 $1,636,654.00 12.05% 1806 Harlem Nights 11/19/1989 $16,096,808.00 $882,003.00 5.80% 364 Home Alone 11/18/1990 $17,081,997.00 $985,189.00 6.12% 1316 The Lion King 6/26/1994 $40,888,194.00 $23,806,197.00 139.36% 686 Twister 5/12/1996 $41,059,405.00 $171,211.00 0.42% 56 Independence Day 7/7/1996 $50,228,264.00 $9,168,859.00 22.33% 1785 Pearl Harbor 5/27/2001 $59,078,912.00 $8,850,648.00 17.62% 161 Monsters, Inc. 11/4/2001 $62,577,067.00 $3,498,155.00 5.92% 567 Bruce Almighty 5/25/2003 $67,953,330.00 $5,376,263.00 8.59% 371 The Day After Tomorrow 5/30/2004 $68,743,584.00 $790,254.00 1.16% 161 The Incredibles 11/7/2004 $70,467,623.00 $1,724,039.00 2.51% 1869 Avatar 12/20/2009 $77,025,481.00 $6,557,858.00 9.31% 2009 Inside Out 6/21/2015 $90,440,272.00 $13,414,791.00 17.42% 385 The Secret Life of Pets 7/10/2016 $104,352,905.00 $13,912,633.00 15.38% Kinda interesting that it increased by almost the same dollar amount as IO did. Still nothing compared to TLK, though. Also, perhaps of note, some statistics, in compared to the overall record weekends. The average length of time an original movie holds the record is about 2 years: 729 days, to be specific. In comparison, all time records are held for an average of 539 days. Original movies tend to break the record by a slightly higher percentage, 16.78% vs 14.92% for all time weekends. However, because all time weekends are larger, their average absolute increase is almost twice as much: $8.9m vs $4.9m for originals.

Based on a book. There were at least a few I thought would go on the list, before realizing they were adaptations. Indecent Proposal and Mrs. Doubtfire both feel into that bucket. And Staying Alive is a sequel I'd never heard of before.

Illumination has nice advertising. Their films are strictly mediocre, though. They're basically making Blue Sky movies in terms of budget and blandness but doing old DWA numbers with them. Impressive, business-wise, but not really encouraging to watch.