Eric the Clown

I...did not know Streisand directed that

What is important though is that I'm in it. That's all that matters. Should have gotten Funniest User, but I guess I gotta improve my material

So I was looking at who was getting the honorary awards. NORMAN LEAR IS STILL ALIVE????

There's been a delay or so, but we're finally kicking off the awards ceremony season with the 78th Golden Globe Awards. This year is full of undeserved nominations, and the HFPA are being exposed for being super racist and a super fraud. But if there's one reason we all watch this show, it's to see celebrities get shitfaced drunk, supply some exciting GIFs, rage over our faves not winning, and hope that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler will say something funny but end up just being kind of awkward. Does Hamilton deserve a Best Picture nomination? Why did Emily in Paris get all those noms? Will James Corden win it all? All these questions and more will be answered tonight! As always, you guys know the rules. Be civil, be nice, have fun. Don't do anything stupid or you will get warning points. Enjoy!

Can you imagine Tom in the role of The Driver? That would be wacky!

@Brainbug@charlie Jatinder @excel1 @YourMother the Edgelord @Webslinger @Noctis @DAJK @Sir Tiki @Giesi @WittyUsername This was another long and taxing year to work on, if only because there were so many major stories to tackle, especially when it came to Disney. My stint talking about Disney's 2010s run was a lengthy one, but necessary. It's certainly fascinating to see just how massive the studio has become at the box office and how they're already dominating streaming in little more than a year and I thought it was important to really contextualize it in what was their big banner year. I only have one year left to take care of, and thank goodness for that. I obviously had a blast working on this series, but it does take a lot out of you. And even with no movies last year, there's going to be plenty to talk about in regards to the future of the box office that I'll still be swamped in the writing process. Hope you guys, and the people I have not @ed, are enjoying this big adventure.

Nineteenth place was the much-hyped Pokémon: Detective Pikachu. In a city where humans and Pokémon coexist together, an aspiring trainer named Tim Goodman finds himself reluctantly paired up with a talking Pikachu voiced by Ryan Reynolds. Together the two uncover the mystery of Tim’s missing father and uncover a conspiracy that could destroy the Pokéworld forever. There’s a lot to say about Pokémon that it’s hard to really start at one point. A property co-owned by Nintendo and Game Freak, Pokémon is a series all about catching, training, and battling against a series of self-titled creatures, all with unique stats and abilities. It first saw life as a Game Boy role-playing game in 1996, which soon led to the highest-grossing media franchise in history. It’s currently the second-best-selling video game franchise in history, only behind Mario, and it just spills out from there. Trading cards, manga, books, music, a theme park, toys, and an anime television series that has gone on for 20 seasons and is still producing new episodes today. In fact, Pokémon has had a very long history in movies and the box office. In 1999, Pokémon: The First Movie was released in America at the height of the brand’s popularity and was based on the popular anime series. This resulted in The First Movie earning the biggest 5-Day opening for a November release, as well as the biggest opening ever for a non-Disney animated movie. Pokémon the Movie 2000 released one year later, and while it did drop hard from the first film’s gross, it was still a financial success, earning the third-biggest non-Disney animated opening. Then Pokémon 3 came out in 2001, dropped even further from the last movie, and Warner Bros. dropped distribution for future films outside of Japan. And after two more Pokémon movies saw a limited theatrical release, Pokémon was no more as a theatrical property, at least outside Japan. With Pokémon movies coming out every year, they still release in theaters in Japan and air on TV on channels like Cartoon Network consistently. So naturally a live-action Pokémon movie was going to happen no matter what. And in April 2016, Legendary Pictures announced they earned the production rights. This was convenient timing too. 2016 was the 20th anniversary of Pokémon and the mobile game Pokémon Go would become a worldwide phenomenon. In July 2016, we first got details on this movie, and how it wasn’t a traditional adaptation of the Pokémon games or anime series. Rather, it was an adaptation of the obscure spin-off 3DS game Detective Pikachu. This was a puzzling choice to many Pokémon fans, but The Pokémon Company explained that since they made so many movies about Ash already, they could do something fresh with a new story and a new protagonist. Rob Letterman of Goosebumps and Monsters vs. Aliens fame signed on as director in November 2016, and development was underway. While the human cast was largely full of upcoming names like Justice Smith and Kathryn Newton, the big star of the show was the voice of Pikachu. Actors like Danny DeVito, Dwayne Johnson, Mark Wahlberg, and Hugh Jackman were considered, but the voice was ultimately given to Ryan Reynolds, fresh off his success with Deadpool. And after that, things kind of went under the radar for the film. While Pokémon was still as big as ever, there wasn’t much discussion amongst fandom circles about the feature. But then the first trailer dropped. And all of a sudden, everything had changed. It was November 12 when the trailer first launched, and it very quickly took the world by storm. It was the top trending video on YouTube and Twitter, spawned numerous memes and reaction videos, and amassed more than 100 million views in the span of 24 hours. The combination of cute Pokémon, Reynolds’ starpower, and nostalgia for the Chu got everybody talking about this movie. It saw more than 1.22 million likes on YouTube in just five days and set a record of most Twitter mentions in one day, earning 400,000 mentions. With two more trailers to come, as well as many more TV spots and featurettes, the hype for Detective Pikachu seemed otherworldly. The views and likes kept on coming, as people couldn’t resist this movie’s charms and it really seemed like this would be huge. With such massive online hype, an iconic brand, and plenty in there for both kids and nostalgic adults, it only made sense that Detective Pikachu would be a massive hit. The stars were aligning perfectly, the buzz was just right. This was going to be for video game movies what Spider-Man was for comic book movies. And when the film finally came out, on the back of several merchandise tie-ins, Detective Pikachu’s May 10 debut was...okay. That’s not to say its $54.4 million opening was bad. In fact, it was the biggest opening ever for a video game movie. But when the dust settled that weekend, it was kind of underwhelming. After all the buzz on social media and the iconic legacy of the Pokemon brand, it really felt like money was left on the table here and that it didn’t live up to the lofty expectations shown by social media. Ultimately the movie finished with about $144.1 million domestically and $433 million worldwide. Domestically this was the biggest video game movie ever, while worldwide it was only second-best, behind 2016’s ill-fated Warcraft movie. It’s kind of weird to think about this film really. When the first trailer dropped, the buzz was through the roof and everybody was hyped for it. Then when it came out, it couldn’t even beat Warcraft’s global total. The theorizing over the movie’s “good not great” performance has been full of possible answers. Maybe it was Avengers: Endgame releasing so soon. Maybe it was the positive, if unenthusiastic reviews. Maybe the trailers got more buzz because of Pikachu’s cuteness rather than actual excitement. Whatever the reason, Detective Pikachu still was successful enough, but there’s still arguments out there it could have been a true box office juggernaut. Either way, the release of Detective Pikachu and its solid critical and commercial success would give the video game movies a needed shot in the arm. This was the first video game movie ever to have a Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and it showed that people would be interested in this kind of material. This would lead to a number of video game movies either releasing or currently in the works, with the trailer for the upcoming Mortal Kombat movie making huge headlines on social media just a couple weeks ago. A Detective Pikachu sequel was also reported to be in development, though no word has been made on it since 2019. Let’s go a fair ways down here at 54th place with the critical darling Parasite. This black comedy thriller focuses on the Kim family, a poor family living in a cramped basement who are just barely making ends meet. But when the teenage son poses as a University student, he becomes an English tutor for the extremely wealthy Park family. Realizing the Park family are rarely in the house and are pretty dense individuals, the Kims pretend to be unrelated and highly qualified workers and all end up working for and mooching off the Parks. This soon leads to conspiracy, shocking reveals, twisted visuals, biting commentary, and twists and turns all around. Parasite was directed by famed South Korean talent Bong Joon-Ho. He first saw great critical and commercial success with films like Memories of Murder and The Host, and would go on to see two English-language hits with both Okja and Snowpiercer. And it was during production of Snowpiercer in 2013 that Bong found the inspiration for Parasite. Bong was a tutor for the son of a wealthy family in his early 20s, and wanted to take his experience and turn it into a stage production. The title of Parasite was considered early on, as it was an effective double meaning. The poor family are technically parasites, leeching off the rich family. Yet at the same time, the rich family are also parasites, leeching off the labor of the working class. A fifteen-page treatment was written after Snowpiercer’s release, but it wasn’t until Okja was finished things went full speed ahead. Filming began May 2018 and the film first debuted to the public at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival on May 21. And at Cannes, it was an instant critical favorite. Festival goers praised the film for its direction, editing, acting, and themes of social inequality and class conflict. And it soon made history when it won the Palme D’Or, the most prestigious prize of the festival. This was the first South Korean movie ever to win the Palme, and was the first unanimous win since Blue is the Warmest Colour in 2013. The festival buzz helped Parasite’s numbers in South Korea, where it released one week after Cannes. And starting with an opening weekend of $20.7 million, it racked up $72.2 million and more than 10 million admissions, meaning Parasite was watched by roughly one-fifth of South Korea's population. Not an easy feat. And sure enough, Parasite slowly but surely became a sensation in every part of the world. It became the first Korean film in nearly 15 years to pass 1 million admissions in Japan. It saw the biggest non-English debut in the United Kingdom. But for the domestic box office, the only box office that matters, there’s a great story here. Opening on October 11 in just three theaters, Parasite opened to $376.3 thousand. With a PTA of $125.4 thousand, it was the strongest per-theater average since La La Land in 2016 and the biggest ever for an international release. Parasite’s distributor Neon would slowly build the film’s hype week after week. Next weekend, it opened in 33 theaters and grossed $1.2 million. Weekend three was 129 theaters with a $1.8 million weekend haul. Then $2.5 million on weekend four, then $2.6 million on weekend 5. Weekend six had it at about 620 theaters, its peak, making about $1.9 million. It continued to play well in limited capacity, reaching $20 million by weekend 10, an incredible feat for a non-English title. The film continued to earn solid results in the arthouse markets, helped by its Best International Film win at the 2020 Golden Globes. MLK weekend had the film boost back up to $1.7 million, buoyed by an 843 theater count and earning six Academy Award nominations. The weekend of the Oscars saw it at 1,060 theaters, grossing $1.6 million. And then we come to that fateful Academy Awards ceremony. And it was here where history was made. Of the six nominations, Parasite won four. Best International Feature Film, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and most important of all, Best Picture. This was the first time ever a non-English language film ever won Best Picture before, with such films being ghettoized into the Foreign-Language category. Parasite was also the first South Korean film ever to be nominated for Best Picture, and the second East Asian film, the first being Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It was also only the third film to win both the Palme D’Or and Best Picture at the Oscars, the other two being 1945’s The Lost Weekend and 1955’s Marty. This made Parasite a film icon. While it was already popular with Korean film fans and film buffs, Parasite’s historical win turned heads and instantly made the film known by the millions watching the ceremony and the millions more who saw it pop up on their news feed. Now everybody had to check this movie out. Sure enough, despite already being available to own on home video, Parasite expanded to 2,001 theaters and leaped 245% from the previous weekend, reaching #7 on the top 10 and grossing $5.7 million over the weekend, the best box office bump for a Best Picture winner since Slumdog Millionaire in 2009. This boosted its total all the way to $43.4 million. Alongside a brief IMAX stint, Parasite finally finished with $53.4 million in the United States and Canada, as well as $258.8 million worldwide, making it the biggest film in Bong’s career, and earning a net profit of $46.2 million. And frankly, if it weren’t for COVID-19, it probably could have finished even higher than that. Parasite’s success was a bellwether, as it quickly gave South Korea cinema, an area of film that has been going through a renaissance of sorts nowadays, more attention than ever. At the same time, Bong Joon-Ho is now considered one of the greatest directors working today almost overnight, standing toe-to-toe alongside living legends like Martin Scorsese. And after the Oscars So White debacle, it seemed to indicate a shift in Hollywood that it was becoming more inclusive and more willing for other types of films. And Parasite is still not done. After being hailed as one of the greatest films of all time, a spin-off television series is currently in the works at HBO with both Bong and Adam McKay as executive producers. No word yet on what Bong’s next film will be, but it’s almost certain it’ll be yet another smash success when it finally drops. For 2019, I’ve talked about nothing but hits. Disney’s utter domination, the Jokah, and the surprise sensations of Knives Out and Parasite. But you all know that I love being an ass, so I think it’s fair to end things with one spicy meatball of a failure. All the way down in 87th place is the one, the only, Cats. Focusing on the hidden world of half-human, half-feline figures known as the Jellicle cats. We follow a young white cat named Victoria and her interactions with the Jellicles, as they all prepare for the Jellicle Ball, an annual ceremony where cats compete against one another to go to the Heaviside Layer and be given a new life. Based on the T. S. Eliot poems, Cats first began life as a West End musical from the great Andrew Lloyd Weber, known for works like Phantom of the Opera, Evita, and Jesus Christ Superstar. Running for 21 years in London and 18 years on Broadway, Cats is one of those musicals that everybody knows. Despite mixed reviews and an unusual premise, people could not get enough of the sets, costumes, choreography, and music. The song “Memory” became a Broadway staple and Cats’ success established a global market for musical theater and pushed the industry for big-budget spectacle and tourist/family friendly pieces...gee, that sounds familiar. A Cats movie, despite an unconventional plot and becoming more and more of a joke amongst the masses, was a no-brainer. As such, the rights were soon picked up by Amblimation in the 1990s. Amblimation, an animation studio founded by Steven Spielberg and owned by Universal, did get concept art done, but the commercial failures of their films We’re Back! A Dinosaur’s Story and Balto caused the studio to shut down and the plans were promptly abandoned. But that didn’t stop Universal, as they still had the rights and weren’t going to stop until this movie came out. Weber did tease the movie in 2013, but it wasn’t until 2016 things really got rolling. Academy Award winner Tom Hooper would attach himself as director. And in January 2018, Hooper, alongside production company Working Title, began casting. Andrew Lloyd Weber also started working on writing a new song for the film, titled “Beautiful Ghosts”. And thus, the hellish film that came to be was born. Things already seemed pretty off when the first casting details were announced. That July, it was revealed that Taylor Swift, James Corden, Ian McKellan, and Jennifer Hudson would all appear in this movie. It was an odd starting roster to say the least, though interestingly Swift was set to appear in Hooper’s Les Miserables adaptation as Eponine. Things got weirder from there, as Idris Elba, Judi Dench, Rebel Wilson, and Jason DeRulo all joined the party. At the very least, you can’t say this wasn’t a starry cast. Filming began in December 2018, but before any of the cast members could actually start filming Hooper forced them all to attend “cat school”. The cast had to crawl on the floor barefoot and hiss at each other for hours, in an attempt to understand what it was really like to be a cat. I am not making a word of this up. The sets were also pretty unique. Because the characters were cat-sized, the sets the actors had to work on were these ginormous, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse monstrosities, with oversized furniture and doorways and all that jazz. Filming wrapped in April 2019, and the first trailer released later in July. It...did not go well. Pretty much entirely due to the visual effects and character designs. A weird combination of CGI and motion capture, the cats in this film had a bizarre, uncanny look to them. The digital fur technology combined with the face of the actors weirdly plastered onto the CG models was horrifying to half the population and hilarious to the other half. The film would soon be mocked and memed online, a fate worse than death, and pretty much killed any and all interest in the movie right off the bat. How did these designs get approved and look so horrid and unfinished? Well, the culprit was Tom Hooper himself. Hooper had never worked with visual effects, at least something to this scale. This lack of visual effects and animation training meant things were truly hellish for the VFX team. The staff was reportedly working 80-90 hour weeks so they can get the film finished before the release date. And seeing as how they were forced to spend six months producing the two-minute trailer, this really meant they had four months to finish an entire 110-minute film that had CG-heavy characters in every frame. All the while, Tom Hooper, a man who had no idea what he was doing, continuously sent angry, denigrating emails to the effects team and continuously insulted them during conferences. But the film was finished...kind of. Because there was such a huge time crunch between the beginning of VFX work and the film’s actual release date, the movie was completed literal hours before its big premiere and still had technical hiccups. There were several CGI glitches and errors throughout the film, with the biggest one being one scene where Judi Dench’s literal hand was on frame, including her wedding ring, rather than the paw that was supposed to be there. Universal had to notify cinemas there would be a new version of the film that fixed these errors right on opening day. So this basically had a Day 1 patch that replaced the print that was shown to opening day patrons. This type of practice was unheard of according to cinema owners. So to recap, this was a movie based on an odd stage musical that was already considered a joke among the masses, had a director who had no idea what he was doing, VFX artists who were forced into one of the worst crunches in film history, a horrifying visual and production design, wasn’t even completely finished when it first premiered, garnered immediate backlash after its first trailer, and opened on December 20, the exact same day as Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. I think you can figure out at this point how the movie fared. Cats tanked both critically and financially. Reviews slammed the film for its story, characters, direction, visuals, editing, musical numbers, comedy, and...pretty much everything else you can think of. And so, Cats, a $95 million monstrosity, opened to just $6.6 million, only managing fourth place for the weekend. And it all went downhill from there. With literally anything else being a better option, Cats basically died once the new year began, grossing just $27.2 million domestically and $73.8 million worldwide. When you include its advertising budget of around $115 million, Cats became one of the biggest bombs of the year, losing Universal around $113.6 million. Only Dark Phoenix and Terminator: Dark Fate are estimated to have lost more. Not long after, Cats’ For Your Consideration campaign for the awards season was quickly canceled, though it did win 6 Golden Raspberry Awards and Taylor Swift was nominated for a Kids’ Choice Award. Andrew Lloyd Weber went on to say he hated the film, and the film, as well as director Tom Hooper, quickly became a laughingstock in the industry. However, there is a silver lining to all this. While the film was lambasted by the general public, an underground cult following did spring up for the piece. There was a significant number of people who found themselves entranced by the nonsensical story, horrifying designs, and garish musical numbers. And people were starting to check out the film in both an ironic and unironic sense at the same time. Costumed screenings and sing-along screenings started to pop up in major cities and were quickly sold out. And sure enough, Cats has become a midnight movie hit, combining the camp value of Rocky Horror Picture Show with the ironic “so-bad-its-good” hilarity of The Room. And once COVID is out of the way, we’ll likely see Cats live on as a bizarre flick that has even more bizarre appreciators in the years ahead. And we have 2019 done. But as always, we still need to highlight a few other stories. It: Chapter 2 finished the series to mixed-ish results. Us continued Jordan Peele’s hot streak. Hobbs & Shaw expanded the world and profits of Fast and Furious. How to Train Your Dragon ended with flying colors. 1917 used the one-take method to great success. The Secret Life of Pets 2 dropped like a rock from the first movie. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was another hit for Tarantino. Shazam! saw another hit for DC. Ford v Ferrari continued James Mangold’s hot streak. Dumbo was the only notable Disney bomb. Maleficent returned to little fanfare. Glass ended the Unbreakable trilogy with...grace? Godzilla: King of the Monsters failed to find an audience. The Upside was a surprise former Weinstein hit. Little Women gave us Timothee at his all-time sexiness. The Lego Movie 2 killed the franchise. Hustlers gave J-Lo major awards attention until it didn’t. The Addams Family was brought back to decent success. Downton Abbey showcased the brand loyalty of the fanbase. Rocketman was a decent follow-up to Bohemian Rhapsody. Alita: Battle Angel was an ill-fated swan song for Fox. Good Boys brought raunchy laughs to many. Men in Black: International was a dud of a spin-off. Annabelle Comes Home was the lowest of the Conjuring Universe, unless you count Curse of La Llorona, which also came out this year. Yesterday was an “eh” summer sleeper. Zombieland gracefully returned. Angel Has Fallen continued Gerard Butler’s weird little action series. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark brought the famous book series to decent success. Spies in Disguise was the unexpected swan song for Blue Sky. Dark Phoenix killed the franchise. Likewise with Terminator: Dark Fate. Dora and the Lost City of Gold brought back the Nick Jr. icon to little fanfare. Escape Room was a surprise hit for Sony in the first weekend of January slot. Pet Semetary was a botched Stephen King title. Uncut Gems was a cult hit for A24 and the Sandman. Ad Astra brought James Gray to the mainstream to mixed results. Gemini Man was an epic bomb for Will Smith and Ang Lee. Ma gave Octavia Spencer a chance to show her scary side. Angry Birds got a sequel but nobody cared. Jojo Rabbit gave Taika Oscar gold. Doctor Sleep was a flop sequel to The Shining. Booksmart became a cult hit. Charlie’s Angels was a film nobody watched. And lastly, Midway...came out I guess. This was 2019