Wrath

Its nice to be at the point of the list where we can quibble over location, but I'm hoping that'll be covered up by all the movies being widely regarded as being worthy of inclusion on the list. Hopefully that doesn't make me wildly, irrationally optimistic.

Darn it. I was right about Addicted being the movie from *last weeks's top 12* dropping the most, sadly it managed to drop entirely out of the top 12 this week. Edit - Kill the Messenger at #25! I'm a genius! Some might argue good luck, but I prefer to go with genius. Edit2 - As a possible argument against my genius, it looks like the estimates were wrong and Addicted was in fact not the top decliner of last weeks' top 12. I prefer to think of that as bad luck.

And all questions refer to the 3 day domestic weekend, the top 12 and are worth 1000 points UOS. 1. Will Ouija finish number 1 again? 4000 *NO* 2. Will Saw finish ahead of Annabelle? *YES* 3. Which of the 3 main New Releases (well 2 new, 1 Rerelease) will have the highest PTA for the Weekend? 3000 *Nightcrawler* 4. How many horror movies will finish in the top 12? *2* 5. Will before I go To Sleep drop more than 8% on Saturday? *NO* 6. Will Nightcrawler gross more than 12M? *NO* 7. Will Saw gross more than its original run's opening Sunday (5.39M) for the weekend? *NO* 8. Will John Wick drop less than 43.5%? *YES* 9. How many of the 3 main releases will finish ahead of Alexanders Silly-Arse day? 2000 *2* 10. Will Birdman finish in the top 12? *YES* 11. Will ABC's of Death have a PTA above $5000? *NO* 12. Will Fury finish ahead of Gone Girl? 3000 *YES* 13. Which film will have the biggest Saturday Jump except for Alexander and Book of Life? *St Vincent* 14. Will St Vincent stay in the Top 8? *YES* 15. Will Zombies rise up from hell and devour us all this weekend? *Obviously not. I mean, if it were *some*, then sure, I could go with that. But *all* means 100%, and I'm completely certain that at least one of us is prudently spending the weekend on a remote island or up in a tree-fort somewhere and will hang on until Monday.* Bonus Questions 1. What will be the combined gross of all the horror films that finish in the top 20? 5000 $18.7m 2. What will be the biggest weekend drop? (film is irrelevant, just the number)? 5000 57% 3. What will Lucy gross this weekend? 5000 $61,000 Placements: 2. Wick 4. Fury 8. St Vincent 11. Judge 16. Equalizer Get all 5 for a bonus of 7000

Fantasies are being made as we speak, I suspect.

NM, Im retarded.

Saw Book of Life with Wrathette #2 and was surprised at how much I liked it. With Alexander I was just happy to not hate it. Book of Life was actually really good. In fact, I liked it more than St Vincent.

You realize, of course, that an event like this would mean that not only would you have to have a *truly* great movie (which would be great), but you then also would need to have multiple follow-up weekends during which nothing was scheduled except complete crap (which would suck). Alternatively, you could have the distributors intentionally not distribute movies broadly at first, intentionally either not giving it to theaters in various regions or just only allowing them to play it on a few screens per market. You could never open to 3k screens have it not lose share for multiple weeks because you will never find enough people willing to see the movie 5-6 times. That's how it worked with Star Wars: A New Hope. That's how they did it in those days, you started on a few hundred screens, probably in major metro areas, and then if you did well you gradually expanded outwards. IIRC, Star Wars increased its number of screens like 8 weeks in a row or something. On the one hand, its pretty awesome that its 8th week wasn't really any smaller than its opening week. On the other hand, it meant that if you lived in Des Moines, you'd probably have to wait for a good movie to get to its 4th or 5th week before you'd have a chance to see it. In today's world, that would make publicity scheduling a total nightmare and be a *HUGE* opportunity for pirates. Edit - Of course, Avatar kinda did this, and so did Titannic, but they're noteworthy for being such incredible outliers. If movies did that all the time, it would stop being rare, and thus stop being interesting when it happened. Essentially, you're saying it would be cool if something incredibly rare happened. Which is true, it is cool when something really rare happens. But its self-defeating, because if it happens a lot, or at least more often than it does now, then it stops being rare. The very act of it happening more often makes it less cool when it does happen.

Hah, yeah. I loved the various scenes with his dirt-yard. Was the perfect end to the movie.

Just saw St Vincent. Good movie. Packed house. I think they made an effort to make it a little more BO friendly and a little less critic friendly than I expected. If its a weak year for leading men Murray might squeak into a nomination, but otherwise I'd be shocked if it sniffs any serious awards. It could end up doing better at the box office than I'd originally thought, though.

Well, I'll say that I think Memento is in about the right place.

Comic book movie fans, perhaps?

Well, October has been surprisingly interesting as far as Octobers go.

"OH MY GOD, THE QUARTERBACK IS *TOAST*!" Edit - I don't think I voted for Die Hard, but it really is a solid film (this is the movie that made Rickman a star) and I don't begrudge it being here. Edit2 - It occurs to me that two of these movies could be very much affected by perspective. I *love* Finding Nemo. I think its amazing and Pixar's best film. After thinking about it, I suspect that its because I'm a parent, and that if I weren't, I would think it was still good, but not necessarily amazing. Similarly, Dr Strangelove, even minus the Cold War, is a great film and a piece of satire well worthy of being on the list. But if you're in your mid-30s or older and thus actually grew up during the Cold War and remember it, then it vaults to being one of the top 10 of all time.

Hmm, I'm pondering question 14. Is it restricted to films in the top 12 last weekend? Movies that will be in the top 12 this coming weekend (in which case we're screwed if we pick a movie that drops out of the top 12)? Or any movie at all?

I'm actually no longer sure GotG is going to reach $330M unless it gets a big bump from dollar theaters. At first it blew past target after target, but once the wheels started coming off the last couple weeks, they came off fast. Probably a consequence of the October slate performing a lot stronger than most people expected (I certainly didn't expect this roster of movies to perform this well) and grabbing screens a *lot* more aggressively than the September movies did..

1. Will John Wick make more than 12M OW? *Abstain* 2. Will John Wick make more than 16M OW? *Abstain* 3. Will Ouija make more than 10M Opening day? *Abstain* 4. Will Book of Life have a 10M+ weekend? *Abstain* 5. Will Fury drop more than 47%? *Abstain* 6. Will Dracula finish above the Judge? *Abstain* 7. Will any film increase 200% on Friday? *YES* 8. Will either of the 2 top New Releases increase on Saturday? *Abstain* 9. Will St Vincent finish in the Top 12? *YES* 10. Will Gone Girl pass 125M total gross by the end of the weekend? *Abstain* 11. Will any film drop less than 26% on Sunday? *Abstain* 12. Will Annabelle gross more than 1.8M on Saturday? *Abstain* 13. Will at least 3 films have a bigger Sunday than Friday? *NO* 14. Which non-horror film will have the largest weekend drop (so no Dracula, Annabelle)? *Abstain* 15. Will the combined PTAs of all the new releases (including wide releases) be higher than Birdman's OW pta ($103,075 est)? *NO*

You've got about 28 hours to go back and edit it if you like.

"FLASH! AHHH AH! KING OF THE IMPOSSIBLE!" DUNH DUNH DUN!

Well at least there was a good reason for it.

We had it all along... *cough* 9. Will every part of SOTM1 (Annabelle question) be YES by the end of the weekend? 2000 NO Wait, what? Its easily past every part of SOTM1 now. Parts 1 and 2 were cleared the first weekend, Child's Play's adjusted domestic gross was $65M or so (according to the original question, anyway) and Annabelle was at about $74M at the end of Sunday, part 4 requires over $75M OS which Annabelle easily has, and part 5 is $125M WW which its also well past. Which one is it falling short on?

Alright, I'll spoiler it as well.

Huh. Well, I went 1 for 4 on my guesses. Like others I'd have preferred to see Wrath of Khan in that spot, but I actually really did like the 2009 movie. If for whatever reason it gets the Star Trek "slot" then I don't really object to it. Alien was *awesome* and I have no objection to both it and Aliens being on the list. Forrest Gump is kind of a troublesome movie to rate. It was really good, but its sort of hard to evaluate as an actual movie since its like a movie-ized version of REM's "Its the End of the World as we know it" instead of a conventional film.

Yeah, HAL is indeed a really good bad guy. Could be Alien. There aren't really that many actually great sci-fi movies out there. I bet (and I say this without having checked the ballots) the next 4 are: Inception, Alien, Avatar, and one of the Star Wars movies (I'd guess either Return of the Jedi or Attack of the Clones).

That's a good question, and I probably should have asked it as well since concerns over exactly that kind of situation is why I abstained on all the multiplier questions.

Children of Men has already shown up so that's not one. I bet you're right about Inception though (I'll admit I haven't seen it). 2001 and Close Encounters I'll admit I didn't vote for, though I thought Close Encounters was good. Here, of course, is where the whole high-and-mighty-arbiter-of-accepted-taste thing falls apart. I know its a bastion of modern cinema and all, but I didn't like 2001. I thought it was overly long, poorly paced, and pretentious. I thought it was similar in a lot of ways to Apocalypse Now which I also didn't like for basically the same reasons (though one key difference being that I thought 2001 was a little pretentious while I thought Apocalypse Now was extremely pretentious).