Jump to content

Bob Violence

Free Account+
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    526

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Posts posted by Bob Violence

    Festival de Cannes 2014

    in And The Winner Is...

    Posted · Edited by Bob Violence

    Nymphomaniac will obviously not be in competition, but the director's cut of part 2 (which has yet to be shown anywhere) seems a pretty safe bet for an out of competition slot. The director's cut of part 1 played at Berlin and it was widely reported that the director's cut of part 2 was being held for Cannes.

     

    Christoph Hochhäusler's Light Years and Mia Hansen-Løve's Eden seem like competition contenders that aren't mentioned in any of the above articles. Eden only wrapped at the end of January, but three months for post-production is certainly doable for a presumably non-effects-heavy film. Light Years has been in the can since September, so it's pretty implausible it won't be ready for Cannes. Somewhat less likely candidates that might end up somewhere in the official selection, or perhaps the Directors' Fortnight:

     

    Cymbeline (Michael Almereyda)

    The Golden Era (Ann Hui)

    Réalité (Quentin Dupieux)

    Tokyo Tribes (Sono Sion)

    The World of Kanako (Nakashima Tetsuya)

    You Can't Win (Robinson Devor)

    • Like 1

    China Box Office Thread | Oppenheimer-August 30

    in China At The Box Office

    Posted · Edited by Bob Violence

    I don't understand where is the problem in getting "only" 10% of the showings... in the rest of the World Frozen had so much less than that in many countries because there are many movies on the theatres at the same time, and it did huge business... 10% means 1 screen in a 10 screens multiplex or 2 in a 20 screens one. That's the usual. Or am I wrong?

     

    I'm going to use this point to go off on a rant that I've been thinking about for awhile. This probably isn't a popular opinion here, but I can't get too upset about the treatment of Hollywood films in China when most non-Hollywood imports would probably kill for 10% of the screenings. Hollywood films are mainstream in China—certain Hollywood stars as big here as they are anywhere, Hollywood is covered by major news outlets, and successful Chinese films are often derivative of Hollywood models (Lost in Thailand, Finding Mr. Right, hell, even The Monkey King is really just a shitty attempt at giving the Hollywood blockbuster treatment to traditional Chinese subject matter). Complaining about China because Frozen isn't getting the same treatment as The Monkey King (or DM2 a month ago) is like complaining about China because Burger King doesn't have better market share than McDonald's and Dico's. Meanwhile the business and regulatory environment in China means there are few (in most cities, no) venues for alternative cinema. There aren't even enough screens in the country to fulfill demand for mainstream films, so who's gonna stick their neck out to build "arthouses"?

    Of course, if China did have an arthouse circuit, it'd need movies. Chinese "art" films sometimes defy the odds and get distribution—usually of the blink-and-you'll-miss-it kind, with release patterns that can seem downright random (here in Qingdao, the theater that screened Beijing Flickers wasn't the same theater that screened The Love Songs of Tiedan, which wasn't the same theater that screened Useless, which wasn't the same theater that screened Beloved). But the volume of imports is restricted by the regulators, so distributors naturally gravitate towards safe lowest-common-denominator titles. A lot of the non-Hollywood imports released here are just bald imitations of Hollywood films, like the recent Metro and Niko 2, and even those tend to get buried. If you really want to get your film released in China, you should probably make it in English with Hollywood actors (cf. The Impossible, Upside Down, innumerable EuropaCorp titles). But I don't blame the distributors for their conservatism, because the regulatory environment encourages it, the exhibition sector isn't set up to support "art" films, and when one does manage to slip through (like A Separation), it has to wind its way through the release queue and then disappears as soon as it opens.

    I think ultimately this will work itself out. Import restrictions will be loosened over the long term; as the number of mainstream cinemas begins to keep pace with demand, theater operators will begin cultivating alternative/niche audiences. I recall firedeep predicting that a proper arthouse circuit will be viable by the end of the decade. I certainly hope so. And I'm not saying any of this to be judgmental—it's just a description. I'm not claiming that China is deliberately suppressing foreign art cinema because theaters in rural Anhui don't show Aleksandr Sokurov movies, but at the same time nobody pretends that imports in China are decided by the market alone, so policy is obviously a factor. The current environment definitely favors Chinese films over Hollywood films, but it also definitely favors Hollywood films over every other kind of foreign cinema, and not only because Hollywood movies are more popular.

    • Like 3

    China Box Office Thread | Oppenheimer-August 30

    in China At The Box Office

    Posted · Edited by Bob Violence

    Planning to see The Monkey King (which I'm expecting to be a clusterfuck) and The Man from Macau (which I don't expect much from either, though I actually thought The Last Tycoon was a decent movie and deserved better at the box office).

     

    Okay so I've seen these now, here are some rambling thoughts on the pair:

     

    The Man from Macau - The Last Tycoon (Wong Jing's previous collaboration with Chow Yun-fat) belonged to the minority of "serious" Wong Jing movies (A True Mob Story, I Corrupt All Cops, Colour of the Truth, etc.). The Man from Macau—notionally a spirtual successor to God of Gamblers and its assorted offspring—is Wong Jing at his Wong Jing-iest, which means dick jokes, bad puns, cleavage, fat women used for cheap laughs, over-the-top mugging, cartoon sound effects, characters spontaneously breaking into song, and comic book-style elements (Chow fights his enemies by throwing metal playing cards; a secret agent has a cybernetic eyeball with a built-in camera).This won't convert anyone who isn't already on board with Wong's infantile humor, but it does show why his infantile humor is preferable to a wannabe like Badges of Fury. Badges of Fury seemed more and more desperate for laughs as it went on, withholding the really ridiculous stuff until the very end. Wong is too balls-out to pace himself that way and throws the kitchen sink into every scene. He's proudly and genuinely shameless, but however bad his jokes might be, they're bad in a way that privileges energy and effort above calculation.And to be fair, there's actually some clever stuff here, like the surprise outcome of a baccarat game or the way co-producer TVB is actually incorporated into the plot. I also liked the understated visual gag where Chow's car phone turns out to be a handset connected to a cell. Best of all is the chance to see Chow let his hair down and prove that roles like Confucius and Cao Cao haven't sapped his playfulness. The biggest disappointment is the dearth of gambling scenes, which might have something to do with the killjoys at the Film Bureau. (They're at least somewhat sensitive to the subject matter, given the title change this underwent in the mainland—from "Casino Turmoil" to "Macau Turmoil"—and the similar retitling of Wong's recent Mr. and Mrs. Gambler.) But Chinese audiences evidently dig that stuff even if the regulators don't: the audience I saw this with actually gasped in unison when a character got a really good mahjong hand.The Monkey King - As advertised, this is a total SFX orgy. Practically every shot seems to have a CG element, which typically varies from "acceptable" to "crap" (very rarely "good" or "great"). It's certainly more technically sophisticated than the TV versions, but a. so what, they spent somewhere around 300-500 million yuan and you could make multiple TV versions for that price, and b. the difference between the effects here and the effects there is more quantitative than qualitative. The overall aesthetic isn't much different, with unconvincing greenscreen work (the actors almost never seem to be inhabiting the same planet as the backgrounds) and a garish plastic sheen on everything from the costumes to the architecture.The artificiality can be amusing, especially the contrast between the CGI and the practical effects. Some of the "demons" look like veterans of the Chuck E. Cheese house band, which has been widely criticized but in my opinion adds some goofy charm. But there's very little imagination at work. Like the TV versions, it's a mostly dutiful illustrated text; where it takes liberties with the story, it's either for the sake of compression or nods to Hollywood-style formula. The Jade Emperor is given more power, so Chow Yun-fat can have a couple of big and awkward-looking fight scenes. There's also a token romance between Sun Wukong and a fox spirit, which is as cringeworthy as it sounds but thankfully doesn't go very far. But the biggest change drastically alters Wukong's traditional character: he's no longer an antihero, just an unwitting dupe of the Bull Demon King.To my mind this is an almost debilitating shift, eliminating the character's anarchic and vaguely political edge. In this version, for example, Wukong isn't even really upset when the Jade Emperor assigns him to oversee Heaven's stables, he just gets goaded to anger by one of the Bull Demon King's minions. It's as if someone (and I'm prepared to blame Donnie Yen here, since this is clearly his project more than anyone's) decided that the story needed to obey simplistic black hat/white hat logic and turned Wukong into a naive nice guy. One knock-on effect is that the entire "uproar in Heaven" part (which takes up the last half-hour of the film) isn't an expression of the character's personality, but just a big misunderstanding that goes on far longer than it has any right to. The Monkey King is inevitably being compared to Stephen Chow's Journey to the West movies (which were original stories incorporating the same characters), but this is really the Chinese equivalent of Man of Steel: another movie about a cultural icon that also had more money than brains and was also less interested in character than in mind-numbing spectacles of destruction.

    • Like 1

    China Box Office Thread | Oppenheimer-August 30

    in China At The Box Office

    Posted

     

    Frozen buzz is still quite underwhelming.

    Two of the four wide releases tomorrow will be really big.

    Screen Count on Jan 31

    Monkey King 33.2%

    Dad, where are we going 24,8%

     

    The Man From Macau 19.3%
     EX-Files 11.2%
    Boonie Bear 3.4%
    DM2  2,2%
    Jack Ryan 1.4%

     

     

    Planning to see The Monkey King (which I'm expecting to be a clusterfuck) and The Man from Macau (which I don't expect much from either, though I actually thought The Last Tycoon was a decent movie and deserved better at the box office).

     

    Dad, Where Are We Going? is a blatant cash grab even by the standards of Chinese film—for those not acquainted with it, it's a theatrical version of a reality TV series about a bunch of B-list celebrities hanging out with their kids. The movie didn't even start shooting until early December, so this must be one of the fastest turnarounds in recent memory. But the show is massively popular (one of the kids is now famous enough that she did a voice for the DM2 dub) and this is the most kid-friendly release of the weekend, so it'll do great no matter how bad it is.

    2014 Academy Awards: The Official Thread (ALL NOMINEES IN THE FIRST POST)

    in And The Winner Is...

    Posted

    speaking of cinematography

    Gonna dl the Grandmaster now

    Too bad I didnt have time to see it in theaters as I intended to

     

    Unfortunately most of the rips out there are from the Hong Kong Blu-ray, which is maybe the worst transfer ever created for a new film. All that great cinematography is just ruined. The French Blu-ray has a much better transfer but it doesn't have any English options.

    • Like 1

    China Box Office Thread | Oppenheimer-August 30

    in China At The Box Office

    Posted · Edited by Bob Violence

    Why did China box-office growth slow down this year?

     

    30%+++ was expected, no?

     

    firedeep is way better qualified to answer this, but my hunches:

     

    -Overall economic growth slowed more than expected

    -Grosses for imports were basically flat

    -It seems like a lot of high-profile local films underperformed relative to expectations. In the summer you had Tiny Times, Man of Tai Chi and Mr. Go, which were expected to take up the slack from Hollywood films and all fell short to one degree or another (expectations for TT were so high that 485m was considered a disappointment). I'm not sure what expectations were for Badges of Fury, so I'm not sure if it was considered a disappointment or not—it certainly was WOM-wise, but that doesn't necessarily reflect on the box office.

     

    Then in the autumn Young Detective Dee barely crawled past the 600m mark, while a lot of early projections had it closer to 700m. And now Personal Tailor (which was once thought to have a good shot at breaking the Lost in Thailand record) and Police Story 2013 might end up making about as much combined as LiT did alone—and last December also had CZ12, which ended up at 880m. Plus LiT opened earlier in December than either PT or PS2013, so I'm guessing a greater proportion of its gross was counted towards 2012.

     

    Of course movies like So Young and Journey to the West performed more or less as expected (though JTTW fell maddeningly short of the LiT record) and every year brings a few surprises, like Finding Mr. Right. But then that sort of thing should already be taken into account when people make growth projections. Still, a 27% increase with 54% increase for domestic films is an achievement.

    • Like 1

    Russia Box Office

    in International Box Office

    Posted

    The problem with an IMAX-only release is that it has one week before 300: Rise of an Empire comes along and takes most or all of its showings. And if Robocop is still doing well, I doubt Sony is going to push IMAX screens to reduce or eliminate Robocop showings (also a Sony release) to make room for Stalingrad, unless there's a contractual obligation along the lines of "the movie must have at least x showings per screen on its opening weekend."

    Russia Box Office

    in International Box Office

    Posted · Edited by Bob Violence

    It might just be a token "contractual obligation" release. A sorta-famous example was Big Shot's Funeral, a Chinese film that Sony opened in the U.S. with no marketing and which grossed $820. I doubt Sony was bothered, since it was a hit in China and they presumably made their investment back from there. Sony Pictures Classics is a very conservative outfit and I can't see them pulling out any stops for Stalingrad. It should at least get better treatment than Big Shot's Funeral, though.

    • Like 1

    Weekend #s | SAT (12.28.2013) 10.5 M TH: TDOS | 09.7 M - 10.0 M FROZEN | 07.4 M AM ll | 07.2 M AH

    in Numbers and Data

    Posted · Edited by Bob Violence

    No, Disney will make sequels like any studio, if the film is successful (remember all of those straight to video animated sequels, luckily those stopped years ago).

     

    They've been cranking out Tinkerbell movies almost every year since 2008. Next year's (with Tom Hiddleston as Hook...huh) is supposed to be the last one. I wouldn't be surprised if Planes continues as a DTV franchise if Fire and Rescue underperforms. DisneyToon was set up specifically to handle existing franchises (just look at their filmography, there isn't a single original property in there), so I doubt they're gonna just stop doing sequels.

    China Box Office Thread | Oppenheimer-August 30

    in China At The Box Office

    Posted

    CZ12 opened with "only" 43m. But it didn't open on Christmas Eve, so it didn't benefit from holiday business on its OD (Christmas and Christmas Eve are quasi-holidays here, in that they aren't official holidays but plenty of families and couples go out in the evening for dinner/movies/shopping/etc.). PS2013 has poorer WOM and is also much less of an action movie—something like 80-90% of the movie takes place in a single location and there's not much of the elaborate stuntwork Jackie is known for. It's closer to Shinjuku Incident and other more dramatic JC films, which is a bit of a problem since the Police Story franchise is more known for crazy action setpieces.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Guidelines. Feel free to read our Privacy Policy as well.

  I accept