Porthos
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Posts posted by Porthos
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5 minutes ago, Noctis said:
What? How does a film that opened to $96m in 2019 adjust to near $148m today? That's slightly over 50%! No way. Maybe $120m.
The film It, not Joker. 🙂 The Italicization was a little hard to see, I think.
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Pulling this out of the Civil War thread as to not be Off Topic
2 hours ago, cinema pal said:or let's have look at Sasha Stone.
Yes, let's take a look at Sasha Stone.
What the fucking hell happened to her?
Saw some stray commentary off and on in the CW thread about her being a right wing loon and that didn't match up at all with my memories of her being a stereotypical HRC supporter who was the type to blast the Susan Sarandon's of the world for giving us Trump in the first place.
Took a look at her Substack just a few minutes ago (which I am not linking to on purpose) and..
Y
I
K
E
S
Again...
What
the
fucking
hell
happened to her?
Did COVID break her that badly? Case of Being Terminally Online Leads to Brainrot? Oppositional Defiance Disorder thanks to butting heads with too many Other Terminally Online (so-called) Leftists?
Cause while she's always been... let's say opinionated and blunt with her style of commentary, holy hell I wasn't expecting that. Especially her worshiping of Tucker Carlson.
Biz-zare.
No, seriously, what the fuck happened to her? Was this a gradual thing where she kept inching and inching and inching before leaping over the slippery slope, or did it come somewhat out of the blue. Because that ain't the Sasha Stone *I* remember.
Gonna tag @Cmasterclay coz he was one of the first people I remember mentioning Stone's Face Heel Turn as well as @BoxOfficeFangrl and @Cap as they're both far far faaaaaar more in tune with the Awards Circuit than I am.
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9 minutes ago, Scubasteve716 said:
Not sure how an R rated movie is going to get to $170 opening weekend.
*double checks something*
Hmmmmmm.....
It's OW looks to be adjusting to around $148m, more or less.
Still need another 22m, though.
*checks something else*
Anyone care to guess what Deadpool's OW is, adj'ed? At least according to the adjustment given currently by the-numbers?
Spoiler$165m, if I did the math right.
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25 minutes ago, PlatnumRoyce said:
I suspect we see normal legs instead of the sort of insanely awful ones anime suffers from.
Wellll, I said legs "can be all over the place" when it comes to anime, because.... they can be all over the place.
Take The Boy and the Heron. That has something like 3.6x legs. That's also one of the most acclaimed anime films in recent memory. It also started from a low base. But it also shows the "oh, it's actually
relatable to a Western audience that doesn't regularly consume any particular anime seriesgood? Wow, okay, I'll check it out" factor that a lot of anime has to fight through.On the other hand, if it has more upfront interest, that could cut into that sort of WOM making it more "normal" as you say.
I think it's gonna be the "initial hesitation"/"overcoming stigma of anime" which is the biggest unknown here. Once we get a gauge of that, then it becomes... Well, maybe not easier, but at least it sharpens the picture a bit.
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On 3/1/2024 at 6:42 AM, Boxx93 said:
Is this anime movie going to be 2D Hand Drawn or 3D CGI?
According to the Never Wrong Wikipedia™:
QuoteAnimation[edit]
Sola Entertainment had begun work on the animation for the film by the time of its announcement in June 2021, and it will be its first production using hand-drawn animation in a style reminiscent of traditional anime productions. The film draws its visual inspiration from the Lord of the Rings film trilogy.[5][7]
5 hours ago, ReturnOfTheBoxOffice said:I think when the first trailer drops y’all will see how big this is gonna be. I seriously doubt this plays like an anime film or a Star Wars show.
Okay, here's the problem in a nutshell.
The next anime film that does more than 100m DOM will be the first one.
The next anime film that doesn't have the word "Pokémon" in the title that does more than *50m* DOM will be the first one.
Now it is true that after adjusting to inflation (using the-numbers), Pokémon: The First Movie adjusts to something like 65.8/181.8 (note: Wed opener). On the other hand, that was released around the height of the Pokémon craze in the US. 2024 is also a far far faaaaaaaar different movie going environment than it was in 1999 which makes inflation adjustments a rough cudgel even with the best of comps.
If we must bring in The Clone Wars (which, again, is a terrible comp for a long list of reasons), that is currently adjusting to something like 21.9m OW/52.8 DOM. 22m OW isn't too far away from a couple of the more recent high profile anime films lately. Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, for instance, opened at 21.1 back in 2022. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - The Movie: Mugen Train opened up at 21.2, though that was one of the very first films to come back as theaters were re-opening so something an interesting dynamic of pent up demand to see ANYTHING versus limited theaters/seat restrictions (as can be seen by the other Demon Slayer releases not doing as well [though, yes, I KNOW it's more complicated than that]).
Past those films it gets rough sledding, pretty fast. (BOM used since the-numbers doesn't have an easy chart reference for anime films [at least that I can find])
Or, to put it another way, WotR has to "prove it". Still, I think looking at 25m-35m OW might not be too bad as an optimistic viewpoint right now with 20m-25m as "default" range, sight unseen.
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23 minutes ago, Bob Train said:
I'm assuming its the YouTube Dislike Extension, which uses the like/dislike ratio of extension users to estimate what the actual like/dislike ratio is (although I've heard it's not accurate).
That's what I presumed as well. Perhaps useful as a range, but the very fact that it's self-selected from folks who install the extension injects problems, though perhaps just adding another layer of problems since the very concept of like:dislike is based on self-selected behavior in the first place.
Perhaps best as a yardstick against similar projects. But then we comes to the bugaboo about just what is a similar project to this.
In the end? In the end the trailer is very popular and well-liked. Determining how well liked is... probably a bit of a waste of time.
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12 hours ago, Elessar said:
Star Wars Clone Wars is a much better analogy.
Probably a bit extreme, as there was several things going against that "film" that shouldn't be at play here and I do think the current box office environment is a bit better overall for such a project.
But as a general setting of expectations range? Probably better to think to that end of the equation when it comes to box office, sure.
I think it's the legs which is the bigger wildcard as that can be all over the place when it comes to anime. Or put more simply, how much will this "break out" of the crowd which is anime and anime-adjacent? I don't think we've seen a single frame of this yet, so it's still up in the air how
weirdstylized this will look.And like it or not, I do think "how it looks" will matter when it comes to the GA. Then there's just the "diminishing returns" aspect of something which is an off-shoot of a franchise.
To wrap up all of this in a bow, could it take off? Sure. It's connected to the LotR brand (which is still very potent) and anime has been getting more popular in the US. This is the type of film that could be a breakthrough film.
Could doesn't mean will, though. Might not even be likely, depending on how one defines "likely". Hard to really judge with lit-er-a-ly nothing to judge on.
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13 hours ago, ListenHunnyUrOver said:
Isn't that an estimate on dislikes? I seem to recall that we peons don't actually know what the actual like/dislike ratio is anymore.
Not saying it isn't popular. Am saying we don't actually know to that level of precision.
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2 minutes ago, Cmasterclay said:
In a twist worthy of M. Night Shyamalan, after all these years of begging for an original hit, and all these months defending Civil War sight unseen.....I absolutely fucking hated it.
F-. Glad it is making money and sure hope more original movies with this scope and marketing get made, though!! Maybe they won't be craven, weightless pieces of shit like this was.
HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU!!!!
STOP USING THE MONKEY PAW WHEN MAKING A WISH!!!!
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41 minutes ago, cannastop said:
Do Dollar theaters even still exist? There was once a $2.50 ticket movie theater near me but it closed. I think the whole rush to streaming killed a lot of them.
We still had one locally as late as 2020. Doing decently too, as a second run theater. The 'rona killed it and it never came back.
I expect a lot of second run theaters died during the theater lockdown. Might be interesting to know just how many, if any, are still around.
COVID might have hastened the inevitable collapse due to streaming, but I get the sense that second run theaters still had a tiny niche as a "good place for teenagers/college students to go and hang out and have a good time". Not nearly enough of them to make a thriving business model with multiple locations in a given market, but maybe enough to keep the lights on.
A similar niche that drive-ins occupy, come to think of it, though drive-ins still usually show first-run content.
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44 minutes ago, SpiderByte said:
Odd way to refer to the director but okay
So you have chosen
deathpedantry. Fair enough.I said "production team" because folks involved are saying different things to different people. But beyond that, their actual actions when it comes to promotional materials bely their more equivocal comments. Actions being louder than words. I know faaaaaaar more people are gonna see the trailers/posters than any hedge setting comments by the director or others (though more on this later).
How to market this film poses a rather interesting puzzle/dilemma. For one, there is a stigma, fair or not, that musicals are unpopular right now. And I use the word "stigma" to note that it is the prevailing wisdom and not necessarily true.
On the other hand, there is also a perception that folks will resent not being told that an upcoming film is a musical, even if they figure it out for themselves. Whether this is actually true or not isn't really the point.
Both of the above are probably thought to hold strong sway over some of the core demos of the film.
Now they could just tell these folks to put on their big boy pants and get over themselves.
They could point out that there are almost certainly films that they love that are in fact musicals, even if they don't immediately think of them as a musical.
Or they could talk about how varied the genre of musical really is, and that perhaps their fears are unfounded.
Or they could do what they've been doing and downplay some of the musical aspects in some interviews but yell at the top of their lungs that this IS a musical in their trailer.
There is something a danger of them being a bit too cute or clever by half as I do agree with your implicit statement that word from folks involved in production will filter out to the GA on some level. And if that contradicts what they're actually saying in their trailers and TV spots and posters and whatever else, a disconnect on expectations could form.
On the other hand, this could be their way of saying "Don't worry it's not like THAT type of musical" without going too deeply into what "THAT type" actually means and let the audience draw their own conclusions that it won't be the type of musical they they don't like and how Joker 2 isn't really that type of film.
All I can tell you is if I didn't know a single thing about Joker: Folie a Deux and I saw that trailer, I'd come to the conclusion it was in fact a musical.
So, no, I can't say I agree with you about them "not promoting it as a musical" because that trailer most certainly did.
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3 hours ago, SpiderByte said:
They don't seem to be promoting it as a musical per se so I'm not sure that'll be an issue.
They are absolutely are. Yes, there is the occasional comments from various members of the production team, but actions speak louder than words.
And that trailer blared to the high heavens that this is gonna be a musical.
(and before anyone feels like being pedantic, "musical" is a very diverse genre with many different types of musicals)
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1 hour ago, dallas said:
I love that they're actually leaning into the musical aspects in the marketing.
Very entertaining to see the most annoying people I know get pissed off by this decision.
Dare say that the chaos energy of such a decision is fairly Joker-esque.
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1 hour ago, Arlborn said:
He's already done the predictable joke!*
* unless you were talking about him probably using this joke on every post on this thread, which. seems likely now that I think about it
THAT JUST PROVES THAT MASKETTEA MAN IS REALLY KEVIN FEIGE IN DISGUISE DOING A FALSE FLAG!!!!
HOW ELSE DID HE KNOW THE TITLE CHANGE AHEAD OF TIME!!!!
I'M ON TO YOU MASKETTA MAN!!!!
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6 minutes ago, DAJK said:
Not so fast
Here’s what my crystal ball predicts:
Conventional tracking had this in mid-to-high teens. BOT tracking said low-20’s was possible. Thursday numbers come in, pretty good. Early Friday numbers come in. Could 30M be possible? Heck, 35? Expectations go up and up.
The film is a bit frontloaded. Weekend estimate comes in at 31M. Actual comes in at 29.91M. Cue @CJohn proclaiming that movie theaters are dead, and the usual doom-and-gloom back-and-forth.
Got your new profile pic ready for you, @DAJK. 👍
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1 hour ago, 4815162342 said:
This is one of those stories that is so freaking unbelievable in how stupid or oblivious various people were that it almost has to be true
24 minutes ago, BoxOfficeFangrl said:I'd have figured that any agency/law firm/etc working with such a big-time athlete would hire Japanese speakers just to make him more comfortable and ingratiate themselves with him. Even if it's a contractor rather than someone full-time, make the effort. But Ohtani seems like he'd delegate dealing with money to others even without any language barriers.
You are a good judge of character! (or at least can read/look for tells 😉)
Finding primary sources on this is difficult, but I can confirm that when he was first signed to pro ball in Japan, he had his mother oversee his finances:
QuoteWhile earning a $2.4-million (U.S.) salary from the Fighters, Ohtani’s parents oversaw his finances. His mother Kayoko deposited around $1,000 into his bank account every month.
that part is relatively easy to source (it's from a biography about him). How long his mother kept control of his finances while he played in Japan is less clear, but I get the impression he had her control it for a very long stretch of time, if not his entire playing career there. Spent some time trying to chase down actual verifiable info that doesn't look to be just sloppy regurgitation of the above but didn't come up with much that I could actually track down and verify.
Now he was 16 at the time when that arrangement started, so that does make sense. And once an arrangement starts, it's easy to keep it going simply due to inertia (plus family ties in this case). But, yes, the read that he'd just as well prefer that someone else take care of money issues seems to be well founded.
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Believe it or not, I am actually trying to restrain my commentary here.
(okay, not succeeding at it, but am in fact trying! 😛)
having slept on it and seen some other commentary plus having something pointed out to me, gonna go FULL BLOWN SPOILER under this box:
Spoilerokay, when I said I was gonna reserve judgement on the whole Dropping a Nuke on Shady Sands in 2277, this is what I meant:
This was part of a headline that pointed out that the nuke drops *AFTER* 2277. Analysis of character ages of the show in regards to Lucy and Maximus does seem to imply that Shady Sands got blown the fuck up very very very shortly after FNV.
Even before the ending of the series, there was all of the nods and outright callbacks to FNV (hell, Mr House is in the freakin' show) which is why this *was* the one thing I felt was off.
On the other hand, whoever designed this infographic should have realized how it would have gone over. I get the intentional symbolism of 200 years after the Great War as a piece of (in-universe) meta commentary, but they had to have known how it would look without a date on the mushroom cloud.
Now there is some minor discrepancies about references to Shady Sands in FNV that don't seem to align with it having... issues in 2081. And "Fall of Shady Sands" can be read as being similar to "Fall of Rome" or various other things, but that gets into the realm of nitpicking and thus uninteresting to me.
But all in all, this does show why I was wanting to wait around to get some other opinions, see what I might have missed, and well how Bethesda would handle it.
Like so, for instance:
======
Along those lines, however, and still talking about the Big Picture, but this time in regards to fans, is that the folks squawking the loudest, and hooooo boy are some folks squawking, are reacting because they're emotionally angry at seeing the NCR getting obliterated and they're looking for anything to latch onto to channel/justify/vent their frustrations.Really does seem similar to TLJ backlash in that respect.
So, I think still a 9.5/10 for me overall. There were a couple of narrative shortcuts that I wasn't in love with at the very beginning
SpoilerI didn't like how the show traced Siggi Wilzig's movements as he was escaping the Enclave and running into Lucy as it didn't quite flow as well as it could have. Specifically when Wilzig was at the Yao Guai Bear Cave and when he was at the firecamp with Lucy seemed to jump around a bit too much. Maybe it'll be a bit more clear on rewatch, I dunno.
Couple of other minor things here and there where the structure of the show didn't quite gel/flow for me.
What they excelled at was nailing the tone, vibe, and yes, humor of the series. Not funny haha but in dark dark satire. Though I will admit for laughing out loud for a minute straight or so about
Spoilerhow Lucy was sentenced to "death" by the survivors of Vault 4. I absolutely lost it at the "two weeks supplies" bit and kept on laughing when Maximus came in to "rescue" Lucy.
...
*clank of fusion core being thrown back into the Vault*
"THANK YOU"
Gold. Sheer gold
Also meant it when I said the show stopped to make one think. For instance, it examined one of the classic Fallout themes of Cynicism vs Idealism... without actually genuinely taking a side. I think.
SpoilerI mean, I'm wondering just where Lucy's headspace is at the end of the series. That she gave her mother a Mercy Kill and left with The Ghoul is a pretty big tell that she's not in the same headspace as she was before she found out how much of a piece of shit her father was and that everything she believed in was a lie.
But was that enough to actually start her down the road to being as cynical and as ruthless and as cold hearted as Cooper Howard became?
I honestly don't know.
Be interesting to find out.
There's a lot of meat on the bone of this series, in other words. Hope it finds the opportunity to be chewed on.
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Oh my:
Trust sure is an... interesting phenomenon at times.
This sounds insane. No, it is insane. But it's also a pretty good example of how modern society will often just go with the flow if everything on the surface looks fine. Or an example of Douglas Adams' Somebody Else's Problem Field in action. Everything seemed fine, so why go the extra mile and add in your own interpreters?
This is gonna make a crazy movie/miniseries one day.
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So not only is Shohei Ohtani's former interpreter and very much ex-best friend Ippei Mizuhara the World's Worst Degenerate Gambler, he apparently isn't very bright, either:
Brah.
Bro.
Just...
All part of an indictment that came down from Feds today that accuses Ippei of stealing *16 million dollars over three years*.
Indictment can be read here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24542204-usa-v-mizuhara-complaint
===
Does really seem that Ohtani really is "for real innocent" to use Shawshank terminology. As I've opined (though maybe not here) wouldn't be the first rich person to get conned out of a lot of money by a trusted person and certainly won't be the last.
BTW. Just how much of a Degenerate Gambler was Ippei? Allegedly, of course.
This much:
Bets ran in the range from the small to the... not so small:
NYT broke a story last night that Ippei is (or at least was attempting to) negotiating a guilty plea over all of this and I... Yeah, I can see why he might be given the copious amount of evidence the Feds are bringing down here.
@TwoMisfits @4815162342 @cannastop @BoxOfficeFangrl @Webslinger @Inceptionzq (plus various others who might be interested in this)
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4 hours ago, Porthos said:
Alright.
Hmmm.
*casually checks Twitter*
A-yep. Thought so.
For folks who are casually checking this thread out but haven't watched all the episodes yet and actually care about spoilers, I have one suggestion:
Get off the net *NOW* until you've actually seen the entire show as this show did not pull any punches. At all.
*reflects*
Okay think I'm gonna give this some dual thoughts. This was some damn compelling TV. I wasn't planning on binging it all the way through, but I kept having to see what happened next. Was some small sloppy bits of storytelling at the very very beginning, but over all as a piece of Prestige TV this was around 9.5/10 or so. Very well made.
And as a casual semi-fan of the property (ultra casual might be the best term), I have to say it was VERY Fallout-y. Themes, style of story. Fallout through and through.
With one notable fandom observation, which I will put in spoilers, followed by much more in-depth thoughts in another nested spoiler box
Some Fallout fans are gunna be
MAAAAAAAAAAADDDDDD.
Like "Make TLJ backlash possibly look like a Afternoon Tea Social Debate" level MAAAAAAAAAAAAD.
I think having the NCR get nuked back to the Stone Age is one thing. Having the NCR allegedly get nuked in the year 2277? Which is approx four years before Fallout: New Vegas is set? Yeaaaaaah... that's gunna cause DISCOURSE. Dropping an H-Bomb on Shady Sands is bad enough. Doing it allegedly before New Vegas?
Well, being the level headed person I am, I'm actually gonna sit back and see just how Amazon/Bethesda addresses this. The fact that the show ends with a shot of New Vegas itself makes me go HMMMMMMMMM. Though what state New Vegas itself is in is very much an open question, as it didn't look particularly good.
SOMETHING is going on here and I doubt it is as simple as WAH WAH WAH TODD HOWARD HATES OBSIDIAN AND NEW VEGAS ARGLE BARGLE GARGLE.
I mean, even before the closing shot there were quite a few New Vegas nods sprinkled throughout the show. Which makes the nuking of Shady Sands at 2277 all the more... I think I'll use the word "puzzling". As it wouldn't have been that hard to literally shift everything up be four or five years and have it be immediately after FNV.Switching back to non-spoilery/review mode. I've been a part of many many many fandoms over the decades and I can see this being fairly controversial. Hence the suggestion to unplug if one cares at all about spoilers.
Which is something of a shame as this was an exquisitely crafted series with a lot of deep themes to explore, along with a few unanswered questions. It really is some compelling TV that makes one stop and think about various things.
Sadly I strongly suspect a likely fan war over this series might very well overshadow just about everything else.
Why? Well, to coin a phrase: Fandom... Fandom Never Changes.
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No spoilers, but... I think that qualifies as a WHAM SHOT at the very very end.
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Open the spoiler box ONLY after watching Ep 5:
SpoilerThis is how I imagine some posters over on r/Fallout and elsewhere are reacting to a certain reveal in this episode:
Not actually gonna check until I'm done, but even a semi-casual Fallout fan like myself suspects.... whooo boy.
(might be mitigated by the last three episodes, but I suspect my choice of gif here is probably accurate)
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Okay, this Main Quest line just keeps getting weirder and weirder, even for Fallout.
Saw some stray commentary off and on in the CW thread about her being a right wing loon and that didn't match up at all with my memories of her being a stereotypical HRC supporter who was the type to blast the Susan Sarandon's of the world for giving us Trump in the first place.
Here’s what my crystal ball predicts:
Classic Conversation Thread
in Box Office Discussion
Posted
Thanks for both replies. 👍
Reminds me a bit of Tulsi Gabbard where she had a couple of core beliefs (and even those could be tossed overboard if needed), but otherwise would go where the wind/money would take them. Especially once they find out how lucrative it is.
(I make the Gabbard analogy because folks who have followed her closely for decades [i.e. me] aren't surprised one whit to see the direction she's taken, given her history/background in Hawaii back in the '00s)