Jake Gittes

Haneke winning for three films in a row is even less likely than Dardennes winning for three films out of six.

My top 15 is a mixed bag so far. I'm losing points on Godzilla (288m) and Million Dollar Arm and not gaining any on TASM2 (238m). On the other hand, Neighbors (157m) and DOFP (236m) look pretty good.

Well it appears that this one is the most audience-friendly/crowd-pleasing since X2. And X2 would have had much better legs if it hadn't been steamrolled by The Matrix Reloaded. DOFP isn't gonna have any competition of that size for a month, and it's the best-received May blockbuster this year. So it could do it, I think.

Does anyone know how much time left till the awards?

Well, yeah, but that doesn't mean we should just put up with it. And just because there's corruption somewhere else doesn't mean we shouldn't expose and fight it here. Sergei Loban is the best living filmmaker we have right now, IMO. Chapiteau-show is easily my favorite Russian film of the past 10 years. Dust is great too. Aleksey Popogrebskiy, Mikhail Segal are other good ones. Not sure if Kira Muratova even counts these days, but anyway, she's fantastic. I haven't yet seen Hard to Be a God, but each of German's first four films is either a masterpiece or close to being one. There have been some good debuts recently - I liked Mayor and Private Parts, and loved Winter Journey, I hope their directors all go on to make something equally good or better. Neither Zvyagintsev nor corruption in today's Russia are subtle, so I don't necessarily see a problem there. Nothing in that article struck me as wrong, either. I don't know where you got clichés out of, unless it was from other reviews (I haven't read most of them).

1) Will X-men make more than 9 mill on Thurs/midnight? 2000 Yes 2) Will Blended's OD be more than X-men's Thurs/midnight? 2000 No 3) Will X-men make more than 110 mill for the 4 DAY? 2000 Yes 4) Will X-men fall less than 8.2% on Sunday? No 5) Will Blended make more than 27.5 mill? Yes 6) Will Godzilla fall less than 45.5% No 7) Will any film fall less than 25%? Yes 8) Will any film (not including Godzilla) fall more than 44.7%? Yes 9) Will Captain America have one of the two best Saturday increases? No 10) Will any film increase more than 185% on Friday? Yes 11) What film will have the softest decrease on Sunday? Captain America 12) Will Million Dollar Arm increase (for the 4 day)? No 13) Will ASM2 decrease by more than 50% No 14) Will ASM2 decrease by more than 18.5% on Monday? Yes 15) Will X-men have a WW weekend of more than 225 mill? Yes 12/15 3000 13/15 5000 14/15 7000 15/15 9000 (I think the degree of difficulty this weekend is higher than others, hence the large amount of points being offered) Bonus 1: What will X-men gross for the 4 day? 5000 119.269 Bonus 2: What will Godzilla gross for the 3 day? 5000 41.959 Bonus 3: What will be the combined weekend 3 day gross for The Other Woman, Blended and Heaven is For Real? 5000 36.538 Bonus 4: (Estimates {on Sunday only} will count) What will X-men gross WW for the 3 day? Closest 3 people to this will each receive 5000 pts. 235.8m What finishes in spots: 4 Neighbors 6 Million Dollar Arm 8 Rio 2 10 Chef 13 Divergent

28.5% drop

This is direct to video, right? Right?

Huh. I'm not a fan of Zvyagintsev at all, but that sounds pretty intriguing. As for possible controversy, well, "abuse of power" is sorta kinda an issue here these days, no?

Yeah. If they wanted to make a point about humans suffering while being helpless and completely insignificant (from the monsters' perspective), they should have just taken a good look at the city destruction sequence from the 1954 Godzilla and used it as an inspiration. There's more wonder, horror and sadness packed in those 15 minutes than in the entire 2 hours of this movie.

Literally nothing about The Search sounds appealing or good to me, there are few kinds of films that make me want to throw up more than overwrought Important Dramas. So I don't know how much it could possibly be improved. It appears that Hazanavicius took entirely the wrong message from The Artist's success, which is unfortunate.

This is like that time when I was one of 3 people who put Bridesmaids in their top 15, except this time shit went horribly wrong.

That's a hell of a generalization.

Yikes. Too bad, it sounded very promising. I think I'll see it anyway, though, because it seems interesting and ambitious even if it's a failure.

Kubrick's Napoleon Orson Welles' Heart of Darkness GDT's Hobbit Todd Field's Blood Meridian Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis Cameron & Fincher & GDT's Heavy Metal Chris Nolan's Jim Carrey-starring Howard Hughes biopic Neill Blommkamp's Halo Lynne Ramsay's The Lovely Bones

There Will Be Blood would have probably been PG had it been released in the '70s. I mean, Friedkin's Sorcerer is PG. That's amazing.

I actually think the combination of the severed leg scene, Ben Gardner's head scene, and Quint's death would get Jaws R these days.

I expect to lose my lead after Week 3 answers are scored... however, I could take it back after I get those 56k points from Question 16. No, I don't think I'm obsessive about this, why do you ask?

What will have the smallest opening weekend? Earth to Echo What will have the smallest opening day? Earth to Echo Name any film that will not have at least a 3 multiplier (note, if you choose to answer this one, and you feel that no film will miss a 3X, you can answer "none")? Edge of Tomorrow

The direction, imo, might be the one thing that hurt this movie the most. Aside from a couple of setpieces (like the wire scene and Pitt's demise) it's incredibly bland. Unique and flashy screenplays like this need to be translated onto the screen accordingly, otherwise they could easily overwhelm and sink the movie, which is kinda what happened here. Ridley didn't try to bring anything out of McCarthy's writing, it seemed like he just pointed the camera in the needed direction, called "action" and "cut" and that was it. The end result is very awkward, bland and way too serious. It's like if Sorkin's screenplay for The Social Network was shot by Bill Condon instead of Fincher - we'd get something much closer to The Fifth Estate than to the TSN we know. Or if Wentworth Miller's screenplay for Stoker (which is very silly and often nonsensical on its own) was shot not by Chan-wook Park, who made the best possible movie out of it, but by any bland and mediocre Hitchcock-wannabe. McCarthy's script for The Counselor needed, among other things, a much more imaginative director.

When actuals come in, I want to see that Transcendence jumped 100% and had a 2k PTA this weekend. Don't disappoint me WB

If it stabilizes after this weekend it could go for 170m. Summer weekdays will help a lot, too.

Shit yeah. 56k here we come.

Shit.

Edge of Tomorrow and Jupiter Ascending will both probably do $300m worldwide, with an outside chance of $350m. Not enough for either to be profitable, but not that terrible either.