Next Week's Movies

There were only a couple new films available, Beerfest and Zoom. Neither struck me as something that would be popular at Western Film. Beerfest could have done well but I think it's one of those movies where people will wait for the DVD.

I decided to bring back The Devil Wears Prada since it did so well last week. I inquired about whether a print of A Scanner Darkly was available and it was so I booked it. I'm curious how it does, it's gotten some press but is a bit unusual.

Looks like An Inconvenient Truth will probably play the following week. I hope so, we are running out of good movies to play.

On the other hand the Media can be manipulated.

I was involved with Western Film while it was still a club, at the time we still ran in Middlesex College and had just converted to 35mm film from 16mm. My friend Mark Maclellan and myself were in charge of Western Film. We both were fans of the movie Basic Instinct, him more so than me. We heard that the British version had scenes that weren't in the North American version. We arranged to bring in a print of the British version and show it. I won't get into how much trouble and expense it was to get it.
So we had the print and had to decide how to market it. This was before the Internet and marketing films was harder and more expensive for small operations like Western Film.
The added footage was basically extra sex and violence, which is pretty much what the whole movie was about. We decided to market it as the Director's Cut. The term was just starting to be used.
Anyway to get to the point, as they say there's no such thing as bad publicity and nothing sells like controversy. We decided to write a fake protest letter to the Gazette and if they published it that would get word of mouth going. They published it and we went on to have 4 sold out shows and made over $10,000 which at the time was a huge amount for Western Film.

Some related trivia.
-The 'person' who sent in the protest letter was Trina Shoons, an anagram of Sharon Stone.
-A nun from Brescia sent in a real protest letter.
-The added footage was less than a minute but was quite shocking for the time.

Tabloid Magazines.

I've noticed a couple things in the tabloids/magazines the last couple weeks. One of them had Nicole Ritchie on the cover, a bad candid of her running or something in a swimsuit. The tagline was something like 'Nicole's starving herself to death'. I bet if you checked back a few issues they ran a similar tagline about her being fat.
I looked at an inside page of one yesterday while waiting for the photocopier and it was running some sets of comparison photos. The one that caught my eye was Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. In the first picture she was taller than him, in the second picture they were the same height so they had a little caption saying Tom was wearing lifts in his shoes. The thing I noticed was in the first picture Katie was wearing a long formal gown which didn't show her feet. I'm not much on women's wear but I would imagine that dress would come with very high heels. In the second pics they were both more casually dressed and she wasn't wearing heels so they are probably about the same height in actuality.

Just a couple examples of how the tabloids manipulate images. I wonder if Tom Cruise wouldn't have had the problems he's had if the media hadn't paid so much attention to the couch jumping incident.

Also examples of how the media manipulates/reflects body image. The women can never be the right weight, the tabloids are always running articles saying so and so is fat or too thin. If they feel they have to say Tom Cruise is wearing lifts in his shoes as a bad thing they are implying/affirming being short is a detriment for a man. I'm glad I'm 6'2.

Back to School

It's Frosh Week, the most chaotic week of the year for basically everyone here at the University. 5000 new students plus many lost parents in need of directions.

It's the most unpredictable week of the year in terms of attendance at the movies. Even more unpredictable than usual.

We had a lot of adults at The Devil Wears Prada on the weekend. I imagine some of them will avoid the campus during the week. On the other hand I expect attendance for You, Me and Dupree will go up as the students return.

Hollywood has completely run out of ideas/ Poster of the Week.

Well, it's official. Hollywood can only recycle itself now. The poster is for a remake of Revenge of the Nerds in 2007. The original one is a great film, I hope they don't make the new one suck. According to IMDB the movie doesn't even have a cast yet. They may have put the poster out so soon because it's one of the productions from a new subset of Fox called Fox Atomic which is supposed to make movies aimed at teenagers. As opposed to Fox Searchlight which makes movies for adults and the art crowd. Little Miss Sunshine is one example.

Fox Atomic, I can't decide if I like the name, simultaneously interesting and cheesy.

Back when Mel was Cool

Mel Gibson has been a movie star for a long time. He started in Australia in the late 70's with his first big international hit being Mad Max. I used to be a huge Mel Gibson fan but not any more.

When he was younger he was one of the best looking actors around. People put him on the cover as Sexiest Man Alive in 1985 or 1986. I think it was the first time they had bestowed that title.

The 1983 GQ cover here I always considered his best magazine cover. It's pretty rare, I only found a couple over years of selling old mags.

Too bad Mel has done the same going crazy routine as Tom Cruise but not as spectacularly. I don't think anyone will take him seriously any more except for the people who share his religious beliefs. It'll be interesting to see how his next movie Apocalycto does after the current controversy. I doubt he needs the money though, no studio wanted to make Passion of the Christ so he paid for it himself which means he would have got most of the hundreds of millions of dollars it made.

Trivia:
Most people think Mel Gibson is Australian but he is American, his family moved to Australia when he was 12 to avoid the draft.
Mad Max was dubbed by Warner because they feared American audiences wouldn't understand the Australian accents, as usual with dubbing it made the movie cheesy. If it hadn't been a really good movie to start with Mel may never have been an international star.

Favorite Books not made into movies?

A lot of people have books they really like that weren't made into movies. Of course a lot of people hate it when books are made into bad movies.

My favorite book is Rendevous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. He's most famous for writing 2001: A Space Odyssey. Rama is about a huge spaceship that comes into the solar system and the crew sent to investigate it. Some of the imagery it presents is outstanding. I've heard about it getting made into a movie for years but it never happened. I think part of the reason was it would have been really expensive to do it right with the special effects that were available. With the very effective special effects now available it could be done I would imagine.

Anyone else have any favorite books they would like to see made into movies?

Contest Winner!

Sorry about not posting this sooner, I was on vacation.

I have to admit I was fairly shocked by the results of the last contest. I didn't expect anyone to get the answer let alone the first entry?! I guess I gave too many hints.

I received another entry by e-mail that also fits the criteria so it also wins. Six Weeks from 1982 starred Dudley Moore and Mary Tyler Moore. I figured there was probably more than one answer.

So Karen who posted Billie Jean please e-mail at wfilm@uwo.ca to claim your prize. The other Karen who e-mailed me also wins.

I hope Billie Jean comes out on DVD at some point. I always liked that movie.

Next Week's Movies.

There were three movies available today. I had been holding You, Me and Dupree to play next week because I figured it was a good frosh week movie. Miami Vice was also available. The Devil Wears Prada was available but since it's Fox it had conditions with it. If I started it Sep 1 I could split it with another movie but I had to pay Per caps which translates to a higher percentage. If I waited until Sept 8 to play it I wouldn't have had to pay the higher percentage but couldn't split it with another movie.
I decided to play Prada next week since it seemed another good Frosh week movie. Prada will play at 7pm and Dupree will play at 9:20. Unless something changes drastically Miami Vice will start Sep 8th.

Get This: I'm playing Prada next week but if I want to keep it another week I can't split it the second week!

These two movies will not be playing at Western Film because they are Fox and can't be split with another movie.
My Super Ex-girlfriend- I wouldn't have played this anyway, it sucked and bombed.
John Tucker Must Die- I would like to play this one but unless I have a week with nothing else I can't justify playing it full shows. I'd be more likely to bring back one of the summer hits.

The midnight series starts soon. I'll be posting the list on the website, some interesting stuff.

2 fun movies

On Sunday Night I saw two movies. I'm on vacation so I see a lot of movies, even more than usual.

SNAKES ON A PLANE- I wasn't planning on seeing this until some of the industry stuff I get said it was actually good. I went to see it and it was a lot of fun. It's not really a horror movie, more of a campy B movie. It was more funny than scary. Samuel L. Jackson was great playing the whole thing with a straight face.

BON COP BAD COP- This is a Canadian movie about a English and French detectives that reluctantly partner to solve a series of murders that involve Hockey. Only in Canada would murders revolve around Hockey! I wasn't expecting much, the trailers were interesting but made is seem like a kind of screwball comedy. I ended up really enjoying it. It was funny but also dramatic and actionic (is that a word). The style was similar to the Lethal Weapon movies.
I 'm surprised at the size of the release. I figured it wouldn't play here at all but it's in three of the four first run theatres in London. So go support you Canadian Film Industry and see the movie. You'll have a good time.

Next Week's Movie

I'm sorta on vacation this week, storing up energy for Frosh week, the busiest (and most chaotic) week of the year at the University.
I booked Click for next week. By itself at 7pm. There were two new movies available, Monster House and Ant Bully. Neither would work as a late show and I wanted Click to be at 7pm. I might have played Monster House if I had nothing else to play. I don't think it would have done well though, not enough adult interest. If was a pretty fun movie though.

I'm still planning on playing You, Me and Dupree the following week.

Trivia Contest #2

I wasn't planning to run another contest this soon but thought of a great question today.

As with the last one the winner gets 2 free passes to Western Film and 2 free medium popcorns.

I'm going to leave this contest open until Aug 25th, I'm really curious to see if anyone gets the right answer. I'm also going to add this contest to the Western Film Mass-e-mail this Friday.

Here's the question:

What movie starred an actor and actress who had the same last name but weren't related?

There could be more than one answer but I can't think of any.

Hint #1 None of the the Baldwins or Arquettes are the stars.
Hint #2 It's from the 80's and not on DVD.
Hint #3 At least one of the stars is still making movies and you will have heard of them. It wouldn't be fair to pick some obscure little movie with no-name stars would it?

Please post answers as comments.

Why so many Shakespeare movies?

I was quite surprised when I looked up the answers for the trivia contest and there were so many Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet movies, plus lots from his other plays I'm sure. I started thinking about why there so many. I thought of two reasons:

He's free, as far as I know there's no copyright on his works. I don't see how there could be as it's been what, 400 years since he died. Therefore making a movie of one of his plays requires no rights to be paid, and no writer unless they wish to adapt the story.

The stories are fairly universal. Even people who have never read the plays usually know the basic stories and names of the characters of the most famous plays. Most of us were forced to read them in high school (that may work against them though).

Just think about how many cultural references there are based on Shakespeare, everything from the name Romeo signifying romance to the multiple references in The Simpsons and tons of other TV shows and movies..

Poster of the Week

I was just looking at the posters for some upcoming movies. This one caught my eye. Never heard of the movie but it's animated, not for children and looks cool. I'll be there (if it ever plays in London).

Trivia Contest Winner!

Western Film's first trivia contest is now over. The entries to the contest were all interesting. I didn't know the answer for sure before I posted the contest but figured it was probably Shakespeare. Dorian Grey was one I hadn't thought of.
I'm going to call it a tie between Donna (Romeo and Juliet) and Janet (Hamlet). If you look up either title on IMDB you get a ton of listings. Hamlet seems to have more than Romeo but more of them are TV and I noticed at least one is a short film and another doesn't seem to actually exist.

So Donna and Janet please e-mail me at wfilm@uwo.ca and I'll get your prizes to you.

Thanks
James.

Midnight Movies Question.

I've been thinking of something and wanted to get some input from readers. The last couple years we have played Friday Midnight Cult movies. Some of the ones for the upcoming year are Van Wilder, Fight Club and Kill Bill 1 and 2.

I've been thinking of playing the movie Saturday Midnight as well. I'm not sure if we would just split the crowd that would have come Friday? A lot of people like to go out drinking Saturday night. Thursday midnight has also been mentioned but the same issue presents itself.

The nice thing is if I try and it doesn't work Western Film won't be out much. The movie is already paid for for the Friday show so the only extra costs would be a few hours of staff.
Anyone have any thoughts?

Next Week's Movies

For the first time in a while I had a hard choice to make as far as next week goes. There were 4 movies available.

Superman Returns
Click
You, Me and Dupree
Little Man

Little Man was easy to say no to, it looked absolutely horrible.

Superman is too long to play anything else as a late show.
Click and Dupree would make a good double feature but during the summer I didn't think either would do great as a late show.
Also we are getting close to the academic year starting so I took that into account.

I don't think anything good will come off next week. Devil Wears Prada will be at least 2 weeks. Clerks 2 might come available but I don't want to play it until the students return.

I decided to play Superman next week by itself. I'm going to play Click starting Aug 25th, probably by itself. I could play Dupree the same week but I think I'll hold it for the next week. The playweek starting Sep 1 contains most of Frosh Week. Dupree strikes me as a good Frosh Week movie, funny, short, with popular actors. Ideally I'd like to play Dupree and Prada but may not be able to. Maybe Dupree and Clerks 2?

During or soon after Frosh week we plan to play An Inconvenient Truth.

Another reason to dislike Wal-Mart

I've read a few things about Wal-Mart and realized something.
One of the reasons theatres are having problems is because DVD's are coming out sooner after the theatrical release so some people are waiting for the DVD. Studios now make most of the money from the movie on DVD which creates pressure to release the movies on DVD sooner.
I read that 60% of DVDs in the US are sold at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart sells DVDs as loss leaders,meaning they sell them for less than normal, sometimes below cost, in order to get people into the store with the assumption (hope?) they'll buy other items. It's a fairly common retail practice.
However if Wal-Mart sells 60% of the DVDs at an artificially low price that means they are creating an artificially high demand. If they sold them at the regular price the demand would be lower, sales would be lower and DVD revenue wouldn't seem as high compared to theatrical revenue.

Questions?

Every so often I put up a blank post for anyone to ask questions. Please leave any questions as comments and I'll answer them if I can.

Next Week's Movie

My choice for next week was simple again. Lady in the Water was the only one available. I decided to do just one show again. In the summer we don't do well on a late show unless it's a different movie than the 7pm show.
I'll probably bring Da Vinci back if I have a week where nothing is available. It's done really well.
We often bring the summer hits back in September once the students have returned.

The Dark Knight and other sequels

I received a press release from Warner Bros last week concerning the next Batman movie. It's going to be called the Dark Knight. Christian Bale will be returning as Batman. Christopher Nolan will be directing again and Heath Ledger will be playing the Joker. This sounds cool, Batman Begins was one of my favorite movies from last year.
I was looking at the list of upcoming releases and some of the sequels caught my attention.

Sept 22 -Jackass 2: I hate to admit I'm looking forward to this one. I'm one of those wackos that find Jackass really funny. I laughed more during the trailer for Jackass 2 than I have for entire movies. In my defense I find the stunts funny, not so much some of the gross out stuff they do. The bit in Jackass 1 with the papercuts I couldn't watch.

Oct 13 - The Grudge 2: Never saw the first one so can't really comment, hopefully it won't suck.

Oct 27 - Saw III: This could be interesting or bad. The first one was pretty novel, the second one was edging closer to formula horror movies but still had some twists.

Nov 3 - Santa Clause 3: I haven't seen the first 2 because I really dislike Tim Allen. I saw a trailer for the third one and I might have to go see it. Martin Short is playing Jack Frost, the villain. From the trailer it looks like he's really funny and perfect for the part.

Dec 1 - Van Wilder Deux: The rise of Taj. I was surprised to see this one on the list, never heard it was being made. It sounds like one of those desperate sequels. Van Wilder was really funny but a lot of it came from Ryan Reynolds. The second one is about his Indian assistant played by Kal Penn. Reynolds isn't even in it which means Van Wilder isn't either. On the other hand Kal Penn was really funny in the first movie so it may work.

Dec 22 - Rocky Balboa: No comment.

Jan 5 2007 White Noise 2: Why are they making a sequel to a Canadian Horror movie that didn't do all that well in the first place, or so I thought?

Feb 9 : Young Hannibal: about the early years of Hannibal Lector from Silence of the Lambs. Don't know much about this one but I'm assuming Anthony Hopkins will not be doing it.

Mar 23- Bean 2: Made mostly for overseas I would imagine but I'll see it.

May 4 - Spiderman 3: no words are necessary.

May 18th - Shrek The Third: First time I've heard the great title. Unless it's really bad all they need to do is open the doors and the cash registers will fill with money.

May 25 - Pirates 3: This is almost guaranteed to be a big hit just because the ending of part 2 was not there, it just kind of stopped.

Jun 22 - Evan Almighty:

First Western Film Trivia Contest!

This will be the first Trivia Contest for this blog. The Winner will receive 2 free passes to Western Film and 2 free medium popcorns.

Here's the question.

What movie has been remade the most?

I'm referring to remakes not sequels, prequels etc. For example King Kong from 2005 was a remake of the 1933 film which was also remade in 1976.

Please post your entries as comments. The winner will be declared Aug 14th.

Good Luck.

Interested in reading a lot about movies?

I found this through cinematical.com one of my favorite websites. Lots of movie news concentrating mostly on comics/action/sci-fi.

Mark Cuban is the owner of a Football Team, a chain called Landmark Theatres and a cable channel. He put a post on his blog asking readers to make suggestions how to improve the moviegoing experience. He got over 900 responses! I've only read part but a lot are completely impractical as far as the movie business such as charging $1.00 on opening weekend to get word of mouth going. Some are contradictory, one guy suggested the theatre keeping track of what movies he goes to with who etc and letting him know when a movie he might like is going to play. For everyone who likes that idea there would be others who would find it an invasion of privacy.
Some ideas have already been done such as using mall parking lots as drive-ins at night after the stores have closed. There's a Drive-In in Toronto that doubles as a golf range during the day.
Here's the original post
And his response.

A great idea.

One of the most common complaints about movie theatres is people talking or using cellphones, also there are technical issues such as the picture out of focus. Modern theatres don't have the staff to monitor all the theatres. One of the big theatre chains in the US is trying something different to solve this problem. A few people in the audience will get a kind of remote control that will have buttons for projection problem, sound problem, talkers etc. The remotes will let the staff know there is an issue that needs to be dealt with and the customers don't have to miss any of the movie. I wonder how expensive they are. I'd love to get a couple for Western Film.

Next Week's Movie

As I mentioned earlier Sony did the unusual move of letting us book Da Vinci Code to start this week so I already know what was playing. I checked what else was available just in case but the only other new movie available was A Prairie Home Companion. I think I would brought X-Men back rather than play Prairie. It doesn't have high awareness and has played at some other theatres in town (plus I thought it was boring.)
Next couple weeks could be Superman and Devil Wears Prada.

Western Film mini movie reviews

Here's what I thought of a few movies I've seen lately.

CLERKS 2: It seemed a bit forced but was fun overall. I wish the 2 main charaters were better actors. It was fine in a little indie movie in 1994 but now it just seems distracting. I don't mind vulgarity in a movie but I thought the F word was used way more than necessary. I was also getting a trifle annoyed at all the anti-gay humour. The funniest part was the muscial number. A big deal was made of the promotion where the first 10,000 people to sign up at the Clerks 2 myspace would get a screen credit. I waited until the end of the credits to see just how long it would take 10,000 names to go by but it wasn't there. Maybe they didn't do it on the Canadian prints.

MONSTER HOUSE: An interesting little movie, funny and pretty scary for little kids. I'm surprised it's doing well since it's so scary but doesn't have a lot to appeal to adults. I could tell it was shot to be shown in 3-d by the way it was animated. If you see it don't leave as soon as the credits start, there's some more stuff in the credits. It fulfills an expectation I had about the movie but writing it would be a spoiler.

MY SUPER EX-GIRLFRIEND: I was looking forward to this one since the concept was fairly original and I like both Uma Thurman and Luke Wilson. It was entertaining but not extremely so, pretty middle of the road. It's Fox so it likely won't play at Western Film if they don't let me split it.

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA: Fun, Meryl did a great job. It wasn't as funny as I was expecting and I admit I looked at my watch a couple times but was still worth seeing. It's also Fox but I'll play it eventually.

CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA: I saw this last night at the Hyland. It's a mockumentary about what the US could be like if the South had won the civil war. Concentrated mostly on the slavery issue. It was presented as a British documentary being shown on American Television. The 'commercials' were the funniest part-the slave shopping channel etc. It was quite interesting.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: Dead Man's Chest. Was a lot of fun, very similar to the first one. I never understood why the first one did so well. It was fun but not exceptional. I guess it appealed to enough different types of people. As for the second part, everyone seems to agree it's too long but I haven't heard anyone say they didn't like it. Disney practially guarantees another hit with the third film, this film doesn't just have your typical sequel ending, it more or less just stops.

SUPERMAN RETURNS: Anyone who has been reading this blog knows I was really looking forward to the movie. I really hate that it's being considered a disappointment. I think it's one of those movies that people just kinda decided wasn't great for no particular reason. The reviews were good. I really liked it, I've actually seen it twice. The effects are spectacular. Brandon Routh does a good Christopher Reeve impression. Kevin Spacey was having great fun chewing up the scenery. Kate was Bosworth was miscast, I can think of so many actresses that would have been better, it was even obvious that her hair had been colored, she's actually a blonde. I'll watch it again when Western Film plays it.

Poster of the Week

I don't plan on seeing The Descent but I find the poster quite neat. The movie is about 6 women who go underground exploring caves and various forms of havoc ensues. It turns out the poster is based on a Salvador Dali work according to Jim Emerson at Scanners. He seems to be Roger Ebert's heir apparent. Anyone who has taken a film class has seen Dali's and Luis Brunel's Un Chien Andalou, a surrealist short which uses a editing trick to make it appear that a woman's eyeball is being slit open.

Milk ads.

I saw a movie tonight and one of those Milk Rap ads was on before the movie. I can't decide if they are supposed to be genuine or a parody. I don't see anyone taking them seriously, I could tell by some of the comments from other audience members. I suppose by being so bad they still get people's attention?

Stuff I find in the theatre.

Technically only items bought from Western Film are supposed to be brought into the theatre but people smuggle some stuff in. More on that in a later post. At the end of each show we clean up the bigger garbage, popcorn bags, cups etc. I've made some interesting discoveries.

This week I found a bottle of Salsa, the funniest thing was the guy came back for it. I'd already put it in the recycling.
Banana/Orange peels/Apple cores.
Sunflower or other nut shells
McDonalds etc.
Foreign food I didn't even know what it was.
Ice cream melted all over the floor.
Candy we don't sell spilled all over and getting smushed into the carpet.

On the other hand, I often find money, the most I ever found in one night was $12.00.

We also find things like wallets, students cards, cell phones, keys,umbrellas etc. I try to track down the owners if I can, especially with wallets. I found keys in there that were never claimed, you'd think the people would come back when they couldn't get into their house or car. We have a nice selection of Umbrellas in our office.

Unpredictable Hot Dogs

During the summer Western Film sells Hot Dogs because we are the only ones open at night and some people are looking for food more substantial than popcorn. Hot Dogs present a bit of a challenge. Each night we have to decide how many to put on. They take about 10 minutes to cook and if we are out a lot of people don't want to wait. We have to weigh several factors in deciding how many to start with at the beginning of the night. Just as an example of how unpredictable sales can be.
Most Tuesday we sell about 8 Hot Dogs. Last Tuesday we sold 17, a record. This Tuesday when one of my staff asked how many to put on I said 6. I didn't expect to sell 17 again but I did expect it to be busy.
Anyway to make a long story short, even though it was busier than last week we only sold 1 hot dog.

Changing Moviegoing Patterns

Like any business there's patterns but with a certain amount of unpredictability. I've noticed patterns change over the last few years. A lot of it started when the First Run Theatres, starting with the Silver City changed their prices. They made everyone the same price, dropping the adult admission and raising the kid's and seniors rates. They also made the prices the same for matinees as well as evening shows. They also erased discount Tuesdays. I wondered why they did all of this. I figured they did it to spread out the business over more days instead of selling out Fridays and Saturdays and Tuesdays. It seems to have worked and spilled over to other theatres.
Our Tuesday business has dropped but other nights have picked up. Sometimes Monday is as busy as Friday.
It changes again during the school year. 2 years ago the busy night was Wednesday. Last year it switched to Thursday. I figure it has a lot to do with the University putting a lot of night classes on Tuesday and Wednesday. Even within my staff I had trouble with too many people having classes on the same nights.

Next Week's movie

This was another week with a very simple choice. The only movie available was Nacho Libre. I hope all the Jack Black fans didn't already go see it. I'm not sure I'll watch it. Jack Black really bugs me. He seems to be one of those actors you really like or really hate.
In an unusual move Sony let us confirm Da Vinci Code a week in advance. It'll be starting Aug 4th. I was planning to run two shows a night until I checked the running time. At 2.5 hours plus trailers it would make a late show for 10:00. That's too late for us during the summer. During the school year I would probably run the late show.

Movie Posters work.

I used to use still pictures from the movies on the Western Film website but one day had one of my little brainstorms. I started using the movie poster artwork instead. The posters for the movies are designed by talented professionals to convey information about the movie. One glance at a movie poster usually tells you what kind of movie it is and who the target market is. I'll illustrate with a few examples.
The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift-The main image is the car since cars are the stars of the movie, no actor in the movie is a star so the pictures of the cast are fairly small, the artwork of the buildings implies speed.





I'll compare the posters for two movies Keanu Reeves has this summer as another example.
Lake House- the position of the characters implies romance, he is in b/w, she is in color which implies the emphasis is on her. They are out of focus which implies a dream like state probably relating to the concept of the characters living 2 years apart (or maybe it's just to make them look younger-a old Hollywood trick). Basically the poster instantly tells you it's a romantic movie aimed at women.
A Scanner Darkly - The characters in this movie were shot live and them animated over. A process that used to be called rotoscoping but I'm not sure if it still is. The poster is quite dark which implies mystery or horror, the animated characters are seen, the colors are quite bold. The characters are behind a window blind. This image is implicitly associated with Film Noir and mysteries. The text font and title imply some Science Fiction elements. Basically the poster tells you the movie is an unusual mystery film aimed mostly at guys.

Disney Sucks

I can't decide if this is good or bad news. I inquired with our booker to see if the Western Film situation with regards to Disney had changed. Disney considers Western Film and Rainbow in the same zone so we can't play the same movie at the same time so we never play Disney. The booker told me that the situation had not changed but in the short term that might be a good thing.
For Cars and Pirates Disney is trying a new way of calculating the percentage theatres pay. It's based on how well the movie does, the better you do the more you pay. This is quite different from the way it works now. Second run theatres pay a percentage known in advance and the same on almost all movies, usually 35%. Some studios drop the percentage the longer we keep the movie.
That isn't the worst part of what Disney is doing. The flat or lowest percentage is 20% higher than we pay now!
This is going to put some theatres in an awful situation. The biggest problem with this is the precedent is could set. If a theatre pays 55% for Pirates the other studios may say they want 55% for their hits too. If it was just Pirates and Cars it could probably be justified since concession sales will be quite high for those movies. However if all the studios wanted 55% many theatres would go out of business.
It's an awful situation to put the theatres in. If I had to make the choice I would boycott those two movies on principle.
Theatres are already squeezed by DVD, Video Games etc and Disney is trying to squeeze even more money out of them.

4 movies open this weekend and I want to see them all.

This weekend has an usual number of wide releases opening. My Super ex-Girlfriend, Monster House, Clerks 2 and Lady in the Water. All of them I want to see with Monster House being lowest priority. I think the one I want to see most is Super Ex-Girlfriend. It's an unusual idea and I like both actors, Luke Wilson and Uma Thurman. I just hope it's not one of those movies where all the good scenes were in the trailers. There's speculation which one will be #1 at the Box office. I think it will be Lady in the Water, it looks good and the director (I'm not even going to try and spell it) is a fairly big name. Clerks 2 will do boffo business with it's cult crowd but not likely spread into the mainstream. It's one of those movies that will do a lot of business opening weekend as all Kevin Smith's fans will see it. It will then drop off a lot next weekend.
Monster House has been a marketing challenge for Sony. It's too scary for little kids but may be hard sell to older kids. My brother took my nephew to Cars and my nephew was scared by the trailer for Monster House. He is only three though.

Well, that's it for big films.

All the 'Big' films for the summer have now come out. The rest of the summer is a mix of smaller movies unless there's another surprise hit like Wedding Crashers from last year. A couple could do so, Lady in The Water is an unknown quantity and it should be interesting how Snakes on a Plane does. I was looking through a listing of some of the movies coming out and there were a lot I haven't seen any publicity for. One that sounds interesting is Crank. It stars Jason Statham from the Transporter movies. He plays a guy who must keep his adrenaline level up to keep a poison from killing him. Should be some interesting action sequences.

Next Week's Movies.

The choice was pretty easy this week. Over The Hedge and The Break-Up were both available. Over the Hedge obviously had to be the early show as it appeals to children. I sorta wished I could put The Break-Up early as it would do better but I figured I can bring it back later if I have an empty week.

Poster of the week and Bad movie of the week.

This pic is of the video poster for a 1984 movie called The Perils of Gwendoline. It was a bad movie that I always liked. It was a French movie with American leads, some of the characters were speaking French dubbed into English. The guy was Brent Huff who was a hot guy but a bad actor. The actress was Tawny Kitaen who was quite hot at the time. She was on The Surreal Life recently, time has not been nice to her. The characters in the movie find a city populated by women while searching for her father. There's lots of female flesh present. There's one funny/strange moment. Brent is pretending to be one of the women in the city and one of the guards takes off his clothes. There's a quick shot of his crotch but there's nothing there but hair!? I read later he had to wear a 'crotch wig'.

Concerts Vs Movies.

I went to see a Tom Jones Concert here in London tonight. My Grandma wanted to go. I was thinking about how different people treat concerts and movies.
Western Film costs $4.25 and if we start the movie 5 minutes late for some reason we get people complaining.
The tickets for Tom Jones at the John Labatt Center were about $100 each. The concert was supposed to start at 8pm so we showed up about 7:45. A comedian started at 8:05 and did his bit until 8:30. Then we sat and waited until 9:05 before Tom Jones actually came on. I could tell the audience was getting impatient.
The worst part was the seats, they had very little padding and were very close together, I'm quite tall and felt like I was sitting in a tiny airplane. By the time Tom started we both had sore butts.

So why are people willing to pay over $100 to wait for over an hour but get upset at a few minutes delay for a movie?

BTW- it was fairly obvious why the folks at JLC were waiting, people kept going and buying beer.

Does this embarrass Johnny Depp?

I wonder what Johnny Depp thinks about his teen idol days? Would he prefer to forget them or see them as a stepping stone to where he is now. Hard to believe he went from a teen idol to one of the biggest film stars in the world. How many actors were successful in that transition?
This is the May 1989 issue of 16 magazine.

Darn Pirates.

Turned out Pirates broke pretty much broke every box office record, 135 million over 3 days.

It sucks for Western Film because we don't play Disney product so we won't be playing it unless we pick it up after it leaves Rainbow in the far distant future.

Disney considers Western Film and Rainbow in the same zone so we can't play the same movie at the same time. They give their movies to Rainbow first. They are able to run matinees every day and other things Western Film can't and hence gross more than we do.
Thankfully Disney is the only one with this policy and they normally don't have a lot of product I would want to play. So far this year the only ones I would like to play are Cars and Pirates.

Next Week's movies.

Today was an interesting day for booking. I was told as soon as I got in the office that The Lake House was available. Over the Hedge wasn't. About the only other one that might have come off was The Break Up. I was trying to decide what to do if both Lake House and Breakup were available, which order to put them in.
Break Up wasn't available after all so I thought it was just Lake House. However at the last minute, literally 10 minutes before 5 pm I was told I could play X-Men 3 if I paid per caps. Per caps means in essence we play a higher percentage than usual. However we could play another movie with it which Fox often doesn't allow.
I decided to run X-Men at 7 pm, initially I was told it was 140 minutes long so I decided not to run a late show of Lake House because it would have started too late. However it turned out X-Men was only 104 minutes so I could start Lake House early enough.

Looks like in the next couple weeks we'll have Break Up, Over The Hedge, and Nacho Libre.

I've had a lot of people ask about Da Vinci. It's still doing well and Sony is one of the studios that puts two weeks between First and Second run so it will be at least 3 weeks before we get it.

Disney is smart.

One thing that has been hurting movies lately is overemphasis expectations. Superman Returns doesn't break records and suddenly people think it sucks. Even the general public is getting into the 'oh, no it it only did 20 million on Wednesday'.

Disney did something smart, they made no predictions as to how they expected Pirates to open. If it doesn't open as big as some say they won't have as many problems.

The word has it may break the all time opening weekend of 114 million set by Spiderman 2. I wouldn't be surprised, I saw it Sunday night at 11 pm and the theatre was pretty much full.

I agree with many of the critics, it's harmless summer fun but nothing more. It was too long and felt a little forced. And boy, talk about a sequel ending.

Roger Ebert and film critics.

Roger Ebert is in the hospital after emergency surgery, the news today said he was in serious but stable condition. He had been in the hospital about a month ago. He's always been one of my favorite reviewers. I usually tend to agree with him. If I haven't decided whether I want to see a movie I'll often check out his review. So many reviewers tend to write mostly a synopsis with some snide remarks. I had noticed Ebert's reviews seem to have gotten a little coarse the last little while. I was really surprised how down his review of Superman was. It all made sense when I heard about his health problems. Being in pain doesn't exactly make one want to write glowing reviews of anything.

On a related note. I make it a personal policy not to read reviews of a movie I definitely want to see until after I have seen it. If I read them before I find they colour my perception of the movie. I may notice something the reviewer mentioned I wouldn't have before. If the review was negative I sometimes find that influencing me as well. I find it much more interesting to see the movie then go and read the reviews. Like I said above, I only read the reviews before if I haven't decided whether or not to see the movie. This can backfire though. I hadn't planned on seeing Elf with Wil Ferrel but the reviews for it were really good so I went to see it. I hated that movie.

Next Week's Movie

My choice for next week was pretty much a no-brainer, there was only one movie available, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. I booked it on Monday. My booker said the Lake House may also be available but Warner was closed for the holiday so I had to wait til Tuesday to finalize. Turned out Lake House held so we only have the one movie. I'm curious how it does. I saw it on the weekend, my Mother (!?) wanted to go see it (she's always been into Muscle cars). It was a lot of fun, more so than I expected. I described it on the way out as a 'filmed version of a teenage boy's wet dream'.

'Movie' magazines.

I used to deal in collectible magazines, mostly entertainment and fashion. I always found it fascinating the evolution of movie magazines. In the 20's, 30's and 40's they were basically about the movies themselves with some articles on the stars. Starting in the 50's they started to be more about the stars and got more gossipy. This trend accelerated in the 60's and by the 70's we had scandal mags like Rona Barrett's Hollywood. Then as prices of glossy magazines increased the newsprint tabloids like the Star took over since they were cheaper. In the last few years the prices of the newsprint versions increased enough that the tabloids went back to glossy magazines.
For Instance the Star started as a very large b/w tabloid, then turned color, then started to shrink, when it got about as small as it could the price started going up. Recently it got to the point the price was too high for a newsprint tabloid so it went back to glossy paper.
I'll put up some pics to illustrate the progression. I don't have scans of the recent stuff because I shut the business down a couple years ago. The Canadian Dollar went up and ebay saturated the market so it wasn't worth doing any more. If anyone has any reason to be interested I have scans over of 20,000 magazine covers. I sold a crapload of magazines over the years.

Creative Accounting.

Sometimes people in Hollywood are paid with a percentage of Box Office, DVD sales etc. The percentage can come off either the front end as soon as the movie is released or the back end after the film has made a profit.
Only a big star or director like Tom Cruise can get Front End. It's a well known thing in Hollywood that if you get Back end you'll never see a dime. Due to creative accounting, on paper almost no Hollywood movie makes a profit.
A while ago the man who wrote the Eddie Murphy movie Coming to America sued Paramount Pictures. He was supposed to get a cut of the profits and Paramount claimed a movie that pulled in over 400 million worldwide hadn't turned a profit?! The case got far enough along in the courts that certain people were freaking that Paramount might have to open it's books to the court. There was also people who could hardly wait to see this happen. If I remember correctly the case was settled out of court so Paramount never had to open it's books.
The moral is, if you ever get in a movie get the money up front.

Why Hollywood isn't in Hollywood or even LA.

There was a big trial in Delaware state earlier this year with Disney shareholders challenging the company over it's hiring of Michael Ovitz. He was fired/resigned about a year later with $140 million in severance pay. I think the shareholders lost which is a shame.
The reason I mentioned this is someone asked me why the trial was being held in Delaware not in LA.
Technically the headquarters of the major Hollywood Studios are in Delaware because it has the lowest corporate taxes or something of that nature. Apparently there are rows of mailboxes that qualify as the headquarters of all these multi-billion dollar companies.

GST Reduction.

I mentioned this on a post a while ago. The 6% GST reduction kicks in today. This makes things a little more fun at the Box Office. We had to drop our price to $4.24. Now I get to hand pennies to people who will look at me strangely.
The reason is an interplay between federal and provincial taxes. If our ticket price minus Federal GST price goes over $4.00 a 10% Provincial Entertainment tax kicks in. $4.25 minus 6% is $4.01 hence we had to drop the price a penny to stay at $4.00.
I'm curious to see if anyone asks why we didn't drop a full 1% which would would have been about 4 cents. Actually we have needed a price increase for a while but were stuck at $4.25 because the extra tax would kick in if we went any higher. In the last couple years minimum wage has gone up over $1.00 an hour. To be fair I also raised the wages of those who made more than minimum. $1.00 an hour adds up to about an extra $12.00 a night cost for Western Film, it doesn't sound like much but it really adds up over the course of the year.
We'll be making 2 cents more per ticket , think that'll put a dent in it?

The Superman Gay issue.

There's been news stories about Warner being all freaked out by all the internet buzz about whether Superman is gay. Supposedly they think it will scare off the teenage boys that will be the movie's main target audience. They seem to have changed the advertising. The commercials I've been seeing now are almost all action and include a shot of him lifting something and he looks more like The Hulk than anything.
First of all, Superman is a fictional character. If some people see things in the character that read as gay that's fine but it's just an opinion, it's not like he's going to get caught in a closet with Batman.
Second I would like to think in today's day and age the fact that some people think Superman is gay would prevent others from seeing the movie would be considered silly. Unfortunately I'm probably wrong.

Next Week's Movies

There wasn't anything new available this week that I wanted to play. Precint B13 (The French movie) was available but that would have done zero business. Fox might have let us play The Omen but I didn't want it since we don't do well with horror movies.
I decided to play RV for the early show and keep MI3 as a late show. I'm curious to see how RV does, it's not as adult oriented as most of the movies we play. MI3 is doing well this week so I'm keeping it for another week.
I was kind of thinking Da Vinci Code might come off but I was told today it's still #4 at the Silver City. We'll probably get The Break Up, Over The Hedge and The Lake House before Da Vinci.

Studio Stipulations

The end of the last post reminded me of something the studios do. Sometimes they'll allow midnight showings the night before sometimes not. Sometimes they dictate no shows before noon opening day etc. I've never figured out why it changes for each film. Maybe they don't allow early shows for movies they don't think will get good word of mouth?

Looks like Superman Returns is Good!!

I get various business newsletters from Western Film's booking agent. Today I received two early reviews of Superman Returns. One is a newsletter, the other was an article from Variety. One said it was good the other was positively beaming.
I'm really glad it looks good. I've been waiting for this for a while but it really looked like one of those movies that could swing either way.
I'm considering tackling the opening night crowds to see this which I never do. I did see the midnight show of King Kong the day before it opened in general release. Maybe they will do the same for Superman.

Any Questions?

If anyone has any movie business or Western Film questions leave them as a comment and I'll answer them if I can.

Next Week's Movies.

I had two choices for next week, One was RV, the other was Mission Impossible 3. Guess which one I chose? I could have split them but I didn't want to play RV at 7pm and it wouldn't work as a late show since it's primarily a family film. I decided to do two shows of MI3 figuring there would be enough demand.
Unless patterns change we will be the only ones playing MI3. Paramount puts what is called per caps on most of their movies. Per caps basically means we pay a percentage of a phantom higher ticket price Paramount sets rather than our real prices. It doesn't usually add up to a lot extra. I've never seen Rainbow play a movie with per caps. I'm not sure if they don't want to pay the extra or just avoid the accounting hassle. That part is a pain. If anyone noticed we played Failure to Launch for two weeks before Rainbow played it per caps is why.
I have a tentative plan for next week. If nothing new comes off which I'm expecting and MI3 does as well as I hope I'll play RV at 7pm and MI3 for a late show.
However there is a small chance Da Vinci may come off. The next two weeks opens Click and Superman Returns so they will push some movies out.

Poster of the Week.

This is the teaser poster for Snakes on a Plane, the first movie to be greenlit and get a star (Samuel L. Jackson) purely by the title. The studio tried to change it and got blasted so bad they changed it back. It comes out in August and will be a big hit if it's any good, the internet buzz is incredible, again based on the title. I heard people are using the image on the poster for tattoos.

Will that be Butter, Topping or Golden Topping?

One thing we get called on occasionaly is asking if people want butter on their popcorn when it's not actually butter. It's a special popcorn topping made by Becel, pretty similar to margarine. However we don't really have a choice in the asking. When I first started here I told the staff to ask people if they wanted topping. We then had to explain what we were asking to about 60% of the customers. Some people thought we meant the powder seasonings. We went back to asking if they wanted butter. I guess most people know what we are asking and know it's not real butter. I remember being asked if I wanted golden topping at a first run theatre run, I bet that really confused people. I don't buy food at the Silver City any more so I don't know what they ask. They have both the topping and real butter (which is extra).

Next Week's Movie.

Poseidon was the only movie available so I booked it for next week. I considered playing Thank You for Smoking as a late show but I don't think enough people know about it. I probably would have played it during the school year.
Since Poseidon didn't do very well (actually bombed) first run I'm only running one show a night. I'm curious to see how it does.
I saw Poseidon and thought it was fun, not great but not as bad as some people seemed to think. I do have to admit I expected more from Director Wolfgang Peterson, he normally makes really good films. I sorta got the impression the special effects took over the movie.

Monty Python

I got some potentially bad news today. I was booking some shows for the midnight series in the fall. Two of the most requested movies are Life of Brian and Holy Grail. Unfortunatly Creative Exposure, the company that holds the rights in Canada is closing up next month. Both of the owners recently died. I believe they also own most of the repertory theatres in Toronto except the Bloor. Since no one knows what going to happen to the rights to the Monty Python movies I couldn't book them. Life of Brian was unavailable for years because it was in rights limbo before Creative Exposure got them somehow.

Pet Peeve #2

People who bring small children to adult movies or babies to any movie. I figure most of the time it's because they don't want to pay or can't afford a babysitter but I don't think it's fair to the other customers. Especially younger children who get bored and start talking. At least most of the time if a baby starts crying one of the parents will take it out of the theatre. We usually give them a free pass since they aren't getting to see the movie.

One thing that we are never sure how to deal with is when parents bring children to a movie they probably shouldn't see. We had someone bring some kids around 7 or 8 to V For Vendetta, not exactly a kid's movie. It's the parent's choice but sometimes I'll say something to imply the movie isn't for kids.
I remember when I was a kid my mother took me and my younger brother and sister to Heavy Metal. Since it was animated she probably assumed it was a kid's movie. I even remember thinking when I saw the naked animated sex I probably wasn't supposed to be there.

Next week's movie.

I booked Ice Age 2 for next week. I'm glad it was available since there was nothing else. It was also good timing because the movie is from Fox so we couldn't play any other movie anyway.
I did have to decide whether to play only one show at 7:00 like we have done the last couple weeks or add a late show.
I decided to do a 9:00 show for 2 reasons. The movie is so short the staff wouldn't have to stay much longer than they would have for just a single show. Also I figure there are people like myself who would go to a late show to avoid the possibly (probably?) noisy children at the early show.

The French Film.

To my mild surprise the movie mentioned in the previous post opened at the Silver City on Friday. It's called Precinct B-13. I went to see it Sunday night. It was relatively busy for a Sunday.
As soon as the subtitles came on I heard a bit of fussing. Some of them didn't know it was in French. I guess the trailers do work. I didn't see anyone leave.

The movie was a lot of fun and I recommend any fan of action films to go see it. The action was way over the top and a lot of it was real. Guys jumping over balconies and through windows. The story was kind of interesting too. I really enjoyed it. After a few minutes I don't even notice I have to read the dialogue. The nice thing about action films is there isn't a lot of dialogue to translate and the subtitles are closer to what is actually said.

Trailers for Foreign Films

There was a trailer playing front of X-Men 3 that was an example of how trailers for foreign films are almost always constructed in North America. It was for a movie called something like District B-12. It looked pretty cool. In the future the ghetto parts of Paris have been walled off but one of these districts had gotten ahold of a nuclear bomb. One policeman is sent in to find it. It's an action movie with completely over the top moves. It said it was from the 'something' of Ong Bak and Transporter 2. I couldn't tell if the action was real like Ong Bak or staged like Transporter 2. There were guys jumping through small windows etc.

Anyway, if you watch the trailer there is no dialogue. Except for the mention of Paris at the beginning and the credits at the end there's no indication it's a French movie.
I've noticed trailers for foreign movies almost always avoid showing dialogue. Do they think people will be fooled into seeing a movie with subtitles?

Luc Besson is the writer of the above movie so it should be good. He did the Fifth Element, one of my favorite movies.

A really stupid suggestion.

This has always stuck in my mind because it must be one of the stupidest suggestions I ever heard at Western Film. This was back when we played only on the weekends and played a different movie every night. Someone suggested we should play a football themed movie on Superbowl Sunday?! I'm not a football fan but if I was I'd be watching the Superbowl not going to a movie (even one about football ) that night.
What we usually ended up doing on Superbowl Sunday was counterprogramming, usually something that appealed mostly to women.

I think a record was set last week.

I forgot to mention something about last week. See No Evil was available to play at Western Film starting May 26th. We weren't going to play it anyway but one thing struck me. It had opened May19th so it was available to second run after only 1 week in first run! I can't recall that ever happening before. It must have done absolutely horrible.

Next Week's Movies.

We booked Scary Movie 4 for next week. Just one show at 7pm. There wasn't anything else I wanted to play to split with it. We could have had Benchwarmers but we don't do well with that kind of comedy. The Sentinel was available but it was from Fox and couldn't be split. I might have played it for one show but it kind of vanished and didn't do well first run. Silent Hill was also available but Western Film doesn't play horror movies.

Poster of the Week.

One thing I've always really liked are movie posters. I have a large collection all of which I'll frame one day when I'm rich. Some really cool ones like a Disney's Snow White re-release with real gold on it and a rare B-style poster for Rocky Horror. Some may or may not be cool but I like them, such as my British Sixteen Candles poster with neat artwork. At some point I'll take pics of some of them but for now I thought I would post some interesting posters for upcoming movies.

Personally I don't like Jack Black. I find him annoying. However I have to admit I laughed when I saw this poster. The movie looks really funny, that is if you like Jack Black. I don't think I'll go see it. But the poster is fun.

2 things you can never get 'right'

There are some things where it's impossible to please everyone. There's three that come to mind about Movie Theatres.

1. Volume. For everyone who says we should turn it up there's someone else complaining it's too loud. At western Film we try to find a happy medium depending on the film. For action films we crank it up, for dramas we turn it down a little. We also vary it depending on how busy the theatre is, bodies absorb sound so the volume needs to be higher if there is a large audience. Most theatres leave the volume at the same level so it may be too loud for small audiences.

2. Popcorn saltiness. Similar situation, some people like it saltier than others. Again we try to find a happy medium. Sometimes when I'm cleaning up the garbage between shows I'll find almost full bags of popcorn. I figure most of the time maybe they found it too salty?

3. Temperature. This mostly comes into play during the summer. People come into an air conditioned theatre dressed for hot outdoor weather and after sitting for a while get too cold. I keep an eye on it and call Physical Plant if it gets too cold. I have noticed many theatres keep it really cold in the summer. I usually dress warm or take a coat. I've seen people bring blankets into theatres during the summer.

Movie choices for Western Film and why I'm usually right.

Picking the movies each week is an inexact science with many variables. I usually have a good idea how any particular movie will do at Western Film. It's a combination of box office,buzz, reviews, my own impression of the movie and general trends at Western Film.

Western Film has it's own unique trends. The movies we do best with are usually not the huge hits. For example last year our biggest grossing film was Hotel Rwanda which only did about 20 million in the general marketplace. Western Film's biggest grossing film ever is Bowling for Columbine. We brought it back for 4 or 5 weeks. We set a non-Tuesday record of 278 people for one show. It was the first Friday back after Christmas break and it was the late show. I remember it well because I was running the box office. I hadn't expected attendance to be that high so I didn't have any extra staff on, made the three of us that were on scramble quite a bit.

I'm usually right about how I think a movie will do but sometimes I'm wrong, occasionally spectacularly. The biggest example is Moulin Rouge. I didn't really want to book it because I hadn't heard much about it and it was Fox so I couldn't split it. However I didn't have anything else to play that week so I booked it. We did huge business and once I watched it became one of my favorite movies. It was one of the highest grossing movies that year.
Another example is Wimbledon, it didn't do great First Run and I didn't hear a lot of buzz about it. I booked it expecting it to do okay and it ended up being extremely busy.
I can't think of anything I thought would do well and was extremely wrong. There have been disappointments of course. Big movies like Star Wars and King Kong can sometimes perform less than would be expected considering how much they do First Run. The biggest disappointment I can think of is a movie called The Machinist. It was a small movie but was getting a lot of press, I had seen it already and thought it was really interesting. However I booked it and did nowhere near what I had hoped.
On the whole I like to think I know what I'm doing but every so often it's nice to be wrong, (in a good way)

Next Week's movie choices.

This week I booked on Tuesday because of the holiday. I booked Take The Lead but for only one show at 7pm. I didn't think attendence would be high enough to run a late show. We almost never run the same movie for both early and late shows unless it's a big hit and we can't split it. Some people think we won't do well with Take The Lead. I have a feeling we'll do good, not great, but good.

Besides there wasn't much else to play anyway. The only other new movies available were The Rocket and Hoot, neither of which I expected to do any business here.

My Theatre Pet Peeves Part 1.

Most people share these but I thought I would rant a little.
In no particular order.

Talkers: People talking during a movie has always been a problem but it's gotten worse since home video. People seem to have gotten used to talking amongst themselves at home. I've gotten good at tuning them out but every so often I have to give someone a look or ask them to be quiet. Thankfully they usually are once asked.

Cellphones: On a similar note, people who talk on cellphones during a movie. Most leave the theatre but even that is enough to be annoying. I was at a movie once and there was a woman talking quite loud on her cellphone. I couldn't believe anyone would be so rude and selfish. My friend and I ended up throwing popcorn at her to get her to shut up.

Cellphone screens: On yet another similar note, I've noticed lately I see a lot of blue screens in theatres. I assume it's people checking the time or whatever but it's really distracting. I was doing a private showing for a group of high school kids here at Western Film a while ago. It was amazing the number of blue screens I saw waving around. One girl even kept hers on and was playing a game on it or something. I could see the light on her face.

What I would get rid of at Western Film.

There's two things at Western Film I would like to be able to remove. However it's nessecary to have both.

Diet Coke: This stuff is a pain because it comes out so foamy. It's a thick foam that doesn't settle quickly. If we fill a cup up once the foam settles the cup is only about half full. We end up wasting a lot trying to pour out the foam. It may not sound like a big deal but if we sell a lot of Diet Cokes it really slows us down.

The Butter: This stuff is just plain messy and gets all over everything. Seems like every time I put some on it manages to hit a popcorn kernal just right to spray back out. I tell all new staff to wear pants and shoes that can get messy. It's surprisingly expensive as well. A 9 litre jug is $50.00. I checked into serving real butter a while ago but it was even more expensive and I didn't think we would use it fast enough to keep it fresh. We stopped selling Nachos because we didn't use the cheese fast enough.

This is the big weekend!

2 movies that are expected to be massive hits open this weekend, The Da Vinci Code and Over The Hedge. Da Vinci could do over $100 mil it's first weekend. It's one of the most anticipated movies in years. The early reviews I've read have all said it's very good movie. Over the Hedge is more of a family film but again is expected to be big and is said to be very entertaining.

After the disappoinment of MI3's opening and the bomb of Posiden the industry needs a good hit to boost morale.

Posiden

Well, we have our first big bomb of summer 2006. Posiden opened to a very low 20 million. For a movie that is rumoured to have cost 200 million that's pretty bad. It got very bad reviews.

I went to see it last night. I thought it was okay, kept my attention. Most of the effects were pretty good. I doubt it could have cost as much as they say. Some of the effects were pretty obvious.

I'd still recommend seeing it if you like big budget-no brain popcorn movies (which I do).

Western Film's movies next week.

Next week May 12 -18, will be an interesting experiment here at Western Film. The early show Friends with Money has some good names in it( Jennifer Aniston, Joan Cusack, Catherine Keener, Frances McDormand) but hasn't gotten a lot of publicity so I'm curious how it will do. It got a 67% on Rottentomatoes.com which isn't bad. Western Film often does well with movies aimed at women so I'm hoping.
The late show is Lucky Number Slevin which again didn't get a lot of press despite some big stars in the cast, Josh Hartnett (maybe not a big star) Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Lucy Lui and Ben Kingsley. It was a fun movie, fairly violent, defintely influenced by and/or ripping off Tarantino. I'm curious to see how well it does.

47 Million Dollar opening is a disappointment?

Mission Impossible 3 debuted with only 47 million dollars, way below the studio and various analysts had estimated. It seems funny that much money would be considered a disappointment. Part of the reason it's considered low is that it opened on over 4000 screens, the 4th highest ever.
I don't think they should have been surprised considering how much Tom Cruise's public image has changed over the last year. He's getting the same creepy taint that finished off Michael Jackson. He's totally alienated his female fan base.
I want to see MI3 but more for Philip Seymore Hoffman as the bad buy. On the other hand I would imagine Cruise is getting a front end deal so he gets a portion of ever ticket sold. I would rather not give Tom Cruise, and by extension, Scientology, any of my money.

For the few people who haven't heard.

The big news this week for many was the announcement that George Lucas was releasing the original Star Wars movies as they were seen in theatres when first released. They are supposed to come out in September. I'll probably buy them. I find it interesting how often he changes his mind. Way back when he said there Star Wars movies would never come out on video at all. I wonder if he's releasing them because the fans have been clamouring for them or to make more money?
I guess it doesn't matter as long as we get to see the movies as they were made and we remember them.
I just wish he would let movie theatres (including Western Film) play them.

An update on Piracy.

I saw this article on the IMDB and thought it was interesting. Reminds me of the first time I realized how big a problem piracy could be for movie theatres. Western Film was playing In Good Company. I was walking back to my office and right outside the theatre I saw two people watching the same movie on their laptop, needless to say I wasn't impressed.

"Having determined that some of the most flagrant movie piracy occurs on college campuses, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) have sent blistering letters to the presidents of 40 universities in 25 states, demanding that they take action against illegal sharing of copyrighted material. The letter observed that several file-sharing sites promise security and confidentiality, giving "many students incentive to engage in activity they have otherwise learned is illegal and unacceptable." The two groups said that they intend to "prioritize our focus" on campus piracy and asked the schools to install blocking and filtering software in their network systems. Meanwhile, today's (Wednesday) Wall Street Journal reported that a study commissioned by the MPAA concluded that the industry is losing $6.1 billion annually worldwide as a result of piracy in all forms, $1.3 billion of that total in the U.S. alone. The study indicated that Mexico ranks as the world's largest market for pirated DVDs followed by China and Russia. At a conference at the Tribeca Film Festival on Monday, BitTorrent co-founder Ashwin Navin said that users of BitTorrent download 700,000 films each day. "

GST reduction.

The reduction is the GST will make things interesting at our ticket counter. Our current ticket price is $4.25, a nice even number. If you take the 7% GST off that you get $3.97 base price.

The problem is in Ontario there is an 10% entertainment tax that kicks in as soon as your base price goes over $4.00. That's the reason you see so many theatres in Ontario more or less stuck at $4.25. If we try to raise the price we more or less have to go to $5.00 since another 50 cents of tax kicks in.

If you take the new GST reduced rate of 6% off $4.25 you get $4.01 which kicks in the entertainment tax.

Looks like I'll have to stop using the nice even number $4.25.

New Superman Trailer!

Here's a link to the new Superman Returns trailer. I'm much impressed. It looks good, they seem to have gone the Batman Begins direction and made it a little darker. I'm still a little nervous about the guy playing Superman. I noticed that until this point they never showed him speaking in any of the marketing. I hope they haven't cast an actor who couldn't act again. Christopher Reeve wasn't exactly a great actor.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/supermanreturns/trailer2/

PS: you need the latest version of QuickTime.
PSS: If link doesn't work paste the above link into your brower window or go to Apple web site.

The Coolest Theatre I've ever been in.

Many moons ago (1992) I visited California, on Hollywood Blvd just down the street from the famouse Chinese theatre was a theatre called the El Capitan. It's a magnificently restored old Movie Palace. The marquee alone was one of the most elaborate I've seen. The theatre is owned by Disney. The movie playing was an enoyable but forgettable comedy called The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag starring my favorite how-did-she-get-famous-she-can't-act 'actress' Penelope Ann Miller. I went to see the movie just to see the inside of the theatre. It was incredible how they had restored it to it's original glory. Even old time showmanship reigned, it had, wait for it... curtains over the screen! Not just one but three, two opened sideways and another set went up. The theatre was also THX which is about as good as you can get as far as sound and picture. I would call it one of my best movie experiences ever and I've seen a lot of movies.
I was back in California a few years ago with my sister and greatly looking forward to seeing another movie there. However I was dismayed to find the movie playing was The Tigger Movie. My sister refused to go. I don't think I'll ever forgive her.

The Scary Parts of Projection.

Like most jobs involving machinery being a projectionist has it's hazards.

While running the projector has a lot of sprockets and rollers turning at very high speed. The sprockets have teeth on them to catch the sprocket holes on the film. If one was to get clothing etc caught in the machinery it would not be pleasant.

If you ever meet me in person you may notice I always have my sleeves rolled up, even when I'm not working, force of habit. I usually cringe when I see a projectionist with long hair.

The light from the lamp's is incredibly bright. Just under normal operation it get splashed in your eyes every so often. It's tough on the eyes to look in the projector while it's running if there's a problem and I need to figure out what is causing it. I knew one guy who had been projecting for a lot longer than I have, he said everything he looked at had a kind a haze around it.

Changing the bulb or opening the lamp's can be one of the most dangerous things. The bulbs are under very high pressure and can explode. The image below is a bulb and the plastic protector it comes in. I've only heard of one guy who had one explode on him, luckily it was already is the plastic protector. He said it sounded like a shotgun going off and the air was full of tiny particles of glass.

I change our bulb once a year and wear a face shield, I rather value my sight. I'm supposed to wear gloves but it's pretty much impossible to maneuver in such close quarters wearing welders gloves.

Projectionists these days do have it comparably easy though, back when they used nitrate film it was a whole different story. The film itself was highly flammable and was going past a very bright hot light. Not the best combination. Theatres used to burn down on a regular basis. Some of you may have seen the Italian film Cinema Paradiso. It shows an example of nitrate film catching fire. Great film by the way.

I had heard something about nitrate film I didn't believe until a few days ago. I was told years ago it could burn underwater?!! That didn't make sense to me since there would be no oxygen supply. However a few days ago I saw the below footage on film-tech.com. I couldn't get a direct link to work but if you follow these directions you can see it.

Goto www.film-tech.com
Go to videos listed along left side
scrool down to miscellaneous
Click on last item, nitrate film buring underwater, requires Quicktime.

Talk about freaky.

Did you know Western Film has the most seats of any theatre in the city? maybe.

It may be hard to believe but it's true. The theatres at the Silver City may look bigger but since the seats are larger the biggest one still has about 40 seats less than Western Film. in recent memory there were only 3 theatres that had more seats. The Capital downtown was a Famous Players but has been 'closed for renovations' for about 6 years. The great 6 plex on top of a dead mall known in it's last days as Smuggler's Alley had an absolutely fantastic theatre #1. That area is now a parking lot. When the theatres in the Galleria were a Cineplex theatre #5 was a great big THX theatre with 70mm capability. Rainbow turned the back part of it into the two small theatres with aisles down the center.

The maybe is because I'm not sure how many seats the recently reopened Hyland has. I think it would be a close race.

Booking next week could have been interesting.

Today is Monday, the day I book whatever starts on Friday. Failure to Launch and V For Vendetta both did very well over the weekend. We came close to setting a non-tuesday record with Vendetta on Saturday night.
This is good news or booking could have been interesting. There were no new movies available. I thought Inside Man might be available but they were holding it. Usually when no new movies are available I play something that we have been holding back as a reserve, usually a movie I'm not sure will go over well at Western Film. Last example of this was Fun With Dick and Jane. I didn't think it would do well, put it in an empty slot and was proved correct. The other tactic I use is to bring back something we have done well with in the last little while. Sometimes we'll take a chance on a 'art' movie that is good but doesn't have a high profile.

However I have no movies in reserve unless you count Aquamarine and a couple horror movies. The movies we have done well with lately are all out on DVD. I asked about playing the documentary Why We Fight but there were still no prints available.

Luckily both current movies did well enough to hold over. I decided to switch the order so people that want to see V For Vendetta but won't come to the late show would get a chance. Hopefully people will still want to see Matthew McConaughey shirtless at 9:35.

Summer at the movies starts next weekend with the release of Mission Impossible 3. It will push a lot of movies out of first run. Over the summer we usually get movies quicker because the sheer volume of new releases pushes them out faster.

Personal appearance by a director at UWO?

There has been some talk about bringing a Director into UWO as a speaker. Naturally the ones most people would be interested in seeing cost more to bring in. My question is this:

Would you be willing to pay about $20.00 to see a Director in person?
If so which ones?
These are some of the names that have been mentioned.

Kevin Smith
Spike Lee
Wes Craven
Ivan Reitman
David Cronenburg

BTW Don't bother mentioning Spielburg, Tarantino, Scorsese or any of the really big name guys, we couldn't afford them.

So leave your comments or suggestions, I'm curious what people say.

When Technical problems Arise.

One thing I noticed when I worked in the multiplexes and to a smaller extent at Western Film is that the audience usually thinks there is someone sitting watching the movie in the projection booth. When something goes wrong nobody goes out to the lobby to tell the staff. I've seen people sit as long as 20 minutes before someone let the staff know. That incident happened at the Wellington 8, the wrong lenses were being used so the picture looked all distorted. It was about 20 minutes into the movie before I got the call to fix it.
In a multiplex there is usually only one person running up to 12 theaters, sometimes more. Everything is automated so all he or she has to do is thread up and start the show. In some theatres you are lucky if they can stick around long enough to focus the picture.
We had a minor hiccup at Western Film last night. The power blinked for a split second. This can cause a couple problems. The lamp may go out and not come back on by itself. If the power is off long enough the platter can get shut off but the projector keeps going with the result of hundreds of feet of film on the floor.

When the power blinked last night the lamp went off but everything else kept going as usual. Our projectionist immediately went in and turned the lamp back on so the screen was dark for less than 30 seconds. The odd thing was that the power usually only blinks or goes off up there during thunderstorms. It wasn't raining. We are always extra vigilant watching the theatre during storms for exactly that reason.

I had a technical issue as an audience member once that was quite interesting. I went to see The Birdcage at a theatre that was downtown. Great theatre, I was so pissed when they tore it down. The movie was playing in DTS, one of the kinds of digital sound. A mistake had been made in the printing of the film so when the 4th reel came on the DTS was playing the sound from the first reel?! It actually matched nicely so no one noticed for a couple minutes until we started seeing people talk but hearing no dialogue. I figured out what was happening, it took me a minute or so to get out of the middle of the crowded theatre and past the upset patrons to tell the projectionist to turn off the DTS. Once he did everything was fine.

In short, if something goes wrong while you are watching a movie, let someone know!

Western Film played the trailer but not the movie?

I often get questioned about running trailers for movies we never play and having up posters for movies we never show. I thought I'd give some info why that happens.

1. Usually the movie sucks. One of the benefits of being second run is we can see how the first run theatres did with the movie. A film like Date Movie we probably would have played but it bombed.

2. It has to do with the Studio, as I've mentioned before some studios won't let us split so we don't play some of their movies. Date Movie is also an example of this, Fox wouldn't let us split it even if we had wanted to play it.

3. On the rare occasion we play a movie aimed at children we have to play trailers for children's movies. One can't really play a trailer for Saw 2 in front of Ige Age 2.

4. We put 4 trailers on in front of each movie, that creates a fairly consistent 10 minutes of trailers before the movie starts. Not only is the movie experience not complete without trailers (to me at least) but it gives late comers extra time to get into the theatre without missing any of the actual film. Occasionally I don't have 4 trailers in the proper format for movies I know I'm going to play so I put on something we may or may not play.

The posters work in a similar fashion but as soon as I know I'm not going to play a movie I take them all down. Some posters come in that I never even put up because I know I won't play the movie. I never put up the Ultraviolet posters for example. I have posters for Ige Age 2 I haven't put up because that's a very iffy movie. It's Fox so we probably won't be able to split it. A kids movie for the late show tends not to work here.

How Western Film Chooses it's Movies.

Western Film is a second run theatre which means we have to wait until movies leave the Famous Players and Cineplexes. We pay a lower percentage than they do and as such are able to charge less.

Each Monday all the theatres book for the following playweek which is Friday to Thursday. The first run theatres decide which movies they are dropping based on how well the movies did over the weekend and what is coming out the following week. A big movie like Star Wars opens on multiple screens so pushes other pictures out.

Our Booker lets me know what movies are available and I choose from there. I normally pick 2 movies, one for early show, one for late show. If there isn't anything new I want to play I'll replay something that did well recently or, occasionally, play something I didn't want to play just to fill the spot.

As an example, this week we had 4 new movies to choose from.

Aquamarine - aimed at too young an audience for us.
Date Movie - Fox so couldn't be split, plus it sucked.
Ultraviolet - bad movie, we don't do well with these kinds of bad action movies.
Pink Panther - this is the one I choose, it's a good movie for exam period, short and funny, (I hope, I haven't seen it)

To fill the other spot I asked about Mrs Henderson Presents and the documentary Why We Fight. We could have played these in earlier weeks but there were no prints available. Mrs Henderson was available so I booked it. There were no prints of Why We Fight so we'll have to wait for it.

It gets really interesting when there is nothing of interest available or more than 2 movies I want to play available the same week.

Loud Trailers

The last post reminded me of a common complaint from movie viewers (at other theatres, not Western Film). The trailers seem to be recorded at a higher volume than the movies, sometimes painfully so. Western Film plays our trailers at a volume level of 5 on our sound system, the movies play at around 7. If we played the trailers at 7 we'd be blowing people out of their seats.
There was one extreme example lately, we have a trailer for The Da Vinci Code that is incredibly loud even at 5. The first time I heard it I thought the projectionist had already turned the volume up.
I can't imagine how loud that trailer must have been in a theatre that plays everything at the same volume.
It kind of reminds me of TV commercials, everybody knows they are louder than the shows but the industry says they aren't. I think they do it to wake people up. On the other hand loud commercials on TV can backfire, there's always the Mute button. I know I use it quite often.

Bad Trailers.

Is it just me or are movie Trailers getting worse? I've seen so many of them that more or less give away the entire film. I can't remember the name but there was one a while ago I literally didn't bother to see becuase the trailer had given it all away.
Like many things style of trailers changes with time so there may be hope. I used to have a trailer for Bladerunner and I've seen other trailers from about the early 80's. They were usually very long and not well done. I think the Bladerunner trailers was about 4 minutes long, most trailers now are about 2 minutes.
Universal did a spectacular job with the trailer for Inside Man. It's one of the best trailers I've seen in ages. Gives you a good idea what's going on without revealing too much. Just what a good trailer should do.
Still, I like to watch the trailers before a movie. I feel like the experience is not complete if I miss the trailers. I usually don't mind missing the commericals though, I tend to see them about 20 times each because I go to so many movies.

Do Critics matter?

One of the stories of the last few days has been the increasing tendancy for Studios not to advance screen movies for critics. So far this year there have been 11 movies not screened vs. 2 this time last year. Most of them have been horror movies and such that the critics probably would have given negative reviews. Three of them, Underworld: Evolution, When a Stranger Calls, and Tyler Perry's Madea's Family Reunion opened at #1. Some are saying the Studios aren't screening the films to prevent negative reviews from hurting opening weekend business. On the other hand, most of these movies are more or less critic proof. I went to see Underworld: Evolution opening weekend. The critics would have slammed it but I thought it was a lot of fun.
One critic was accidently invited to a screening of BenchWarmers and wrote a review which went out over the wire services. Sony Pictures tried to get the review pulled, calling it 'unauthorized'. The critic didn't even give it that bad a review.
The funny thing about the situation with Sony is they got caught a couple years ago making up phony quotes from nonexistant critics praising some of their less films.
Disney publicity chief Dennis Rice said, "If we think screenings for the press will help open the movie, we'll do it. ... If we don't think it'll help open the movie or if the target audience is different than the critics' sensibilities, then it may make sense not to screen the movie." Sounds like a public relations way of agreeing with the critics.

Film is an odd business

I haven't worked a lot in other industries but the film business seems to run weirder than other businesses. Part of it comes from the nature of the product. Technically there's competition between the studios but there really isn't. The studios may sell the same type of product but if Fox has Star Wars you have to deal with Fox. If Paramount has Mission Impossible 3 you have to get it through them. It's not like Coke and Pepsi where the products are fairly interchangeable. I doubt many people would leave a restaurant that only has Pepsi when they want Coke.

I've mentioned Fox won't let us split movies most of the time. The funny thing is they don't mind if you only play one show each evening instead of 2. We sometimes do this for long movies or during the summer if it's quiet.

The really funny thing is Fox won't let us split with their own product?! Last year we wanted to play Mr and Mrs Smith and StarWars the same week and they wouldn't let us.

Other odd things happen. I have a poster on my wall from the 1997 rerelease of the first 3 Star Wars movies. The poster says, and I quote ' Three reasons why they build Movie Theatres'. The odd thing is that Lucas has pulled the movies out of service, meaning movie theatres can't play them? The Star Wars movies are the second most requested movies for our midnight series and we can't play them.

Sometimes the studios just seem to throw good movies out with no advertising or promotional support. 16 Blocks is a good example. It was a good film but got practically no press and didn't do as well as it could have. I haven't seen it yet but Lucky Number Slevin looks like another one. It starts today but practially no one seems to have heard of it. The trailers make it look good. Wouldn't one think a movie starring Josh Hartnett, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Ben Kingsley and Lucy Lui would have gotten a trifle more press?

The general public has some part in this as well. It seems they won't see a movie if they haven't heard of it
whether it's good or bad. People often assume a movie they haven't heard of is bad.

One incident particularly struck me once. Before I worked at Western Film I was working at the old Westmount 2-plex. There was a line of coming soon movie posters along the wall. One woman looked at a poster and said she'd never heard of it in a dismissive tone. There has to be a first time she 'hears of' a movie and the coming soon posters are supposed to do just that.

more in a later post.

Why I go to movies.

Some of you may have wondered wny I go see movies at other theatres even though I run Western Film and can see them for free. There's a couple reasons for this.

1. I like going to other theatres so I can relax, when I watch a movie at Western Film I always feel like I'm 'on call' if anything happens. Usually the movies I watch at Western Film are ones I haven't had time to see or didn't want to pay $10 to see elsewhere. Sometimes I'll watch movies I saw elsewhere a second time at Western Film.

2. I also go see movies I know won't be playing at Western Film. Usually movies such as horror films or films from certain studios (I'm talking about you, Fox and Paramount) that make it hard for us to play all of their films. I saw Slither last night. Western Film doesn't play horror movies. If all the movies Western Film has ever played were compared for attendance horror films would be at the bottom, even the big hits like The Ring.
I went to see Transporter 2 a while ago because I knew Western Film wouldn't play it, although I wanted to. It was from Fox and they would have wanted both shows each night for the week. It wasn't a big enough film to do that.
I'll probably have to go see Thank you for Smoking somewhere else because it's from Fox as well.

Du'oh The Simpson's movie! and Slither.

I haven't seen it but there is a very short trailer for the Simpson's movie in front of ICE AGE. As a huge fan of the Simpson's I might have to go see Ice Age now. The movie doesn't come out until Jul 27 2007 so I'll have to wait a while for the movie. I hope it's worthy of the big screen. South Park pulled it off so I don't see why the Simpson's shouldn't be able to.

I went to see Slither last night. I like comedy/horror movies. I found it fun to watch if somewhat hokey. It was referencing a lot of older horror movies. The main character, the Sheriff, played by Nathan Fillion, has some good one-liners. Fillion also starred in Serenity and is Canadian so he gets extra points in my book. Too bad it's the first horror movie this year so far to bomb it's first weekend.