Next Week's Movie

Rainbow finally dropped Inconvenient Truth from their $7.50 art series so I was able to book it for Western Film. The only other new film available was Accepted which I figured was aimed at younger people than most UWO students.

There has been a lot of requests for Truth so I decided to run it for both shows, not something I do often unless I have to. It's fairly short so the late show is at 9:05, so even if the late show is a bust it won't be too expensive in terms of staffing.

Based on requests and previous experience I think Truth will be one of our highest attended films this year.

Scott Baio as Maverick?!

I was flipping TV channels yesterday and watched a little bit of a show on child stars. There was a quick interview snippet with Scott Baio saying he was offered Top Gun! I can't imagine him in the role. He wasn't a very good actor for one, didn't look like a fighter pilot either. For all his faults Tom Cruise was perfect for the part of Maverick in Top Gun.

Next Week's Movies.

My choice for next week was pretty easy. Snakes on a Plane and Clerks 2 were the only good choices available. There was also a couple movies available that didn't do well like Wicker Man and Zoom.

I decided to put Snakes as the early show since I think it has wider appeal than Clerks 2.

I'm curious to see how they do. Both could be the kind of movie where most of the people who want to see them go to the first run theatres.

Still waiting for Inconvenient Truth, maybe next week.

Open Threat Post for questions.

Since I figure there may be some new readers among the new students I figured I'd put up an open thread. If there are any questions about Western Film or the movie industry please leave them as comments and I'll answer them as best I can.

Fun with Film Shipping!

Something happened this week that happens every so often, a problem with shipping and receiving a film.

Film is shipped on small reels about 20 minutes long. Most films are 6 reels. The small reels are shipped in metal canisters that hold from 2-4 small reels. Most of the time we expect to receive 2 canisters.

We book on Monday and the movies usually show up Wednesday or Thursday. To get a movie ready to play we splice it together with special tape. Add the trailers to the front and it's ready to go.

This week I'm playing three films, Prada, Scanner Darkly and Friday Midnight show of Crash. We already had Prada sine we played it last week so I was expecting Scanner and Crash to show up.

Nothing showed up Wednesday which isn't uncommon. When I got to work Thursday afternoon I checked and found the following: Both parts of Crash, 1/2 of Scanner and 1/2 of ANT BULLY! Needless to say I made a very fast phone call. The second half of Scanner was shipped today (Friday) on the bus so it all turned out okay. I'm glad we aren't far from Toronto.

We have had some other similar problems.

Every so often Purolator loses half of the film and sends it to Windsor or something.

Last week Universal didn't tell the warehouse to send You, Me and Dupree so it came in on the bus on Friday.

Sometimes small mistakes add up to bigger problems. We played a movie called Walking Tall once, it came in late for some reason so I was putting it together during the 7pm show to play for the late show. It ended up being one of the few times I have lost a show. The small reels weren't labeled properly so I had no idea what order the reels were supposed to go in?! The only way to tell was to play the small reels and figure out the right order. If the movie had come in on time I would have been able to figure out the order Friday afternoon. Since it came in late I couldn't check before it was supposed to play and had to cancel the show.
The worst example was a couple years ago. I don't remember what movie it was (probably blocked it out). It was the 7pm show. The studio didn't tell the warehouse to send the print. When I called Thursday the warehouse sent a print by Purolator. Purolator lost half and all I got was the first half. Another canister of the second half was put on the bus and should have arrived Friday Afternoon. There was some sort of natural gas leak or something in downtown Toronto which messed up the shipment. The canister didn't come on the 5pm bus and the next one was supposed to come in at 7pm.

So now I had a choice: do I cancel the show or take a chance and do the following.
Put together the first half, about an hour's worth, and start it at 7pm. Pick up the second half at the bus depot after 7 rush it back and put it together while the first half was playing. There would have been a short intermission while I threaded up the second half but other than that it should all have worked smoothly. I took the chance and guess what happened? The second half didn't show up on the 7pm bus.

I stopped the show about 40 minutes in and explained exactly to the audience what had happened. Thankfully most of them thought it was funny and no one yelled at me. The canister showed up in time to play for the Saturday show.

Scenes after the credits.

Some films have scenes after the credits. Currently we are playing X-men which has a brief but interesting scene at the end. I'm one of those strange people who watches the credits for every movie (unless I really have to go to the bathroom). I find it funny how the theatre is empty within about 10 seconds of credits showing most of the time. I was in California once and most of the people there stayed to watch the credits, maybe in case there was someone they knew?

Comedies, especially animated ones, tend to have scenes after the credits. Dodgeball had one that was almost a minute long.

Sometimes action/sci-fi films do as well, Constantine had one. There something similar at the end of Aliens.

I won't even get into the number of horror movies that have scenes at the end.

One of the Lethal Weapon movies had a scene at the end but the theatre I saw it in still had a curtain and it started closing partway through the scene. Whoever had set up the automation of that show I guess didn't see the extra scene or didn't care.

Sometimes Studios use the extra scene as a marketing ploy, some people went back to see X-Men again after they heard about the end. I was working in a theatre playing Monster's Inc and at one point we had to change the last reel on all the prints. Monster's Inc. was one of the animated films that had fake bloopers in the credits. Partway through the run they changed the bloopers and then ran ads to get people to see the movie again to see the bloopers. Thankfully the bloopers were really funny.

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).