Al Pacino and Robert De Niro together in a cop film?

There's a bit of buzz about this film as it features two heavyweight actors. The new trailer is below. It looks interesting but nothing special. Hopefully I'm wrong.

Righteous Kill.

The Ten Moviegoing Commandments.

This has got to be one of the funniest things I've read lately.

The Ten Moviegoing Commandments

I think I'll post these in the slide show that runs before the films. Should be good for a laugh and hopefully some educational value.

Movie Review - 10,000 BC.

The first I heard about this film was when I checked into what films actor Steven Strait had coming up. I liked him in The Covenent. 10,000 BC sounded interesting and Roland Emmerich was directing. Emmerich has had a spotty career with both good and bad films, I think Independence day is one of the best popcorn movies ever made. Popcorn movies tends to mean big budget, special effects driven spectaculars. His movies tend to be big and loud without a lot of substance but usually exciting. I was expecting something similar from 10,000 BC.

It was fairly obvious Warner Bros was hoping for a hit similar to 300 from last year, same release date, same genre, similar marketing.

Unfortunately the movie sucked. It was almost boring, only had a couple big action sequences which were obviously computer generated, didn't make sense and even stole a couple scenes right out of 300!? Steven Strait did a fine job with what he was given to work with, he looked pretty good shirtless for most of the movie.

I'd love to see the outtakes from this, the dialogue was so corny I bet they had a lot of takes where the actors couldn't keep from laughing.

I don't think this will play at Western Film. Not just because I didn't like it but for a couple reasons.

-it's getting negative buzz

-these kind of action films don't tend to do great at Western Film even when they are hits and considered good.

I might play it if I have an opening in the schedule.

Next Week's Movies

I was a little disappointed this week, I really wanted to get No Country For Old Men since it comes out on DVD. However it was still doing well enough that at least one first run theatre held it. We have played films (Walk The Line , Brokeback Mountain) after they were on DVD before and if it's something people want to see they will still come. No Country is a film that should be seen on the big screen. It will still play, hopefully the week after, I don't think I can not play it at this point with who knows how many people have been waiting for us to get it.

I was told on Friday that 27 Dresses would be available. Fox puts time between first and second run so I often know early when their films will be available. Unfortunately they wouldn't let me split it so it has to be both shows.

The current week I choose to play Atonement over There Will Be Blood, planning to play Blood next week if No Country wasn't available. Paramount Vantage decided to give the Hyland There Will Be Blood which I have no problem with. I had decided to play 27 Dresses over Blood for reasons similar to why I choose Atonement this week. Blood will still play but I'm not sure when.

One decision I didn't have to make was what to play for a late show if No Country had been available. I could have played two shows of No Country or kept Atonement for a late show. It would have been a tough call.

Why the Hannah Montana Concert Film won't be playing at Western Film.

I'd never heard of Hannah Montana until a couple months ago when word of this movie came out. She's a bit of a sensation, the weekend the movie opened it was #1 with $20 million on only 683 screens, most wide release movies open on at least 2000 screens.

However the reason it only opened on that many screens is because it's in 3-D and there are a limited number of screens with 3-D capability. It was supposed to be a one week only engagement but naturally was held over with that kind of money involved.

A couple of local theatres are opening it next week which means they must be installing Digital Projectors with 3-D since no theatre in London could show 3-D before.

There is no 2-D 35 mm film version so Western Film can't play it. I'm not sure if we would anyway, she's most popular with pre-teen girls and there ain't a lot of them on campus.

Poster of the Week: Religulous

I think Bill Maher is one of the funniest people around. He uses his humour to get across a political message I usually agree with. I hope this movie plays in Canada, his TV series on HBO doesn't and that pisses me off.

The movie comes out later in the year. I'd say it's fairly easy to tell from the poster and title what the subject matter is.

A movie I want to see: Wanted.

I'm a sucker for action adventure films, especially those based on comic books or graphic novels. The first trailer for Wanted with Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy didn't wow me but the new one looks like a movie I really want to see. I guess Angelina has actually been working, it seemed like she spends so much time in the tabloids she wouldn't have time to do anything else.
I've always found her interesting. She has such a extreme look, she's beautiful but in a weird way. I'm curious to see how she ages.

Wanted Exclusive Trailer

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Watching movies twice.

As far as I know few people see as many movies as I do, at least one a week, usually two. I bet there are even fewer people who see as many movies twice!
I go see a lot of films in first run release before they come to Western Film for a few reasons. Seeing the films myself gives me a good idea how they will work at Western Film, I get to keep up on what's happening at the other theatres and I can really relax because I'm not in charge.

One of the staff always watches the first showing of any film at Western Film, usually Friday. We do this to watch for technical problems such as splicing errors or sound problems. It's usually the projectionist that watches the film but on nights that person doesn't want to watch the film I often will. It works out that the usual Friday projectionist Chris and I have different taste in films. If he doesn't want to watch the film I usually will and vice-versa. I do occasionally pull managerial prerogative and make him watch a movie I really don't want to watch. Some movies are good once but not a second time or just plain sucked the first time.

Sometimes I watch a film again just because I want to.

So as a result I often end up seeing films twice. It's an interesting experience. I can watch the film more closely and see how shots were set up, notice things I didn't the first time etc. I sat and watched Cloverfield again last night. This is the best kind of film to watch twice. It's full of so many small things that can be missed the first time. The fast action is also more interesting to watch as I can get a better idea what I'm seeing. I can also watch for stuff I read or heard after I saw the film the first time. I read there is a image of something large falling into the ocean in Cloverfield which I missed the first time. The second time I was watching for it.

Next Week's Movies.

When I initially got in to the office I was told There will be Blood was available for sure and a couple others were still being checked on, I decided to wait until I found out about the others. While I was waiting I tried to decide what to do about a late show if I booked in There will Be Blood. It's very long so a late show would have to be at 10pm, pretty late for us. My original plan was to play Cloverfield as a late show after Blood but I ended up playing Cloverfield this week.

I decided to try a little experiment. I noticed we had a lot of students coming to Persepolis so I thought I would try it as a late show and see what happens. Generally the 'Art' shows only do well for the early show but I wondered how one a lot of students wanted to see would do.

It turned out Atonement was available so I booked it in instead of Blood for a couple reasons.

-it'll do better

-next playweek is one of the heaviest in terms of student workload. I figured more would come out for a two hour film than for a 3 hour really heavy film.

-I could play it for both shows, a late show of Atonement would do better than one of Persepolis.

My current plan is to play There Will Be Blood the following week followed by a late show of Atonement if it does as well as I think it will. This kinda depends on if No Country for Old Men is available. I hope I don't have to choose between No Country and Blood, it would be a tough call.

R.I.P. New Line Cinema.

One of the more prominent smaller studios has been erased. New Line Cinema has been owned by Warner Bros for a while. Warner has decided to fold New Line into Warner's film division effectively leaving New Line a shell with a name. New Line is known as the House that Freddy built based on the fact that it's earliest successes were the Nightmare on Elm Street films. It has in recent years produced some classic films including the Lord of the Rings films. New Line had been having some bad times lately, except for Hairspray they hadn't had a hit in a while. They produced The Golden Compass which is getting a rep as one of the biggest bombs ever. I think there's more to it than that, probably a clash of personalities with the studio executives. All studios have bad times, movies are an inherently unpredictable business. New Line took one of the biggest gambles in movie history and won. The three Lord of the Rings films were all shot at the same time at a cost of some $300 million. If the first weekend of the first film has been a bust that would have resulted in a huge loss.

I read they were keeping New Line but it would no longer produce, distribute or market films. My first thought was 'what else does a studio do?'. After a little more thought I think they are keeping the name to attach to certain future films. For example if Warner makes the Hobbit films they will probably release them as New Line for legal or continuity reasons. New Line also has some films that haven't been released yet.

This could get interesting here in Canada. A company named Alliance is the biggest Canadian movie distributor. They tend to release a lot of the high profile award magnets (Atonement) as well as some lower films (Good Luck Chuck). They also release most Canadian films. New Line's films are distributed in Canada by Alliance and constitutes a large portion of Alliance's releases. Alliance will presumably release the New Line films that haven't come out yet but after that who knows?

Alliance was just bought by new owners including the Quebec government. Their investment may have just taken a turn for the worse.

There's an extensive posting on New Line at Cinematical. including a list of all their films. There's some real classics there.

What's with Movie Titles lately?

This isn't a new phenomenon but seems to be getting more common. Movie titles that seem to have no connection to or explanation from the film. Here's a few recent examples.

Cloverfield- There is a mention of the cloverfield in a title card but it's not really explained where it comes from.

Before The Devil Knows You're Dead- an apt title for the film but as far as I could tell was never referenced in the film.

Persepolis- A quick Google tells me that Persepolis is the name of a city in the Persian Empire and now in Iran. That's never explained in the movie, it is kinda a cool title though.

I Am Legend- Maybe it's the title of the book the Will Smith movie is based on but it doesn't make a lot of sense. Perhaps they are referring to the status of his character after the events of the film.

Western Film Movie Review - Vantage Point.

The trailers for this film were really well done. I really wanted to see it and it looked really good. Unfortunately the movie didn't quite live up to the trailer. It was still a good, interesting, fun film but not as good as I had hoped. It used a somewhat unconventional narrative form which some of the audience members seemed to have trouble with. It was one of those films where the elements of a great movie all seemed to be there but weren't quite put together right. It's still worth seeing though. I don't think it will play at Western Film even if it was a better film. The kind of mid-range action films it represents don't get well attended at Western Film any more. I might try it as a late show if I have an opening.

Next Week's movies.

I was really hoping for a big movie to come off this week as it's typically busy since the students tend not to have too much to do right after Slack Week. I didn't expect to get any of the Oscar movies but I was hoping for 27 Dresses to come off. It'll do real well here.

These are the movies that were available:

Rambo- wouldn't do well here.

Meet The Spartans - I wouldn't have played it anyway and Fox wanted full shows?!

National Treasure 2 - I decided not to play this for now, maybe not at all. Based on general trends and especially how I Am Legend did these kind of films just don't seem to be what people want to see at Western Film.

Persepolis- This is the kind of film that can do well here. I'm hoping it's like Kite Runner and I'm pleasantly surprised and does better than I think it will. It could also bomb.

For the late show I decided to do a bit of an experiment and put in Cloverfield. We'll see if everyone who wanted to see it already saw it. I'll probably have to put up signs about the queasy-cam aspect of the film, some people can't take the shaking camera and get motion sickness.

New Feature on Coming Soon page of website.

I get a lot of people asking whether we are going to play particular films. Mostly the smaller films that didn't play in the first run theatres. Sometimes it's a film that playing at another theatre and the person wants to know if they can wait until it comes here or should go see it there.

In response I added something new to the bottom of the coming soon page of the website. A list of films and their status as to whether they will play at Western Film. There's 4 categories, Will Play, Will Probably play, will Probably Not play and Won't play. Films will likely move around between categories as time goes on, mostly down the list.

Some people will probably want to know whether films that have just come out or are going to come out soon will play so they know whether they should wait. I'm not listing films like that since it's too hard to know until we see how the critics and audience respond to the film. I had fully planned to play Cloverfield until it came out.

Hopefully I won't get in the situation where a film I listed as Will Play doesn't for some reason. You'll notice that list is pretty small.

This week's Movies ( a little late)

I realized I hadn't posted my usual what and why I booked next week post. These movies started yesterday but I'll pretend that hasn't happened for the post.

This is one of the hardest weeks of the year to book. It all falls in Slack Week so I don't want to play anything the students want to see as most of them aren't here. For example if Juno had been available this week I would have said no. For this week I try to play films that is of more interest to adults and/or we've already played.

There were Three new movies available.

Cloverfield - I've been really undecided on playing this one. It had a lot of hype and was interesting. It really seemed to polarize people as to who liked it and who didn't. However the steep drops in grosses after the first weekend signify it might be one of those films that everyone who wanted to see it already has. In any case I wouldn't play it this week since the students aren't here. If I have an late show opening in the next couple weeks I might put it in. After There Will be Blood might work. The late show that week will be about 10pm since Blood is so long and Cloverfield is fairly short. (plus I kinda want to watch it again myself).

Untraceable- medium level thriller, wouldn't have done much here.

The Eye- horror, not something we play.

I thought of a few adult oriented films that we hadn't played. The first one I asked about was I'm Not There but there are no prints available for a couple weeks. The next one I asked about was Before The Devil Knows You're Dead which was available so I booked it in. This is a great little thriller with great performances. It suffers from a lack of awareness so I don't know how it will do. I find it odd that Philip Seymour Hoffman got nominated for Charlie Wilson's War when he did such a better job in Devil.

I was thinking of only playing one show next week since there was no obvious late show. However I wanted to play one to give the staff that are here full shifts. The staff that stayed behind want to work as much as possible this week while they have no school which I completely understand. I figured out once how much a late show needs to make to break even for weeks like this when I need to decide whether to run a late show. It comes up more in the summer. I looked at what we had already played and Sweeney Todd had done fairly well. I decided it would make enough to show for a second week so I booked it in.

27 Dresses should come off soon. Juno, No Country for Old Men, There will be Blood and Atonement should all be coming soon depending on how they do at the Oscars.

Hollywood Double Standards+ American Ones.

I've noticed this before but these are two blatant examples.

THE PATRIOT a film from 2000 starring Mel Gibson. It was about a small band of American rebels led by Mel Gibson against the British during the War of Independence. The movie carefully made the British out to be really bad guys. However if you watch the film the rebels are using basic rebel moves such as ambushes that are used all over the world. Basically, in England the film would have been titled THE TERRORIST.

CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR. Tom Hanks plays a US congressman who arranges aid to the Afghan rebels when the Soviets invaded in the 80's, eventually leading to the Soviet withdrawal. I noticed two things about this film.

Except for one short sequence the Russians are never seen getting killed. It concentrates mostly on equipment such as helicopters being destroyed. The one short sequence with Russians is similar to The Patriot in that the Russians are portrayed as really bad guys.

The US is basically accusing the Iranians of arranging aid to the Afghans currently fighting the Americans in Afghanistan. Therefore the same film could be made from the Iranian point of view at some point in the future.

I'm not saying the Americans are wrong, I just think it's a bit of a double standard.

Why Atonement got cancelled

We had booked in Atonement for the current week. On Friday about Noon I got a phone call at home from our booking office. They wanted to know why our website said we didn't have any shows on Saturday. I told them we had gotten bumped for the Vagina Monologues.
Apparently Westmount was still playing Atonement and complained, they probably weren't happy to begin with that were playing the same film as them. The distributor Alliance wasn't too happy not to have the whole weekend. I told them we do most of our business on Friday, Tuesday, Wed and Thurs and Saturday is relatively quiet.
Alliance pulled the film and wouldn't let us play it. We ended up playing Enchanted for both shows all week.
I've always tried to avoid getting bumped for various other events, especially on certain nights. The Monologues the last couple years took over a Sunday night which I wasn't too worried about. Hopefully this whole situation will be a good argument against getting bumped in the future. Probably not for the Monologues, the Saturday night show was really busy so I imagine they'll want to do it again next year.

Funny Sweded trailer for Be Kind Rewind.

I'm not sure where the term sweded came from. It may actually be referring to the director of Be Kind Rewind Michael Gondry who I think is Swedish? The movie is about 2 guys who create their own versions of films to replace videotapes accidently erased in a video store.

You have to watch or have seen the official trailer for Be Kind Rewind for the sweded version to make sense. It's the first video below.

For some reason this film is getting a really limited release in Canada. I'm not sure if that means it's either weirder than it looks or not as funny as it looks or they just want word of mouth to spread. The director has made some weird films such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Darn it,

I had this really interesting post ready to go about 2007 in review. Naturally Blooger is broke and pics won't upload. I'll post it later.

First post for 2008.

Boy, I'm behind. Sorry for disappearing like that. Was concentrating on other things for a while. I found myself still writing blog entries in my head so I guess I should get back to it. Part of it was the low numbers of people reading it according to the Google analytics. I suppose I got into a loop where the low readers made me post less which lead to fewer readers. From now on I'm going to post as I want to and not worry about the number of readers.

I'm going to put the link back on the Western Film website with the subtitle ' now updated daily' since I try to always do everything I say I'm going to update it daily as much as possible.

James Waite
Western Film.