Too Cool for Words.

I love things like this. (includes sound)

Last week was a really weird week.

The last playweek (Religulous and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist) was one of the weirdest weeks ever in terms of attendance.
There are basic patterns Western Film tends to follow. How well Friday and Saturday do can usually be extrapolated into how well the rest of the week will do. That's partially how I can make a decision on Monday about whether to keep a movie for another week even though I don't know for sure how it's going to finish.
There are of course variables such as weather and holidays.

here's the base assumptions. I knew Religulous would do well but I wasn't sure how well. Nick and Norah I wasn't sure about. I figured it would do okay at least but could bomb. I didn't expect it to do really well.

I don't normally use actual numbers but in this case I will since I don't think the meaning will come across if I don't.

On Friday Religulous did about 90 people and Nick and Norah about 35, respectable numbers for each.
They both did almost exactly the same numbers for Saturday.
Sunday and Monday are the quietest nights so based on the above I would have expected about 30 and 15 on Sunday. My staff got somewhat surprised when we again had 90 and 35 show up?! I've never seen something like that happen without a holiday or some extenuating factor.

Monday night we weren't sure what to expect and much to my surprise once again got 90 and 35.

Based on the weekend numbers I would have expected about 200 and 100 on Tuesday since it's discount night. However I wasn't sure if the pattern would hold since things had been weird so far. About 6:49 Tuesday I was thinking the pattern had broken because we didn't have a lot of people yet and it just didn't seem like it was going to be busy. However at 6:50 people started coming in droves and we ended up with 173 for Religulous. Based on that and the weekend I still expected about 100 for Nick and Norah. Much to our surprise 193 people showed up?!

Wednesday was about the same as the weekend which isn't unusual.

I expected about the same for Thursday. Again we were surprised when 137 people showed up for Religulous, a high number for any non-Tuesday show. Nick and Norah did about the same as it did the other nights.

So Religulous ended up as the third highest grosser of the year, second if you count the 85 high school students who came to a special afternoon showing. Nick and Norah did about twice what I would have guessed it's maximum would be.

So all in all it was a great week. I think it was somewhat fluky, good movies that people hadn't seen yet in a week when there weren't too many midterms?

So this leaves me with the question of whether to bring Religulous back for another week. Normally a film does about half of what it did the first week, but was that week a fluke and artificially high?! I'm also reminded of the situation that happened with Borat. It's first week was huge, one of the highest of the year but it's second week was only about 15% of it's first week, really weird.

I'll probably bring Religulous back if there aren't any new movies I need to play. I'm very curious to see how it does....

Next Week's Films

There were three new films available for next week.

Saw 5 - I never book horror, most of the ones who want to see it will have already done so.

Eagle Eye and Body of Lies.- This presented me with a bit of a dilemma. I want to play both films but didn't really want to play either as a late show. Both strike me as films that will do better as a 7pm show since they have adult appeal as well as student. If I had to choose one as a late show it would have been Eagle Eye. Since there aren't a lot of films out currently that I'm really waiting for I decided to play Eagle Eye next week and book Body of Lies for the following week.

I decided to bring back Pineapple Express for the late show. It did really well the first week and I've had requests. I considered keeping Religulous but haven't yet decided whether to bring it back, see the next post as to why I'm having trouble deciding.

I hate when they don't play the right trailers!

I went to see Quantum of Solace tonight. One thing that was a bit of a story in the movie world was the new trailers that were supposed to show before it. The one I was most interested to see was the first full length trailer for the next Star Trek movie. There was also supposed to be the new Watchmen trailer, and I think the latest trailer for The Day The Earth Stood Still.

I was very disappointed, the Trek trailer wasn't there, there was no Watchmen trailer and the DTESS trailer was an older one.

I finally gave in and watched the Star Trek trailer online, I really wanted to see it on the big screen. I'm looking forward to the film, I've been a Star Trek fan since I was a kid. Got a bit out of it over the last while, never watched the last series but always watched the films.

That's my rant for the day.

James Bond Meets The Incredibles

This is another mash up trailer from the same guy who did the Dark Knight / Toy Story one I posted a couple weeks ago. It's not quite as good but still fascinating how images and audio are so malleable.

100 Spoilers in 4 minutes.

Found this interesting little video. Don't watch it if you haven't seen a lot of films. I figured I would be safe to watch it but there were a couple films mentioned I hadn't seen. Most of them are well known to anyone who pays any attention at all to pop culture or film.



I wonder how many takes it took?

I'll take a compliment where I can get it, sort of.

I overheard a customer say this last night, he was referencing our snack bar prices.

' they're not as big a rip-off as the other places'

Not sure if that's a compliment or an insult?

I hate it when...

Some girl showed up about 20 mins late for a film tonight and called her friends inside to find out where they were sitting. That's a trifle rude to the other customers. The theatre was quite full so she probably had to crawl over a bunch of people to get to her friends.

Cell phones have their place but not in a movie theatre. One of the most common answers given as to why some people prefer to see movies at home is distractions from other patrons in theatres, especially cell phones.

That's my 2 cents for tonight.

Next Weeks Movies.

Next week was a pretty easy week to book. I had been planning to play The Duchess as the 7pm show if nothing came off that I thought should be played instead. It turned out the only new film available was RockNRolla which seems a great fit for a late show.

The booker was checking on Eagle Eye and Body of Lies so they should come off soon. Eagle Eye has been playing a while so must still be doing good business.

We've only got 4 playweeks before we close for Christmas. Time flies.

Question about Slideshow invisibles trivia.

I'm looking for feedback from anyone who reads this who actually goes to Western Film to see movies. Before the movie starts we play a PowerPoint slide show with trivia. Some of the trivia I get from imdb which is usually more in the form of 'did you know...' rather than questions. The visual trivia I get from a site called filmwise.com (with permission) I started using their invisibles trivia as they seemed neat and they make a lot of them so I had lots to choose from. In the invisibles trivia they take a scene from a movie and someone very skillfully erases the humans leaving only their clothing and sets. You then have to guess what the film is.

I like using the invisibles for the slideshow because they are easy to change which takes less time so I can change the slide show more often. However I'm not sure how effective they are. I have to make the images larger for the slide show which reduces resolution and then the image gets even bigger on the big screen.

So I have a few questions.

Do people have trouble making out what the image is because it's too fuzzy sometimes?

Are they too hard?

Is having trivia before a movie tacky?

I make sure the trivia isn't so easy as to be almost insulting as I've seen at other theatres.

I just updated the slide show. This time I tried to pick invisibles that were more clear visually. I also tried to pick ones that were a little easier than some in the past.

If anyone checks it out let me know what you think.

P.S. if you are a movie buff you might want to check out the invisibles at the site. I'm surprised how many people get all 8 each week. I can usually get about half.

Speaking of Presidents...Trivia Question.

An interesting fact was recently unearthed in the USC archives by Andrea at the Front Desk.

Guess what Canadian recently married to a very famous Briton was President of the Western Film Community as it was called in 1982? It was a student club at the time.

I'll post/confirm the answer in a few days.

Hint, there's one twist to the story so think a little outside the box.

P.S. Anyone at the USC who already knows the answer please hold off before commenting. I'm curious to see if anyone gets it.

This is one time I'm glad I was wrong.

When a friend of mine who follows politics closely told me about this guy named Barak Obama who was running for President I was skeptical. I figured a black man with an Arabic sounding name didn't have any chance at all to become President of the US. I'm glad I was wrong.

Now we'll see if he can start to put the US back on track and repair at least some of the damage of the last 8 years.

Personally I think if McCain had won the rest of the world would have basically said 'screw you' to the US and it would have become increasingly irrelevant.

Remake of the Day the Earth Stood Still

This is one of those movies that puts me in a movie lover quandary. The original is a classic that in many ways shouldn't be touched but the new one looks interesting.

I'm getting the impression this is one of the remakes that uses only only the name and some of the basic concepts and characters from the original. The original is way too slow to work these days and somewhat anti-climatic.

SPOILER - From the trailer it's obvious the definition of the word 'still' has been changed. In the original the alien made all the machinery, cars, trains, electricity, etc. stop at the same time hence making the world still. The new one looks like still=dead.

I'm curious to see how they end it. It will have a similar problem as the War of The Worlds remake did, the original ending isn't very exciting.

Keanu Reeves is actually well cast here. He does well with parts where he has to play anything but a regular human.

One thing that is setting off alarm bells for me is the special effects, especially the disintegration scenes, they don't look very well done, hopefully it was just an early version.

Here's the trailer. There was a five minute extended version but it has been removed. It showed a bit more of the action.





I'll be seeing this one opening weekend. It's from Fox so I hope it's either a big hit or a complete dud so I don't have to decide whether to play it for all shows when it should only play one show per night.

Next Week's Films

I had already booked Religulous in for the 7 pm show so I only needed to decide what to play for a late show. Over the weekend I had thought about playing Lakeview Terrace but decided it would be better to bring back Pineapple Express depending on what came available. There were four movies available:

City of Ember: a cute movie but I wouldn't have played it even if I could. As it is it's from Fox who wanted full shows so there's no chance in heck I would ever play it.

W. : I'm not sure about this one, it didn't do great in general release and a lot of our regulars saw it at our advance showing.

Quarantine: We don't do well with horror.

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist: I wasn't expecting this to come off yet so I hadn't really thought about playing it. It got decent reviews and did good business so I decided to play it. It makes a good late show since the target audience is students.

The following week is getting interesting. I'm still planning to play Duchess as the early show but I'm going to wait and find out what else is available. I'm also accumulating a lot of possibles for the other show.

Trailer for a Freaky Film.

This film has been getting a lot of buzz, I hope it makes it to Canada. The story sounds like something Hollywood couldn't make up but it's true.

I don't understand some theatres.

We played a Bollywood ( Indian ) film called Drona on the weekend. One of the theatres that had previously played the film did something that makes no sense to me. Bollywood films are almost always long, 2 1/2 to 3 hours and have an intermission about half way through. The intermission is built into the film, the word intermission, or sometimes interval, comes up on the screen.
Every Bollywood film I've played has had an intermission, even one that was only about 2 hours long. So Bollywood audiences expect to have an intermission so they can go to the bathroom etc.
From a theatre's point of view an intermission is great for food sales. We made 75% of our food sales this weekend during the intermission.
So if you are still with me, the audiences expect an intermission and the theatre makes money, everybody's happy.
So why did a previous theatre cut off the section of film that says intermission?! From a film standpoint the only practical reason to do this would be to be able to splice the film altogether into one long movie without an intermission. Why would anyone do that? The only thing I can think of is to save the time of the intermission in order to run more showings of the film per day. Personally I would hate to be sitting watching the film waiting for the intermission to go to the bathroom and it never comes.

It made things a little awkward for us this weekend. A Bollywood film I showed a few months ago had a similar situation. I spliced the intermission titling back into the film. This weekend however one of my projectionists made up the film and didn't know to do that. By the time I found out it was too late to fix it. I knew where the intermission was supposed to be but to the audience it was probably somewhat jarring as the film just stopped without any text warning. Luckily they tend to put the intermissions at either cliffhanger moments or just after pivotal events so it's somewhat predictable. For Drona the intermission came right after the transformation of the regular guy into the Super guy.

Next Week's Films Oct 31 - Nov 6

I had already booked Burn After Reading in so I knew what the early show would be. The question was what the late show would be. It ended up being one of those annoying weeks with tough choices to make. There were some good films available but I didn't think they would make good late shows. Movies that appeal to adults as well as students usually need to be the early show. For the most part only students come to the late shows.

Religulous- I decided this should be a early show so I put it off a week and booked it to start Nov 7. I booked it in so I could start advertising it.

The Duchess.- Another film that needs to be an early show. I've tentatively slotted this into the week after Religulous. I didn't book it in in case something more interesting comes available.

I still needed to make a choice for the late show. There were two possibles.

My Best Friend's Girl- I've been changing my mind about whether to play this or not. It's kinda a cross between a romantic and a raunchy comedy. I usually have a reading on how I think any film will do and this one I'm getting nuthin'. I decided to try it and see what happens. It's playing at 9:00. My guess is it will do somewhere between 'okay' and 'bad' but it would be a nice surprise if it does 'good' or better.

Lakeview Terrace - I normally wouldn't play this kind of mid-range thriller but it did okay and stars Samuel L. Jackson. It's tentatively slotted into the late show after Religulous but I won't cry if something better comes available.

Advance Screenings

One thing I really like doing is advance screenings, especially when it's a film I know won't suck. We've done three so far this year. Warner did Fool's Gold in February. That went really well, was very busy, it got a little complicated as they were selling the tickets for charity rather than giving them away. It also had to be on a Tuesday which got interesting since I had to cancel whatever else would have played that night on our discount night.

Maple AKA Lionsgate did The Bank Job in March. It went quite well for a relatively small movie, at a busy time of year for the students, about 100 people.

During the summer I wrote to the woman at Maple and asked her if she wanted to do any more. I was interested in Religulous but it turned out that was being distributed by TVA in Canada.

We did decide to do one for Oliver Stone's W. which was last week. Considering the timing right after Thanksgiving I was expecting about 100 people. We ended up with just over 200 so I was quite happy. They also bought a lot of popcorn.

W. had trailers for The Spirit and Transporter 3 in front of it. Hopefully Maple will want to do advance screenings for those.

Toy Story meets The Dark Knight.

This is a great fan-made mash.

It occurred to me that something like this would make a great study subject for a film class. It shows just how easily the meaning of images or sound can be manipulated for a desired response.

An odd decision I had to make.

I got an odd phone call on Monday. Alliance called at about 4pm and asked if we wanted to do a advance showing of Zack and Miri Make A Porno. Doing so would be really cool except they wanted to do it on Thursday, as in 4 days later, replacing a movie that had been advertised all week and was doing well (Mamma Mia). I had to say no even though I wanted to do it. Mamma Mia is doing quite well and I didn't think cancelling the last 7pm show of it was a good idea. I'd never be able to let everyone know in advance it had been cancelled which would lead to some pissed off customers.



I wonder if a premiere somewhere else got cancelled and they were looking for some place else to play it. The woman seemed almost insulted/surprised when I said no.


Hopefully they call back and want to do some more advance shows with a little more notice.





It's too bad they didn't call last week. I only had the 7pm showing of Dark Knight so I could probably have done the screening afterwards at about 10pm.





It occurred to me later I could have done the Zack and Miri screening as a midnight show but I don't know how well that would have worked or whether Alliance would have gone for that.