Everyone can do an American accent... at least everyone thinks they can. But how many would pass muster with a Hollywood studio? The BBC's Stephen Robb took a lesson from one of the movie industry's top accent coaches.
Any actor or actress hoping to convince in a foreign accent must have three words in the back of their mind at all times.
They won't be phrases like "shape of mouth", "position of tongue" or "placement of voice" - although all of these will be fundamental to learning and adopting an accent.
The three words haunting the performer, driving hour after hour of dialect practice, are "Dick", "Van" and "Dyke".
Everyone can do an American accent... at least everyone thinks they can. But how many would pass muster with a Hollywood studio? The BBC's Stephen Robb took a lesson from one of the movie industry's top accent coaches.
Any actor or actress hoping to convince in a foreign accent must have three words in the back of their mind at all times.
They won't be phrases like "shape of mouth", "position of tongue" or "placement of voice" - although all of these will be fundamental to learning and adopting an accent.
The three words haunting the performer, driving hour after hour of dialect practice, are "Dick", "Van" and "Dyke".
The American's "strike a light, guv'nor" Cockney caricature in Mary Poppins is widely regarded as delivering the worst film accent of all time. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, it was not.
And that's up against competition from Sean Connery playing a Spaniard, an Irishman and a Russian at stages of his career.
British dialect coach Barbara Berkery admits that a lot of actors seeking her tutelage plead at the outset: "I don't want to sound like Dick Van Dyke."
Her glittering cast of former students include Gwyneth Paltrow, whom she trained for Emma and Shakespeare in Love, and Renee Zellweger for Bridget Jones's Diary and Miss Potter.
Half-hour challenge
Paltrow won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love and Zellweger was nominated as Bridget Jones, but probably the greater tributes to their English accents were the nominations from an obviously impressed British Academy - they sounded the part.
Berkery has also coached Brad Pitt (Seven Years in Tibet), Jim Carrey (A Christmas Carol, due out next year) and Geoffrey Rush (Pirates of the Caribbean), and is currently working with Jake Gyllenhaal on his English accent for Prince of Persia.
The American's "strike a light, guv'nor" Cockney caricature in Mary Poppins is widely regarded as delivering the worst film accent of all time. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, it was not.
And that's up against competition from Sean Connery playing a Spaniard, an Irishman and a Russian at stages of his career.
British dialect coach Barbara Berkery admits that a lot of actors seeking her tutelage plead at the outset: "I don't want to sound like Dick Van Dyke."
Her glittering cast of former students include Gwyneth Paltrow, whom she trained for Emma and Shakespeare in Love, and Renee Zellweger for Bridget Jones's Diary and Miss Potter.
Half-hour challenge
Paltrow won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love and Zellweger was nominated as Bridget Jones, but probably the greater tributes to their English accents were the nominations from an obviously impressed British Academy - they sounded the part.
Berkery has also coached Brad Pitt (Seven Years in Tibet), Jim Carrey (A Christmas Carol, due out next year) and Geoffrey Rush (Pirates of the Caribbean), and is currently working with Jake Gyllenhaal on his English accent for Prince of Persia.
In other words, or for words in another accent anyway, London-based Berkery has become the English dialect coach Hollywood turns to. "It's a nice position to be in," she says.
Usually conducting her training for several weeks in the run-up to a production, and then throughout the shoot, Berkery has consistently achieved convincing results with hugely-dedicated and highly-talented actors; what she can do with me in half an hour is a different challenge altogether.
Exposure to US films and television means most people probably believe they can affect a passable American accent - myself included.
But Berkery explains that "mimicry is not the same as doing accents - if somebody is just mimicking, I think we do feel it isn't quite truthful."
Her work involves building the accent authentically by teaching the real mouth shapes and tongue positions involved - for a general American accent, she tells me, that means a wide mouth and the tongue higher up in the mouth.
She also tells me to smile, in order to place the voice towards my nasal resonator - one of the three voice resonators along with the facial and throat resonators. Berkery describes learning to do an accent as having "a mask on the face that fits perfectly".
With my lifted tongue, wide mouth, attempted smile, and the concentration involved in maintaining these as we start voice exercises, my mask resembles something like Jack Nicholson's The Joker with a lobotomised, vacant look in the eyes. I feel certain that a cinema audience would find it distracting.
Berkery takes me through some of the major vowel changes from standard English to general American - their short "ah" in bath and sample, the "aw" in cloth and Boston - and the sound that comes out of my mouth is unrecognisable to me.
It is a long way from my own south-east England accent, but not much nearer my trusted American impression. It does sound vaguely American, but like an over-the-top, slightly camp game show host with an occasional lisp - not what I had been aiming for at all.
And I find the process very unnerving. "The voice is the soul and you are moving it," says Berkery.
"People do find it very frightening - it's like being off-balance."
As we continue, moving from vowel exercises to working on consonant changes, Berkery frequently offers comments like "Make it less" and "Don't do as much".
Not only is my performance dreadful, there is clearly much too much of it; my overacting makes Dick Van Dyke's infamous turn look like a masterclass of subtlety and technique.
"You mustn't play an accent," Berkery says. "You must play a character who has an accent, but you must never play an accent."
Berkery and her students start with nothing and build an accent from its essential parts.My brief lesson hints at the phenomenal amount of work involved in reaching a point where that accent convinces on a giant screen, in surround sound and over a two-hour running time.
While Berkery suggests most actors "can have a good stab at the accent if you have enough time", she stresses that those that "get it really perfect" do so through exceptional dedication.
She had two months working with Zellweger before filming started on Bridget Jones's Diary, comprising lessons in the morning followed by afternoons out together in London when the actress was forced to keep up her accent.
Zellweger later worked undercover in a publishing house using her English accent, and also maintained it on set for the entirety of the film's shoot.
"Some people never, ever heard her own accent until we finished the film," says Berkery.
"It was a testament to her talent and hard work. It was a complete transformation; she is a girl with a very strong Texan accent and she did completely transform herself."
An authentic accent will be "second-nature" to an actor, Berkery says, likening it to fluency in a foreign language where a person doesn't have to think about the process of speaking.
"You don't want the audience to notice," she adds. "You don't really want people to think, 'That's a good accent,' because if you think that you are not thinking about the character."
On those terms, maybe my accent wasn't such a flop after all - nobody's ever going to be distracted thinking how good it was.
Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts
Monday, 28 July 2008
More than just a Carry On?
Caricatured as low-brow and smutty, Carry On films were never much rated by movie critics. But do they tell us something more profound about the huge social changes in post-war Britain? The BBC's Carolyn Quinn (right) thinks so.
A few weeks ago on her Sunday morning radio programme, Gabby Logan made an unintentionally saucy comment and referred to having had a "Carry On moment". Without further explanation you know exactly what she meant.
Almost everyone has seen at least one of the films. Most people have a favourite Carry On scene or cringe-making pun.
The very first Carry On film - Sergeant - came out 50 years ago this August and its appearance spawned a series of 30 over the next two decades. I decided to put in an idea to make a documentary marking the golden anniversary - not the sort that had been made many times before, focusing on the saucy lines and, at times, the desperately sad story of the troupe of actors who became such familiar faces to us all.
Instead, I wanted to examine the amazing social changes society underwent over the 20 years during which Sid James, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims, Barbara Windsor and the rest were Carrying On.
Think about it. When Carry on Sergeant, a low budget black and white movie came out in 1958, National Service - the core of its plot - still had a couple of years to run in Britain.
By the time the last film of the main series, Carry on Emmannuelle, was released in 1978, life was very different - the permissive age was in full swing and the post-war era of deference had gone, replaced by the desire to escape the duties and limitations that most of those living in the 40s, 50s and some of the 60s accepted as part of their "lot" in life.
From 1958 to 1978 the Carry On films held up a mirror to British society, its institutions and its rapid changes. National Service ended, the National Health Service expanded rapidly, the sexual revolution arrived, the country faced bouts of industrial strife and working-class families started to holiday abroad.
'Proto-feminist'
Amid the slapstick, the innuendo and the corny puns, the Carry Ons reflected all of this. Derided by highbrow critics, it is only recently that social commentators have come to appreciate them for the unvarnished portrait they paint of a nation in flux.
Take Carry on Cabby (1963) for tentative stirrings of feminism as Hattie Jacques sets up an all-female taxi firm to rival that of husband Sid.
In the words of Daily Telegraph columnist Simon Heffer, Cabbie is "certainly what Germaine Greer would call a proto-feminist film".
By the time of Carry on Girls, 10 years later, bra-burning feminists disrupt a beauty contest in the seaside town of Fircombe.
While the humour may have been upfront, any social commentary was more subtly conveyed, says Andy Medhurst, lecturer in film, media and cultural studies at Sussex University.
"They weren't films that set out to have an explicit social message but in a paradoxical kind of way that gives them more meaning," says Mr Medhurst. "They capture the way people living humdrum lives with limited horizons found a release in comedy. They seem to encapsulate an everyday life in Britain of that time."
Earnest people
Indeed, the makers of the Carry Ons had no serious ambition for them other than as easy entertainment in the best music hall tradition. The man behind the scripts for the first six Carry Ons, Norman Hudis, had no idea he was being "significant". Now in his 80s, and living in America, he recalls he was simply reflecting life at the time.
"For the most part," says Hudis, "it was earnest people in circumstances where they were being tried or pushed to the limit, almost giving in but eventually coming through and doing what they were supposed to do and doing it well."
For Simon Heffer, these early Carry Ons reflect a "sense of social cohesion which was really important before an age when individualism became as highly prized as it is now".
"I think that was the predominant sociological current and the films very accurately reflect that."
Where Hudis drew on his own wartime service for Carry On Sergeant, he also plundered his wife Rita's memory for Nurse. She had been a state-registered nurse and provided him with many a juicy story of life on the wards.
Yet again, there was more to 1959's Nurse than the saucy one-liners.
Former nurse Julia Hallam, now a film lecturer at Liverpool University, says Nurse provides a patients' eye insight into what was really going on in hospitals.
Sexy stereotype
"One of the things that you can think of them as representing is the first wave of consumer critique of the health service, particularly in the hospitals which were very authoritarian.
"Patients often felt too terrified to ask questions of people. They felt hospital was a very demeaning process and robbed you of your identity. From the patients' point of view, you can see the Carry Ons are a bit of a rebellion against that idea."
In 1959's Nurse, the NHS seemed novel and egalitarian. The nurses were cool and professional - and the patients fell in love with them.
By Carry On Doctor, eight years later, Barbara Windsor had introduced the saucy nurse to the nation - much to the chagrin of the Royal College of Nursing, which was horrified by the portrayal of the "sexy nurse" and fought the image for years, says Ms Hallam.
All across the Carry On canon, the rich entertainment was suffused with broader sociological comment.
Soft porn
From Teacher (1959) which seized on the ethics of corporal punishment in schools - eventually outlawed in 1986 - and the strains between traditional and progressive teaching methods, to 1971's Carry On at Your Convenience, with its undercurrents of industrial unrest.
That was the year a new Industrial Relations Act was passed, aimed at cutting numbers of unofficial strikes; the previous 12 months had been the worst in terms of days lost in industrial disputes since 1926.
Yet by the mid-70s Carry Ons' knack of feeling the pulse of British mass entertainment was fading.
By 1978 and Carry on Emmannuelle - in which the eponymous "heroine" manages to step outside a lot without her clothes - the Carry Ons were dying. Soft porn was readily available in British cinemas in the form of the raunchier Confessions films and even the original Emmanuelle.
The time for nudge-nudge-wink-wink, innuendo-laden comedy had passed. Somehow the Carry Ons seemed old-fashioned and naive.
But as the decades have passed, the pendulum has swung back, allowing us to view the Carry Ons with affection. Even if you think they are corny/cheesy/horribly dated you may at least appreciate them for their nostalgia value and their reminder of more innocent times.
A few weeks ago on her Sunday morning radio programme, Gabby Logan made an unintentionally saucy comment and referred to having had a "Carry On moment". Without further explanation you know exactly what she meant.
Almost everyone has seen at least one of the films. Most people have a favourite Carry On scene or cringe-making pun.
The very first Carry On film - Sergeant - came out 50 years ago this August and its appearance spawned a series of 30 over the next two decades. I decided to put in an idea to make a documentary marking the golden anniversary - not the sort that had been made many times before, focusing on the saucy lines and, at times, the desperately sad story of the troupe of actors who became such familiar faces to us all.
Instead, I wanted to examine the amazing social changes society underwent over the 20 years during which Sid James, Charles Hawtrey, Joan Sims, Barbara Windsor and the rest were Carrying On.
Think about it. When Carry on Sergeant, a low budget black and white movie came out in 1958, National Service - the core of its plot - still had a couple of years to run in Britain.
By the time the last film of the main series, Carry on Emmannuelle, was released in 1978, life was very different - the permissive age was in full swing and the post-war era of deference had gone, replaced by the desire to escape the duties and limitations that most of those living in the 40s, 50s and some of the 60s accepted as part of their "lot" in life.
From 1958 to 1978 the Carry On films held up a mirror to British society, its institutions and its rapid changes. National Service ended, the National Health Service expanded rapidly, the sexual revolution arrived, the country faced bouts of industrial strife and working-class families started to holiday abroad.
'Proto-feminist'
Amid the slapstick, the innuendo and the corny puns, the Carry Ons reflected all of this. Derided by highbrow critics, it is only recently that social commentators have come to appreciate them for the unvarnished portrait they paint of a nation in flux.
Take Carry on Cabby (1963) for tentative stirrings of feminism as Hattie Jacques sets up an all-female taxi firm to rival that of husband Sid.
In the words of Daily Telegraph columnist Simon Heffer, Cabbie is "certainly what Germaine Greer would call a proto-feminist film".
By the time of Carry on Girls, 10 years later, bra-burning feminists disrupt a beauty contest in the seaside town of Fircombe.
While the humour may have been upfront, any social commentary was more subtly conveyed, says Andy Medhurst, lecturer in film, media and cultural studies at Sussex University.
"They weren't films that set out to have an explicit social message but in a paradoxical kind of way that gives them more meaning," says Mr Medhurst. "They capture the way people living humdrum lives with limited horizons found a release in comedy. They seem to encapsulate an everyday life in Britain of that time."
Earnest people
Indeed, the makers of the Carry Ons had no serious ambition for them other than as easy entertainment in the best music hall tradition. The man behind the scripts for the first six Carry Ons, Norman Hudis, had no idea he was being "significant". Now in his 80s, and living in America, he recalls he was simply reflecting life at the time.
"For the most part," says Hudis, "it was earnest people in circumstances where they were being tried or pushed to the limit, almost giving in but eventually coming through and doing what they were supposed to do and doing it well."
For Simon Heffer, these early Carry Ons reflect a "sense of social cohesion which was really important before an age when individualism became as highly prized as it is now".
"I think that was the predominant sociological current and the films very accurately reflect that."
Where Hudis drew on his own wartime service for Carry On Sergeant, he also plundered his wife Rita's memory for Nurse. She had been a state-registered nurse and provided him with many a juicy story of life on the wards.
Yet again, there was more to 1959's Nurse than the saucy one-liners.
Former nurse Julia Hallam, now a film lecturer at Liverpool University, says Nurse provides a patients' eye insight into what was really going on in hospitals.
Sexy stereotype
"One of the things that you can think of them as representing is the first wave of consumer critique of the health service, particularly in the hospitals which were very authoritarian.
"Patients often felt too terrified to ask questions of people. They felt hospital was a very demeaning process and robbed you of your identity. From the patients' point of view, you can see the Carry Ons are a bit of a rebellion against that idea."
In 1959's Nurse, the NHS seemed novel and egalitarian. The nurses were cool and professional - and the patients fell in love with them.
By Carry On Doctor, eight years later, Barbara Windsor had introduced the saucy nurse to the nation - much to the chagrin of the Royal College of Nursing, which was horrified by the portrayal of the "sexy nurse" and fought the image for years, says Ms Hallam.
All across the Carry On canon, the rich entertainment was suffused with broader sociological comment.
Soft porn
From Teacher (1959) which seized on the ethics of corporal punishment in schools - eventually outlawed in 1986 - and the strains between traditional and progressive teaching methods, to 1971's Carry On at Your Convenience, with its undercurrents of industrial unrest.
That was the year a new Industrial Relations Act was passed, aimed at cutting numbers of unofficial strikes; the previous 12 months had been the worst in terms of days lost in industrial disputes since 1926.
Yet by the mid-70s Carry Ons' knack of feeling the pulse of British mass entertainment was fading.
By 1978 and Carry on Emmannuelle - in which the eponymous "heroine" manages to step outside a lot without her clothes - the Carry Ons were dying. Soft porn was readily available in British cinemas in the form of the raunchier Confessions films and even the original Emmanuelle.
The time for nudge-nudge-wink-wink, innuendo-laden comedy had passed. Somehow the Carry Ons seemed old-fashioned and naive.
But as the decades have passed, the pendulum has swung back, allowing us to view the Carry Ons with affection. Even if you think they are corny/cheesy/horribly dated you may at least appreciate them for their nostalgia value and their reminder of more innocent times.
Friday, 25 July 2008
Mike Leigh
If ever there was, truly, an actor’s director, it must be Mike Leigh. Even when he began his career staging plays back in the 60s, he had a freewheeling style that depended on actors to help build characters and story through improvisation. However, when it came to making movies, his fluid approach to scriptwriting was something that scared away financiers. This partly explains the 17-year gap between his feature debut Bleak Moments in 1971 and his second film, High Hopes (1988). But Leigh also earned a reputation for dealing in dark, gritty subject matter considered a tough sell for the Saturday night crowd, despite the rich vein of humour which often runs through his work. It was only in recent years that Leigh finally earned the trust of British moneymen. Secrets & Lies, starring Brenda Blethyn, earned five Oscar nominations in 1997, including Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. And, more importantly for Leigh, it guaranteed the green light for his next project. In the ten years since, he has produced five more films, working in exactly the same way, and attending the Oscars again in 2005 with abortionist drama Vera Drake. His latest project, Happy-Go-Lucky, is a much brighter, breezier affair featuring Sally Hawkins as an eternal optimist. Talking to BBC Film Network, Leigh explains why he too is determined to look at the bright side of British filmmaking. Happy-Go-Lucky is on general release from 18th April 2008. The short film 'Lovers' Lane' by Film Network Director, Guy Ducker will be screening as a pre-feature during its week long run at the Barbican from Friday April 25th to Thursday May 1st.
A tale of two Microsofts
And so it was to a rather emasculated Los Angeles Convention Center for the first press conference and briefing of E3 2008.
The E3s of old were colourful, brash affairs but there were no signs of the traditional giant posters on the convention windows and walls. The walls were bare and the hall had the air of an accountancy convention, rather than a games conference.
We'd been dragged from our beds for an early morning exclusive press briefing with Microsoft, ahead of the actual Xbox conference. We were promised a "major announcement".
On the way to the venue the journalists speculated about the announcement:
"A price cut!" "A new Halo game""Bungie's new project"
So what was it? Well, it was Lips, a karaoke game that bears more than a passing resemblance to Singstar on the PlayStation 3.
A ripple of disinterest passed through the assembled media who half-heartedly asked some questions, most of which were batted away with a "we can't talk about that right now" response.
Microsoft brought on Welsh singer Duffy as the acceptable face of video games to plug the new title. Right on cue she admitted she didn't play video games because they were too violent.
One of the journalists asked her about downloadable content for Lips. Unsurprisingly, she wasn't exactly that well versed with the digital distribution plans for Xbox Live titles.
And so on we trouped to the press briefing proper. And it was the usual slick Microsoft briefing.
We were expecting a radical new direction for the console. But the first half was dominated by the classic blockbuster franchises, Gears of War 2, Fable 2 and Fallout 3.
Just as we thought that Microsoft's attempt to become a more family-friendly console was an illusion, up stepped John Schappert and Shane Kim to reveal all.
A re-designed Xbox Live, coupled with plenty of social and casual games were paraded in front of us. But it felt like Microsoft had merely cherry picked some of the more successful aspects of the PlayStation and Wii, and created versions for the 360.
There was lots of news about new developments for Xbox Live content but most of them applied only to the North American market.
Bungie were due on stage to reveal a taster of their upcoming project their first title post Halo. But there was no sign of them.
I had been due to speak with them immediately after the briefing but that too was pulled with little explanation.
And so what impression am I left with? Well, Microsoft are clearly a company being pulled in two directions: it needs to satisfy the blood-thirsty needs of its core demographic, but can only triumph over Sony if it can attract more European gamers to the platform, and they tend to prefer more casual titles.
Microsoft can do both but the firm just looks uncomfortable trying to do casual and social: a demo session during the briefing of three Xbox senior playing a movie game was just painful to watch.
The E3s of old were colourful, brash affairs but there were no signs of the traditional giant posters on the convention windows and walls. The walls were bare and the hall had the air of an accountancy convention, rather than a games conference.
We'd been dragged from our beds for an early morning exclusive press briefing with Microsoft, ahead of the actual Xbox conference. We were promised a "major announcement".
On the way to the venue the journalists speculated about the announcement:
"A price cut!" "A new Halo game""Bungie's new project"
So what was it? Well, it was Lips, a karaoke game that bears more than a passing resemblance to Singstar on the PlayStation 3.
A ripple of disinterest passed through the assembled media who half-heartedly asked some questions, most of which were batted away with a "we can't talk about that right now" response.
Microsoft brought on Welsh singer Duffy as the acceptable face of video games to plug the new title. Right on cue she admitted she didn't play video games because they were too violent.
One of the journalists asked her about downloadable content for Lips. Unsurprisingly, she wasn't exactly that well versed with the digital distribution plans for Xbox Live titles.
And so on we trouped to the press briefing proper. And it was the usual slick Microsoft briefing.
We were expecting a radical new direction for the console. But the first half was dominated by the classic blockbuster franchises, Gears of War 2, Fable 2 and Fallout 3.
Just as we thought that Microsoft's attempt to become a more family-friendly console was an illusion, up stepped John Schappert and Shane Kim to reveal all.
A re-designed Xbox Live, coupled with plenty of social and casual games were paraded in front of us. But it felt like Microsoft had merely cherry picked some of the more successful aspects of the PlayStation and Wii, and created versions for the 360.
There was lots of news about new developments for Xbox Live content but most of them applied only to the North American market.
Bungie were due on stage to reveal a taster of their upcoming project their first title post Halo. But there was no sign of them.
I had been due to speak with them immediately after the briefing but that too was pulled with little explanation.
And so what impression am I left with? Well, Microsoft are clearly a company being pulled in two directions: it needs to satisfy the blood-thirsty needs of its core demographic, but can only triumph over Sony if it can attract more European gamers to the platform, and they tend to prefer more casual titles.
Microsoft can do both but the firm just looks uncomfortable trying to do casual and social: a demo session during the briefing of three Xbox senior playing a movie game was just painful to watch.
Wednesday, 23 July 2008
Batman Is Back
There's a beautiful high-angle shot, early in The Dark Knight, that looks down on Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) in full Batman regalia as he perches atop a Gotham skyscraper, surveying the city he lives to protect, then leaping off and spreading his majestic bat wings to swoop down into the night. Bruce's trajectory is also the film's. It traces a descent into moral anarchy, and each of its major characters will hit bottom. Some will never recover, broken by the touch of evil or by finding it, like a fatal infection, in themselves.
The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan's second chapter in his revival of the DC Comics franchise, will hit theaters with all the hoopla and fanboy avidity of the summer season's earlier movies based on comic books. It's the fifth, and three of the first four (Iron Man, Wanted and Hellboy II) have been terrific or just short of it. (The Incredible Hulk: not so hot.) It's been one of the best summers in memory for flat-out blockbuster entertainment, and in the wow category, the Nolan film doesn't disappoint. True to format, it has a crusading hero, a sneering villain in Heath Ledger's Joker, spectacular chases — including one with Batman on a stripped-down Batmobile that becomes a motorcycle with monster-truck wheels — and lots of stuff blowing up. Even the tie-in action figures with Reese's Pieces suggest this is a fast-food movie.
But Nolan has a more subversive agenda. He wants viewers to stick their hands down the rat hole of evil and see if they get bitten. With little humor to break the tension, The Dark Knight is beyond dark. It's as black — and teeming and toxic — as the mind of the Joker. Batman Begins, the 2005 film that launched Nolan's series, was a mere five-finger exercise. This is the full symphony.
A Better Class of CriminalGotham has a new white knight: a fearless district attorney, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), who's determined to nab malefactors through the law with the same gusto that Batman, the dark knight, applies using his gadgets and charisma. The Mob (led by Eric Roberts) they can handle, with the help of stalwart police lieutenant James Gordon (Gary Oldman). But the Joker — this guy is nuts. He does deals with the Mob, then crosses them up. He makes a point with his pencil by ramming it into a gangster's head. "This town," he says, "deserves a better class of criminals." So do action movies, and here he is, vowing to bring down Batman and Dent, just for the mad fun of it.
In its rethinking and transcending of a schlock source, The Dark Knight is up there with David Cronenberg's 1986 version of The Fly. It turns pulp into dark poetry. Just as that movie found metaphors of cancer, AIDS and death in the story of a man devolving into an insect, so this one plumbs the nature of identity. Who are we? Has Bruce lost himself in the myth of the hero? Is his Batman persona a mission or an affliction? Can crusading Dent live down the nickname (Two-Face) some rancorous cops have pinned on him? Only the Joker seems unconflicted. He knows what he is: an "agent of chaos." Your worst nightmare.
No, really. This villain, as conceived by Nolan and his scriptwriter brother Jonathan and incarnated with chilling authority by Ledger, is not the elegant sadist of so many action films, nor the strutting showman played by Jack Nicholson in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman. He isn't a father figure or a macho man. And though he invents several stories about how he got his (facial and psychic) scars, he's not presented as the sum of injustices done to him. This Joker is simply one of the most twisted and mesmerizing creeps in movie history.
The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan's second chapter in his revival of the DC Comics franchise, will hit theaters with all the hoopla and fanboy avidity of the summer season's earlier movies based on comic books. It's the fifth, and three of the first four (Iron Man, Wanted and Hellboy II) have been terrific or just short of it. (The Incredible Hulk: not so hot.) It's been one of the best summers in memory for flat-out blockbuster entertainment, and in the wow category, the Nolan film doesn't disappoint. True to format, it has a crusading hero, a sneering villain in Heath Ledger's Joker, spectacular chases — including one with Batman on a stripped-down Batmobile that becomes a motorcycle with monster-truck wheels — and lots of stuff blowing up. Even the tie-in action figures with Reese's Pieces suggest this is a fast-food movie.
But Nolan has a more subversive agenda. He wants viewers to stick their hands down the rat hole of evil and see if they get bitten. With little humor to break the tension, The Dark Knight is beyond dark. It's as black — and teeming and toxic — as the mind of the Joker. Batman Begins, the 2005 film that launched Nolan's series, was a mere five-finger exercise. This is the full symphony.
A Better Class of CriminalGotham has a new white knight: a fearless district attorney, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), who's determined to nab malefactors through the law with the same gusto that Batman, the dark knight, applies using his gadgets and charisma. The Mob (led by Eric Roberts) they can handle, with the help of stalwart police lieutenant James Gordon (Gary Oldman). But the Joker — this guy is nuts. He does deals with the Mob, then crosses them up. He makes a point with his pencil by ramming it into a gangster's head. "This town," he says, "deserves a better class of criminals." So do action movies, and here he is, vowing to bring down Batman and Dent, just for the mad fun of it.
In its rethinking and transcending of a schlock source, The Dark Knight is up there with David Cronenberg's 1986 version of The Fly. It turns pulp into dark poetry. Just as that movie found metaphors of cancer, AIDS and death in the story of a man devolving into an insect, so this one plumbs the nature of identity. Who are we? Has Bruce lost himself in the myth of the hero? Is his Batman persona a mission or an affliction? Can crusading Dent live down the nickname (Two-Face) some rancorous cops have pinned on him? Only the Joker seems unconflicted. He knows what he is: an "agent of chaos." Your worst nightmare.
No, really. This villain, as conceived by Nolan and his scriptwriter brother Jonathan and incarnated with chilling authority by Ledger, is not the elegant sadist of so many action films, nor the strutting showman played by Jack Nicholson in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman. He isn't a father figure or a macho man. And though he invents several stories about how he got his (facial and psychic) scars, he's not presented as the sum of injustices done to him. This Joker is simply one of the most twisted and mesmerizing creeps in movie history.
How Batman Broke the Record
Holy gargantuan grosses, Batman! Hollywood has just ridden to the most lucrative moviegoing weekend in film history on the cape of The Dark Knight. Christopher Nolan's gritty Batman sequel raked in $155 million between Friday and Sunday, outselling the previous top weekend grosser, 2007's Spider-Man 3, by more than $4 million and driving the movie business to a record $253 million weekend.
The Dark Knight's unprecedented box-office might is "mind-boggling for us," says Dan Fellman, president of domestic distribution for Warner Bros. Pictures. (TIME and Warner Bros. are both subsidiaries of Time Warner.) The film benefited from a unique mix of factors beyond the usual superhero movie hype, including a buzzed-about performance by the late Heath Ledger as the Joker, perfectly pitched marketing, agile distribution and gas prices that have made a night at the movies an attractive alternative to a summer road trip. It also helps that The Dark Knight, as most critics and audiences attest, is a very good film.
As early as last summer, months before Ledger's sudden death in January, Warner Bros. sensed that Nolan was filming something that might transcend mere fanboy fodder. With Batman Begins, in 2005, the director successfully rebooted the troubled franchise, but this time around his decision to go darker — and The Dark Knight is as mordant a superhero movie as there has ever been — dovetailed with the popular mood. "We saw the dailies coming in and we knew we had an incredible movie," says Fellman. Though Christian Bale's Batman is The Dark Knight's star, it was Ledger's knife-wielding anarchist around whom the studio built an early viral marketing campaign, featuring the villain prominently in posters, trailers and on the web site WhySoSerious.com.
After Ledger's death, curiosity about his performance — not always driven by the best of impulses — only grew. "It added to a certain mystique about the film," says Steve Mason, box-office analyst at FantasyMoguls.com. While Warner Bros. was anxious about appearing to capitalize on interest in Ledger's death as The Dark Knight's release date approached, it resumed showcasing Ledger in trailers. "The performance is so good, had they not highlighted it, it would have been a mistake," says Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office analysis firm Media By Numbers. In the end, Fellman says, "[Ledger] certainly is part of our great success."
In the weeks before opening, Bat-ticipation was ratcheted so high that Dark Knight screenings were selling out online as fast as theaters could add them. The AMC South Barrington in Chicago planned to show the movie on six screens and ended up ordering more prints in order to play it on 18. A planned Friday midnight showing at Hollywood's Cinerama Dome sold out so quickly, its adjoining theater, the ArcLight, added 13 midnight screenings. Those midnight shows broke another record, earning $18.5 million, to beat out Star Wars, Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith's 2005 record of $16.9 million. And those numbers don't include the hardy fans who stayed up for the 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. shows. Tickets to see the film on giant IMAX screens, which accounted for a record $6 million of the weekend's gross, also went fast, inspiring some ticket-holders to scalp them on eBay for as much as $80 a pop.
When it came to breaking box-office records, Batman wasn't flying solo. Universal's Mamma Mia! earned $27.6 million to snare the best opening for a musical, narrowly beating out last summer's Hairspray and helping propel the record weekend sales across the industry.
As for The Dark Knight, its future looks bright. Most blockbusters are built on first-weekend hype that quickly falls off as new films arrive in theaters, but audiences are spreading good word of mouth and, in some cases, returning to see the film on IMAX screens. Whether there'll be enough returns to put The Dark Knight in all-time box-office territory remains to be seen. But Hollywood appears to have its box-office superhero for 2008.
The Dark Knight's unprecedented box-office might is "mind-boggling for us," says Dan Fellman, president of domestic distribution for Warner Bros. Pictures. (TIME and Warner Bros. are both subsidiaries of Time Warner.) The film benefited from a unique mix of factors beyond the usual superhero movie hype, including a buzzed-about performance by the late Heath Ledger as the Joker, perfectly pitched marketing, agile distribution and gas prices that have made a night at the movies an attractive alternative to a summer road trip. It also helps that The Dark Knight, as most critics and audiences attest, is a very good film.
As early as last summer, months before Ledger's sudden death in January, Warner Bros. sensed that Nolan was filming something that might transcend mere fanboy fodder. With Batman Begins, in 2005, the director successfully rebooted the troubled franchise, but this time around his decision to go darker — and The Dark Knight is as mordant a superhero movie as there has ever been — dovetailed with the popular mood. "We saw the dailies coming in and we knew we had an incredible movie," says Fellman. Though Christian Bale's Batman is The Dark Knight's star, it was Ledger's knife-wielding anarchist around whom the studio built an early viral marketing campaign, featuring the villain prominently in posters, trailers and on the web site WhySoSerious.com.
After Ledger's death, curiosity about his performance — not always driven by the best of impulses — only grew. "It added to a certain mystique about the film," says Steve Mason, box-office analyst at FantasyMoguls.com. While Warner Bros. was anxious about appearing to capitalize on interest in Ledger's death as The Dark Knight's release date approached, it resumed showcasing Ledger in trailers. "The performance is so good, had they not highlighted it, it would have been a mistake," says Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office analysis firm Media By Numbers. In the end, Fellman says, "[Ledger] certainly is part of our great success."
In the weeks before opening, Bat-ticipation was ratcheted so high that Dark Knight screenings were selling out online as fast as theaters could add them. The AMC South Barrington in Chicago planned to show the movie on six screens and ended up ordering more prints in order to play it on 18. A planned Friday midnight showing at Hollywood's Cinerama Dome sold out so quickly, its adjoining theater, the ArcLight, added 13 midnight screenings. Those midnight shows broke another record, earning $18.5 million, to beat out Star Wars, Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith's 2005 record of $16.9 million. And those numbers don't include the hardy fans who stayed up for the 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. shows. Tickets to see the film on giant IMAX screens, which accounted for a record $6 million of the weekend's gross, also went fast, inspiring some ticket-holders to scalp them on eBay for as much as $80 a pop.
When it came to breaking box-office records, Batman wasn't flying solo. Universal's Mamma Mia! earned $27.6 million to snare the best opening for a musical, narrowly beating out last summer's Hairspray and helping propel the record weekend sales across the industry.
As for The Dark Knight, its future looks bright. Most blockbusters are built on first-weekend hype that quickly falls off as new films arrive in theaters, but audiences are spreading good word of mouth and, in some cases, returning to see the film on IMAX screens. Whether there'll be enough returns to put The Dark Knight in all-time box-office territory remains to be seen. But Hollywood appears to have its box-office superhero for 2008.
Thursday, 17 July 2008
3D Animation in a nutshell: by Morph
If you have wandered onto this post, you probably have a general understanding of what 3D Animation is. It's difficult not to watch a movie that hasn't used 3D Animation in one way or another to produce stunning visual effects and highly engaging characters. You need only look at movies like King Kong and Transformers: The Movie to realize how far 3D Animation has progressed in such a short time. Knowing that, the objective of this post is to either reaffirm what you already know or have you questioning what you thought you knew about 3D Animation and it's ever developing industry.
Simply put, 3D Animation is just animation within a 3D environment. The length to which 3D Animation is used within that environment depends largely on what is required. As a not-so-newbie newbie to the 3D Animation industry, I have learnt a great deal of things about what I thought I knew about 3D Animation. First off, the field of 3D Animation covers a broad range of lesser fields, the main ones consisting of modeling, texturing, rigging, animation, dynamic simulation, scripting and rendering. Each field in itself deserves its own moment in the spotlight so I will keep this post on the topic of 3D Animation in a Nutshell and will talk about these fields in larger detail in later posts.
Because 3D Animation is so expansive and dynamic a field as technology makes it easier for artists to visualize their work, it's easy to become lost within the many lesser fields within itself. Luckily, most 3D Animation enthusiasts do not possess the ability to perfect all fields. For example, someone who is good at modeling and texturing, may not be as good at scripting and rigging. Likewise, a person who is capable at animation may not have lighting and rendering as a strength. Does this mean 3D Animation is too impossible a field to create a career out of? You could not be further from the truth concerning 3D Animation. Because it is always developing, 3D Animation has the benefit of enjoying growing appeal from more and more 3D Animation enthusiasts than ever before. With modelers turning into lighting TD's and animators becoming proficient at dynamics simulation and rigging, there are more than enough opportunities to learn and grow in the 3D Animation industry.
And that, my fellow readers, is the challenge of learning 3D Animation. With so many avenues to pursue and so many places to stop and learn new tools and skill sets, we are given the awesome opportunity to become whatever we want. In reality, this is the way a MMORPG should be played. A kid uses 40+ hours on his computer playing an online game that lets him level-up his character a few levels on a bad week, signing off at the end with nothing more to show for it than a few game props and typing cramp. I on the other hand, can invest 40+ hours of my time modeling a character that'll put that kid's avatar to shame. 3D Animation provides the applications and means for me to create a character as realistic as technologically possible. Thanks to 3D Animation, I might also choose to design props, be they weapons or vehicles which will have you wincing in pain or whining in jealousy. If I so choose, 3D Animation makes it possible for me to create an environment for my character that could hold it's own against that of the Crysis or Unreal in-game environments. I could also make a short animation for my character within this environment, all thanks to 3D Animation.
Now sure, a kid might still enjoy playing a game that contains all of these things and more, but heck, why would I waste my time in a game created by someone else, controlled by their own rules and regulated by their own standards when I have the ability to develop my own. Need I say more..? I hope not but just in case, doing this as well as so much more is all possible because of 3D Animation.
Simply put, 3D Animation is just animation within a 3D environment. The length to which 3D Animation is used within that environment depends largely on what is required. As a not-so-newbie newbie to the 3D Animation industry, I have learnt a great deal of things about what I thought I knew about 3D Animation. First off, the field of 3D Animation covers a broad range of lesser fields, the main ones consisting of modeling, texturing, rigging, animation, dynamic simulation, scripting and rendering. Each field in itself deserves its own moment in the spotlight so I will keep this post on the topic of 3D Animation in a Nutshell and will talk about these fields in larger detail in later posts.
Because 3D Animation is so expansive and dynamic a field as technology makes it easier for artists to visualize their work, it's easy to become lost within the many lesser fields within itself. Luckily, most 3D Animation enthusiasts do not possess the ability to perfect all fields. For example, someone who is good at modeling and texturing, may not be as good at scripting and rigging. Likewise, a person who is capable at animation may not have lighting and rendering as a strength. Does this mean 3D Animation is too impossible a field to create a career out of? You could not be further from the truth concerning 3D Animation. Because it is always developing, 3D Animation has the benefit of enjoying growing appeal from more and more 3D Animation enthusiasts than ever before. With modelers turning into lighting TD's and animators becoming proficient at dynamics simulation and rigging, there are more than enough opportunities to learn and grow in the 3D Animation industry.
And that, my fellow readers, is the challenge of learning 3D Animation. With so many avenues to pursue and so many places to stop and learn new tools and skill sets, we are given the awesome opportunity to become whatever we want. In reality, this is the way a MMORPG should be played. A kid uses 40+ hours on his computer playing an online game that lets him level-up his character a few levels on a bad week, signing off at the end with nothing more to show for it than a few game props and typing cramp. I on the other hand, can invest 40+ hours of my time modeling a character that'll put that kid's avatar to shame. 3D Animation provides the applications and means for me to create a character as realistic as technologically possible. Thanks to 3D Animation, I might also choose to design props, be they weapons or vehicles which will have you wincing in pain or whining in jealousy. If I so choose, 3D Animation makes it possible for me to create an environment for my character that could hold it's own against that of the Crysis or Unreal in-game environments. I could also make a short animation for my character within this environment, all thanks to 3D Animation.
Now sure, a kid might still enjoy playing a game that contains all of these things and more, but heck, why would I waste my time in a game created by someone else, controlled by their own rules and regulated by their own standards when I have the ability to develop my own. Need I say more..? I hope not but just in case, doing this as well as so much more is all possible because of 3D Animation.
Wednesday, 16 July 2008
Download Kung Fu Panda Full Movie Legally Online!
Do people really download full movies online? The answer is yes! As we are speaking, there are millions of people downloading all the newest DVD and theatre releases such as Kung Fu Panda movie. The internet is a powerful tool. Instead of driving to the movie theatres, spending $10 on a ticket, $6 on popcorn, and sitting next to pesky kids, you can enjoy watching any movie in the comfort of your own home. People are always wondering which path to take when downloading full movies online. There is a bad path and a good path.
Let's start with the bad path. Many sites offer "full movie downloads" which are essentially just people taking their video camera to theaters and taping the screen. I have come across a couple of sites that have Kung Fu Panda movie. The video and audio are both very bad quality. On top of that, they are usually broken into parts. Another annoyance is the occasional subtitles in every other language popping up onto the screen. These sites are also flooded with internet users' worse nightmare- spy ware and viruses. The most important disadvantage is that these are ILLEGAL downloads. I personally cannot find the energy to sit through these versions of movies. They are impossible to follow and you are stuck watching them on your small computer screen instead of on your big TV.
Now here is the better path that majority of online users take. Now I know people don't like to spend money when other options are free. But I am here to tell you that the advantages of this path greatly outweigh the free advantage of other strategies. The answer is membership sites. Over the past year, I have tried out about ten different membership sites. All of them were good and well worth my money. Some were better than others however. The advantages of movie download membership sites are endless. Certain ones already have Kung Fu Panda movie for download. The key is to find a membership site that offers unlimited downloads for life for one small price as opposed to sites that you have to pay per each movie.
There are endless advantages:
* - 100% legal and safe * - saves time, money, and they are very convenient * - life time access to millions of unlimited movies * - all new DVD and theatre releases are available * - all movies are PERFECT quality; there are no low quality, bootleg versions * - VERY fast download rates - usually takes less than 5 minutes * - you can burn movies straight to DVD no problem * - tons of bonuses: ant-spy ware programs, DVD copying programs, and unlimited technical support * - most sites off unlimited music and TV-shows
I have done the work for you. I have tested out plenty of sites and I will lead you in right direction. If you are ready to download Kung Fu Panda movie legally in perfect quality online as well as all the new theatre releases such as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull, Iron Man, and Hancock, please visit All Movie Downloads for more information.
Let's start with the bad path. Many sites offer "full movie downloads" which are essentially just people taking their video camera to theaters and taping the screen. I have come across a couple of sites that have Kung Fu Panda movie. The video and audio are both very bad quality. On top of that, they are usually broken into parts. Another annoyance is the occasional subtitles in every other language popping up onto the screen. These sites are also flooded with internet users' worse nightmare- spy ware and viruses. The most important disadvantage is that these are ILLEGAL downloads. I personally cannot find the energy to sit through these versions of movies. They are impossible to follow and you are stuck watching them on your small computer screen instead of on your big TV.
Now here is the better path that majority of online users take. Now I know people don't like to spend money when other options are free. But I am here to tell you that the advantages of this path greatly outweigh the free advantage of other strategies. The answer is membership sites. Over the past year, I have tried out about ten different membership sites. All of them were good and well worth my money. Some were better than others however. The advantages of movie download membership sites are endless. Certain ones already have Kung Fu Panda movie for download. The key is to find a membership site that offers unlimited downloads for life for one small price as opposed to sites that you have to pay per each movie.
There are endless advantages:
* - 100% legal and safe * - saves time, money, and they are very convenient * - life time access to millions of unlimited movies * - all new DVD and theatre releases are available * - all movies are PERFECT quality; there are no low quality, bootleg versions * - VERY fast download rates - usually takes less than 5 minutes * - you can burn movies straight to DVD no problem * - tons of bonuses: ant-spy ware programs, DVD copying programs, and unlimited technical support * - most sites off unlimited music and TV-shows
I have done the work for you. I have tested out plenty of sites and I will lead you in right direction. If you are ready to download Kung Fu Panda movie legally in perfect quality online as well as all the new theatre releases such as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull, Iron Man, and Hancock, please visit All Movie Downloads for more information.
Satellite TV For PC - Stop The Insanity
Have you ever found yourself in this situation? There you are in your comfy living room, beers on ice in the Styrofoam cooler, chips and dip and hot dogs ready to go, and all the guys coming over to watch the big game, and boom, just as kickoff is scheduled to go, the screen turns to static? We have all been there, whether it was the big game we missed or the season premiere of our favorite TV series, the cable company has let us down.
It is always times like those that we begin to wonder why on earth we pay the darn cable company a hundred bucks every month, right? Well, there is an answer to those recurring monthly fees. It is time to get satellite TV for your PC or laptop. For just an initial fee, sometimes as low as about fifty buck, you can get thousands of channels of satellite TV for your PC today.
You don't need to run out to Best Buy to get all kinds of gizmos, either. Even if you are not exactly the most technology savvy person in the world, you can make satellite TV for PCs and laptops a reality just by downloading it to your computer. Forget about those ugly dishes in your backyard and the cable that is always going out at the worst time; consider getting your hands on the one hundred percent legal satellite TV for PC software today.
Whether you are using one of the older versions of Windows or XP or even Vista, the satellite TV for PC program will work; there is no need to upgrade your operating system or go get some ugly black box. With just your Internet access and your computer, you can watch soccer games from Venezuela, Mass from Vatican City, the Miss Brazil beauty pageant, educational channels from all over the world or your own hometown, the best and latest movies that you have always been paying extra for, or just about anything else you can think of. The time to trade in that monthly bill for a satellite TV for your PC program is now.
It is always times like those that we begin to wonder why on earth we pay the darn cable company a hundred bucks every month, right? Well, there is an answer to those recurring monthly fees. It is time to get satellite TV for your PC or laptop. For just an initial fee, sometimes as low as about fifty buck, you can get thousands of channels of satellite TV for your PC today.
You don't need to run out to Best Buy to get all kinds of gizmos, either. Even if you are not exactly the most technology savvy person in the world, you can make satellite TV for PCs and laptops a reality just by downloading it to your computer. Forget about those ugly dishes in your backyard and the cable that is always going out at the worst time; consider getting your hands on the one hundred percent legal satellite TV for PC software today.
Whether you are using one of the older versions of Windows or XP or even Vista, the satellite TV for PC program will work; there is no need to upgrade your operating system or go get some ugly black box. With just your Internet access and your computer, you can watch soccer games from Venezuela, Mass from Vatican City, the Miss Brazil beauty pageant, educational channels from all over the world or your own hometown, the best and latest movies that you have always been paying extra for, or just about anything else you can think of. The time to trade in that monthly bill for a satellite TV for your PC program is now.
The Box Office: Hollywood's Gage for Movie Quality?
Why Bother With the Box Office?
Every once in a while I read the box office stats. Why? To see if any movie has come close to topping Star Wars as the highest grossing movie off all time. My trust in the box office was firm adn secure until 1997 when Titanic blew everything away and became (and still is) the highest grossing box office movie of all time. What did this mean? Was my world shattered because Star Wars was defeated according to Box Office Mojo? Hardly. All it meant was that people went in huge numbers to see Leonardo DiCaprio while Star Wars continues to be the greatest cinematic experience of all time. The box office make no judgement on movies, it just tells us which movies people are going to see. But it does affect what people see. That's the catch. If a movie has a high gross at the box office people will perceive it as being good and more will go and see the movie. There are plenty of examples where this is true. the opening weekend for Spiderman 3 was huge and people continued to go see it. The film had more of a run than it should have had because the box office (although not a person) compelled people to go see it. "It must be good because it's a blockbuster!" people would say. Sadly, the movie was poor and if the box office had accurately reflected the picture's quality, the franchise would be in trouble. But the people came, so another movie is sure to follow
What Can We Really Learn from the Box Office?
Movies and the Hollywood industry continue to fascinate us (mostly North Americans but people around the world are being sucked into it's vortex) and the box office is a fun way to track what trends in film are popular. So you can see how reading the box office gross numbers could benefit enyone related to the film industry. Writers, merchandisers, set designers, for example, should keep a close eye on the box office and see what types of movies are doing well at present and what have done well in the past. So the box office can be a valuable research tool for people interested in gaging popular viewing opinions.
The website below contains more articles to help you learn a bit more about the box office. If you love movies new or old, it's always fun to go through the box office stats and see just how much money was spent at the movie theater. Sometimes it's reassuring that good movies are being seen by lots of people. Sometimes you'll be left scratching your head and wondering, "Why'd they go see that?"
http://www.boxofficefacts.com
Every once in a while I read the box office stats. Why? To see if any movie has come close to topping Star Wars as the highest grossing movie off all time. My trust in the box office was firm adn secure until 1997 when Titanic blew everything away and became (and still is) the highest grossing box office movie of all time. What did this mean? Was my world shattered because Star Wars was defeated according to Box Office Mojo? Hardly. All it meant was that people went in huge numbers to see Leonardo DiCaprio while Star Wars continues to be the greatest cinematic experience of all time. The box office make no judgement on movies, it just tells us which movies people are going to see. But it does affect what people see. That's the catch. If a movie has a high gross at the box office people will perceive it as being good and more will go and see the movie. There are plenty of examples where this is true. the opening weekend for Spiderman 3 was huge and people continued to go see it. The film had more of a run than it should have had because the box office (although not a person) compelled people to go see it. "It must be good because it's a blockbuster!" people would say. Sadly, the movie was poor and if the box office had accurately reflected the picture's quality, the franchise would be in trouble. But the people came, so another movie is sure to follow
What Can We Really Learn from the Box Office?
Movies and the Hollywood industry continue to fascinate us (mostly North Americans but people around the world are being sucked into it's vortex) and the box office is a fun way to track what trends in film are popular. So you can see how reading the box office gross numbers could benefit enyone related to the film industry. Writers, merchandisers, set designers, for example, should keep a close eye on the box office and see what types of movies are doing well at present and what have done well in the past. So the box office can be a valuable research tool for people interested in gaging popular viewing opinions.
The website below contains more articles to help you learn a bit more about the box office. If you love movies new or old, it's always fun to go through the box office stats and see just how much money was spent at the movie theater. Sometimes it's reassuring that good movies are being seen by lots of people. Sometimes you'll be left scratching your head and wondering, "Why'd they go see that?"
http://www.boxofficefacts.com
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