B.O. Justice…

I greedily scan the box office figures weekly, as a way of seeing if my private predilections get played out in the market place. I giddily quaff my schadenfreude while gloating over the financial comeuppance of some hideous studio bilge. Of course many of the comparisons I make are spurious, because the playing field is hardly ever even, but here are a couple of the items I noted with satisfaction this week:

To date, Garfield has out-grossed Kill Bill2, White Chicks and The Stepford Wives

Disney is shutting down it’s hand drawn animation, but not before Home on the Range out-grossed the noxious Buena Vista released Raising Helen.

In the battle of the self-righteous blowhards, Fahrenheit 911 is way ahead of The Terminal

In the “who has the more valid world view” department The re-release of the original Godzilla is handily beating a snooze inducing Bukowski: Born into This

And to date, Shrek 2 has out-grossed The Passion of the Christ by about 100 million dollars. Yet where are the Time magazine cover stories about America’s return to Ogreism?

0 Comments +

  1. I love ya, but…

    …I’ve decided that the aesthetic methodologies of Quentin Tarentino and Matthew Barney are the same, and equally suspect.

    And Uma Thurman will never be Tilda Swinton, much less Diana Rigg.

  2. Coincidence?

    This isn’t a response to the above post. I noticed that you added me to your LJ friends. Here’s where it gets wierd: I was looking at a photo spread in ArtNet earlier today and saw a photo of you. I did a google search and everything because your name seemed familiar.

    Hope all is going well. Do you have any of the Rabbit drawing from the 90’s floating aroung?

  3. I love ya, but…

    …I’ve decided that the aesthetic methodologies of Quentin Tarentino and Matthew Barney are the same, and equally suspect.

    And Uma Thurman will never be Tilda Swinton, much less Diana Rigg.

  4. It’s all about the hands

    Speaking of aesthetic methodologies (I reach for my gun), you should put in a good word for your NYC readers for Guy Maddin’s Cowards Bend the Knee opening, well, right about now for two weeks at the Film Forum.

    I suspect Guy Maddin himself wrote the plot summary for Cowards at IMDB.com:

    It’s time for hockey! There’s no telling what will happen when the Winnipeg Maroons’ own star player Guy becomes embroiled in the twisted lives of Meta, a vengeful Chinoise, and her hairdresser/abortionist mother Liliom. Innocent Veronica, caught in the middle, is treated to both services! Meanwhile poor, dithering, cowardly Guy can only stand by and watch.

    It plays with two virtually unseen Maddin shorts, Sissy-Boy Slap Party (exactly what it sounds like) and Sombra Dolorosa (an elderly woman has to confront the Grim Reaper in a Mexican wrestling match) and a new Quay Brpothers short.

  5. Looking again I would characterize the movies I’m favoring as “fantastic”, by which I mean that they are direct about their unreality (in fact proud of it) without pretending to naturalism. Also most of they are heavily reliant on animation.
    The exception would be “9/11”, but as Thor will tell you my movie preferences these days fall into two types: elaborately stylized fantasies, or documentaries. Anything in the middle leaves me cold.
    I guess I’m a populist in the same way Charles Ludlum was.

  6. Re: I love ya, but…

    And, IMO, QT is an even more paltry substitute for Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam, etc.

    See the latest ads where the self-aggrandizing git tries to get naïve, KB-loving kids to think he had something to do with the making of Zhang Yimou’s Hero? Shameless.

  7. Re: It’s all about the hands

    Sissy-Boy Slap Party was (perhaps: still is?) available for viewing online from IFC’s site. Bizarre and very silly. But lots of fun.

  8. Looking again I would characterize the movies I’m favoring as “fantastic”, by which I mean that they are direct about their unreality (in fact proud of it) without pretending to naturalism. Also most of they are heavily reliant on animation.
    The exception would be “9/11”, but as Thor will tell you my movie preferences these days fall into two types: elaborately stylized fantasies, or documentaries. Anything in the middle leaves me cold.
    I guess I’m a populist in the same way Charles Ludlum was.

  9. Re: I love ya, but…

    she doesn’t have to be. She’s already Uma. Unlike those ladies (okay, not unlike Tilda, there’s only one of those in all parallel dimensions, she is the Nexus Being), she actually gets mussed, bloody, torn and sore along the trail.

    And what about Elle Driver?

    Now if only Quentin would get busy on resurrecting Sean Young’s career, too.

  10. Nayland, you really should watch this

    Thanks for the reminder, I had come across Dolorosa there but couldn’t find it again when looking for it. IFC doesn’t make it easy — they’re not in their own search index, and they badly misspelled one of the two shorts titles on top of that. But I persevered, so here are the links.

    Sombra Dolorosa:
    http://www.ifcfilms.com/ifcfilms?CAT0=3127&CAT1=5326&SHID=21403&VID=3904&CLR=red&BCLR=&VTYPE=6276

    Sissy-Boy Slap-Party:
    http://www.ifcfilms.com/ifcfilms?CAT0=3127&CAT1=5326&SHID=21403&VID=3903&CLR=red&BCLR=&VTYPE=6270

    Sissy-Boy is singularly one of the funniest and cleverest pieces of film I’ve ever seen. Kenneth Anger meets The Three Stooges, with more than a little Bruce Weber thrown in, and a masterful job of scoring and editing. A perfect accompaniment to Cowards Bend the Knee. As I remarked after we saw The Saddest Music in the World, Guy Maddin makes the films Matthew Barney only wishes he could make.

  11. Re: I love ya, but…

    Say what you will about Tarantino’s films, he’s a huge movie fan, and goes way beyond the call of duty to promote movies and moviemakers he likes. Miramax on the other hand is notorious for buying distribution rights to great Asian films, then never releasing them. They’ve been sitting on Hero for TWO FUCKING YEARS. I’m guessing that Tarantino lobbied Miramax to release it, and Miramax required his name on it as part of the bargain as a way to draw audiences. For the chance to see Hero on the big screen, I can easily live with a little marketing spin.

  12. Let’s hear it for the boy, let’s give the boy a hand!

    Thank you! I was going crazy trying to find Slap Party on the IFC site. (Now I’m having to explain to Jeff why I’m cackling.) In a better world, there would be an Academy Award category just for this.

    (And Saddest Music STILL hasn’t opened here.)

  13. Re: Let’s hear it for the boy, let’s give the boy a hand!

    (And Saddest Music STILL hasn’t opened here.)

    Maybe it’s time MBD curated a film series for its dark periods? How much does it cost to lease a projector, anyhow?

  14. Re: No Slapping!

    Some interesting films playing there. Are you seeing / have you seen any of them? And why does a Candian film about the bear community have a Spanish title?

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