What Movies Have You Seen Lately?

Quote: Nareed

Now, "small" movies, that is without massive special effects or even grand-spectacular cinematography(*) might be viewed just as well streaming than in theaters.

Well, there are a host of "small movies" that are making a fortune.


Fifty shades, which you would assume would be a small screen subject makes $570m worldwide on a $40m budget.


Five years ago Melissa McCarthy was a low key supporting actress with many bit parts (mostly in TV) to her credit. Who would have picked her to be one of the most reliable money making movie star today?

And the ultimate in small screen themes: Despicable Me, Despicable Me 2 , Minions only cost $219 million to make and have pulled in $2.3 billion in worldwide box office so far. Plus a small fortune in endorsement and toy sales.

Terminator: Genisys appears to be one of the biggest flops this year, although nowhere near the catastrophe of "Jupiter Ascending".

Quote: Ayecarumba

Note that the big trailer before this film was for the new Star Wars movie coming in December. It is going to be Humongous.

I hear that in this one the good guys will build a bigger Death Star to hunt down and destroy every last copy of the prequels.

Quote: Pacomartin

Well, there are a host of "small movies" that are making a fortune..

If we had streaming in the 70s, many R and X rated movies would have made a killing among pre-teens at the time. I don't think ratings are much enforced at theaters any longer.

Quote: Nareed

... to hunt down and destroy every last copy of the prequels.

Very meta!

Quote: Nareed

When you can have a BIG image and fantastic, high-quality sound in a phone or tablet, then these big-budget, low-IQ movies will suffer in theaters.

Many people still don't have first class viewing theaters in their home, but even when they do sometimes. (Just like you can make an ice cream shake at home) it's still somewhat more diverting to go out to a theater than do everything at home even when you can.

But then again, rowdy, or inconsiderate people can help ruin the experience, and also lately random gunmen it appears.

Quote: rxwine

Many people still don't have first class viewing theaters in their home,

I suffered such a lack at one time. Even then, a half-good theater was much more impressive than TV for the big, epic, visual effects extravaganzas.

As a matter of fact, I recall seeing the original "The Clash of the Titans" in Israel (Jerusalem, I think) at a theater which should have paid people to go in rather than the other way around. It was still a better viewing experience than watching it at home on tape later on.

Quote: Pacomartin

Very meta!

Wasn't that a Rock band formed by students of Classical philosophy? ;)

Actually the first SW prequel is watchable. It's not that bad (provided you fast-forward through the pod race nonsense and about 75% of all that happens on Tatooine), and does a decent job of setting up a Republic in decline, a manipulative villain, a conflicted anti-hero, and even a symbol for the victims to come.

The problem is that it's all mostly build-up and thus the payoff is small. Which would be fine for a first chapter, had the other two movies delivered even a third of what the first movie did.

As is, the first prequel merely serves as an opportunity to mourn it for its wasted potential.

The TV show with the highest all time rating was 1952–1953 second season of I Love Lucy with rating of 67.3. So that number for each year will continue to drop as people have more and more distractions.

Analysts have been predicting the end of movies since color TV became widespread in 1965, But the number of tickets kept climbing up until 2002.

Quote: rxwine

... it's still somewhat more diverting to go out to a theater than do everything at home even when you can.

And no one really expects movies to die. But there are people who keep thinking that ticket sales will head back down to one billion per year in the next five years. Ticket sales were at a 25 year low last year, and the core movie going groups (like teenage boys) were dropping.

DOMESTIC TICKET SALES
1.5757 billion tickets sold in 2002 Spider Man (peak year)
1.2628 billion tickets sold in 1989 Batman
1.2681 billion tickets sold in 2014 American Sniper
1.4 billion tickte? possibility for 2015

China signed an agreement on its current quota system for foreign films (34 film titles per year) with the World Trade Organization in 2012, valid for five years. This means the second round of negotiations will start around Feb. 17, 2017. Studios only receive 25% of the boxoffice from China (the lowest percentage in the world). But by 2017 the movie market will already be huge. With almost 4X the population of the USA and Canada, the Chinese boxoffice will be of principal interest for the big budget films.

Quote: rxwine

Many people still don't have first class viewing theaters in their home, but even when they do sometimes. (Just like you can make an ice cream shake at home) it's still somewhat more diverting to go out to a theater than do everything at home even when you can.

Funny, this reminds me of a story by Asimov called "Dreaming is a Private Thing."

A form of entertainment in the future are "Dreamies." The idea is feeling an imaginary or real experience by someone else, with all senses involved. As I recall, people experience them privately (see the title) at home, one person at a time. The Dreamies are bought or rented in cylinders, if memory serves, much as until recently people did with DVDs and VHS tapes (even something called Beta tapes, according to the fossil record).

Part of the story concerns a company planning to produce "Dream Palaces" where several people at a time can experience the same Dreamy. The owner of a rival company insists it will never work, because "dreaming is a private thing."

So pretty much the reverse of movies.

BTW, that was a common theme in picturing entertainment in the future. Aldous Huxley had something similar in "Brave New World" called, I think, "Feelies." Arthur Clarke had them in a "White Heart" story (I should get that book). More recently, Natalie Wood's last movie was "Project Brainstorm" featuring the same general type of technology.

I saw Terminator Genesis a few days ago.

To set the stage, the movie goes off the alternative reality theory of time travel. However, at the nexus points, where a new reality splits off, which happens when the time machine is used, anybody who traveled in it can remember parts of both timelines if he was involved in multiples ones.

Then it gets confusing as both people, terminators, and a new hybrid, have traveled using it. Don't try to figure it out but just enjoy the movie.

That said, this movie definitely gets an A for special effects and great chases. However, to me, it takes more than that for a great movie. I didn't care for the choice of any of the major actors, especially Sarah Connor, except Arnold (I don't want to look up how to spell his last name). That aside, somehow the whole tone or pacing of the movie didn't hit me right. It seemed like a loose plot to connect a bunch of spectacular fights and chases. However, it wasn't awful either.

On my 0 to 10 scale I give it a 6.