Box Office Blather: Spectacles, Star Vehicles, Subtitles and Easy $

Year in Review Pt 1 of Many
It's time to wrap up 2010. You'll have to have patience since The Film Experience likes to do this piecemeal... and often! Let's do it every day at 10 AM or 10 PM or both when we magically have free time. How about that? We'll start with the US box office.

Box office hits get much coverage in the media so let's just dispense that basic "smash hit" list quick-like and move on to more interesting less covered seat-filler topics. All figures on all lists are up until the December 18th. And please go easy on any errors as I am unskilled at math is not my strong suit.



US Top Dozen

1. Toy Story 3 $415
2. Eyesore in Wonderland $334
3. Iron Man 2 $312
4. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse $300
5. Inception $292
6. The Commercial For Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt 2 $265
7. Despicable Me $250
8. Shrek Forever After $238
9. How to Train Your Dragon $217
10. The Karate Kid $176
11. Clash of the Titans $163
12. Grown-Ups $162

The list proves again - as in every year - that the American moviegoer has an extremely limited palette. There are only four types of films he/she will go to in droves: animated features, sequels/remakes (i.e. "franchises"), action/visual spectacles and broad comedies. It doesn't get more diverse until much further down the list. The only film in the year's top 25 that doesn't fit neatly into one of those four categories is Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island. So well done, Marty. That is a true accomplishment.

Subtitled Features
(I've included worldwide figures too for the sake of provenance)

1. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo [Sweden]  $10 (worldwide: $104)
2. The Girl Who Played With Fire [Sweden]  $7 (worldwide: $66)
3. The Secret in Their Eyes [Argentina]  $6 (worldwide: $33)
4. I Am Love [Italy] $5 (worldwide: $10)
5. The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest [Sweden]  $4 (worldwide: $40)
6. My Name is Khan [India]  $4 (worldwide: $41)
7. A Prophet [France] $2 (worldwide: $17)
8. Dabangg [India] $2 (worldwide: $3)
9. Kites [Miscellania] $1.6 (worldwide: $3)
10. Raajneeti [India] $1.5 (worldwide: $12)
11. MicMacs [France] $1.2 (worldwide: $16)
12. Golmaal 3 [India] $1 (worldwide: $2)

Beyond interest in the Swedish "Millenium" trilogy -- which dropped steadily with each film here and elsewhere in equal percentages -- it was tough going for international fare yet again. It seems like a different world entirely than when we regularly had a couple of substantial breakout hits a year (as recently as the mid Aughts). The only steady market seems to be Bollywood features, which regularly gross about a million with barely any media coverage. Oscar nominees are a far less stable subcategory. Despite more media coverage their grosses tend to be all over the place, ranging anywhere from $10,000 (Peru's Milk of Sorrow) to just over half a million (Israel's Ajami) to the $2 million range (France's A Prophet and 2009 holdover Germany's White Ribbon) to $6 million (the winner, Argentina's The Secret in Their Eyes). In other words it's a bit hard to imagine that the Oscar nomination does all that much more for the films than they could have managed on their own... unless they win. It's tough to quantify so it's aggravating that the studios seem to think that the first quarter is the only time to release the high profile foreign contenders. (It's like how the English language Oscar contenders all have to compete with each other for the same limited seasonal dollars from November through February. It's so weird.)

Next...?
Well, I was going to do a list based purely on original material but the list was so depressing (it was basically original material that could easily be confused for a remake) that I screamed abort! abort! and changed course immediately. Let's try this. Which DRAMAS, i.e. the things audiences mostly only want to see on their TVs now, were hits with moviegoers?

Top 12 Dramas (reality based i.e. no supernatural, genre or primarily action-focused stuff)

1. Shutter Island  $128 [debatable classification - remove it if you will]
2. The Town $92 [an action movie in a sense but mostly a drama]
3. The Social Network $91
4. Eat Pray Love $80
5. Dear John $80
6. The Last Song $62
7. Why Did I Get Married, Too $60
8. Secretariat $58
9. Letters to Juliet $53
10. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps $52
11. For Colored Girls $37
12. The American $35

On this list we see that quality matters far less than having a star in your movie; just don't expect big returns on investment since big stars cost $10+ million. Also: Amanda Seyfried and Tyler Perry are good bets for non-gargantuan but sturdy profits. The Social Network, a film without any action sequence, gooey romance or crime-angle, is a true anomaly. It's only here because it's awesome and topical. But being awesome and topical will only get you to around $90-100. It's interesting that The Social Network's box office is so similar to Brokeback Mountain's, another anomaly that had quality as its chief selling point. (GASP. What a crazy thing to bank on!)

Best Return on Investment???
This list is haphazard / insufficient using only production budgets vs. US distribution returns from box office mojo. In other words it's not so accurate (merchandising, foreign markets, DVD sales and the potential windfall of sequels all contribute to insanely costly movies making a lot of money... eventually. While marketing costs subtract from that profit margin all the while.) But I think the following list is interesting as a very blurry snapshot as to what films are profitable even before you factor in these other things.

1. Paranormal Activity 2 $84 gross = 28 times its budget.
2. The Last Exorcism  $41 gross =22.7 times its budget.
3. Easy A $58 gross  =7.25 times its budget.
4. Jackass 3-D $116 gross = 5.8 times its budget.
5. The Kids Are All Right $20 gross = 5 times its budget.
6. Twilight Saga: Eclipse $300 gross = 4.4 times its budget.
7. The Karate Kid $176 gross = 4.4 times its budget.
8. Diary of a Wimpy Kid $64 gross  = 4.2 times its budget. 
9. Despicable Me $250 gross = 3.6 times its budget. 
10. Dear John $80 gross  = 3.2 times its budget.

Black Swan, budgeted at $13 million may well join this top ten since it's already earned $15 million and it's only just finished its first weekend of wide release and once it wears off its opening week energy, presumably it'll get that Oscar nominee boost to keep it going.

If you include worldwide revenues and franchise potential the numbers would change. How to Train Your Dragon, for example, which cost $165 million to make and grossed $217 million doesn't sound that profitable until you factor in the foreign gross (another $277 million) and the eventual sequels ordered up, which will come into the world market with the most cost efficent marketing tool possible: familiarity. And some movies are far more profitable overseas: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was budgeted at $13 million and has grossed $104 million worldwide, so only 10% of its gross is coming from America. But I was trying to make this as easy on myself as possible hence the US totals.

The year in box office. Crazy numbers. I'd be happy just making a really crappy "per screen average" figure this week. How 'bout you?

Finally..

It would... oh never mind. This post is long enough. What's the last movie you paid to see? Did you get your money's worth?

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Mean Girls

Next Wednesday night is the Season 1 Finale of 'Best Shot". Together we'll look at the 1955 classic Night of the Hunter which --- well, if you've never seen it, you're in for a major film event. It's appropriately creepy for late October, too. Today, something lighter and flirtier.

MEAN GIRLS (2004)

God, she can be SO annoying.

Few movies from the Aughts have proved as delightfully durable as Mean Girls, the Tina Fey scripted Mark Waters directed comedy that introduced us to Queen Bee Regina George (a total "rock star" performance from Rachel McAdams) and her army of skanks, Gretchen (Lacey Chabert), Karen (Amanda Seyfried) and new girl Cady (Lindsay Lohan) -- "I love her. She's like a Martian" -- transferred in from Africa and experiencing the jungles of public education for the first time. On first viewing back in 2004, its debt to Heathers (1988), another comedy about evil life-ruiner hotties, seemed insurmountable in terms of New Classic! reaction. But Mean Girls has, in the past six years, more than proved its own worth and its own identity. In retrospect the two films feel very different in tone and aesthetic personality, with only the subject matter, mean girls, and über quotability to unite them.  In future years, the next great mean girl classic will be compared unfavorably to both of them.

The best filmmaking choice in the movie, aside from the inspired casting, might be the staging of every character intros. The entire principle cast gets fun intros with the best being reserved for the Queen Bee herself who is literally carried into the picture in slo-motion by her male admirers while a Greek chorus of students fills us in on who she is and why we should be in awe of her. It kicks off with the double conscience of the film Janis Ian (Lizzy Caplan) and Damian (Daniel Franzese)

"And evil takes a human form in Regina George. Don't be fooled. She may seem like your typical selfish back-stabbing slut-faced ho-bag but in reality she is so much more than that. She's the Queen Bee. The star. Those other two are just her little workers... "

. To underline her power, Missy Elliott is on the soundtrack also introducing her...

 "hey hey hey ♫ I'm what's happening."

And Rachel McAdams is indeed what's happening in Mean Girls (especially now that we've had to let our love for LiLo's brief sparkliness go).  Every time you watch it, her performance gets better. A lot of actresses can and have done deliciously bitchy but her deliciously bitchy has so many shadings from stickily sweet (is she for real? why do i want to believe this one moment) to casual bored privilege to tossed off power plays to embarrassment at any hint of runner up status to machiavellian rage spiked with tiny flashes of self-loathing (that Burn Book sabotage moment!). She's damn near unimproveable in the picture.

For best shot, I choose a two-part Regina moment...



I love how the camera tracks Regina through the hallway after she's hatched her brilliant revenge plan. She's regained control of her screaming rage we saw in the prior scene and she's just gliding through the hallways, with a neat hint of actressy athleticism. Gone is the sex kitten and in her place is the marathon runner.

The shot functions like a reverse Hansel & Gretel; the witch is leaving a bread crumb trail. In the bookend shot that follows (also pictured) the camera is still moving but the witch isn't. Witness her hungry self-satisfaction while she watches the children gobble up the crumbs. They're already baking in her oven!

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Finally, I have to end with a gymnasium moment because Amanda Seyfried just slays me as Karen Smith "one of the dumbest girls you'll ever meet".



This scene where Gretchen "apologizes" to her classmates -- 'I can't help it that I'm popular' -- always makes me cackle. Particularly because the punchline is so funny. Karen is watching Gretchen blankfaced and just opens up her arms to receive her friend while everyone else steps away. The funny thing about Karen is actually how innocent she seems, like a mean girl by accident of proximity and stupidity.


The "Best Shot" clique is so fetch

• Dean A believes in kissing cousins.
• Sorta That Guy maps it out for you.
• Okinawa Assault wonders what table you sit at?
• Serious Film thinks Daniel is too gay to function
• Pussy Goes Grrr had never seen the movie before!!!
• Antagony & Ecstasy goes to the mall and notices the gap. Not the Gap.
• Movies Kick Ass Whoa. great minds think alike. Jose and I both got caught up in the Wicked Witch of the North (Shore).
• Awkward is What We Aim For survives a three-way call.
• Andrew R appreciates a "cool mom"

 Previously on "Hit Me With Your Best Shot"

• Angels in America (2003), X-Men (2000), Showgirls (1995), Bring It On (2000), Black Narcissus (1946), A Face in the Crowd (1957), Pandora's Box (1929), Se7en (1995), Requiem for a Dream (2000) and La Dolce Vita (1960)

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•  "Let me tell you something about Lindsay Lohan"