Through one of the smartest film promotions I’ve seen in awhile, Disney has already sold 500,000 advance tickets to its little nature doc-for-kids, Earth, by promising to plant a tree for each audience member who pays to see the film during its first week (starting tomorrow and ending Tuesday, April 28). Never mind that all those people could just plant a tree themselves, and that families may ultimately be disappointed to find the movie is less focused than the ads would have them believe (the “three animal families” narrative is often abandoned for a broader look at the planet’s ecosystems) –– the fact that Disney managed to come up with such a successful marketing gimmick, and incentive, that has no necessary web-related elements is extremely commendable in these mostly viral-campaign-obsessed times.
Of course, there’s nothing at all wrong with online movie marketing, and it’s worth pointing to another new film opening this week, Obsessed, which has a fun little gimmick utilizing personalizing technology we’ve seen in plenty of prior viral promotional tools. It may not help save the planet, but we actually had more fun making this video, in which we made Ali Larter seem to be obsessed with SpoutBlog editor Karina Longworth, than we did watching Disney’s Earth. Then again, we at least saw the documentary, primarily because of its promotion, yet we probably won’t be seeing the very banal-looking Obsessed.
Ignoring whether or not they were successful, we picked ten other favorite viral gimmicks, many of which were more enjoyable than the movies they promoted: …Read more
When it was announced that David Wain would be directing Role Models — taking over from The Girl Next Door’s Luke Greenfield — there was room for disappointment. After all, for Wain to follow up his anarchic cult favorites Wet Hot American Summerand The Tenwith a seemingly mainstream man-child comedy — one more suited to the talents of Todd Phillips or, well, Greenfield — was to crush his fans’ hopes for something more along the lines of his wacky web series, such as Wainy Days and Stella, or the old MTV sketch comedy show, The State.
But Role Models does look funny, probably because Wain ended up rewriting (with Paul Rudd and Ken Marino) Timothy Dowling’s original script. And it’s not as if Wain has suddenly gone and sold out with a bunch of really broad family films, as did his former State mates Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant, the screenwriting duo behind The Pacifier, Night at the Museumand Taxi. Still, many of us are holding out for that rumored State movie, or even better, a big screen adaptation of any of the following State sketches:
Everyone’s talkingtoday about how, while no one was looking, Step Brothers has somehow made almost $100 million. All this, in spite of middling reviews and an almost complete lack of buzz. And granted, this might have been a real surprise in a different year, but if you take a look at 2008’s overall box office numbers, you see a lot of films that were written off after disappointing first weekends and/or otherwise for some reason have not been touted as “hits”, but which have nonetheless very quietly grossed either just under or just over a million dollars.
The most notable example of this is probably What Happens in Vegas, which has made $80 million in just over three months. Its release never went wider than 3,000 screens, and it never hit number 1, but if you factor in international box office, it’s grossed $200 million––or, about six times its reported production budget. Why is no one is talking about this film, or what it means for the careers of Cameron Diaz or Ashton Kutcher, while 27 Dresses’ $76 million domestic gross, on a very similar budget, is pretty widely considered confirmation that Katherine Heigl has risen to the very selective stratosphere of actresses who can open a movie?
If there’s one thing I relate to on the big screen, it’s the depiction of fraternal relationships. I’m the middle of three brothers (excluding the half-brother I only knew as a toddler and the former stepbrother I only knew briefly as an adult), and at different points in my life I’ve either hated them or considered them my best friends. So, yeah, I can’t wait to see Step Brothers, starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly as new siblings who go from being enemies to BFFs when forced to live together.
Choosing a handful of favorite movies about brotherhood is really tough. After all, tales of brothers go all the way back to almost the beginning, with the story of Cain and Abel. And a number of favorites can’t exactly be discussed, because the revelation of brothers, especially twin brothers, is often the surprise twist in films. So, before you start naming a thousand other films about brothers that I’ve forgotten (such as The Brothers McMullen andLegends of the Fall), keep in mind that I’ve actually left out a whole pile of brother films, and this is more of a personal favorites list.
Coupe de Ville – If there’s one movie that seemed to define my brothers and I growing up, it’s this underrated road movie about three estranged siblings (played by Patrick Dempsey, Arye Gross and Daniel Stern) delivering the titular automobile to their father (Alan Arkin). As kids, my brothers and I couldn’t have been any more different, just like the guys in the movie. For at least half a decade, until he seemed to disappear after he left the sitcom Ellen, Gross was like my cinematic alter ego, just because I felt a kinship with his middle-brother character in Coupe de Ville so much. …Read more
The first half of this week saw a drought as far as new trailers are concerned. But when it rains it pours, and by the end of day Thursday the internet had received a relative monsoon of debuts, including the now-official release of the Sex and the City trailer, which Karina prematurely peeked at last Friday, and another awesome ad for Iron Man.
But the truly noteworthy trailers had to be those for three eagerly anticipated comedies, two of which we are seeing for the first time. First, there’s The Love Guru, which stars Mike Myers as his first originally created comedic character in more than ten years. Unfortunately, it kind of makes me wish he would just keep making Austin Powers movies. Maybe I just don’t get it, and maybe I should just accept that a Myers comedy is less about it and more about him. But it doesn’t look that funny. And I’m a person who can appreciate the making fun of Extreme and the parodying of Bollywood and the ridiculing of little people.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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