Mainstream, but not too mainstream

I often beat myself up over the fact that I don't always get as far outside the mainstream as I like in terms of the movies I watch. Oh, I'm aware of and see my share of foreign, independent and just plain weird titles. But a film snob would probably scoff at the overall commonness of what I watch.

So it was pleasing the other day when I was looking at the "2011 in film" entry on wikipedia, and noticed that I had seen only one of the top ten grossing films so far this year.

(I saw a second -- Transformers: Dark of the Moon -- last night, so I figured I better write this post before I get any further down that inevitable road.)

That's right, only the highest grossing film of the year -- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 -- had crossed my eyeballs before last night.

And that's out of nearly 80 films from 2011 that I've already seen.

Here's how the whole list stands, with the worldwide grosses listed afterward. (I usually have a local bias and consider grosses domestically, but wikipedia is more fair and lists the grosses worldwide, so I will go with that system for today.)

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 - $1,328,111,219
2. Transformers: Dark of the Moon - $1,123,196,189
3. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - $1,043,871,802
4. Kung Fu Panda 2 - $663,024,542
5. Fast Five - $626,137,675
6. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 - $596,383,267
7. The Hangover Part II - $581,464,305
8. The Smurfs - $562,044,359
9. Cars 2 - $551,846,625
10. Rio - $484,635,760

I assume I'll end up watching maybe half of these before I close my 2011 rankings in late January, and most of the rest over the next couple years. (Not sure if I'll ever get that far in the Twilight series -- we'll have to see.) But those I do watch between now and January, I'll be watching more to be completist than anything else -- more to be sure I've seen a truly representative sample of the films that came out in 2011, for ranking purposes. The others will make good candidates to watch with my son when he gets old enough. (I'm stockpiling animated movies I haven't seen now, so I'll have plenty later.)

And I take some pride in the fact that only one of these is a movie I went to see in the theater. I'm not such a sheep after all, am I?

However, the reverse conclusion is also somewhat discouraging. It means that a lot of other people saw a lot of movies in the theater that I, as a general film fan and critic, did not deem worthy of my theatrical dollars. Which, if you trust my judgment at all and extend this line of thinking outward, means that popular films are getting worse and worse in quality. Or simply that people are demanding less and less of them.

Well, for today I'll just dwell on the positive. I'm selective in what I expose my eyes to.

At least until I inevitably see the fourth Pirates and the fifth Fast and the Furious.

A loose interpretation of Wednesday

I got an email yesterday from movietickets.com telling me to "be among the first to be transformed."

(I may actually be transformed, but I refuse to be "among the first.")

The email was to tell me that "midnight comes early" at AMC theaters, which are showing Transformers: Dark of the Moon tonight at 9 p.m.

It's become common for theaters to show midnight showings of new releases, even the ones that aren't that big a deal. In fact, I remember when the last Twilight movie came out, there were showings at some theaters starting every five minutes from midnight to 1 a.m. After that I think they did the decent thing and told everyone else to wait until the matinee showing later that afternoon. Though it's not unprecedented for movies to screen throughout the night, which is I think what happened when The Phantom Menace came out 12 years ago.

But the one governing rule used to be that you at least had to wait until the clock struck midnight to start showing the movie, so it was technically the correct release date. Well, not anymore. AMC theaters -- at least in Los Angeles but probably elsewhere -- is getting a three-hour head start on the movie's official June 29th release date. Anticipating the huge rush of fanboys who care a huge amount about the scintillating mythology of Michael Bay's mechanical monstrosities? (Note the sarcasm.)

The whole thing reminds me a little bit of the increasingly earlier opening times for retail stores on Black Friday. Back in the day, businesses trying to sell Christmas presents on the day after Thanksgiving used to wow us by opening their doors at 7 a.m., a good two hours before they normally would. Then it became 6 a.m. Then 5 a.m. Then 4 a.m. And then at that point they may have just skipped the really wee hours and jumped all the way back to midnight.

The Wednesday release date is already a head start on Friday, and the midnight show is already a head start on the Wednesday matinee. Now a 9 p.m. show? For Transformers 4, someone will have to push the envelope further and start the show at 8 p.m. (Though it occurs to me that perhaps the 9 p.m. time was chosen because it's technically midnight on the East Coast, though that logic is flimsy at best.) The really funny thing is that the June 29th release date itself seems to be a recent phenomenon, as I couldn't find a single poster on google images that displayed the June 29th release date. The one here, and all others, listed it as July 1st.

Sigh ... yeah, I might be seeing this movie. In the theater. In IMAX. I know, I know.

A friend of mine, with whom I saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (also in IMAX), recently treated me to a night at the Hollywood Bowl. My friends and I don't usually treat each other to such extravagant outings, but this was an exception -- when he invited me, I told him I had the interest in going to Star Wars in Concert, but not the money. I thought that would be the end of the discussion, but he called my bluff and offered to pay for my ticket. So I accepted, thinking I'd pay him for at least half of it. When he refused my money, telling me instead I could treat the next time we went to the movies, I hatched the plan to see the third Transformers with him in IMAX -- IMAX being closer in price (if only by a few bucks) to the Hollywood Bowl ticket than a regular movie.

At a recent birthday drinks, however, he hedged, negating that part of him that didn't care about the mass hatred of Michael Bay and just wanted to witness a spectacle. So we may see something different. (Rise of the Planet of the Apes, perhaps.)

You'd think I'd breathe a sigh of relief, that I didn't have to sit through the third Michael Bay suckfest in the theater, but what can I say. They've done a pretty good job with this trailer, and I was secretly happy to have an excuse to see this movie based on the obligation to repay my friend's favor -- which saved me the embarrassment of having to actually choose to see the movie of my own free will.

We'll see what happens. At least I know that I will not be among the first, and certainly not on the day before the movie is actually released.

Sound the alarm

At a certain point, a phenomenon becomes so widespread that you just have to comment on it on your blog.

When I saw the trailer for Rise of the Planet of the Apes yesterday, that moment arrived.

The phenomenon I'm speaking of is the use of the "biohazard alarm" in trailers for action/effects blockbusters. And there's a reason it's getting used all the time -- it's damn effective. If you weren't already psyched for the movie, the biohazard alarm triggers an immediate sense of the movie's prospective awesomeness.

If you don't know what I'm talking about when I refer to the "biohazard alarm," watch this trailer and you should immediately get it. You won't need me to tell you this, but the sound I'm talking about kicks in at 1:15.



Where else have I seen it? How about here:



Or here:



And here as well. (It's at 1:02, since this one is a bit longer.)



And I'm sure there were others. These were just the ones I could think of off the top of my head. I think I also heard it in ... yep, I think I heard it in the Something Borrowed trailer as well. The biohazard alarm is officially everywhere.

Ordinarily, my stance on any technique that gets used repeatedly in cinema would be to chastise it, to accuse those people who repeatedly use it of laziness. But not here. See, the biohazard alarm never wears out its welcome. It never ceases to be chilling. As far as noises are concerned, it's the be-all, end-all indication that shit is already beyond fucked up.

And because it's not exactly the same biohazard alarm every time, it's newly arresting every time. Sometimes it's more like the game show buzzer they used in Family Feud (Apes), but sometimes it's more of a whooping sound, like a fire alarm (Transformers). But in all instances, the biohazard alarm is recognizable as such because its eerie sounds come at the same interval, and are about the same length. And in all instances it's used for the same purpose: Get out now. "EMERGENCY. EMERGENCY. CONDITION NO LONGER NORMAL."

And in all instances elicits this response from the viewer: "Ho-lee shit."

Mission more than accomplished.

And I can say it was certainly accomplished in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. When I first heard there was going to be another Planet of the Apes movie this summer, I thought "Really? They're resuscitating that franchise again?" But having seen the trailer, I've entirely changed my tune. Not only am I digging the CG apes, but they're totally badass and have major destruction on their minds. Since we know what happens later on in this chronology, we know that these apes will stop at nothing until they've vanquished the human race. Sign me up.

And yeah, I think it may have been just about 1:15 into that trailer when my mind shifted from "Maybe ..." to "YES!!"

Bring on the contamination. Bring on the hurt.

I'm ready. Sound the alarm.

A trio of thefts

In terms of reveals of sequel titles, the biggest recent news out of Hollywood was the name of the third Batman movie, due out in July of 2012: The Dark Knight Rises. For those who didn't like the similarity of that title to 2008's The Dark Knight, use the Indiana Jones movies as your reference point. The first movie had its own kind of title (Raiders of the Lost Ark), then a different naming convention took over and continued to rule (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). (And let's ignore the fact that some people have tried to go back and retroactively rename Raiders so it fits the formula: Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.)

Anyway, before I get lost in one of my famous tangents ... my own biggest recent sequel title news, in terms of giving me a blog topic, was yesterday, when I learned about the title of the new Transformers movie:

Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

Really?

I laughed, just as I had laughed over titles like The Phantom Menace and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It sounds a bit goth, doesn't it?

When I watch Transformers movies, I don't pay much attention to their mythology. For example, even though I watched (and liked) Transformers, I had no idea who "the fallen" were supposed to be when Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen came out last year. So Dark of the Moon could really mean something within the context of this mythology that I don't pay attention to.

However, to me it just sounds like an attempt to borrow the name recognition of a number of other successful properties. Not that the Transformers franchise should need that, but it seems that way all the same.

First and most obviously, there's Pink Floyd's seminal album Dark Side of the Moon. I didn't find any poster images that have been made public for the actual Transformers movie (which is due out next summer), but I did find several pieces of artwork made by fans and satirists to poke fun at the title's similarity to Pink Floyd's album. One of those is the one you see above.

But then there's also a seemingly intentional shout-out to another popular recent usage of the word "moon": Twilight: New Moon. (Or The Twilight Saga: New Moon, or however you're supposed to write it.) Should we expect to see robots who transform into vampires and werewolves in the new movie?

And finally, to bring us full circle in this discussion, the word "dark" gives us that Dark Knight feeling we all know and love. And The Dark Knight was the third highest grossing film of all time in the U.S., at $533 million.

Of course, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is 11th on that list. So Michael Bay's formidably craptastic series really doesn't need the help.