Craig's MovieBlog

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• I don't love Noah's writing, but his Summer Movie Preview is pretty complete, if nothing else.  I find myself looking forward to Iron Man, Speed Racer, Indiana Jones, Get Smart (why open this on the same day as another huge comedy, The Love Guru?), Wall-E, Wanted, Hancock (could be Will Smith's first misfire in some time), The Dark Knight, Step Brothers, The X-Files sequel, Choke, Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, The International, Towelhead, Hamlet 2, and finally, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (no, not really).
• David Poland handicaps and predicts the box office of the summer hits.  If Hancock hits $250 million, I'll be stunned.  Also, I think he's underestimating the geek quotient on Wanted.  I mean, if 300 can hit a massive opening weekend, then don't you think Wanted will gross more than $62 million all up?  Finally, if Sex and the City only makes $60 million, someone's getting fired at New Line Cinema.  Oh, wait - nevermind.  See David's full box office chart here.
• Dilbert author Scott Adams hated No Country for Old Men and proposes a new system for reviewing movies.
• The first full-length movie has been launched on YouTube, and the creators have an interesting business model behind it.  And by interesting, I mean "no way in hell will this work."
• David Poland again, talking about the Juno Blu-ray DVD.  It comes with a "bonus digital copy" that you can put on your iPod, PC, etc, etc.  This is brilliant, and I'd love to see every DVD come with this.  I mean, if I buy the DVD, and I want to put it on a different platform - can the studios save me some frustration and do the extra work for me?  I don't want to go find special ripping software, potentially breaking several laws... I want to put 17 Curious George episodes on my laptop or iPod for the airplane trip with my kids, but there's no convenient way to do this today.

The Most Overpaid Celebrities

Forbes Magazine just posted an article where they mathematically determined a way to figure out which celebrities really were the most overpaid.  It's super interesting, but they forgot to stick the landing.

Most magazines just print salaries and back end deals, which makes us say things like "Holy Crap!  Tom Hanks got 170 bajillion dollars for The Da Vinci Code?  That movie was so boring!"  There's no context, no taking into account how much the movie made overall, etc.

Forbes, however, did something much more interesting.  They derived a formula to figure out how much a movie made for every dollar that was spent on a star's salary.  They looked at the last three films from "the biggest stars in the industry," added up their worldwide box office plus DVD revenue, and subtracted out the budgets (which includes star salaries).  This number was called the "net revenue."  I did wonder where they got their data for budgets (especially marketing), but I ignored that ambiguity for the time being.

Then Forbes divided that "net revenue" by the stars' salaries.  That gave them information such as, "for every dollar spent on Nicole Kidman's salary, her movies return just $8 on average to the studios" or "Angelina Jolie (who makes less than Kidman) gives her studios $15 back on average for her last three films.

I found this to be a fantastic way to derive star value, because it naturally lessens the impact of low budget or independent films, which pay their stars less, have smaller budgets, and (in a sane world) lower box office expectations.  When most people just average the box office take of a star's filmography, it never takes those differences into account.

So, why did I say that they dropped the ball?  It's because THEY DIDN'T PUBLISH THE FREAKING LIST!

Sure, they call out Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman as stars that aren't worth their salary, and they have this annoying picture gallery that makes me click through pages (and up their eyeball count for advertisers) which lists more people (Will Ferrell, Tom Cruise, Will Smith, etc.) but they don't show their work.  Who are the worst 20?  More interestingly, who are the top 20?  Who brings in the audiences, but commands a low paycheck?

Maybe it's in the printed version of the magazine, but I can't tell you how disappointed I was to not be able to see the whole list.

Random Bunch o' Links

Really?  There's a market for two films about Che Guevara?  Really?  I love Steven Soderbergh, but how much money did The Motorcycle Diaries make again?  Who makes these decisions?  Because I bet I can do their job for a much smaller salary.

The Wachowski brothers are finally directing again after The Matrix Trilogy, and it's Speed Racer.  These guys are going to make a "family friendly" film, after Bound, The Matrix, and V for Vendetta?  The mind boggles...

Will Smith comes into his own, according to Kris Tapley and David Poland.  I've got to say, when I think about my days as a junket whore (I was young, I needed the money), the best five minutes I spent was interviewing Will Smith.  The passion, energy, and humor that he exudes is a rare quality.

Finally, NPR's Kim Masters does a good job talking about why she thinks Borat isn't the next Snakes on a Plane, but I'll throw some other data at you: 

1) 72% of this week's Fandango tickets were for Borat.  Second place was Santa Clause 3 with 9%.  Yep - 8 times as many people bought tickets for Borat.

2) Rotten Tomatoes.com gives Borat a 95% approval rating from the critics.  Something tells me this film might be good.  Snakes on a Plane... 69%.  That would make Borat the 8th best reviewed film of the year.

Oh, and if you're offended by Borat's humor, you should definitely make your voice heard at this site.