kottke.org posts about movies
In the past 5 years, I’ve probably been to a theater an average of once every two weeks to see a movie. Even though it costs a small fortune, I almost always get a soda and popcorn (topped with “butter”[1]) to go with the show. Many of the larger chains offer a deal if you purchase a large popcorn and a large drink together. This “Super Combo” costs a lot less than ordering a L popcorn and a L soda separately from the menu but often it will actually cost you less than a L popcorn/M soda, M popcorn/L soda, or even a M popcorn/M soda (?!??). Why such a steep discount when the theaters make so much of their money on concessions? I’ve developed a few theories over the years but would like to hear your thoughts before sharing them.
[1] The proper way to butter movie popcorn is to fill the bag half full, apply butter, fill the rest of the bag and apply more butter. This results in fairly even application of butter to kernel throughout the bag. Due to a lack of focus on service and an increasing number of theaters moving to DIY butter application, it’s getting more and more difficult to buy a good bag of buttered popcorn at the movies.
Another take on why movie theater revenues are declining. The ads suck, the movies suck, ringing cell phones suck, and you can watch your Netflix at home on your widescreen TV. Again, no mention of piracy.
The New Yorker recently ran a feature on how a couple of mathematicians helped The Met photograph a part of The Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries. That same week, they ran from their extensive archives a 1992 profile of the same mathematicians, brothers David and Gregory Chudnovsky. The Chudnovskys were then engaged in calculating as many digits of pi as they could using a homemade supercomputer housed in their Manhattan apartment. There’s some speculation that director Darren Aronfsky based his 1998 film, Pi, on the Chudnovskys and after reading the above article, there’s little doubt that’s exactly what he did:
They wonder whether the digits contain a hidden rule, an as yet unseen architecture, close to the mind of God. A subtle and fantastic order may appear in the digits of pi way out there somewhere; no one knows. No one has ever proved, for example, that pi does not turn into nothing but nines and zeros, spattered to infinity in some peculiar arrangement. If we were to explore the digits of pi far enough, they might resolve into a breathtaking numerical pattern, as knotty as “The Book of Kells,” and it might mean something. It might be a small but interesting message from God, hidden in the crypt of the circle, awaiting notice by a mathematician.
The Chudnovsky article also reminds me of Contact by Carl Sagan in which pi is prominently featured as well.
According to Wolfram Research’s Mathworld, the current world record for the calculation of digits in pi is 1241100000000 digits, held by Japanese computer scientists Kanada, Ushio and Kuroda. Kanada is named in the article as the Chudnovskys main competitor at the time.
(Oh, and as for patterns hidden in pi, we’ve already found one. It’s called the circle. Just because humans discovered circles first and pi later shouldn’t mean that the latter is derived from the former.)
A list of films ordered by uses of the work fuck. A movie called Nil By Mouth has 470 uses; that’s 3.67 uses per minute.
40 things that only happen in the movies. “All beds have special L-shaped sheets that reach to armpit level on a woman but only up to the waist of the man lying beside her.”
The CollegeHumor guys get a movie deal with Paramount. Casting ideas? Freddie Prinze Jr. as Zach Klein, Jake Gyllenhaal as Ricky Van Veen?
For reasons which are kind of interesting in a weird way (but won’t get into right now[1]), I’ve changed the movie ratings around these parts from a 100-point scale to a 5-star scale.
And as long as we’re talking movies, I’ve gotten several emails over the past few months to the effect of: “you moron, how can you possibly justify giving the same rating to Casablanca as you gave to Barbershop?” The answer is that I’m not a movie critic (my review of Me and You and Everyone We Know didn’t even have anything to do with the actual movie) and my ratings are almost entirely subjective, except when they’re somewhat more objective. The subjective/objective ratio depends on the movie and my mood and which star is in the house of which planet and/or Greek god and hence is not to be trusted at all, unless you’re a regular reader of my “reviews” and have gotten a sense over many months just what makes me like or dislike particular movies. Also, it’s just a stupid rating. You know, for fun. Relax.
[1] Ever wondered why movie ratings assigned by critics are usually on 4 or 5-point scales and not on, say, 100-point scales? Yeah, me neither. But after using the 100-point scale for over a year, I may have discovered part of the reason. 100 is just way too many points[2]. How can there be any tangible difference between a 75 movie and a 76 movie? And when you start looking the whole list of ~220 movies ordered by rank on a 100-point scale, it gets even worse…why are the 15 movies rated 91 better than the 8 movies rated 90? From the standpoint of the rater, thinking about those one or two point differences is a big waste of energy (it gets worse with time as you try to “fit” a particular movie into the ever-lengthening ranked list) and it just confuses the reader anyway.
Also, the stars look nicer[3].
[2] Aggregated ratings (a la Metacritic) are an exception.
[3] I got the star from Zapf Dingbats (the capital H character at 16px). Astute readers will notice the similarity with the iTunes song rating stars, which is not altogether unintentional.
Profile of filmmaker Michael Winterbottom. Winterbottom directed the excellent 24 Hour Party People and the upcoming 9 Songs.
A list of mini golf holes based on movies. “Raiders of the Lost Ark: You must putt the ball precisely into the idol’s head, or a 15-foot-high, 1-ton golf ball comes rolling after you.”
Some film directors’ top ten movies lists. Directors Michael Mann, Sam Mendes, Cameron Crowe, Quentin Tarantino, and others choose their favorite films.
“Lord of the Bings” cherry advertisement in supermarket. “One bing to rule them all” and in the parfait bind them?
Leather master Tom Cruise. “Owning one leather jacket: cool. Owning eleven (and counting) different leather jackets: not so cool.”
Interview with Soso Whaley, director of Mickey D’s and Me, counterpoint to Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me. “Even without seeing [Super Size Me] I could tell from the clips and the description by Spurlock that this was nothing more than junk science masquerading as legitimate scientific discovery.”
AFI’s top 100 movie quotes. Anything missing from the list or something that should be dropped?
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