Pro-Gamergate is pro-life

scrib

That doesn't answer the question of whether it's any good. People liked Twilight, for Gord's sake.

Magus

Isn't less than 7/10 'its a bad movie'? With extra space left for true horrors?

FrostCat

Whatever happened with that Movie anyway? Is it good? Did people really like it?

it has an 8% on Rotten Tomatoes, although 50% of users liked it. "Critics Consensus: Poorly scripted and dramatically ineffective, The Host is mostly stale and tedious, with moments of unintentional hilarity."

Average rating 3.6/10. The lifetime gross was $26M US and another $36M foreign. The production budget was $40M.

Jaloopa

@scrib said:

People liked Twilight, for Gord's sake

I got dragged along to Twilight by my then girlfriend, not knowing enough about it to fight harder. There was a middle aged housewife there who was apparently on her fifth viewing. Fucking weirdo

Magus

Ah, another thing less expensive and better than Foodfight. Which covers something like 98% of things (not just movies. ALL things.).

FrostCat

@accalia said:

i didn't dare read that. was it actually decent or is she just a bad writer?

Bad writer, probably. I read some hilarious reviews of the Twilight series talking about how it's thinly-veiled Mormon history/metaphors. My wife liked Twilight enough to read all the books and watch the movies, so I wound up seeing bits of it, and what I saw, like Murray Head says, did not excite me. I would assume based on the stats that The Host was bad, too.

FrostCat

@Magus said:

Which covers something like 98% of things (not just movies. ALL things.).

If you're looking for a low point of comparison, Freddie Got Fingered is my touchstone, so to speak. Or perhaps I shouldn't have used that expression.

At any rate, I will mention again that when I went to see it, the ticket guy asked "why would you want to go see that?" (I dunno, I hadn't heard the reviews yet?) TAKE THAT AS A WARNING: if the guy who's trying to sell you a product doesn't want you to buy it, don't buy it.

scrib

So worse than yard work and about on par to cleaning up after a particularly sick raccoon.

@Jaloopa said:

I got dragged along to Twilight by my then girlfriend, not knowing enough about it to fight harder. There was a middle aged housewife there who was apparently on her fifth viewing. Fucking weirdo

Middle aged women go through a period of rapid changing craziness. It's different in craziness to younger women because it's the direct mirror opposite of the earlier craziness. Clingers become haters sort of thing. It's why women who are only mildly crazy are such keepers — they don't rebound so badly in their middle years.

Magus

I don't think I want to know. I only know about such horrors as Birdemic and Foodfight secondhand, because JonTron was brave enough to watch them. Those reviews are amazing. If movie ratings must be positive numbers, they are negative anyway.

FrostCat

@Magus said:

I don't think I want to know.

You don't. I heard the prevailing theory is Tom Green wanted to ensure people would stop bothering him to be in and/or write a movie, so he made something that would be so ill-received, that nobody would ever ask him again.

The movie's chief problem as that about 80% of it is as awkward as the naked fight scene towards the end of Borat, another movie that was clearly a "fuck you" to the audience.

FrostCat

I mean, when you have a scene where the paraplegic girlfriend asks Andy Dick's character to beat her legs with a cane as foreplay for some reason I've mercifully forgotten, well, I hope I don't have to finish that sentence.

Edit: wait, Andy Dick wasn't in that? Well, now, my memory's clearly been corrupted by how goofy that movie was.

Magus

Foodfight took 10 years and $65million to make. The footage all got stolen a few years back. They made it anyway.

But Birdemic might actually be worse. Waving clothes hangers at gifs of birds is not a very effective form of combat.

dkf

@FrostCat said:

Average rating 3.6/10. The lifetime gross was $26M US and another $36M foreign. The production budget was $40M.

So it was profitable?

Polygeekery

@dkf said:

So it was profitable?

Yes, but when you have blockbusters that bring in over $1B, not really. I bet the opportunity cost on that money would wipe out the earnings.

HardwareGeek

There is also weird accounting in Hollywood. Movies can gross far more than they cost to make, but still lose money on paper. The principal reason for this is that it allows not paying people who would otherwise get a share of the profits.

Polygeekery

Perhaps it is after accounting for marketing and distribution costs?

FrostCat

All you can say is that the movie took in more than they spent. As HardwareGeek says, they abuse accounting to make it so technically there's no profit.

But those worldwide figures relative to the cost means it was a flop. Although apparently it also sold a lot of DVDs as it became something of a cult hit, says Wikipedia.

Polygeekery

@HardwareGeek said:

The principal reason for this is that it allows not paying people who would otherwise get a share of the profits.

I am not doing a ":citation needed:" sort of thing, but do you know of any articles on the subject? This sounds like exactly something that they would do and I would be interested in reading more about it.

HardwareGeek

Not specifically, no. Best I can suggest is Google movie accounting. It gets a bunch of hits that appear to be relevant.

EvanED

There's a Wikipedia page:

Hollywood accounting - Wikipedia

For example, apparently Spider-Man, despite having over $800 million in box office revenue, did not make a profit. LOTR was produced at a loss, as was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

It's amazing how the studios can survive when they keep making such awful investment decisions.

Polygeekery

That is just...I don't even have words. Shit like that is why I feel no sympathy for big studios when they bitch about pirating.

scrib

@Intercourse said:

That is just...I don't even have words. Shit like that is why I feel no sympathy for big studios when they bitch about pirating.

The story goes that Star Wars, the original trilogy, has never posted a profit.

RaceProUK

@scrib said:

The story goes that Star Wars, the original trilogy, has never posted a profit.

The films didn't need to: the proceeds from the merchandising more than make up for it. Mainly as they're still coming.

scrib

This post is deleted!

FrostCat

@Intercourse said:

That is just...I don't even have words.

You didn't know about this? Huh.

The music industry is very similar, except they have a whole new set of shitty things, like signing people to 7-album contracts, and then refusing to accept the last couple of albums so they can hold onto a band forever, or charging them massive amounts up front to claw back parts of royalties, and so on.

When you go to a concert and buy albums and tshirts and what-not, that's about the only way most bands signed with studios ever actually see money; they get a pittance, if anything, from the studio, because they're in effect still paying back the loan of recording time, advances, and so on.

Polygeekery

I was not aware of the "Hollywood accounting" thing. I am very familiar with the music industry's dubious deals though. I have several friends involved in the recording industry and I hear all about how the latest artist got screwed every time I go to LA and visit with them. It is just revolting the way they screw people over. David Bowie and some other artists released strings of really shitty albums just to get out of their contracts, etc. I feel like the RIAA and the MPAA have really ratcheted up their particular brand of assholery because they realize that their time is limited. Get all they can, while they can, because their number is almost up. It will not be long before indie is the way to go with all of the creative arts.

Buddy

Except even that's not true anymore—ticketing agencies have learnt the same bullshit that the studios did. I forget where and when I read it, but I recall there was some controversy where an artist was found to be scalping their own free tickets (the ones they were allocated for friends and family) and someone wrote an article explaining that that was the only way they could even make money from concerts any more.

Basically the deal is that one company pretty much has a stranglehold on the ticketing market, and they've realized that they only pay royalties on the actual ticket prices, so they keep ticket prices low, let them all sell out instantly (good publicity) and make big profits from the ‘whales’ who are willing to pay thousands for add-ons, and from loyalty bonuses with the credit card companies. The card companies aren't very picky about who they give cards to, so for the price of a few extra gold card subscriptions, scalpers can have access to all the pre-order bonus tickets they want before anything even goes on sale to the general public.

That's what I remember reading, anyway.

Maciejasjmj

@FrostCat said:

Bad writer, probably.

I'm guessing you haven't read 50 Shades of Grey.

I actually managed to read the first Twilight book for shits and giggles - it was bad, but okay for a chuckle. With Grey, I couldn't manage to get past the first quarter - not because it's offensive or anything, but because of the horrible, terrible, awful writing.

@Magus said:

Birdemic

Seen a few reviews. Hilarious stuff.

boomzilla

@Maciejasjmj said:

I actually managed to read the first Twilight book for shits and giggles - it was bad, but okay for a chuckle.

That's often the way of any book, but especially with adults reading Young Adult Fiction (AKA, teenagers). My wife and daughter read the books and liked them. I've seen some of the movies as something in the background of whatever I was doing while my wife / daughter watched them.

I'm sure they're a lot better than most of what's out there, but get a lot of ridicule because they're high profile.

FrostCat

@Maciejasjmj said:

I'm guessing you haven't read 50 Shades of Grey.

Nope. I may have read a paragraph in a blog review or something, but no more. Oh, and I saw a little bit of some kind of a teaser trailer of a movie a while back, if that was real, but that seemed pretty lame.