Categories
Back Seat Box Office Shows

Back Seat Box Office #32

Amongst the hosts, Andrew and Tony were tied for first this week with 20 points while Jonathan came in third with 18 points. Average scores for the first seventeen weeks of 2011 have Tony in first place with 20.35 points, Jonathan in second with 19.71 points and Andrew in third with 19.53 points.

Visit our scoreboard for a comprehensive list of results as well as an explanation of our scoring system. Play along at home, email or call your picks in before Friday night and get on the board.

New movies debuting in wide release this weekend include Fast Five, Prom, and Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil.

Picks for the week:
Tony

  1. Fast Five
  2. Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family
  3. Rio
  4. Prom
  5. Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil

Andrew

  1. Fast Five
  2. Rio
  3. Prom
  4. Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family
  5. Water for Elephants

Jonathan’s casting of runes predicted:

  1. Fast Five
  2. Rio
  3. Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil
  4. Water for Elephants
  5. Prom

Got something to say? Head over the the Back Seat Producers forum and let us know what you think.

Categories
Back Seat Box Office BSBO Results Shows

Back Seat Box Office #31 Results and Voice Mail

Andrew joins Tony to spare you, the gentle listener, from Tony’s one-sided banter.

A stumble or two is had at the beginning, but the Producers recover and steam-roll the rest of the episode.

Tim offers sage advice for every man… or couple.

Thanks for listening!

Categories
News

Weekend Box Office: April 22 – 24

#1 Rio from Fox holds at #1 with a weekend gross of $26.3 million (-32.9%) in 3842 theaters (+16). Total gross to date is $80.8 million. Budget was $90 million.

#2 Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family from Lionsgate debuts at #2 with an opening weekend gross of $25.0 million in 2288 theaters. Budget is unknown.

#3 Water for Elephants from Fox debuts at #3 with an opening weekend gross of $16.8 million in 2817 theaters. Budget was $38 million.

#4 Hop from Universal drops from #3 to #4 with a weekend gross of $12.1 million (+13.7%) in 3616 theaters (+8). Total gross to date is $100.2 million. Budget was $63 million.

#5 Scream 4 from Dimension drops from #2 to #5 with a weekend gross of $7.0 million (-62.4%) in 3314 theaters (+9). Total gross to date is $31.0 million. Budget was $40 million.

#6 African Cats from Buena Vista debuts at #6 with an opening weekend gross of $6.0 million in 1220 theaters. Budget is unknown.

Rounding out the top 12 are:

#7 Soul Surfer drops from #5 to #7 with a weekend gross of $5.4 million (-25.2%) in 2240 theaters (+26). Total gross to date is $28.5 million. Budget was $18 million.

#8 Hanna drops from #4 to #8 with a weekend gross of $5.2 million (-27.3%) in 2384 theaters (-161). Total gross to date is $31.7. Budget was $30 million.

#9 Insidious drops from #7 to #9 with a weekend gross of $5.2 million (-22.8%) in 2130 theaters (-103). Total gross to date is $44.0 million. Budget was $1.5 million.

#10 Source Code drops from #8 to #10 with a weekend gross of $5.0 million (-18.0%) in 2363 theaters (-194). Total gross to date is $44.6 million. Budget was $32 million.

#11 Arthur drops from #6 to #11 with a weekend gross of $4.0 million (-39.8%) in 2770 theaters (-506). Total gross to date is $29.2 million. Budget was $40 million.

#12 Limitless drops from #10 to #12 with a weekend gross of $2.6 million (-27.2%) in 1363 theaters (-522). Total gross to date is $74.0 million. Budget was $27 million.

The combined gross of the top 12 movies this weekend was $121.2 million (+3.6%).

New movies debuting in wide release this weekend include Fast Five, Prom, and Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil.

A note on “Gross”: On average, studios will earn approximately 55 percent of the final gross.

Sources:
Box Office Mojo

Categories
Back Seat Producers Season 06 Shows Special Episode

BSP Special Episode 12: Villains

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFI’s_100_Years…_100_Heroes_and_Villains

This is one we’ve been sitting on for a while… that might be an understatement.

This episode was recorded: 9/24/08.

For those keeping score, David was still Adam, Darrell had yet to join the crew, and this would have been episode #78.

We hope you had a great Easter weekend… this episode released at this time means that Tony didn’t spend part of his vacation editing audio.

One final note, this past Saturday, April 23rd 2011, Fanboy Smackdown/Back Seat Producers celebrated the 5th anniversary of the recording of the first episode. We didn’t release the episode for another week.  The episode we’ll record this week is our Anniversary episode.  Thanks for listening!

Categories
Back Seat Box Office Shows

Back Seat Box Office #31

Amongst the hosts, Andrew came in first this week with a perfect 25 points. Jonathan and Tony were close on his heels, tied for second with 24 points each. The hosts combined score was a record setting 73 out of a possible 75 points. In fact, the entire BSBO community had a spectacular week. Average scores for the first sixteen weeks of 2011 have Tony in first place with 20.38 points, Jonathan in second with 19.81 points and Andrew in third with 19.5 points.

Visit our scoreboard for a comprehensive list of results as well as an explanation of our scoring system. Play along at home, email or call your picks in before Friday night and get on the board.

New movies debuting in wide release this weekend include Water for Elephants, Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family and African Cats.

Picks for the week:
Andrew

  1. Madea’s Big Happy Family
  2. Rio
  3. Water for Elephants
  4. Scream 4
  5. Hop

Jonathan

  1. Madea’s Big Happy Family
  2. Water for Elephants
  3. Rio
  4. Scream 4
  5. Hop

Tony

  1. Madea’s Big Happy Family
  2. Rio
  3. Water for Elephants
  4. Scream 4
  5. Hop

Got something to say? Head over the the Back Seat Producers forum and let us know what you think.

Categories
Back Seat Box Office BSBO Results Shows

Back Seat Box Office #30 Results and Voice Mail

This was a great week for all involved. Scores were up by an average of nearly 5 points!

We had 3 new participants to the game and we are on the cusp of having a leaderboard with 20 people on it!

Get your friends and family to get involved, compete against us and against each other!

Thanks for listening!

We love exclamation points! (Or for the programmers out there: We love bangin’!)

Categories
News

Weekend Box Office: April 15 – 17

#1 Rio from Fox debuts at #1 with an opening weekend gross of $39.2 million in 3826 theaters. Budget was $90 million.

#2 Scream 4 from Dimension debuts at #2 with an opening weekend gross of $18.6 million in 3305 theaters. Budget was $40 million.

#3 Hop from Universal drops from #1 to #3 with a weekend gross of $10.7 million (-49.7%) in 3608 theaters (-8). Total gross to date is $82.1 million. Budget was $63 million.

#4 Hanna from Focus drops from #2 to #4 with a weekend gross of $7.282 million (-41.1%) in 2545 theaters (+10). Total gross to date is $23.2. Budget was $30 million.

#5 Soul Surfer from TriStar drops from #4 to #5 with a weekend gross of $7.268 million (-31.4%) in 2214 theaters (no change). Total gross to date is $19.8 million. Budget was $18 million.

#6 Arthur from Warner Brothers drops from #3 to #6 with a weekend gross of $6.7 million (-44.7%) in 3276 theaters (no change). Total gross to date is $22.1 million. Budget was $40 million.

Rounding out the top 12 are:

#7 Insidious drops from #5 to #7 with a weekend gross of $6.7 million (-28.0%) in 2233 theaters (-186). Total gross to date is $35.8 million. Budget was $1.5 million.

#8 Source Code drops from #7 to #8 with a weekend gross of $6.2 million (-28.2%) in 2557 theaters (-414). Total gross to date is $36.8 million. Budget was $32 million.

#9 Your Highness from Universal drops from #6 to #9 with a weekend gross of $4.0 million (-57.1%) in 2772 theaters (+3). Total gross to date is $16.0 million. Budget was $49.9 million.

#10 Limitless drops from #8 to #10 with a weekend gross of $3.6 million (-33.0%) in 1885 theaters (-770). Total gross to date is $69.5 million. Budget was $27 million.

#11 The Conspirator debuts at #11 with an opening weekend gross of $3.5 million in 707 theaters. Budget was $25 million.

#12 The Lincoln Lawyer drops from #10 to #12 with a weekend gross of $2.8 million (-32.6%) in 1702 theaters (-718). Total gross to date is $50.4 million. Budget was $40 million.

The combined gross of the top 12 movies this weekend was $116.9 million (+13.8%).

New movies debuting in wide release this weekend include Water for Elephants, Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family and African Cats.

A note on “Gross”: On average, studios will earn approximately 55 percent of the final gross.

Sources:
Box Office Mojo

Categories
Back Seat Producers Season 06 Shows

BSP Episode 179: Unforgiven

Your Producers for this episode:

  • Tony
  • Tony
  • David
  • Darrell

This episode was recorded: April 13th, 2011

Categories
Text Reviews Theatrical Review

Theatrical Review: Super

I really was not planning to see this.  When I first saw the trailer to Super, it looked to me like it was going to this geek reference comedy with Rainn Wilson doing his thing from The Office, which had become extremely tired for me (I quit watching The Office a couple of seasons ago).  Even knowing that this was written and directed by James Gunn, who has previously made Slither which I had a good time with, wasn’t enough.

What made me want to see it was the recent review that Ignatiy Vishnevetsky and Christy Lemire gave it on Ebert Presents At The Movie. Their review convinced me that there was more to Super than what it’s trailer gave off, and it certainly intrigued me enough to want to seek this out when it came to St. Louis.  Awhile back, I’d posted on a messageboard about one of the original iterations of At The Movies going away, and it was followed by someone talking about the idea that the concept for this show was going the way of the dinosaur thanks to the internet and the barrage of reviews that you can get through that.  I thought that was just kind of sad.  Yeah, sure, you can get reviews all over the internet for everything, but they’re faceless, they have no sound or inflection and unless it’s someone you trust completely, they’re all over the map.  Of course, there’s a lot of good reviewers out there on the internet, who you know you can completely trust, just due to their consistency.  But with that said, nothing will ever really replace for me the idea of an actual television show devoted to it.  I can’t begin to tell you how many movies I was opened up to by actually seeing and hearing intelligent conversation thanks to the various iterations of At The Movies. Sorry for the long digression in the midst of this, but I can’t push Ebert Presents At The Movies enough.  You may not agree with every review in the end, but the one thing that it does have is a consistency of voice and intent.  To me anyway, that’s invaluable in deciding what to see.

But back to Super. This opened here in the St. Louis area this past weekend at one of my favorite theatres in town, the Tivoli.  When I heard it was coming, this got fast-tracked for me right away, thanks to the above.  I saw this last night, and think it’s one of the best movies that I’ve seen so far this year.

Frank D’Arbo is seemingly just your average ordinary guy who at the start of the film tells you about the only two perfect moments in his life- marrying his wife Sarah and pointing out to a policeman where a criminal went.  Frank’s devoted to Sarah, but Sarah’s got a past history of substance abuse.  That history begins to catch up to her when she gets involved with a slick guy named Jacques.  In a matter of days, Jacques leads Sarah back to her old ways, and soon she out-and-out leaves Frank, leaving him hopelessly distraught.  Frank’s at the end of his rope and doesn’t know what to do until a divine vision comes to him.  This vision inspires Frank to become a costumed crimefighter named The Crimson Bolt and from there, the inevitable hijinks ensue.

As I said above, writer/director James Gunn is best known for 2006’s Slither. But before that, he had a long association with Troma Studios, known for their low-budget, extremely over-the-top exploitation films.  A lot of Super is a flat-out salute to those movies, but there’s a lot more to this as well.  It’s really difficult to pin any sort of singular label on this movie.  On it’s surface, it looks like it’s going to be a broad comedy, when in it’s actually an extremely black comedy.  With Rainn Wilson’s presence, I at least originally had the feeling that he was going to be of one note, but he goes to some places emotionally that are extremely dark, so this could also carry the label of being a psychological investigation.  And then there’s the whole super-hero element that initially gets compared to Kick-Ass, but combined with other factors more puts this on the same plane with what I think Sucker Punch was trying to achieve.  The difference being that Super actually does achieve it.  The end result, to me anyway, actually has more in common with Taxi Driver more than anything else.

Oh, there’s certainly some broad comedy, and it’s not ineffective.  It’s also not what this will be known for, that gets overshadowed by the very dark overall tone and the extreme violence within.  The violence is quite graphic and feels “real” and that is certainly something to keep in mind if you decide to see this.  That factor alone is something that could be a huge turn-off for someone coming in and expecting this to be like what I’d originally thought it was going to be.

Gunn’s Troma roots are certainly on display in the shooting style.  The look of the film feels like there was a lot of guerilla filmmaking going on while shooting this, and it definitely works.  It’s authentic feel makes the evident darkness even more pronounced.

There’s even more to it than that.  Other highlights include a terrific animated opening sequence, a very Troma-esque way in which Frank gets his divine vision, and a great score from composer Tyler Bates.  I’d mentioned Sucker Punch above.  Sucker Punch does something with it’s ending that tries to flip the whole thing that just doesn’t work primarily due to just not being set-up that well.  Well, Super does the same sort of thing, but when it happens it’s not forced and it does still come back to Frank, making for quite the poignant ending.

The big revelation for me here though was Rainn Wilson.  This isn’t Dwight Shruite by any means.  Frank is off-balanced, to be sure, but he’s also, at least to me highly relatable.  He’s had his life turned upside-down, with one of his perfect moments tarnished.  He externalizes a lot of pain that I know I can certainly relate to.  Those scenes might at first seem a touch over-the-top, but I thought they were very honest and certainly made him to be a much more sympathetic character than what I had originally expected.

Liv Tyler plays Sarah, and Kevin Bacon plays Jacques.  At first, the big question looms, how does someone who looks like Liv Tyler get involved with a guy like Frank?  Another movie might be very superficial with something like this, but James Gunn actually goes there and tells you how.  Tyler shines in these scenes, and again, it feels honest.  Kevin Bacon is very slick and right off the bat you know that Jacques is going to be this sort of scum that everyone has come across in their lives in their own way.

Ellen Page plays Libby, a comic book store employee who helps Frank get on his track and later becomes his “kid” sidekick, Boltie.  I tend to think that Ellen Page is one of the best young actresses out there today and seeing her in Super further supports that.  As unbalanced as Frank is, there’s even darker stuff at work for Libby, she’s just not as cognizant of it as Frank is.  Page is quite good at subverting that making this part something that has more in common with the first movie I saw her in, Hard Candy.

The casting also includes some other nice touches.  Veteran actors Gregg Henry, Michael Rooker and Nathan Fillion (all also in Slither) have key roles here and play perfectly into Gunn’s big picture.  Other nice acting touches include William Katt (from TV’s The Greatest American Hero as an on-screen police officer and Rob Zombie as the voice of God.  Their appearances are really brief, but very nice winks to the intended audience.

Super is a terrific movie and just this extremely huge surprise.  It’s not for everyone, for instance if you’re a parent who’s seen the trailer and think that this will be something your children will enjoy, you just might want to hold off.  It’s dark tone and extreme violence could also be very off-putting to some, so I can’t give this a blanket recommendation.  But if you think you can get into the combination of blacker-than black comedy, psychological unbalance and a very big heart, then you might find something very special with Super.  I know I did.

Categories
Back Seat Box Office Shows

Back Seat Box Office #30

Despite an old witch placing a curse on Tony’s equipment we pulled together and overcame to bring you this, our 30th episode.

Amongst the hosts Andrew and Jonathan are tied for first this week with 17 points while Tony is bringing up the rear with 15 points. Average scores for the first fifteen weeks of 2011 have Tony in first place with 20.13 points, Jonathan in second with 19.53 points and Andrew in third with 19.13 points.

Visit our scoreboard for a comprehensive list of results as well as an explanation of our scoring system. Play along at home, email or call your picks in before Friday night and get on the board.

New movies debuting in wide release this weekend include Rio and Scream 4.

Picks for the week:
Andrew

  1. Rio
  2. Scream 4
  3. Hop
  4. Hanna
  5. Soul Surfer

Jonathan

  1. Rio
  2. Scream 4
  3. Hop
  4. Hanna
  5. Arthur

Tony

  1. Rio
  2. Scream 4
  3. Hop
  4. Hanna
  5. Arthur

Got something to say? Head over the the Back Seat Producers forum and let us know what you think.