Carnival to spend up to $900 million to clean up it’s poop decks, Royal Caribbean: We’re sorry. But your daughter took a dive in the ocean, so you’re confined to your especially selected room. Enjoy the rest of your trip.

What is the attraction people have regarding cruises anyway?  I have given consideration to going on one at some point in my life but it just doesn’t appeal to me.  I think some of these people who ship out have watched too many episodes of The Love Boat when they were younger.  Some of the Carnival Cruise ships can hold over 3000 people.  Why would you want to be stuck out on the ocean with that many sweaty, smelly, possibly diseased humans in a floating cracker jack box where there’s no way to escape?  And if the motor conks out, you’re pretty well stuck eating cans of sardines and crapping them back out in a Hefty Cinch Sack.  Now multiply doing that by several thousand and you have a pretty lousy stinking cruise.  Pun intended.

And hell, even if none of that happens, you never know when some drunk jack ass is going to attack you or push you overboard so that you can swim with the fishes or become shark bait. 

I have a lot of relatives that have gone on these cruises.  And they return to tell us how absolutely wonderful the trip was, except on those occasions when it wasn’t so hot.  These would be the times they’ve been injured, or spent the whole trip getting sick and losing their lunch in the no bigger than an outhouse bathroom of their cabin for the entire journey.  But still, they swear by them and will defend the cruise ship lines to their death.  Let’s hope it never comes to that.

My relations may have felt otherwise if they had been on one of the infamous recent poop cruises.  But Carnival has seen the error of its ways as if they had been struck by a holy vision of Captain Merrill Stubing or Blessed Mother Virginal Cruise Director Julie McCoy showing them the error of their ways. Okay, it probably had more to do with dwindling sales, high cancellations, and stock shares taking a pretty big tumble. 

From The Consumerist:

Carnival announced today that it has plans in the works involving $300 million in improvements to its entire fleet.

The money will be sunk into upgrading safety and creating redundant power systems, according to a press release on Carnival’s site (via Good Morning America), ostensibly so that if one engine fails the entire ship won’t be thrown into a state of septic emergency due to overflowing toilets.

Included in today’s improvements is a system-wide increase in emergency generator power across Carnival’s fleet of 24 ships and additional investments in the newest and most technically advanced fire prevention, detection and suppression systems………

…….In addition, Carnival is going to spend somewhere upward of another $600 million to improve its ships overall and make sure the sewagepalooza that struck the Carnival Triumph in February doesn’t happen on future trips.

Carnival is the world’s largest operator of cruise ships, with brands like the Princess (which had its own Poop Cruise event recently) and Cunard in its family, as well as the ill-fated Costa Concordia.

Meanwhile in Miami, a woman has filed a lawsuit against the Royal Caribbean Cruise lines because she claims she was confined to her cabin after her daughter fell overboard.  Maybe they thought she would try to jump into the ocean to look for her.  Nah, they could have had somebody accompany her especially since they had the personnel to guard any escape attempt from the room she was locked in.  It’s a wonder they didn’t handcuff her to a steam pipe

Here’s the story from Courthouse News:

Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines kept a woman under guard in her room for days after her daughter fell overboard and died, and wouldn't even let her go to the chapel to pray, the mother claims in court.    Vera Marion claims the cruise line didn't even bother to turn the ship around to look for her 21-year-old daughter until 2 hours after she fell overboard……

…..The crew of the Allure of the Seas did not notify the U.S. Coast Guard that a person had gone overboard until approximately 11:30 EST, approximately two hours after the crew first received report of the incident.   Following the person-overboard announcement, the crew denied Vera Marion access to her room, her belongings, or contact with her fellow work associates. She was moved by crew members to a cabin without a balcony and guarded there by crew members stationed outside her door and inside of her cabin.  She repeatedly pleaded with crew members to leave her alone, but they refused. This situation persisted for days.  For the remainder of the cruise, crew members did not permit Vera Marion to leave the cabin or travel anywhere about the ship without the presence of security.  They did not permit her to receive guests or messages that her associates had apparently left her or to contact them.  They did not even allow her to go to the chapel on board the ship to pray for her daughter's well-being,  The crew forced her to leave her cabin door unlocked, and "as a result, male crew members walked in on Vera Marion unannounced while she was undressed, on several occasions.   Marion, who also has two sons, says that despite her pleas,  Royal Caribbean made public that a twenty-one year-old woman from Bartlett, Tennessee went overboard.  Vera Marion's boys learned of this news from home and attempted unsuccessfully to contact their mother to ask if it was A'riel who went overboard.  A'riel's body has never been recovered.   The mother seeks compensatory and punitive damages for wrongful death, false imprisonment and negligent infliction of emotional distress.

I don't know about you but I think I'd rather have taken my chances on the Titanic or the Lusitania than sailing the ocean blue on these tugboats. I don't know, maybe someone thought A'riel was The Real Ariel and gave her a shove.  At any rate, the only poop cruise I want to be a part of is when I flush my commode and launch my business to cruise down through the city sewer lines.  But if you insist on going on one of these jaunts, be sure to pack a plunger, take extra Charmin, and don’t go within 100 feet of the railing.

First Hunger Games Catching Fire Teaser Trailer: It’s A Good One And On My Must See List For This Year.

Weekend Box Office Report 4/14/2013: Jackie Robinson Hits a Home Run, Ends Racism

If only it were true.  Robinson went a long way to breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball, but racism as we all know, continues onward to this day.  Where would the Tea Farty and many Republicans go and who would they vote for if they didn’t have their fearless leaders feeding into the paranoid delusions of their half witted followers that all minorities are out to get them?

I didn’t get to get out and see 42 this weekend, which was the number one film at the box office.  And I still haven’t made it out to find out if 3D dinosaurs are better than the 2D ones.  And time is running out on that one unless I want to invest in a 3D Flat Screen.  I don’t, not after having just invested in a 2D back in January.

Sometimes…..well most of the time, I hate living where I do.  Being 30 miles away from the nearest theater is a pain in the ass, not only because of the time it takes to get there and back, but because the cost of the gasoline you need to do it just adds to what is usually a pretty expensive outing anyway.  There have been many times I would have gone to see a movie during the week, but when you arrive home from your job at 5:00 or thereabouts, driving over sixty miles is far from being appealing no matter what the reason.

I have a nice enough blu-ray set up here at home, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.  Those movies I don’t make it out to the theater to see, I’ll watch from the comfort of my living room, even though I still prefer the theatrical presentation with it’s sticky floors, overpriced popcorn, crying brats, cell phone distractions, and the guy who sits next to me narrating the film on a continual basis.  Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that you can’t pause the action while you go take a squirt.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, 42 was given a CinemaScore of A+, and was like by all types of audiences be they male, female, young or old:

Financed by Legendary, whose CEO Thomas Tull personally produced the $40 million project, the PG-13-rated 42 recounts the career of Jackie Robinson. The film was written and directed by Brian Helgeland (A Knight’s Tale), and stars Chadwick Boseman as Robinson and Harrison Ford as the Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey. With an excellent A-plus CinemaScore from all four quadrants of the audience, it was embraced by moviegoers as it outperformed expectations, which had the movie opening in the mid-to-high-teen millions.

42 enjoyed something of a hometown advantage in Los Angeles, where the Dodgers now play: Of the top ten-grossing theaters playing the pic, five were in Los Angeles. “It played extremely well in large and small markets, urban and suburban, and we have a great road ahead of us,” said Dan Fellman, Warners president, domestic distribution. “Congratulations to Thomas Tull and Legendary for bringing the picture to us.”

The movie did play older: 83 percent of its audience was over 25, with 45 percent of the audience between 25 and 49. Gender-wise, it broke fairly evenly though, with 48 percent male and 52 percent female. While African-Americans contributed to the audience that turned out for the drama about breaking racial barriers, the film enjoyed broad appeal. “There’s not one pattern that jumps out,” Fellman said. The film is currently playing in 3003 locations, but Fellman expects to expand it further in the coming weekend.

And don't feel sorry for the Weinstein’s Scary Movie 5 either which only managed to scrape up a piddling $15 million which doesn’t at all compare favorably to the $40 million opening of it’s predecessor, Scary Movie 4.  The movie only cost about $17 million to make, and I’m sure it’ll make a profit from the rest of its domestic run and any other Euro’s it can scrape up overseas. You can alread preorder the DVD or Blu-ray if you wish.  Look for this pre-order price to come down quite a bit. 

I know this is going to sound bad but I haven’t even seen the first Scary Movie, let alone it’s long run of sequels.  The whole lame brain premise just doesn’t appeal to me and as long as this blog only has the equivalent of five visitors a week, then there’s no real reason to see some films I don’t want to put any effort into.  And besides that, aren’t most horror films already kind of a parody of themselves?

That doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll exclude bad movies from my viewing habits.  You should already know that from some of my previous Poo Poo winners.  But unless this blog miraculously rakes in $30 thousand a year so I can do nothing but write pointless crap twelve hours a day, I’ll have to keep my shit job until I can retire.  By that time I may be too decrepit to write at all.

On the other hand, Netflix does have the first two Scary Movies available for streaming and if they stay there long enough, I may get to them.  Maybe I’ll even be greatly surprised by their insightful humor and wicked parody of horror films.  Uh-huh.  I’ll let you know. 

There’s one other film I should mention before we get to the chart.  Tom Cruise’s Oblivion actually opened this past week as well.  But not in the U.S.  It hit the European circuit for a rather hefty total of $61.1 Million.  Good for first place in the international market.  It opens in the U.S. this coming weekend.  This is no longer unusual.  Many films have opened overseas before unfolding across the continental U.S.  Spielberg’s Adventures of Tin Tin played in Europe a long time before it arrived here because it was better known.  And there have been films that were declared flops in the U.S. that actually did fairly decent business overseas.  That’s the new world order, so get used to it.  Here’s the tallies:

Repeat! We have a winner in The Consumerist’s Worst Company in the U.S. It’s EA! Again!

I’m glad EA made the finals, but I think Bank of America should have taken the award.  Or maybe not.  That’s just logic talking.  Emotionally, I simply hate the fuck out of EA and I’m glad they are the winner.  EA is the epitome of American Corporations who just don’t give a rats ass about consumers.

They have done their best to destroy any enjoyment one could get out of gaming with their crappy half assed half finished over-priced games, their DRM always on connection schemes, their overpriced micro-transactions some of which include paying for game items plastered with advertising so they get paid twice, and their total lack of customer service.  Those last two words are not even in the EA vocabulary.

And the response last week of chief operating officer Pete Moore trying to blame EA’s performance on homohpobia is as disgusting as it gets.  When you start using the gay community as a shield because your company sucks big time, your just as bad as any Republican because you’re a hypocrite.

I can find nobody, and neither did The Consumerist, offering any evidence that people voted because they hated homosexual.  Simply put, practically everybody hates EA and their disgusting lies such as the continual falsehood regarding the DRM of Sim City.  The people who run this company are totally clueless, and the stockholders should be pissed off about it.  But apparently they are as stupid as those they hire to run this fiasco.  Or maybe they love losing money.

The Consumerist:

Make no mistake: Video games are big business. A company like EA — and Activision, Ubisoft, Nintendo, and Sony, etc. — merits just as much scrutiny as any other business that plays a leading role in a multibillion-dollar industry. It’s only a fractured, antiquated public perception that video games are somehow frivolous holdovers from childhood that allows gamers to be abused and taken advantage of by the very people who supply them the games they play.

“Until EA stops sucking the blood out of games in order to make uninspiring sequels, or at least until they begin caring about how much gamers hate their lack of respect for our money and intelligence, this is going to continue,” writes Penny Arcade’s Kuchera. “We don’t hate them because we’re homophobes, we hate them because they destroy companies we love. We hate them because they release poor games. We hate them because they claim our hate doesn’t matter as long as we give them our money.”

Instead of deflecting, we ask the higher-ups at EA to reflect on the following question:

When we live in an era marked by massive oil spills, faulty foreclosures by bad banks, and rampant consolidation in the airline and telecom industry, what does it say about EA’s business practices that so many people have — for the second year in a row — come out to hand it the title of Worst Company In America?

Something that is totally overlooked and seldom mentioned is that if EA is such a great company, why have they shown more losing quarters over the years than profitable ones?   And this is by a large margin.

For the quarter ended Dec. 31, EA posted a net loss of $45 million, or 15 cents a share, compared with a loss of $205 million, or 62 cents a share, a year earlier. Sales declined to $922 million from $1.06 billion.

When items such as deferred revenue and stock-based compensation are factored in, the company said it earned 57 cents per share on $1.2 billion in sales, compared with earnings of 99 cents per share on $1.65 billion in sales in the year-earlier period. The results were mostly in line with analysts' average expectation of 56 cents per share on revenue of $1.28 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.

How can any company rake in that much cash and still stay in the minus column.  Better yet, how do they stay in business?

But this response may be the best one I’ve read to date regarding EA.  From Penny Arcade:

SimCity not only requires an Internet connection, a decision that has led to no end of technical problems, but we can no longer create huge cities. We can’t save our game, experiment with the design, and then reload. It’s not a sandbox anymore, and the playful nature of past games in the series has been replaced by a game that forces us to play a certain way.

The gutless reaction to these issues is just as large of a problem, and after I was personally blown off by Origin PR for daring to ask about whether customers can get a refund for their non-working game, I can understand the frustration on the part of gamers trying to fight for their money back. If their official PR is comfortable giving the finger to the press and refusing to comment on refunds, I can’t imagine how customers are treated.

You know my thoughts on Real Racing 3, a game made by the remnants of two other developers EA ate up before laying off their staff and smashing them together. The company’s reaction to the vocal dismay at the microtransaction model is, once again, that they’re making money so they don’t care if you don’t like it.

EA may have the reputation of being a company run by empty suits, but blowing off the hatred of gamers due to the “market” having spoken shows just how well deserved that reputation has become. It seems that no EA executive can even pretend to care about the massive backlash the company is facing from gamers who feel ripped off.

I’m sure they sell a lot of their big guns such as Madden (overpriced, hardly changes, you’re spending $60 every year just for new rosters) or The Sims 3 (They’ve lost a lot of customers, me included, with exorbitant micro-transactions in their Sims 3 Store while skimping on content in their stuff packs and expansion packs.  Each expansion pack brings new problems to the games functions with no fixes) but nobody is buying the rest of their crap because EA does not give a damn about the customer or the quality of their product.   

And As long as you have greedy clueless executives like Pete Moore blowing smoke up the ass of, well any two bit air headed reporter in listening distance,  and trying to use the flimsiest cover to hide behind in a feeble minded attempt to explain away winning an award such as this, then EA will always be a company that belongs in the shitter.  I hope sooner or later, they get the royal flush.

And despite Moore’s creed of statistics about customers doing this and that, most of which they are forced into in order to play shitty EA Games, nothing will change the fact that most people on this earth believe that EA has been a festering infection on the gaming industry.  Congratulations, to Mr. Moore and EA for their award. They deserve it.

Crossposted at Corporateownedusa.

Annette Funicello passes away at age 70

From Hollywood Reporter:

Annette Funicello, a Disney Mouseketeer on TV's The Mickey Mouse Club who went on to fame by co-starring in several beach movies with Frankie Avalon in the 1960s, has died. She was 70.

Funicello, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1987 and became a spokeswoman for treatment of the disease, died Monday at Mercy Southwest Hospital in Bakersfield, the Walt Disney Co. announced.

Although single-names were not in vogue at the time, her popularity was so wide and her personality so familiar that she was “Annette.” No last name needed.

The quintessence of innocence, mixed with dark good looks and beguiling charm, she was a male ideal and a female role model. Wholesome in the best sense, Funicello was drive-ins, sock hops, beach parties and malted milks -- the personification of an innocent era.

I grew up with Annette having been around during her Mouse Club years, the Disney Films, and the Beach Party movies. I had always hoped to write about some of her films, and will still do so I'm sure. Annette (you seldom used her last name. She was always Annette to us.) was one of the great icons of the 50's and 60's, and her long struggle with M.S. is finally over. I'll have more to say about Annette later.

Frankie Avalon who was her lifelong friend and starred with her in the Bikini Beach movies was interviewed by TMZ.

Frankie Avalon on Annette Funicello's Death: I'm Devastated - Watch More Celebrity Videos or Subscribe

Opening scenes of Beach Blanket Bingo, with Annette, Frankie Avalone, and a cast of many.

Roger Ebert 1942 - 2013

I have been a fan of film criticism ever since I checked out Rex Reed’s book, Big Screen, Little Screen, from the local Library years ago.   It was entertainingly irreverent and sarcastic, but the idea that someone could make a living watching movies and TV shows then writing about it had never crossed my mind.    English Teachers, Literature Teachers, and even one Psychology Teacher, often told me I had a knack for story telling.  I just needed to be more polished.    

In my junior year,  I was told by a guidance counselor that the creative writing class wasn’t for someone like me, and my dreams of putting pen to paper and coming up with any kind of worthy prose that someone would actually want to read were squashed. And no, this particular misguided counselor had no way of knowing whether I had any real talent buried inside of my over active imagination that could be harnessed and projected out through my magic typing fingers.  

In case you’re wondering what she meant by “someone like me,”  see any John Hughes movie that takes place in, near, or during high school for reference.  Yes, teachers can sometimes be as shitty as the students.   

Fast forward to the mid seventies.  Roger Ebert & Gene Siskel, rival critics from the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune respectively begin appearing in a monthly show on the local Chicago PBS station, WTTW.  The program becomes popular enough that it moves to a bi-weekly format, and is aired on PBS Stations around the country.  By 1979, it was appearing weekly on stations all over the United States and quickly became the highest rated entertainment show in the history of PBS.

I was lucky enough to discover the show early on, when it always ended with Spot the Wonder Dog making an appearance for the Dog of the Week segment.  I became an instant fan of both critics.  And the dog as well.  But I always preferred Ebert.  He seemed more like the average guy you would go see a film with, and then argue it’s merits or lack of over a brew at the local tavern.  For some reason, when I enjoyed a film that the two critics loved, I felt as if my opinion was validated.  But if there was a film I liked that they panned, I didn’t feel as if my reasoning was any less valuable than theirs.  But I did watch, listen, and learn as to why Gene and especially Roger, offered the criticisms that they did.  And what I learned was that there was many more different layers in the process of movie making then I had realized.

 

It was no longer whether I just liked the movie or not.  It was now, what did I like about it?  The acting?  The Cinematography?  The Costume Design?  The Craftsmanship of a Director choreographing the film so that all of these elements combined in perfect harmony?  On the opposite end of the equation, were the actors giving it their best effort to overcome the crappy dialogue of a miserable screen play?  What decisions did the director make that were just bad choices all the way around?  Is the score pleasing to the ear and does it enhance the film?   Or did you just want to mute the damn thing?  Or is everybody going through the motions just to make a quick buck.

Yet, I never had a chance to actually read an Ebert or Siskel written review until the late nineties, when the internet finally began to unfurl itself to the masses.  We didn’t get the Chicago Newspapers delivered to the town that I lived in.  It was Ebert whose reviews I read for the most part probably because he took to the internet like a duck takes to water.

And what you saw on TV was pretty much what you read in print, with the caveat that the written reviews were more in depth, but could often be just as sarcastic, funny, witty, or totally serious in their absolute praise.  It became a weekly ritual to find Ebert’s reviews on Friday before heading to the theater.  A bad review didn’t necessarily keep me away from many films, but a good review could often convince me to view a film I might not have bothered with.

When Siskel passed away, Richard Roeper took over for him.  I like Roeper, but I had spent so many years with Roger and Gene, that it just wasn’t the same.  And when Ebert became ill and had to leave the program, my interest in it waned.  But I still went to Roger’s web page, hoping he would be back writing about the latest film offerings. 

Eventually he did return.  And in the process having lost his voice, Roger adapted new ways to communicate with his millions of fans through his blog, through his constant twitter presence, and through his many books.   And whether it was a result of having to deal with his many illnesses or not, he seemed to become closer and more accessible to his millions of fans on the internet and off.  

But when it came to what was on the screen, Ebert believed in the purity of cinema.  He often wrote about some of the new film technologies he didn’t particularly care for.  I don’t think he ever came to terms with the 3D process.  He viewed it as gimmicky, and there were less than a handful of films that he thought made proper use of the technique.  These included Avatar, and the recent Life of Pi. 

Ebert hated the conversion of celluloid to digital projection in the theaters.  But I think he finally grew to accept that it was the future and there was no stopping it.  Or maybe he was simply lamenting the fact that the day would come when the world of cinema he knew so well and had loved his entire life would no longer exist at all in the manner he and so many of us had become accustomed to.

It was in 2003 that my old urge to write resurfaced after lying dormant for over thirty years.   I had read many “reviews” on the IMDB, and decided I could do that as well.  My initial offerings weren’t more than a couple of paragraphs, three at the most.  (And I’m sure there are those who wish they still were)  When I mention those early reviews, I often refer to them as a P.O.S.  That’s because for the most part they are.  But at the urging of a few people I had met on the Titanic message boards, I began to expand my horizons.  I did my best to improve.  As you can tell, it’s constantly a work in progress.

Not long after that, politics got in the way.  I was on the old AOL, and 2004 being an election year, I decided I could no longer stand the George W. Bush admiration society campaign of misinformation any longer.  So movie reviews gave way to politics, and in November of that year, I was designated as the Democratic Blog Page of the Month out of thousands.  There was, a Republican Counterpart.  In the end, it may have been an award that had little meaning for anyone but myself.  But I can’t tell you the joy and surprise I felt for just having been acknowledged for the first time.

Eventually I would get back to the movies.  And I enjoyed doing it so much I started a separate movie review blog.  Clyde’s Stuff was generally used for other entertainment features and politics.  A strange mix if there ever was one.  And except for my writings concerning American Idol in 2005 and 2006 which set my blog aflame, my reviews of movies old and new attracted the most traffic.

I think what I also learned from Roger Ebert was to not only  be myself,  but to do my utmost to be entertaining while being as informative as I could.  Say what you think, but don’t act like some know it all talking down to others.  You have to love what you are doing when it comes to writing.  Chances are you won’t make a dime.  You do it for the enjoyment of it, and if someone happens by and likes what you’ve done or responds to it, then that’s just icing on the cake.

Roger loved the movies, and loved to write.   I do as well.  I  followed him for over thirty years, and in his last blog entry, I had a very uneasy feeling about how things were really going.  During the entire period of his illness, Ebert always tried to put the best face on what at times must have seemed like insurmountable obstacles while experiencing excruciating pain.  And last Thursday, when I came home from work and logged onto The Huffington Post, the news couldn’t have been more any worse.  Ebert, had passed away.  I felt like I had lost a best friend.  I was devastated.  I don’t think there has been the death of any celebrity that had affected me as much as this one did.

There weren’t too many days that I spent on the internet that I didn’t check to see if Roger had a new column, or some new reviews.  Or if he tweeted something he found particularly compelling on the chance that you might be interested in it as well.  Chances were pretty good that you would be.  I always was.  There was something comforting for me about just knowing Roger was there and that anything he had to say would be infinitely more worthwhile than the thousands of words I’ve typed out in this entire blog.

I had commented on his blog several times.  The last time was in one of his most widely responded to essays asking his audience what was the movie that they really hated, hated, hated.   I offered up Norbit, a movie I examined in depth on this blog, and went so far as to use a brief passage from that article in my response.  But other than that, I made no real attempt to ever contact him in person.  Now I wish I had.  Now it is too late.

I’m not sure what I would have written.  Maybe just writing and letting him know how much admiration I had for him not only as a writer, but his importance to me as a person because he believed in the philosophy that it was more important to do your best to make others happy.  From a political standpoint and a humanitarian standpoint, we were on the exact same page.  And he never tried to hide it, often writing lengthy essays such as this recent passage on climate change and this one written in January on gun legislation where he had a sense of hope, and then this later one, where his outlook had turned bleak.  I understand this as well.  Having written about politics off and on for the past nine years, I’m not sure that too much has really changed for the better in this country.  And most days, I swear I’ll never write another word.  But the hypocrisy in the never ending selfish philosophy of much of the world boils inside you until you have to let it out regardless of how frustrating it may be in the end.  Just as I sense Roger’s frustration when writing about a young girl who died needlessly in Harsh Park.

There are some people who hated Roger Ebert.  They hated him because he dared to give a thumbs down to some inconsequential piece of film tripe that they may have revered.  To them, it didn’t matter why.  But this is the same type of narrow minded earthlings who hated Roger politically, because he was often derisive of their inability to grasp the simple equation that their fellow man’s well being should be given the highest priority, and not lining the pockets of Corporate USA.  It is their loss, for they’ll never really understand nor did they experience all that he had to give.  

Monday, April 8th, will be Roger’s Memorial service.  It is open to the public on a first come basis.  And that’s a good thing.  Because for Ebert, other than the movies themself and the love of his life, Chaz, it was his millions of followers that meant more to him than anything.  But he wouldn’t want tears.  He had lived life to the fullest, and relished every minute of it.  He had given all he had to give.  He would want us to continue to do so as well.

He loved his fans every bit as much as we loved him.  As far as I’m concerned, the balcony will never close.  Goodbye, Roger.  We’ll miss you. 


 

Weekend Box Office Report 4/7/2013: The Evil Dead-Revised Edition

It was another testosterone filled weekend at the Box Office as American Males scurried into the theaters to gape, holler, and hoot, at the gore and bloodletting in Evil Dead to the tune of $30.5 million dollars off of a production budget of $17 million dollars.  Chances of Evil Dead recuperating it’s production AND marketing costs are now at 100 percent.  However, the film only earned a C+ CinemaScore in North America which proves one thing:  Since the audience was made up of 58 percent males, when it comes to guts and gory, the guys will watch about any piece of crap you put up on the screen these days.  Unless of course it’s directed by Uwe Boll.  Nobody wants to see any movie produced by the guy who is a continual blight on the art of film making.

Jurassic Park 3D, the other not so really new entry, came in at number four with a domestic take of $18.2 million dollars.  Not bad for a movie that has been on DVD forever, and was released on Blu-ray in a boxed trilogy set just about a year and a half ago.  It even beat Titanic’s 3D Weekend totals, but keep in mind that Titanic had the disadvantage of less showings due to it’s running time of over three hours.  Up next for the dinosaur epic is the Blu-ray 3D version scheduled for release in just two weeks on April 23, for those of you who have the capability at home for that format. 

I purchased a new set for my girlfriend this past Christmas and didn’t go that route.  Finances were not on my side, but more than that, I still see the appeal of 3D as being limited as well.  The expense doesn’t stop with the purchase of a 3D set either.  You need a blu-ray player that is 3D capable (I have one of those, but looks like I’ll never use it for that function), and the 3D blu-ray discs are more expensive.  There isn’t much as far as the broadcast medium either, and what you will find is that it will cost you extra as well. 

On the other hand, those who keep predicting that this latest incarnation of 3D will eventually die off keep being proven wrong.  It appears audiences are just being more selective in what they see, or perhaps when they believe the 3D will add to the experience.  And despite Jurassic Park being a 3D retrofit, most of the reviews I’ve read have praised it.  I gave thought to seeing it myself this past weekend but my girlfriend had other ideas.  We ended up seeing The Call with Halle Barry.

The Croods, in it’s second full week of release pretty much tied with GI Joe for runner up status and continues to rake in the dough surpassing the $125 million dollar mark domestically.  GI Joe, while taking in 21.1 million domestically, continues to conquer Europe and Asia where it has taken in $145 million in overseas box office compared to the $86.7 totals it’s racked up here at home.  Sorry kiddies, but the U.S. box office is not not the only thing that makes the world go round.

From Hollywood Reporter:

Universal opens the 3D rerelease of Jurassic Park 20 years after the original dinosaur movie debuted and is using the pic to prime audiences for Jurassic Park IV, which rolls out in June 2014 (Spielberg is producing but not directing). Hollywood has had a mixed track record with 3D rereleases and will be watching closely to see how Jurassic Park performs over the course of its short run (the Blu-Ray/DVD comes out in two weeks).

The Croods and G.I. Joe: Retaliation claimed the No. 2 and No. 3 spots on the North American box office chart, although the precise order won't be determined until Monday morning, since both films are estimating a $21.1 million weekend.

Croods, from DreamWorks Animation and Fox, jumped the $300 million mark globally over the weekend, becoming only the second title of 2013 to do so after Oz the Great and Powerful. Croods grossed $34.1 million internationally from 62 markets for a foreign total of $206.8 million. The 3D toon has now earned $125.8 domestically for a global cume of $332.6 million.

G.I. Joe raced past the $200 million mark in its second weekend of play at the global box office. The action pic, from Paramount, MGM and Skydance, boasts a domestic total of $86.7 million, while it earned $40.2 million internationally from 60 countries for a foreign total of $145.2 million and global haul of $231.9 million.

For all you box office score keepers out there, here are the totals: