Food Blog Conundrum

This post is going to be fairly short, but expect a Tuesday Top 10 before the end of the day.

Recently a friend of mine asked a question when I was trying to come up with a theme for a Top 10 (and you know who you are). "You haven't done anything with food in a while, why not?" Ha asked. This is the same person that complimented how well this blog is written, so I could not really be mad. Well, the answer was a little complicated and I actually did not get into the long of it, but I will now.

The short answer was that I had been truly inspired by anything in a while and that film ones are actually a little easier to come up with. The long answer is that maintaining a food blog is incredibly expensive, time consuming, and, honestly, there are so many good ones out there to compete with.

First things first, I do not claim to come up with any recipe on here from scratch. I just can't do that. I am generally complimented on my cooking quite a bit, but nothing I make is from the ground up my recipe. Generally what I end up doing is picking up little things here and there from shows I watch religiously (i.e. "Martha Bakes", "Martha Stewart's Cooking School", "Pati's Mexican Table", "The Chew", and of course "Good Eats") and incorporating them into other recipes.

Like I've said before, I ALWAYS do the recipe as is first, then start messing with it or blending it with other recipes to get the best result IMHO. That's the thing, though, taste is purely subjective. I may like things sweeter than you do, think things are too salty when you don't, (<-use a="" added="" alton="" an="" and="" as="" brine="" brown="" but="" comma="" dammit="" do="" don="" flavor="" for="" garlic="" ginger="" his="" i="" if="" in="" instance="" integral="" is="" it.="" it="" just="" like="" lots="" loves="" of="" omit="" or="" oxford="" p="" recipe="" recipes.="" several="" t.="" t="" the="" too="" turkey="" uses="" you="">
But I digress. I will get on a mission to perfect something and will try recipe after recipe taking bits from one or another and techniques from YouTube videos until I have achieved nirvana for that recipe (an example of this will be the tiramisu I make which I will share later this week). A few months back I was on a mission to create a perfect corn dog. I failed miserably. I could not get the texture and flavor down. I finally gave up and went and bought frozen ones that I deep fried to perfection. I won't be trying that one again. Although I did find the perfect onion ring in the process (add some garlic powder and pepper to the flour and use panko bread crumbs)!

Other times I look for ways to simplify and quicken a recipe without losing flavor so that I don't have to cook all damn day. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE to cook and it relaxes me, but after a long day of work I don't want so spend another 8 hours doing spaghetti or fettuccine alfredo (recipe to come).

So, this stuff takes an inordinate amount of time and money and I end up falling back on some of my standards or recipes that don't require any tinkering, so there's no reason to post it here, because it isn't my recipe or it is already on here, lol.

I hope this gives you some insight into why it takes a while between cooking posts. I do have some I'd like to post in the near future. Some are listed somewhere above and some are not, but I promise to have them up fairly soon. I do wonder if I should just take the food out altogether, but I think at least a couple of people would kill me for taking down some of these recipes.

American Zombification

No, I don't mean that everyone is becoming zombies from TV or for blindly following someone...although...

Actually, I'm talking the current zombie trend in pop culture. After the discussion last week about vampires, I thought I'd go a different direction and talk about a horror "villain" that doesn't have a unified lore. As I stated last week, most (good) vampire movies have some similar tendencies and lore that define the category and movies (or shows) that deviate from this lore run the risk of gathering a huge amount of haters and I'm one of them. Zombies, on the other hand, have a different set of rules depending on the "world" they inhabit. About the only thing you can count on anymore is that destroying the brain kills the zombie. That makes them something that can be fresh and interesting all the time, but also something that divides more people than it unites.

So let's dispel a few quote/unquote myths about the zombie horror genre and show why it is such a scattered lore:

George Romero is the grandfather of all zombie movies - this isn't really true unless you insert "modern" after the word all. Zombie movies have been around since "White Zombie" in 1936 (yes, the movie that Rob Zombie got his band name from); and if your definition of a zombie (we'll get to that in a minute) is a reanimated corpse, then "Frankenstein" in 1910 had one of those, so he only linked the two together. If he had just done that with "Night of the Living Dead", it probably would have been forgotten. That's not what made it interesting. Romero's zombie movies have always had something to say. "Night" was a metaphor for race relations just as "Dawn of the Dead" was about rampant consumerism. That's what made them great, not the zombies themselves.

Zombies eat brains - have you always thought that that was kind of a staple of the genre? Well, it hasn't been. In fact, no "classic" zombie film had that in it. What started that idea was a small part in "Return of the Living Dead"in 1985 (a personal favorite) where a severely decayed zombie groans "BRAINS!" at one point which just stuck from then on as "lore".

Zombies can drown - now here's a point of contention that leads to that point of no unifying lore. You've seen it in several instances that a zombie drowns in water. How? Unless you prescribe to a certain aspect that we will get to in the next section, zombies are dead and don't breathe, so how would they drown? Several movies ("Land of the Dead") and even "Walking Dead" have shown otherwise. Lucio Fulci's "Zombii 2" even has an infamous fight scene of a zombie walking on the ocean floor and encountering (and fighting) a shark!

Zombies are the undead - here's a big sticking point with me. That's generally what I consider to be a main tenet of the genre, but really it isn't. The term zombi itself came from the Caribbean, more specifically Haiti, where people were raised from the dead by the way of voodoo to do their master's bidding. Usually the bokor (witch doctor) is said to have trapped the person's soul so they can be controlled. It is even on the law books in Haiti that you can't zombifi someone. What really happens, though, is the person is drugged into a death like coma that lasts for days and then the person is dug up only to be brainwashed into thinking they are undead. Watch "The Serpent & The Rainbow" which is an excellent movie that delves into that. So can we really say they are not zombies if it is drugs or an infection? Hence the discrepancy over "28 Days Later" being a zombie movie or not (most "purists" and even director Danny Boyle argue not). Which brings me to my last point.

Zombies are slow shambling (un)dead - this is the other sticking point with me. Purists HATE the (fairly) recent advent of the fast moving zombie. They mostly think the shambling zombie is the only way to go, which I agree with, if they are the dead coming from the ground, but the virus style just doesn't jive with me when they shamble. I think people one day waking up and us being over-run with shambling reanimated corpses is a little more than far-fetched unless the incubation time is outrageous or we're all already infected. Otherwise, transmission from person to person takes time and a shambling zombie is too easy to get away from if there isn't a horde. This is what made "28 Days Later" so terrifying. How realistic it was with speed of transmission and speed of turning combined with fast moving "zombies". And that was just "rage". I, for one, like the fast movers AND the slow shamblers, just depends on if the world they are in makes sense for that speed.

And that's all I really have to say about them. Just hope I could shed some light on zombies and how they are an ever-evolving lore that some people take just a little too seriously. LOL.

Vampires in Cinema

I've always been a big fan of vampires. I LOVE vampire movies, but I also LOATHE vampire movies. I'm really glad that the horror genre has begun to move on from them especially since mainstream started making vampire movies into these horrible, mopey teenage romance movies. Ugh. And it isn't the romance that is a problem, that's always been a part of vampires. There's a certain Gothic romance element that SHOULD be integral to the story.

So what does the right vampire story entail? Lore. The lore is really important. When I read "Dracula" in middle school (the unabridged version, btw) it entirely shaped the way I thought of vampires. Yes, there was a romantic quality to him, but there was also a vicious need that drove Dracula. The movie kind of made him more sympathetic than he really was in the book, but there was still that animalistic urge that made him want something and stop at nothing to get it. Beyond that, it laid the groundwork for what was necessary for vampires to maintain themselves (dirt from the homeland, the coffin in Lucy's case, blood, and minions), the shapes he could take (bat, wolf, and smoke) as well as what could damage them (crosses, silver, stake to the heart, beheading, roses (look it up), holy water, and fire). No sunlight to be found.

Let's discuss that last one. That little change been added in the last 100 years. Nowhere in Stoker's masterpiece is it said that vampires are damaged by sunlight. Dracula walks around in daylight and has no real effect, although it has been said that he is not as powerful. No, that part of lore was added by "Nosferatu" in 1922. And honestly, I really don't mind that. There has to be some changes from time to time in order to keep the stories fresh and new. Somewhere along the line the killing of the "master" will free the subjects was added and used to great effect in movies like "The Lost Boys" and "Fright Night (1985)" (2 of my other favorites). (SPOILER ALERT) "Dracula 2000" added that Dracula had a new back story (which was never really given in the book, just the movie version's Vlad the Impaler back story) of being Judas Iscariot which made many of the things he feared make more sense so I actually liked those changes.

What really rubs me the wrong way? The half-blood vampire stuff. The half vampire, half werewolf stuff. The sparkly, brooding, "vegetarian" vampire stuff. Or taking the Dracula story and warping it into something completely different that just uses the names (I'm staring daggers at you, "Dracula" TV show). I understand trying to move things into a new time and place since much of the Gothic style has been played to death from the '60s and '70s Hammer films, but do it right. Even with all it's faults, True Blood (or more accurately the BOOKS the show was originally based on since the show jumped the shark somewhere in season 3) actually stuck with much of the original lore with a few little twists to make it interesting. Don't bring back "Dark Shadows" and make it a farce! When they brought it back in the '90s, it was AWESOME. It was present day and it worked, not this pseudo '60s in the 2000s crap. I digress.

I just want my old school vampires back. I'm hoping this new "Dracula Untold" will maybe move in the right direction, but I doubt it. Especially since Vlad Tepes was not an inspiration for Dracula in the first place. Plus, it seems they've gone really Hollywood with it all. Ugh. If you want to see good vampires anymore, you've got to delve into the past. Seek out the movies I've mentioned above plus "Fright Night 2" and a lesser known series of movies called "Subspecies" which are really good (if not really dated now, lol). The first 2 movies of that one are great and then they decline, but still, good twists on the old formula.

Let me know if I've forgotten any of your favorites!

The Rise and Fall of the Summer Blockbuster

In the summer of 1975, "Jaws" opened and the term Blockbuster was born. Before that, there had been plenty of runaway hits that had made plenty of money, but nothing that people had continually gone back to see just for the thrill of it. There had been plenty of movies before then that had made a significant amount of money (even more than Jaws), but this was a turn in Hollywood's thinking towards making a film and marketing it. Action packed and generally more fast paced than other movies, Blockbusters are generally marketed towards a younger crowd (that, conveniently, is not in school over the summer). Budgets ballooned on the promise of a big return at the box office.

As time went on, the budgets went more towards bigger and better special effects that are way easier to market and less towards the script and plot. Thus, they began to get less intelligent to the point of most critics HATING the summer movie season more and more because the overall quality of the movies was waning. The Holidays had their own Blockbuster season as well with more family friendly fare launching during the period, just not to quite as big of a box office haul. Critics didn't hate this as much because it also coincided with the push for Academy Award films, so there was a good mix. Summers, however, with rare exception got sillier, more action bloated, and paper-thin plots until in the 2000s they just were shells of movies for marketing only.

Then the public started to get a little wiser, probably because they were thinking more with their wallets. Bigger budgeted movies were getting to be more of a gamble with mediocre openings or huge second week drop offs as people were more choosy in what they saw. This funnily corresponded with the rise of Geek culture. Suddenly, there was room for the Intelligent Blockbuster. Comic book movies started becoming popular and there was almost no such thing as a bonafide movie star anymore. People were no longer the draw. It was either the director (like Quentin Tarantino) or the actual plot that started drawing in the people.

So, now, in the last couple of years you've had much more intelligent fare doing increasingly well and the schlock that used to do so well before is an even bigger gamble for Hollywood. Christopher Nolan's movies are the new idea of a Blockbuster and Tarantino has begun to release his movies during the summer and studios are moving films around to get away from his weekend. That's pretty powerful stuff. Summer is also becoming less and less of an exclusive time to release the big movies. with the start and end of the season starting and ending earlier and later (respectively) every year. Look at this year, "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" opened in March and, honestly, there are big films almost every week for the rest of the year. Probably won't be much of a drop off until January (when all the Academy Award bait will be coming out). Within the next few years, there may not even BE a drop off in a particular month as they see that people will go see a good movie REGARDLESS of the time of year.

Estar Gwars

Once again I am back because I feel I have something to say and it's about one of the things that EVERYONE seems to have an opinion about: Star Wars Episode VII. Like I normally say, this isn't an argument to defend the movie, just to make you think more about it. I'm gonna bring up a few things that people are skeptical about with it and see if maybe I could shed some light on those issues.

Let's begin.

"It can't be good that Disney is behind it."

I know it is kinda fashionable to pick on Disney, but why is that? Yes they are a big conglomerate that has loads of money and continues to pick up properties left and right (and geek properties at that), but what exactly have they gotten wrong lately? Marvel has gotten better with the Avengers continuity being great so far (including their animated outings) and their cartoons are way better than they've been in years. Part of the reason for the latter is a bit of a detriment to the one thing that has gone down under their "parentage": Pixar. The reason for that, though, is that most of the original team from Pixar has moved on. Brad Bird is doing live action ("Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol" was directed by him under J.J. Abrams as producer), so is Peter Docter, Steve Jobs has passed, and John Lasseter and Edwin Catmull have gone on to be in charge of all Disney animation.Only Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich are really still doing the hands-on and that's a harder job when you aren't surrounded by the others anymore.

But, honestly, we aren't talking animation anyway. Now, Star Wars movies are not R-rated and are pretty family friendly to begin with, so what exactly is the problem? Even if you want to go down that road, Disney owns Touchstone pictures who have done "Con Air", "Sister Act", "The Prestige", "Dead Poet's Society", and "The Insider". They also owned Miramax and therefore Dimension films during their heyday, producing "Scream", "The Faculty", and the Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, and Robert Rodriguez films. So they have a very diverse pedigree that doesn't have a huge track record of stifling creativity (except maybe when Michael Eisner was in charge). So really, nothing to fear there.

"George Lucas isn't involved, oh no."

And what is exactly wrong with that? He almost killed the franchise himself! Episodes I and II were awful and he was in charge of them from start to finish. Plus, he allowed the lore to get muddled and the canon to get contradictory. Soooooo, can they really screw it up more? Nope. Canon is being streamlined and made into a more cohesive narrative which is a good thing (although don't get me started on Korriban being made into Moraban) and they hired Lawrence Kasdan of "Empire" and "Raiders" fame to write, so I think the story is in good hands.

"J.J. Abrams? What the hell?"

This seems to be a main sticking point and one I really don't get. What exactly has he done wrong? Sure he started with "Felicity" (which I never watched, but I'm told was actually pretty good), but he's also created some of the biggest Sci-Fi shows in the last decade and a half: "Alias", "Lost", and my personal favorite "Fringe". He also is a huge fan of the era that spawned the original Trilogy. "Super 8" was a love letter to the works of Spielberg and he has said himself that he's afraid to screw up "Star Wars" because he loves it so much. He didn't feel the same way about "Star Trek" and I think he did a bang up job with those.

Speaking of reboots, he has a history of rebooting franchises that have strayed considerably in a successful way. As I said, I liked the "Star Trek" reboot and felt it had a reverence for the originals that had not been seen in a while. Most forget he also rebooted the "Mission: Impossible" movies after John Woo completely disregarded what made the franchise so good in the first place and made a flashy action packed movie that had more to do with Bourne than M:I (for the record, I like the Bourne movies, they just aren't what a M:I movie should be). Abrams made a movie that really felt like an extension of the first movie and took the series to a whole new level. In fact, I'd kinda like to see him get a crack at the Bond franchise. Sure he's not the most talented director ever and he certainly loves those lens flares that I'm not fond of, but he isn't Uwe Boll. He respects the source material and is afraid of failure. Sounds good to me.


So give him a chance. Give the movie a chance. I doubt highly it could ever be as bad as "The Phantom Menace".

The Nirvana Paradox

I know, it's been a couple of weeks. I had been planning on seeing some of the new movies like "Godzilla" and "X-Men", but haven't so I didn't feel like I had much to say. I do, however, have something to say about something a little random.

Nirvana. Lots of talking about them recently since they've just been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but let's talk about their contribution to said rock and roll history. I'm not out to convince you of anything in particular or to make you "hate" your favorite band (if it is), no, I just want you to maybe re-evaluate and question what the music industry wants you to believe.

I want to start by admitting that I've never been a huge Nirvana fan. That isn't to say that I don't like them, just that I'm not someone who rushed out and bought anything they did. In fact, I never bought any Nirvana albums. I liked them enough to listen to them on the radio, but never thought they were so great that I needed to listen to them over and over again.

Which brings me to my first point. Were they really all that talented? I think not. Now, Dave Grohl is an exception (which I will talk about in a minute), but honestly I'm not convinced that they were. The songwriting is actually terrible and stupid even for a rock song (which are not known for being terribly poetic). And the simple 3 chord progression (which admittedly is a staple of rock) wasn't ground breaking in any way. So what was so great about it? Well, it was the complete opposite of everything that had been happening for the decade before. The late '80s and first year '90s was just characterized by hair bands and the rise of hip-hop. Then Nirvana hit. Grunge was the exact opposite of all that. It struck a chord with the youth of the time (including lots of my friends) and was the latest trend in a long line of disenfranchised youth music, which is what rock has embodied in some way for generations by punk, goth, and more recently emo.

So we have a new genre that emerges from Seattle and the first band that breaks is immortalized as

who brought it to the world. Sound familiar? Sex Pistols anyone? What if it has been Alice In Chains or Soundgarden? Would the world hold them in such high esteem? I think so, but then again, it could be that Kurt Cobain's death was just timely enough to send them into legendary status. Think about it, they only had 2 mainstream albums and were at the very height of stardom, so they never really had a chance to fizzle out and all the controversy and theorizing about Kurt's supposed suicide kept them in the news for a long time (hell, even in the last six months as the photos have been released).

If he hadn't died, what might have happened? Well, there wouldn't have been the Foo Fighters, that's for sure. Dave would never have been allowed to blossom on his own since he was always overshadowed by his eccentric front man. Also, I really feel they would have fallen flat on their face in terms of their following. Sure there would have been die-hard fans and they could have continued for some more time, but I'm sure the trends would have left them behind. I would point to another band of the '90s that had more #1 rock singles than anyone before and now is all but forgotten (except by hardcore fans like myself) which is Collective Soul. Had Ed Roland passed after "Dosage" would they have the same fame as Nirvana? Hmmmm.

I know I rambled and probably could have written better, but I just wanted to get a few points across. Hopefully you will re-think Nirvana's role in history.

Throwback Thursday-Gosford Park (2001)

I don't really want to make this a long post, so I will get right to the point. Today won't be a full-on review, because this movie is over 10 years old, but I do want to kind of convince you to try it out since it's one of my all-time favorite movies. Firstly, a little bit about the movie:

Summary from IMDB:

"Multiple storylined drama set in 1932, showing the lives of upstairs guest and downstairs servants at a party in a country house in England."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280707/

"Gosford Park" is a quintessentially Robert Altman film that follows in the footsteps of "Mansfield Park" and, more to the point, "Upstairs Downstairs", but really is its own beast. Altman was one that didn't dwell on the small details, he was more about capturing the soul of the moment. His movies always were made with lots of ad-libbing from the principles and essentially the art of the conversation. Sure there is a murder mystery involved which serves as the "plot" to drive the story (or really stories) and ensure that no one leaves while the various storylines (that mostly revolve around motive) play out, but it is the conversations between the various characters that really defines the narrative. What's kind of cool is that it is almost entirely shown from the servant's perspective. There is ALWAYS a servant around listening.

What I absolutely love about "Gosford Park" is that nothing is blatantly spelled out for the audience. Everything comes down to gestures, stretches of silence, reading between the lines, and snide, under-handed remarks. You have numerous storylines that twist and turn around each other that sometimes relate one to another and sometimes do not. They all play out well and without leaving a bunch of loose ends. Sure, some are left for the viewer to fill in the blanks, but that's intentional. Especially because, even though I've seen the movie probably 15 times, every time I see it, I make new connections and epiphanies as to what is really going on. It's hard to even keep track of who's who (since the servants are mostly called by the name of their "upstairs" counterpart) and how they are related to each other in the first viewing, but it gets much easier on repeated viewings. The writer of the movie (who won an Oscar for this) is who writes "Downton Abbey" so if you like that, you might really like this movie.

The actors are all superb. Many you know well like Maggie Smith (Prof. McGonagall!), Ryan Phillipe, Helen Mirren (Queen Elizabeth II), Clive Owen (who shoulda been Bond), and Michael Gambon (Dumbledore!); others like Charles Dance (Tywin), Tom Hollander (Pirates movies), and Bob Balaban (several Wes Anderson and Christopher Guest films) you'll go "Hey! It's that guy that was in that thing with...". Then there's the people that must only be famous in England. Still, they all are great in their respective roles. No one stands out as particularly bad, though Phillipe is out of his depth with the rest of the cast.

I really don't have much more to say about it. Watch it and see for yourself. If you don't like it, sorry to have wasted your time, but if you like tight scripts with lots of dialogue and don't mind a movie where nothing really "happens" other than conversations, then see it.

Damn, now I'm going to have to watch it AGAIN...

Why Marvel's The Avengers Is NOT The Greatest Comic Book Movie Ever

Like I promised yesterday, I'm gonna outline why The Avengers isn't the greatest comic book movie of all time. That isn't to say that I don't like and enjoy the movie, it just isn't as flawless as the world makes it out to be. I'm sure this discussion will piss some people off, but honestly I don't really care. I concede that as with most things, what is the "best" is a purely subjective thing that can never be proven. That doesn't mean that it can't be categorically proven to NOT be the best.


I need to preface the rest of this by saying I will be comparing it often to another movie that is often brought up as a retort: The Dark Knight. I'm using this movie for a few reasons: 1) it is a fantastic example of the reasons The Avengers fails, 2) I've always liked DC comics more than Marvel (I will admit bias), 3) it is the best comic book movie ever. Ha.

The Major Plot Hole

I'll start with the weakest argument, but probably the one that bothers me the most every time I watch The Avengers. There's one huge, glaring plot hole in the movie that most viewers just accept and move on. Thor already knows about the Chitauri coming when he shows up. Everyone just accepts this fact and moves on with no further explanation. How does he know? What more does he know about them? Where do they come from? Why are they following Loki? If he knew all of this, why has he only come to confront Loki when Loki comes to Earth and not before? Instead we get a casual reference to "he has an army" and quickly they move on and the rest of the team (and subsequently the viewer) are whisked off to something else. This is yet another movie that caters to the ADHD viewer. 

Wait, There Is No Plot

Speaking of ADHD, the "plot" just moves from one thing to another rather quickly to mostly just set up another action sequence. Yes, I get this is an action flick, but there's not much else here. Just think about it, any time they start to develop anything other than the all-these-disparate-entities-need-to-band-together-to-fight-this-sorta-vague-threat it is cut really short and moves on. There's a point in the middle of the movie that the motives of S.H.I.E.L.D. begin to be questioned and it devolves into a bitch-fest that ends up serving that very basic plot and nothing else. It even gets revisited and actually becomes the whole central plot of The Winter Soldier.
Comic books have always had something to say. On the face they have always been just really well drawn (and longer) comic strips, but there has always been something deeper. Nationalism, racism, political unrest, and sociology have all been thoroughly explored in the pages of comics. They are a place for the writers and artists to vent frustrations or safely have conversations about the most controversial subjects of our time without (at least most of the time) doing it overtly. The Dark Knight explored several of these types of issues both overtly and subtly; like overreaching of government surveillance (the echo-locator), socioeconomic disparity (the Joker's many sociological experiments), and political climate change. Winter Soldier tackled some of these same issues and that's why it is more successful than The Avengers in my book.

All that The Avengers did was barely touch on distrust of the government and then swiftly swept it under the rug to focus on rag-tag-group-needs-a-reason-to-band-together-to-save-the-world. Like THAT hasn't been done 100s of times before.

Action, Action, Action

My last point is more of a summation of the previous two. This movie was made by a petulant child playing with blocks. He sets them up, knocks them down, rinse, repeat. The action sequences are beautiful and really well executed, but nothing really happens between them other than the set up for another action sequence. I get that this is an action movie, but I'm left wanting more. I will say that I just don't care for non-stop action movies and this one at least let you breathe a little between, but it just has very little meat for me. The Dark Knight has short bursts of action that use up all the drama prior to them to allow the action to punctuate rather than dictate. The opposite happens in The Avengers. The action dictates the plot and pacing not the other way around. Again, much of this point is just personal preference, but that's the nature of a blog.

In conclusion, I hope I've brought up some points that will make you rethink your position on The Avengers. Notice that I never said The Avengers was a bad movie because it isn't. I really enjoy the movie for what it is: a fun popcorn movie. Just don't try and make it what it isn't: the greatest comic book movie ever.

Multi-Plex Conundrum or Why Do I Pay So Much For Concessions?

Friday at my viewing of "Evil Dead" I did something I haven't done in a while. I bought a Coke at the concession stand, not because I wanted to, but because I had a free popcorn coupon from CineMode (ask me if you don't know what that is). It didn't require me to buy the soda to get it, but I felt guilty for not buying something and just going up for my free popcorn. Then I realized the genius of offering the free popcorn. It gets people to buy concessions that normally wouldn't and probably gets people who would normally buy concessions to buy more than they normally would because of the "deal" they got.

Then I noticed all the people coming in with their own buckets and cups. Part of the deal where you pay a little extra for the bucket and cup then get discounted refills for the rest of this year. What does this do? Makes you get a soda and popcorn every time you come to the theater. It might even make you come to the theater a little more often to get your money's worth out of that offer. So aren't their margins reduced every time you come in for your "discount". Nope. The cup or bucket cost way more than the drink or popcorn you put into it and you've already paid the initial upcharge that covers that cost. Popcorn and soda are literally made for pennies, so maybe they "lose" 10 cents per refill after the first couple of times you use it (which after that, most people will forget they had them or forget to bring them), but that's still $2.90 in margin for each container that they might not have gotten before.
 

Don't they make a fortune from ticket sales?

Short answer is no. I'm gonna over simplify so you get the picture. See, the way the contracts between the studios, distributors, and theaters are structured so that about 95% of what is made in ticket sales the first week goes up the food chain and doesn't stay with the theater (this is through payment to actually show the movie and actual percentages of ticket sales that go to the studio/distributor). Then each week it gets reduced by approximately 5% (these numbers aren't exactly hard numbers and change per contract) so that the theater gets more. Now the first week the sheer volume of tickets usually grants the theater enough money to cover the cost of the overhead (like electricity and labor) for a particular movie, but the 2nd week usually ends up being a loss because of how drastically the volume of tickets drops on most movies. The 3rd week the theater will generally turn a bit of profit (that might offset week 2's loses) and by the 4th they might actually get to see a bottom-line profit (although it may not cover all the other overhead like rent and advertising).

Can't they do something else besides upping concessions?

They try. Corporate companies can rent out the theater for events (which rarely happens in most areas), you can have birthday parties at most venues, there's the "arcade", and companies pay for screen time before the movie starts. This is all well and good, but again, mostly pays for overhead. Plus, you can't guarantee any of these things other than the pre-movie advertising, so mostly those are just icing on the cake.


What about that 3-D Surcharge?

Despite what you think, the theater doesn't really profit from that. In fact, it may end up costing the theater more than a regular movie might. You see, you're not buying those glasses like you think you are. The studios pay for those. That's why you should recycle them at the end of the movie. You're gonna have to pay that surcharge no matter what. The surcharge goes towards paying off that expensive projector that they had to install to show 3-D and the maintenance on said projector. So why would the studios push 3-D if they're paying for those glasses? It is 2-fold: since the contracts are based on percentages and since the surcharge counts as part of the ticket they get a bigger chunk of money for each viewing. It also inflates the yearly gross numbers which makes business look better than it really is (which makes people head to the movies more because of mob mentality).

Let's break down "Avatar" a bit in a little bit of a thought exercise to show how 3-D can inflate box office numbers (numbers are from Box Office Mojo). Domestically "Avatar" brought in $760, 507,625 and the estimated number of tickets sold was 97,255,300. Let's say that only 1/2 of those tickets were in 3-D (I'd say the majority of people saw it in 3-D so this is probably a low estimate). So divide the tickets by 2 which gives us 48,627,650 3-D tickets with a low estimate surcharge of $3 (it's more like $5 in some areas). So 48,627,650 times $3 equals $145,882,950 added to the box office take. Even if you reduce the 3-D tickets to 1/3, you still end up with $97,255,300 added. And these are pretty low estimates. If half the ticket sales were 3-D, almost 20% of the box office was in the surcharge. Take that out and it doesn't seem quite as big of a juggernaut. With that, they can promote "Avatar" using the press without paying for it by talking how many records it is breaking, adding to ticket sales. Without all this, it might not have surpassed "The Dark Knight" from the year before and "Avatar" still isn't bigger than "Gone With the Wind" when adjusted for inflation

Sorry about all of those numbers. Hope you were able to follow.

So what does it all mean? Well, nothing is gonna change anytime soon. Costs of movie making continue to balloon and the studios need to recoup what they put in and theaters are a business so they need to make sure they add to their bottom line. That's just the world we live in.

Hopefully this gave you a little insight into how the business of a movie theater works and why concessions are the price they are. 

What Makes a Bond Movie a Bond Movie or Why Daniel Craig Isn't Bond

Well, I'm back after a long hiatus and with an issue that is sure to stir up some love/hate amongst you readers. I've been pondering this one for months because when I tell someone that I haven't liked the last 3 (ok, really the last 4) Bond movies, I had a hard time articulating why. I have issues with Daniel Craig as Bond for reasons outside of the movie itself (comments he has made to the press concerning Bond), but that's not all it is. I feel it is the whole movie structure and the insistence that they "modernize" Bond.

Everything (well ALMOST everything) that is wrong with the franchise can been summed up in the cover of the colleciton:

I'll give you a moment to see what is the issue.

30 more seconds...

See it? And no it isn't that Craig is in the center or that Lazenby and Dalton are seen as the red-hheaded step childs of the franchise by putting them off in another color (although...).

Look closely at the guns and what they're wearing. A machine gun? A haphazard suit? This is BOND not Jason Bourne! Why don't they just have him say "Bourne, James Bourne" and get it over with? Since the series had started to wain at the box office during Brosnan's tenure as Bond, they desperately tried to find some way to make Bond fresh and new to a modern audience and with the success of the Bourne franchise, it was decided that aping some of the tropes of Bourne was the way for Bond to go. Problem is, Bourne aped from Bond to begin with so now we have a 2nd generation watered down Bond. Don't get me wrong, the movies are generally decent (and fairly entertaining) action movies, but action does not a Bond movie make. Here's what is missing:

Two things wrong in current Bond movies that are evident from the get go. The first is the gun barrel fade being moved to the end of the movie which has always STARTED the movie. Even if the movie didn't have a teaser opening sequence before the credits like "Dr. No" we've always had it start off the movie. The other thing is the theme song and opening credits itself. Now, the first two Bond movies didn't really have theme songs per se and the sequences had evolved greatly over the years, but there is a certain feel to them that had been missing in the past few, but made a glorious return in "Skyfall". The music hadn't been right since "The World Is Not Enough" (still one of my favorite themes) and "Casino Royale" completely dumped the style of the credits. I feel these kind of set you up for the movie. You know now what you're getting into.

Other things are more subtle, but they get me annoyed none the less. Bond rarely drinks his famous martini anymore. He drinks Heineken. The cars haven't been fun (with the exception of the Astin Martin returning for a cameo in "Skyfall"). The gadgets (and therefore "Q") have been gone. Basically most of the "spy" has been removed from the series. Watch "Archer" and you see what you should be seeing in the Bond movies, which boils my bottom.

So...if much of this is back into "Skyfall" with the exception of the fade, that should make the new one better right? Not really. Those are minor quibbles. What follows is the real meat and potatoes.

We'll start with where Bond was cheeky and would say things with a twinkle in his eye, there's a much more hard and arrogant tone to his words. Most of this one I place solely on Craig. I know they want a more emotional and darker edged Bond, but the lines that are supposed to add a little levity just make me dislike the character more. Speaking of "Dark Bond", it annoys me that they did the same thing with Timothy Dalton (who could still pull off the levity) and the public raked him over the coals! I thought Dalton was ten times the Bond Craig is. They've also made him TOO vulnerable and quote-unqote emotional. Part of the fun of Bond is that he's so calm, cool, and collected when things are getting out of control. The clothes shouldn't be all disheveled and nary a hair should be out of place. This is getting a little better, but still a problem.

Plot structure is a issue too. Like the Mission Impossible movies did for part 2 (though I LOVED Ghost Protocol FYI), they are starting to value the action sequences more than the spy elements (hence the machine gun up top). In previous Bond movies (prior to "Die Another Day") there were usually only 2 (or maybe 3) big action sequences (usually a vehicle chase and a big fire fight) with a fist fight here and there just to break things up. Now it just seems there is a setup, action sequence; setup, action sequence; setup, action sequence; rinse and repeat every 15 minutes until the movie is over. I guess it is because I don't have ADHD that I actually get bored with this structure. Especially when the last 30 minutes is just some long extended action sequence with very little pay off in the end.

I've gone on quite a long while, but stay with me for a couple more.

I know this is a little cliche, but bring back the damn Russians (or at least Communists) and SPECTRE. Very few "successful" Bond movies have strayed out of that concept. It works. And more and more writers are realizing that since they're creeping back in as the villains (well Communists).

And bring back the Bond girl. We throw that term around quite a bit, but what IS a Bond girl? I won't go into it much, but there should be 3 in the movie. The "throwaway" that really doesn't have much to do with plot, but is just there to prove just how suave he really is (I know that's a bit chauvinistic, but that's  kind of what the character is, but her character is usually balanced by the next two); the "damsel in distress" who usually ends up surprising Bond and the audience with her intelligence and "balls" before the end; and the "femme fatale" who generally cannot be trusted and ends up turning on him. Sure there may not be all three, but if there aren't, it usually means 2 and 3 are rolled into one (as one first then the other). I do have one question, though, where are the female villans? There have been several good female henchmen like Xenia Onatopp or Pussy Galore, but no main villains.

Speaking of the villain. This has been the biggest problem as of late. I think it very much has to do with the fact that with the exception of "Casino Royale", the movies are no longer based on Ian Flemming novels. They've run out of his material. Some of them have been based on other writer's works that are considered "cannon", but mostly it's some writer thinking they are making up a good Bond story and they aren't. There's supposed to be a henchman you think is the main villain who is usually very eccentric and cool, then you meet the man behind the scenes in the third act who is just so damn calm cool and collected. He rarely does any of the dirty work himself. He's the brains behind the operation and more often than not, the food chain even goes higher than him (generally to SPECTRE). In "Skyfall", Silva always seems like a henchman to me and never the true villain. He's a Jaws, Oddjob, or Baron Samendi not Goldfinger, Scaramanga, or Kananga. And save Le Chiffre, I'm sure you can't name a Bond villain probably back to "Goldeneye", but back to "The World Is Not Enough" at least. That, to me, is a problem.

I'm not saying I'm done with the franchise, but I think it is very telling that I didn't see "Skyfall" in the theater. I ALWAYS see a new Bond when it comes out, but the previous 3 had left me so disenfranchised that I didn't really care if I saw it immediately or not. Hire Tom Hardy and we'll talk again, Sony.