Category — Movies

Mixed martial arts is the fourth most popular pay-per-view sport among men 18 to 34, reports Douglas Quenqua in the New York Times (3/15/12). Mixed martial arts is "where a fighter can use any style of combat — jujitsu, karate, boxing, wrestling — to subdue an opponent. Fighters wear minimally padded gloves and matches are held in cages so no one can fall out. The result is an often bloody, bone-breaking affair that, according to fans, leaves no question of who is the better combatant." Among guys under 35, it "has come to represent everything that boxing once did to their fathers and grandfathers: the ultimate measure of manhood, endurance and guts."

For them, it’s right up there with baseball, basketball and football, according to Scarborough Sports Marketing. For everyone else, "it ranks below horse racing and figure skating." Mixed martial arts first arrived in the US, from Brazil, in 1993. Its popularity began to grow in the late 90s with the release of Fight Club, a Brad Pitt film in which it is central to the storyline. At first it was outlawed by many states and "cable networks refused to carry the graphic fights, which for years were conducted almost entirely without rules. Such attempts to ban the sport only "fueled its rise," however.

Since it wasn’t possible to watch mixed martial arts on television, young men traded videotapes, giving "the sport the feel of a grass-roots movement." A network of fans trading tapes soon spread across the internet. Today, the sport is legal in "nearly every state that sanctions boxing" and "watching a mixed martial arts fight is as easy as setting your DVR." Tim Parrott, whose 10-year-old son is a fan, has no problem with the sport’s unvarnished violence. "These are the new superheroes for kids," he says. "People don’t wake up today and want to be Sugar Ray Leonard. They want to be Georges St. Pierre." Prof. Robert Thompson of Syracuse University says the sport has surprising appeal among his students. "This is not something that smart young people look down their noses at," he says.

A mathematical concept can explain why our favorite movies hold our attention, reports Holly Finn in the Wall Street Journal (2/25/12). It is quite surprising, given our allegedly shrinking attention span, that we’re willing to sit through movies running two hours or more: “Sixty percent of us will abandon an online video by the two-minute mark. But the top 10 grossing films of all time run an average of 135 minutes.” Of this year’s nine Oscar nominees for best picture, “just three are under two hours” (granted, the winning film, The Artist, clocked in at just 100 minutes).

It’s possible that we’ll stay put simply because of our investment in tickets and popcorn. Or maybe it’s “the combined sensory deprivation (no light, no internet, no talking) and sensory overload (surround sound! bloody battles! 3-D!).” The big screen alone, and its ability to make us feel like we’re in the movie, certainly helps. However, a scientific paper, Attention and the Evolution of Hollywood Film, “shows how movies — and moviegoers — benefit from the mathematical concept 1/f (one over frequency). This wave pattern occurs everywhere in nature, from engineering to music, though no one knows why.”

The concept is that our attention span waxes and wanes, “on a spectrum from random to predictable,” but graphed over time 1/f is “the finely balanced seesaw in between.” An analysis of “160 popular movies released between 1935 and 2010 … discovered a distinct move toward 1/f on the screen … with clusters of shots of varying length interspersed with shots of varying length.” So, while our “great wired world bends our brains to its whims … the film world is bending to ours. As out of sync as we often feel in this accelerated age, movies know what we need … we sit down, lock into a film’s rhythm, and get lost in it.”

A new documentary looks at a decades-old debate over the true meaning of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film, The Shining, reports Robert Ito in the New York Times (1/29/12). Room 237, by director Rodney Ascher, interviews “professors and historians, fanboys and artists, many of whom have posted their theories online.” Two of the most popular theories are that the film is about the holocaust and that it is about genocide of the American Indian. A third theory has it that the film is a confession about Kubrick’s alleged role in faking the moon landing.

One theorist, who subscribes to the holocaust interpretation, notes the film’s “many references … to 1942,” the year the holocaust began. It appears as the number on a shirt and is the number of times Shelley Duval swings a bat at Jack Nicholson. At another point, “Summer of ’42” plays on the television. An American Indian genocide theorist meanwhile points to the Indian chief logo on cans of baking powder, as well as a scene where Nicholson “hurls a tennis ball repeatedly against an Indian wall hanging.”

The moon-landing-hoax angle meanwhile is premised on the idea that Kubrick helped NASA fake it, and the Shining is his confession. Evidence includes the "hexagonal design" on a hotel carpet, said to be patterned after an "aerial view of the Apollo launching pad." Rodney Ascher thinks the Shining continues to fascinate because "it is a compelling work of art that acts as a kind of mirror, especially for thoughtful people, who see aspects of themselves that are among the most precious things they have experienced." The two-hour film’s name, by the way — Room 237 — "is a reference to a haunted room" in the hotel in which The Shining is set.

A "carefully crafted distribution strategy" was the key to success for "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," reports Erica Orden in the Wall Street Journal (1/11/12). The plan was to do "the reverse of the usual pattern in modern Hollywood, where big movies typically open on as many screens as possible — often upwards of 3,000 — on the theory that such wide exposure maximizes the impact of costly national advertising campaigns." James Schamus, chief executive of Focus Features, the film’s distributor, instead decided to open on just four screens, expanded cautiously to about 55, and then waited until after the holidays before going to 800 screens.

"Our goal with ‘Tinker’ was to play underneath the traditional December blood bath, forgoing a massive media spend and aggressive print count and rather making sure the film completely dominated the specialized part of the market," says James. The strategy is known as a "platform release," and is designed to tailor "distribution based on early information about demographics and feedback from moviegoers." Initially, the assumption was it would attract an older, matinee audience. Surprisingly, it proved popular at late-evening showings, suggesting a wider, younger audience.

But Focus didn’t expand quickly into a few hundred screens because that "would require the studio to pay for essentially the same size television campaign but wouldn’t provide the exposure to the 800 or so theaters it was ultimately looking to reach." Once it reached the 800-screen range, James said each theater was hand-picked. "We talk about the neighborhood and we talk about the historical grosses for those theaters so we know where the money is," he says. As a result, Tinker managed to earn "more money per screen among the top-10 grossing films than any but the No. 1 film" during at least one weekend in January.

She was known as "the most beautiful woman in the world," but Hedy Lamarr also helped invent technology that later led to wi-fi and GPS, reports Diane Brady in Bloomberg Businessweek (12/11/11). The Hollywood film star’s unlikely role as the co-inventor of "a jamproof radio guidance system for torpedoes at the age of 27" is the focal point of Hedy’s Folly, by Richard Rhodes. In it, he "tries to dissect the story behind the frequency-hopping radio encryption technique that was awarded US Patent No. 2292387."

Her work was actually a collaboration with another unlikely amateur inventor, George Antheil, an avant-garde composer and writer. Their goal was to find "ways to transmit signals over multiple frequencies, thus thwarting enemies’ attempts to jam radio-guided missiles by homing in on a single frequency." They knew that this "would work only if the transmitter and receiver were both synced to the same sequence of frequencies."  

Their solution was based on a technology George had developed for a composition that "called for 16 synchronized player pianos," using  “a piano roll to coordinate the frequencies." This "spread spectrum technology" as it is known, wasn’t used until the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, after their patent had expired. But incredibly, "a screen siren and an eclectic composer" created a groundbreaking technology, proving that "innovation can come from anywhere,” but also that "a world that craves new ideas also tends to dismiss those capable of producing them."

The NYC Food Film Festival invited viewers to sample the foods featured in films, reports Pervaiz Shallwani in the Wall Street Journal (10/12/11). The idea has its roots in a 2004 documentary called Hamburger America, which "chronicled the history of eight iconic burger joints." When it was screened at Water Taxi Beach, its creator, George Motz, also served "four burgers featured in the film, including a green chile cheeseburger from a stand in New Mexico" to the audience. George says that after one very emotional woman "thanked him for giving her a slice of home," he knew he was onto something.

"I think it works because people want to know where their food comes from and this is a very direct way to connect to a meal," he says. The festival, at Tribeca Cinemas earlier this month, showcased some 28 films (selected from 160 entries) and offered samples of its starring attractions. "A film about Domenico DeMarco, of Brooklyn’s Di Fara Pizza, was paired with pies from the shop. Two films about tacos coincided with a taco cook-off featuring eight pro chefs." Among the flicks were "eight dialogue-free films offering close-up shots of cooking set to music."

“We try to keep it very, very appetizing,” says George, who adds that the festival is not about politics. “There is no Food Inc. here,” he says. ” The idea for Hamburger America came from George’s wife, who suggested making a film about food after seeing a documentary on hot dogs. Hamburgers seemed the obvious choice, the Sundance Channel picked it up, and the project “has since spawned a book and an iPhone app.” George, who is also host of “Made in America,” has already introduced his Food Film Festival to Chicago and “plans for expansion to eight more cities.”

Mermaids are poised “to swamp vampires and zombies as supernatural rainmakers in popular culture,” reports Bloomberg Businessweek (8/29/11). A good chunk of mermaid momentum is thanks to the most recent Pirates of the Caribbean, which featured “sailor-drowning mermaids played by models.” But it’s also because they have a certain something in common with vampires. “They’re incredibly seductive, and they could kill you,” says Carolyn Turgeon, author of Mermaid: A Twist on the Classic Tale. “You have all the angsty stuff that you have with vampires. Except you have all this female power.”

Carolyn also runs a new magazine called Mermaids & Mythology. Other "mermaid-fueld projects are piling up," including a mermaid-based book by Twilight author Stefanie Meyer, and two, dark, live-action movies based on Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid. Much of this mermaidmainia comes to a head (or tail) at Mer-Con, which is the mermaid equivalent of Comic-Con, held last month at the Silverton in Las Vegas, home of the Mermaid Restaurant and Lounge. The event is run by Thom Shouse, who created Daryl Hannah’s tail for the 1984 film, Splash, and has since "become the world’s top designer of bespoke urethane tails."

Other mermaid-boom beneficiaries include The Weeki Wachee Springs Underwater Theater, which has been running mermaid shows since 1947. It nearly closed a few years ago but “it’s now hosting sold-out camps for adults who want to swim with tails.” Fire Pixie Entertainment meanwhile hires out "pro mermaids to perform at parties." As far as Thom is concerned, mermaids are a marketer’s dream. "They can sell hair-care products, skin-care products, seafood!" he says. Thom recently created a tail for a Panda Express ad. "It hasn’t become mainstream," says Thomas Harder, manager of the Silverton’s mermaid aquarium, "but we’re not on the fringe anymore."

A Utah homebuilder has constructed a real-life replica of the "sherbet-colored" house from the Disney/Pixar hit film, Up, reports Brooks Barnes in the New York Times (8/23/11). The builder, Blair Bangerter, saw the animated film two years ago and "became preoccupied with replicating the colorful Victorian." The problem was that Disney almost never approves use of its intellectual property: "This is a company that once forced a Florida day care center to remove an unauthorized Minnie Mouse mural. More recently, Disney told a stonemason that carving Winne-the-Pooh into a child’s gravestone would violate its copyright."

Disney later relented on the gravestone, but Blair certainly had his work cut out for him. Lucky for him, he is a connected guy (among other things, his father is a former Utah governor) and his lucky day came when "a lawyer with ties to Disney had become a member of the Salt Lake Homebuilders Association." Eventually, Blair’s plans made their way to Up’s director, Pete Docter, who loved the idea and used his "considerable clout" at Disney to get the necessary approvals (Up’s box office was $731 million and Pete’s other credits include Toy Story and Monsters, Inc.)

Disney did impose some limitations — above all, that Blair could build only one replica. But the house, as well as the furniture, "wallpaper, hardwood floors and the knicknacks on the shelves are the same or nearly so" as in the film. (images) Where Blair didn’t have details (like the kitchen, which wasn’t in the film), "he installed robin’s-egg colored, 1950s-style appliances." Its neighborhood, Herriman, Utah, is "a rapidly growing community where most homes are painted the same shade of brown," and sell for about $300,000. The multi-hued Up house is priced at $400,000, and while some of the neighbors think it’s "cute," would prefer to see it in earth tones.

One of the best movies of all time owes much of its creative genius to radio, reports Tom Nolan in the Wall Street Journal (9/13/11). The movie is Citizen Kane, "which perennially tops critics’ polls of the best films ever made." Its maker, Orson Welles, developed many of the film’s "signature devices" while producing adaptations of "famous stories by great authors" for radio. The productions featured "expressive voices and evocative sound effects," creating "marvelous films inside a listener’s mind." Most in/famous was Welles’ "audacious 1938 radio presentation of H.G. Wells’s ‘The War of the Worlds."

It was so effective that some thought Martians had actually invaded, and resulted in Welles, then 23, receiving an RKO contract to make movies. Citizen Kane, his first effort, was a "generations-spanning biography of a powerful press baron with political ambitions." Welles’s radio roots were evident in number of ways: "The rapid-fire overlapping dialogue of near-simultaneous speakers … Musical stings, such as a snicker of notes from a muted brass section, punctuate certain bon mots." And the relentless pace, like a radio play "rushing to fit a complex saga into a single hour without once losing a listener’s attention."

Then there was "the deployment of marvelous voices — especially Welles’s, one of the supreme instruments to emerge from a medium where the greatest emotion emanated from a single narrator, whether delivering a nuanced monologue or a single word: Rosebud …" As William Alland, who played a reporter in the movie, observed: "Sound in radio is like lights in a theatre … With sound you can do so much colorization; it’s more than just a background. So that sound becomes a very creative part." The result, for Citizen Kane, was "a vitality that was rare for movies in those days," says Norman Corwin, who worked with Welles in the ’30s. "He got that from radio."

An independent video store is "transforming from a strictly retail business to a cultural hub and community center," reports Nicole LaPorte in the New York Times (7/31/11). The Santa Monica-based store, which opened 26 years ago, is called Vidiots. Its newfound strategy involves hosting "a campy sing-along night," where customers dress up in "bell-bottoms, love beads and big-hair wigs" while watching and singing along to a screening of Jesus Christ Superstar. It also entails offering "classes on anime mythology; lectures by filmmakers … and spoken-word events … where participants deliver improvised monologues."

These happenings don’t actually happen in the store itself — they are staged at "a sleek space called the Annex," which opened about a year ago. "We felt that with Netflix and the internet, what we should be focusing on was community and people talking to each other," says Patty Polinger, co-owner of Vidiots with her business partner, Cathy Tauber. "We just wanted to go to the other extreme." Other video stores are on a similar track. Videology, in Brooklyn, "is opening a cafe and bar, where a dozen kinds of beer will be on tap, and movie screenings and trivia nights will take place," for example.

Some see a link between this type of community-oriented retail and "the local food movement, or a decision to buy asparagus at a farmer’s market instead of at a superstore." Both tap "into a cultural impulse to connect with something, or someone, in a digital age." As Milos Stehlik of Facets Multi-Media, an art-house film company, observes: "People who work in the video store are very knowledgeable about film … There’s always a conversation, not just a click." However, Peter Fader, a Wharton marketing professor, thinks consumers won’t necessarily choose either high-tech or high-touch, but a combination of both "as a part of their movie consumption portfolio."