What We Learned This Week: July 30-August 5

LESSON #1: THE LITERARY WORKS OF STEPHEN KING ARE NOT ALWAYS FIT FOR FILM— As of the It remake next month, 66 film adaptations, sequels and all, have been created based on novels, novellas, and shorts stories of the legendary Stephen King.  The film list boasts classics like The ShiningThe Shawshank Redemption, and Carrie.  It will not include The Dark Tower.  Sapped of its multi-volume depth of mythology and whittled down into a 90-minute loose spiritual sequel, a grand work like The Dark Tower should have been made into a mini-series for television, as 25 other King works have been before.  Let’s see if Netflix can decant the mess that is The Dark Tower with some quality programming and attention to detail.  

LESSON #2: DETROIT HAS BEEN A TIMELY STORY FOR 50 YEARS, ONLY NO ONE CARED TO REMEMBER–The historical incidents chronicled in Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit is but one of ten national uprisings from across the country in what became known as the “Long Hot Summer of 1967,” has been timely, ignorance and all, for 50 years.    Bottom line, it was timely next to any one of the over 40 ethnic riots that have occurred on American soil in the last half-century.  This counts as better late than never. If it takes a piece of film entertainment telling serious stories to instigate hard reflection and improved new public dialogue, Detroit is poised to accomplish such a mission.  Hard to watch as it is, consider the film essential viewing.

LESSON #3: STEVEN SODERBERGH IS ON TO SOMETHING— Promoting his first film in four years after flirting with retirement, the Out of Sight, Traffic, Magic Mike, and Ocean’s 11 series filmmaker outlined just how different the business model is for Logan Lucky.  In a heady and fascinating interview with GQ (appropriately click bait titled “Steven Soderbergh is Back to Destroy Hollywood”), Soderbergh described how he went around the studio system to sell the foreign rights to Logan Lucky ahead of time to finance the production.  He then brokered the streaming, home media, television, and airline deals ahead of time to pay for the advertising and marketing.  By doing so, every theatrical dollar for Logan Lucky goes directly to the people who made the film without any studio taking a cut.  That’s ballsy and genius and I hope it pays off and starts a trend of less studio tinkering.

LESSON #4: JEFFREY KATZENBERG IS ON TO SOMETHING EVEN BIGGER— The volume of and dependency towards personal mobile devices, especially handy smartphones, is creating an emerging go-to conduit for digesting entertainment content for a growing section of media audiences.   The former Disney and Dreamworks exec wants to tap into that in an ambitious way.  Outlined in a Variety feature, Katzenberg wants to foster a whole new line of short-form entertainment options targeting 18-to 34-year-olds backed by top-shelf talent and budgets equaling the production quality of primetime television.  Examples include 10-minute series episodes, 5-minute talk shows, and 2-minute newscasts.  This $2 billion pitch, dubbed New TV by Katzenberg, would be revolutionary.  I will still say what I said last week in this department.  It all comes down to price point.  If it’s affordable, people will come.


DON SHANAHAN is a Chicago-based film critic writing on his website Every Movie Has a Lesson.  He is also one of the founders and the current directors of the Chicago Independent Film Critics Circle.  As an elementary educator by day, Don writes his movie reviews with life lessons in mind, from the serious to the farcical.  As a contributor here on Feelin’ Film, he’s going to expand those lessons to current movie news and trends.  Find “Every Movie Has a Lesson” on Facebook, Twitter, Medium, and Creators Media.

 

Minisode 19: Summer Movie Challenge (2017)

It’s that time again to make box office predictions for the Summer Movie Challenge. This yearly competition involves us choosing what we think will be the highest grossing films between May and Labor Day. This year we are joined by our Feelin’ Film contributors – Don and Steve. Who will emerge victorious? Listen to hear our picks and find out how you can play along!

2017 Summer Movie Challenge Rules

The rules for the game come from TimeTravelReview’s Summer Movie Pool:

The object is to pick the films that you think will be the top-ten grossing films of the summer, in order of box-office performance. As I’ve said, that means only films released from May 1st 2017 to the Labor Day weekend, counting only the money those films make domestically (US and Canada) in that period. In other words films from March or April might still be making money after May 1st, but they don’t count; films released from May on could start racking up foreign B.O., but that doesn’t count; films released from May on could still be making money into September, but that doesn’t count either. Box Office numbers are generally available late Monday or Tuesday after the weekend closes. For the last seven or so years, I have been using box office numbers from Yahoo Box Office which gets their numbers in turn from Box Office Mojo. So what you will be doing is figuring out what 10 films will make the most money, and putting them in order of what you think they will gross at the box office. BUT, in addition to your top 10, you get to pick 3 “Dark Horses”- films you think *might* make it, but that you are not confident enough about to put into the top 10 proper.

2017 Summer Movie Challenge Scoring:

To see how we are doing check out the official SMC Scoreboard:

  • Getting number 1 or number 10 dead-on gets you 13 points (each).

The rest of the scoring goes like this:

  • 10 points for numbers 2-9 dead-on
  • 7 points if your pick was only one spot away from where it ended up
  • 5 points if it was two spots away
  • 3 points if your pick is anywhere in the Top 10
  • 1 point for each dark horse that makes it into the Top 10

The scoring is tabulated so that you get the SINGLE HIGHEST point value for each pick- that is, if you get number ten right, you don’t get 13+3, you only get 13.

Aaron

1. Guardians of the Galaxy 2
2. Despicable Me 3
3. Transformers: The Last Knight
4. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
5. Spider-Man: Homecoming
6. Cars 3
7. Wonder Woman
8. War for the Planet of the Apes
9. Alien: Covenant
10. Baywatch
DH: The Mummy, Dunkirk, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
Patrick
1. Guardians of the Galaxy 2
2. Spider-Man: Homecoming
3. Alien: Covenant
4. Despicable Me 3
5. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
6. War for the Planet of the Apes
7. Wonder Woman
8. Cars 3
9. The Mummy
10. Baywatch
DH: Dunkirk, Transformers: The Last Knight, Baby Driver
Don
1. Guardians of the Galaxy 2
2. Despicable Me 3
3. Spider-Man: Homecoming
4. Wonder Woman
5. Transformers: The Last Knight
6. Cars 3
7. War for the Planet of the Apes
8. Baywatch
9. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
10. Dunkirk

DH: Alien: Covenant, Captain Underpants, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

Steve
1. Guardians of the Galaxy 2
2. Spider-Man: Homecoming
3. Despicable Me 3
4. War for the Planet of the Apes
5. Transformers: The Last Knight
6. Cars 3
7. Wonder Woman
8. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
9. The Mummy
10. Captain Underpants
DH: Alien: Covenant, The Dark Tower, Baywatch

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