Bad Movie Twins

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) Preview

Alright, so we are moving on to the Sci-Fi entry of our Calendar cycle and watching a film that has been on the BMT radar for years. Mostly this is due to its star, who is bad movie royalty. That’s right, we’re watching The Day the Earth Stood Still starring Keanu Reeves. It was released on December 12th, 2008 beating out the likes of Exodus: Gods and Kings, Love Don’t Cost a Thing, For Richer or Poorer, Home Alone 3, The Golden Child, and Delgo for a place on the calendar. Wow! That’s a murderers row. I’m actually surprised that we ended up going with The Day the Earth Stood Still for December 12th. Delgo is one of the biggest bombs in film history and has terrible reviews to boot. It’s a good thing though because our calendar is lacking in Sci-Fi. Without further ado, let’s go!

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) – BMeTric: 48.6

(Pretty boring BMeTric plot, but look, we found one! It’s been a while, but this is a movie which starts basically above its eventual mean rating and moves down. If you remember the regression plot 6.0 to start is pretty much the crossover point, so while this is well within normal expectations we could be seeing a bit of a Transformers effect. A movie which gets a bad reputation which drives its rating downwards (unusual for bad movies). The amount of votes this movie got is also startling, for such a giant domestic bomb I find that a little strange.)

Leonard Maltin – 2 stars – Strange visitor from another planet arrives on Earth in a giant sphere and adopts human form. The government and the military respond with hostility and weapons but super-smart biologist Connelly makes a personal connection with the alien – though her young stepson (Smith) isn’t as easily won over. Pallis remake of the 1951 classic turns Klaatu into a cipher and dissipates the impact of the story.

(Having already watched the original in preparation for the remake I’m not sure I like that they seem to have merged the female lead and the mathematician into a single character (Connelly). I feel like that dissipates the impact of the story.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ16Rzi-lfA

(Daaaaannnnnggggggg! They made it a straight action film. That’s unsurprising, but the original is more like a Hitchcock film, so I was kind of expecting and hoping for a suspenseful thriller. Oh well.)

Directors – Scott Derrickson – (Known For: Sinister; The Exorcism of Emily Rose; BMT: The Day the Earth Stood Still; Deliver Us from Evil; Notes: Officially in the Marvel Universe fold as he is directing and writing the Doctor Strange film.)

Writers – David Scarpa (screenplay) – (Known For: The Last Castle; BMT: The Day the Earth Stood Still; Notes: Has been attached to write a Daredevil reboot and currently involved in writing a Cleopatra film.)

Edmund H. North (1951 screenplay) – (Known For: Patton; The Day the Earth Stood Still; In a Lonely Place; Sink the Bismarck!; Damn the Defiant!; One Night of Love; BMT: The Day the Earth Stood Still; Meteor; Notes: Won a screenwriting Oscar for Patton. Died in 1990 at age 79.)

Actors – Keanu Reeves – (Known For: Keanu; The Neon Demon; John Wick; The Matrix; Point Break; The Devil’s Advocate; Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure; Dracula; The Replacements; The Matrix Reloaded; Constantine; Speed; Something’s Gotta Give; Much Ado About Nothing; Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey; The Gift; A Scanner Darkly; My Own Private Idaho; Parenthood; Dangerous Liaisons; A Walk in the Clouds; The Private Lives of Pippa Lee; Man of Tai Chi; BMT: Knock Knock; The Day the Earth Stood Still; Even Cowgirls Get the Blues; Exposed; The Watcher; Johnny Mnemonic; Chain Reaction; Generation Um…; Feeling Minnesota; 47 Ronin; Youngblood; Hard Ball; Notes: Obviously huge actor in the BMTverse. Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2005 for Worst Razzie Loser of Our First 25 Years; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2002 for Worst Actor for Hard Ball, and Sweet November; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2001 for Worst Supporting Actor for The Watcher; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1997 for Worst Actor for Chain Reaction; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1996 for Worst Actor for Johnny Mnemonic, and A Walk in the Clouds; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1994 for Worst Supporting Actor for Much Ado About Nothing;)

Also starring Jennifer Connelly (from BMT classic Winter’s Tale) and Kathy Bates – (from BMT Classics: Tammy, North, Failure to Launch, Valentine’s Day, and American Outlaws! She’s a secret BMT legend!)

Budget/Gross – $80 million / Domestic: $79,366,978 (Worldwide: $233,093,859)

(Fairly successful for what it was. Opened with a reasonable $30.4 million and then dropped like a rock.)

#8 for the Environmentalist genre – Movies concerned with the cause or promoting it.

(Anyone else find it funny that the waves seem to follow Democratic presidents almost perfectly? Doesn’t bode well for those fearing a Trump presidency, looks like environmentalism in film is out at the moment. This one came literally at the peak of environmentalism oriented films)

#117 for the IMAX (Feature-length) genre

(I almost didn’t even generate this one, but this is amazing! First how it just goes up and up. Second, because of how stable the monetary output from IMAX movies has been. If only all the genre plots had this much data too, so smooth and nice to look at.)

#21 for the Sci-Fi – Alien Invasion genre

(The big peak around ‘95 is obviously Independence Day. Seems like a rare case because this movie kind of came right as the genre was rising. We are coming down from a big peak (like Battle Los Angeles, Skyline, and Cowboys and Aliens from a few years back), but I’m wondering if the new Independence Day pulls a Jurassic World whether we might see that trend change a bit).

#8 for the Sci-Fi Remake genre

(I love the remake categories because you can see the “waves” as remakes are used in between (presumably) times in which more original properties are made. This is kind of messy, but as usual this movie comes as the back end of one of these waves, although the money always seems to be there for the sci fi remakes maybe. We seem to be entering one of the short troughs at the moment perhaps)

Rotten Tomatoes – 21% (40/191): Heavy on special effects, but without a coherent story at its base, The Day the Earth Stood Still is subpar re-imagining of the 1951 science-fiction classic.

(That’s funny that they remade a classic film (that clearly has a coherent story) and seemingly removed or ignored the story in favor of special effects. That sounds like a terrible idea.)

Poster – The Day the Sklog Stood Still (D-)

(Dear God. The only thing good about this is the green and blue tone. Otherwise this is an absolute disaster. Only didn’t get an F because it’s not the poster for The Avengers.)

Tagline(s) – 12.12.08 is the Day the Earth Stood Still (F)

(That’s an F, as in fuck that noise.)

Notes – Renowned astronomer Seth Shostak was hired as a consultant on the film. He reviewed the script several times for errors, and gave suggestions for making the scientists less dry: “Real scientists don’t describe an object entering the solar system as ‘notable for the fact that it was not moving in an asteroidal ellipse, but moving at nearly 3*10 to the 7 meters per second’. More likely, they would say that there was ‘a god-damned rock headed our way!'” He also noted the scientists should refer to one another by a first name basis. (This could be our jobs I feel like. Because he isn’t wrong. I never walked around calling my coworkers doctor. The notes make perfect sense, although probably would seem comedic and strange in a Sci Fi film).

In the original movie, Gort was 8 feet tall. In the remake, he is now 28 feet tall. (Which seems like a strange move to me, just why? It begs the question).

In Harry Bates’ short story ‘Farewell to the Master’, upon which the movie is based, the last line revealed a dramatically different angle. It reads: “‘You misunderstand,’ the mighty robot had said. ‘I am the master.'” (yeah, and the original adaptation totally ignored this as well… obviously the new one wasn’t based on the story. It’s based on the film, duh.)

Keanu Reeves recorded the line “Klaatu barada nikto” twice, and one recording was played backward and spliced with the other (which was left normal) to make the overall dialog sound more otherworldly.

According to the filmmakers, John Cleese was the most difficult choice in casting as he was primarily noted for comic roles. Cleese felt that at his age, a dramatic role with subtle humour would be an easier role to play rather than another manic old man.

The film was primarily filmed in tones of green and blue, the Earth’s natural colours.

Awards – Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 Recap

Jamie

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 is not the first time we’ve watched two films in a series separately for BMT, but it does kind of fly in the face of some of the measures that Patrick and I have taken in constructing BMT. We have slowly built up to consuming all relevant media when watching a film. So for Endless Love I read the book, watched the original film, and watched the 2011 film. For Paul Blart we watched the original as a bonus film when tackling Paul Blart 2. So this is a bit of a relic of yore. Now we probably would have watched both films at the same time (and read the book and watched the original film and…) but instead we are just watching this film a year later trying to remember what we thought of the first one. As I remember it I found the first to be a thoroughly depressing adaptation of a very good book with OK acting. Unsurprisingly the second film is a not quite as depressing but infinitely shoddier version of the first film. Lower the stakes and up the physical comedy and voila. Not particularly satisfying.

Patrick and I have been workshopping the Settings 101 class. Really trying to hammer out the details on what make a good setting for a film. For Cheaper by the Dozen 2 we get a surprisingly solid settings film. Now, it’s not as good as the first film. In the first film the crux of the plot is the family moving from Midland, Indiana to Evanston, Illinois to coach at the imaginary Illinois Polytechnic University. Look at those settings! It screams ‘Illinois!’ at the audience. That’s probably an A- (we’re tough graders). In the second film the family is still living in Illinois and decides that they have to go to the lake house in Wisconsin. While kudos to them for going all in on a specific setting again, it wasn’t as clear this time exactly where they were going. In fact I kind of missed it until later in the film when the oldest son and Jaime King talked about moving to Wisconsin to pursue their dreams. So I kinda have to give it a C+. It would have gotten into the B or B+ range if they had been clearer. Maybe passing a “Welcome to Wisconsin” sign when driving to the lake or just printing it on the screen. I call that a meta-acknowledgement. Where the film itself nods to the audience and says “in case you didn’t know where we were.”

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Cheaper by the Dozen Two?! More like Sequel Repercussions, Boo! (does that make sense? It felt good writing it). We went full on BMTquel, a very rare double BMT delight (Grown Ups and Growns Ups 2 come to mind for sure, not sure about other sequels). Let’s get into it!

The Good – I do think the “family comedy” genre is necessary for the world. I for one enjoyed things like The Great Outdoors growing up even though that movie is objectively terrible in retrospect, but I was like eight, why worry about movies like this? The tom-boy girl was fantastic in this film as well. Maybe the best kid actor in BMT history.
The Bad – It is a movie that you can kind of see the seams of its movie costume in. It doesn’t feel like a real movie. It is like a producer was like “What? The stupid remake of Cheaper by the Dozen made money, shit … I guess make another one. I have this script for The Great Outdoors 2 which makes no sense and stars the ghost of John Candy, can you rewrite this?” The movie legit stars 25 different people and is excruciating for 95% of the runtime. I really didn’t enjoy this film for a variety of reasons, but mainly because it just felt like a throwaway.
The BMT – Yes! I’m actually surprised it isn’t higher than the 40 something that it was. It is a kids movie, but again, it is kind of the worst the genre has to offer in a way. I should have put Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt in the good category to a degree, they clearly ad-libbed all of their lines, and they are solid as rocks, but still, the movie is super weak and I didn’t like it at all.

Boom. Audio Sklog-entary review. So this one was again just the director. This guy was pretty funny and had some good anecdotes … but was also kind of hilariously down on the movie. Everything seemed rushed, he was wrangling 20 kids at all times, and in addition to that he had to deal with the fact that Tom Welling, Hilary Duff and the twin boys (who were on Desperate Housewives at the time) were almost literally not on set all together at any given time. The guy did admirably (and was also weirdly obsessed with the noises his stomach was making throughout), but still not as good as if there was a second person to get the stories out of him. B. One of the better single person commentaries I’ve listened to thus far.

BTW I want to Reboot Cheaper by the Dozen haaaaard. Just to make Steve Martin a competent football coach / father. Example: Tom Welling is meandering around like a weirdo in both films at this point. Why not make him become the assistant coach? Why not show Steve Martin do something with his family? He talked about kids being “hardwired”, but seriously, his son liked football, he didn’t hate it, it makes no sense that all of a sudden he’s opening a garage in rural Wisconsin. One of the more frustrating storyline issues with both movies in this series. I’ll do the remake for a dime. No joke.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 Preview

This week we get to detail an interesting predicament that Patrick and I put ourselves in. In our last cycle we made the terrible, terrible (terrible) mistake of choosing Bulletproof Monk for the Chain Reaction category. It was a great BMT, but we really painted ourselves into a corner for the rest of the year due to the limited cast. After several days of slaving away in the BMT mine Patrick was able to finally discover a route that should satisfy our Chain Reaction needs for the rest of the year. Unfortunately that also means that we have to jump from Bulletproof Monk through Jaime King to… ugh… Cheaper by the Dozen 2. Two Hilary Duff movies in a row! Awww man. For serious? It was released on December 21st, beating out Richie Rich, Bonfire of the Vanities, Mixed Nuts, Joe Somebody, Fun with Dick and Jane, and Breakin’ 2 Electric Boogaloo to be the top (worst) release for the day. Wow, that’s impressive, albeit unfortunate for our BMT enjoyment. Sigh. Let’s go!

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (2005) – BMeTric: 46.4

(Finally, some plots that don’t just shoot up to 70 and sit there. Nice little bump around Christmas in ‘06 (this came out near Christmas ‘05 so naturally people watched it a year later as well). The rating plot is amazingly steady and outpaced its regression by a bit. I think it got demolished early on, so maybe it’s a kids film where for some reason grown adults feel the need to destroy it online? Because of how steady the rating is this is also a very rare film where you can see the 2011 inflection in the BMeTric as well. Usually that inflection is countered-balanced by the rating going up as well so you usually don’t see it. It could have gotten to 50+ pretty easily if not for a few recent ratings bumps. Sigh.)

Leonard Maltin – 1.5 stars – Depressing sequel to the box-office hit finds the Bakers returning to the vacation spot of their youth, where dad Martin gets into a competitive spat with wealthy Levy. Once again, a comic known for his rapier wit is reduced to Z-list slapstick (e.g., taking falls chasing rodents). A far more compelling if unexplored movie was right under the filmmakers’ eyes: Levy’s courtship of wife Electra (surprisingly, a leveling influence here).

(Wait, more depressing than the first one?! I found it profoundly depressing already. Also, I’m not sure I understand the plot of his alternate film. Is this a film that focused on how Levy and Electra fall in love prior to the events of this film (which could hardly be called Cheaper by the Dozen 2)? Or just making them a more prominent focus of the film?)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUjLJFsHlSg

(While this looks like The Great Outdoors reboot that nobody asked for, I also get the feeling that they might have gotten closer to what I hoped the first film was: a football coach learning to efficiently “coach” his giant squad of children to some purpose. Add a little dash of gay panic at the end and this might be promising (relatively speaking, of course))

Directors – Adam Shankman – (Known For: Hairspray; Rock of Ages; BMT: The Wedding Planner; Cheaper by the Dozen 2; The Pacifier; Bringing Down the House; Bedtime Stories; A Walk to Remember; Notes: Came out of Juilliard and started out dancing in music videos and television (such as the Nickelodeon show Roundhouse), then moved into Choreography, then Directing, and now Producing. Kind of incredible. Really worked his way up.)

Writers – Sam Harper (written by) – (Known For: Rio; Open Season; BMT: Just Married; Cheaper by the Dozen 2; Cheaper by the Dozen; Rookie of the Year; Notes: Obviously main writer on this. According to the production notes his first draft is close to the filming script and was a big part of getting Martin back and signing Levy.)

Craig Titley (characters) – (Known For: Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief; BMT: Scooby-Doo; Cheaper by the Dozen 2; Cheaper by the Dozen; See Spot Run; Notes: Wrote the first film’s story so got a character credit. Now a main writer and producer on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)

Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey (novel) (as Frank Bunker Gilbreth Jr.) – (BMT: Cheaper by the Dozen 2; Cheaper by the Dozen; Notes: Original writers of the book. They are two of the Gilbreth kids that were inspiration for the story.)

Actors – Steve Martin – (Known For: Home; Looney Tunes: Back in Action; The Prince of Egypt; The Jerk; It’s Complicated; Little Shop of Horrors; ¡Three Amigos!; Father of the Bride; Parenthood; My Blue Heaven; Planes, Trains & Automobiles; Baby Mama; Bowfinger; Shopgirl; Dirty Rotten Scoundrels; The Big Year; Roxanne; Father of the Bride Part II; All of Me; L.A. Story; The Muppet Movie; The Man with Two Brains; Leap of Faith; Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid; Pennies from Heaven; BMT: Cheaper by the Dozen 2; Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band; The Pink Panther; The Pink Panther 2; Bringing Down the House; The Out-of-Towners; Cheaper by the Dozen; Mixed Nuts; Sgt. Bilko; Love the Coopers; Novocaine; HouseSitter; Notes: A comedy and movie star. Currently a major name in the bluegrass scene. Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2010 for Worst Actor for The Pink Panther 2.)

Also stars Hilary Duff and Tom Welling from the last two BMT films Material Girls and The Fog respectively

Budget/Gross – $60 million / Domestic: $82,571,173 (Worldwide: $129,181,830)

#34 on the Worst Openings – Super Saturated chart

#11 for the Comedy – Fish-Out-of-Water Father genre – Comedies about Fathers and Father Figures Parenting Children

(Strangely a genre which has not been added to since 2013. Also that early 90’s bump? Uncle Buck, both Problem Childs, Parenthood, and Three Men and a Little Lady. We are looking at the peak of the genre’s proliferation, but also when the profits looked to be a-tumbling)

#32 for the Comedy – Sequel (Live Action) genre

(Again! Right at a previous peak, but just as the genre was a tumbling. This is definitely a trend in BMT. Funny enough the new wave of comedy sequels is rising (Zoolander 2 and Neighbors 2 this year so far). Seems like they need to harvest a new crop of comedies to sequelize between boom-time.)

#8 for the Remake – Sequel to a Remake genre

(My God, those waves! They just get bigger and bigger. Presumably the troughs are where they release the original remake. I think ‘05 to ‘10 might end up going down in history as an anomaly in bad movie history, just prior to the tentpole movies crowding the release schedule and VOD becoming a real option, a true heyday of traditional bad movie watching. Another dying genre it looks like, possibly because these sequels are now more regularly being released by alternative means.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 6% (6/93): A sequel to a remake, Cheaper 2 wastes its solid cast in scenes of over-the-top, predictable humor.

(Ugh, that sequel to a remake part makes me feel a bit ill. It really is just misguided all around in this case because the first movie was already pretty terrible. Blah, not excited.)

Poster – Cheaper by the Sklogen 2 (D+)

(Horrific. Only saved by a lack of a The Avengers level gaffe and a nice level of symmetry. Patrick’s note: I’ve decided to Sklogify the movie name in the poster section now. Why? Because if I were to photoshop, let’s say, my face onto all 14 characters in the photo that would be the title of the film.)

Tagline(s) – Same Big Family… Even Bigger Adventure. (A)

(I… I… love it. It’s beautiful. Nearly a perfect tagline for this particular film. That’s all I have to say. It has left me nearly speechless.)

Notes – Hilary Duff had an eating disorder during filming, causing Lorraine to have a gaunt, skeletal appearance in this movie. (Oh sad, upsetting way to describe it too)

When the “Cheaper by the Dozen” movies were made, neither Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt, who played the parents of 12 children, had ever had a child in real life. Steve Martin first became a father years later in February of 2013 when his wife Anne Stringfield gave birth to his first child.

Carmen Electra is allergic to dogs. When the Bakers go to the Murtaughs’ house, their dog Gunner jumps all over her. When the Bakers are leaving, tiny red dots are all over her body. (Also gross. These notes are gross)

Real baby and childhood pictures of Hilary Duff and Alyson Stoner were used for the “photo albums” of their characters. (coool)

This film is a sequel to a remake of a film that was based on a book that was based on a true story. This means it is four steps away from its source material. (cooooooooool)

The Baker’s Cabin for the movie was built and then torn down after the filming. (ugh. I hate these notes. So wasteful.)

Events in the Labor Day Cup included: the Egg Toss, Wheelbarrow Race, Diving, Sack Race, Archery, Egg and Spoon Race, Water Treadmill, Volleyball, and the Tie-breaker Canoe Race. Not seen, but shown on the scoreboard were: Tug-O-War, Baseball Dunk, and Water Skiing. (hahahahahaha I love that this is a note. Hey, we should hold a BMT summer extravaganza with these exact events. People would be like “I wonder why they chose these twelve specific and mundane events for a bad movie festival” and we’ll creep over and whisper “Cheaper by the Dozen 2” and then they’ll throw up in their mouths)

Awards – Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Actress (Hilary Duff)

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor (Eugene Levy)

Material Girls Recap

Jamie

I’ll let Patrick sum up Material Girls. The film is small enough that probably just one perspective is needed. I’ll keep my notes limited to a comparison between this film and Sense and Sensibility (on which it is “based”).

So technically Material Girls is based on Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (so Book Review obvs). I did indeed read the book to make sure I got the full Material Girls experience. I can tell you… not necessary. If you squint you can map the characters between the book and the film (Elinor is Hilary Duff, Marianne is Haylie Duff, Edward is Tommy, Willoughby is Rick, and Colonel Brandon is Henry). Besides that there is literally no resemblance. I amused myself while watching the film by imagining what Sense and Sensibility would be like if its plot actually did resemble the plot of Material Girls. And it would go… a little something… like this: Elinor and Marianne Dashwood are heirs to their father’s corset empire. Unfortunately upon his passing they learn that his corsets are dangerous and has led to the permanent deformation of its wearers. It can’t be! In order to clear their names, get their beaus and receive the inheritance they rightfully deserve, they must infiltrate the dances of their rivals to uncover the dastardly conspiracy to defame them. Along the way they learn that money isn’t everything and love can’t be bought. Boom. That would be the worst book. This reminds me of an idea I had (that would also be the worst) which is writing books-films-are-based-on… not books-based-on-films. Rather than just adapting the film directly into a book, you take the film and reimagine it as a book that it could have been based on. Get it? There’s a subtle difference… nevermind, it’s not important.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone? Material Girls, more like Makes Me Hurl! (oof, my wife had to help with that one). So you know how some movies feel like they aren’t real movies? No? Well this one was barely a movie. But I know the question on everyone’s mind: was it dog poo in my face? You’ll have to wait and see, let’s get into it:

The Good – I did not think Haylie Duff was substantially worse as an actress compared to the actors surrounding her, the story was surprisingly interesting, and what should have been a really terrible Erin Brockovich reference ended up being the best part of the movie.
The Bad – Data from Star Trek was not so good. Lukas Haas was straight dog poo in my face, more on that later. This is barely a movie, and so clearly involved (1) a studio trying to salvage a Olsen Twins movie gone wrong, and (2) was only released because someone in production (probably the director) had connections in the industry and got distribution.
The BMT – Yes! But I would put it at 30-40 just because of the size of the film. It was not straight up dog poo in my face because in its small way it was charming. I would never watch this film again exclusively because Haylie Duff and Lukas Haas have the single most excruciating romance in the history of cinema.

Alrighty. Quick hot take on the commentary, a mini Audio Sklog-entary, this was exclusively the director and confirmed for me that a single person commentary is necessarily inferior to multiple people. Also, while I know the director is well meaning, it comes across as kind of a shoddily put together film. The entire commentary is just about how they were trying to explain the story from A to Z, nothing really super interesting here beyond the fact that apparently the director herself convinced a very tentative Lukas Haas to act like a weirdo in a comedic role and it came out horribly, no joke. D+. I can imagine less interesting commentaries, but they’d be trainwrecks.

It looks like Jamie is doing a little Sense and Sensibility review, so I might as well rock a Settings 101. Am I allowed to? I’m not sure, but this movie was very much set in LA, complete with “hilarious” LA-has-terrible-public-transportation jokes. I think I give it a C+. It’s story doesn’t require the film to be set in LA necessarily, but they use the setting to solid effect in the end (the aforementioned bus gag, the boyfriend is a star on an OC-like show, a couple gift bag gags). Maybe Jamie can chime in on the scale and some examples of what is an A – D setting. Obviously an F setting is one which just doesn’t have a setting, like Trespass starring Nic Cage.

Material Girls Preview

You know we need a clean slate after a terrible film like The Fog. Just gotta pick something that’s not too bad and not too good. Just middle of the road… … … JK! We are watching Material Girls starring Hilary and Haylie Duff! A Girls Night Out travesty sure to destroy our will to live. The Calendar cycle is truly a wonderland of BMT Street Cred. This film was released on August 18th and beat out the likes of Mortal Kombat and Accepted to hold the spot for that day. The fact that it was actually released is a minor miracle in itself (and in 1500 theaters no less). Let’s go!

Material Girls (2006) – BMeTric: 68.3

MaterialGirls_BMeT

MaterialGirls_RV

(The rating plot for this is unbelievable. So unbelievable I had to do an entire BMT:CSI:SVU (We’re the Special Victims) on it. To add a bit to that post: First, I find the votes/rating trajectory interesting for another reason, it has that distinctive 2011 inflection point in the IMDb votes. But not only that, it has the same inflection in the ratings plot and the BMeTric plot! You can’t move that rating without votes, so it makes sense, but I think that is a first and kind of an amazing example of regression to the mean and how IMDb likely expanded their user base around 2011. Second, the fact that this almost has a 70+ is absurd. The Calendar just keeps on giving street cred, thanks Calendar.)

Leonard Maltin – 2 stars – Two spoiled cosmetics industry heiresses lose their money after a controversy involving face cream and a disfiguring skin disease. Forced to suffer indignities like riding the bus and wearing last year’s fashions, they eventually learn the value of hard work and fight to reclaim their company’s reputation. This movie glorifies the “high life” while praising its heroines for transcending it. Filled with absurdities, but fast paced, colorful, and painless.

(Two stars!? Color me shocked. I love how Leonard goes to this length to critique a film like Material Girls, especially when he takes umbrage with the hypocrisy of the plot. It’s Material Girls Leonard. I don’t think they cared. Also a note: this plot is hilariously similar to that of Catwoman starring Halle Berry. [Patrick’s Note: TWO STARS?!?!])

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT_mqkj9ht4

(We will see if this trailer lasts. There was another one which was apparently taken down or something. Oh yeah, this movie looks like a non-movie and awful and I do not look forward to this viewing experience.)

Directors – Martha Coolidge – (Known For: Real Genius; Valley Girl; Rambling Rose; BMT: Material Girls; The Prince and Me; Out to Sea; Angie; Notes: Saaaaay Whaaaat? Real Genius for reals? She was the first female president of the DGA.)

Writers – John Quaintance (written by) – (Known For: Aquamarine; BMT: Material Girls; Hot Pursuit; Notes: Showrunner in television. Executive produced Whitney, Ben and Kate, Undateable, and Workaholics.)

Jessica O’Toole and Amy Rardin (written by) – (BMT: Material Girls; Notes: Writing partners, most of their credits are for An American Girl stories. Co-executive producers of the shows Selfie and Jane the Virgin.)

Actors – Hilary Duff – (Known For: The Lizzie McGuire Movie; Playing by Heart; Human Nature; Bloodworth; BMT: Material Girls; Agent Cody Banks; Cheaper by the Dozen 2; The Perfect Man; Cheaper by the Dozen (BMT); War, Inc.; A Cinderella Story; Raise Your Voice (Seen in); Stay Cool; What Goes Up (BMT); Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2007 for Worst Actress and Screen Couple (Material Girls), Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2006 for Worst Actress (Cheaper by the Dozen 2, The Perfect Man), Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2005 for Worst Actress (A Cinderella Story, Raise Your Voice). Former Disney star and also a musician. Currently on the show Younger.)

Haylie Duff – (Known For: Napoleon Dynamite; The Lizzie McGuire Movie; BMT: Material Girls; I Love Your Work; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2007 for Worst Actress and Screen Couple (Material Girls). Currently does a lot in cooking with a blog, television show, and book called Real Girl’s Kitchen.)

Also stars Anjelica Huston as the eeeeeevil Fabiella (I assume she’s the bad guy)

Budget/Gross – $15 million / Domestic: $11,449,638 (Worldwide: $16,907,725 Worldwide)

#22 for the Summer Girl Power genre – Late Summer (July/August) Girlpower. Ever since Clueless, appealing to the young female audience in July and August has proved quite profitable.

summergirlpowerAnalysis

(Funny that it almost made its money back domestically despite being a gigantic bomb. Not the worst “Summer Girl Power” film of all time. That would be Undiscovered starring Ashlee Simpson which we are definitely watching for BMT. That looks like the worst. Yay! Once again though we are looking at a film in a “dying genre”. Whether this is with how boxofficemojo defines genres there hasn’t been a summer girl power movie since 2010 and this movie appears at the tail end of its existence (sorry for how the plot looks, there are just not than many summer girl power movies so it gets a little jumpy). My guess is that “girl power” movies now tends to come out later, think Hunger Games, but they were amazingly and consistently profitable for a while there.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 4% (2/54): Plagued by paper-thin characterizations and a hackneyed script, Material Girls fails to live up to even the minimum standards of its genre.

(You mean the minimum standards of the “Summer Girl Power” genre? This is truly one of the lowest reviewed films of the 2000’s probably.)

Poster – Double Trouble (D-)

material_girls

(There are four rules of thumb for posters: don’t use white as the principal color, don’t feature people without artistic modification, employ some symmetry, and jazz up the font. This (nearly) fails all of them. On top of this, the Duff sisters are on the poster twice(!). It’s like Shaq in the Steel poster (unlikely connection). Only didn’t get an F because of the lipstick “I” in the title.)

Tagline(s) – It’s A Short Trip From The Penthouse To The Poorhouse. (C-)

(… … Oh sorry, I fell asleep while reading that tagline. Too long, needs to be more clever, and needs another “p” word to get some nice alliteration pop.)

Notes – Written for Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen. (Obviously)

This is the first film that both Hilary Duff and Haylie Duff are in together. (Obviously)

Hilary improvised many lines and moments in the film, Coolidge noted on the DVD commentary. Among others, Hilary came up with the Lucy walk when the girls are dressed up as Sassy maids and added the reference to women having their own buses in Japan when the sisters are riding the public transit on the spot. (Can. Not. Wait. To listen to the commentary)

Based on Sense and Sensibility, a novel by Jane Austen. (“Based” might be a strong word here)

Awards

Nominated Razzie Award Worst Actress Hilary Duff Haylie Duff

Nominated Razzie Award Worst Screen Couple Hilary Duff Haylie Duff

The Fog Recap

Jamie

I guess I’ll start the recap for The Fog by discussing the John Carpenter original a bit. It’s pretty classic Carpenter: great music, good practical effects, and a simple way of telling a story without getting bogged down. Was it scary? Not really. But The Thing wasn’t really all that scary and it’s still the best. I really had only one complaint about the whole thing. It’s that we didn’t really know any of the characters, even by the end of the film. Very little character development to the point where they were hard to distinguish. Case in point, in the A.V. Club’s review of 2005’s The Fog they mixed up the characters that Adrienne Barbeau and Jamie Lee Curtis played. And I don’t blame them. It was hard to figure out their distinguishing features. Besides that it was an alright horror film of the era.

Now how does this all compare to the 2005 film? Well you can think of the 2005 film as pretty much the same as the original except take everything good and turn it into a pile of garbage and take everything bad and turn it into more of a pile of garbage. What I’m trying to say is that the film is a pile of garbage. I experienced Strange Wilderness level despair at having to sit through it. It’s not even a Silent Hill: Revelations or Legend of Hercules where they are so ridiculously off the charts horrible that I couldn’t stop laughing. This was just an assault on my senses. On top of all this it was no doubt the least scary horror film I’ve ever seen and had a couple of the worst horror deaths ever put to film. Was this 70 level BMT? I certainly think so. I honestly just don’t know how enough people watched it to garner a 70.

This film doesn’t deserve a game. Instead I’ll tell you a tale. It was a comedy of errors trying to get Rupert Wainwright’s commentary for this film as it’s only included on the (seemingly rare) unrated DVD release. Netflix claimed to have the unrated DVD for rental, but I saw through their lies and ordered the 1980 original (settling for streaming the remake on Netflix proper). Lo and behold they still mistakenly sent me the 2005 version and my hunch was confirmed when it did not have the commentary on the disc (so it was useless garbage like the film it contained). I then had the brilliant idea to order the disc through my local library system. The great thing about the system is that the details of each disc (including special features) are included when making an order from an outside library. I found a copy of the unrated DVD with the commentary in the system and was on my way to Rupert Wainwright-town. Or was I? When it arrived it was still just the regular DVD without the commentary! Damn public library system. Who would have thought that the wonderful librarians at the Mabel Public Library (Mabel, MN, population: 780) couldn’t figure out my nuanced request for a particular version of 2005’s The Fog? Obviously I want to listen to the commentary! Just like any red-blooded American! Whatever. In the future I’ll have to embarrassingly note the version I would like and make sure the librarians work their arthritis-plagued hands to the bone providing me with exactly the bad movie viewing experience I need at the expense of the taxpayers of MN. Harumph.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! The Fog? More like … y’know what, surprise NY Post headline! There would be a picture of Maggie Grace in a stupid hat with the headline: Lost in the Fog! Anyways, I’m glad Jamie his the big message because I’ve got more important things to attend to. But quick hits, let’s go!:

The Good – Um … it was a nice relaxing film. No stress. They didn’t go the cheap route and kill the black guy first, or have him say “Aw Hell Naw!” or “That’s what I’m talking about!”. Good for them (I was seriously considering just leaving this blank, but resolutions and silver linings and all).
The Bad – This is literally all that is terrible about late 90s / early 00s horror. It is not scary. All the actors are skewed weirdly young and are awful. The story is convoluted, shock horror abounds, terrible kills, terrible CGI, an unnecessary remake. It wasn’t even so ridiculous you laugh at it, you stare at it in confusion and disgust. Blah.
The BMT – 70? Weirdly I say yes, even though confusion still exists about how it ever could accrue the amount of necessary votes. It is quite confusing, it keeps me up late into the night. But the BMeTric I think gets it right, this might be the worst horror film ever made.

Usually here I would play some game, but this upcoming movie has thrown us a little curveball. So we need a little BMT:CSI:SVU (We’re the Special Victims). A long time ago I discussed the BMysTery of the IMDb inflection point (remember? No? Whatever). After solving that I, naturally, took a triumphant seven month long hiatus. But this graph, the ratings / vote graphic for Material Girls shocked me!:

MaterialGirls_RV

Look at that rating trajectory, it climbs over two points! I you were like me (a literal crazy person) you’d know this is absurd. After reading this fivethirtyeight blog entry I could only conclude one thing: Material Girls was tragically brigaded by awful people in its early days and is, in fact, a hidden diamond in the rough for us to enjoy (hooray!). But something I remember from long ago was bothering me … what if it is just regression to the mean. What if whenever I looked at a ratings plot and thought to myself “Huh, I wonder why the rating of The Fog is rising over time? People are dummies” is was in fact me who was the dummy?

So here is the crux of the story: it is totally plausible that this entire time, whenever I expressed mock horror at the rating trajectories rising through time for bad movies, I was a dummy and pretty much exclusively looking at regression to the mean. No joke, just look at this plot!:

RatingsPlot

Basically with such a steep and definitive negative correlation between where a movie’s rating started and how it changes pretty much all of the movement I’ve seen in the ratings of bad movies was due to regression to the mean. Take Material Girls as an example (the blue square). It is a movie that climbed so thoroughly out of the gutter it genuinely shocked me, and yet, it is actually pretty close to what you’d expect from a movie of its initial caliber (it climbs not much higher, although I do think there was some element of trolling on the Material Girls rating when it first came out).

Unfortunately with how I got this OMDb data, as impressive as it was, it isn’t really enough to use this idea for much beyond guessing at what a movies rating might have been when it was first released. But it has inspired me in a way that hopefully will benefit BMT real soon (but that is for a later date). Read the full write up here. Cheerios and back to you Jamie.

BMT:CSI:SVU: We’re the Special Victims #2

This is a continuation of the long-term IMDb data analysis using the Internet Archive. Thanks Internet Archive! You can see part one of this series here. Cheers.

‘Ello everyone. A few months back (or a few days with regards to this website) I tried to solve the BMysTery of the mysterious inflection point in IMDb Data. Don’t know what I mean? The short run down is that a lot of movies seems to have two slopes, one for growth before 2011 and one for after. The previous post explored that and came to a (I think) reasonable conclusion. So what is all this about then? Well, I have a ton of data just lying around and something just kicked up and itched my brain. Time for the long story.

You guys know Material Girls right? Hilary and Haylie Duff vehicle, pretty big deal. Well, every time we do a preview for a movie we generate trajectories for both IMDb rating and votes through time. Usually this results in a scream of “WHY?! Why has the rating of this terrible film gone up over time?!” And typically it was left there, because hey, people have different tastes, and maybe it is just kind of a trait of the data. But then Material Girls!

MaterialGirls_RV

First, holy moley that 2011 inflection. Even the rating has an inflection! This was a huge red flag for me. Second, the rating jumps 2.5 points! That is patently absurd. Through all of this I couldn’t help but think maybe …. it was related to this recent blog post by fivethirtyeight. But then I was looking through some of my very old programs and stumbled onto a very prescient comment:

#Look at that variance! Awesome, basically regression to the mean.
#Movies are superlative when they come out
#End up regressing both up and down to the mean

So that’s what this (short) entry will look at: The regression to the mean in IMDb ratings. Something I clearly knew about literally 7 months ago then managed to forget pretty much instantaneously … yeah, I’m an idiot.

First start with a plot of all of the rating data I’ve got:

Ratings

Nonsense. But you can kind of see that things condense as time goes by. But it is all easier if you plot the rating change (over ten years) by the initial rating of the movie. I’ve included a regression and Material Girls is marked out by a blue square:

RatingsPlot

Nice. Pretty much the entirety of the crazy jump in ratings is explained by regression to the mean. Just look at Material Girls. And funny enough the rating at which it crosses over, 6.0, is kind of the cut off point for bad movies as well, which is fun.

It is interesting, especially looking at the first plot: the rating doesn’t just regress by some exponential, it pretty much follows the voting trajectory. But … yeah, they aren’t that correlated:

RatingsVotesPlot

The rating can’t move without votes, so it following the vote trajectory through time I think is just a consequence of that inherent underlying connection. And I think that’ll just about do it for that. The regression is interesting, but probably at this point hard to utilize for good. It could be used in tandem with a vote number trajectory predictor to try and predict vote/rating trajectories into the past. But predicting votes is the rub, and I’ve found rather difficult.

But I declare this BMysTery closed! It wasn’t that hard, I mean, I apparently knew the answer seven months ago, but yeah, bad movie IMDb ratings tend to go up (and the opposite for good movies) over time. It isn’t people waking up and realizing movies are better than their rating, it is just regression to the mean. And Material Girls probably wasn’t brigaded by guys.

BMT:CSI:SVU: We’re the Special Victims #1

Editor’s Note: This analysis was initially performed in October of 2015. The plots have been cleaned up and updated (so that I don’t look like I’m incompetent). At the time we were basically just starting in on the use of historical data to explore the evolution of bad movies through time, an ongoing project. We are, of course, indebted to the Internet Archive which has been diligently collecting this data for years. Cheers.

Welcome to BMT:CSI:SVU (we’re the special victims). This section uses high-tech forensic science (not really) to solve the mysteries of BMT … you could even call this a BMysTery. For the first in this series I naturally decided to present my boldest analysis to date. It asked the question: What really has happened to the voting and ratings through time on IMDb? The initial idea was to start in on trying to predict ultimate vote counts based on an initial vote trajectory … I got waylaid a bit. I started by taking every movie listed on OMDB that has a release year of 2005 (658 movies). I wanted a solid 10 years of samples. I went to the Internet Archive and then took 20 vote/rating sample (the two nearest archived pages on either side of the new year from 2006 to 2015) for every movie that had a valid page (the vote number being greater than 5) prior to January 1, 2006 and after January 1, 2015. I finally just linearly approximated vote/rating pairs for each New Year Day from 2006 to 2015.

The resulting data set had 471 movies (yeah … I took about 10000 page calls, sorry Internet Archive) each with approximate vote/rating pairs for 10 data points (New Years Day from 2006 to 2015).

RatingTime

The rating plot isn’t that interesting, it shows that the ratings have dropped a little over time without much of a trend. Although this doesn’t jive with a lot of the individual plots I generated previously which suggested rather strongly that the rating tends to increase with more votes being cast. Instead I ended up finding that there isn’t a correlation between how the rating changes and the current rating or number of votes, something to be investigated further in the future I think.

If you normalize the voting trajectories based on the number of votes on New Years Day 2015 though you get a more interesting result.

VotesNorm

Basically, it looks like the samples are split into two groups: movies that gained most of their votes after 2010 and those that gained most votes before 2010. This is in fact a trend: there is the odd anomaly in IMDb data whereby movies seemed to have an inflection point sometime in 2011. This can be more easily seen using the sum of all the votes, and in 2011 the total number of votes all of a sudden starts to increase:

VotesMean

Say what? That doesn’t quite jive with what we saw in the trajectories before. But it is true, a bunch of movies have either the 2011 inflection visible (red) or they appear to have leveled off since initial release (green, a much more expected trend). Here are the top and bottom 10 ranked by deviation from a linear trendline:

VotesExtrema

So in order to quantify the difference between the two trajectories I note that the mean normalized trajectory is roughly linear:

VotesNormMean

By correcting for this the normalized and corrected vote count trajectories now go from zero to zero. If you sum across the normalized and corrected trajectories then normal trajectories will have a positive value and those with the 2011 Inflection will have a negative value. I called this value S (for sum, inventive I know).

The thing I thought was interesting was if you then plot the S value against the log(votes) from IMDB you see a rather strong correlation between the two:

SCorrelation

Against the rating it is a bit more unclear. And while I won’t get into the nitty gritty (mutual information, distance correlation, and partial correlations all support what I’m about to say by the way, the Pearson correlation is reported above the plot and the data does appear linear so this is probably sufficient), basically I would say rather confidently that whether the 2011 Inflection is present or not is strongly linked to the popularity (number of IMDB votes) of the movie in question. Specifically, more popular movies are more likely to have the inflection.

This result is probably the strong indicator that a previously held belief about the 2011 inflection is true: the inflection has to do with IMDB expanding their smartphone/internet presence and seeing a sudden influx of new customers in 2011. Why? Because these new customers are more likely to vote on the initial wildly popular movies than something like Crispin Glover’s directoral debut. So for movies released prior to 2011, the most popular movies are much much more likely to see gains (and thus the inflection).

An alternative theory would perhaps be the international angle. As the international user base grows those users are also much much more likely to vote on the wildly popular movies (which are more likely to be available in foreign languages and released internationally). There are two reasons I think this is less likely. First, the inflection is seen in both international and US vote statistics (scraped from the much less robust Internet Archive data set of the IMDB ratings pages, and normalized by the maximum value in the windowed year average):

NationalVotes

Indeed, looking at the percentage of votes from international users and the increase (proportionally) is rather linear in reality, no inflection:

InternationalPercent

Second, I think there would be a lot more foreign language outliers in that case. A case where users from, say, Hong Kong increase, then those movies (with a much smaller number of votes) would have also seen the inflection. But in general I don’t think that was true (although I haven’t looked too closely, but I think I would have noticed that).

So that’s it. I declare this BMysTery closed! I think it is definitely due to a sudden influx of new users probably due to the widespread adoption of smartphones and development of the IMDB app. I should point out it still could be bots, because bots might try and fake out IMDB’s automated purging algorithms by voting on (likely) popular movies. But I don’t really see why that is more likely than my conclusion which I think makes total sense. Case closed I say!

Jamie’s Peer Review

I agree, particularly since you can find that around that time is when the IMDB apps became available. In June of 2010 (less than a year before the inflection) the android app launched in conjunction with a IMDB Everywhere initiative, where the company made a concerted effort at expanding their presence on mobile devices. The only thing that is a little curious is that the inflection seems pretty exact (I would wonder what kind of distribution we are talking about for the inflection point. Is it always the same point? Or are we seeing the inflection as a range starting around June 2010?). Would be weird if the initiative started in June 2010 and showed no effectiveness for a half a year before seeing a dramatic effect all at one time. Would still beg the question as to what specifically caused the dramatic effect… just curious. Probably still related to the initiative though.

The Fog (2005) Preview

Leaving The Avengers behind, we make our way to the Horror/Thriller category of the calendar. Unfortunately, the calendar is woefully bereft of thrillers so this is really just a horror category. With that in mind, why not choose one of the worst reviewed horror films released in the 2000’s? That’s right, we’re doing the remake of The Fog from 2005. The original was directed by one of my favorite directors of all time John Carpenter, so at the very least we’ll get to enjoy watching that before being disappointed by the new version. It’s the most BMT film released on October 14th, beating out Elizabethtown, Domino, Exit to Eden, and (most interestingly) the 2011 prequel of The Thing. A different John Carpenter material made (terribly) for the modern world. What are the chances that it would be released on the exact same day 6 years later? Let’s go!

The Fog (2005) – BMeTric: 76.4

(So I have a theory. The past few weeks we’ve hit the 70+ BMeTric hard, and the plots have looked amazingly similar. Cat in the Hat, Taxi, The Avengers, this … they don’t half ass it. They go balls to the wall and hit that 70+ hard. Really I think that is the key. When Jack and Jill came out, for example, everyone knew this was a catastrophe (it sits pretty at 80+ these days). I think that these are movies that just seem like a bad idea on paper and then double down with terrible execution to boot. And yet … out of those four doesn’t The Fog kind of stand out? Seems like an outlier, like it doesn’t belong? For me I barely remember this thing. I wonder why people were so immediately against the film (2.9 rating early on is absurd). I have theories … see the box office section below for more. I finally put the votes/rating chart up because why? Why would The Fog’s rating rise over time? All part of the weird world of IMDb user ratings)

Leonard Maltin – 1.5 stars – A dense fog from the Pacific creeps over a Northwest seaside village, bringing with it murderous, vengeful ghosts. Lame remake of John Carpenter’s 1980 movie alters the plot slightly but is no improvement. Carpenter and his longtime partner Debra Hill produced this. Alternate version also available.

(This sounds like a 1.5 star review considering Leonard already didn’t like the original all that much (2.5 stars). For those that are interested, the alternate version is an unrated widescreen edition that includes a director’s commentary that I may or may not have ordered through my local library system [Editor’s note: little old library ladies seemingly don’t know what unrated means. I. Am. Furious].)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWH1WlzXbko

(Not sure what I’m supposed to get out of that trailer besides the fact that Antonio Island is perpetually shrouded in darkness. Not even sure who the main characters are.)

Directors – Rupert Wainwright – (BMT: The Fog; Blank Check; Stigmata; Notes: Say whaaaaaaaaaaaat? You telling me staple-of-the-sklogs-childhood Blank Check was (1) a bad movie, and (2) directed by the guy who directed The Fog? Count me in, this movie is definitely amazing. An apparently prolific music video director he was featured on the British Millionaire Matchmaker.)

Writers – Cooper Layne (screenplay) – (Known For: The Core; BMT: The Fog; Notes: Saaaaaaaaaaay Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? You telling me staple-of-the-sklogs-late-night-movie-watching-indulgences The Core was (1) a good movie, and (2) written by the same guy who wrote The Fog? Count me double in, this movie is definitely double amazing. There isn’t much more about him besides that he had a small part in Coneheads.)

John Carpenter (1980 screenplay) – (Known For: Halloween; They Live; Escape from L.A.; Escape from New York; The Fog; Halloween H20: 20 Years Later; Prince of Darkness; Assault on Precinct 13; Assault on Precinct 13; Eyes of Laura Mars; Dark Star; BMT: The Fog; Halloween: Resurrection; Halloween III: Season of the Witch; Ghosts of Mars; Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers; Halloween 5; Halloween; Black Moon Rising; Halloween II; Notes: A lot of these credits are for this kind of stuff, remakes. But BMT classic Ghosts of Mars is pretty special. Honestly, Halloween, Escape from New York and especially his directing credits like The Thing are all remarkable both as films, but also for their mind blowing practical effects. I can say without hesitation he is one of my favorite filmmakers of all time.)

Debra Hill (1980 screenplay) – (Known For: Halloween; Escape from L.A.; The Fog; Halloween H20: 20 Years Later; BMT: The Fog; Halloween: Resurrection; Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers; Halloween 5; Halloween; Halloween II; Notes: One of the most famous female producers of her time she worked with Carpenter on many of his early films. Was serving as producer of The Fog right around when she was diagnosed and subsequently died of cancer sadly.)

Actors – Tom Welling – (Known For: Draft Day; Parkland; BMT: The Fog; Cheaper by the Dozen 2; Cheaper by the Dozen; Notes: Owns (or maybe owned) a house on Martha’s Vineyard (what, what) where he was married. Probably best known for playing Superman on Smallville.)

Maggie Grace – (Known For: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2; Taken; Knight and Day; Faster; The Jane Austen Book Club; BMT: The Fog; The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1; Taken 3; We’ll Never Have Paris; Lockout; Taken 2; The Choice; Notes: Best known for running really weird in Taken… oh and for her work on Lost.)

Also stars Selma Blair who is becoming a BMT staple with The Sweetest Thing and Down to You in her repertoire.

Budget/Gross – $18 million / Domestic: $29,550,869 (Worldwide: $46,201,432 Worldwide)

(Actually looks OK just by the numbers, but it was considered a pretty big disappointment when it came out. Just a year before The Grudge was able to make $187 million worldwide on a smaller budget, so I think that’s what they had in mind. That obviously did not happen.)

#32 for the Horror Remake genre

(Bam, new plot. I made this to explore my theory on why this movie was so destroyed in BMeTric. Using a windowing method, it sums up the number of theaters showing movies of this genre on a date plus or minus a year from a date in time (blue). And also the gross per theater for these movies (over their entire domestic run, green). The Fog is shown as a dashed red line in time. Hypothesis: This movie was the last straw for horror movie fans for remakes of 80’s films. And the plot bears this out! The genre was almost born in 2000 and grew to a plateau right when The Fog came out. And right as the gross was a-tumbling. It has since appeared to almost die as a genre. But I think this is a product of the blockbuster (Star Wars, Marvel, DC, etc.) dominating and saturating the theaters over the last five year. But we’ll see. Regardless I am convinced this is part of the reason this movie was thoroughly destroyed on IMDb (and thus the BMeTric), horror fans are … particular and love to vote on IMDb it seems. Right around future BMT classics The Eye and One Missed Call as well)

Rotten Tomatoes – 4% (3/68): The Fog is a so-so remake of a so-so movie, lacking scares, suspense or originality.

(I feel like this and Taxi have the funniest RT consensuses. Just very matter-of-fact despite summing up two of the worst reviewed releases of the decade. Maybe it was just a sign of the times. Before they started shoehorning puns into everything.)

Poster – The Meh (C-)

(Just meh. A bit boring, needs to pick a color other than grey, and the font is too easy to turn into the spoof poster of The Sklog. Also, where’s my tagline? Bullshit. I would have put it down into D+ range, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with it, just nothing good.)

Tagline(s) – None. (F)

(There are taglines from DVDs and stuff, but there is no official tagline from the poster or major advertising. Unacceptable.)

IMDb Keyword – fog

(I had to note this little guy. Both of the Silent Hill BMT classics make this very prestige-ish list. Get it? … The Prestige is number one on the list).

Notes – Selma Blair did almost all of her own stunts. For her underwater scenes, she spent 12 hours in a water tank, with only short surface breaks, for two days straight. (… I don’t believe you)

In between takes in Vancouver, press were granted access to the set. During Selma Blair’s interview, director Rupert Wainwright made a joke she didn’t like. In response, Blair reached into her shirt, pulled out a rubber “falsie,” and flung it across the conference room at the director, deadpanning, “That’s the Adrienne Barbeau part of the role.” (wat)

Before Tom Welling was cast, actors considered for Nick Castle included David Boreanaz, Jesse Metcalfe, Matthew Davis, Henry Cavill, Adam Garcia, Michael Cassidy, Oliver Hudson, and Peter Facinelli. Matthew Fox and Ben McKenzie, were also considered for the role and met with the director, but due to conflicting television schedules they did not read for producers. (If only the charmless walking mannequin that is Henry Cavill would have been in this, perfecto)

Fergie (of The Black Eyed Peas) was attached to play Stevie Wayne before a last-minute conflict prevented her contract from closing. (Well they lost a fan here. Everyone loves musicians and especially Black Eyed Peas in any major motion picture. The more the better and this film is worse for that egregious casting misstep. Unforgivable)

Maggie Grace beat Emilie de Ravin, her Lost (2004) co-star, for the role of Elizabeth. (And with that we end, what a loss for Emilie de Ravin)

The Avengers Recap

Jamie

At certain points while watching The Avengers I started getting that special, flighty feeling in the pit of my stomach. The feeling I got when I first laid eyes on Chris Klein dropping lines from Birches. The feeling I got when Big Momma was delivering a baby/sermon. The feeling I got when a monster-alien stood atop the mountains of Mars screaming “Bananananananas!” Namely, it was the feeling that we were on the cusp of something special (in its own special BMT way). Unfortunately, we never quite got over the hump. Each time we seemed on the verge of crossing into Hall of Fame territory, the film reeled itself back into boring or downright confusing territory. It goes back to something I’ve said before about bad movies. To make a truly bad movie you need that special sauce: freedom. You need to have such buy-in from the studio that they let you do what you want without oversight. You need to be delusional and everyone around you needs to be too afraid to let you know that it’s all a disaster (or just not care cause it’ll probably make money anyway). The Avengers didn’t have that. The studio was horrified when they tested it and hacked the movie to pieces. That makes for fun in its own right, (I dare two people to watch this film and come out with the same plot synopsis) but it also means that it’s very difficult to reach the next level of craziness that we strive for at BMTHQ. Not for lack of trying though. There was a full 10 minute sequence where Sean Connery prepares to date rape Uma Thurmon that was seriously messed up (and fortunately averted at the last moment). I’ll end on that sour note.

No commentary this week as I’m sure the studio didn’t want anyone involved to speak on record about what happened. I’m also not going to talk about the adaptation aspect of the film as it was based on a television show and there was just no way to absorb enough material to make an adequate judgement (although I did watch pieces of several episodes). Instead I’ll just do a quick game I just made up. It’s a BMIT class I teach called Settings 101 and it’s where I try to measure how well the film took advantage of the setting it chose. The Avengers almost reached peak Settings level. It was explicitly set in London (and not some vague location in England), it was cued by maps, signs and addresses in the film, it was mentioned by characters, and a major landmark of the setting plays a role in the film (Big Ben is destroyed by a lightning bolt). This is basically A- material right here as far as Settings go. How could it have gotten to A+? Why by mentioning the setting in the title, of course. Next up on the syllabus, The Making of an A+: London has Fallen.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone. The Avengers? More like My Tormentor, amirite? The Avengers got street cred coming out of every which way. A film spoken about as the crown jewel of one of the worst summers in Hollywood history. Shoe in, right? BMTHOF easy right? Well…

The Good – I found the “storyline” somewhat interesting and Connery somewhat compelling. I liked trying to pick out places in London. Erg, in retrospect that is it.
The Bad – The movie is very slow moving. It is very confusing. No one besides Connery seems like they fit their characters, everyone is replaceable. There is a scene with a bunch of people dressed as teddy bears that is the second most bonkers scene in the movie! (The first being the aforementioned quite disturbing almost-rape scene). The characters live in a bizarre non-London with zero extras akin to I, Frankenstein. It doesn’t feel like a movie, it feels like a music video or something. Oh, and it has bar none the worst CGI I’ve seen since a Sound of Thund-ah.
The BMT – Well yes, but maybe not 70. This is interesting though. Usually when a street cred film doesn’t live up to expectations it is because the movie is secretly ahead of its time and kind of good (Freddy Got Fingered, Ishtar). This is the first one which I can say is objectively bad because it is hacked up, but it still just seems off. It feels like a 70, and is a 70, but yet probably wouldn’t make a bad movie film festival I organized. It is an enigma that breaks the BMeTric in a way.

I’ll close the review just by saying I was getting healthy whiffs of Wild Wild West throughout the film. I guess that isn’t surprising, those two movies came out amazingly close together, both were based on old television shows but targeted at younger audiences, and both were colossal failures and notorious black marks on the 90s movie archive. But there was a weird feeling of … cynicism? This idea of screw-the-source-material in a way. Not that I’ve seen either show to any degree, but the updating just feels wrong. At least the way both movies go about it does. This movie confuses me, I’m not joking. I think that is a trend in our recent spat of 70+ BMeTric film, general confusion about whether a movie is ahead of its time or dog poo in my face.

Quick game. Let’s go Sequel Prequel Remake and make a little sequel out of this. Connery is back as a sexy octogenarian lighting monster ready to electrify Uma’s heart once again! But can the Avengers pull double duty and also stop an evil banker, Max Moneygrubber, trying to pull off a complex multi-level Ponzi scheme? Will Connery help the light of his life to zap Moneygrubber or burn them once and for all? The Avengers: Max Attack! I just vomited in my mouth.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs