The LA Times recently published an article about how even 13 Oscar nominations might not be enough for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (trailer, review) to earn back its budget.

Not only did Paramount and co-financing partner Warner Bros. spend $150 million to make it, but the companies will also be laying out an additional $135 million to market and distribute the picture worldwide, according to a person familiar with the situation. Since the movie opened Dec. 25, Paramount has spent lavishly, particularly on its Oscar campaign, which some industry executives estimate could exceed $10 million.

To date, “Button” has grossed $104 million at the U.S. box office and generated an additional $16.2 million in Australia and a handful of markets overseas.

Even with its forthcoming international take and eventual DVD sales, “Button” could struggle to earn a significant profit — or even a modest one.

Benjamin Button wasn’t the best movie ever made, but it’d be a shame if studio execs see this and interpret it as high-minded, big budget movies with name directors being a bad bet.  And you know they will because studio execs are idiots, look at Fox.  The problem wasn’t the big budget, the problem was that every studio put out their “awards” film at the same time, all banking on the same poorly defined phenomenon like they always do.  Hey, I have an idea, why not release Button in January or March, when it’s going up against Underworld 12 and Martin Lawrence in a Fat Suit 7? My guess is it would split less audience with those than with Gran Torino, The Wrestler, Milk, Slumdog, Frost/Nixon and every other award movie they put it up against.  But hey, what do I know, I’m just a muscular supergenius.

It’d been a few years since I’d seen Forrest Gump when I saw Benjamin Button, and it was still impossible not to notice the similarities.  The case that screenwriter Eric Roth plagiarized himself is even more damning with the evidence presented side by side in this video, which calls Button “exactly like Gump, except, no AIDS”.  Though it did have Hurricane Katrina, which is basically the new AIDS. If you ask me, the biggest mistake of Button was not getting this guy in there somehow.  Don’t get judgy, you know your ass would’ve been stealing beer too.

UPDATE: Says commenter “Orca-fat”: “Umm, Forrest Gump wasn’t from Louisiana. He was from Alabama. He played football for the Crimson Tide. I know all those ignorant red-staters are pretty much the same, like everyone with skin darker than mine, but the video emphasizes ‘raised in Louisiana’ and ‘New Orleans voiceover’ when the question of home state is possibly the only actual difference between the two movies.” Good point. I probably should’ve caught that.

[via /Film]

The Producer’s Guild of America has released their best picture nominations, and they are:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (trailer, my review)
Frost/Nixon (trailer)
The Dark Knight (trailer)
Milk (trailer)
Slumdog Millionaire (trailer)

The PGAs are typically a blueprint for the Oscars, which makes today’s news bad news for Revolutionary Road and the likewise shunned. Last year, four of five PGA contenders went on to score Best Picture nominations at the Academy Awards. [Yahoo]

I don’t know why we make such a big deal about this crap.  You think it’s coincidence that four of the five nominees came out in the last month?  The people who vote on this stuff just aren’t that smart, they probably vote for whatever they saw last.  Which is why if I had a movie in contention, at the premiere I would serve popcorn laced with poison! My diabolical plan can’t possibly fail.

Marley & Me remained “top dog” at the box office and came in “best in show” with $21 million over the weekend.  Bedtime Stories number two even though everyone agrees how much it sucks, Curious Case of Benjamin Button number three, nothing new came out this weekend, blah blah blah who cares (full top ten after the jump).

In a season loaded with wartime stories, two more Nazi-themed films opened in limited release.  Paramount Vantage’s “Defiance” debuted with $121,000 in two theaters for a whopping average of $60,500 a cinema.
ThinkFilm’s “Good” opened with $9,300 in two theaters, averaging $4,650. The film casts Viggo Mortensen as an upright German academic gradually seduced into the Nazi fold as World War II approaches.

Meanwhile Valkyrie has been out for two weeks and The Reader opens in a week.  It reminds me of that book my mom used to read to me when I was a little kid, The Day of Too Many Nazis! On that note, I don’t know where these pictures came from, but I love them. If you have any pictures I can use in lieu of having anything intelligent to contribute to boring stories, feel free to send them on over.

Read the rest of this entry »

A man angry that a family was talking during a Philadelphia showing of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button pulled out a Kel-Tec .380 and shot another man in the arm.

The victim — who was apparently chatting with his son during the movie — told police that [James Joseph Cialella Jr., 29] told him to be quiet and threw popcorn at his son.

The man, whose identity was not reported, said some words were exchanged and Cialella then got out of his seat. The man said he got up to protect his son, and Cialella then shot him.

As patrons ran from the theater, Cialella reportedly went back to his seat and resumed watching the movie — until police showed up to arrest him on charges of attempted murder, aggravated assault and weapons violations. [UPI]

Said a police spokesman, “What do you mean ‘Was the guy who got shot also white’?  What would that have to do with anything?”