Wednesday, April 06, 2016

Movie biz talk

It seems to me that Disney is probably in for a great year with its movies, both critically and financially.

Item 1:  Zootopia (which I haven't seen yet) has already made $800 million internationally (with $231 million of that from China!)   This movie seemed to come with not much publicity build up, but I guess its uniformly strong reviews (except from the Nutty Economist - now there's a movie title for you - Steve Kates) means there has also been strong word of mouth and it's just taken off.

Item 2:  to my surprise, as I wasn't very impressed with any trailer I saw, and the source material also holds no interest,The Jungle Book is also getting strong reviews.   Not sure that I would see it, but presumably it will make money.

Item 3:  a new trailer for The BFG is out and gaining a lot of attention (deservedly - it does look like a very visually pleasing film).  Spielberg doesn't always have great outcomes with kids films (see Hook, which was barely passable), but I reckon everyone will be getting a very good feeling about this one.

[And for the adults reading who want to watch something from overseas, I will remind them to check out the extensive list of movies that SBS's on line service seems to make permanently available.   The quality of their free streaming video always seems good to me on mere ADSL; why can't the ABC on line service meet the same standards?  I watched a Dutch WW2 movie last weekend on the SBS service - Winter in Wartime - and it's pretty good.   The eccentric Big Man Japan, on the other hand - not so great, despite the rottentomato reviews.]

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