We’ve all seen the headlines “James Pauley and the attack of the killer mutant cyborg sheep: Part IV sweeps the box office with the biggest opening day of all time!”

Apparently, we, the simple-minded public, are supposed to be wowed and awed (and cajoled, via bandwagon propaganda) into seeing the movie. One thing I’ve noticed though: It seems everytime a new blockbuster movie comes out, it’s always “the biggest opening day of all time!” and only by a little bit. It got me thinking “I wonder what the biggest opening day was, of the top 10 opening days, when you adjust them all for inflation?”

Inflation for those of you that don’t know, is the creeping death of our almighty dollar. Every year, on average, our dollars are worth 3.2% than the year before. (This means, among other things, that the minimum wage which was stuck at $5.25 for several years, is actually only worth about $3 / hr when you adjust for inflation). What inflation also does, however, is skew price comparisons. We’ve all heard our grandparents say “I can’t believe how expensive ____ is! When I was a boy, I only paid a nickel for it!” More often than not, the price has only changed by a penny or two (AFTER ADJUSTMENT), and sometimes, such as in the case of eggs or milk, it’s actually CHEAPER (adjusted) than it was when Grandpa was a wee lad.

Back to movies.

So, here’s the data I’m working with, pulled from BoxOfficeMojo:

Calculating the CPI:

Ok, this is where a VERY SMALL amount of math comes in. It requires consulting a table, setting up a very simple proportion, and doing some multiplication. A calculator helps, but isn’t totally necessary. (Or, and you are going to LOVE me for this, you can use the BLS’s Inflation Calculator!!!)

First, we need to get our CPI numbers. CPI is an acronym for “Consumer Price Index”. It’s calculated, and maintained, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). There’s lots of information on that page, but the real meat-and-bones of it is in the US City Average, All Urban Consumers table. Just trust me on that.

Ok, to use this table: Along the lefthandside, down in a column, is the years, stretching from as far back as 1913 (your grandpa / great-grandpa’s time) to March 07. (April will be up soon, they’re generally a month behind.) The columns to the right of the year column are individual months, all twelve of them, followed by an annual average. Doing individual month comparisons are generally more accurate than annual average. So to find the CPI for a given month, we find the row containing the year we want, and then find the column corresponding to the month we want, and Bingo! There it is. The CPI for that month.

For your own trivia, I’ll walk you through one of the top 10 listed. (Bear in mind, since we don’t have May 07’s CPI, this won’t be QUITE as accurate as it could be, but it should be pretty close!) Let’s do #10: Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

Return of the King came out in December 2003. The CPI for that month was 184.3. The most recent CPI is March 2007, which is 205.352. So now we create a ratio of those two dates to get their CPI factor. (205.352 / 184.3 = 1.114053). Now, we multiply that factor times the raw (nominal) price from the past. (1.114053 x 34,450,834 = $38,380,060.97). So the Return of the King’s opening day ticket sales, in today’s dollars, is 4 million dollars more! That’s substantial!

Since I don’t expect you to do all the calculations, I’ll do them all here. (Since we don’t have May’s CPI - I’m estimating it at 208.72. The months previous have both increased approximately 1.7 each month. So two more months = +3.4)

Just because I’m a glut for punishment, here’s that table again, sorted:

Only three big differences, rank-wise. But then again, all of those movies are all from the past decade. I’ll leave you with this last comparison, for “all-time highest-grossing-movies”. Movieweb (with their annoying verizon ads) lists the top 1000 grossing movies of all time. At number 1 is “Titanic” (12/1997, $600,788,000), number 2 is “Star Wars IV: A New Hope” (5/1977, $460,988,000), and number 74 is “Gone with the Wind” ($198,655,000, 12/1939).

Doing the same thing again:

I rest my case.

Categories: Geekery, Movies & the IMDB 250
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“There’s good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fightin’ for!”

Overview: [There really isn't any short way to tell the story of this movie accurately...so I apologize in advance]. There’s a uber-powerful ring. Two little-people have to dump it in a volcano hundreds of miles away in the evil lair of the big bad guy. They are aided by their friends, an elf, a dwarf, and a human [sort of], as well as various other people along the way, who unfortunately all get sidetracked by two humungous epic-scale battles waged by the big bad guy. Ultimately good prevails and we all say Hurrah.

Noteworthy Actors / Actresses: Elijah Welch (Frodo), Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn), Sean Astin (Sam), Ian McKellen (Gandalf), John Rhys-Davise (Gimli), Orlando Bloom (Legolas), Hugo Weaving (Elrond), Cate Blanchett (Galadriel), Sean Bean (Boromir), Billy Boyd (Pippin), Ian Holm (Bilbo), Dominic Monaghan (Merry), Liv Tyler (Arwen), Christopher Lee (Sauruman), Brad Dourif (Wormtongue)

Homages / Trivia: Too much to list. Fellowship of the Ring, Two Towers, Return of the King.Verdict: One word: Epic. This trilogy is probably one of the best known book sets of all time. Beautifully shot, directed, and wonderfully acted. I think the only thing that would really bother some people about it is its length (ranging from 2 hrs and change to 3 hrs and change, the THEATRICAL versions… each extended cut adds another 20 to 40 minutes!). But personally, I think if they tried to make it shorter, it would have done it a disservice. Being a geek gives you a special appreciation for it, but I think this movie can appeal to anyone. If you aren’t used to sitting through long movies, watch the theatrical versions, they’re still really good. I wish they would do movies like this with other classics. Definitely worth watching.


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“Above all, protect yourself!”

Overview: Frankie Dunn is an aging Boxing trainer who moonlights as a manager. Due to things in his past, he’s too cautious, and his boxers keep leaving him because of his conservatism. Maggie is a girl with nothing more than a dream, and a whole lot of persistence. They both have a lot of unresolved baggage from their respective pasts, and through each other they ultimately find redemption.

Noteworthy Actors / Actresses: Clint Eastwood (Frankie), Hilary Swank (Maggie), Morgan Freeman (Eddie)

Homages / Trivia: The movie was based on a collection of short stories by Jerry Boyd, from the book “Rope Burns: Stories from the corner“. The actress that played Billie “The Blue Bear” was Hilary Swank’s trainer.

Verdict: This movie is kind of a boxing movie, but not really. The focus of the movie is really on the dynamics between Frankie (Eastwood) and Maggie (Swank), which becomes more and more evident as the movie goes on. Sure, there’s lots of boxing, training, fighting, knockouts, and tomfoolery, but the allusions to the symbiotic relationship between the trainer and the trainee become more and more apparent. That said, and I really don’t want to have to put any spoilers in here so this is going to seem a bit cryptic — it’s powerful. I think this may be some of Eastwood’s best work ever, both acting and directing, and I thought Unforgiven was AWESOME too. It’s definitely worth seeing, and it definitely deserved all the 5 academy awards it received.

From IMDB: (2004) Frankie Dunn (Clint Eastwood) has trained and managed some incredible fighters during a lifetime spent in the ring. The most important lesson he teaches his boxers is the one that rules life: above all, always protect yourself. In the wake of a painful estrangement from his daughter, Frankie has been unwilling to let himself get close to anyone for a very long time. His only friend, Scrap (Morgan Freeman), an ex-boxer who looks after Frankie’s gym, knows that beneath his gruff exterior is a man who has been seeking, for the past 25 years, the forgiveness that somehow continues to elude him. Then Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) walks into his gym…

Categories: Movies & the IMDB 250
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My hot gf, Melissa, thought of a smashing idea: let’s watch all the movies on IMDB’s Top 250! Lately, we’ve seen a lot of movies of the caliber that would expect to fall out of someone’s ass. The list is always changing by a little bit here and there, so I’m not going to post it here. (Even if we watched two movies a day, every day, it would still takes us over 4 months)
View it Here.

We have watched: (Now hyperlinked!)
1. The Godfather (1, June 8 2006)
2. The Shawshank Redemption (7, June 20 2006)
4. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (4, August 17 2006)
5. Casablanca (4, June 9 2006)
9. The Good, The Bad, The Ugly (10, June 30, 2006)
10. Pulp Fiction (18, July 12, 2006)
14. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (14, August 13 2006)
15. The Usual Suspects (3, June 9 2006)
16. Raiders of the Lost Ark (19, July 15 2006)
20. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (20, August 14 2006)
35. Vertigo (9, June 30 2006)
36. Taxi Driver (14, July 6 2006)
48. Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi) (24, July 27 2006)
53. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (8, June 24 2006)
54. The Maltese Falcon (2, June 8 2006)
58. Alien (58, July 31, 2006)
71. Million Dollar Baby (71, August 14 2006)
84. Amadeus (12, July 5, 2006)
86. The Incredibles (25, July 28, 2006)
117. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wo Hu Cang Long) (23, July 25 2005)
122. Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade (20, July 15 2006)
127. The Life of Brian (22, July 21 2006)
131. Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid (#131, July 10 2006)
136. African Queen (#136, July 10 2006)
152. Hero (8, June 20 2006)
154. Harvey (6, June 12 2006)
192. The Big Lebowski (192, August 6 2006)
203. Young Frankenstein (13, July 9 2006)
228. The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance (11, July 2 2006)
238. Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl (17, july 11, 2006)
241. Planet of the Apes (5, June 11 2006)

Categories: Movies & the IMDB 250
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“F*** it… Let’s go bowling.”
Overview: Lebowski may be an uncommon name, but Los Angeles is a big city, home to two separate and  unrelated Jeffrey Lebowski’s. When their identity is mistaken and “The Dude” Lebowski (Bridges) has his house broken into, his rug peed on, and his face shoved in a toilet, a long chain of events cascades down from there. The Dude is cast into a progressively more complex web of events involving treachery, bowling, kidnapping, bowling, theft, sex, bowling, violence, and lots of J-rollin, pot-smokin good times. Oh, and bowling. Even though the main character happens to be a stoner, I think non-stoners may identify with the movie more.
Notable Actors / Actresses: Jeff Bridges (The Dude), John Goodman (Walter), Steve Buscemi (Donnie), Julianne Moore (Maude), Sam Elliott (The cowboy), Phillip Seymour-Hoffman (Grant), Tara Reid (Bunnie), Flea (Nihilist 3), John Turturro (Jesus).
Homages / Trivia:  In the duration of the movie, the Dude never actually rolls a single bowling ball. The Sandals (Jellies) that he wears in the film, as well as a lot of the character’s clothes, actually belonged to Jeff Bridges. The blue VW beetle driven by the P.I. is a reference to an earlier Coen brothers film, Blood Simple (1984), in which a P.I. also drives the same car. The German Pop band “Autobahn” in the film is an implied reference to a real group from the 1970s named “Kraftwerk” who actually had a song named “Autobahn”. The album cover is remarkably identical to a real Kraftwerk album as well. John Goodman once did a television ad for the “In & Out Burger.” The shirt with kanji on it worn in the beginning is the same one Jeff Bridges wore during “The Fisher King” (1991). The character of Walter is based on John Milius, the writer of “Conan the Barbarian” (1982).
Verdict: This movie reminds me of the Scorcese films — the plot itself is kind of secondary to the illustrative nature of the film. It’s not so much a journey as it is a snapshot into the surreal life of “The Dude”; Or at least a surreal episode in The Dude’s life. The film ranges from hilarious, to tragic, to absolutely bizarre. It’s funny, although more in a tongue-in-cheek black-humor sense than a slapstick in-your-face sense. (Think less Jim Carrey / Robin Williams and more William H. Macey). It’s definitely worth watching at least once — The first time you’ll probably be confused as anything, don’t try to figure it out, just enjoy the experience.
From IMDB: (1998) When “The Dude” Lebowski is mistaken for a millionaire Lebowski, two thugs urinate on his rug to coerce him into paying a debt he knows nothing about. While attempting to gain recompense for the ruined rug from his wealthy counterpart, he accepts a one-time job with high pay-off. He enlists the help of his bowling buddy, Walter, a gun-toting Jewish-convert with anger issues. Deception leads to more trouble, and it soon seems that everyone from porn empire tycoons to nihilists want something from The Dude.

Categories: Movies & the IMDB 250
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“Well, it’s an interesting combination of elements making him… a tough little son-of-a-bitch.”

Overview: The crew of the Nostromo is returning from a trip to pick up some raw ore to be refined when they get a distress signal from a nearby planet. They’re approximately six weeks from home, and were all woken up by the ship’s onboard computer from Hypersleep in order to investigate this signal. The law requires that distress signals are always investigated. The crew touches down on the alien planet and investigates a crashed ship. Inside, they find some really bizarre things, and one of the crew members, Kane, gets separated from the group to investigate a downward tunnel — down there he finds an array of pods underneath a layer of mist. One of the pods pops open near him and… well… all hell breaks loose. This movie definitely preys on our fears of Parasites and more importantly, of the unknown.
Noteworthy Actors / Actresses: Sigourney Weaver (Ripley), John Hurt (Kane), Ian Holm (Ash), Tom Skerrit (Dallas)

Trivia / Homages: The graphics used on-screen for the undocking sequence were the same used in the movie Blade Runner. The inspiration for the chest-bursting parasite is from Spider Wasps, which gave the screenwriter nightmares. (Spider Wasps sting a spider to paralyze it, then lay eggs on the still-living spider. The larvae hatch out and consume the spider while it’s still alive). However, the “Alien” chestbursting phenomena is more accurately found in both the Ichneumon and Braconid insects, which lay their eggs inside of beetles and caterpillars, respectively. When the eggs hatch, the larvae eat their way from the inside out.


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