Information taken from Brandon Gray's
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/
13 11 Horton Hears a Who $367,734 -23.0%% 428 -60 $859 $152,571,420
125 105 Chicago 10 $81 -92.7%% 1 -1 $81 $173,927
It appears that "Persepolis" has left theaters, ending with a total North
American boxoffice of $4,445,756, with an overseas box office of $17,303,640.
I enjoyed the movie, though I didn't think it was good as its biggest fans
asserted. Like "The Triplets of Belleville", it was something different from
U.S. family cartoons, animes, and motion capture movies. It's always best to
encourage variety in the medium. Maybe motivated by its BAF Oscar nomination,
Sony Picture classics ultimate gave it a distribution large enough that it
even reached Greenville, SC's main multiplex, and then played at the dollar
multiplex at Spartanburg. It was encouraging to see a studio get that much
behind a non mainstream cartoon movie.
For the Memorial Day weekend I went to see "Chicago 10". That movie
never got very much distribution, but wouldn't you know it, it showed up in
Columbia, SC. Thanks a whole bunch to the Nickelodeon theater.
http://www.nickelodeon.org
That's a non-profit theater run by University of South Carolina-Columbia
students out of an old building. Just one small room, but at least they can
bring a few movies that you wouldn't expect to find in the middle of South
Carolina. I'd been looking for an excuse to drive to Columbia.
I wound up enjoying the movie more than I expected. The film used a lot
of actual footage of the 1968 demonstrations without narration. That footage
turned out to make for exciting cinema. As for the animation sequences, the
art in the motion capture scenes actually looked better on the big screen than
on a quicktime trailer. The color scheme fit the trial's harsh move, and the
style used for faces resembled the style you'd see in official portraits. But
there's no hope for motion capture movement. The jerky movement inevitably
damaged the impact the trial scenes might've had. But to my surprise, the
movie also has a couple of traditionally animated scenes, a small snip you can
barely catch on the trailer. The art and animation in those traditional scenes
were dramatic and full of life. If only the whole movie had looked like those
scenes.
The movie unfortunately breaks down in its last third. I got lost telling
what footage was what; I think they were throwing in footage of protests from
all over the country. And the movie didn't finish the trial; instead we get
some stills at the end describing how the trial ended and whatever became of
whomever. I felt cheated. And did the Chicago 10 judge really behave like
this? Roy Scheider played him as such a cartoonish caricature that he hurt
the credibility of the trial scenes. Pity, as this was Scheider's last role.
----------------------------
O.K. For weeks, the box office has been very dead for animated features.
But I'm looking forward to this weekend, when "Kung Fu Panda" opens. I've
been psyched for this movie ever since Jerry Beck described it as "right up
there with 'The Incredibles'".
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film/kung-fu-panda-kicks-ass
Let's see if this movie really is THAT good.
- Juan F. Lara
