Overpriced Popcorn

Introduction The biggest buzz in movie news these days is the release of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The film slammed the box office this weekend, dominating in a way that even its predecessors in the Lord of the Rings trilogy did not. The film pulled in nearly $223 million at the box office its opening weekend, and that was with a traditional Friday opening rather than the oh-so-trendy "Wednesday opening to pad the numbers" tactic. The movie is news for several reasons. The obvious, of course, is that it's the long-awaited completion of the story of the Baggins clan as written by J.R.R. Tolkien, an adaptation of the prelude (not prequel, for this book was in fact written first) to the longer, epic Lord of the Rings. The second is Jackson's decision to shoot the film in 48 fps "High Frame Rate" (or HFR) format. For around 100 years now, films have been shot in 24 frames per second; the argument in favor of HFR is that the faster...

Introduction It's been a whopping thirty-three years since Dan O'Bannon and Ridley Scott gave us a seminal film in both the science fiction and horror genres: the classic (some say masterpiece) Alien . The film was not only a commercial success, but has gone on to near universal accolades, including a laundry list of award nominations and wins in 1979. Wins include the 1979 Oscar for visual effects, and a nod for art direction.  It won Saturn Awards for best sci-fi film, best director, supporting actress, and got a nod for Sigourney Weaver.  It also was nominated for best makeup, special effects, and writing. I could go on--there were nominations for the BAFTAs, Hugo Awards, Golden Globes and on and on and on. The film spawned three sequels and two spin-offs with "Sister" franchise, Predator .  In general, and with the arguable exception of Aliens , the sequels are all considered generally inferior to the original. Aliens is an interesting case, in that it smartly...