arctic tale Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Not Much Jolt in Starbucks' Movie World
Filed under: Documentary », Box Office », Movie Marketing »
After the wild success of March of the Penguins, Paramount Classics thought they had a solid follower with Arctic Tale -- the story of a walrus and her calf and a polar bear and her cubs. They scored a promotional partner in Starbucks and waited for the success. Well, where Penguins earned millions, Variety reports that Tale has only earned $484,000 in the past month -- not quite the popularity they were expecting. (Penguins had nabbed millions in the same amount of time.)But it seems that no matter how much Starbucks can infiltrate the US, and slip a store on practically every street corner, they can't seem to beef up movie sales. Tale is their second attempt -- the first was Akeelah and the Bee, which also performed below expectations. But it's not without some effort -- for this latest film, the company installed signage and stickers, specially-branded cup sleeves, sold plush walruses, sold the film's soundtrack and had special discussions in some stores about climate change. They didn't go further, like specially-named drinks, to avoid over-commercializing the tie-in, which I have to respect. "We are careful to promote our products and projects in a tasteful manner and not to interfere with the coffeehouse experience," says Ken Lombard. The article also mentions how the stores don't have screens to air footage, but really, it's a flipping coffeehouse -- that's a good thing! Is the problem how Starbucks is promoting it, the films themselves, or something else?
Indie Weekend Box Office: '11th Hour' and 'King of Kong' Face Off
Filed under: Documentary », Independent », Box Office », Family Films », Cinematical Indie »
In a classic case of doc vs. doc, nature vs. nurture, environmental doc The 11th Hour battled video gaming doc The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters for top honors among limited engagement earners this past weekend -- and the environment won, according to Leonard Klady of Movie City News. Klady's estimates put The 11th Hour in first place with a per-screen average of $14,700 at four locations for an estimated total of $58,800 for distributor Warner Independent. Cinematical's Ryan Stewart felt it had little new information to offer but "overall, The 11th Hour does a serviceable job of preaching to the environmental choir." Rotten Tomatoes rates reviews as being 79% positive.Trailing not far behind was The King of Kong (I really don't like that needless titular verbiage). Scott Weinberg saw it at SXSW and gave it high marks; I saw it a couple of weeks later at AFI Dallas and loved it. For my money -- or quarters, if you insist -- it's one of the best movies of the year because of its keen sense of humanity; the snappy pace and non-condescending sense of humor helps too. Of the 36 reviews accumulated so far at Rotten Tomatoes, only one has been negative, giving it a 97% positive rating. The King of Kong averaged $10,300 per screen at five theaters in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and Austin; distributor Picturehouse will expand it to more cities in the coming weeks.
Nature doc Arctic Tale, which Paramount Vantage pitched to family audiences, lured very few paying customers. Klady estimated a per-screen average of just $830 during a weekend in which the picture was expanded to 227 theaters. Our own Jette Kernion was none too impressed, noting: "I think it would play just as well on a television, perhaps on DVD if your family didn't want to sit through 90 minutes of nature film all at once." That seems to be what most parents have decided to do -- wait for the DVD.
Review: Arctic Tale
Filed under: Documentary », New Releases », Paramount », Theatrical Reviews », New in Theaters », Family Films »
If not for the unexpected box-office success of March of the Penguins, Arctic Tale would never have seen the light of theatrical release. The documentary would have ended up as a National Geographic special on whatever TV channel nature shows are broadcast these days (remember, I don't have cable), and I suspect a slightly less glitzy star than Queen Latifah would have narrated the show. However, Paramount Vantage is gambling that families will flock to theaters to see more polar adventures with adorable animals, even if the animals aren't doing anything we haven't seen before.
The success of March of the Penguins is that it introduced many of us to a phenomenon of nature: the mass marches and other rituals that make up penguin conception and birth. If you're a fan of nature shows you may have known all about the penguin march, but most of us did not. Unfortunately, Arctic Tale does not focus around a similar phenomenon. The movie concentrates its story around a baby polar bear and a baby walrus as they struggle to survive in the Arctic mountains and islands ... especially since in recent years, the ice melts earlier and forms later every year. The phenomenon here is actually global warming, although it is never mentioned by that name, but it is not a radical enough catalyst to muster much interest. The animals themselves are simply too predictable -- they swim, hang out on the ice, wrestle, hunt, and eventually grow up.
SilverDocs: Religion, Politics, Women and Other Controversial Topics
Filed under: Documentary », Foreign Language », Independent », Music & Musicals », Other Festivals », Religious », Cinematical Indie »
With plans to screen 100 documentaries in just six days, SilverDocs 2007 gets under way Tuesday, June 12 with Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, directed by Jim Brown (no, not that one; this one), which promises to interweave folk music, social upheaval and Seeger's life and music. Among the six films competing for the Music Documentary Award will be Hip Hop Revolution (history of hip hop in South Africa), Kurt Cobain About a Son (the late musician narrating his own journey) and Nomadak Tx (from Spain, about two musicians and a "magical instrument"). The Beyond Belief program explores "faith, fanaticism, spirituality and ethics in civil society," according to the press notes, and includes the world premieres of Living Goddess (a young girl worshipped as the incarnation of a Hindu goddess lives peacefully in traumatic times) and Orthodox Stance (love that title: a young immigrant in New York City must balance his Hasidic beliefs with his rising career as a boxer).Politically-charged movies are certainly on the agenda. Just three higher-profile titles that caught my eye: 14 Women (Mary Lambert examines the lives of female US Senators), Lake of Fire (Tony Kaye on abortion; the press notes say it's "carefully balanced," but this is Tony Kaye, whose insane career Erik just wrote about) and State Legislature (Frederick Wiseman spends 217 minutes on "the inner workings of the democratic process," specifically in Idaho). And then there's the latest by Liz Garbus (Coma relates the stories of four victims), Mike Mills (Does Your Soul Have a Cold?, in which Japanese marketers tackle antidepressants), Helvetica (which James reviewed at South by Southwest) and the local premiere of the controversial Nanking (which Kim reviewed at Sundance). Artic Tale is the closing night presentation. My head is swimming with the possibilities. Even if you aren't planning to attend, the film guide is well worth checking out to see the wide range of material that's screening this week in and around Silver Spring, Maryland.
'Arctic Tale' Trailer: How to Sell a Documentary (Or Not)
Filed under: Documentary », Independent », Paramount Classics », Family Films », Cinematical Indie »
When an innocuous-sounding nature movie called March of the Penguins smashed box office records two years ago -- to the tune of $77 million in the US -- you better believe Hollywood was paying attention. Distributor Paramount Classics was quick to snap up rights to another documentary about polar creatures in early November 2005. Call of the North was not some hurried project put together to capitalize on the success of Penguins, though. Filmmakers Adam Ravetch and Sarah Robertson had worked together on at least two Arctic-themed episodes of the long-running series Nature earlier in the decade. David Poland reported that they had been working on the film, shooting on location and thus often enduring sub-zero temperatures, for seven years. He also passed along the news that the film was "due out in mid or late '06." Somewhere between then and now, the title changed to Arctic Tale (at one point it was The Walrus and the Polar Bear) and acquired narration spoken by Queen Latifah and written by Linda Woolverton (Beauty and the Beast), Mose Richards and Kristin Gore (Futurama and daughter of the former US Vice President). From a look at the web site, it's being marketed as a cute yet environmentally-sensitive movie for kids; for adults, the advertising mentions the film as coming from "the studio that brought you An Inconvenient Truth." Certainly it's the distributor's goal to get as many people as possible to see it. I just wonder if any of the harsh realities of the animal kingdom were softened for the sake of trying to replicate the success of Penguins, and if the result fully reflects what the filmmakers set out to make so many years ago. For now, you can watch the trailer at Moviefone and decide if you agree with The Documentary Blog, where Jay Cheel comments: "I don't mean to sound like an a******, but this trailer is s***." Paramount Classics has set a release date of July 25.
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