*** Official "HARRY POTTER & THE PHILOSOPHER'S/SORCERER'S STONE" Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[TerryRL]

Oh yeah, go here too...
Link Removed

 

[TerryRL]

And here...
Link Removed

 

[Tino]

Terry
Is there an actual quote from Warner Bros. in any of the articles that you mention? I haven't read one yet. Please tell us exactly where you read it coming
Warner Bros. as many of us would like to read it.
Thanks

 

[TerryRL]

"Some are even talking of the film's braking Titanic's all-time box office record, which stands at $600 million domestically and $1.8 billion worldwide."- Nov. 30th issue of Ent. Weekly

The comment was referring to some WB execs, as well as other industry watchers, that had been interviewed.

 

[RobertR]

As well as the Daily Variety magazine the week of Potter's release. The last issue of Premiere magazine had a good Potter article, as well as the Hollywood Reporter.

Also check out the websites for the L.A. and New York Times. The same goes for USA Today.

But those are all publications external to WB. To say they speculate on HP's boxoffice success is not the same thing as saying WB predicted anything. As for saying Entertainment Weekly talks about boxoffice...one could say the same thing about Time or CNN (both owned by WB's corporate parent). But I'd say that's simply covering movie news.

 

[TerryRL]

That's true, but publications such as Ent. Weekly (which is owned by WB) held interviews with WB execs as well as some of the cast on this issue. While some were cautious in their wording, some did think the movie had a shot at dethroning "Titanic".

 

[Tino]

"SOME"?
Sorry Terry, no offense but that comment that you quoted above is NOT from any WB exec. That's speculation on your part. Neither the Entertainment Weekly article nor the Premiere article quote ANY WB execs making claims. I just read them.
Facts are much preferred to speculation, wouldn't you agree. Accusing WB of such claims without evidence is a bit unfair to WB, right?

 

[TerryRL]

Yep. It is unfair.

From all that I read, I was of the understanding that WB held a certain position on HP concerning it's box office where "Titanic" was concerned. If I'm wrong, than I apologize to every exec out there. WB had done this sort of thing before with the "Batman" movies, as I pointed out, and maybe I read more into it than that concerning all the articles I read. If I did, than that's my mistake.

 

[RobR]

My wife and I saw Harry Potter last night. I thought it was a bad, totally unsatisfying movie. I kept waiting to be entertained, and actually started to fall asleep when my wife (who is a big fan of the books) kept waking me up. The funny thing was that she actually fell asleep two hours into the movie. She admitted it was not that great and overlong. I haven't read the books, but that's irrelevant as I believe movies should be able to stand on their own.

I read Roger Ebert's four star review. What he wrote about Gladiator (also a bad movie, by the way) would apply to Harry Potter: "The film looks muddy, fuzzy and indistinct. Its colors are mud tones at the drab end of the palette, and it seems to have been filmed on grim and overcast days. This darkness and a lack of detail in the long shots helps obscure shabby special effects (the Colosseum in Rome looks like a model from a computer game), and the characters bring no cheer...." Could they make the Quidditch match any more cartoonish? I don't remember seeing that bad of GCI in Gladiator on the big screen.

 

[TerryRL]

My oldest daughter (8) loved it, my youngest daughter (5) feell asleep during it. My wife and I didn't really like it that much, but neither of us have read any of the books. I'm assuming you have to be a big fan of the books to love the movies where HP is concerned. We all loved "Monsters, Inc." though.

And yes, the CG in HP was pretty bad in some spots. The worst being when Potter was riding the back of that troll. ILM is doing the FX for 'Chamber of Secrets', so maybe the FX will be better next time out.

As for "Gladiator", I dig that movie. I still don't think it should've gotten the Best Visual FX Oscar though, that honor should've gone to "The Perfect Storm" in my opinion.

 

[Hubert]

Gladiator was a great movie. And I thought Ebert's Gladiator review was stupid. Gladiator was supposed to look the way it was. And if he had actually watched the movie, it was not mostly shot overcast days. Mainly the only part of the movie that was overcast was the first 20 minutes. The rest of the movie was shot in bright sunlight. With only some white puffy clouds. The movie was about Rome. It wasn't supposed to be this gaudy colored movie with people in purple robes laying on lounge chairs eating grapes. It was a realistic look at Rome. But that is another subject.

As for Harry Potter, I thought it looked like it was supposed to look, although I've never read the book.

 

[Bill Buklis]

I haven't read the books yet, but I still liked the movie. It's a movie that's meant to amaze and wonder. It tickles your imagination and brings you into the world of the impossible, yet plausible. This is the type of story that's almost always better in a book, but I feel this movie did a pretty good job. Is it the best movie of all time? Hardly. But, it was definitely well done and enjoyable.

I agree the CGI isn't perfect, but it wasn't that bad. It was actually fairly decent. Even as advanced as CGI technology is today, it's still far from perfect. I feel that the quidditch match would have looked far worse without CGI. To do this with wires, etc, they would have had to tone down the scene considerably [and it still would have come in at a greater cost].

 

[TerryRL]

No disrespect to anyone involved with 'Potter', it just wasn't really my cup of tea. The Quidditch Match sequence was really well done and the movie had a few cute moments, just overall I didn't really dig it.

I'm just not that big a Chris Colombus fan. I hated the "Home Alone" movies, as well as "Nine Months", "Stepmom", and "Bicentenial Man". I didn't hate 'Potter', but seeing it once was enough for me.

 

[Rich Malloy]

I don't usually care one whit for the corporate machinations and box office draws of movies, but I thought this article was very interesting - check it out:

How do today's Hollywood pictures get made? Why do they get made? Who makes the decisions? And why are so many big-budget Hollywood movies so disappointing? In interviews with FRONTLINE over the past six months, studio executives, producers, filmmakers, industry analysts, and critics have shared their insights into how the movie business, and movies themselves, have changed -- and whether the new business model makes sense.http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...ows/hollywood/

 

[RobertR]

Fascinating reading, Al. Thanks for the links.

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

A final word on forward looking statements. The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) frowns on publicly traded companies making these kinds of statements (i.e. wild revenue predictions) only to temporarily hike a company's stock share price from an unnecessary demand. That's why when it was mentioned that WB was making wild predictions on potential box office gross for Harry Potter, it just didn't sound right.

Publicly traded movie studios will very rarely comment on potential box office gross for their own films. Something to keep in mind in the future.

~Edwin

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

Potter made $5.9M on its third Friday but a whopping 74% drop from last Friday, following its alarming 36% drop on Thanksgiving weekend. If this trend continues, it will barely make more than $300M. We'll see how the rest of this weekend's numbers go.

~Edwin

 

[Sam Davatchi]

Deleted due to a similar joke further!

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I felt the movie tried to do too much and the end result was a bunch of "oh, by the way" solutions to some problems (getting the stone) and overdeveloping solutions to other problems (the whole sports event to set up how he got the key...by the way, wasnt it convenient that there happened to be a broom floating there?).

I don't know if you realized it... but the stone was MEANT to be reached. Otherwise, how could Flamel get to his elixer when he needed it? Both instances you mention are straight from the book, and IMO, rather clever. How the stone was hidden was in fact the most clever thing in both the book and the movie, IMO. Oh well, I guess it just wasn't your cup 'o tea.

 

[ScottR]

No matter how much more Potter makes, it is already an astounding success both financially and in the hearts of its fans. In years to come, it will be regarded as a classic. The Wizard of Oz (my favorite film) did not scale gargantuan heights back in 1939, and today it is regarded as THE American classic. So I think we are putting too much behind financial numbers. Many families cannot afford the high ticket prices today, but that does not mean that they do not want to see Harry Potter...and with the advent of DVD, more and more people are inclined to see the film just once knowing that they will most likely see a quality presentation at home in just a few months. Harry Potter may not overtake Titanic at the box-office, but who cares? It has already proven itself in cinema history. As far as Columbus goes, he is getting a bad rap. Home Alone remains a Christmas perennial. It may not be Dickens, but it is a family favorite.