Yes. You hear right. Alreety. Alrighty then. This classic old FZ video for “City of Tiny Lights” is a bit long, but for the time period it was definitely waaaaaaay ahead of its time. It still blows CG away. Not just technically or w/rt to complexity, but inventiveness and imagination. Amazing.
After having watched it more than a dozen times, most recently yesterday, I am still convinced that Team America: World Police is the masterpiece of masterpieces of cinematography. Yes, it’s true. If you haven’t seen it yet, you are truly missing out on one of the worlds most wonderful film treasures. In fact, I reviewed it after first watching it. I had to say that since I just finished watching the end of it a few minutes ago.
This is a really good article on Gizmodo. Check it out.
So, Spiderman 3 is said to have broken all previous opening day box office sales revenues at $59 million (US) and will likely (according to Sony) break the standing 3-day record of $135 million, set by Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man’s Chest. Revenue comparisons like this mean NOTHING to me. Sure, it means a lot to the film’s backers: producers, investors, partners, distributors, merchandisers, etc. But year-over-year, it means NOTHING. What matters is TICKET SALES VOLUME. How many TICKETS were sold. Given that ticket prices climb higher every year, how can anyone make meaningful claims like this when a movie five years prior might have sold more tickets? Does higher revenue mean more popular? Not necessarily. There is never any mention of adjustment rationale to address this either. NPV is not implied or stated. Average ticket prices are never quoted (bad PR for sure), so there’s no basis for comparing movie “A” in 2007 to movie “B” in 1999. So given that the stats are incomplete (or ill-justified) I can’t assign them any merit either.
It all smacks of spun statistics. My 4.0 GPA in “Advanced Statistics” from hazy college days, left me with one powerful lesson: Read the fine print. If there is no fine print, DON’T TRUST THE FIGURES. The fine print often gives away the entire game. For example: how many times have you seen this on the news…
A recent survey poll shows candidate William NoBalls leading challenger Sam LicksaLot by 52 to 48 percent.
But the fine print at the bottom says “margin of error: 5%“.
Guess what that means? It could be 48 to 52, 47 to 53, or even 50/50. Don’t see the problem? Read the boxed quote again, carefully, then read this paragraph again, carefully. Did you catch it?
Yes. It’s not technically “lying”, it’s simply “hiding the truth”. Legal? Yes. Ethical? Depends on whom you ask.
The closest report I’ve seen yet on comparative figures is at the web site The Numbers: All Time Box Office Record. At least they provide a table of inflation-adjusted earnings. Still, nobody breaks it down by ticket volume. That would be nice to know for a REAL comparison of popularity.
So let’s dissect a POSSIBLE SCENARIO here, with respect to Mr. Spiderman’s box office earnings record. If we were to assume that the average ticket price as of May 5, 2007 is $8.50 (a conservative estimate I’m sure), that would roughly equate to 6,941,176 tickets sold.
According to several official sources, Dead Man’s Chest ranks
If The Godfather grossed $302,393 on opening day (1972) and average ticket prices were around $1.50, that would roughly equate to 201,595 tickets sold.
