Jon Schnaars's blog

It's no secret that movie theaters have been struggling. That may surprise some, but it's important for this discussion to separate out the movie making business from the movie showing business. Hollywood (and others) make movies. The process by which a movie gets produced is arcane and overly-complex, and I won't pretend to know everything about it or examine it here. When it comes to putting movies in front of audiences, there's another system, equally labyrinthine in design, that dictates where, when and how a movie gets shown.

Variety reported yesterday that our brains may soon be melted by another Philip K. Dick story on the big screen. This time around, it's "Ubik," regarded by many as Dick's master work, getting the film treatment. The cinematic effort will be produced by Celluloid Dreams, and Dick's daughter will be intimately involved. Celluloid Dreams has been responsible for several recent critical successes including "Persepolis," "Son of Rambow," and this year's "Funny Games" reboot.

I don't want to upset anyone here on a Monday morning, but what you see here may be the first documentation of the massive NYC-ConEd cover-up of the cannabalistic humanoid underground dwellers' escape from the sewers.

I was only able to sneak two pics before "the man" shewed me away, but clearly something is afoot outside my office building. I might start blasting 80's synthesizer jams, just to make sure everyone else knows what's up.

In this day and age, sitting atop the box office standings for more than one weekend is somewhat uncommon. Doing so in the midst of the highly contested summer season, even more so. "Iron Man" had a nice run, but it was only a matter of time, and this week the Marvel creation plummeted all the way to number two.

When we were talking about the box office returns during Sunday's podcast, I mentioned that "Speed Racer" had a little trouble beating out "What Happens in Vegas" also known as "Ashton vs. Cameron (ZOMG, *winky face*)!" The numbers were eerily close when the estimates were published at Box Office Mojo on Sunday afternoon, but Speed and Co. took home second place by a margin of about $.2 million (estimates have been updated, but "Vegas" was at $20 million, with "Racer" at $20.2 or so).

Week 2 of "Iron Man's" reign is in the books. At over $50 million, it easily destroyed "Speed Racer," which itself had trouble out dueling one of this year's more atrocious releases, "What Happens In Vegas." Ashton Kutcher notwithstanding, this week belonged to Downey Jr. once again.

Welcome to Summer. The first real blockbuster is in the books, and boy was it a doozy. "Iron Man" scored with critics and with audiences. While number one at the box and $100 million sounds pretty good, to really understand how well the film did, it's helpful to look at some comparisons.

First, some prominent superhero films by Metacritic score:
Spider Man 2 - 83
Iron Man - 78

Do you love the film "The Ring" so much you wish you could play a video game version of it? Well, guess what, you're in luck... sort of.

Over at Cinematical, fellow horror devotee Scott Weinberg has a review up from a Tribeca Film Festival screening of the Swedish vampire film "Let the Right One In." Like "Dying Breed," "Right One" sounds like an excellent foreign horror offering.