Weekend Box Office Report

All systems go

That's "Us," all right: The Hometown Perspective

Jordan Peele's Us is in some ways an expanded version of his earlier film Get Out: it deals in the same paranoid themes of identity and replacement as his first film. The new one transcends the limitations of the first, and it’s concentration on racial messages, to explore some strange new ideas. A lot of them.

The Wilsons, a family of four headed by Gabe (Winston Duke) and Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) set out for a vacation in the Santa Cruz area. Adelaide was there when she was a child, back in 1986: something traumatic happened to her back then that fills her with quiet unease. Then, one night in their comfortable lake house, a family of four shows up at their driveway— nearly identical copies of them, clad in red jumpsuits, holding golden scissors. They proceed to brutalize the Wilsons, fully intent on eventually killing them, likely to replace them. Not sure how that would work: these doubles are all mute-- except for Red, Adelaide’s doppelgänger, who talks in a raspy, wounded voice, who explains that they are mirror images of the Wilsons, waiting underground their entire lives for their chance to come up into our world. Things quickly become violent, and that violence soon spreads to their neighbors' lake house, and continues to build.

Hi. We're not the neighbors. We're you.

Jordan Peele explores some expansive ideas in this film: it has a symbolic language that plays out stronger than the horror elements. Class (there is a very literal underclass in this universe), identity and the conditional nature of morality are strong themes. These explorations give the film a more speculative, “Twilight Zone” feel than establishing a horror film tone. Nonetheless, there are homages to the “Strangers” and “Purge” franchise, and a good-sized dose of Nihilist Austrian Horror as well. Most of all, it’s a variation of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” the ultimate body-horror franchise.

This is a scene from a sequence at the beginning of Us, which
takes place in a "dark ride" at the Boardwalk. It's a labyrinth
made to look like a forest, lit in dark pale blue light, with
recorded narration saying odd things over ambient forest
sounds. It did not remind me of a haunted house ride:
it looked like an exhibit at the Museum of Jurassic
Technology in Venice.

For all the gore and suspense, its also clear that this is Peele’s sophomore effort: he throws in so many ideas and symbols that these explorations tend to overwhelm the horror elements, making it an engaging film, but less of an emotional experience as the tidy, horrific Get Out. The photography is outstanding, telling half the story through repeated images and motions, reflections and wide-open ‘scope compositions. The performances are very good as well, with Lupita Nyong’o in particular turning in performance you would swear was done by two entirely different people.

That’s all well and good, but what about the local angle?

Jordan Peele and the Giant Dipper.

Our hometown of Santa Cruz (Daniel the Box Office Report guy and I both hail from there) has been in some popular films— but it rarely gets a star turn under it’s own name. It does in Us--and a very satisfying star turn at that. In the 1980s at least, the super-duper-left-leaning city council found objections to the themes of most films that wanted to shoot there, and insisted the city’s name be stricken from the scripts. Which is why The Lost Boys is set in “Santa Paula” and Sudden Impact is set in “Santa Carla:” Creator and Killer Klowns from Outer Space aren’t really set anywhere.

The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk is a central setting in Us (as it is in most films set in the area) and I’ll admit this new film gets something right about the place earlier films missed: it’s kinda creepy. This amusement park been around for over a century, and the places where Us was filmed are on the east end of the boardwalk, which hasn’t changed much in 40 years. The opening flashback is set in 1986: having actually been there multiple times in 1986, I can say the film gets it right, and the place is unchanged. (The only difference is there used to be very good video arcade on that end, which is not evident in the flashbacks.) The Seaside Company keeps throwing paint on the place every season, but anyone who has grown up there knows the Boardwalk is an ancient place, full of history. To walk there on a summer evening is to feel the closeness of a long past: the smell of creosote, gear oil, suntan lotion and cotton candy: the crashing surf and the screams from the roller coaster riders. As kids we all shared Boardwalk myths, whispered to each other, invariably horrific: the girl who fell from the Sky Glider. The sailor who was decapitated at the top of the Giant Dipper. Us captures this mood: timeless dread barely covered up under new paint.

This is something you can see
any day of the week in Santa Cruz.

One of the first shocks in Us is in the 1986 flashback, when young Adelaide wanders away from her parents at the Boardwalk. She walks by a scary-looking homeless person holding a sign with a bible verse on it (Jeremiah 11:11, one terrifying verse!). People in the audience had a visceral reaction to this guy. Having grown up in Santa Cruz, however, all I could do was shrug: In my old hometown, he’s way too common to be scary.



All good horror stories start at home, right?

Apollo 11: Best "Found-Footage" Doc EVER

First of all, I was there for the real thing: July 20th, 1969, when Neil and Buzz of Apollo 11 walked on the moon. A moment in history never to be forgotten or repeated, the day the cold, lifeless universe began to yield to humanity's will. I did not think in such grandiose terms at the time, of course, being seven years old-- but nothing could have pried me away from our Motorola console TV that day, not for all the candy in the world (and the candy was very good in 1969).

We had relatives over and everyone watched with wonder-- except my uncle Jim, who had a big lunch and was passed out in dad's Barcalounger, snoring through the whole thing. I was annoyed with him at the time, but now I realize he had a half-good reason to be zonked out: For such a momentous event in world history it was not a particularly interesting one to watch. Neil's step onto the lunar surface was carried live, but it was a super-contrasty monochrome image. The networks carrying the moon landing used a lot of cheesy animation, simulations and talking heads to pad out the low-res NASA video feed. The astronauts had to return to the earth, with it's plentiful film processing facilities, with magazines of exposed 16mm movie film and 70mm still images to give us the iconic imagery we associate with the era.

Live video of Armstrong on the moon looked like this.

The media status for early manned spaceflight hasn't changed that much: Grainy 16mm and low-res video (some in color), backed up by more 16mm TV coverage. When documentary filmmaker Todd Douglas Miller set out to make a 50th anniversary tribute of the Apollo 11 mission, he started out with the same resources everyone else had since the Nixon era: The familiar stills and grainy news footage, the same warbling audio.

Then two remarkable archives of previously unseen and rarely heard content were discovered.

The Mitchell AP65, very likely one of the cameras used
to document the Apollo missions.

The first discovery was the identification, deep in the vaults of the National Archives, of 165 reels of well-preserved Todd-AO 65mm film negative documenting the Apollo missions, from 8 to 14. These had been stored-- unseen-- since they were shot. Nobody even knew WHY this incredible trove of film existed: There was a tenuous connection to a failed co-production between NASA and MGM pictures, and this precious footage may have been outtakes from this effort. It is more likely that some unknown Public Affairs Officer at NASA wanted a definitive archive document for this extraordinary moment in human history, in the highest fidelity possible. In terms of capturing detailed, realistic imagery, 65mm was about as good as you could get in the late 1960s-- The resolution is the equivalent of 13K digital, a DCP format that does not currently exist because it would melt the image processors.

From the opening sequence: the Crawler delivering the
Saturn v rocket to the launch pad.

The second discovery was the original 30-track audio recordings of  the Apollo missions. At Mission Control in Houston all the various departments (CAPCOM, FIDO, Guidance, etc.) had their own audio circuit loops so the various members of each team could talk to each other. Other departments could punch into these loops as needed: a lot of the cool buttons on the Mission Control consoles are simply audio patch switches. These archive tape reels were digitized, corrected for various imperfections (the “wow and flutter” of the original audio made a lot of the voices on these tracks sound tremulous and nervous: now they just sound normal) and time-coded.

The Saturn V taking off, in 65mm Todd-AO.

These new resources went into Apollo 11— and the results are nothing short of magnificent. You have never seen Apollo-era NASA footage like this before: It's crystal-clear, with vibrant, unfaded color, looking like it was shot yesterday. The vividness is startling, out of context and impossible-feeling, as if someone found super8 home movies taken during the Battle of Gettysburg. The 65mm footage in concentrated in the beginning and end of the film, the launch and all the hubbub around it, and the carrier recovery and processing afterward. There was one Todd-AO camera set up less than a mile from the launch pad (on remote control, if they were smart) and the result is the most insanely detailed look at a Saturn V taking off ever seen. It puts the digital simulations of Apollo 13 (1995) and First Man (2018) to shame.

Johnny Carson, watching the launch from the VIP stands.
He is wearing a give-away paper baseball cap provided
courtesy of RCA. This was 1969: wearing hats went out with
john Kennedy, and only little boys went out in public
wearing baseball caps.

The 65mm camera operators covering the launch did something remarkable: they turned the cameras away from the NASA gear and into the crowds. Some of the best footage is of people milling around that hot morning in Florida, chatting, grabbing snacks, setting up cameras. Warm-weather casual fashion was on display everywhere: and what struck me is 100% of the adult men in attendance at Cape Kennedy or watching nearby wore shirts with buttons and collars. In 1969 T-shirts were underwear, or just for boys.

They let the 65mm camera into the Launch Control Center
at Kennedy, probably because all the windows would provide
enough light to get good shots. Mission Control in Houston
is windowless and all the footage is low-light 16mm.

The middle of the film relies mostly on older 16mm film archives, but the addition of the recovered 30-track audio elements adds something new: when we see Gene Krantz or Charlie Duke talking on those black headsets, the audio is in perfect sync. Before the new audio was available, filmmakers didn't even try to sync the audio.

Overall, it’s a tidy (93 minutes), Cinéma vérité style doc, long on reproducing the sights and sounds of the Apollo 11 mission with a minimum of explanation and no narration. If bringing the past back to life is the goal of any documentary, the startling new video and audio of Apollo 11 sets the highest standard I’ve ever seen.

Neil, Mike and Buzz, about to board the Airstream to the stars!

Any new documentary about American manned spaceflight is an exercise in somewhat wistful nostalgia: they document an era when we used to take on huge, improbable projects like this, apply the best minds on earth to the task, and make human history. There was a recent interview with a retired NASA official where he said that if the funding for space exploration had continued at the same pace as the Apollo program, humans would have landed on Mars by 1985. Alas.

Weekend Bix Office

Wonder Park, as in I wonder if I should bother

Weekend Box Office Report

Look I'm back

Box Office Report, no video this week

I am almost to busy this week to even tell you I'm too busy to do a box office report but as you can see, at least I can manage that much. Look at this though!

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/

TW	LW	Title (click to view)	Studio	Weekend Gross	% Change	Theater Count / Change		Average	Total Gross	Budget*	Week #
1	1	How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World	Uni.	$30,028,540	-45.4%	4,286	+27	$7,006	$97,678,815	$129	2
2	N	Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral	LGF	$27,062,332	-	2,442	-	$11,082	$27,062,332	-	1
3	2	Alita: Battle Angel	Fox	$7,221,417	-41.5%	3,096	-706	$2,332	$72,452,725	$170	3
4	3	The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part	WB	$6,600,258	-31.8%	3,458	-375	$1,909	$91,660,298	-	4
5	4	Fighting with My Family	MGM	$4,661,991	-40.3%	2,855	+144	$1,633	$14,916,612	-	3
6	11	Green Book	Uni.	$4,573,320	+114.9%	2,641	+1,388	$1,732	$75,782,931	$23	16
7	5	Isn't It Romantic	WB (NL)	$4,514,602	-36.6%	3,325	-119	$1,358	$40,168,605	-	3
8	N	Greta	Focus	$4,481,910	-	2,411	-	$1,859	$4,481,910	-	1
9	6	What Men Want	Par.	$2,763,886	-47.3%	2,018	-371	$1,370	$49,704,890	$20	4
10	7	Happy Death Day 2U	Uni.	$2,456,240	-49.8%	2,331	-881	$1,054	$25,222,850	$9	3

You can't stop Tyler Perry's Madea. Only Tyler Perry himself can.