OK, I don't always agree with Roger Ebert, but this is hilarious. Excerpts from his reviews of movies that he just plain hated. I particularly like :

On "The Hot Chick" : "The MPAA rates this PG-13. It is too vulgar for anyone under 13, and too dumb for anyone over 13."

On "Mad Dog Time": ""Mad Dog Time" is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time .... "Mad Dog Time" should be cut into free ukulele picks for the poor"

On "North" : "I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie."

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050811/COMMENTARY/50808002

The 2nd-shortest review on record (not by Ebert) is of a play titled "A Roaring Good Time" ... the review was, simply, "No."

"Solo" with Mario Van Peebles has to be my least favorite movie of all time. When my wife and I see a bad movie, we usually comment that yes it was bad but it was better then "Solo".

I personally though "Snakeyes" or "Heist" were the worst big budget movies I've ever seen. Man, the dialog in Heist was SO bad.

Ebert outdid himself with his review of the recently-released Deuce Bigalow movie. Hilarious.

This short review was great:

"Freddy Got Fingered"

This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.

> Ebert outdid himself with his review of the recently-released Deuce Bigalow movie

That was classic. I am surprised they liked the 40 year old virgin. I pegged that as being horrible, but maybe not.

"The Village"

To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes. It's a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It Was All a Dream. It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore.

Ebert's review of Chaos. Summary: it's shit

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050811/REVIEWS/508110303/1001

I can respect him slamming The Usual Suspects. I think it's a pretty good movie, but someone has to put it in its place. However, there's far bigger fish to fry. Why not hit some of the Matrixes and Star Wars movies? Waterboy, The Usual Suspects, Resident Evil are objectively better, by the laws of the universe.

I'd value the two Resident Evils about ~$3.50 worth of entertainment. A lot more than I can say of many high-profile movies which don't meet his list.

At least he likes Dawn of the Dead...

So... Alien vs. Predator grossed more than any of the five previous installments.

Are we really going to keep playing the silly "made more dollars" game when tickets cost 3x now what they did in 1979?

Will Hollywood ever start measuring by tickets bought?

You know what would be really cool? Find some way to measure repeat attendance (like 25% off if you present a ticket stub) - measure THAT. Then you'll see what the *real* blockbusters are.

Philo

I liked Freddy got Fingered. You thought it couldn't possibly get any worse, and then it got much MUCH worse.

Unfortunately, ticket attendance isn't even a good measure when there are more theaters, more people, and more people attending movies in general than ever before.

+1 for Freddy Got Fingered. "Daddy would you like some sausages?"

It basically succeeded on the grounds that it wasn't a half-assed bad movie; Tom Green pretty much purposely made it as bad as he possibly could, given the resources he was afforded.

I'd much rather watch a movie like that than a Michael Bay movie that pretends to be half decent.

I enjoyed this review of The Island:

http://mrcranky.com/movies/island.html

"Bay's sins are all ones of excess. He's like a lab animal who has access to an orgasm button."

>> "Solo" with Mario Van Peebles has to be my least favorite movie of all time. <<

Solo was indeed incredibly bad. When I saw it, the film broke twice, and got stuck in the projector once (whereupon the heat from the bulb melted it). I have no idea why I stayed to watch the end.

Another bad one is "Battle Beyond the Stars", also known as "John-Boy Walton in space". Yes, it was by Roger Corman.

Roger Corman films are beyond criticism, many might also be beyond being watchable.

"So... Alien vs. Predator grossed more than any of the five previous installments."

How can that be? I personally saw Aliens like 5 times in the theater, bought the video cassette when it came out, and recently purchased the DVD version. And the first Predator was also excellent, had Arnold Schwarzenegger in it, AND that wrestler what's-his-name.

I only saw AVP once. It was made by some German company, with people nobody ever heard of. (Not that important, it was the monster's fighting each other we wanted to see, of course). It wasn't even IN the theaters that long. It didn't even have Sigourney Weaver in it.

Don't they use dollars adjusted for inflation or anything? I think their math is off.

Simon sez : "Roger Corman films are beyond criticism, many might also be beyond being watchable."

I like that. You can also substitute "Russ Meyer" for "Roger Corman," there. ;)

As much as Europeans love to say all American movies are crap, it looks like they watch them more than we do. Alien, Aliens, and AVP had similar totals domestically. What puts AVP over the top is the overseas markets.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=alien.htm
Domestic Total Gross: $78,944,891
Overseas: $24,000,000
Worldwide: $104,931,801 

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=aliens.htm
Domestic Total Gross: $85,160,248
Overseas: $45,900,000
Worldwide: $131,060,248 

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=avp.htm
Domestic Total Gross: $80,282,231
Overseas: $90,901,632
Worldwide: $171,183,863

Mark brings up a good point : an efficient overseas distribution network has really been the major factor responsible for box-office-gross increases in the past, say, 15 years.

And people say globalization is bad for the US.

Who says its bad for the US?

Its probably worse for everyone else :-).

Anyone that mentions China or India in any internet forum with people from the USA anywhere, ever.

No! Globalization is not bad for the U.S. Outsourcing domestic production because foreign workers are so cheap is bad for the U.S. Or is that perhaps the same thing?

In the race to the bottom, in terms of product production cost, we are perhaps losing sight of the fact that it once was those production paychecks that allowed the workers to purchase those products.

If we could get the Indians and the Chinese (and Japanese. And Taiwanese. And Koreans. And Mexicans. And Vietnamese, Hong Kong people) to implement working condition laws, then the rising tide could raise all boats.

But merely using "Outsource!" as the solution to 'expensive' American labor is way too short-sighted a solution. It's the outsourcing aspect of globalization we need to be wary of.

I'm sorry, Allan, but I fail to see the difference. Working with other countries necessarily equals working with their labor laws and our labor directly competing with theirs for *multinational* business.

You have to take the bad along with the good.

Oh, well, if "outsourcing" and "globalization" are synonyms, then yes, we're going to be screwed in the short run.

I hope they aren't the same thing -- I KNOW what 'outsourcing' is, my company tried to do it without success. I don't know what this magic buzzword "globalization" really means yet.

Outsourcing happens irrespective of globalization. You can outsource down the street to people whose ancestors stepped off the Mayflower.

Globalization simply allows it to happen on a (duh) global level.

Again, you can't globalize some things, while not globalizing others.

> Again, you can't globalize some things, while not globalizing others

Governments have used subsidies and/or other legislation to [try to] avoid off-shoring.

I know Japan works very hard (through tariffs) to preserve their native rice production. The price of land being what it is in Japan, it would be very easy for Japan to let other countries be their rice bowl.

It would also be very bad for them to be dependent on other countries in that way. They are willing to pay more for rice, in order to be self-sufficient. I honor them for that.

I guess my preferred approach would be to have some protected industries for each country, to let them be relatively self-sufficient, and some un-protected, so the cheapest producer can provide those products.

The world as it is now is a web of carefully balanced tariffs, price supports, and trade agreements. I would hate for that to be kicked over for some philosophically pure ideal of "globalization".

Bottom line -- it's not all or nothing.

I think you'll find Taiwan's labour laws considerably more liberal than the US's.

America does have protectionist policites... towards OPP - Other People's Petrolium.

We have a choice here, isolate ourselves from the two economies that are really going to explode in this century, or help them improve their primitive infrastructure and grab a piece of the pie. With a ride like that, I'd rather be part of it than isolated from it.

Open borders and rights may be another fine form of globalization. After all, many globalization plans are there to allow corporations (these legal persons) to "live" in other countries and be assured of certain rights.

Yeah, despite what the drafters of NAFTA tell us, we're not importing tons of tequila from mexico and maple syrup from Canada. We're sending car parts across the border. Most trade under NAFTA is intra-company stuff designed to take advantage of cheap labor.