AVATAR: Box Office Analysis

The long awaited 3D Sci-Fi epic film AVATAR, directed by James Cameron has finally hit the screens around the globe on 18 December 2009. In the opening weekend, the film managed to gross $77 million from approx 7000 screens in North America and an estimated $164.5 million from the rest of the world, excluding big markets Japan and China where the film will open on 23 December and 2 January, respectively.

While the opening is solid, it is far from spectacular. Before release, Fox had estimated the opening weekend gross to be around $50 million - $60 million range, which I thought was too pessimistic. A day after release, Fox again repeated their under-estimation when they reported that AVATAR was poised to collect $73 million. Fox might have been cautious because of the notoriety of the North American market which responds coldly to non-established premises with no star power despite the scale of production. Other blockbuster openings of the year like The Twilight Saga: New Moon ($143 million), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ($109 million) and X-men Origins: Wolverine ($85 million) were sequels belonging to highly popular franchises with devoted fan following. Even the films with the all-time highest grossing opening weekends like The Dark Knight ($158 million) and Spider-man 3 ($151 million) were in that league. AVATAR, as we know has a non-established premise created by writer-director James Cameron. No wonder Fox was on back foot. Incidentally, AVATAR's figures are the best ever for a non-sequel film.

Fox's conservative projection may also be a trick so as to bestow the tag "exceeding studio expectations" to AVATAR. They played a similar game with the film's budget. The New York Times set the rumour bells ringing loud in November when they reported that AVATAR has "a price tag approaching $500 million". The Wrap in December quoted a Fox spokesperson as saying that the budget for AVATAR "is $237 million, with $150 million for promotion, end of story." Even to this day, there is no clarity on the actual budget of the film which is being promoted in territories like India as the biggest film ever.

Coming back to Fox's estimate, the industry as a whole however expected a sum much more than Fox's projection. Eventually AVATAR did exceed studio expectations, but fell short of industry expectations. Other than the usual December collection pattern where blockbuster openings rarely happen, the film suffered due to the cold wave that swept the American east coast regions and parts of Europe. Fox reported a collection drop of 18% in New York City, 57% in Philadelphia and as much as 75% in Washington, DC on saturday.

AVATAR, with its excellent word-of-mouth and favourable reviews will withstand any cold wave and will be collecting in the range $800 million - $1 billion worldwide. Considering that the studio nets about 50% of domestic and 40% of overseas collection, the prospects of the film in DVD market and the product/merchandise tie-ins, the sum which will leave Fox and their partners Dune Entertainment and Ingenious Media, who reportedly bore 60% of the film's cost laughing all the way to the bank. They deserve that for having faith in the King of the World.

Book Review: Orachante Oramakkurippukal (Memories of a father) by Eechara Warrier

The book is a memoir by Professor T. V. Eechara Warrier on the events following the arrest and custodial murder of his son Rajan, an egineering student at the Regional Engineering College, Calicut, Kerala during The Emergency. It is a rather small book but rich in chilling recollections of the darkest days of Indian history since partition. The book is also a critical study of our political and legal establishments. We would expect a lot of criticism towards Karunakaran, but he is more or less spared citing "only that can be expected from him." It is Achutha Menon, considered Kerala's best CM till date by many, who comes under heavy criticism for his cold attitude towards Prof.Warrier. Prof.Warrier explains it came as a rude shock to him because Menon had taken refuge under him when he was in exile.

The author's lack of experience in writing is evident as he keeps on repeating certain points. Nevertheless its a powerful and poignant recollection of a father's search for his son and his fight for justice.

The English translation of the book is published by Asian Human Rights Commission and the e-book is available free of charge:

http://www.ahrchk.net/pub/mainfile.php/mof/

Ritu: An inspired Viral Campaigning

Ritu is the 6th film directed by acclaimed Malayalam film director Shyamaprasad. The film written by Joshua Newton features fresh faces in major roles. The film's music is by Rahulraj, and the album has 5 songs. I think the appropriate spelling should have been Hrithu, but who gives a damn?

The film has a fresh feeling around it and it might become a landmark film in Malayalam cinema. That, we will have to wait and see. As of now, what makes this film special is its viral marketing campaign. I have seen some films making half-hearted attempt at it, but this kind of a full-fledged viral campaigning is unprecedented in Malayalam film industry.

The film has pages on:

• orkut
• facebook
• Twitter
• Picasa and
• YouTube !

Plus the film has a minimal but interesting website (http://ritumovie.com/), which has fantastic layout and concept. The beautifully crafted trailers and posters of the film have a unique touch to thm; they carry light, dark and daring attittudes at the same time. I have a good feeling about this. If they have put in the same kinda care and dedication into the film itself, we might get a pathbreaking film, after a long time.

Ritu opens on August 7th, 2009.

Microsoft Bing's 'sex'ual discrimination

Have u ever searched the term 'sex' on bing.com, Microsoft's new search engine? Most certainly not. If u ever wanted to do that, u would have done that thru Google. I heard about this funny aspect of bing search and I searched 'sex' on bing and we know that the term 'sex' in many usages is not that sinister. I have two screenshots put together in the pic.

The top one is the first result you will get if you are searching from India. Bing declares that the results may be explicit and demands change of search term for results! If u need results, just change the location to.. say US. Tada! Bing springs to action and claims that it has returned 1.7 billion results. Google returns 0.7 billion results for 'sex'! Just have look at the related searches tag. Girls? 2009? Sigh! And none of the results on the first page on bing had links to porn sites, while Google had a couple of them. Its clear that even if Microsoft and Yahoo join hands aginst Google, unless they induce some common sense to the engine, nothing gonna happen.

Reviews: Kambakkht Ishq and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

It would be fun comparing the big summer flicks of Bollywood

and Hollywood, which have garnered similar reaction from critics and the box-office. I mean the critics were thrashing the films black and blue while the films were raking in really big dough. T2 (I apologise to all terminator fans, but the second installment of Transformers has a painfully long name to type) has grossed over $600m globally in 2 weeks, while KI has netted around Rs.36 crores in the first week, both very good figures by respective industry standards.

KI is supposed to be the bollywood-meets-hollywood

film, but that backdrop pales out in comparison the central theme of the battle of sexes, which itself is ridiculously lame. So what does it have? I does have Sly Stallone, who got a feel of bollywood than the reverse. The cameos by Brendon Routh and Holly Valance lacks punch, and Denice Richards just acted in what perhaps is the most gawky and sidelined roles in her career. And Kareena? She is convincing sometimes, but mostly is unimpressive.

Akki? Well,the man and his comic timing are the only only things worth in the film, considering that most of the jokes are not funny at all. And yes, the film has such number of kisses that it can put Emran Hashmi to shame. So is it worth a watch? Yes, if you have no value to your time and money.

T2 picks up where the first film has left, but has a lot of back-story to tell. The best thing about the film is that it is as big as we expect it to be. CGI is used in almost every scene of the film and it, despite being some what 140 minutes long (a bit too long by hollywood standards) is having a thorough script. You have to keep your logic out of the hall, though. This is a feat for your senses if you like kick-ass films. Guess what, I found this action film to be funnier than KI, which is supposed to be a comedy. They have dragged in a family angle to the film, which was sometimes ok, but mostly not. LaBeouf and Fox have done what they are supposed to do pretty well, but the real stars of this film is the men who created the CGI. If you are looking for a perfect action filled weekend film, look no further.

Is Slumdog Millionaire anti-Indian?
This is one interesting controversy. The originator of it, Amitabh Bachchan has taken it a U-turn, and has already called Slumdog Millionaire a "wonderful film". But more and more people are joining what "The Independent" calls a smear campaign (http://in.news.yahoo.com/43/20090131/908/ten-smear-campaign-hits-oscar-favourite.html). The latest one to join is Priyadarshan. He has called the film a "cheap trashy mediocre version of erstwhile Bollywood hits." (http://in.news.yahoo.com/43/20090201/914/ten-slumdog-millionaire-is-mediocre-tras.html) Well, in all fairness, we know that Priyan has made many "cheap trashy mediocre versions of erstwhile Hollywood hits," but let it stay there. There is one point in which I would tend to agree to him: "The angry director wonders why there isn't a single shot in 'Slumdog...' that shows the more aesthetic side of Mumbai?" So here we are. Just how anti-Indian is Slumdog Millionaire?

I just compiled a list of negative portrayals of India/Indians in the film. Some of them true, some exaggerated:
1. Police brutality, including a never-heard-before shock therapy.
2. The slums, especially the toilets. No comments.
3. A boy getting himself bathed in s**t to get an autograph of Bachchan.
4. The riots. (A boy dressed as Rama just stands there, amidst all hullaballoo! And I have no idea how Jamal understood that its Rama.)
5. The mafia which creates child beggers; the children made blind to enhance the impact.
6. The kid theieves in trains.
7. Fraud tour guides.
8. People steals the bulk of the spare parts of a car in which Jamal had brought his foreign tourists. The Indian driver brutally assaults Jamal for this, the angel foreigners intervenes and pays Jamal some American bucks as compensation!
9. The red street.
10. The underworld.
11. In the call centre, the agents replace themselves with a chai-wala, and he in turn gives wrong directions to the caller. In another scene, almost all the agents leave their desks to whatch KBC.
12. In broad daylight, gangsters chases and abducts a girl in the VT railway station!
13. A game show host who hates the guy in hot seat because err.. he is a chai wala? Also the host gives the wrong answer to him during a break pretending to be helping!

On the positive side, there are:
1. High rise buildings (in the middle of a sea of huts)
2. The Taj Mahal
3. The call centres
4. You can see that I am clearly short of points here.

So we are back to the original question. Just how anti-Indian is Slumdog Millionaire?