Pages

Sunday, February 21, 2010

The Hurt Locker wins in England and a Few Other Weekend Thoughts

In somewhat of a surprise The Hurt Locker won today at the BAFTA's beating out An Education. Given the critical success and its British pedigree, I expected An Education to take a win on its home soil. The Aviator was the last film helmed by an American director to win here, this and the six other wins show large support for this American war drama over in England. Only three films this decade have translated a BAFTA win into an Oscar win. Hopefully the American Academy follows the British Academy's lead once more.

This weekend also showed another strong weekend for Avatar as it inched closer to $700 million, and climbed past The Sting on the all-time adjusted gross box office list for fifteenth place. Looking over the list I realized that only two of these films have been released in my lifetime, the other of course being Titanic. Despite what some cynics downplaying the movie's inflated gross due to 3-D sales, this is still an impressive performance. The first memory of a large box office performer was seeing Jurassic Park on Father's Day in 1993, the theatre I went to with my family day had a large dinosaur in the lobby, and I remember standing in line for what felt like hours to get in. Today with bigger theatres and larger screen counts those long lines are quickly becoming a thing of the past.

2 comments:

  1. You have to wonder where all these people are coming from...I mean, not everyone can be seeing it twice, can they?

    ReplyDelete
  2. i think many people are, but a big part of it is that its become a movie everyone must see -- espcically considering people know the movie wont play as well on DVD

    ReplyDelete