Posted on 11/15/2004 6:20:46 PM PST by wagglebee
Anyone with any sense knows the makers of the unpleasant children's movie "Polar Express" were foolish to unload it just days after the release of the excellent, can't-miss animated hit "The Incredibles." But some in Tinseltown seem eager to lose money.
The good news about the failure of "Polar Express," already being nicknamed "Polar Distress," is that it's hurting Bush-bashing fat cat Steve Bing, one of those left-wing tycoons who tried to buy the presidential election for John Kerry. Bing put up half the money for "Polar Distress" (the rest came from the Democrat media leviathan Time Warner) and squandered $14 million to try to defeat the president.
The movie cost $170 million to make and $125 million to distribute and market, the Wall Street Journal reported today. It has brought in only $31 million so far, compared with $144 million for the deserving "Incredibles."
More fun facts about ding-a-ling Bing: Fellow Bush-hating leftist Sean Penn is suing him. Penn claims producer Bing blacklisted him after that little photo op in Baghdad to support genocidal maniac Saddam Hussein.
Note to "Polar Distress" star Tom Hanks, reeling from flop No. 3 this year and scheduled to appear in the Catholic-bashing "Da Vinci Code": Audiences prefer you when you speak your lines and do not like you when you shout your lines.
I for one did not like the choice of Hanks for this either.
There is a lot action in this and Hanks is not an action star.
I would rather see Bruce Willis in this thing.
This would have been a great role for Harrison Ford about 10 or 15 years ago, but he's to old now for this. Although I think Sean Connery might be great in it.
But Hanks would not be my first choice for this.
That's possible, but they way I look at it is thus: I usually go to Edwards theater and only to the Palace screen which is 87 feet across and I think "the Incredibles" is still playing on that one and I will definitely buy it on DVD when it comes out, but "Polar Express" might be on the Giant screen [it was their IMAX]. I always sit in the last row of the theater. They do have more speakers than I do at home, but my system isn't bad.
I bought Mitsubishi's 55 inch HDTV wide-screen diamond brand and I have a very good Polk Audio 7 speaker system. They are so life-like that once while watching a DVD where it was raining and there was thunder, I looked outside because I just knew it was raining. My center channel is 34 inches wide and 8 - 10 inches tall. My surround speakers are close to 20 inches tall and the left and right channel speakers along with the center channel all have powered sub-woofers - I ordered them without fully comprehending just how large they were. You might say the speakers are hugh. I also have a very good progressive scan DVD player. The movies I watch at home are a lot sharper than what I can see at the theater and if you factor in that I am about 8 foot from the screen where I am over 100 feet from the screen in the theater, I feel I have a better experience with home viewing.
On the other hand, I do have three free tickets with two more free tickets on the way, so maybe I will splurge and go see it because the big screen is a nice experience, but I rarely go anymore since I bought my home theater in 2000. The last movie I saw this year was "Resident Evil, the Apocalypse". I got a free ticket for that one by buying "Resident Evil" on DVD. For the past few years, the only movies I went and saw were the three Lord of the Rings movies and maybe one or two in the summer, but usually if I got a free ticket while buying a DVD which is how I saw "The Chronicles of Riddick" in the summer and I am buying the DVD tomorrow.
I'm going to check the reviews on Amazon but can anyone give a hint as to why the movie is not doing well?
Saw the trailer and had the same thoughts. It did not make me want to see it. Dark and a little forbidding, not something you would want to see yourself or bring a kid. My guess is their problem is marketing, not the movie itself, based on comments here. But it could also be that not many know about the book.
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