CRASH

Started by Finn, April 20, 2005, 05:02:29 PM

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pete

do the right thing was too intelligent and "realistic" for most of the people.  crash is more accessible because it's dumber and more blatant.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

MacGuffin

Lions Gate's 'Crash' gamble paying off big
By Nicole Sperling, Hollywood Reporter

"Crash," writer-director Paul Haggis' film about race relations in Los Angeles, did not seem the obvious choice for an early summer success story. But with the boxoffice experiencing a slump this year, Lions Gate Films' pickup from the Toronto International Film Festival has become one of the season's few bright spots.

Its success can be credited to a bold release plan, an emotional marketing campaign and an aggressive screening program. For "Crash" has been able to do what few movies accomplish nowadays: It has attracted four very distinct demographic groups -- college students, upscale adult audiences, the urban market and females -- in a meaningful way.

The result has been a $36 million boxoffice gross in just four weeks. The film could gross as much as $50 million -- a number that might exceed the final domestic grosses of the expected summer blockbusters it opened against, 20th Century Fox's "Kingdom of Heaven" and Warner Bros. Pictures' "House of Wax."

And it hit that mark in the very unconventional manner for a specialty film by opening wide in the early summer instead of taking the more traditional route of opening in New York and Los Angeles in the fall, gaining traction through word-of-mouth and expanding to a critical mass just in time for Academy Awards consideration.

"Fall is a season when a lot of highbrow quasi-commercial pictures get released," Lions Gate Releasing president Tom Ortenberg said. "We didn't feel the need to wait that long and then compete in a crowded marketplace."

Lions Gate picked up the Stratus Film-produced pic for $3.3 million in the fall and soon after pursued a wide release plan.

"Platforming is a great way to hedge a bet if you are not sure of your allocation of resources," Ortenberg added. "But we didn't feel like we needed to hedge our bets. We were very confident in both our movie and our materials. We had great actors, a very promotable filmmaker and a lot of national press. We didn't want to waste it on a few city openings."

The film was perfectly timed in that director Haggis was coming off his Oscar-nominated screenplay for "Million Dollar Baby" and Don Cheadle was fresh off his Oscar-nominated role in "Hotel Rwanda."

In retrospect, a platform release actually could have killed Haggis' directorial debut starring Cheadle, rapper Ludacris, Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon and others. While the film received mostly positive reviews around the country when it opened May 6 on 1,864 screens, both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times film critics issued scathing reviews.

"There was a lot of talk about a fall release in New York and Los Angeles, but there would be no conversations right now (about 'Crash') if we had done that," said John Hegeman, president of marketing at Lions Gate. "Our only bad reviews were in the New York Times and the L.A. Times."

Instead of betting on big-city reviews, Lions Gate instead relied on early data that showed the movie to have strong playability across different demos in addition to high marketability to those same groups. Although Ortenberg said the company didn't spend more than $20 million to market the film, Hegeman added that the campaign went much deeper into each demographic than is usual. With four specific targeted audiences, the company bought more TV ads than it ever had before and spent more money than it usually does.

With "Crash" a boxoffice success, the results have been noticed throughout the industry.

"It's a brilliant campaign," one marketing executive said. "They took a not-very-extraordinary story and elevated it to being very emotional. It was also very courageous to roll the dice and go out there wide with something that isn't like everything else out there."

It also has been a huge win for producer Bob Yari, with "Crash" marking his biggest success since entering this industry.

"Lions Gate made the exact right decisions with this film, and they did it very intelligently," Yari said. "This is a project that I've loved from the time it was a script. It's the ultimate success for me. It has a message, it has an opportunity to affect people who watch it, and it's a commercial success. I don't know of any other reason why I'm in this business."

The other component to Lions Gate's marketing plans was a widespread screening program, targeting racial groups nationwide, both to get early feedback and also to spread the word about the film. According to Hegeman, Haggis, Cheadle and Dillon hosted screenings throughout the country to offer a "platform for people to talk." The film also received endorsements from such community leaders as Los Angeles' Mayor-elect Antonio Villaraigosa, the Rev. Al Sharpton and NAACP leaders.

"Why wouldn't we go wide with this?" Hegeman asked. "We had something relevant, cultural, timely and with a diverse cast. With Haggis, Cheadle, Sandra Bullock and Ludacris, we had such diversity and a ton of marketing hooks. Why chance it and waste it when you have something that could bust through the gates? No one agreed with us until after the first weekend."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Rudie Obias

Quote from: flagpolespecial
Quote from: Hodgemeyer
Quote from: rudiecorexxxthere's one shot in CRASH that lasts for only 3 seconds (maybe) that the editor should have taken out.  if they did take this shot out then CRASH would have been a much much better movie (imo).  can anyone guess which shot i'm talking about?  (probably not)

So which shot are you talking about?

he's talking about the shot where you see that the red box is full of blanks. like we fucking didn't know the moment she wasn't hurt. shit house mother fucking movie.

exactly.  but i still like CRASH (enough)....
\"a pair of eyes staring at you, projected on a large screen is what cinema is truly about.\" -volker schlöndorff

©brad

has a couple powerful moments (oddly enough, i was really moved during the sandra bullock 'your the best friend i have' scene with the maid), but overall a muddled mess with more holes than swiss cheese and enough heavy-handed symbolic imagery to make u vomit. a few funny lines tho. can't remember any off the top of my head but i did chuckle a few times.

Myxo

Saw this tonight..

It had moments of brilliance overshadowed by an awkward script.

Without reading a single post in this thread the influence of Magnolia is very heavy here. The snow at the end was a big time rip off. Ty Burr at the Boston Globe from his review..

"Its characters come straight from the assembly line of screenwriting archetypes, and too often they act in ways that archetypes, rather than human beings, do."

I still think it's worth checking out and wouldn't discourage anyone from seeing it for some of the things that really worked well. Mat Dillon with his father, the Persian store owner in front of the locksmith's house, and Ryan Phillipe's scenes were all excellent I thought. Cheadle was great as usual.

ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ

There will probably be SPOILERS in this...


It's been bugging me lately that I've been liking every movie I've seen.  I've seen so many great films lately, I've been wondering if I lost my abilities of distinction.  Could it be that I just like watching movies?  Maybe it's just that all movies have something to offer and there can always be another way to look at the movie.  These thoughts have been plauging me for a long time.

Then I saw Crash.

Crash seemed to throw subtlety to the fan.  I loved the idea of a movie about racism, classism, hate in general and showing the consequences of it, but that's where my love for the movie ended.  

The movie was way too sweeping in its ideas, it didn't give the viewer any credit.  There is little to nothing that I'd catch upon a second view, which is sort of pretentious of me to say, but through the movie, they made everything blatantly obvious.  How the hell do so many people change in the course of two days simultaneously, with little or no catalyst?  I understand that people change, but Sandra Bullock changed almost instantly with no real reason.  She said on the phone "I woke up and realized I'm always angry, I want to stop" Now fucking come on... Someone whose car had recently been jacked by two black people and maid who won't do things the exact way her OCD self wants things will one day spurn the idea herself?  

I could buy that, I guess, if it didn't happen to everyone.  Everyone just had this spark of inspiration that they needed to change out of nowhere.  

OH and what the fuck was up with the partner cop shooting the black guy?  How out of character was that?  This guy who really gives black people the benefit of a doubt, shoots a black guy who glimmers light that might give away the possibility of having a gun.  Also factor in, he used diplomacy with a black guy he'd only seen once to let him get off with a warning, stepping into the line of fire of the black guy and cops, who were both mad.  Not only that, but he takes advice from a cop he apparently loathes, seeing as how he watched the cop molest that black woman.  Why would he take his advice that in a few years, he'd lose his patience with the black community?

That bulletproof cape story was cool, but when he told it, I knew she was going to be shot at.  Honestly, I wanted her to die.  I wanted something shocking to happen.  Really this whole movie was rather predictable in general.  

I think all the sex and swearing was tossed in to make the movie edgy.  The sex scene didn't seem too appropriate for the characters to be having, especially if the girl was going to find out the guy didn't treat his mother right.  I guess being ethical between partners, and moral with your parents is a different story.

This movie sounds like a good idea, since it's compared to Magnolia and Do the Right Thing, but really, if turned into an equation, would look like:

(Do the Right Thing + Magnolia) - Soundtrack - Script - Directing = Crash

A friend asked me if I wanted to see this for free, so I said "Sure, free movie can't hurt, plus this movie sounds great."  I try not to read any material about movies until I see them so I give it a fair chance and I'm not over or underwhelmed.  I told him that, to me, Crash was basically like Everybody Poops with an extra 3,000 pages.  There isn't much you can say about the subject matter on such a literal basis, but the movie tries its best to do it.  The friend disagreed with me, but I had to again relate it to the fact that if Hillary Duff made a song called "dont B angri", it wouldn't quite deal with the subject matter adequately enough.

Basically, the movie pointed out there's hate in the world, using very obvious mediums.  I'm glad I know I can still not like movies.
"As a matter of fact I only work with the feeling of something magical, something seemingly significant. And to keep it magical I don't want to know the story involved, I just want the hypnotic effect of it somehow seeming significant without knowing why." - Len Lye

w/o horse

That's a good review right there Walrus.  Also,

Quote from: petedo the right thing was too intelligent and "realistic" for most of the people.  crash is more accessible because it's dumber and more blatant.

If Crash had had this kind of bluntness it would have been better.
Raven haired Linda and her school mate Linnea are studying after school, when their desires take over and they kiss and strip off their clothes. They take turns fingering and licking one another's trimmed pussies on the desks, then fuck each other to intense orgasms with colorful vibrators.

soixante

Just saw Crash.  For the most part, I thought it was quite good.  I need to let it sink in and think about it, but I think it is much better than Do The Right Thing and Grand Canyon, the two films it resembles the most.

I think one of the themes of the film is that people aren't what they seem to be on the surface.  The Ryan Phillipe character, who saves one black man from certain death, kills Larenz Tate.  Maybe he's more of a racist than the Matt Dillon character.  Sometimes, the people with the best of intentions do the most damage.

The locksmith is looked upon as a gangbanger by Sandra Bullock's character, and is suspected of robbery by the Persian store owner, but despite apprearances, he is a hard-working, law-abiding conscientious man.

I think the point of the film is that everyone in this film crashes, in one way or another, and has to walk away from the wreckage with (hopefully) some hard-earned wisdom.
Music is your best entertainment value.

Gamblour.

My only regret is that Conan seemed to like it so much.
WWPTAD?

ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ

Quote from: soixante
The Ryan Phillipe character, who saves one black man from certain death, kills Larenz Tate.  Maybe he's more of a racist than the Matt Dillon character.  Sometimes, the people with the best of intentions do the most damage.

That is one of my biggest problems with the movie.  He steps into the line of fire for a black man he'd only seen once, he wants to change cars and not be with a racist, and then sporadically, he fires upon a guy that he picked up... he really seems like the guy who would've given Tate the benefit of a doubt.

This movie was saturated with character inconsistencies.. and not the kind that happen normally.  I think that there were 14 writers for the movie, and this is the best they could assemble.
"As a matter of fact I only work with the feeling of something magical, something seemingly significant. And to keep it magical I don't want to know the story involved, I just want the hypnotic effect of it somehow seeming significant without knowing why." - Len Lye

82

I didn't mind the version of Samuel Barber's Angus Dei in the trailer...  on the other hand, the trailer wasn't very engaging.  I think i'll pass.
"We're all one thing, Lieutenant. That's what I've come to realize. Like cells in a body. 'Cept we can't see the body. The way fish can't see the ocean. And so we envy each other. Hurt each other. Hate each other. How silly is that? A heart cell hating a lung cell"

SiliasRuby

All Magnolia similarities aside, this multi-character drama was pretty darn good. Although I would have liked to see more of Brendan Fraser and Sandra Bullock. Cheadle really has the magic touch, he really shines in this and I was surprised by Ludacris's performance. I really liked it but when I left the theatre I was begging for more. Solid Flick, but nothing can beat Do the Right Thing.
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There was a FISH in the perkalater!!!

My Collection

Myxo

Paul Haggis (who penned this film and Million Dollar Baby) also created Walker, Texas Ranger.

Think that's a chapter of his life he'd like to forget? :lol:

Gamblour.

Quote from IMDb:

"I agreed to write the pilot because I thought it would just go away, but it became this huge hit and I remember waking up at 3 or 4 in the morning in a cold sweat, dripping wet. I mean, I was drenched. I just pictured my tombstone and it said: 'Paul Haggis: Creator of Walker Texas Ranger.' So the impetus for making these movies is really just to wipe that image from my mind."
WWPTAD?

cron

wowsers, that isn't made up.
context, context, context.