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Re: The Fountain

  •  01-17-2007, 1:02 PM

    Re: The Fountain

    Hi there,

    I’m not very active in the forums because I don’t have much time for that. :( I started a thread some time ago about Integral Art, and I realized I didn’t know very much about the latest works of Wilber and some other semiotic theory so I’ve been reading (2 hour on the bus everyday!) all the authors Wilber consider for building Integral Semiotics. After all this reading, I still think that my first intuition was right, and I find it relevant for this matter too.


    Again, since I feel I’m one of the few discordant voices here, I want to make clear that I don’t have any objection on Ken’s theory, which I find extremely useful both for personal and professional issues. BUT ART. I think the theory is fine. It’s how is it applied.  And that makes me think that I’m wrong, but at the other side, since what I value the most of integral thinking is that you can measure it by how much effective it makes you, and the application that Ken do of his own (probably underdeveloped in this aspect) theory doesn’t pass the test. PLUS, I know I’m no one special to call for anything, but somehow I demand to Stu, as a legitimate heir I think he is, to surpass his master in this point, because he is an artist. A good one.   


    IMIO (In my Integral Opinion!), it is painfully obvious that you can’t put at the same level Alex Gray and Van Gogh (Ken), or that The Fountain is not a great movie (Stu). (I wish my English was better to say what is coming next.)


    I can defend The Fountain to death. But I can’t say that it is a wonderful movie. That wouldn’t be Integral. I think that we are so HUNGRY for spiritual movies, that any effort in that direction have our sympathy. In the same way we project our good aspects in the person we fall in love with, we do the same thing with this kind of movies. Come on! Pay attention to the interview, Darren have no idea of what Stu is talking about. At the other side, Stu mainly talk about left quadrants but for the special effects.  


    I like the idea of talking about the same Spiritual subject in those three levels (pre-rational/mythic, rational, trans-rational). I admire Darren because he dares to try it and convince a studio to go on. And so on. But the results are not good enough. It is normal: the more ambitious and difficult, the more easy to fail.


    Beyond the flaws of the dialogues and rhythms, and the flatness of the characters dressed with oneiric ambient, what I dislike the most is that Darren looks like a young amateur poet with a thesaurus dictionary. A symbols dictionary, in this case. All that collage of clichés! Do you really want me to explain that more in detail? But, (and this is really connected with what we talked in the thread I mentioned before), those clichés are used more as what I call signs (arbitrary and conventional signifier, like the radioactive sign) than true archetypes. Therefore, the film works with certain altitude because we already know what is he talking about and the sentence “..Death is the path to awe”, not because of the movie itself. I cried for one hour when I turned the last  page of Grace and Grit. The movie recalled me that moment. But never could make me feel like that. It is not memorable. Not for me. Not this way.


    “Lady in the water” is a very different situation. That is a better movie! I’ve just see Fangsz asking in this post if “Lady in the water” is really magenta. But I’m afraid that it is far for being trans-rational. Despite of it, Fangsz make some interesting questions. For instance, I do agree that film only could be made by at least a green meme. IN the same way integral art is art made by an integral artist, could we say green art is made by green artist? In that sense, I’d say the movie is more green than magenta. Now take a green or yellow viewer that has made a lot of personal introspection and have clear some psychological concepts. Is this movie moving him back to magenta or up to yellow/turquoise as it apparently happens to Fangsz? It is the opposite of the altitude sickness. If you are trans-rational, can you see the monster as the shadow and not as an actual monster? I guess the answer is yes.


    Another interesting question he makes: is all fantasy centered on the Magenta altitude? Let’s have a look at “The Dead Emcee Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip-Hop”, the latest work of the integral artist Saul Williams. As you can figure out from the title, it has a heavy load of mythological background. Is this work magenta or is he using magenta impulses to connect with a magenta NGH audience? Is this work pre-rational? Not for me! I admit that “The Lady in the water” didn’t moved me to trans-rational spaces (I just rationalized the mythic story) and that’s why I think is magenta/green centered, depending of the altitude of the viewer. But the book of Saul Williams made me move along the whole spiral, bottom to top, and backwards. And I don’t believe any word of the mythological origin of the book, despite I think is as beautiful as a art work has to be. At the other side, I admit that when I’m reading his powerful voice resonates inside, and my knowledge of him (right quadrants) makes me jump to transcendence from his early words. It is happening to me what happens to Stu or Ken?


    I have seen (both “The Fountain” and “Lay in the water”) in DVD just to understand the opinion of Stu and Fangsz at integalnaked (I wasn’t interested on them). Stu mentioned some other movies I love, as The Matrix, I heart Huckabees, etc. Let’s forget for a second how each of us like it or how angry we are because of this or that critic. Let’s move to the WE. Let’s look for some objective data, so we can discuss over an objective perspective.

     

    I HEART HUCKABEES

    Critics Tomatoer:

    Reviews Counted: 175
    Fresh: 106 Rotten: 69
    Average Rating: 6.3/10

     

    FRESH 61%

     

    BOX OFFICE SUMMARY  

    Box Office Total: $12,711,889   
    Box Office Opening:$292,177   
    No. of Weeks in Top 10:1   
    Highest Ranking:10 

    BOX OFFICE HISTORY

    Week

    Rank

    Wkd. Gross

    Theaters

    Per Theater

    Cumulative

    Week #1

    24

    $292,177

    4

    $73,044

    $292,177

    Week #2

    15

    $901,123

    44

    $20,480

    $1,311,304

    Week #3

    12

    $914,880

    65

    $14,075

    $2,600,993

    Week #4

    10

    $2,902,468

    785

    $3,697

    $5,807,764

    Week #5

    11

    $1,705,923

    901

    $1,893

    $8,441,017

    Week #6

    14

    $1,113,777

    585

    $1,904

    $10,234,914

    Week #7

    18

    $541,784

    278

    $1,949

    $11,195,428

    Week #8

    22

    $296,895

    163

    $1,821

    $11,680,406

    Week #9

    25

    $215,729

    106

    $2,035

    $12,044,129

    Week #10

    27

    $137,314

    128

    $1,073

    $12,247,822

    Week #11

    31

    $83,592

    107

    $781

    $12,385,183

    Week #12

    37

    $56,212

    80

    $703

    $12,495,748

    Week #13

    45

    $18,098

    44

    $411

    $12,547,523

    Week #14

    49

    $26,129

    43

    $608

    $12,596,975

    Week #15

    46

    $41,654

    45

    $926

    $12,654,923

    Week #16

    46

    $35,608

    46

    $774

    $12,711,889


    THE FOUNTAIN

     
    Critics Tomatoer: 

    Reviews Counted: 155
    Fresh: 78 Rotten: 77
    Average Rating: 5.9/10

    ROTTEN 50%

     

    BOX OFFICE SUMMARY  

    Box Office Total: $9,892,669   

    Box Office Opening:$3,768,702   

    No. of Weeks in Top 10:1   

    Highest Ranking:10

     

    BOX OFFICE HISTORY

    Week

    Rank

    Wkd. Gross

    Theaters

    Per Theater

    Cumulative

    Week #1

    10

    $3,768,702

    1,472

    $2,560

    $5,456,908

    Week #2

    13

    $1,785,334

    1,472

    $1,213

    $8,241,535

    Week #3

    18

    $501,489

    636

    $789

    $9,390,119

    Week #4

    29

    $130,233

    145

    $898

    $9,776,258

    Week #5

    44

    $36,578

    35

    $1,045

    $9,892,669

     
    If we compare this two movies, we see that they probably will do the same money in the same amount of time. But “The fountain” opened in 1,472 theatres, against 4 theatres for Huckabees. Critics were more open to the last (61%), but I don’t think it can balance the commercial effort made for The Fountain. Here, word of mouth worked in opposite directions:  35 theatres for the fountain the week #5, 901 for Huckabees.

     
    Now let’s have a look to THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS, one of my favourite movies EVER.

     
    THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS

     

    Critics Tomatoer:

     

    Reviews Counted: 200
    Fresh: 74 Rotten: 126
    Average Rating: 5.3/10

     ROTTEN 37%

     

     BOX OFFICE SUMMARY  

    Box Office Total: $139,076,032   
    Box Office Opening:$48,475,154   
    No. of Weeks at #1:1   
    No. of Weeks in Top 10:3

     

    BOX OFFICE HISTORY

    Week

    Rank

    Wkd. Gross

    Theaters

    Per Theater

    Cumulative

    Week #1

    1

    $48,475,154

    3,502

    $13,842

    $83,790,000

    Week #2

    3

    $16,415,384

    3,502

    $4,687

    $114,268,949

    Week #3

    6

    $7,032,216

    3,024

    $2,325

    $125,382,792

    Week #4

    11

    $4,787,326

    2,055

    $2,330

    $133,332,436

    Week #5

    12

    $1,352,380

    1,257

    $1,076

    $135,673,369

    Week #6

    16

    $722,041

    633

    $1,141

    $136,924,212

    Week #7

    21

    $271,473

    272

    $998

    $137,460,747

    Week #8

    30

    $244,279

    116

    $2,106

    $137,882,816

    Week #9

    34

    $186,142

    116

    $1,605

    $138,294,428

    Week #10

    37

    $103,877

    78

    $1,332

    $138,462,698

    Week #11

    34

    $234,434

    319

    $735

    $138,737,892

    Week #12

    37

    $136,207

    262

    $520

    $138,937,971

    Week #13

    43

    $75,724

    177

    $428

    $139,076,032

     

    Look at his numbers! Worst rate of good reviews so far. Made almost same money than The Matrix, with 88% at rotten tomatoes, which makes the highest score of all movies above.

     

    Finally, let’s pay attention to Lady in the Water numbers:

    LADY IN THE WATER

    Critics Tomatoer:

    Reviews Counted: 191
    Fresh: 46 Rotten: 145
    Average Rating: 4.2/10

    ROTTEN 24%!!!!!!

    OX OFFICE SUMMARY  
    Box Office Total: $42,219,433   
    Box Office Opening:$18,044,396   
    No. of Weeks in Top 10:2   
    Highest Ranking:3 

    BOX OFFICE HISTORY

    Week

    Rank

    Wkd. Gross

    Theaters

    Per Theater

    Cumulative

    Week #1

    3

    $18,044,396

    3,235

    $5,578

    $18,044,396

    Week #2

    6

    $7,144,275

    3,235

    $2,208

    $32,203,657

    Week #3

    12

    $2,711,191

    2,670

    $1,015

    $38,633,274

    Week #4

    21

    $835,426

    1,155

    $723

    $40,839,528

    Week #5

    31

    $233,484

    340

    $687

    $41,483,823

    Week #6

    41

    $101,054

    163

    $620

    $41,682,850

    Week #7

    39

    $238,600

    261

    $914

    $41,956,398

    Week #8

    38

    $116,017

    248

    $468

    $42,116,107

    Week #9

    43

    $63,566

    142

    $448

    $42,219,433

     

    Worst score than the Fountain, but made $42 million agains $9!!!

    Do you think that public have less altitude sickness than critics? Common sense would say the opposite. Public likes the entertainment, which is what mostly measures the quality for them. It’s Hollywood. That’s Darren league. He is no shooting a short film for his integral friends.

    My only point here is that those movies had not a great support from critics, but worked for the people... BUT The Fountain. And we can write long about why, but in short: it’s not a good movie.  If you let that your “awesome message” stops people from enjoying you movie, you can’t blame the critics. You can’t blame the public. Altitude sickness is not a good excuse.  

    OF course I’m thinking out loud here. Open to discuss. Little bit challenging tone maybe. It’s because everybody agrees here, and I feel kind of freak.

    hugs,
    toni
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