Abrams' New "Star Trek" Loaded with Political ...
End Times: Violence and Destruction at Cannes ...
All Tomorrow's Parties: "The Great Gatsby" ...
Will Aronofsky's "Noah" Inflame Religious ...
The Best and Worst of Sundance 2013
Where is Jafar Panahi's "The White Ballo ...Post-Oscar, "Taxi" Drives to Box-Office Darkside
In honor of tonight's Cinema Eye nonfiction awards, I've been thinking about "Taxi to the Dark Side," the recent Academy Award winner for Best Documentary. You don't get bigger honors than the Oscar, but how much did the golden statuette help nudge audiences to seek out this sobering indictment of America's torture practices? Not much: Post-win weekend, the film's per-screen average was just $950 (in 19 venues); in its subsequent two weekends in release, the film earned another $25,000, not a huge fraction of its total $173,000 sales-to-date. Not to be the bearer of bad tidings, but the film's total gross marks the worst performance for an Oscar-doc winner in six years.
As far as I can tell, 2001 Oscar-winner "Murder on a Sunday Morning," directed by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, never got much of a theatrical release, so based on this year's results, we're doing some serious backtracking. The date is an important one, because it's the year that docs -- propelled by post-9/11 disillusionment or a greater interest in politics or the studio divisions' pumped-up marketing of nonfiction -- entered the mainstream. If you look at the Oscar winners from 2002-2007, they all made multiple millions. One would have thought that the Oscar really could have made a difference for "Taxi," but the data shows just how far we've come from those brief glory days.
Latest Tweets
-
RT @thompowers: Rithy Panh documentary A MISSING PICTURE wins Un Certain Regard at #Cannes2013 http://t.co/bQr9TZh1lO @antkaufman
Posted 2 hours ago -
Rithy Panh documentary A MISSING PICTURE wins Un Certain Regard at #Cannes2013 http://t.co/bQr9TZh1lO @antkaufman
Posted 4 hours ago -
Rare for Cannes, a documentary wins top honors in Un Certain Regard #Cannes2013 | ReelPolitik http://t.co/jRstv4MqiN
Posted 6 hours ago -
Political Pics on Khmer Rouge and Palestinian Occupation Win Cannes Prizes | ReelPolitik http://t.co/IxicbSMvGB
Posted 7 hours ago
2 Comments
Docs2002 | March 20, 2008 9:24 AM
Don't you think part of the problem is that the films just aren't entertaining enough? Say what you like about the importance of its subject, but Darkside (much like Enron) was a fairly ordinary film.
Mark Rabinowitz | March 19, 2008 4:18 AM
I'm sure it doesn't help that this year's Oscar telecast was the lowest-rated....ever. Not only that, but Iraq War-related films seem to be stil in search of an audience. Maube audiences feel that they see enough on TV or maybe it's because the economy is out pacing the way as an election year concern? Whatever the reason, I agree that it's a serious shame.