For your consideration:
The highest grossing film of 2007 was “Spiderman 3”.
The most watched television series was “American Idol”.
The best selling album was “High School Musical 2“‘s soundtrack (though Josh Groban might change that in the last few days).
The best selling non fiction book was “The Secret,” while the best selling fiction book was the last installment of “Harry Potter
The most searched phrase on Yahoo was “Britney Spears”
You know there is something wrong when Harry Potter is the only sign of intelligence at the top of a year’s pop culture charts. I’d love to say I’m Canadian and this isn’t our deal. But I’m pretty sure this is exactly what the top of our charts look like too. Now - I don’t mean to sound snooty - and let me preface this by admitting I did not see Spiderman 3, barely watched American Idol, and would never by the HSM2 soundtrack or even be friends with someone who bought “The Secret”. But my ignornace to the content aside, I have a pretty clear idea as to what each has to offer. And I get some of their appeals, particularly Idol and HSM2, both apparently fun adventures into somewhat mindless pop culture. And I get Spiderman, too, as you were all fooled into thinking it would be good because the other two were. But, c’mon…
This all shouldn’t surprise me, and I guess it doesn’t, and I think what really irked me was the recent crap-o-rama at the box office, and I’m taking out on 2007 entertainment as a whole. But doesn’t anyone else find it sorta disgusting how much money National Treasure, Alvin and the Chipmunks and, to a lesser degree, I Am Legend (not in that it made less money, but in that it wasn’t so bad) are netting? When all the receipts are counted, this is our likely top grossing films of 2007:
1. Spiderman 3 | $336 million
2. Shrek the Third | $321 million
3. Transformers | $319 million
4. Pirates of the Caribbean 3 | $309 million
5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix | $292 million
6. I Am Legend | | $251 million
7. Alvin and the Chipmunks | $229 million
8. The Bourne Ultimatum | $227 million
9. 300 | $211 million
10. National Treasure: Book of Secrets | $208 million
Those ten films total $2.7 BILLION dollars. That means the average North American spent just under $9 seeing them.
The average metacritic score for them must be in the red (I could do the math, but…). Add that to Wild Hogs’ placement just under the top 10 and this is one sorry slate (save Harry, a rat and Jason Bourne) at the top of the box office. Especially considering how many great films came out this year overall.
After the joy of creating my cinematic top 10 a few days back, I decided to take a stab at a lesser-qualified list, music. I love year-end music lists because it gives me the opportunity to go download a few dozen songs I missed from the year to keep me going through the generally drab group of releases that happens in market-low January and February. Though certainly as much a part of my life as film, I’ve never felt particularly informed on music. But my iTunes suggests, its there for me everyday, and 2007 found a good thousand tracks added to my iTunes library.
My music tastes are pretty much across the board, and are heavily influenced by a half dozen people in my life who seem constantly informed on artists and bands that become everyone’s favourite a year later. I basically taste test their tastes, as well as the tastes of some blogs and magazines I read on a semi-regular basis, and this results in what I listen to during the 20 hours a week or so I spent walking or in transit.
The list that follows is nothing out of the ordinary. It varies drastically from true artists whose entire albums could have made a top 100 list to manufactured pop sluts whose album found more of a place in my iPod rotation than I had expected. Its loosely representative of said library’s “most listened” function, though I decided to exclude artist repeats (or else Feist would have five songs in my top twenty), and tinkered with the rankings (the pop-hook-that-makes-you-repeat-it qualities of songs like Rihanna‘s “Umbrella” made it the unchallenged #1 most-listened), to create a good representation of the 25 songs that found themselves in heavy rotation in my 2007 ears.
1. The Arcade Fire - Keep The Car Running
2. Beck - Time Bomb
3. Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova - Falling Slowly
4. Feist - 1234
5. Rihanna - Umbrella
6. Peter, Bjorn & John - Young Folks
7. LCD Soundsystem - All My Friends
8. Spoon - You Got Yr Cherry Bomb
9. M.I.A. - Paper Planes
10. Amy Winehouse - Rehab / Britney Spears - Radar
11. Nine Inch Nails - My Violent Heart
12. Bloc Party - I Still Remember
13. Rilo Kiley - Silver Lining
14. Pink feat. Indigo Girls - Dear Mr. President
15. Bjork - Earth Intruders
16. Kaiser Chiefs - Ruby
17. Tegan & Sara - Back In Your Head
18. Patrick Wolf - The Magic Position
19. Jimmy Eat World - Here It Goes
20. Kylie Minogue - 2 Hearts
21. Of Montreal - Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse
22. Lily Allen - Smile
23. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Down Boy
24. Bright Eyes - Four Winds
25. Mary J. Blige - Just Fine
Multiples from artists that deserve a slot despite my “rules”: The Arcade Fire - Intervention; Feist - I Feel It All & My Moon, My Man; Britney Spears - Piece of Me; LCD Soundsystem - North American Scum; M.I.A. - Jimmy; Lily Allen - LDN; Amy Winehouse - You Know I’m No Good; Bloc Party - The Prayer; Nine Inch Nails - In This Twilight; Bjork - Innocence
According to Fantasy Moguls, Paul Thomas Anderson‘s first two days in release has brought some major per theatre averages… In two houses, the film managed a $33,000 average on Wednesday and slightly down $28,000 average on Thursday. That suggests that Blood might be headed for a $90,000 average this upcoming weekend.
And this is good news for any lover of film, especially when two genuine pieces of garbage: National Treasure: Book of Secrets and Alvin and the Chipmunks, along with slighly more impressive I Am Legend have truly dominated the Christmas money train, once again showing us that the Wild Hogs suggested stupidity of American filmgoers was no fluke. The three films have a combined gross of well over $300 million, and have been open for less than 2 weeks or less than 1 week, respectively. Equally sad is that, other than Blood, the highest reported average on Thursday was The Bucket List.
In other news, briefly and notably, Sweeney Todd continues to have trouble, falling below P.S. I Love You and The Water Horse‘s takings on Thursday, earning just $2.27 million for 9th place. Juno, however, is doing quite well (benefiting from a platform release that might have done Sweeney some good), hitting 6th place on Thursday and bringing its cume to almost $16 million.
I’m hoping to add one of my favourite pasttimes - endlessly browsing wikipedia to procure a mass amount of useless knowledge - into this blog as an ongoing series. Here’s the first one, which is certainly not some staggering find, but I found it after watching Jesus is Magic over Christmas and thought it was noteworthy:
Sarah Silverman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Silverman is very open about her lifelong battle with clinical depression, crediting her current emotional health to her use of prescription drug Zoloft. Silverman has said that she does not consume alcohol, because it nauseates her. Silverman says she does not want to get married until same-sex couples are able to. She also says she doesn’t want to have biological children to avoid the chance that they might inherit her depression. She enjoys playing Internet Scrabble; one of her regular opponents is Alyssa Milano, who lives in the same building.
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