Monday, April 30, 2012

Summer Movie League: TEAM ORBIN

Last night we drafted our teams for the Block-Buster-Fantasy-Summer-League or something like that.

We were for real. At least, excel documents made it feel that way.

My initial drafting strategy included watching trailers on hulu and thinking "what the?!? has our country come to?" or "huh. I'd rent that." or "YES!! MARVEL MOVIE! YES!!!"
*note: watching trailers is something I do for fun, not just for research. And I do it all the time. It is like my lalapalooza of cinema. You put in two and a half minutes, catch up on some actors, get most of the plot and move on. I never have to see a Katherine Heigl movie again and I couldn't love it more.

Then I googled the top grossing movies of each of the last ten years. It totally changed my strategy. Did you know Americans are bat sh*t crazy?

Did you know that in 2011 the disappointing sequel... "The Hangover Part II" was number 4 (yes even after everyone spread the word that it was not funny it still made $254,464,305) and yet these ocsar nominated films didn't break the top 100 - "Tinker, Tailer, Soldier, Spy", "My Week With Marilyn", and "The Tree of Life"

Let me put it this way - in 2011, the "Cowboys and Aliens", "We Bought a Zoo" and "Jack and Jill" were all in the top 50 grossing movies!

In the last ten years the big hitters were comic book action movies, movies based off of huge selling novels, and kids movies. Just behind that are sequels. My new drafting mantra became "Two And A Half Men is the Number 1 Show In America." And with that mindset, I made picks. (I also factored in release dates and how they were related to other movies.)

Neil didn't study like his crazy competitive enthusiastic wife so he joined up with me to make "Team Orbin". We had some people who dropped out - so we added two more at the last minute and they really held their own considering that they had less then 24 hours notice.  Thus the 6 of us gathered...

5 teams drafted, 7 movies per team
We went 2nd

TEAM ORBIN:
(you can click on each movie to watch the trailer)
The Avengers - May 4th
Thats My Boy - June 15th
Paranorman - Aug 17th
Sparkle - Aug 17th
Piranha 3DD - June 1st

So feel free to go see all of these in their first two weeks of domestic release! (and I know a lot of these are pretty terrible ... refer again to my mantra above... and you're welcome, we didn't go with Madea's Witness Protection)

Neil gave me a lot of crap for picking Sparkle but I stand by that choice. American Idol Star. Cee Lo Green. and Whitney Houston singing "His Eye is On the Sparrow" - it's "Dream Girls" 2.0 WITH a deceased cast member. Unfortunately it comes out at the end of August and I will have to endure a sparkling of jokes about the pick for four months.

After we had our teams, my cousin revealed his big secret: In the summer, R Rated movies don't do well. He said with school out its all about the teenagers. Those pesky teens buy tickets to PG-13 then sneak into the R theaters. Which makes movies like "Jack and Jill" look really good on paper. 

Hot Dang, the R's are half our list. (and we were *this* close to going with "Rock of Ages" over "That's My Boy" because of the R rating.) 

I hate drafters remorse.

Looks like its all on Sparkle now.

7 comments:

  1. This post made me laugh out loud repeatedly!

    And I just wanted to let you know, that the Kaisers will be doing our part to help you win and seeing The Avengers next Monday. (And possibly subsequent times depending on if it's as awesome as all the early reviews I've been hearing!)

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  2. I stand by my statement that if Sandler's movie beats "Rock of Ages," there is no god. But then, hey, my time will be totally freed up on Sunday mornings.

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    1. Neil and I were back and forth on this. He thought more guys would see Thats My Boy and could get more girls there too for the date night - Rock of Ages being the harder sell for men. I was unsure, I tend to go with your rationale. *but then I won in the Sparkle decision so I had to give him one.

      (when people say marriage is about compromise, somehow I don't think they were envisioning a debate between the merits of Adam Sandler vs. Whitney Houston and the gross domestic value)

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  3. To paraphrase Groundhog Day:

    "People LIKE Adam Sandler!"
    "Yeah, well people LIKE blood sausage too. People are idiots."

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    1. hahaha! YES this is exactly how I approached the entire game! (thank you for succinctly wrapping it all up)

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  4. This is the coolest thing EVER!! Confession: I love all the Madagascar movies. They make me laugh so hard. Unfortunately I think it's because I can identify with the penguins and King Julian.

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    1. Coy I have to admit I was excited for this one too - I'm going to use this as the excuse to take my niece and nephew.

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