No travel plans translate to more movie ticket purchases

New research numbers from ComScore show that all those people who weren’t taking trips because of the lousy economy and high gas prices instead went shopping online. Some of those dollars went to movie ticket sites, which saw a five percent bump in July from the month before.

 

With the release of highly anticipated summer films, ticket sites grew 5 percent to more than 44 million visitors as movie goers pre-purchased tickets to avoid long lines and sell outs at theaters:

• Moviefone led the category with 17.5 million visitors (up 12 percent)
• Fandango posted a 29-percent gain to 9.3 million visitors
• MovieTickets.com jumped 13 percent to 4.7 million visitors

 

This is why I skipped network TV for the last three nights

Because I didn’t want to fall victim to the same problem that befell Pete:

“I’d have posted about the prime-time RNC speeches earlier, but I just stopped coughing up blood.”

Picking Up the Spare: Wanted, House of Wax and Tropic Thunder

Wanted

A pair of posters for Wanted have raised the ire of the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority, saying that the appearance of Angelina Jolie and lots of guns on the posters glamorized the idea of violence to young people. Universal responded by pointing out the elements on the posters did contain those things, but that doing so simply reflected the movie’s comic book roots. The regulatory group eventually conceded that the posters might be offensive to some but were unlikely to cause widespread public harm.

House of Wax

James at Podcasting News uses one of two new surveys showing the growing spread of podcasts and podcasting into the general public to rationalize why Paris Hilton was the “first celebrity podcaster.” Hilton recorded a series of increasingly non-sensical podcasts in the lead up to House of Wax way back in early 2005. 

Tropic Thunder

Rebecca at AdFreak plums the myriad levels of meta that exist in the marketing of Tropic Thunder and the recently-released documentary chronicling the making of the movie-within-a-movie Rain of Madness. 

Movie Journal: Shoot ‘Em Up

There’s only the barest of plots that runs through Shoot ‘Em Up, the violent comedy with Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti. It’s really more “excuse” than “plot” when it is there and doesn’t amount to much, though the movie is by and large so much fun that doesn’t even wind up mattering. 

Owen plays a man of violence who unwittingly steps into a situation that finds him protecting a newborn baby from a gang of tough guys who wants that baby as dead as its mother. Giamatti is the head of the gang that’s just disposed of said mother and is after the baby, though the reasons why aren’t clear until the last 15 minutes of the movie and make little sense when they’re revealed, so don’t worry about it. 

The violence is completely over the top and largely unbelievable, but the performances by the two leads are so committed that they’re absolutely engaging. Owen seems to be out to prove that he could have handled the most outrageous stunts the Bond producers could have thrown at him if he had been tapped for that role. And Giamatti gives a wonderfully enthusiastic showing that makes it clear he’s having an absolute blast in a very shallow role but still bringing his usual level of excellence to it.