Rush Hour and American Pie were two of the most enjoyable comedies
of recent memory. One was a new twist on the ?buddy cop? action film, the other a
teen sex comedy featuring a cast of young up-and-comers and Eugene Levy. Both made
buckets of cash at the box office, and sequels were inevitable. Now that both sequels
are in theatres, the question is ? which is better?

Of the two sequels, I figured American Pie 2 had the biggest shoes to
fill. The first captured the awkwardness of being a teenager admirably. Thinking
back, just about every time one of my friends or I tried to ask a girl out, or we
fought to stay cool under pressure from the opposite sex, we reacted much the same
way Jim (Jason Biggs) would – we panicked. And almost every other detail from that
first movie seemed familiar; everyone knew a Stiffler in school, everyone had an
older friend or sibling who would dispense advice and everyone finds himself doing
crazy things to impress a boy/girl. Rush Hour 2 had it a lot easier. All it
needed to do to make its audiences happy was give Jackie Chan a lot of room to do
his stunts, give Chris Tucker witty things to say in that crazy falsetto of his and
surround them both with a fast-paced action movie plot.

Rush Hour 2 finds Det. Carter (Tucker) vacationing in Hong Kong visiting his friend Det. Lee (Chan). As far as plot goes, once again a major crime is committed,
this time at the American Embassy. Naturally the Americans want to handle
things their way and naturally, Carter and Lee get in the way. Two beautiful women
are thrown in to add some sex appeal to the cast; Zhang Ziyi (Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon) plays a baddie who would like nothing better than to kick Det. Lee?s
ass, and Roselyn Sanchez plays a possibly corrupt U.S. Customs agent.

Nothing about this sequel works. The production quality is weak (it was apparently
rushed, much to Jackie Chan?s displeasure) resulting in fewer stunt sequences. The
screenplay by Jeff Nathanson (Speed 2: Cruise Control) ruins every joke from
the first movie and Chris Tucker?s material is more racist and less funny this time. The plot is completely irrelevant and Ziyi is given nothing to do but
dropkick Chris Tucker a few times. She doesn?t even get a single fight against Jackie
Chan, which is arguably the battle her fans came to see. All I can say is that
I hope Chris Tucker likes his $20 million paycheck because I doubt he will get too
many more of them.

American Pie 2 fares much better, though it is not without flaws. This
time, it is summer break after freshman year at college, and everyone is getting
together to Par-Tay. The film?s main problem is its cast ? not the actors themselves,
but their sheer numbers. Thanks to contractual obligations, not a single cast member
of the first movie is absent from the sequel. This forced screenwriters Adam Herz
and David Steinberg to find a way to accommodate everyone, which results in a lot
of useless scenes with unimportant characters taking up time better spent on the
principles. Honestly, do we need Casey Affleck back for one scene? And they gave
Natasha Lyonne nothing to do in the first American Pie, so why bring her back
to do nothing in the second?

Pie 2?s story never quite lives up to such memorable scenes as Jim getting
it on with a pie, or getting broadcast over the internet as he gets funky with Nadia,
the foreign exchange student, but it comes very close. A sequence involves
?possible lesbians? is hilarious, and Stiffler (Seann William Scott) fires off a
great line about every thirty seconds. Finch?s continued obsession with Stiffler?s
Mom has moments, while Eugene Levy gets much more screen time as Jim?s Dad, mostly
to good advantage.

What really made me enjoy the second helping of Pie is the continued presence
of that teenaged awkwardness. While most people don?t look at pie the way Jim does,
we all have our manic moments, and Jason Biggs is great at capturing that ?Oh, God?
feeling when you realize you?ve just dumped chili on your lap, etc. Many of the various
characters in American Pie I & II aren?t funny (see Kevin), but they all go
through the angst of youth that is a rite of growing up for us in North America.
As long as the people behind these films continue to capture that feeling, they will
find a fan in me.

The people behind Rush Hour 2, however, need to figure out the many ways that
their sequel went wrong, and fix it before the inevitable third installment, otherwise
their series will become more pathetic than the Lethal Weapon series did.
And it got pretty bad.

American Pie 2 Grade: B

Rush Hour 2 Grade: C-
 

Tim Chandler

Monday August 13, 2001A trend that has been developing over the past six years is for the motion picture studios to open a movie on huge number of screens. In essence, flooding the market with their product on opening weekend. If they have a hot property, this leads to an extremely large opening box office take, such as we have recently seen with such films as SLMB2, MUMY2, JURA3, PLNTA, RUSH2 and AMPI2. There are two significant benefits that the studio derives from this front loading a movie’s viewership. The first is an immediate (and significant) cash flow infusion to offset their upfront expenditures. The second, is that in most cases, the studio takes a greater percentage of the box office receipts during a film’s opening weeks. This percentage declines the longer the film has been out. Consequently, they make considerably more money if they can get the bulk of the customers to see the film when their percentage of the take is the highest.

But, those aren’t their only reasons. It is sometimes unbelievable, how much a studio will spend on a movie’s advertising campaign. Advertising is extremely expensive. But, one of the most effective forms of advertising doesn’t cost them dime. That being, “word of mouth”. The third benefit of front loading viewership is the potential unleashing of vast numbers of walking, talking, bulletin boards. If it is a really good film, this has the effect of generating a flood of interest, by others having come in contact with these enthusiastic patrons. This then forms the basis of what we call a film’s “legs”. The more “new” interest (beyond the movies original potential audience), the bigger the viewership in subsequent weeks, the more profitable the film becomes.

However, “word of mouth” can cut both ways. There is an old saying that “good news travels fast, but bad news travels even faster”. If a film is a piece of trash, the studio knows that word of mouth is ultimately going to knock the legs right out from under it. In this case a business decision needs to be made. They can do an average roll out, and let it die a long slow death. Or, go with a massive roll out, and a quick death. Depending on the film, the massive roll out can be much more profitable. For example, the studio may know the property is a dog, but if they sense that there is a significant number of potential patrons that are primed for the film, the massive roll out allows them to capitalize on that pent up demand. The picture gets it’s big box office opening before the bad word of mouth can effect the majority of the films core audience.

All this may be very interesting, but how does this help an HSX player make investing decisions? The first thing to remember is that just because a film is being opened on a large number of screens, this doesn’t guarantee a significant opening weekend box office. This is a common misconception that many new players have. Next, be careful not to over-estimate the amount of pent up demand in the film’s core audience. Studios expend significant resources to determine such things, and even they blow a call occasionally (i.e., ARTIF). Most of the time all we have to go on is our gut feelings and derived relationships to historical data. Always keep a thought in the back of your mind that this mega-opening may be the studio attempting a “hit and run” strategy. Lastly, even if your analysis has been successful, and profitable, a huge opening doesn’t guarantee it will also have a large delist multiplier. In fact, a large percentage of the largest openers had delist multipliers significantly less than the 2.9 adjustment multiplier.

Holding a huge opener long, may render a great return on your investment at adjustment time on Sunday afternoon. What can be equally important, is your decision about that investment after the adjust occurs. Is the stock going to have a GRNCH-like delist multiplier (3.55) or a TOMBR-like delist multiplier (2.46). These mega-openers tend to be expensive stocks, which means the commissions for getting into and out of a position can be significant. If the stock is having very large swings in price, lucky day trading can be profitable, in spite of the size of the commissions, and a bad first decision might be salvaged at the proper point in the swing. If the stock isn’t experiencing large price movements, a proper post-adjustment decision becomes even more important.

Let me preface the balance of the article by saying that the decision to hold an expensive stock over the subsequent four week period is only logical under two conditions. The first being the size of your portfolio. Unless you have a mega-portfolio with excessive cash, tying up a large amount of capital in one security is not prudent. The exception to this, is the rare second condition, where your predicted delist multiplier for the security gives it’s potential profit, a return on investment (ROI), greater than what you could obtain from other investments during that period. The trick is being able to predict that delist multiplier.

One of the problems in making an accurate early prediction, is that sometimes the initial signals we detect may be misleading. One such signal, that can really send us down the wrong logic pathway, is our old friend “word of mouth”. Be careful when everyone is indicating that a film has excellent word of mouth. This doesn’t necessarily guarantee good legs. If the general population isn’t receptive to the subject matter of a film, all the great word of mouth coming from the film’s core audience, won’t induce others to go see it. In this situation, the ultimate size of the delist will depend on the size of the core audience. And, if it’s demand was satisfied by the wide availability of a large roll-out, you can expect significant declines in the weeks to come. FINAL was a good example of this. Because there are so many variables involved, making delist predictions for a big opener at adjustment time are rarely worth the risk. That is why most players with small to average portfolios elect to take their profits (or losses) and move on to an investment that has a better profit potential.

OK, you dissolved your position in the mega-opener at adjustment time. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get back into the security at some point prior to it’s delist. There still may be some profit potential for the making. The trick is to see that potential, if it exists, before everyone else does. Here is data on some recent mega-openers (see above chart). It’s obvious that a very large 1st to 2nd weekend drop off (i.e., 55% or greater) doesn’t bode well for a stock. If during the first full week, the market didn’t see this very large drop off coming, and the price of the stock is still around the adjust price, shorting it as soon as Friday’s negative numbers come out can net you a tidy profit at delist. In fact, that is what I did with PLNTA. I shorted it at $201.00/share the day after adjustment, and will walk away with a $2 million profit at delist. What amazed me is even after the second weekend it’s price continued to go up. To me, this indicates that most players disregard hard data and fly by the seat of their pants, or believe their gut rather than analyzing the data.

As is evident in the chart, an extreme 1st to 2nd weekend drop off is easy to make a decision about. Those around 50% seem to be the tough ones to call. In fact, you may need to wait till the 3rd weekend’s results before a comfortable call can be made. Again, once you feel you have a handle of what the ultimate delist multiplier will be, you still need to wait for the proper price point to occur. Timing is everything. You could be absolutely sure, after the second weekend, what the delist multiplier is going to be. But, unless the stock attains the price point where your information can turn a profit, you must put the capital to use elsewhere.

To make life interesting, sometimes the good news in early returns can jump up and bite you in the a**. Take a look at the data for SLMB2 and AUST2. Both opened almost exactly the same. Both had very low 1st to 2nd weekend drop offs for this size of opener. Depending on what the price of the shares were at the time, both of these could have been potential “buys” or “holds” after the 2nd weekend. Now look at the significant difference in their delist multipliers. Ouch! If you were holding this stock at the third weekend you had better been paying attention. What happened? Obviously, both films had good word of mouth as evidenced by the very low 2nd weekend drop off. I think this is a case where SLMB2 ran out of core audience and even the good word of mouth wasn’t enough to sustain further growth. The point being, that even good performers can turn south in a hurry, and a profitable opportunity can come, or be lost, when you least expect it.

We are likely to see another dozen or so mega-openings before the year ends. I hope my ramblings help stimulate your interest in wanting to analyze the data as it comes in on these future securities. Based on the history of the above securities there is a real possibility to turn several separate profits on them by analyzing the film’s progress.

Have a profitable day.

Aaron

Most of us remember at least one time when, as children, we were scared to death. It is easy to laugh now, but when you are four years old and those shadows in the closet look just like a skeleton, terror overrides all other thought. And even if your mom turns on the light to show you that ?it?s only your sweater, honey?, when the light is extinguished, Mr. Bones comes back?

What we, as children, see in our closets and hear whispering under our beds is rarely captured properly in cinema. Screenwriters do not like to venture into the clich鳠(creaking floors, doors closing) that grew out of our fears, and most directors are too in love with movement to allow darkness to stand still. What they fail to realize is that a digital ghoulie in the closet will never be as frightening as a few well-placed shadows that give the impression of a ghoulie. One filmmaker who does understand this is Alejandro Amenabar.

Amenabar, the Spanish composer/writer/director of The Others, is a filmmaker who understands subtlety and uses it perfectly. His film is almost devoid of digital effects (some fog is the only occurrence I could spot), and yet scares the hell out of you. Everything is suggestion, possibility and shadow and your mind does all the rest. It?s a wonderful experience for someone used to tripe like Jan de Bont?s The Haunting. Coincidentally, the film The Others most resembles is the 1963 version of The Haunting by Robert Wise.

The story: The Channel Islands, England – 1945. Three old, well-trained housekeepers arrive at a darkened mansion answering an ad in the paper. It seems the former housekeeping staff disappeared without a trace the week before? Grace, the head of the household (Nicole Kidman), accepts the three as her new staff, introduces them to her two children Anne & Nicholas (Alakina Mann & James Bentley) and explains the rules. The children, she explains, are allergic to light, and thus curtains must be perpetually drawn, doors must be closed to isolate one room?s light from the next, and never ever can any light brighter than an oil lamp be let in if the children are around. It all makes for a most marvelous and promising beginning to a movie, don?t you think?

There is very little else I will say about the story as The Others is a film with many surprises. I will say this: Grace begins to hear noises in the house, and at other times hears crying, yet upon spotting her children sees no evidence of tears. Once this hushed mystery wraps its foggy tendrils around you, it is almost impossible not to become captivated by it. The audience at my screening was stone silent throughout, except when they were screaming en masse, and believe me, scream they did. There is only one misstep, and that involves Grace?s husband Charles (Christopher Eccleston), who is off fighting the War. He appears in the film quite late, and ultimately the audience isn?t given enough time to get to know him before things get funky. His character serves as a disruption, briefly ending the sense of dread that permeates through the film.

Amenabar and cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe have created a most beautiful picture. The house in which Grace?s family lives is gray, silent, and very creepy. The vast gardens are perpetually housed in at least a bit of fog, and it makes the countryside seem ethereal. The mansion?s insides are not only full of shadow, but the walls are covered with old triptychs and murals that are often only half visible. It truly is a haunting old house, an absolutely wonderful locale for the film.

I was surprised when I first heard that Nicole Kidman was following up her exhausting work on Moulin Rouge with a horror movie. I rationalized that she must need a break after going through two epic productions in a row (Eyes Wide Shut being the other one), and decided to make a throwaway frightfest to relax. But instead, the role of Grace is surprisingly meaty, arguably more complex than her work in Moulin. Before the weird noises start, Grace is a loving, caring adult mother of two trying to run a household while her husband is away. But when her fears start to override her common sense, Grace finds herself in the same state as her children; frightened of the shadows and the dark, filled with terror at the thought of what may be behind the door. The slow change from skeptic to believer provides Kidman with yet another role to show off her acting abilities, and she gives it a subdued 100%. The two child actors chosen to play her kids are wonderful, while the house staff, led by actress Fionnula Flanagan, have just the right amount of mystery about them to keep their place in things a mystery.

The Others is the first film since Shyamalan?s The Sixth Sense to really get under my skin. Similar in pacing and style (lots of people speaking quietly while sitting motionless in a room, for instance), the two filmmakers clearly understand what makes us afraid as children, and recreate it as best as possible onscreen. Post-viewing, I found myself remembering the skull that would float in the middle of my closet with the slight greenish tint to it. I knew it was my sweater, but at the same time, I knew I didn?t know anything. Any film that can bring those memories back into my head truly got to me, because it means it genuinely scared me. That is perhaps the best praise I can give this remarkable little film. Go see it.

Tim Chandler

Grade: A-

Despite how far North America has come towards accepting homosexuality, there are thousands of conservative-minded parents out there whose children are silently and painfully going through a sexual identity crisis. When you are not sure if you like boys or girls or both, the first people you should be able to talk to are your family. When you cannot, the emotional stresses can be devastating.

Director Lea Pool, whose previous film Emporte-Moi, expertly dealt with teenaged girls in love, wades once again into the emotional maelstrom that can surround such relationships. This time working from Judith Thompson?s adaptation of the Susan Swan novel ?The Wives of Bath?, Pool?s film follows Mary, who arrives at her first day of Catholic boarding school. She shares a room with Victoria and Pauline, an energetic duo who promise to make her life fun. The three girls become friends, and Mary, upon waking up early one morning, discovers that Victoria and Pauline are much more than that. A free spirit, Mary sees no problem with the relationship and shares the duo?s secret. Problems arise when another classmate discovers the lovers together in bed, and Victoria is forced to make a choice: admit their relationship and force the others to deal with it, or repress her love to save ties with her conservative family. It also becomes unclear whether she prefers women or is really experimenting, as so many do.

Lost & Delirious, a title that perfectly describes the mix of love and terror that flows through its young lovers? veins, begins wonderfully. The three girls? share equal screen time and we quickly find out that they all come from some form of broken home. As the characters reveal their secret fears and desires to each other, you cannot help but be won over. Ultimately, the story movies in a direction that I consider misguided, changing the whole balance of the film, but from start to almost-finish, Lost & Delirious is emotional and intriguing.

The film stars Piper Perabo, whose career seemed ready to die as quickly as it began after Coyote Ugly and Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle, as Pauline, the fiery aggressor of the young couple, while Jessica Pare, in her first role after Stardom, is sublime as the sexually confused Victoria. Mischa Barton, whose previous performance was as the poisoned girl in The Sixth Sense, makes Mary into an exquisite foil; where Pauline is defiantly sexual, Mary is practically asexual. When Pauline rages against her oppressors, Mary takes in what she sees but let?s nothing show. Barton?s performance as the shy, torn friend caught in the middle of a lover?s quarrel is equal to the others, though she mostly reacts to their actions.

Judith Thompson?s screenplay makes a large turn after the lovers? relationship is discovered. From the second that outside stresses begin to wear on Pauline and Victoria?s love, the film becomes centered on Pauline solely. Victoria remains visible in the story, but no longer has any strong scenes, and Mary?s own family problems take a backseat to her attempts to keep Pauline from snapping. Even a humorous subplot with Graham Greene as a gardener fades to nothing. The film becomes all Pauline, and the stunning performances by Barton and Pare are almost forgotten as Perabo stretched her acting chops and channels Angelina Jolie from Girl, Interrupted. Her performance is strong, but in the end it is all the film has left.

In the end, Lea Pool simply takes things one step too far. Lost & Delirious is a wonderful story, exploring the many places you can find love, and it features performances that at times are simply astonishing, but the ending seems meant to force a reaction out of the audience instead of providing closure to the film?s tale. Lost & Delirious is an enjoyable film to see, and if you do see it and enjoy it, I highly recommend searching out a copy of Emporte-Moi (Set Me Free) at your video store.

Grade: B+

Tim Chandler