Welcome To Elizabethtown. Population: 0
If, as some critics have suggested, Elizabethtown represents the opening salvo in Hollywood's autumnal barrage of Oscar-bait pictures, the studios may want to redraw their battle plans: It was this weekend's no. 3 picture and made $11 million, opening after last week's top-grosser Wallace & Gromit and the water vapor-as-murderer-Tom Welling-career-maker The Fog. (Full report here.) It's a case for the textbooks: An advertising lead-up that went on for months before the actual movie premiered, reducing the film's novelty and desirability with each bus ad and commercial; a schlocky tv spot that made it look like the now-famous re-edit of The Shining trailer; and, may we humbly submit, little to no blog pulse. But to be fair, this isn't the first time a director has had to learn this lesson the hard way.
Posted
by Philip Ewing at October 17, 2005 10:46 AM
Category: Moving Pictures
