Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Apparently, I Have Absolutely Horrid Taste

According to Wikipedia, the following 13 films from the '80's, '90's, and '00's (have we settled on the "ooohs" yet?) were all official box-office bombs, meaning that their domestic revenue was less than half of their production costs. They are also all movies that I, at one time or another (including the present), for one reason or another, really, really liked. And have fond memories of:
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)
American History X (1998)
Bottle Rocket (1996)
Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
Death To Smoochy (2002)
Ed Wood (1994)
Hudson Hawk (1991)
The Iron Giant (1999)
Mars Attacks! (1996)
The Postman (1997)*
Super Mario Bros (1993)
Titan A.E. (2000)
Zodiac (2007)
The one exception on this list is The Postman. I actually thought that the movie was quite silly - as well as a little morally questionable - but I included it on the list because it was filmed mostly in Central Oregon (around Terrebonne, if I'm not mistaken) and Kevin Costner rented from my grandparents while he was in town. And I guess that he partied with Tiger Woods, too.

But the rest of the movies rock! What's wrong with Americans? Seriously, I'm going to have a film-festival featuring all of these wonderfully weird movies. Maybe make it a traveling feature, moving from college campus to college campus. Call it, "Mr. McQuark's Matinee of Monstrous Movie Misadventures." (Copyright, 2009)

Make a million bucks.

Guaranteed.

Post-Script: After including the Wikipedia links to each of these films, several things have come to my attention:

Many of these films, especially Bottle Rocket, The Iron Giant, and Zodiac were critically acclaimed, yet still failed at the box office. This, of course, leads us into the age old question of what taste is, and who gets to determine that definition.

Both Mars Attacks! and Zodiac actually made a profit, but that is only after calculating in their foreign revenue.

Joss Whedon was one of the writers for Titan A.E.

Both Robin Williams and Ed Norton are in two of these movies. Tim Burton directed two of these movies.

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