I liked Michael Z. Newman's post on Harvey Weinstein's disappointment over Grindhouse's performance at the box office. All of the reasons he gives for the movie's poor showing make more sense to me than the Hollywood Conventional Wisdom. Personally, I think the marketers should have played up the "two-for-the-price-of-one" element a bit more: I didn't know that Grindhouse is made up of two feature-length movies, I thought they were both around fifty minutes each (more like Sin City), and I'm enough of a cheapskate that that makes a difference. (My ignorance probably has something to do with reading The Hollywood Reporter every day, but never going anywhere near site like Ain't It Cool).
The gist of a lot of Mike's post is that the actual audience for this kind of movie (a "postmodern pastiche" "horror anthology") really isn't that big. Tarantino and Rodriguez have been able to infuse their geek-love for midnight movies into films that have found a fairly wide audience. But I think that something like Death Proof, which looks like schlock horror is going to be less appealing than Sin City which looks like a super-stylish noir or Kill Bill which looks like a super-sexy action movie.
Anyway, I'm still looking forward to seeing Grindhouse (probably this Saturday afternoon). I've been in a very pro-Tarantino phase the last few months (my attitude towards his movies has varied fairly wildly over the years) and I actually am a fan of schlock horror movies.
I also agree with something in the comments section of Michael's post: Will Ferrell in his underwear is always funny.
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