The Bull Pen #20

It is hard to believe I have actually written 20 of these. Sure, some folks pepper their blogs almost every other day with a little snippet and some folks post a nice sized blog every now and then but I have tried to make this a weekly entertaining reading experience. On that note, I would like to point out that the last (seemingly) major summer movie is going to be released this Friday; the movie of course is Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. The first PotC movie kind of snuck up on me. It had an interesting look about it and threatened to be a decent movie but not one that yelled out, “SEE ME ON OPENING WEEKEND”. Well, after some outstanding buzz, I managed to see it and was impressed with how they not only managed to make a decent movie out of a Disney ride (and a legendary one at that) but also made a movie about pirates that people actually talked about. While the movie was exciting, had a lot of action, and was directed by a competent fellow, the movie’s success was pretty much 75% contributed by Johnny Depp. I mean, when you get nominated for an Academy Award for playing a role that is not a) based on a real person b) handicapped or challenged in some way or c) has some sort of inner psychological demons, then you must have created a role that really caught the attention of some folks. To put in simpler terms, when was the last time someone was nominated from an Action-Adventure picture? So, Johnny Depp carries the movie on his back as Captain Jack Sparrow and Disney finally makes boatloads of money off a ride based movie.

Fast forward to 2006 and now we have the second PotC movie to look forward to on July 7th and the third one by May of next year. By early reports, it appears that this one is just as appealing as the first one, once again due to Depp. It may shock and surprise people but something tells me that Captain Jack Sparrow is going to be kryptonite to Superman. I know I will be there this weekend to see what mayhem will ensue. Backing up to an earlier statement, it seems as though this is the last major release of the summer as there appears to be very little buzz around any of the pictures to be released the rest of the month or even in August. Sure, Miami Vice is still yet to be released but the rest of the schedule just kind of looks blah. I remember when August still held a few of the good summer movies. Now, May through the first half of July seems to be the era of the summer blockbuster. To top it all off, what may be a summer blockbuster can be very deceptive in this day and age as worldwide gross has become as important as domestic gross. One of the best examples is the movie Troy. Troy only made $133+ million in the United States and is usually seen as a failure compared to its cost of $185 million plus marketing costs. However, when you factor in that the movie made another $364 million worldwide at the box office, you can plainly see where the United States is not the only box office that counts. In fact, if you want something that may blow your mind, the IMDB shows that US box office receipts for Batman Begins was $205,343,774 while non-US box office was $166,510,009 making worldwide receipts $371,853,783. Compare to Troy’s $497,409,852 and you’ll see that US gross and appeal is not the only thing driving the market. What does this all mean? Well, I just thought I would point it out for the next time you get concerned that your favorite movie underperforms at the US box office. You never know when the world just may agree with you.

Custom Game of the Week: As much as I have enjoyed going into BTB Slayer with some of my fellow 2o2p’ers over the past week, I still hope there are times we can enjoy some custom games (mainly because Team Rockets is getting pretty old pretty fast). Under Siege is a recent creation of mine and is a variant off of a BR Assault type game. No real fancy rules for this game except for the fact that the only weapon you start off with is a Battle Rifle and there are no weapons on the map except for grenades. That is correct, no snipers, no shotguns, no rockets, and no dual wield weapons. Vehicles are on the map and all you get is the Battle Rifle you start with. Sudden death is turned on (and it makes it really tense because you have to either break defense to get the bomb guy or let the game drag on) and all other regular settings apply. I have now played this on Headlong, Terminal, and Zanzibar and on all three maps, the game stays balanced if you work together as a unit. You can score on Terminal despite the defensive team having a Wraith if you use your vehicles properly. You can defend on Zanzibar because the Gauss Hog is vulnerable once it stops outside the gate or if it pulls into the defensive base. Headlong is even better because of the defensive base location and balance in starting vehicles. I really find this much more enjoyable than standard Assault because of a how a team can succeed if they work as a unit, as opposed to a single sniper being the hero and picking off folks as they get close to the base or the guy with the rockets being a dynamo and quickly eliminating the vehicles. Ask for it by name the next time I am in a party.