Sumofale – Week 11

Posted on August 5, 2016August 5, 2016 by rhysnice

Know what starts today? The Olympics! Wooooo! And right at the perfect time too. It’s certainly the dog days of summer, sports-wise. Football is still a month away. Soccer has taken a break from playing every day during June and July. Basketball and hockey don’t start for months. And baseball is, well, baseball.

It also comes as a welcome respite from the political freakshow we’ve been experiencing for the last month. Look, I love a good dumpster fire as much as the next guy, especially when the main accelerants are hairspray, fake tanner, sweat and the black oil that came out of the aliens on the X-Files. But there’s only so many times I can scream “THAT’S A LIE!” or “THAT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE!” or “THAT’S NOT EVEN GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT!” at the TV. So, I’m very ready to switch the channel. Peace out, Joe Scarborough, I’m gonna go watch me some Judo!

Unfortunately, this does mean I’m going to have to put up with seeing Matt Lauer’s smug face everyday, looking like he is putting on the Olympics all by him fucking self. But that’s okay! Because for every time I have to see Matt Lauer trying to look important, I get to watch Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski being Fucking. Fabulous.

Homeboy packed 9 suitcases for a 2 week trip! And instead of putting her stuff in suitcases, girlfriend just brought entire racks of clothing, including 100 pairs of shoes! God bless these two. I hope they’re not just doing commentary on gymnastics or whatever. I want daily culture updates from Tara and Johnny. I want segment where they go to a bar and drink Caipirinhas till they fall off their stools. I want to see them trying to play foot volleyball on the beach while wearing the most preposterous bathing suits you’ve ever imagined in your life*. I want to see Tara and Johnny singing “Copacabana” and “Girl From Ipanema” at a karaoke bar. I want to see them interviewing athletes about their Tinder habits. I want to see Tara flirt with Lebron, then see Johnny flirt with Lebron. Give me The Tara and Johnny Show. I need it.

*I’m picturing 1920s bathing costume, that is somehow brazil cut in the back. And a giant-ass sun hat, of course.

Of course I fucking love the Olympics. There’s sports on all day, everyday, for 2 weeks. Turn on the TV first thing in the morning? Sports! Come home from work and flip on the boob tube while cooking dinner? Sports! Have a small, secondary window streaming stuff at work? Sports! I’m watching the Olympics right now, and it totally doesn’t matter what time you’re reading this.

Granted, some of those sports are dumb. I’m looking at you dressage. Look at this shit:

What is going on? I can’t even tell if that horse is doing a good job or a bad one. And is that horse getting a medal? No? Then get the fuck outta here. You are not an athlete. You do not belong in the Olympics. Plus, you’re probably already rich*. You don’t deserve MORE acclaim. Save a spot for that Chinese boy ping-ponging his way through college.

*Case and point, that gif is Mitt Romney’s horse

Anyway, silly random sports are part of the fun of the Olympics. Basketball, track & field, gymnastics and swimming are awesome. But it’s also awesome to randomly flip to a sport that you haven’t thought of for four years and watch the two best fencers in the world try to stab each other. Or handball? Why isn’t handball a thing in this country, besides in gym class? Handball is awesome. It’s basically a mixture of all the best rules from basketball, soccer, hockey and dodgeball. And how about synchronized diving? I sometimes mess up just trying to jump into a pool and these two guys are doing flips and shit at the same exact time. Also, I think we need more synchronized events in our lives. Everything becomes, literally, twice as hard when people are trying to do the same thing at the same time. And it doesn’t just have to be sports. Reality shows, take a page from the Olympics. Top Chef should have synchronized chopping. RuPaul’s Drag Race should have synchronized shade throwing. Real Housewives should have synchronized chardonnay drinking and hair pulling.

There’s nothing better than armchair quarterbacking these random events, as well. I get to watch 45 minutes of a sport I haven’t seen before and suddenly I’m an expert. Oh, I totally would deduct points for that vault. That wasn’t a full rotation on that last flip.

It’s also fun to get caught up in rooting for other countries. Sure, America’s great and all that. USA! USA! USA! Yadda yadda yadda. But it’s also really cool to see other countries do really well in some random sport. Like those South Korean archers? They’re mad good at shooting stuff with bows and arrows. Last Olympics, I got caught up in watching this British skeet shooter trying to medal in front of his home crowd. They were going nuts after every shot, and I couldn’t help but getting fired up. This is something everyone knows. That’s what makes multinational sporting events so special. NBC advertises for the Olympics with Michael Phelps, Carli Lloyd, Gabby Douglas and… Usain Bolt. Know why? Because sometimes it’s more fun to root for the guy who’s better at something than everyone else, ever.

But best of all, I saw something amazing while I was going through the broadcast schedule*. I was reading through the events to see what was coming up. I saw Rowing. I saw Archery. I saw Water Polo, but not the U.S, but then I saw they play at 9am, so I made note of that. I saw Air Rifle. Oh word, the Olympics have Rugby now?! It’s just Sevens, but I’ll have to be sure to check that out. And then I saw it. I’d forgotten it existed. But it returned to me in all it’s glory:

Screen Shot 2016-08-04 at 3.24.51 PM

That’s right. GOLD ZONE. It’s like Red Zone, but for the Olympics. And much like comparing the Olympics to football, Gold Zone is not as nearly as cool or exciting as Red Zone. And I’m sure the host, if they even have one, is no Scott Hanson. But I’ll take it. Gold Zone, you want to mainline all the best Olympics directly into my veins with no commercials? Give it here. What’s that? You want to give me a double box of Italy-France water polo and Germany-India field hockey? Go right ahead. But be sure to switch the the USA-Spain women’s basketball at 11am. You already have that covered? Nice. Now you want to show me the Men’s Trap Final medal ceremony? Oh, Gold Zone, you know what I like. Gold Zone you are the methadone to my Red Zone heroin.

*NBC’s site is horrific, by the way. I can’t wait to have streams constantly crash for 2 weeks straight. But I’m sure it’ll manage to show me the same Coke commercial in sparkling, crisp HD, every time that happens.

Look, and I know things about the Olympics being in Brazil are awful. There’s zika virus. The government is corrupt. The water is basically poop. The accommodations are terrible. But that’s not the athletes’ fault. That’s the fault of the Brazilian government and the IOC, who ranks second in front of the NFL and behind FIFA in the Corrupt Sports Organization power rankings. This thing should never have been put in Brazil. It should be on Olympic Island in the middle of the Atlantic. We don’t need the Azores do we? We should definitely keep all that stuff in the back of our minds, but, for all those reasons I stated above, let’s all enjoy some dope ass beach volleyball.

Weekend Breakdown

Weekend recaps are getting harder and harder as I feel like they’re just turning into Whatshername came in first with these movies and Whosetheirface came in second with most of those movies but a couple different ones. And FantasyMovieLeague.com gives you the standings and how much money each movie made, so it kinda feels like what’s the point? All that said, Tanya won the weekend. High Five! She grabbed this weekend’s best performer, Nerve, twice, which made $112k per Bux, as well as some other movies. Apparently, the better way to go was this weekend was to grab as much Nerve as you possibly could, as the weekend’s perfect lineup was one of each of Bad Moms ($23.8M) and SLOP ($18.9M) and then just fill out the rest of your lineup with Nerve.

Perfect Lineup

Bad Moms ($23.8M) x 1 / SLOP ($18.9M) x 1 / Nerve* ($9.4M) x 6 = $116,405,216

*Best Performer of the Weekend = 2M bonus, Perfect Cineplex receives a $5M bonus

Coming Attractions

Suicide Squad (Fri: $708, Sat: $443, Sun: $355)

This movie deserves all of the negative reactions it’s getting. And man, is it getting panned. It’s currently at 27% on Rotten Tomatoes, and one of the top “positive” reviews reads:

“Risk-averse” is not exactly a ringing endorsement. The reviews are actually quite fun when you look at them:

It probably won’t surprise you that this movie is racist (the only black guy in the cast plays Killer Croc), sexist (it does a really good job of ogling Margot Robbie), and the only (slightly) good parts involve (in ascending order) Will Smith, Margot Robbie and Queen Viola Davis. I hope she bought a villa in Tuscany with the money she made from doing this movie. At least SOMETHING good should come from this hot garbage.

But no, these aren’t the reasons this movie deserves the suckage it’s getting. The number one reason this movie earned all the shit it’s getting can easily be described by one image:

Anyone who thinks this is a good look, well for ANYTHING, never mind the Joker, an iconic supervillain who has existed for 75 years and never had grillz, obviously is out of touch and has no idea what they’re doing. Also, fuck Jared Leto and his “method acting,” sending weird shit like dead rats and used condoms to his co-stars since he thought that’s what the Joker would do since he was SOOOO CRAAYYZEEEE. Ugh. What a douche bag. Dude’s always been a douche bag. And no, I’m not harboring some long-term resentment of him because he was a heartthrob on My So Called Life and some girl I liked in middle school, loved him instead of me. That’s not the case, because if you must know, I wasn’t cool in middle school and I was watching Star Trek: The Next Generation instead of My So Called Life, so I had no idea who Jared Leto was until he got his face smashed in in Fight Club. So there. AND, after all the focus he gets in the trailer and headlines the poster, it sounds like he gets like 15 minutes of screentime in the actual movie.

This is our first multi-day release, meaning you can select and get the earnings for Friday, Saturday or Sunday (or some combination thereof), but you can’t get the earnings for the entire weekend. Predictions are at record breaking levels somewhere between $133 and $145 million. The most money will come in on Friday, hence it costing the most, especially with all those NERDS who bought tickets ahead of time and now have to go to the movie regardless of it sucking. Fandango reports “the biggest pre-sale for any August title in the company’s 16-year history.” But maybe Saturday is the way to go. It’s much, much cheaper and, even though FMLnerd has a significant drop off from Friday to Saturday, the last few weekends have only had a 10-15% drop off between Friday and Saturday. Sunday feels like a bad choice all around, because Sundays suck in general. I really don’t know what you should do. It feels like this movie is going to do well, regardless of the shitty reviews, and that’s a lot of money to leave on the table. Either way it feels like Suicide.

Nine Lives ($99)

This is a movie where Kevin Spacey voices a live-action cat. You don’t need to see a trailer for that. There aren’t even reviews for this movie. That’s all you need to know about this.

Shade of the Week

Lastly, there are 3 weeks left after this weekend. I’m debating having playoffs, which would mean next weekend everyone would have a matchup, and the only thing that matters about your score is that you beat the person you’re matched up against. Standard playoff seeding would apply: 1st (me) would be matched up against 8th (Sean, at the moment), then 2nd against 7th and so on. Winners would move on to try and win the championship. What do you all think?

Sumofale – Week 10

Posted on July 29, 2016July 29, 2016 by rhysnice

I went camping this weekend. I haven’t been camping in a very long time, and it was a lot more fun than I remember it. The last time I went camping, truly camping, I think I was in high school. Lemme tell you, it’s WAY more fun when you can drive a car into the campground, park it and be like “commence camping!” I’m used to carrying all my gear on my back for like 8 miles everyday, then setting all that shit up, lighting a fire so we can cook some instant potatoes over it. Mmmm Mmmm! Now, there is a time and a place for that kind of badass camping, but since I don’t own a knife, I’m going to steer clear from it. Also, badass camping might have to go on the Murtaugh List, as I am too old for that shit. So, here now are my completely half baked rules for camping as an adult:

Bring Beer. There’s a reason when you go camping as a kid that you tell ghost stories. It’s not because their fun. It’s because you’re not drinking. As I’ve said before drinking improves anywhere from 37-48% when you’re outdoors. And when you’re camping, you’re outdoors ALL THE TIME. Nothing but delicious beer! Plus that goes up by another 5-6% when you’re drinking a nice, cold beer in sitting around a fire. Drinking while camping is great. I may need to update my Experience Beer Power Rankings.

Don’t skimp on gear. Have you ever slept on the ground? It’s the worst. Newsflash: The ground is really fucking hard. Make sure you have a pad to sleep on. Whatever replacement you think that will “be enough,” it won’t be. Buy the shit that’s designed to do the thing you need it to do. Same with sleeping bags. Although, I kind of hate sleeping bags, since I run hot and they make me sweat more throughout the night than if I was having nightmares about getting chased by giant chainsaw-wielding cockroaches wearing Jets jerseys, but it turns out it’s good to have insulation when you’re outdoors all night. Also gear is way better now. I’d gotten used to tents with metal poles that didn’t fit anywhere near the amount of people the label said it did. Now tents have lightweight, carbon fiber poles and are actually spacious. It’s quite nice. Also, “Did you know they have the world wide web on phones now?!”

If you know someone with better gear than you, go with that person. This one is optional, but will make your camping experience way better. I went with a guy who had a hatchet. We didn’t use it, but man, I knew I was in good hands that weekend. Sure, you don’t need the gazebo with surrounding mosquito netting, but it’s pretty dope to have one.

Bring your dog. We were up in the air about bringing Ollie. We thought he might get annoying or not allow us to do certain things. It turns out, having him around was awesome. He. Was. SUPED! You know what Ollie loves? The outdoors. You know where we were for almost 3 days straight? The outdoors. He couldn’t get enough of it. Of everything. Imagine if you had a friend who was just really upbeat and funny and generally fun to be around. That person would be pretty fun to camp with right? Now, imagine if they were all fluffy and had a super cute face! The best!

Look how happy this guy was:

Quick story: Ollie spent the whole day running around, sniffing stuff and generally being excited. He then spent the evening going from person to person pimping himself out for pets while we sat around the campfire. After dinner and a few beers, I got up to walk towards the tent. Ollie ran over and sat right outside the tent. When I unzipped the door, he jumped inside and laid down in the middle of the tent. He’d been so excited all day, that he tuckered himself out and then put himself to bed. Totes adorbs.

Get more ice than you need. You’ll always use it. I feel like this should be a general rule in life. If I ever have kids, this will be the life lesson I impart on them. Nothing would make me prouder than 20-odd years from now, at some keg party at Curry College, someone goes “We’ve run out of ice!” And my child gets down from a keg stand and responds, “Don’t worry, I bought extra bags.”

Try not to use your phone. Instagram will be there when you get back. So you can put your phone away. You will need it to get to and from the campsite, because ironically I’ve forgotten how to use a map because I’m so used to looking at the map on my phone. A solid camping Spotify playlist will come in handy, too. I guess the flashlight is really convenient. Also, texting people is important when you’re trying to meet up with each other. You’ll also want to take pictures of your adorable dog running around the campground. And you should feel free to Google things like, how long to grill steaks or what is in doggie ice cream cones. Okay, what I’m trying to say is, charging your phone is really difficult in the woods.

I guess that’s it. Beer, Gear, Dog, Ice. Perfect camping trip!

Weekend Breakdown

Danny won his second weekend with grabbing SLOP ($29.6M) twice, Tarzan ($6.6M), Nemo ($7.2M), The Purge ($2.4M) and The Shallows ($638k) twice, for a total of $83.9M. Last week’s best performer? Absolutely Fabulous! Which I’m pretty sure you did not know was a movie this summer. It made $103.4k per Bux from just $1.8M.

Perfect Lineup

Lights Out ($21.7M) x4 / Mike & Dave ($4.4M) / Absolutely Fabulous* ($1.8M) x 3 = $107,721,051

*Best Performer of the Weekend = 2M bonus, Perfect Cineplex receives a $5M bonus

Coming Attractions

Most movies this weekend come in at the line between fresh and rotten. But who cares! Jason Bourne is back to beat up bad guys with a spatula!

Jason Bourne ($767)

Bourne is back! Again! After that other time he was back! And then there was that time he wasn’t back and they tried to make Renner a thing. But now he’s back!

I love the Bourne movies. They’re dope. I couldn’t tell you the plot of any of them at all. Besides the general, “He’s a government hitman with amnesia, and he’s going after the people who made him” but I couldn’t actually tell you what any of the specifics are. But gimme Matt Damon is running around Budapest and beating the shit out of a guy with a phonebook and I’m in!

Also, I think Jason Bourne may have a point. Has there ever been a more poorly run agency than Treadstone? Across these movies, they’ve gone through Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, David Strathairn, Ed Norton and now Tommy Lee Jones. That’s 5 directors in 14 years! That’s some incompetence right there.

This movie is not nearly as good as it’s predecessors. The first 3 Matt Damon-Bourne movies averaged 83% on the Tomatometer. Jason Bourne is currently sitting at 55%. Those three movies have averaged almost $50 million in their first weekend, each making at least $15 million more than the previous. Predictions have this movie taking a step forward from Damon-less Bourne movies (Legacy made $38 million) but a step back from Ultimatum (the third Bourne movie, which opened to $69 million), pulling in somewhere between $51-$54 million. It’s $767 makes it a bit steep, averaging $68k per Bux. Unless you think it’s going to dominate the weekend, you may not be Bourne this way.

Bad Moms ($251)

So this looks incredibly stupid. But it looks like it has the potential to be funny. It’s sitting in that high 50s-low 60s range that stupid comedies like this (Old School, Step Brothers) have gotten. Which makes me think as long as a comedy isn’t in the totally rotten range, it’ll probably be good, or at least funny. Did you know The Hangover (whose writers also wrote this movie) got 79%? It’s not that I thought the movie was bad, I just didn’t think critics would love it so much.

Predictions for this movie are in the $25-$27 million range. At $251 FML Bux, that averages out to $103k per Bux, which is pretty good! This might not be such a bad pick!

Nerve ($84)

The fuck?! I understand why they do the dares like “Kiss a stranger” and “Steal that toaster” but why are they like, “Well, my cellphone tells me I need to shoot my friend in the face, so I may as well do it. Shoulder shrug emoji!” Why can’t they just stop playing this game. I understand getting caught up in a game, but once it gets dangerous, you should probably stop. OH! This movie is an allegory for Pokémon. Got it! That shit is deep.

This movie also comes in at that 55-60% range, currently sitting at 59%. This is the first I’ve heard of this movie and am I supposed to know who Emma Roberts is? Anyway, mediocre reviews plus kinda-zero buzz gives this one a predicted opening of only $12 million opening. That said, this one is so cheap at $84, it’s predicted to average $142k per Bux. I dare you to take it!

Captain Fantastic ($19)

Viggo!! Where you been my dude?! I haven’t seen you since you saved the world from orcs and murked all those Russian mobsters. Good to have you back. Man, in 2003 I thought this guy was gonna be the next superduperstar. Oh well, I’m sure he’s happy.

This movie is apparently very good, being Certified Fresh at 78%. This movie came out a few weeks ago and has gown in theaters from 4 to 36 to 104, and ended up making $1.1 million last weekend. It’s super cheap at $19 FML Bux, so if it improves at all, let’s say $1.5 million that would average $79k per Bux. It could be a fantastic way to fill out your lineup at the end.

Shade of the Week

View this post on Instagram

😂😂 #absolutelyfabulous » #kardashian

A post shared by The Archive of Shade (@theartofshade_) on Apr 11, 2016 at 3:48pm PDT

Sumofale – Week 8

Posted on July 12, 2016July 15, 2016 by rhysnice

Somewhere between reading the 145th and 163rd article about Pokémon Go I decided I should try the app that everyone’s going crazy about and see what it was all about. After all, in it’s 3rd day on the market Pokémon Go had more than twice the number of installs as Tinder and almost as many daily users as Twitter.

First of all, what the hell is Pokémon Go? I’m glad you asked, because I’m still not entirely sure. It’s an Augmented Reality (AR, if you’re a douchebag in the “Tech Space”) game, where you try to capture a bunch of animal-like creatures. You do so by walking around the real world (IRL, for the kids), which then translates to moving your avatar around the map by using your phone’s GPS. You then run into Pokémons as you walk around, which is signified by your phone vibrating, which is a little alarming. When you tap on them, the game then uses your camera and maps the Pokemon onto your camera’s viewfinder. The result is you see Spearow in the real world:

You then flick the red and white PokéBall up at the Pokémon over and over again until you hit it in the head. The ball opens and sucks the Pokémon inside, kinda like the Ghostbusters trap. And yes, that is me attempting to catch a fake bird, in the middle of a crosswalk in downtown Manhattan. People will most certainly die playing this game.

There are also PokéStops. PokéStops are places where you can check in and pick up shit, like more Pokéballs, Pokémon pheromones to attract more Pokémons (come here you sexy, little Pokémons!), and more lives for Pokémon battles. I’m not quite sure if there’s anything more to it than that, but they do entice you to keep checking into them. Each time you go to one, you think “Okay, I got some stuff. Now what?” You feel a little annoyed, but then you find yourself walking down the block to the next one.

These PokéStops can be anything from the “Authentic” Irish Pub downstairs from my office:

To random “architecture”:

To Strip Clubs:

Looks like there's a PokeStop at the strip club by work. Don't think this stop was meant for all ages… #PokemonGO pic.twitter.com/PDdLh0gKsa

— Gajan Kulasingham (@gogogajman) July 8, 2016

I was pretty bummed that the Vivid Cabaret near my office didn’t end up being a PokéStop. Would’ve been great for research. I mean…

There are also Pokémon “Gyms” which are places where I guess you do battle with other Pokémon players. But, not really? I guess the Pokémons you do battle with are computer controlled, so it’s more like a place where you can leave your Pokémon and hope it doesn’t get killed by some other person when they bring there Pokémon around. I guess it’s like if Michael Vick ran a doggie day care?

I missed out on the fun of running around with the rest of the internet world this weekend, but I wanted to test it out anyway, so YOU can have a hands on look at what playing this game is like. I decided to play this game as it was meant to be played, walking around, staring at my phone screen ignoring the outside world at my own peril. I walked to and from work several times this week in an attempt to “Catch em all!” Here are my observations, and unfortunately, I did not get laid.

This app is kinda terrible. Here’s why:

1. This app crashes. A lot.

I work for a digital services agency that builds apps and websites. I would be SUPED if we could put out a product that was THIS popular and crashed THIS often. It crashes and completely quits about every 6 or 7 times you play it, but also freezes and needs to be restarted even more frequently than that. Yet, everyone’s like “But I gotta keep playing!!”

2. Their servers are overloaded anywhere between 10% and 70% of the time.

Look I understand, they had no idea the game was going to be THIS popular. But there are times when so many people are using this game, that it basically throws up it’s hands and says “Nah.”

And when you can get in, there’s a lot of walking around the map with no locations to go to:

Or going to a location that their server can’t find:

3. There are no instructions.

If you read this post and got the vibe that I only, kinda, sorta knew what I was doing, that’s because there isn’t really anything telling you what you are doing. There is a help section that tells you what the PokéStops and Gyms are, but they don’t tell you why you want to go there. Or, you know, what the point of catching Pokémons are. I guess you can set up your own PokéStops and Gyms, but I have no idea how to do that.

Every time you catch a Pokémon, there is a brief animation where the Pokéball rattles around as if to show the Pokémon is trying to get out. Sometime they do! It’s super annoying because then you have to try and hit them in the head with a ball again. So I’ve started to tap on the little ball when it rattles around. I’m pretty sure this is doing nothing, but sometimes, maybe it works? Again, no instructions to let me know if this is a thing or not.

4. It cooks your battery and gobbles data.

Imagine you were driving for a couple hours and you were using Google Maps for directions, but the turn-by-turn directions that super-conveniently reroute you when there’s traffic. But then, you were also using Spotify to listen to music. And doing a google image search. All at the same time. All on data. That’s basically the same thing as what this app is doing to your phone. On a walk after work of about half an hour, Pokémon Go went through 180 MB of data and 35% of my battery.

5. This game is literally dangerous.

And no, I’m not talking about, “you’ll get addicted and spend all your money” dangerous. I’m talking about “walking across the street while staring at your phone because Pokémons tend to be on street corners” dangerous. I’m talking about “Getting into car accidents” dangerous. I’m talking about “these motherfuckers setting up a PokéStop to rob people” dangerous. Don’t play this game!

This app is kinda incredible. Here’s why:

1. Everyone is playing it.

This App was released in the middle of last week and instantly exploded. It immediately became part of the zeitgeist. Hundreds, if not thousands, went to Central and Prospect Parks to catch Pokemons. 2,000 people met in the middle of Sydney to play together. There are bar crawls scheduled in Brooklyn (with 300 people going and another 1600 interested) and San Francisco (with 4600 people going and 22 THOUSAND people interested!!). Each day, I saw a half dozen people playing it on my walk home, and those were the people where I could creepily see what was on their phone screens. I saw a dude with TWO fucking phones and he playing it on BOTH! There’s a guy on the other side of the office is playing it, right now. Seriously. I just got an email from a recruiting agency, that for some reason thinks I’m in any way in charge of personnel at our company, referencing Pokémon Go (“we’re experts in catching the best creative talent for you”). Last weekend, the average user was using it almost as long as Snapchat and Instagram, COMBINED. Even if those who have no idea what it is, they will still have to prepare an old-man, fiery hot take that they don’t care about this stupid Pokie Man.

2. They figured out how to implement AR that everyone enjoys.

Augmented and Virtual Reality are two of the trendiest technologies for new apps. For some reason people think this is the future, even though VR gives people motion sickness. Investors can’t throw enough money at AR/VR apps. Everyone asks my boss what we’re doing in AR & VR. But until now, there hasn’t really been any success with these types of games and apps. All Pokémon has done is put a dumb little Caterpie on top of your camera screen, and people can’t get enough of it. Get ready for a Sunday New York Times piece on Augmented Reality.

3. It makes people go outside.

We can forget about all the subliminal messaging (you’re constantly training your Pokémons, and you always need to go to Gyms), the only way for you to be good at this game is to literally leave you house and walk around. Look at all these fat nerds who are complaining about their legs being sore.

4. Its very good at making you want to play it.

I have no idea why, but I kept playing Pokémon Go. It’s not exactly fun. Every time I checked a PokéStop, I picked up 3 more Pokéballs and then felt dumb. I then thought “OOO! There’s another one right over there!” I kept catching the same goddamn Pokémons, over and over and over again. Fuck Zubat! In my first, let’s call it, 20 minutes playing the game (I checked in periodically while at work the first day I downloaded it) I caught 13 Zubats. By the end of 3 days, I had 35. Ugh, look at Zubat, so wack! It just flaps its wings frantically like a spastic kid after drinking Kool-Aid all day. But then I see another goddamn Zubat flying right next to me on the map and I then spend 30 seconds flicking little red balls at him. Also, battles aren’t fun. Especially since the Pokémons at gyms are waaaayy more powerful than your weak little Zubats. Typical gym rats (Gym Rattatas!!), just sitting at the gym all day, getting huge, staring at themselves in the mirror, making us Normals feel bad for trying to work out. But there has to be some reason for collecting all these stupid Pokémons, right? Better hit the gym.

Takeaways

This will not be the last you hear of Pokémon Go. It’s basically the most successful app ever, making it to the top of the App Store in 4.5 hours (which is a record) and after only a day after launch, it is the 5th top grossing app in the U.S., beating out Clash of Clans and Candy Crush. In less than a week, Nintendo added $9 BILLION to its current value, and Pokémon Go has yet to be released in the UK, Europe and Japan, where the entire country might just shut down, but ironically all be outside.

As I was walking around playing, I found myself looking at other people staring at their phones, wondering if they were playing too*. But, I had no sense of camaraderie while I was walking around playing. Instead, I was super embarrassed about it. God bless those Millennials and their lack of giving a fuck. They just walk around, faces glued to their phones and yell to each other about how they just caught a Cougray or a Falcane or a Rabbeet**. Me? I held my phone in the most nonchalant, non-obvious way, and if someone walked by, ZOOP! Phone in the pocket. This game made me feel like too much of a nerd, and I’ve spent my whole life being told nerds are lame.

*Turns out, when you’re actually looking around, actively noticing who’s got their phone out, IT’S A LOT! Like 5 or 6 different people! At least!

**I made those up. Pokémon names are just slightly messed up versions of real animal names.

Overall, this game may be fun… but also may not be fun. I played a lot of it in the beginning, and found myself absentmindedly reaching for my phone to check it. But I didn’t get enough out of it to think it was fun. I can see myself continuing to play this for a little while, then playing less and less, deleting it from my phone and not caring. Maybe if Jen had it, and I could kick the crap out of her Pokémons with my Pokémons, then it would be super fun. Instead, I’m just walking around the East Village wishing that a real pigeon was a Pidgey, so I could flick fake red balls at it.

Maybe we all should just go eat some Poke, instead.

NY Magazine, of course, has excellent roundups of everything Pokémon: What is Pokémon Go? and Pokémon Go Took Over the World This Weekend

Weekend Breakdown

The Secret Life of Pets, or SLOP, for short, was anything but a secret this week as it crushed its $80 million estimate, bringing in $104 million. This led to SLOP being this weekend’s Best Performer at $126.3K per Bux.

It was a good weekend for Butts, as Dead and Turbo took first and second place, respectively. Liz followed her love of puppies and kitties to the promised land, as she was the only person in our league to grab SLOP, and won the weekend with a total of $119.7M. Tarzan ($21M) and Mike & Dave ($16.6M) had good weekends as well, both averaging over $100k per Bux. Andy grabbed Tarzan x1 and Mike & Dave x3 which helped him pull in $93M. Jenny and Danny both grabbed Nemo ($20.8M) (Jenny x2, Danny x1) and Tarzan, and ended up being only separated by only $300k. Danielle went Nemo and Tarzan as well, which helped her to 5th place. Her downfall was grabbing The BFG ($7.8M), but more on that in a second. Sean went Nemo x3 and Farting Dead Guy Movie x3, which put him in 6th this week with $81M, but only $700k behind Danielle.

The “F” in The BFG may as well stand for “flop” because it pulled in a not-so-giant $7 million, $5 million less than estimates for the weekend. May as well be The BS G. Get it?! The estimated $12 million gave it an estimated average of $120k per Bux, which led to me and Tanya* grabbing it 6 times each. Instead, it pulled in $82k per Bux and killed us both.

*I’ve been told Tanya does what she wants, it’s just her lineups tend to reflect the more analytical predictions, so I make assumptions.

That’s what I get for listening to the nerds. Of course, this week, I’ll be like, “Fuck you and your averages and hypotenuses!!” and then their predicted best lineup will be the best lineup.

Perfect Cineplex

The Secret Life of Pets ($104M)* x1 / Independence Day: Resurgence ($7.8M) x1 / The Shallows ($4.8M) x1 / Now You See Me 2 ($1.3M) x2 / X-Men: Apocalypse ($401K) x3 = $127,808,412

*Best Performer of the Weekend = 2M bonus, Perfect Cineplex receives a $5M bonus

Coming Attractions

We’ve reached the half-way point! There are 7 weeks left. Downhill from here on out. This week gives us Ghosts, Narcos and wrestlers! Three ~~very~~ well received movies out this weekend…

Ghostbusters ($645)

I’m having a hard time with this movie because Ghostbusters is one of my all-time favorite movies. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve seen it. I’m one of those annoying people that you can’t stand to watch it with because I know every word. So, unlike a lot of other Twitter eggs out there, my hesitation for this movie does not come from a place of #sexism. I’d be upset by a Ghostbusters remake even if it starred Tom Brady, Ron Swanson, The Rock, and Big Papi. AND I think these women are incredibly talented! I’d go see any movie staring Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy and Kate McKinnon (I don’t watch SNL anymore, so I don’t know anything about Leslie Jones, #racism, I guess), especially if it were directed by Paul Feig. The Heat was awesome. So was Spy. And of course, so was Bridesmaids. We don’t need to remake EVERYTHING. Put these four women in a movie (and don’t forget about the better Hemsworth, of course), have Paul Feig direct it, but have them be astronauts instead of ghostbusters and I’m all in!

Thankfully, the movie is really good. It’s “Certifiably Fresh” with a score of 74%. Though I can’t get a read on whether that means anything, because the bad reviews are basically given out by “Haters” and the good reviews are mostly: “Don’t be a Hater.” The one consensus between the Haters and non-Haters is that it’s better than the second one, at least. I don’t know. I’m going to see this movie, I just don’t know how much money and effort I’m going to spend trying to see it.

The 1984 Ghostbusters opened to $34 million when you adjust its original $13 million to 2016 dollars. It was also #1 seven weeks in a row and never lost more than 15% from weekend to weekend for 3 straight months. I looked at Spy as another comparison and that opened at $29 million and The Heat opened to $39 million, but those movies were R-rated. I’d make a guess that this was in the $40-45 million range, but Box Office Pro has it closer to $55 million, which may be more accurate if a bunch of kids go, because to them Bill Murray is a grampa, Dan Aykroyd is fat, and Harrold Ramis is dead. Ugh.

$55 million at $645 Bux gives you and average of $85k per Bux, which puts this movie right in the hard decision zone. Which sounds about right, because I spent about 8-months either talking myself into or out of this movie. What’s a few more days?

The Infiltrator ($90)

If you like Netflix, you’ll love this movie. Take a huge slab of Breaking Bad‘s Brian Cranston. Mix together Law & Order‘s Benjamin Bratt and Bloodline‘s John Leguizamo. Take that mixture and sprinkle it all over your Brian Cranston. Now set your Narcos* to Medium High. Once that’s nice and hot, put the Brian Cranston on the Narcos for about 120 minutes, being sure to turn it every 15 minutes, or so. Pull it off and serve.

*Or as it’s known in my household: NAARRRCCOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This movie is teetering on the point of Fresh and Rotten. Every time I check, it changes. It was at 60% when I started this post, then it dipped to 59%, then back up to 62%. It’s probably something different, even now. This has airplane movie written all over it.

Box Office estimates are just under $5 million. Even at the low price of $90 Bux, for a new opening, that gives it a per Bux average of less than $55k. More like Outfiltrator.

Sultan ($16)

Sultan actually came out last weekend, but was unavailable. It made $2.4 million from only 283 theaters, which was enough to make it in the top-10. You would think it will probably increase the amount of theaters it’s in, which would compensate for the drop from weekend to weekend. If this movie makes $2 million, it will average $125k per Bux, which would a great way to fill out those empty spots at the end of your roster. It’s risky, but it could pay off.

Shade of the Week

Have a good weekend everyone!

Sumofale – Week 7

Posted on July 8, 2016 by rhysnice

It’s going to be an abridged post this week as I’ve been way too busy this week with 4th of July, work, my brother being in town and getting ready to move. Not much of a recap, but I will let you know The Legend of Tarzan made $46 million last weekend! That’s basically double its estimated $23 million. This made Tarzan this week’s best performer.

Perfect Cineplex

The Legend of Tarzan* ($46.6M) x2 / Central Intelligence ($15.4M) / Free State of Jones ($5.3M) / Captain America: Civil War ($950k) x4 = $126,677,338

*Best Performer of the Weekend = 2M bonus

Coming Attractions

No time for an intro, but just enough time for what’s coming out this weekend…

The Secret Life of Pets ($826)

I’ve been watching trailers and commercials for this movie for months (seriously, they advertised this thing in the first round of the NBA playoffs, which was April!) and I kept thinking it was going to be terrible. The reason being that it didn’t look like it had a plot. It looked like it was just stringing together lots of funny gags about the silly things animals do at home. Dainty poodle enjoys metal music. Weiner Dog uses mixer to scratch belly. Cat acts like asshole. That one’s funny because it’s no change from what they always do. It reminded me a lot of Minions, which shouldn’t be a surprise this movie is done by the same production house Illumination, where they were like, “Lets just take cute characters, start animating and figure out the story as we go.”

So I was thinking to myself, this movie has no plot, at least a movie like Finding Nemo had the plot of, “We need to find Nemo.” I then watched this trailer. This movie has the plot of Finding Nemo. So, it’s going to make a billion dollars. Literally. This movie has everything you need to make a billion dollars: Animation, talking animals, the fact that it’s pretty good (it scores about 76%), and of course, the biggest moneymaker around, Kevin Hart. Millions of children will go see this over and over and over again. Then they will go see The Secret Life of Pets 2 and 3 over and over and over again. This movie has now become a permanent part of our lives. Get ready to see these three faces on backpacks and small T-shirts for a very long time:

Estimates for this movie are very good. Box Office Mojo has it around $85 million, where Box Office Pro has it at a more conservative, yet still impressive $79 million. Also, Fandango is reporting presales are actually higher than Finding Dory. Let’s hear from their PR department:

” ‘The Secret Life of Pets’ tops Fandango’sFanticipation movie buzz indicator this week with an off-the-leash 94 points out of 100 points, and rules Fandango’s weekend ticket sales. “

God, I love that it’s someone’s actual job to sit there and write that bullshit to then deliver to news organizations.

Anyway, estimates of $82 million with a price of $826 gives us an estimated average of $99k per bux. That’s good, but it might not be good enough to use up more than 80% of your budget with one movie. Remember Finding Dory broke records with a $135 million opening weekend, and made $152k per Bux, but it still wasn’t the right play that weekend.

Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates ($157)

This movie looks wicked dumb… and I kinda want to see it. Like not spend $15 to see it. But when one of your friends brings it over on DVD because they saw it on sale at Walmart, I’m definitely all in for that.

And guess what? It is wicked dumb. It comes in around 47%. Reviews include phrases like “barely coherent,” “occasionally funny,” “surprise-free,” “deliriously dirty,” “a temper tantrum of a comedy,” “cheap laziness,” and my favorite, and maybe most damning, “brotastic.”

Quickly, why is Adam DeVine the preferred Workaholic? He’s not even the funniest one. And here’s my hot take: the funniest Workaholic is Anders. But still, Blake should be getting bit parts in basically every movie. Especially dirty comedies like this.

Estimates are in the $10 million range, and with a cost of $157 Bux, that puts it’s estimates average at around $64k per Bux. Do not bring this movie as your date to… this pun has nowhere to go, sorry. Don’t pick this movie.

Our Kind of Traitor ($12)

This came out last weekend, but wasn’t available. It only showed in 373 theaters and made $1.2 million. That’s better than a previous John Le Carre adaption, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which opened to $310k in 4 theaters. This one is pretty good, scoring 68%. Let’s just say this makes a million, that averages out to about $83k per Bux. Not the best, but might be a good filler if you do go with the big guns like Pets.

Swiss Army Man ($12)

This looks like the weirdest, craziest, strangest movie ever. And in that vain, this movie won the award for best director at Sundance, while prompting people to walk out in the middle of it. To which I say, if you’re offended by a farting corpse and don’t think it’s hilarious, you, sir or ma’am, are taking yourself WAAAAAY to seriously.

This movie came out last weekend too, but wasn’t available for lineups. It made $1.6 million in 636 theaters. Again, if you’re looking for a filler movie, this could be a good choice, probably better than Our Kind of Traitor. I’ll probably grab it, just because farts are always funny.

Sumofale – Week 6

Posted on July 1, 2016 by rhysnice

Happy 4th of July! Nothing like celebrating America’s 2016th birthday with some burgers, ice cold Americas and explosions. So here now are some rules to help you enjoy your 4th of July.

Rule 1: Watch Independence Day at least once. Independence Day is now on HBO GO. Watch it this weekend and remember just how fucking great that movie is. It’s also the perfect movie for this type of weekend. Put it on in the background while you put together the pasta salad. Feel free to leave the room to go put ice in the cooler, when you come back there will still be one more national monument yet to be blown up. Last year, AMC marathoned that shit all day, on repeat. Unfortunately, they’re not doing that again this year, and are instead showing a marathon of Jaws and Jaws 2. Which leads me too…

Rule 2: Watch Jaws, at least once. Blake Lively’s got nothing on this guy:

Rule 3: Drink a beer outdoors. It’s scientifically proven that beer tastes 37-48% better when drank outside.

Rule 4: Spend time outdoors. I know Rule 1 & 2 just advocated for watching TV, but July 4th is meant to be spent outside. It’s going to be hot as balls a lot of the time, so there will be a time when you need spend a few precious hours in the A/C watching Vivica A. Fox save a dog from an explosion inside that tunnel. But until that time, go to the beach, a park, a Bar-B-Que, a porch, a roof deck, a pool, a beer garden, anything. It’s July 4th, you should spend the weekend sweating your ass off and smelling almost like BO, just like our forefathers did.

Rule 5: Go to a Bar-B-Que. There is nothing better cooking meat on a fire. It’s basically the first things we learned to do as humans. Before toilet paper, before clothes, hell, before talking, there was putting meat on the fire and then eating it.

Rule 6: Don’t take pictures of fireworks. Just stop it. You’re blocking everyone else’s view. You’re phone camera is not that good. The pictures are not going to come out. And if by some miracle they do come out halfway-decent, you’re never going to look at them. Are you really going to go back 3 years from now and go “Oh look, this is a picture of those blurry streaks of white on an all black background. Such good memories.”? No. No, you are not. God help the other people you show those pictures too.

Instead, watch the fireworks like a normal person. Experience them. Take it all in. There will always be that one firework that catches you off-guard, either it’s fucking HUGE or there’s that big BOOM that comes when you’re not expecting it. You don’t want to be looking at your phone when that happens. If you want pretty pictures of fireworks just Google it. Here, look, there’s tons of ’em:

Screen Shot 2016-06-30 at 8.29.31 PM.png

Those look better than anything you could every hope to get with your iPhone. So put it away.

Rule 7: Give yourself a soundtrack. When you’re outside at the beach, or the park, or a Bar-B-Que, or a porch, or a roof deck, or a pool, or a beer garden, and your drinking that beer, music will make that experience all the better. It’s been scientifically proven that music will improve your outdoor chilling experience by 42-56%. Suggestions include: Pandora’s “Hip Hop BBQ” station, Spotify’s “Beach Vibes” playlist, your own custom playlist that obviously includes Tom Petty, Prince, and Snoop Dogg, or just Chance the Rapper’s Coloring Book on repeat over and over and over again.

Rule 8: You don’t have to drink shitty beer. Look, I know Budweiser put “America” on the goddamn can, but don’t drink that shit. I drank one two years ago, because “Fuck it, it’s 4th of July, and the can is basically an American flag.” Well, it tasted like Ollie pissed on said American flag and then someone rang it out into a glass. There are so many good beers out there, and so many of them are great for drinking in the summer. There are session IPAs, pilsners, radlers, shandys, wheat beers, goses and more. If you’re looking for some suggestions, here’s a list compiled by a guy I’ve met like twice. There are so many different types of beers and they all taste different and not at all like shit. And guess what? They still fuck you up! So, why not drink something delicious that ALSO gets you drunk .

Rule 9: Be subtle about your love for ‘Merica. Look, nobody needs to be wearing anything close to this (on sale for JUST $29.99!!). No American flag shirts, no american flag bandannas, no American flag skirts, especially no American Flag tank tops. These things make you look like a douchebag, so just don’t. Unless you’re 19, and then of course, you’re most definitely a douchebag. An American flag bathing suit is maybe the only article of clothing that could be okay. As long as you’re at the beach. And 45.

Okay, maybe this okay.

Rule 10: Drink a fruity cocktail. Preferably with a ton of ice in it.

Rule 11: Don’t set off fireworks. Leave that shit to the professionals. And not the professional football players:

Have fun this 4th of July and be safe!

Weekend Breakdown

Tanya won the weekend with a perfect lineup. She took my advice and took Blake Lively’s shark-fighting fake boobs 7 times, then filled out the one remaining slot with The Conjuring 2 ($7.7M). The Shallows made $16.7M this weekend which was enough to be the weekend’s best performer at $133K per Bux. Tanya played the best performer ($2M) 7 times and also had the perfect lineup ($5M), meaning this week she received an extra $19M in bonuses.

I came in second, opting for Central Intelligence ($18.2M) and Now You See Me 2 ($5.6M) in my non-shark infested slots. Andy played a combination of Central Intelligence (x2), The Shallows (x3), The Conjuring 2 (x2) and Now You See Me 2, which was enough to earn him 3rd place. No one else played The Shallows, except Danielle who went with an undersea theme this weekend playing only Finding Dory ($73M) and The Shallows once. I’m going to send Danielle a text at 6:30am on Friday to tell her to set her lineup. Sean also played The Shallows, but only once. And also went with the Civil War drama, Free State of Jones ($7.6M), because of course he did.

Perfect Cineplex

The Shallows* ($7.7M) x 7 / The Conjuring 2 ($5M) = $144,308,270

*Best Performer of the Weekend = 2M bonus

Coming Attractions

Like I said, you should be spending this weekend either outside or streaming Independence Day. But here’s what’s coming out this weekend (Note, it’s a 4-day weekend WOOT! so box-office estimates and totals will include Friday through Monday):

The BFG ($463)

Man, it’s a good thing I don’t have kids. I’d be reading to them at night, and they’d be in their jammies, nestled in their little beds, and I’d go “And then the Big Fucking Giant turned to Sophie and said…” and then I’d be in trouble.

Anyway, this movie looks gorgeous and has generally positive reviews, coming in at 71% on the Tomatometer. It also has going for it Steven Spielberg and recent Oscar winner Mark Rylance. It also has the nostalgia factor of being a beloved children’s book. I don’t remember if I read this book or not, which means I was probably told to read this book by several people and I started it, but never finished it. Just like The Witches, James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Unfortunately, Finding Dory is going to turn every other movie this weekend into fish food. The BFG is estimated to only make $19.5 million this weekend. With a steep price of $463 Bux, The BFG gives you an estimated $42k per Bux average. That is neither Big nor Fucking Giant.

Purge: Election Year ($336)

I think even if every crime were legal for one night, torturing and killing people is probably still low on my list of crimes I’d do during the Purge. I think I’d just steal stuff. I definitely wouldn’t be runnin’ around a’ murderin’ people. If the Purge were real, I’d just quit my job and spend the whole year planning the most elaborate heist to do during that night. The rest of the year, I’d live my life like Danny Ocean. Oh man, I kinda want the Purge to be real now. This guy’s got the right idea:

I do not understand the Purge. If I made a movie about a night without laws, it would be just me dining and dashing at fancy restaurants.

— Jesse David Fox (@JesseDavidFox) June 30, 2016

So, it looks like The Purge: Election Year is actually pretty good. It’s rated around 65%, which is pretty interesting because The Purge rated 37% and The Purge Anarchy rated 56%. But after reading a few reviews, it seems like maybe they managed to make the same kinda fun, but kinda dumb movie, but lucked into releasing it at a time when it seems pretty realistic that there would be an election to determine whether or not we get to run around and kill people with no consequences.

Good or bad, The Purge franchise has a pretty good track record at the box office. The first one opened to $34 million. The second Purge opened to $29 million two years ago. Estimates for the third Purge, or Thurge, come in around the same place as the other two, at $30 million. With a price of $336 Bux, that makes for an estimated average of $90k per Bux, which is pretty damn good. I’ll be voting for The Purge this weekend.

The Legend of Tarzan ($349)

This movie looks terrible. Like really, really bad. Don’t even go see this movie for all the Alexander Skarsgård shirtlessness. That’s what True Blood is for. That show has just as much terrible plot, lack of chemistry, over the top acting and bad CGI animals as this movie, but at least on True Blood you’ll get to see Skarsgård’s wang.

This movie comes in at 34% and I imagine by the time I post this, that’ll go down as even more bad reviews come in. Estimates are at around $23 million. That gives you an average of $66k per Bux. This legend should be forgotten.

Shade of the Week

Screen Shot 2016-06-30 at 11.01.51 PM.png

Everyone have an awesome and safe 4th of July!

Sumofale Week 5

Posted on June 24, 2016July 1, 2016 by rhysnice

I know I don’t really talk about sports on this particular blog and I keep it to movies instead, but this is my blog and I can do what I want and I couldn’t stop thinking about two plays all week. You may not care about sports, or maybe you like basketball but hate soccer, or it could be the other way around. Two things happened this week, two days apart, one in the NBA playoffs and one in the Copa America Centenario semifinal, that were, by every definition of the word, amazing. I’m reminded of a scene from one of my favorite shows, Sports Nite. It’s a scene where Casey’s on the phone with his kid, who he has a bad relationship with. It’s late at night and he tells him to turn on the TV even though it’s past his bedtime. There’s this guy running and he’s about to break the world record for the 15,000 meters. Casey tells his son that he’ll fill him in on what the significance of this even means, but for now, he tells him to “just watch.”

On Sunday, Lebron James did everything he could to win the NBA Finals, including this block. Just watch:

On Tuesday Lionel Messi imposed his will on a soccer game and showed the USA they have a long way to go to consider themselves a contender. He did a lot of things during that game, but he scored one of the most ridiculous goals I’ve ever seen. Just watch:

The thing that got me was that these two guys who are considered the best in the world at what they do, elevated their game to a level that was so amazing, it kind of became unbelievable. They’re moments that just kind of leave you shocked. It doesn’t make sense that these people are part of our species.

What was also amazing was how similar and different both these plays were. Lebron is a giant monster of a man. He’s the closest thing we have to what a superhero would look like in real life. Lebron is everywhere. He’s probably the second most famous person in America, next to the president. For that block, he ran full speed, the length of the court, jumped higher than anyone else and smashed the ball against the backboard like it was a grape, if you were some weird person who smashes grapes against the window. Messi is not a giant man. He’s quite small. Look at him in that picture, he’s like an adorable, little hedgehog. He doesn’t talk during his commercials. Before that goal, he takes a moment and reties his shoes. He had all the time in the world to take that kick. It was just him and that ball. And he bent it through time in space into a part of the goal that was unsavable.

Even though they did it in very different ways, both of these men looked at the ball, said “Fuck that, I’m not losing tonight,” imposed their will on a round piece of leather, and nothing was the same for the other team after that. The other team was destined to lose after that moment. It’s like they’re two sides of the same impossibly, amazing coin.

That shit is amazing. You don’t just GET to do that. You can’t always get what you want. It’s true, they even wrote a song about it. Most people can’t just think they’re going to do something better than everyone else, and it actually happens*. I can’t do that with anything in my life, unless it’s eating too much and feeling bad about myself.

*See Trump, Donald

They even both have a singular name that is synonymous with greatness. Jen and I went to Boston again last weekend to go see Argentina play, and I kept describing Messi as the “Lebron of soccer” to my non-soccer savvy friends. In a completely different conversation, when someone asked “How is Argentina so good, I thought it was just Messi?” and I compared it to how Lebron carried those shitty Cavs teams to the finals all those years when it was just him. Somewhere in Europe or South America, that same conversation is happening, just with the two names are switched.

And it turns out they aren’t just carrying their teams or are surrounded by inferior talent. Argentina also has 4 or 5 World Class players and 9 or 10 more great players. The Cavs have a bunch of past and future All-Stars. And whatever you classify JR Smith as. And Lebron was playing against the two-time MVP, Steph Curry, and NBA All-Defense winner Draymond Green. This is what makes these moments even more unbelievable. There they were, in the middle of all this other talent, and just said “Nah. My turn.” They took an already-raised bar, and bunny hopped right over it. It’s like that video that was going around right after Prince passed away, of him playing with all these other rock superstars at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame George Harrison tribute:

Prince is on stage with Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Steve Winwood, and Dhani Harrison. And when it comes time for him to solo, it’s like Prince looks around and goes, “Y’all are cute. Watch this.” And he FUCKING RIPS it.

Look, you may not understand sports, but you get that Prince reference. It’s that feeling you get when you watch greatness. It’s the feeling you get when you finish the train heist episode in Breaking Bad. It’s that feeling when you see [great painting] in person by [great painter guy]. It’s that feeling of, “Holy shit. That’s amazing. Seriously, no one else on Earth can do that,” and enjoying the hell out of it.

And that’s what sports do for me at the end of the day. I get to watch someone do something that no one else on the planet can do and enjoy the hell out of it. And on a day like today when the news feels like a stream of headlines from the Onion and people are making stupid decisions based on, basically, spite, it’s nice to have something that you can look at and makes you think “That’s incredible” and it puts a smile on your face. Just watch:

(and listen)

Weekend Breakdown

Welp, for the first week, I did not come in first place. I decided to put all my fish eggs in one basket and ride with Finding Dory. You’d think this was a good decision, as Finding Dory broke the record for most money made by an animated movie in an opening weekend, with $135 million. That’s enough for 19th ever, overall, as well. Many of us tried to FIND success with Dory (get it?!), which lead to a very close weekend, where 6 of us were only separated by $8 million. But alas, Dory was not the right play this weekend. The right play was to ROCK out with Central Intelligence ($35.5M) and Alice Through the Looking Glass ($4.3M), which was this weekend’s best performer at $204K per Bux!!

Danny* was able to grab first place this weekend with $159 million. Danny went with Dory, but also managed to take Alice 3 times, which lead to a $6 million bonus. I came in second, $10 million back from Danny, followed very closely (<$400k) by Jenny*, as we both swam with Dory and didn’t manage to take this week’s best performer. Tanya (4th), Andy (6th) and Sean (8th) went the Central Intelligence route, but didn’t manage to grab the perfect lineup. Danielle came in 7th this week, because she only used 4 movies. Leaving slots open loses you money! Stop this! Do I need to explain how the internet works? If you click on a movie you add it. If you click on it, while it’s in your roster, you can remove it. Look, I know you may think, “Oh Dory will make so much money, I can afford to lose the $6 million that 3 empty slots penalizes me” but you can’t. If you weren’t penalized that $6 million, you’d have been in fourth place this week and… okay you’d still be in the same place overall, but stop it! Help me, help you.

*I think*

*I don’t actually think, I know. But I wanted to keep the joke going for one more week.

Perfect Cineplex:

Central Intelligence ($35.5M) x 4 / Alice Through the Looking Glass* ($4.3M) x4 = $172,304,040

*Best Performer of the Weekend = 2M bonus

Coming Attractions

Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum vs. Aliens, again. Matthew McConaughey vs. the South, and maybe the North too, or perhaps he takes on the whole Civil War. Blake Lively vs. a Shark. Me vs. my couch, because I’m not seeing any of ’em.

Independence Day: Resurgence ($620)

The first one was ID4. So this one would be ID4 2? Is that then ID8? ID16*?

Why is Will Smith not in this movie? He should be sitting next to Jeff Goldblum with a salt and pepper beard saying stuff like “I still have GOT to get me one of these!” and “Welcome back to Earff!” Come on! Grumpy Old Men fight space aliens is way better than some bullshit about living up to your dead father’s… blah blah blah snoooooooze. We already have Goldblum just silverfoxing it all over the screen and Bill Pullman’s beyond scruffy beard. They even brought Data back! No one wants to see the lesser Hemsworth and… I honestly have no idea who that kid is.

The movie gods were not happy at the exclusion of the Fresh Prince and in result, this movie is not that great. It comes in at 46%. Most of the reviews describe it as “like the first one but not quite as good and a lot more blow-uppy.” It seems like it just depends whether a particular critic likes that or not, because they either describe it as “Over the top and fun!” or “Over the top and tired.” The original Independence Day is rated 15% better, at 61% and the reviews are very similar: “I’d love this if I was 10,” “Big, loud, cheesy”. But when we’ve been seeing that for 20 years and 4 Transformers movies, people probably are going to get tired of it. Especially, if there’s no Will Smith! All this of course means Andy and Tanya will love it.

Independence Day opened to $45 million and went on to make over $300 million. It is also one of the top-10 grossing movies released before the year 2000. Estimates have it making around $50 million this weekend. At $620 Bux, the $80k per Bux average is good but there may be some better deals to be had.

*I learned that this one is #IDR. LAME.

Free State of Jones ($147)

This is basically The Patriot in the Civil War. Except not as good. Not even close. And The Patriot wasn’t even that good!

This movie sucks apparently. It scores only 35% on the Tomatometer. It sounds like they used up all the action scenes in the trailer because critics consistently say this shit it boring. This movie would probably more interesting if it was a two and a half hour Lincoln commercial. At least high school history teachers can take a week off in June next year by showing this mess.

Estimates for this movie are around $9.5 million. At $147 Bux, that’s only $64k per Bux. Leave this one to die on the battlefield.

The Shallows ($126)

I can’t get over when that one dude just gets completely gobbled up by the jumping shark. I know they do that shit when they’re chasing seals, and it’s absolutely terrifying. But they don’t do that when it’s a surfer not swimming away from them, right? I’m gonna say right. Let me have this. I like the ocean. I don’t wanna be scared of the ocean for the rest of my life. SHARKS DON’T EXIST.

So the shark, gobbles up one dude. Then another dude. Then spends hours waiting to eat Blake Lively? You don’t think Mr. Shark would lose interest and just swim off to go eat mad fishes? On second thought, it does kinda make sense. Ollie will stick his nose up at the counter for like 45 minutes if he thinks he’ll get a scrap of something.

By the way, speaking of Mr. Shark, if you have 5 (more) minutes, you should read this. I think if I ever made it to become a professional writer, this is the perfect example of what I’d strive for.

So this movie is really good! This movie comes in at 74% fresh. Apparently it’s simple, intense, well made, and most importantly, 86 minutes. The funny thing is that as soon as I saw this trailer, I thought, “Oh I’ve seen this movie, it was called Open Water,” and that movie scored a 72%. Critics like them some simple shark movies.

Lead by positive reviews, people’s love of scary movies, huge social media love, and Shark Week beginning on Sunday this movie is estimated to pull in between $12 and $13 million. At the price of $126, that’s a $103k per Bux average! I will definitely be taking Blake Lively and her fake boobs on my team this week.

The Neon Demon ($37)

Ugh, hardest of passes. I don’t know what I think about this movie, but none of it is positive. But here are some people who found some words to say about this movie (Spoiler: They’re not positive either):

Screen Shot 2016-06-23 at 10.15.34 PM.png

Screen Shot 2016-06-23 at 10.15.51 PM.png

Screen Shot 2016-06-23 at 10.16.01 PM.png

“A special kind of awful,” “dumbfoundingly awful,” and “hot garbage.” Yeah, this movie sucks.

It costs $37 and estimated to make $2.5 million. That’s an average of $70k per Bux. It’s probably best we never speak of this movie again.

Shade of the Week

Screen Shot 2016-06-23 at 9.25.00 PM.png

Set your lineups before noon! Have a good weekend!

Sumofale Week 4

Posted on June 16, 2016June 17, 2016 by rhysnice

I travelled to Boston this weekend, and here’s a little spoiler. Doesn’t suck! I know a lot of us moved away to the big, super cool city and were like “Oh, Boston is lame. It’s all just Irish pubs that don’t stay open past 1am.” But that’s not true. Well, not entirely. First of all, who the fuck is staying out past midnight anymore? Not this guy! The NBA finals start at 9 each night and it makes me want to die. I’m all about day drinking then getting 8-plus hours of sleep. AND THEN having my Sunday.

Also, not just shitty Irish pubs anymore. Sure, the Black Rose is still there. But the beer scene is off the chain. Honestly, craft breweries are so prevalent these days, it’s hard to find a town that doesn’t have a decent craft beer scene. That said, I had some great, great beers in Boston. They even have good shit at Gillette Stadium. Sure, it costs $17 and comes in a “novelty” cup that is just a green silhouette of a soccer player kicking a blue ball on a yellow background and doesn’t even mention Brazil or Copa America. But, the again, so do the Bud Lights.

The food was delicious too. Gone are the days of paste-like clam chowder. We had some nachos with blue crab all over them that made me want to tear my shirt off they were so good. Just go Hulk Hogan all over that place. Leg drop a morherfucker through a table.

And all these cool things that happen in New York? I can’t do them because the other 700 million people who live here are doing them too. Nothing like hearing about something that’s the best ever, then waiting in line for 13 hours to tell me their sold out of deep fried sneakers.

The T is still really small and slow. But at least you can recharge your Charlie Card on the internet.

Weekend Breakdown

Tanya and I had basically the same team of Now You See Me 2 ($22.4M), Me Before You ($9M) and 5 Alice Through the Looking Glass(es) ($5.6M). The only difference was I had a second Me Before You and Tanya went with Captain America: Civil War ($4.3M). Alice ended up being the best performer of the weekend, which added $10M to each of our scores. I’m leading Tanya by about $46M at this point. I just have to not pull a Golden State Warriors at this point and blow this at the end.

Danielle and Danny* both brought in $66M going with a Now You See Me 2, Warcraft ($24.2M) and Me Before You tandem. Liz and Jenny* were only $2M and $4M back, respectively. Andy had a solid team of good value movies, playing Me Before You three times and Alice twice, but didn’t have a heavy hitter like Now You See Me or Warcraft.

*I think

The real question is what happened to Sean. Look at Sean’s team:

Screen Shot 2016-06-16 at 8.52.25 PM.png

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 ($14.4M) only cost $224 Bux last week. Captain America 3 cost $60 Bux, used twice is $120. I don’t know how much The Lobster costs anymore, but it couldn’t have been $656 which is how much money Sean had left after picking those three movies. What the hell happened? Did he realize that he’s been in last for many past seasons, so he just sabataged himself to keep the status quo? Did the power go out as he was submitting his lineup? Did Liz get caught up in the competition and hack into Sean’s account*? Did he get attacked by a dinosaur? Did he get attacked by Chris Pratt? Let’s hope so

*This is why I don’t let Jen play

Coming Attractions

This week is ridiculous. Ridiculous. I want to see both of these movies and they both look great. They both look like they could make a ton of money and together they both cost more than $1000 Bux, which means you can’t own both of them at the same time. It’s time to see which corner you’re on. Pixar or The Rock?

Finding Dory ($885)

I have so many mixed feelings about this movie. One the one hand, Finding Nemo is a perfect movie. Original, funny, moving. It’s amazing. It scored a 99% on Rotten Tomatoes. I actually looked up the one bad review on RT and the one complaint is, “too kidsy” So I felt there’s no need to make a sequel.

On the other hand, apparently this movie is as perfect as you can get without being Finding Nemo. Right now it rates at 95%. Any of the negative reviews echo my hesitation for why their doing a sequel, again claim it’s too kidsy, or are taking themselves too seriously.

Finding Nemo opened to $70 million. But Finding Dory is going to do much, much better than that. Pixar sequels have all increased their opening take over their predecessors by anywhere from to 10% (Cars 2) to 96% (Toy Story 2). Estimates have Finding Dory breaking the record for largest opening weekend by an animated movie, a record currently held by Shrek the Third with $121.6 million. Fandango reports have it already as the top pre-sold animated movie of all time, beating out Minions. Finding Dory is now the most Fanticipated™ animated movie of all time*. Box Office Mojo estimates it’ll make $124 million, and Box Office Pro estimates $131 million. Let’s average those together to say $127.5 million. Even at Dory’s stiff price of $885 Bux, it’s still a $144k per Bux average. If this breaks all kinds of records, you’ll be kicking yourself for not taking it, even if it means you can’t pick The Rock and Kevin Hart. By the way, if you take this you have $115 Bux left and seven slots. Don’t leave slots open! The Nice Guys, looking to make around $1M, at $7 Bux is a good cineplex filler-outter.

*Fuck Fandango and fuck marketing, in general.

Central Intelligence ($225)

I’m so in on this movie, it doesn’t even matter if it’s good or not. Reviews are mixed to good-ish, coming in at 60%. Many of the reviews fall into the “I can’t believe I enjoyed myself,” “Dumb but really fun,” “Wait, The Rock is funny?” or “Turn your brain off and enjoy” category.

This is by the same director as We’re the Millers, which made $26 million in it’s opening weekend, but did really well in following weekends, never losing more than 40% from the previous weekend. That means it gained buzz as it went, wasn’t as bad as it looked, and people saw it multiple times. This bodes well for Central Intelligence. Also boding well for this movie is Kevin Hart. People love that tiny man. 4 out of his last 5 movies have averaged almost $30 million in their opening weekend.

Also, this movie’s tagline of “Saving the World takes a Little Hart and a Big Johnson” is pretty much the best tagline since 1997’s Volcano with “The Coast is Toast.”

Both Box Office Mojo and Box Office Pro put this one in the $34-$35 million range. At $225 Bux, that’s an average of $156k per Bux. Uh oh, does it make more sense to load up on 2 or 3 Central Intelligence(s) than to take Dory? Make your decision quickly. Cineplexes are locked at noon.

Have a great weekend!!

Shade of the Week

Sumofale Week 3

Posted on June 9, 2016 by rhysnice

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows won the weekend, making about $35M. Those results were even worse when you take into account it’s high FML price of $750, which lead to a lineup-crushing $47k per Bux performance.* The $35M take was about 45% less than the original’s opening weekend gross of $65M. This is interesting because this is just yet another movie in a long line of sequels that is performing about 40% worse than it’s predecessor. X-Men: Apocalypse, Alice Through the Looking Glass, The Huntsman: Winter’s War, Ride Along 2, Allegiant. These are all sequels to “popular” movies and/or franchises that have underperformed compared to the movie before them, some by 10s of millions of dollars. Many of these movies had a similar budget to the original, and almost half of them had a budget that was higher! That means the studios are spending the same amount of money, if not more, on movies that are making less money. Does this mean we’re going to stop seeing a run of sequels that we don’t want? Probably not. These movies still perform well internationally. With the exception of Alice, all the sequels mentioned above have made their money back (or close to it) overseas. X-Men has made nearly a half BILLION dollars internationally, to date. So we’re going to see more and more and more sequels, just with more and more Chinese and Russian product integration. I don’t understand why Trump wants to stop sending jobs to China, we’re sending all our movies over there, and it’s making us money on products that should be losing money.** That’s basically his business model right, make money on things that fail?

*A quick note on this: I mention this a lot because I’ve learned it’s the best way to do well in this format. The better your movie does per FML Bux the better your team does, which intrinsically should make sense; if a movie does well for a low price, your team overall has a better chance of doing well. Add on top of that the $2M bonus for Best Performer of the weekend and these are the movies you want to target. I’ve found that movies in the $100k per Bux range tend to be Best Performers. When making selections if it’s estimated to be in the $70k-$80k range that is more than likely going to perform well for your team. The FMLnerd does a really good job breaking this stuff down every week, if you’re into that type of thing.

**I’ve made this joke before, but I don’t care, I like it. When Avengers: Infinity War parts I & II come out, we should just let everyone in China see them as many times as they want for free. In return, they forgive all of our debt they own. This is a plan so simple, it has to work and in no way has any drawbacks.

The other important movie news involves my jam, Me Before You. This movie pulled in $18 million, which at it’s price of $184 led it to become this week’s Best Performer at $101k per Bux. All hail Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains, Constant Friend-Zoner, Khal Murker, Hardest-Working Woman in Show Business, Costco Executive Member, Dertie Gertie, Third Splash Brother, AND Best Performer of Fantasy Movie Leagues.

Weekend Breakdown

I now lead by $40 million thanks to 5Xing Me Before You, which totaled $104 million after adding in a $10M bonus. I’m so much better at this game than all of you!!! This is like playing T-Ball with a bunch of 6 year olds and just cranking home runs*.

*I thought the picture of this was so funny that I figured someone had already done it. I scoured YouTube but only found adults playing with children the way you’re supposed to play with children. The closest thing I could find was this.

Also riding the Me Before You dragon was Tanya and Danielle, because of course she did. I can’t think of a more ‘Danielle’ movie than Me Before You, with the exception of any movie staring The Rock. Tanya is still in second, but Danielle has jumped up from last to 6th.

Tanya’s big downfall was doubling up on Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping ($4.7M). I meant to mention this last week, but this is a lesson I learned with using Keanu in back-to-back weeks: niche comedies (comedies staring actors/comedians with cult followings) do not do well in this game, which sucks, because you REALLY want to ride with them, but they just don’t make enough money. Again, I meant to tell you this last week. Sorry.

Andy* and Jenny* are in 4th and 5th, respectively, and only separated by $4 million. Sean drops from 5th to 6th this week.

*I think

Liz pulled a Coach Norman Dale from Hoosiers, “My team is on the floor” and left spots open:

Liz has huge balls. But she also did very poorly this week choosing a cineplex that only made $51M and then lost $2M for every slot she left open. She’s now in 7th place, $30M ahead of Danny*, who’s come in 7th two weeks in a row.

*I think

Best Cineplex:

Me Before You* ($18.7M) x5 / Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising ($4.7M) x1 / Zootopia ($753.7K) x2 = $114,987,156

*Best Performer of the Weekend = 2MM bonus

Coming Attractions

The fare for this weekend looks pretty bad. You should make other plans. Go to the beach. Fly a kite. Watch tons and tons of soccer. Anyway, here’s what’s coming out this weekend.

The Conjuring 2 ($606)

BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA!!! So scary and all of it is true! Every part of it. It all happened. Totally real. Evil nuns and everything.

Holy crap! This movie is actually pretty good. It comes in at 67% on the tomatometer. And the bad reviews are mainly “Oh, it’s not as good as the first one.” HOLY SHIT! I just looked and the first one was really good. That one comes in at 86%! I have no idea how to handle this.

The first one made $41 million and estimates for this one are in a similar range, coming in at around $35 million. However, at the steep price of $606, that only gives you a $57k per Movie Bux, which is not very good.

Now You See Me 2 ($359)

Hey look, another sequel!

I have so many questions about this movie: Are they all SUPPOSED to be super douchey? I know magic is lame, check that, magicians are lame, but isn’t having all their “magic tricks” be CGI even lamer? Why is there no token black guy on their little team of magicians?* I suggest we replace Jesse Eisenberg with Michael B. Jordan. Tell me this movie didn’t just become 15% better. I wonder if they replaced Isla Fisher’s character with a new character played by Lizzy Caplan, or if the producers were just like, “Just switch her out, nobody will notice the woman anyway” And is Isla Fisher too good for this movie? Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for Lizzy Caplan getting some burn, but there is literally NO ONE too good for this movie. Morgan Freeman does all his scenes in a jail cell, meaning he did the whole thing from some sounds stage in Malibu. In between takes, Woody Harelson and Mark Ruffalo are probably discussing what prep school to make a donation to with the money they make from this. I’m pretty sure you can see Michael Cane actually cashing his checks in the background of one of those scenes. And Harry Potter was like, “I’m just not gonna shave my beard. Cheers!”

This movie is bad. It rates 35% on Rotten Tomatoes. I don’t really have anything else to say about it. It’s bad.

Estimates put it at $26 million, which is slightly worse than it’s predecessor’s opening weekend of $29 million. $29 million? That’s it?! Why are they making another of these? Anyway, with a price of $359 Bux, that puts it at a pretty good value around $75k per Bux. I’ll be grabbing this one.

*At this point I originally wrote: “How is Common not in this movie? This feels like a movie Common would be in.” Turns out he was in the first one!

Warcraft ($303)

I don’t really know how much clambering there was for this movie. The original Warcraft game, that looks like this is based on, came out in 1994. Warcraft became really popular in ten years later, when World of Warcraft came out. That game was MASSIVELY popular. At the height of its popularity, it had 12 million subscribers. But that was in 2010, which was six years ago! Since then, subscriptions have been falling and it was reported they were down to 5.5 million last year. But nothing like jumping on the popularity of a video game, 5 years too late. That’s pretty much why we got an Angry Birds movie, right? I guess we’re 3-4 years out from a Candy Crush movie. Ugh, the worst part about that is it’s probably true.

God, this movie looks terrible. I cannot name a single person in this movie, besides the guy from Vikings. But that’s what I know his name as, “the guy from Vikings.” But, on top of unknown actors, many of whom are CGI’d into Orcs, they all have names like Garona, Medivh, Llane Wrynn, Durotan, Orgrim, and Gul’dan. I really think Game of Thrones is so popular because George R.R. Martin just gave everyone normal, everyday names like Ned, Jaime, and Jon. That and the boobies.

Did anybody else notice that the “good” Orc is white-ish and the rest of the Orcs are green? Like, seriously? #AzerothSoWhite

Reviews say it’s even more horrible than you think it is. Rotten Tomatoes scores it at 23%. We don’t have to go through all of them, but it’s always fun to read bad reviews:

You know a movie is bad when two separate reviewers compare it to Battlefield Earth.

Ouch!

Yeesh! Let’s see how it’s doing internationally:

Oh the Brits. Always never funny.

Shit, even the Spaniards hated it.

And as always, less is more:

Estimates are $22 million and with it’s $303 price, that makes it worth about $72k per Bux, which is pretty good. But, based on how goddamn awful this movie looks and how poorly it’s being reviewed, I think it could underperform even compared to poor estimates. That said, it did apparently just break the IMAX opening day record in China by pulling in $5.3M across 290 IMAX screen. So there’s that.

Shade of the Week

Don’t forget to set your lineup, they’re locked at noon on Friday!

Sumofale Week 2

Posted on June 3, 2016 by rhysnice

I have a confession to make. After a long and fierce hatred of a certain movie star, I have changed my tune. I, in front of my friends and God, declare that I like Ryan Gosling.

There were many things for me to hate. The fact that he doesn’t look as tall as he actually is. The fact that he’s Canadian. I mean, the fact that I was hating on a short, Canadian man is basically my right as an American male. BUILD A WALL!! Keep the Canucks out! And you don’t even have to build it that high!

And this schlub is the standard for being attractive?

Hang on while I swoon.

Or this?

Oooooo I can really see how one would fall for the meth-head look. Come on ladies, get your shit together.

As you can see, I’ve built myself a pretty solid case for disliking the guy. Canadian, short, bum. QED. But then, I saw The Nice Guys this weekend. And this guy?

This is a guy I’m in on. Gosling in The Nice Guys is a 100 emoji raised to the power of a fire emoji. Dude is electric. This is a Gosling I can get behind (and who wouldn’t want to, amirite?!). He’s a hilarious, drunk asshole who is completely ridiculous, yet has still has goddamn swagger. Every time he wasn’t on the screen I thought, “Where’s Gosling? I need more of him. Give me all of The Gosling!”

You should go see The Nice Guys. It’s dope. Gosling’s the best, Russell Crowe is great, and the whole movie, top to bottom, is a blasty blast. You owe it to yourself to have some fun.

Recap of the weekend:

AWWWWW YEAH!!!! Guess who’s in motherfuckin’ first? This guy! And I don’t care if I’ve played before and you haven’t. I gave you all a chance to get at least 3 weeks of practice in. But no, you just wrote me off like you always do. Stupid Rhys and his stupid ideas. Well now I’m winning by $10 million. Suck it! I went all in on Captain America: Civil War ($20M) using it 6 times, coupling it with my new favorite movie, The Nice Guys ($8.3M), and Zootopia ($1.1M).

Other notes:

I have no idea whose team is whose, except for Tanya and Danielle, because they didn’t pick team names.
Of course Tanya would be good at this. She’s like a summer movie savant. In fact, she was the only one to get the Best Performer of the Week, Love & Friendship ($3.2M). If she had not filled out her lineup willy nilly, picking A Bigger Splash ($520K), Barbershop: The Next Cut ($320K) and Mother’s Day ($298K), but instead just gone L&F 4 times, she’d be sitting in the lead by about $4 million.
Back Row Funny Business and Moviefonebone picked the exact same lineup, but considering their lineups consisted of 4 of the top 6 most picked movies that week, it’s not that crazy,
Danielle and 60% of the time, I win everytime went all in on Angry Birds and got pooped on. Both had Angry Birds ($24.6M), Captain America, Neighbors 2 ($11.4M), The Jungle Book ($9.5M) and The Nice Guys in the front end of their lineups. Angry Birds just didn’t make enough money to warrant the $606 FML Bux price tag.
Best Cineplex:
- X-Men: Apocalypse ($79.8M) x1 / Captain America: Civil War ($20M) x1 / The Jungle Book ($9.5M) x1 / Love & Friendship* ($3.2M) x 5 = $140,094,243

*Best Performer of the Weekend = 2MM bonus

Coming Attractions

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows ($750)

Michael Bay has a PhD in ruining characters from our childhood. So far he’s destroyed Transformers (average Rotten Tomatoes score of all 4 movies is 35%) and created these weird looking, stupid Ninja Turtles. I bet he’s got something to do with the oddly large boobs on the suits in new Power Rangers movie. Why not stop there? How bout Thundercats? Or He-Man? Or M.A.S.K.? Or even Captain Planet? Just create a piece of hot garbage movie for every cartoon I enjoyed in my youth.* He even took time out of his busy schedule to ruin a classic RUN-DMC song for this trailer.

*If I were to go back and watch these shows, I know for sure they’d be bad. But the point remains that Michael Bay hasn’t been involved in a good movie since The Rock.

This movie looks horrible. Just freaking terrible. Reviews, not surprisingly, are awful. Rotten Tomatoes scores it at 31%. The first one made $65 million in its opening weekend and that one was rated 22%, so this one could produce regardless of its bad reviews. That said, Box Office Pro says the buzz for this one has been bad, noting “that less than half the Twitter buzz over the last week than its predecessor.” They predict it to pull in a less than spectacular $27 million. Even if it does better than that, at $750 FML Bux this one feels too risky for me.

Me Before You ($184)

This one’s your pretty standard love story plot: Daenarys Targaryen is hired to take care of crippled Finnick Odair. She’s quirky. He’s a grump. They fall in love. Her dragons burn him alive. What, you didn’t watch all the way to the end?

Reviews are mediocre, scored at 50%. Reviews describe it as the sap-fest that the trailer makes it out to be. But the Box Office Guy on FML points out that there is “a solid precedent of female driven movies doing solid business in June” including The Fault in Our Stars ($48M), The Proposal ($33M), The Lake House ($17M), The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (13.2M), The Notebook ($18M), Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood ($23M) and those movies averaged 55% on Rotten Tomatoes. Predictions are around $16 million which combined with the $184 price point is a good value. I’m all over this one. High risk, high reward baby!!

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping ($108)

I laughed out loud (the kids call it, LOLing) twice during this trailer. Once when his album was called “Thriller, Also” and then during the interview where he goes, “We’re like McCartney and… Kanye.” I also enjoyed the Adam Levine holograms grinding on each other.

I think this looks thoroughly enjoyable and pretty funny. I can’t wait to watch this on HBO some day next year when I’m home sick. Reviewers feel pretty much the same way (not the staying home from work part). It’s got a score of 79% and the reviews say its funny and fun, but you’ll probably forget about it as soon as you walk out of the theater.

Box Office Mojo and Box Office Pro both have estimates around $5 million, which makes this one’s price too high for this guy.

The Lobster ($24)

*Technically this movie has been out for a few weeks, but it’s getting more of a nationwide release this weekend and this is the first week it’s available on FML.

What really can you say about a movie where a guy goes to a retreat to find love, but if he doesn’t fall in love, he turns into a lobster? Apparently, you can say it’s great. It’s got a score of 91% on Rotten Tomatoes.

It made $750K last week in 116 theaters. It’s now been expanded into 550 theaters. I think it could make $1.5M – $2M, and at $24 it’s got serious best performer bonus potential.

Shade of the Week

Be sure to set your lineups…er cineplexes by noon!

Week 1 – Coming Attractions

Posted on May 25, 2016May 26, 2016 by rhysnice

The summer weather is officially here and my butt is fully prepared to sweat through my pants for 4 straight months. Are you ready for the hottest summer on record? Well get ready, because here’s the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s prediction for this summer:

The fact that it looks like an asshole is not a coincidence. Congrats, we’re fucked!

I was going to do a preview post, but it ended up basically being just a list of movies because I wanted to save the few decent jokes I had for the Coming Attractions post about those specific movies, so I ended up keeping those joke bullets in my joke gun. Or joke gun in its joke holster? Whatever. But I do have a few predictions…

Top 5 Grossing Movies

Captain America: Civil War
Finding Dory
Independence Day Resurgence
Suicide Squad
X-Men: Apocalypse

With no nostalgia dinosaurs to dominate the summer, Marvel superheroes are back to take all the money. There just doesn’t look like any other heavy hitters that could knock Captain America: Civil War out of the top spot, except maybe Finding Dory. Finding Nemo is probably one of the most beloved Pixar movies of all time, so a sequel is bound to make a ton of money. It was also the top grossing Pixar movie of all time, until Toy Story 3 came out in 2010, a movie that also happens to be a sequel to another beloved Pixar movie. The dark horse for this summer is Independence Day Resurgence. There apparently is a formula which takes a movie from 20 years ago and reboots it with current handsome, megastar and sprinkles in some “remember this?” and makes a gajillion dollars. It doesn’t even matter if the movie is good! I don’t think Suicide Squad looks particularly great, but people seem excited for it, so I think it’s going to do well. And X-Men could be terrible (more on that in a second!) and still make $100 million in its opening weekend.

Top 5 Floposauruses

Warcraft
Ben Hur
Star Trek Beyond
Bad Moms
Now You See Me 2

Warcraft could not look dumber, and with the amount of CGI they put in that thing and the amount of marketing their doing, they must’ve spent hundreds of millions on this piece of poop. It’s going to be a glorious disaster. I actually had Star Trek Beyond 2nd on this list but I’m just so offended by the idea of remaking Ben Hur, that I moved that one up. There is no world in which a Ben Hur remake is good. Especially one directed by the acclaimed director of such amazing cinematic masterpieces like Wanted and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Fuck this movie and fuck all the people at MGM/Paramount who thought this was a good idea. What did they think they could turn this into the Ben Hur expanded cinematic universe? I hope this loses ALL the money.

One more observation: This year has quite a few R-Rated comedies with very transparent titles. Take Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, which is basically the same exact plot as the first movie, but instead Chloe Grace Moretz and her sorority become the neighbors. Or Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates which stars Zac Efron and Adam DeVine as Mike and Dave who bring Anna Kendrick and Aubrey Plaza to a wedding, as their dates. Then there’s Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, starring Andy Samberg, as a popstar. There’s also Bad Moms, which features Mila Kunis and Kristen Bell as moms, who decide to be bad and Christina Applegate, who isn’t a bad mom. Sausage Party is an animated movie that stars the voices of Seth Rogan, Jonah Hill, Kristen Wiig, James Franco and others, as sausages. And finally there’s War Dogs, starring Jonah Hill and Miles Teller as gun runners in a time of war. It feels like Central Intelligence starring The Rock and Kevin Hart should belong on this list, but that movie’s only PG-13. These movies don’t look so bad, in fact many of them look really funny. It’s just their titles are very unoriginal.

Let’s get to this Week 1’s coming attractions.

(Note: I’ll be adding the FML pricing next to each movie, for reference)

X-Men: Apocalypse ($735)

This movie looks like the hottest of messes. Somehow the previous movie which contained two Professor X’s and two Magneto’s and TIME TRAVEL looks less confusing and bloated than this one.

Having Oscar Isaac play Apocalypse is setting off all my “Let’s have Tom Hardy play Bane, but cover-up his entire face and have him speak into an air conditioner” alarm bells.

If Mystique can alter the way she looks however she wants, then why does she have a bad dye-job? You’re telling me she CHOSE to have her roots showing? Nah bro.

According to reviews this movie is a “bumper-car disaster” (Hollywood Reporter) and a “kitchen-sink mess with a half dozen too many characters” (Entertainment Weekly) where director Bryan Singer had “so many possible directions…[and] chooses the least interesting one” (Slant) which makes it a “joyless technical exercise” (Movie Nation) with a “script [that] is just nonsense, comprised entirely of sarcastic asides, [and] portentous gobbledygook.” (Time Out New York) The rest of the reviews are, at best, mixed. Rotten Tomatoes has this scored at 48%. That makes it the second worst X-Men movie ever, only better than X-Men Origins: Wolverine (38%), a movie that starred Will I Am, made Tim Riggins look like this, and took that wise-cracking Deadpool guy you’ve heard so much about recently and sewed his mouth shut. And gave him sword arms. And lasers coming out of his eyes. So yeah, that movie was really dumb.

The price is high at $735 of your designated 1000 FML Bux (their word, not mine) and the reviews are bad to mixed, but X-Men: Days of Future Past made $110 million on Memorial Day weekend two years ago so it might be worth the high price tag.

Alice Through the Looking Glass ($501)

Ooooo featuring a White Rabbit cover by Pink! A Trent Reznor cover of Immigrant Song it is not.

I could not have less interest in seeing this movie. Why did they make this movie? It’s been SIX YEARS since Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. Are you like me, wondering why they are going back to this well? Well, (heh) Alice in Wonderland made over $116 million it’s opening weekend back in 2010. That’s the 25th highest grossing weekend ever, and at the time, it was the 6th! It went on to make $334 million which is more than Guardians of the Galaxy, Shrek the Third, Transformers and Iron Man.

Oh man is this movie bad, though. Rotten Tomatoes scores it at 30%, where the consensus seems to be: Looks amazing. The story? Not so much.

To me, $501 seems like a lot for a movie that has the potential to lose to both X-Men and Angry Birds.

Shade of the Week

Also playing this weekend

The Angry Birds Movie ($606)
Captain America: Civil War ($154)
Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising ($100)
The Jungle Book ($59)
The Nice Guys ($51)
Money Monster ($33)
The Darkness ($11)
Zootopia ($10)
Love & Friendship ($9)
The Huntsman: Winter’s War ($6)
A Bigger Splash ($6)
Mother’s Day ($5)
Barbershop: The Next Cut ($5)

Last Week’s Perfect Cineplex

The Angry Birds Movie* x2 / The Darkness x4 / The Huntsman: Winter’s War x1 / The Boss x1 = $98,244,000

*Best Performer of the Weekend = 2MM bonus

Remember your goal is to select a “cineplex” (I really want to say “team” here, and will probably just start doing that in like 3 weeks) consisting of 8 movies. Each movie has a set price, and you have $1000 to try and create the cineplex that makes the most money over the weekend. You can select movies multiple times. There is a 2MM bonus if you select the movie that has the best Gross to Price ratio (which you are eligible for if you select that movie multiple times). There’s also a 2MM penalty for every spot you leave open, so utilize those $5 movies.

Be sure to set your cineplexes, their locked at noon on Friday. Sumofale!

	se upp för dårarna on Week 1 – Coming Att…
	76Lashonda on Week 1 – Coming Att…
	Between a rock and a… on Sumofale – Week 11
	Between the Rock and… on Sumofale – Week 7
	Between the Rock and… on Sumofale Week 3

Author: rhysnice

Weekend Breakdown

Perfect Lineup

Coming Attractions

Suicide Squad (Fri: $708, Sat: $443, Sun: $355)

Nine Lives ($99)

Shade of the Week

Weekend Breakdown

Perfect Lineup

Coming Attractions

Jason Bourne ($767)

Bad Moms ($251)

Nerve ($84)

Captain Fantastic ($19)

Shade of the Week

This app is kinda terrible. Here’s why:

This app is kinda incredible. Here’s why:

Takeaways

Weekend Breakdown

Perfect Cineplex

Ghostbusters ($645)

The Infiltrator ($90)

Sultan ($16)

Shade of the Week

Perfect Cineplex

Coming Attractions

The Secret Life of Pets ($826)

Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates ($157)

Our Kind of Traitor ($12)

Swiss Army Man ($12)

Weekend Breakdown

Perfect Cineplex

Coming Attractions

The BFG ($463)

Purge: Election Year ($336)

The Legend of Tarzan ($349)

Shade of the Week

Weekend Breakdown

Perfect Cineplex:

Coming Attractions

Independence Day: Resurgence ($620)

Free State of Jones ($147)

The Shallows ($126)

The Neon Demon ($37)

Shade of the Week

Weekend Breakdown

Coming Attractions

Finding Dory ($885)

Central Intelligence ($225)

Shade of the Week

Weekend Breakdown

Best Cineplex:

Coming Attractions

The Conjuring 2 ($606)

Now You See Me 2 ($359)

Warcraft ($303)

Shade of the Week

Recap of the weekend:

Coming Attractions

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows ($750)

Me Before You ($184)

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping ($108)

The Lobster ($24)

Shade of the Week

Top 5 Grossing Movies

Top 5 Floposauruses

X-Men: Apocalypse ($735)

Alice Through the Looking Glass ($501)

Shade of the Week

Also playing this weekend

Last Week’s Perfect Cineplex