SUMMARY: So far this year, ticket sales for Hollywood blockbusters have underperformed. But that could all change with the opening of “Jurassic World,” a much anticipated reboot. What else do this season’s “popcorn movies” have in store for audiences? Jeffrey Brown reports.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” “Mad Max: Fury Road,” and “Furious 7.”
ACTOR: Lock it up.
JEFFREY BROWN: In theaters near you this summer, Hollywood is heating up, and looking for a hero, a familiar hero, to entertain the masses, and boost its own bottom line.
Film critic Mike Sargent of Pacifica Radio.
MIKE SARGENT, Pacifica Radio: You’re seeing a lot of sequels, reboots, reimaginings, things that have some sort of following.
JEFFREY BROWN: An emphasis, that is, on films Hollywood and we, the consumers, already know, or at least knew, a remake of an old ’80s film, like “Poltergeist,” or a riff on a once-popular TV series like “Entourage.”
ACTOR: Like I told you 15 years ago, the next level is coming.
JEFFREY BROWN: Sargent calls these popcorn movies.
MIKE SARGENT: I think the audience for a popcorn movie is an audience that wants to go into to — in the heat of summer, go into an air conditioner and kind of check out.
You’re going because you’re either visiting characters you know before, in the case of something like “Entourage,” “Mission: Impossible 5,” where you know it’s going to be fun. You know it’s not about anything. There’s no message. There’s no exploration of the human condition, but you’re just going to forget your troubles.
JEFFREY BROWN: And superheroes remain all the rage. Studios have announced plans to release nearly 30 more superhero films between this summer and 2020.
SUMMARY: Both restaurant and customer take a risk when they make a reservation. Is the table really going to be ready at 8:00? Will the party of six be a no-show? Chicago restaurateur Nick Kokonas, co-owner of elite restaurants Alinea and Next, says one way to avoid the waste of broken reservations is to sell prepaid dinner tickets. Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports on Tock, a new tech startup.
WOMAN: Good afternoon. RPM Italian.
PAUL SOLMAN (NewsHour): A popular midrange restaurant in Chicago. Looking for a prime-time table a few weeks out?
WOMAN: It looks like I can do 5:00, or you’re looking at about 10:00 p.m.
PAUL SOLMAN: Reservations, it seems, are a problem at, and for, pretty much every eatery tonier than Arby’s, all the way up to Alinea, number one in Chicago on TripAdvisor, 26th in the world, says Restaurant magazine.
To co-owner Nick Kokonas, reservations can be a dance of deception between restaurant and customer.
PAUL SOLMAN: Why is that?
NICK KOKONAS: One, there’s a no-show rate of 10 percent, 12 percent.
PAUL SOLMAN: So, restaurants are overbooking.
NICK KOKONAS: Just like the airlines do.
And the other thing is that they’re afraid to say no to people. So, they know people will, if they arrive at a restaurant and the table’s not quite ready, they will go to the bar for 40 minutes, they will spend a little more money, and then they’re not going to leave at that point. It’s Saturday night.
PAUL SOLMAN: So, the restaurants lie to the people, and then the people who know they might not show up are lying to the restaurant.
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
*Anti-First Amendment policies that attempt to turn America into a theocracy by enshrining ANY religious belief as law.
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