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  • The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."
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September 13, 2007

WHY HOLLYWOOD DRIVES US NUTS

We generally try to keep the Hollywood thing to a minimum around here, but a posting at Deadline Hollywood Daily has got us a bits nutso this afternoon.  In short, Warners has announced that the Harry Potter movies are film's most successful franchise ever.

With the success of this summer's Harry Potter And The Order of the Phoenix, Warner Bros announced today that its five Harry Potter films have combined to become the top-grossing film franchise worldwide in history. It surpasses even the box office total of all 22 James Bond and 6 Star Wars franchises, with two films yet to come -- Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The combined worldwide box office gross for the five Harry Potter films to date is in excess of $4.47 billion even as The Order Of The Phoenix is still going strong in theaters around the globe. In addition to holding the franchise box office record, all five of the Harry Potter films are among the 20 top-grossing box office hits of all time.

Every time we see one of these new "records" trumpeted (Best Holiday Opening Ever!  Best Three-Day Opening Ever!  Best Left-Handed Hungarian Opening Ever!), the oh-so-obvious fact of ticket inflation beats us over the head but seems to elude everyone else in this town.  A ticket to the new Potter flick will set you back a minimum of ten bucks, as much as fifteen if you hit one of those plush theatres.  Of course you're breaking records!!  But when things are adjusted for inflation, a very different picture emerges.  Better still, why not track actual number of tickets sold, and leave the inconstant dollar out altogether.

You can try it all for yourself at Lee's Movie Info, using their handy Box Office and Movie Ticket adjuster.  When you can consider the average ticket price in 1964 when moviegoers were lining up for Goldfinger was around a buck, we think it's safe to say that Harry ain't the king.

OK, we're done.

Posted by at 05:17 PM in Hors catégorie |

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Comments

Daniel

Doesn't it take the cost of making the films into account as well as inflation?

Posted by: Daniel | September 14, 2007 at 05:39 AM

Michael O'D

You may be interested to learn that Charles Wheelan shares this bugbear with you, and writes about it at some length in "Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science."

Posted by: Michael O'D | September 14, 2007 at 09:46 AM

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