D-Box Technology

Vibrating you along with your movies

BY COLIN ENQUIST

D-Box is a line of motion equipped seating and control devices that work with a supporting movie or video game to provide motion feedback to the viewer. Using an internet connection (or directly from a Blu-Ray disc) to read the “Motion-Code” the chair will receive commands to vibrate, move, lean, and shake based upon action on the screen. How does it work you ask, well the D-BOX system has a pair of direct-drive actuators that move and lift the seating. These electro-mechanical lifts are capable of enacting up to 2Gs of acceleration and just over 500lbs of lift on the seated subject(s). The actuators are mounted effectively under the back feet of the chair in which a control cable is connected to either a D-BOX Series 3 Kinetron controller or a PC running the D-BOX motion control software.

Hollywood is slowly embracing this technology as Sony began supporting D-Box by adding Motion-Code to select Blu-Ray titles as of March, 2008, and Universal Studios has also begun distributing supporting titles as of November, 2008 while Fox has been supporting D-Box since 2006. Currently the D-Box has a library of about 1000 films.

Not only focusing on home theatre, D-Box just recently had its first major theatrical release with Universal's Fast & Furious, with the Motion-Code technology written into it. Chairs were installed in LA's Grauman's Chinese Theatre, and in a theatre in Surprise, Arizona, and the enhanced seating was available for a $5 surcharge.

One of my worries about investing in the D-Box technology would be if I (or my fiancée) would get motion sickness while watching a movie. Those who worry like me, about motion sickness need not worry, as D-Box uses motion effects that are carefully produced with the intention to well replicate the reality and not to create a theme park ride experience. Furthermore, D-Box has a level control that lets you adjust the motion and intelligent vibration intensity, just like you can adjust the volume of the sound on a sound system. The biggest downside to having this new technology in your living room is the high cost. You would be looking at around $6, 100 just for the basic set up but with the technology slowly becoming more affordable and as the movie selection grows, you may just see more and more of these chairs lounging around.

Check out their official website (http://www.d-box.com/) that has a good video showing and explaining most of the features of D-Box and how it works.

Box Office Battle (April 10th)

Hannah has second highest Easter weekend opening ever

BY COLIN ENQUIST

Playing in 3118 theatres, Hannah Montana: The Movie grossed an estimated $34M, with a Friday gross of $17.3M which is the highest ever for a live-action G-rated film on its opening day. Though not able to break the weekend gross of Scary Movie 4, Disney can probably thank Miley Cyrus' star status for bringing out the teenagers off of school on Good Friday to see the film which is also Disney's highest April take in the companies history.

Universals' Fast and Furious surpassed the $100M mark, becoming the fifth movie this year to do so. Dropping 59% into second, the Vin Diesel and Paul Walker film raked in $28.7M, making the decision easy for Universal, who signed both stars to a come back for yet another film for the franchise. The film also crossed the $200M mark worldwide over the weekend.

Monsters vs. Aliens brought in $22.6M, bringing its impressive total up around $141M. The film is still playing in over 4000 theatres, and with only a 30% drop in ticket sales, we should expect this to become the highest grossing film of the year sometime over the next week.

The dark comedy, Observe and Report opened in fourth place at $11.1M. Warner Bros. has high expectations for the Jody Hill comedy starring Seth Rogen, the studio is hoping it follows the line drawn by Kevin James' Paul Blart: Mall Cop which is the current number one grossing film this year. With the much darker material, the audience will be quite different.

Slots five through seven were filled by Alex Proyas and Nicolas Cage's sci-fi thriller Knowing with $6.7M, the Paul Rudd R-rated buddy comedy I Love You, Man with $6.4M and haunted house thriller The Haunting in Connecticut with $5.7M. They've grossed $68M, $59M and $46M respectively.

The biggest dissapointment would be Fox's Dragonball: Evolution, which opening only in 2181 theatres and bombed its way to $4.6M. The opened a few weeks back in the foreign market and has grabbed $25.3M overseas already.

Rounding out the top ten, Adventureland took in another $3.4M bringing its two week total around $11M. Duplicity earned another $2.9M, making the four week total $36.8M.

Box Office Battle (April 3rd)

Fast & Furious races past the competition.

BY COLIN ENQUIST

Universals Pictures’ Fast & Furious raced past the previous April opening record with $72.5M, held by Anger Management which opened to $42.2 million in 2003. Reuniting Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and Michelle Rodriguez helped the studio surpass the original The Fast and the Furious which grossed $40.1M on opening weekend. 2 Fast 2 Furious opened around $50M while the third film in the series, directed by Justin Lin who also directed the current film, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift brought in $24M. The three films have totalled around $333M worldwide, with Fast & Furious surpassing the entire gross of Tokyo Drift’s earnings.

Last weeks leader, Monsters vs. Aliens, dropped 43.5% in ticket sales during its second weekend. The 3D animated film took in $33M bringing the total around $105M. DreamWorks Animation made the film for $175M.

The Haunting in Connecticut had an enormous fall in ticket sales but still came in third, losing 58.5% from last week. Still managing to grab slightly over $9.5M, raising the total earnings around $37M for the two weeks it has been released.

Alex Proyas’ and Nicolas Cage’s sci-fi flick Knowing earned another $8.1M in fourth place and has reached a three week total of $58.2M.

Fifth place film I Love You, Man added another $7.9M. The Paul Rudd and Jason Segel comedy has made a total of $49.3M in three weeks.

Miramax Films’ Adventureland, the comedy about a recent college grad who ponders the future after taking a job at a local amusement park took in $6M on its opening weekend finished in sixth place. The film stars Jesse Eisenberg, Ryan Reynolds, Kristen Stewart, Martin Starr, Paige Howard, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader and Margarita Levieva. Gregg Motolla wrote and directed the film.

The bottom four films were Duplicity ($4.3M), Race to Witch Mountain ($3.3M), 12 Rounds ($2.3M) and Sunshine Cleaning ($1.8M).

Fast & Furious Breaks Several Records

Action flick see's big numbers for its opening day

BY EMIL TIEDEMANN

Justin Lin's Fast & Furious (Universal) smashed several opening-day records with its Friday tally of $30.1 million, $2 million more than the previous record holder for a first-day opening prior to the summer, 2007's 300 (Warner).

The fourth film in the popular street racing franchise also had the best first-day opening for the month of April, besting the $15.4 million that Anger Management (Sony-Revolution) pulled in on its opening day in 2003.

Playing at 3,461 theatres in Canada and the U.S., Fast & Furious even outdid its franchise predecessors, as well as any film featuring its two stars, Vin Diesel (XXX) and Paul Walker (2 Fast 2 Furious).

As for its 3-day weekend toll, F&F is predicted to earn more than $60 million, which is not enough to topple Passion of the Christ's $83.8 million bow, the highest weekend gross for any film released before the summer.

Friday (April 3) also saw decent numbers for DreamWorks' Monsters vs. Aliens ($8.9 million) and The Haunting in Connecticut ($3.6 million), though Miramax's Adventureland failed to trigger much box office action on its opening day ($2.1 million), despite premiering in 1,862 venues.

3-2-C

New This Friday: Fast & Furious, Adventureland, Sugar...

These are three of the new films premiering this Friday (April 3) in North American theatres. Vin Diesel and Paul Walker reunite for the street racing action flick Fast & Furious (left), which will play in more theatres than any of the other new films this weekend. Jesse Eisenberg plays a recent college grad who ponders the future after taking a job at a local amusement park in Greg Mottola's comedy Adventureland (center), which is set in 1987. In the indie film Sugar (right), which will be in limited release, Algenis Perez Soto plays Miguel "Sugar" Santos, a baseball star in the Dominican Republic who joins the American minor leagues in Iowa.

Other films opening this weekend are all in limited release, including Matt Aselton's Gigantic (starring John Goodman), Christopher Barratier's Paris 36 (Gerard Jugnot), R.W. Goodwin's Alien Trespass (Eric McCormack), and Rupert Wyatt's The Escapist (Brian Cox).

Fast & Furious Makes it Four

Diesel & Walker reunite for the Furious franchise's latest offering

BY EMIL TIEDEMANN

Eight years after Rob Cohen's street racing film The Fast & the Furious (2001) hit summer theatres, Justin Lin directs the original cast in a new high-octane "interquel," the fourth installment in this popular film series.

Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, and Jordana Brewster have returned for Fast & Furious (notice the subtly different title), which picks up where the 2001 film left off--hence the film's slogan "New Model, Old Parts"--forgetting that the last two Furious movies even exsisted. This marks the first time that all four stars share the screen together since '01, when The Fast & the Furious became a surprise hit around the world, and making a household name out of Diesel, who has starred in a string of failures over the last few years.

Diesel rehashed his role as L.A. street racer and ex-con Dominic Toretto, who finds himself reuniting with just-released-from-prison-former-agent Brian O'Conner (Walker), in order to combat a common enemy, meanwhile pondering each other's loyality. They find themselves working alongside the feds to bring down a heroin operation, and doing it in fashion, steering some expensive and exotic muscle cars through California and Mexico.

Diesel refused to appear in John Singleton's 2003 sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious (he also turned down a sequel to his XXX film), though Walker opted to continue his role as O'Conner, with a supporting cast that included model-turned-actor Tyrese Gibson, former soap opera actress Eva Mendes, and hip-hop star Ludacris.

The sequel proved an even bigger success worldwide, though the same couldn't be said for a third effort, 2006's The Fast & the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Lin also directed Tokyo Drift, though it featured a whole new cast of actors (Lucas Black, Sung Kang, and rapper Bow Wow), and fizzled at the box office. Diesel made a small cameo in Drift, which had nothing to do with its predecessors, plot-wise.

The Furious series, which has always been associated with hip-hop music (Ja Rule made his feature film debut in the 2001 original), perserved the tradition with this latest feature, which includes cameos by Xzibit, Lil' Wayne, T.I., and T-Pain, while Gibson and Kang also make appearances. The soundtrack will also feature some big names in hip-hop, including Busta Rhymes, Pitbull, Soulja Boy, and The Neptunes.

With an $80 million budget, Fast & Furious is expected to do well when it hits theatres this Friday (April 3), but has a lot to live up to. The previous three films have grossed a combined $600 million in global ticket sales, and millions more in merchandise. Below is Universal Pictures' trailer for Fast & Furious.