True Grit is a true hit.

The latest film from the Coen Brothers has passed the $100 million mark, specifically, the $110 million mark, and the success is just bound to keep growing. This is the first film for Joel and Ethan to pass this mark domestically, and it speaks very highly of where film might be headed over the next couple of years.

Our movie made how much?

Numbers like this make me a bit hopeful for the immediate future, as a filmgoer. We can see the impact, both financially and in popular culture, that Black Swan has made - here, below, is a recent Jim Carrey/Black Swan spoof -

Once you're sent up on SNL, you've kind of made your mark. And, thanks to Awards Daily for making me hip to the video. I think it's hilarious.


But, I digress - my point is this. With the influx of movies we get from, say, February to July, it seems like we're bombarded with movies regarded as crap. But, the make a lot of money, probably because they're the only ones getting promoted and the only ones readily available to see. Then in August and September, we get the dramas that were pushed back from release the year earlier, or we get the leftover summer blockbusters. Then, from October to December, we get our Oscar candidates. Then, in January, we get them in wide releases. And every now and then we get a Christmas movie. go figure.

The Oscar movies tend to fail because we get so many of them at once. Not everyone can go see them. I wish they were more spread out. And I wish that the smaller independent films could get a larger push in the earlier months of the year. But, like I always say - without all the bad, how will we ever know what's good? I guess it works out to that degree. Inception and Predators brought it over the summer months, otherwise we would have been left with just Knight and Day and The Last Airbender.

Hopefully, because of the growing success of True Grit, Black Swan, and even The King's Speech, we'll be seeing more quality films over the next few years get bigger pushes.

And hopefully, directors known for their "Oscar" movies will keep taking risks and trying new genres. Darren Aronofsky's next film will be an X-Men Origins film, and the Coen's... well, God knows what they'll do next. Edward Zwick took a (misguided?) stab at the romantic comedy genre this year with Love and Other Drugs* and even Kevin Smith is giving us his first horror film.

These are exciting times. I'm proud to be a part of all this. Even if over the next sixth months we'll be subjected to Nicolas Cage movies and I'm sure something about an exorcism.

le sigh.


Coming soon - a full review of Love and Other Drugs, a look at our Oscar hosts, and a slightly more in depth look at Animated Feature.