Chillpak Hollywood Hour #105 - Box Office Hits, Movie Franchises

It’s all movies on this week’s episode!  Dean and Phil start by running down the top ten grossing films thus far in 2009 and the list is a real head-scratcher.  Phil hadn’t even heard of one of the films!  They then discuss the films they’ve seen during the past week, including a very good documentary, a fantastic foreign film, and they even add a few more comments to the Star Trek discussion, before turning their attention to X-Men Origins:Wolverine, posing the question, “just how far – and how fast – can a franchise fall?”  That brings up the latest Terminator, of course, and from there, Dean and Phil preview all the films coming out over the next four weeks, from the hopeful blockbusters to the quality independents, foreign language films and edgy dramas that hope to catch on as counter-programming at the multiplexes.  From what we’ve seen Summer of 2009 is where audiences learn the disastrous effects of the writer’s guild strike of ‘07, when many films were rushed into production without workable scripts!