I am a hat, you are a shoe. I belong on the head, you belong on the foot. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.

by Thom Yee

Snowpiercer images courtesy of RADiUS-TWC

One summer movie you probably didn’t see or even contemplate over the last few months is Snowpiercer. For its North American theatrical release, the film opened in a grand total of eight locations, followed by a slightly wider release to 150 mostly art house theatres the next week, and straight to video-on-demand services the week after that. All of which suggests a real piece of crap, but It’s also a piece that broke box office records in South Korea during its initial release in the summer of 2013, and has gone on to earn $100 million worldwide. A sci-fi actioner starring Chris Evans, Tilda Swinton and John Hurt — in what’s kind of an odd mirroring of Only Lovers Left Alive, another art house movie I reviewed recently, only swap out Captain America for Loki — you might ask what happened given its overseas pedigree and potential mainstream appeal. Surely if there had been any concerted effort at all to market the movie, some people would have seen it. Perhaps so, but as with all things that sound stupid in show business, the answer comes down to yet more Hollywood Upstairs Accounting. Continue reading →