{"id":8456,"date":"2014-10-11T17:15:20","date_gmt":"2014-10-11T23:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/?p=8456"},"modified":"2024-12-26T10:12:44","modified_gmt":"2024-12-26T16:12:44","slug":"iow-assessing-the-honors-roll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/?p=8456","title":{"rendered":"IOW: Assessing the HONORS roll"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">A lovely cool Saturday to you, dearest readers! Today\u2019s heady <strong>Image of the Week<\/strong> offers a few bonus hypotheses that stem from core issues laid down in the center spread of <a title=\"CUZine #7 hoists aloft our history :: C-U Blogfidential\" href=\"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/?p=6813\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><strong>C-U Confidential issue 7<\/strong> from last fall<\/span><\/a>. So, to begin our complementary brain game, please review the following clip and try to name which <strong>Ivy League<\/strong> cornerstone is the setting. It is cued right up to &#8220;that scene&#8221; for your convenience:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">~~~~~<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VpTafaZKwSo?start=5760\" width=\"450\" height=\"253\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">~~~~~<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Familiar to students, faculty, and year-round residents in <strong>Champaign-Urbana<\/strong>, the main quad of the <strong>University of Illinois<\/strong> campus is here seen doubling for another in the collegiate drama <strong>WITH HONORS<\/strong>, starring <strong>Brendan Fraser<\/strong> (<strong>THE MUMMY<\/strong>) as a student attending prestigious <strong>Harvard University<\/strong> and <strong>Joe Pesci<\/strong> (<strong>GOODFELLAS<\/strong>) as an ailing vagrant with a poetic streak living in a boiler room. Producers enlisted UIUC as one of several surrogate sites at which to film scenes not already covered on location at <strong>Cambridge, Massachusetts<\/strong>, dressing up the <strong>Foellinger Auditorium<\/strong> grounds in May 1993 for a Harvard-set graduation scene. Yet, despite the brief thrill C-U citizens and UI administrators might have felt at the time, knowing (fictionalized) images of the school would eventually be flickering before a nationwide audience\u2019s eyes, does this rate any more than a footnote 20 years later?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Also starring <strong>Patrick Dempsey, Moira Kelly, Josh Hamilton<\/strong>, and <strong>Gore Vidal<\/strong>, the <strong>Warner Bros.<\/strong> release directed by <strong>Alex Keshishian<\/strong> (<strong>MADONNA: TRUTH OR DARE<\/strong>) opened theatrically one full year later on <strong>April 29, 1994<\/strong>, to decent earnings and tepid critical reaction. You can reference <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Rotten Tomatoes<\/strong><\/span> for <a title=\"WITH HONORS @ Rotten Tomatoes\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rottentomatoes.com\/m\/with_honors\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\">a smattering of the latter<\/span><\/a> but let\u2019s pay attention to what the former might tell us. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Box Office Mojo<\/strong><\/span> <a title=\"WITH HONORS @ Box Office Mojo\" href=\"http:\/\/www.boxofficemojo.com\/movies\/?id=withhonors.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\">lists a domestic take just north of $20 million<\/span><\/a> for <strong>WITH HONORS<\/strong> including a brief perch at the top of the chart with $3.7 million, earned at 1,220 locations during the second weekend of its run. Performing on par with unremarkable numbers logged by the entire filmic field leading up to the summer of that year, launched in mid-May by <strong>Mel Gibson<\/strong> and <strong>MAVERICK<\/strong>, the Fraser vehicle quickly lost traction. Of the immediate competition, only <strong>FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL<\/strong> or <strong>THE CROW<\/strong> might spark discussion today.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">~~~~~<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><object width=\"450\" height=\"253\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/vHTG6I0LpMY?hl=en_US&amp;version=3\" \/><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><embed src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/vHTG6I0LpMY?hl=en_US&amp;version=3\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"450\" height=\"253\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" \/><\/object><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">~~~~~<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Practically no fan-generated good will or late-blooming nostalgia has propped up <strong>WITH HONORS<\/strong> in the ensuing years, and consider how Warner has treated it as a catalog title despite Fraser\u2019s eventual status as comedy-action star. Apart from a widescreen laserdisc and the more typical full-screen, bare-bones VHS and DVD issues of that era, the studio has only offered the film as a nearly identical DVD reissue and video-on-demand streaming. (The ancient home video trailer used as promotion for VOD, shared here, does not inspire any hopes of improved presentation.) Obviously, lacking notoriety has doomed <strong>WITH HONORS<\/strong> to a middle-of-the-road <strong>Hollywood<\/strong> movie graveyard. Is it warranted? Is it fair? We\u2019d be really hard pressed to call for the time-consuming and costly restoration of this, an average entertainment aimed at general audiences, yet it often weighs on those very audiences to resurrect or bury a film.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">With that said about <strong>WITH HONORS<\/strong> as forgotten content, what about <strong>WITH HONORS<\/strong> as failed harbinger of Hollywood business to come? Like we mused in <strong>CUZine<\/strong>, illustrated by the still image below of the lead actors walking the Quad \u2013 click it to reveal the full \u201cfor press use\u201d photo glossy \u2013 a million confluences figure into when, where, and how a movie studio machine interacts with the world at large. We can only theorize why Tinseltown has never returned to Champaign-Urbana for film production on any significant level since the week of <strong>May 6, 1993<\/strong>, or only occasionally in the cites beyond such as with fellow Warner title <strong>THE INFORMANT!<\/strong>, <a title=\"\u201cWhitacre\u201d blows whistle today :: C-U Blogfidential\" href=\"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/?p=1040\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\">primarily shot by director <strong>Steven Soderbergh<\/strong> and crew in the <strong>Decatur<\/strong> area<\/span><\/a>. <em>Is it warranted? Is it fair?<\/em> Certainly, we dig our indigenous film culture, but we\u2019d also love for Chicagoland to loosen its grip on visiting production in <strong>Illinois<\/strong> and <a title=\"Is rapport not WANTED with C-U? :: C-U Blogfidential\" href=\"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/?p=277\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\">let some honest commerce trickle downstate<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">~~~~~<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/Images\/CUBlog Art\/cu_withhonors_quad_LG.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"Everett (Patrick Dempsey), Monty (Brendan Fraser), Courtney (Moira Kelly), and Jeff (Josh Hamilton) congratulate one another after graduation from Harvard in Warner Bros.' poignant drama, WITH HONORS. (Photo: Peter Iovino\/\u00a9 1994 Warner Bros.) Collection of the author.\" src=\"http:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/Images\/CUBlog Art\/cu_withhonors_quad.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">~~~~~<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong>C-U Blogfidential<\/strong> believes in the philosophy \u201ceverything good starts small;\u201d in this case, all levels of movie production are vital and scene building is necessary for the C-U to attract and fulfill the needs for bigger and better-funded shows. (That <em>doesn\u2019t<\/em> mean our Hollywood drought is any less dispiriting.) Playing county-wide host to <strong>CONSUMED<\/strong>, this past summer\u2019s dose of guest filmmaking brought here by producer team <strong>Daryl Wein<\/strong> and<strong> Zoe Lister-Jones<\/strong> with guidance from <strong>Brett Hays<\/strong> of <strong>Shatterglass Studios<\/strong>, will help to state our case. The low-budget drama utilized a fair amount of talent brought in, but many other personnel and resources \u2013 including all locations \u2013 were secured locally. <a title=\"'Giving community' putting its best foot forward :: The News-Gazette\" href=\"http:\/\/www.news-gazette.com\/news\/local\/2014-06-22\/giving-community-putting-its-best-foot-forward.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\">We made a good impression on our new friends<\/span><\/a>, apparently, and that will hopefully be part of the discussion once <strong>CONSUMED<\/strong> post-production wraps and the finished film winds its way into the media landscape starting next year.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">~ Jason Pankoke<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><em>p.s.<\/em> When, <em>oh<\/em> when, will the makers of a major narrative motion picture allow <strong>Champaign-Urbana<\/strong> to play itself? Not unlike the sleight of hand employed by <strong>WITH HONORS<\/strong> production designers and set decorators to present two blocks of Urbana real estate as an academic institution residing in the New England states, <strong>CONSUMED<\/strong> will imply every person, place, and thing appearing on screen exists in <strong>Iowa<\/strong> since that is where their story is set. We can say without irony that we prefer the concept of our environs standing in for an imagined setting than, say, what the producers behind the upcoming <strong>David Foster Wallace<\/strong> road trip film <strong>THE END OF THE TOUR<\/strong> elected to do \u2013 <a title=\"Flick: Michigan to be made to look just like B-N! :: The Pantagraph\" href=\"http:\/\/www.pantagraph.com\/blogs\/flick\/flick-michigan-to-be-made-to-look-just-like-b\/article_f4dd4800-73eb-11e3-8850-0019bb2963f4.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\">recreate real-life <strong>Bloomington-Normal<\/strong> settings in chilly <strong>Grand Rapids, Michigan<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, where they filmed due to the almighty tax break incentive. (Amusingly, they <em>did<\/em> also shoot in <strong>Bloomington, Minnesota<\/strong>, at the <strong>Mall of America<\/strong> according to <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>IMDb<\/strong><\/span>; the film, starring <strong>Jason Segel<\/strong> as novelist Wallace and <strong>Jesse Eisenberg<\/strong> as <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/span> contributing editor <strong>David Lipsky<\/strong>, recounts a book tour.) Or, for that matter, to become a city-accurate backdrop for a disconcerting true-to-life tale as did <strong>Decatur<\/strong> in <strong>THE INFORMANT!<\/strong>, the dramatization of how a <strong>Don Quixote<\/strong>-minded corporate suit blows the whistle on agricultural price-fixing enacted by his superiors at <strong>Archer Daniels Midland<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><em>p.s.2<\/em> Technically, the C-U <em>is<\/em> currently playing itself on the big screen, for a few fleeting moments mostly involving the <strong>Virginia Theatre<\/strong>, in the <strong>Roger Ebert<\/strong> documentary <strong>LIFE ITSELF<\/strong>. Data on VOD earnings seems hard to come by, but <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Box Office Mojo<\/strong><\/span> reports <a title=\"LIFE ITSELF @ Box Office Mojo\" href=\"http:\/\/www.boxofficemojo.com\/movies\/?id=lifeitself.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\">an $800,000 gross in limited release<\/span><\/a> through <strong>Magnolia Films<\/strong> since the <strong>Fourth of July<\/strong> weekend, with most of that amassed before <strong>August 1<\/strong>. Considering it is now pulling in a weak $3-5 thousand per week, we\u2019re not bothering to place bets at the <strong>Secret MICRO-FILM Headquarters<\/strong> as to when it might break $1 million theatrically. It won\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><em>p.s.3<\/em> Right before posting this, we attempted to verify one last thing on <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Box Office Mojo<\/span> and discovered its home page URL redirected to <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">IMDB<\/span>. Both are owned by <strong>Amazon<\/strong>, and <a title=\"Box Office Mojo Site Disappears Into IMDb :: Variety\" href=\"http:\/\/variety.com\/2014\/film\/news\/box-office-mojo-site-disappears-into-imdb-1201326950\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Variety<\/strong><\/span> reported on Friday that this seems to be no fluke<\/span><\/a> even though an explanation has not been issued. We hope our links in this article will be restored shortly and apologize if not, even though this is obviously beyond our control.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><em>p.s.4<\/em> We now have the <strong>Madonna<\/strong> pop ballad \u201c<strong>I\u2019ll Remember<\/strong>,\u201d which played over the <strong>WITH HONORS<\/strong> closing credits, stuck in our heads. <a title=\"&quot;I'll Remember (Theme from WITH HONORS)&quot; @ Wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/I%27ll_Remember\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\">It reached No. 2 on the <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>Billboard<\/strong><\/span> <strong>Hot 100<\/strong> chart<\/span><\/a> and is probably better remembered, so to speak, than the movie.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><em>p.s.5<\/em> Finally, we circle back to <strong>Brendan Fraser<\/strong>, whose star has arguably faded since the third <strong>MUMMY<\/strong> movie appeared in 2008. When originally researching this post in the spring, we discovered an eerie metaphor for that career slide in the form of <a title=\"HAIR BRAINED :: Official Site\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hairbrainedthemovie.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><strong>HAIR BRAINED<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, an independent comedy feature released to home video on <strong>March 25<\/strong> through <strong>Vertical Entertainment<\/strong> after a token weekend of theatrical play. Directed by <strong>Billy Kent<\/strong> and written by <strong>Adam Wierzbianski<\/strong>, responsible for <strong>THE OH IN OHIO<\/strong> a decade ago, <strong>HAIR BRAINED<\/strong> relays the misadventures of a 14-year-old genius played by <strong>Alex Wolff<\/strong> and a recovering gambling addict played by Fraser who become unlikely roommates at fictional Whittman College. The plot involves Wolff\u2019s Eli character joining the school\u2019s quiz team in the hopes of eventually competing against and beating the team from the <strong>Ivy League<\/strong> school that rejected his first application \u2013 <strong>Harvard<\/strong>. <em>Eep<\/em>. Read into that what you will; of the reviews we skimmed, including middling verdicts offered by <a title=\"HAIRBRAINED: Film Review :: The Hollywood Reporter\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/review\/hairbrained-film-review-684389\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #800000;\"><strong>The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, <a title=\"Film Review: \u2018HAIRBRAINED\u2019 :: Variety\" href=\"http:\/\/variety.com\/2014\/film\/reviews\/film-review-hairbrained-1201123021\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #800000;\">Variety<\/span><\/a>, and <a title=\"Reviews: HAIRBRAINED :: RogerEbert.com\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/reviews\/hairbrained-2014\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">RogerEbert<\/span>.com<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, only <a title=\"Child Genius Meets Middle-Age Kid: \u2018HAIRBRAINED\u2019 Puts Brendan Fraser Back in School :: The New York Times\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/02\/28\/movies\/hairbrained-puts-brendan-fraser-back-in-school.html?_r=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #800000;\"><strong>The New York Times<\/strong><\/span><\/a> title-checks <strong>WITH HONORS<\/strong> for the uneasy parallel. And, lest we forget, <em>every<\/em> movie has a champion out there, somewhere; we present <a title=\"Reviews: HAIRBRAINED :: The Dissolve\" href=\"http:\/\/thedissolve.com\/reviews\/590-hairbrained\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #800000;\">this vote of confidence by <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>The Dissolve<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/a> as a counterpoint.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><em>p.s.6<\/em> We like you, Brendan. Rebound for the win!<\/p>\n<p>[Updated 7\/10\/23, 1:20 a.m. CST]<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">~~~~~<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"HAIR BRAINED (Vertical Entertainment)\" src=\"http:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/Images\/CUBlog Art\/cu_withhonors_hair.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"619\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the \u201cImages of the Week\u201d Dept.: There may be no honor involved in remembering when Hollywood enlisted the C-U, but that does not mean we can&#8217;t throw a little love down WITH HONORS way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[376,19,15,348,20],"tags":[1348,1702,1349,1353,1352,854,1347,1172,1350,134,1351,289,1346],"class_list":["post-8456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gone-hollywood","category-images-du-cu","category-media-coverage","category-ones-that-got-away","category-videos-du-c-u","tag-brendan-fraser","tag-c-u-confidential","tag-consumed","tag-hair-brained","tag-harvard-university","tag-hollywood","tag-joe-pesci","tag-life-itself","tag-the-end-of-the-tour","tag-the-informant","tag-uiuc-foellinger-auditorium","tag-warner-bros","tag-with-honors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16208,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8456\/revisions\/16208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.micro-film-magazine.com\/cublog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}