Posted on 07/20/2011 7:20:14 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
If you happened to hear something in the press this week about the new documentary “The Undefeated,” chances are it was negative.
Maybe you even heard that director Stephen K. Bannon’s glowing account of Sarah Palin’s political ascent was a big box office flop.
And if you did, maybe what you heard was negative spin motivated by anti-Palin bias.
The biographical documentary hit theaters last weekend to scathing reviews and a press that seemed all-too-eager to bury it. Still, it managed to sell out several showings en route to a $6,500 per screen across 10 theaters and is set to modestly expand this weekend.
Those aren’t huge numbers, but they’re more than respectable for a film with virtually no traditional marketing muscle and a scant three-week booking window.
“The Undefeated” currently has a 0 percent “fresh” rating, a measure of a film’s popularity, over at the critical aggregator site RottenTomatoes.com, although most media outlets like The New York Times have yet to chime in with an official review. And some reporters pounced on one journalistically dubious account to prove it’s already a failure.
“Sarah Palin Movie Debuts to Empty Theater in Orange County,” blared the headline over at TheAtlantic.com based on one political blogger’s experience at a single midnight screening. That’s hardly a fair test of the film’s drawing power. Movie buffs line up for midnight screenings of can’t-miss sequels and pre-sold blockbusters about iconic superheroes -not political documentaries.
Respectable news outlets quickly picked up the empty theater meme, including a Los Angeles Times blog, nymag.com and Politico.
That wasn’t all the film had working against it.....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
From what I read from FR members who saw it is that it is informative, exciting and inspiring though it has rough edges and could use some better editing/sound mixing. Of course out here in the sand dunes of SE NM have no chance of seeing it until the DVD comes out.
Surprising that even the conservative NY Post film critic gave it a negative review.
Just because the NY Post is to the right of the NY Times doesn’t make them conservative.
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