Super simple: just vote on your favorite movies in “bracket” style and see how your “picks” do. If you complete your “bracket” you get a code for a free rental. The votes are held daily, but you can vote on what you miss if you don’t check it daily.
You can take care of all these shenanigans over at the Redbox Facebook page. Enjoy your free movie rentals (you should rent The Sessions and tell me how it is)!
Kirk Caouette’s Hit ‘n Strum is almost a one man show. The former stunt actor left behind a life of setting himself on fire and jumping in front of cars for other people in order to do it for himself and the result is very positive.
Couette wrote, directed, composed and stars in the movie as Mike, a busker living on Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside. Stephanie (Michelle Harrison), a young career woman, hit Mike and takes off just as he’s getting up and when she sees Mike again the following day playing outside her officer, she stops and listens. This marks the beginning of an unlikely friendship between Mike and Stephanie.
Hit ‘n Strum open on Friday, March 8th at the Fifth Avenue Cinema and we’ve got an opportunity for you to win double passes to see the movie during its run next week. To enter, simply tweet the following:
@hitnstrum at Fifth Avenue Cinemas in #Vancouver! Inspiring local film with amazing soundtrack.
The good folks with the movie’s promo team will contact winner directly via twitter.
You can listen to some of the movie’s soundtrack, which is quite good, here while the movie’s trailer is tucked under the seats.
Thanks to everyone who played our annual Oscar Pool this year. Mixing it up a bit this year with some “funkier” question was a little bit more fun and some of those responses did make or break the line between winning and losing – especially the “second chance” question.
A complete breakdown of all the responses are below. Before the winners are contacted, feel free (in fact, PLEASE DO!) review your answers and make sure my math is correct! You’ll have three full days to look over the responses and look for any discrepancies. If you find something amiss, leave a comment in the appropriate section below or feel free to shoot me an email. Thursday night will be the deadline for corrections. After that, winners will be official and will be contacted to receive their prizes.
Thanks again to Corey and CriticalMassCast for sponsoring this contest and providing the DVD prizes!
A few interesting statistics:
– We had 42 total responses
– 88% of respondents answered ARGO for Best Picture (five people did not and all five picked something different).
– For the “how many Tweets” question, the range of [serious] answers was from 12,000 to 25 million (answer was 8.9 million)
– Five-way tie for the closest correct answer to the Tweet question at 5,000,000
– 17 people took correct advantage of the “second chance” question and received the extra 5 points
– No need for the tie breaker question, but the closest answer to the correct one (215 min.) was 211 minutes
– Biggest surprise (collectively) was Best Director. 65% incorrectly picked Spielberg. 21% correctly picked Lee
– 93% of respondents correctly picked Day-Lewis to win best actor
– 91% of respondents correctly picked Hathaway to win best supporting actress
– 95% of respondents correctly picked Amour for best foreign language film
– 93% of respondents correctly picked Adelle for best song with “Skyfall”
and now on to the winners…
» Read the rest of the entry..
We’re not too into big trivia questions or problem solving around here. Much too lazy for that. Instead, we leave it up to you guys. If you’d like to have $25 to spend on Fandango for movie tickets all you have to do is drop some thoughts in the comment section below about your favorite Die Hard moment from any of the five films.
That’s it! We’ll pick a winner at random (though the better your thoughts come across, possibly the less random it will be 
.
Good luck and thanks or dropping by the third row!
#DieHard #Spon
Because of popular demand, we’ve put together a fun little Oscar Pool for you this year. We’re doing things a little bit differently this year. We’ve put together a point system based on various Oscar prediction sites, Vegas odds and a little of my own inklings of arbitrary.
Here’s how it works. Based on “difficulty”, each answer is worth anywhere from one to five points. Best picture is worth a whopping ten points because… well, it’s best picture and that’s the way I did it. No answer is required but there’s no penalty for getting it wrong (other than you don’t get the points), so you might as well guess. Person with the most points wins! You may re-submit your responses at any time (last set of responses will count as your official entry). Pool closes sometime Sunday afternoon; so get your picks in ASAP!
Prizes will be dished out to the first and second place winner. Thanks to Corey Pierce and CriticalMassCast for sponsoring this contest and providing the DVD prizes. All RowThree contributors are encouraged to participate for fun but are not eligible for the prize pack. For official rules, please call 1-800-figureitoutyourself.
Not every single official category is here but to make up for it I added some of my own categories. I hope you’ll approve. Let the games begin…
Looking for that additional stocking stuffer for a loved one… or better yet, yourself? You may have just stumbled upon the right place. Courtesy of Warner Brothers, we’re giving away a Blu-Ray combo pack to one lucky reader of this post. All you’ve go to do to win is try one (or both if you want) of the trivia games below: Trivia Challenge or the Decode-a-Scene game. Both are pretty easy, but just share your results in the comments section below for your chance to win. One winner will be chosen at random and you will be sent (at our discretion) either the Magic Mike blu-ray pack or The Dark Knight Rises blu-ray combo pack. Both excellent films; both even more excellent on baby Blu.
Did you catch Tim Burton’s latest freak fest? Do you want to (again)? Just drop a note in the comment section – preferably something discussion worthy – and we’ll pick a winner from the responses at random and send out a brand new Blu-ray of Dark Shadows starring Johnny Depp, Eva Green, Jonny Lee Miller, Helena Bonham-Carter, Chloe Moretz and Michelle Pfeiffer.
Responses must be received by October 16th. And feel free to play around with the widget below.
A couple of years ago we hosted a bracket tournament here at RowThree to determine who the “best” director of all time is. I think we settled on someone obvious – like Hitchcock or Spielberg or something. It seemed to be more work than it was worth and we haven’t tried it again. But it seems someone else is willing to run the show this time around and figure out what the best sequel of all time is.
From now until September 5th, Grantland.com is running a bracket round of some of the best true sequels (they get into details about what constitutes a sequel and what doesn’t) of all time and it’s up to readers to try and decide which title will move on to glory.
You can get all of the details over at their main site, but the voting actually takes place via their Facebook page. So if you feel like a little pointless movie voting fun, head over there and make your picks. The first round ends today I believe, so get over there soon to participate! I’ll warn you right now there are a couple that are fairly difficult decisions.
Opening night. Press in attendance. Director in attendance. Anticipation for the festival. And a great film being screened.
It’s yours for the taking!
The fine folks at the upcoming Shinsedai Cinema Festival are offering three double passes to RowThree readers to attend the opening night screening of Ringing in Their Ears. Director Yu Irie will also be in the house for this Canadian premiere of the story of real life Japanese band Shinsei Kamattechan and some of their eccentric fictional fans.
“…narrative lines converge into an ecstatic explosion affirming the power of rock and roll.”
- Christopher Bourne, The Bourne Cinema Conspiracy
What do you need to do to score a pair? Simple – just post a comment below with the name of any other film screening at this year’s Shinsedai (hint: our preview from earlier this week might contain a film title or two in it and so might the Shinsedai web site). The first three correct comments will win the tickets. The only other requirement is that you are actually in Toronto on the date of the screening (July 12th, 7PM at The Revue Cinema). We’ll follow up in the comments section regarding how to get ahold of the tickets.
Advance tickets and passes for the 4th Shinsedai Cinema Festival (all of which takes places at The Revue Cinema) will be going on sale Thursday, June 21st.
WELCOME TO THE SUMMER, boys and girls! Mamo’s summer box office contest kicks off once again, and we give you our picks for what the top ten films of the 2012 season will be.
To download this episode, use this URL: http://rowthree.com/audio/mamo/mamo247.mp3
THE SUMMER STARTS ON MAY 1 AND ENDS ON AUGUST 17, in terms of movies you can pick. Please work by domestic release dates only and with domestic grosses only. Scores will be tabulated after the Toronto International Film Festival is over.
Players will submit the following:
Top ten films, in order of total grosses. Also total gross $ amount and opening weekend gross $ amount. So as an example, submissions should look like this:
1. Dark Knight Rises, $402 million, $175 million
2. Avengers, $375 million, $150 million
Points awarded for:
A. 1-10 Points for film rankings. If you are bang on (your #1 pick comes in #1) you get 10. If you are 5 places away (your #8 film comes in #3) you get 5, etc.
B. 10 bonus points for every film who’s gross you have within 5 million of the actual gross.
C. 5 bonus points for every film who’s gross you have within 10 million of the actual gross.
D. 1 bonus point for every film who’s gross you have within 20 million of the actual gross.
E. 10 Bonus Points for every film who’s opening weekend gross is within $1 million of the actual opening weekend gross.
F. 5 Bonus Points for every film who’s opening weekend gross is within $5 million of the actual opening weekend gross.
G. 1 Bonus Point for every film who’s opening weekend gross is within $10 million of the actual opening weekend gross.
E. 10 point bonus for every film you have ranked correctly AND within 5 million of the actual gross AND within $1 million of the opening weekend gross.
F. For the purposes of calculating weekends – Films opening on a Wednesday are counted until the first Sunday they are released. Films opening on Memorial Day weekend are counted until the following Monday. Films opening the week of July 4 are counted from whenever they open in that week until the first Sunday of their release. Example – Spiderman opens on Tuesday, July 3. Your guess for weekend gross would actually be its 6 day total, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
WELCOME TO THE SUMMER, boys and girls! Mamo’s summer box office contest kicks off once again, and we give you our picks for what the top ten films of the 2012 season will be.
To download this episode, use this URL: http://rowthree.com/audio/mamo/mamo247.mp3
CONTEST ENTRIES ARE NOW OFFICIALLY CLOSED. THANKS FOR ENTERING. We will tally the results in mid-September and announce the winner on the show; in the meantime, feel free to continue to use this thread to chat up the summer results. You can also watch the leader board for the contest right here (thanks to GE Hale!).
Rules:
THE SUMMER STARTS ON MAY 1 AND ENDS ON AUGUST 17, in terms of movies you can pick. Please work by domestic release dates only and with domestic grosses only. Scores will be tabulated after the Toronto International Film Festival is over.
Players will submit the following:
Top ten films, in order of total grosses. Also total gross $ amount and opening weekend gross $ amount. So as an example, submissions should look like this:
1. Dark Knight Rises, $402 million, $175 million
2. Avengers, $375 million, $150 million
Points awarded for:
A. 1-10 Points for film rankings. If you are bang on (your #1 pick comes in #1) you get 10. If you are 5 places away (your #8 film comes in #3) you get 5, etc.
B. 10 bonus points for every film who’s gross you have within 5 million of the actual gross.
C. 5 bonus points for every film who’s gross you have within 10 million of the actual gross.
D. 1 bonus point for every film who’s gross you have within 20 million of the actual gross.
E. 10 Bonus Points for every film who’s opening weekend gross is within $1 million of the actual opening weekend gross.
F. 5 Bonus Points for every film who’s opening weekend gross is within $5 million of the actual opening weekend gross.
G. 1 Bonus Point for every film who’s opening weekend gross is within $10 million of the actual opening weekend gross.
E. 10 point bonus for every film you have ranked correctly AND within 5 million of the actual gross AND within $1 million of the opening weekend gross.
F. For the purposes of calculating weekends – Films opening on a Wednesday are counted until the first Sunday they are released. Films opening on Memorial Day weekend are counted until the following Monday. Films opening the week of July 4 are counted from whenever they open in that week until the first Sunday of their release. Example – Spiderman opens on Tuesday, July 3. Your guess for weekend gross would actually be its 6 day total, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
We here in the third row like our readers. You are more to us than just your Jules Winnfield or 2001 avatars in the comments – and that’s why we often feel like rewarding you with free stuff. Still, everybody knows that free doesn’t come without a price. Read on to see what you have to do to enter our latest contest and win everything you will need to start writing your dream movie!
