Covid has made us all do crazy or unusual things to deal with the lockdown – in my case, that means revisiting films from 20 years ago, to see how well they’ve held up (or not). And since we’re probably going to be in this situation for a good portion of this year as well, why not document my adventure through the cinema of 2001? It’s as good a year to start with as any: many will say it represents the calendrical start of the 21st century, and historically it might as well, due to the obviously significant events that occurred. On a personal level, it’s the year when I really started getting into movies by tracking what I’d seen and how much I liked it. So I’ll use this quarantime to look back two decades, revisiting old favourites and confronting ones that I missed or avoided. Hopefully it’ll prove informative and enjoyable.
The first film I’m looking back on is Save the Last Dance, the teen dance drama released this week in 2001. It’s maybe safe to say that the studio, Paramount Pictures, didn’t expect a lot: the film only cost $13m and was released in 2200 theatres, 200 less than the Ryan Philippe techno thriller Antitrust opened in the same weekend. But when the dust settled, Save the Last Dance had more than quintupled the box office opening weekend of Antitrust, grossing $27.5m over the 4-day MLK holiday and becoming the first bonafide hit of the year. It ended up with $91m domestically and $131m worldwide, good enough for the top 25 financially. But its cultural footprint is what I’m more interested in.
(more…)
Cinema Charchuk 