In retrospect I regret my decision to let you guys do New Trek without me.   Nah, go ahead I said, have fun.   Now after listening to the end result I wanna write a rebuttal so huge it feels like I'm gonna give birth.   

But I got work to do, so I will just have to keep my legs crossed and try to breathe deeply.

Short version, of course Brian's wrong.  I just wish I'd been there to explain how wrong.    For starters GAAAHHHH CONTRACTIONS  SOMEBODY GET ME AN EPIDURAL

Only the terribly uncool people.   Tauren hunters rule.

While it's fair if you got that message from the scene, I don't think that was the intent.  I read it as a demonstration that Ellie was already who would continue to be as an adult - pragmatic and logical, and not interested in vague pseudo-answers like "God moves in mysterious ways".   

I think if the movie wanted to give us a heavy-handed message like you describe (and many a less-deft movie has), we'd have seen a scene of her going to church with her dad before he died.    Or more likely, given Zemeckis' tendency in these matters, religious memorabilia on her wall, revealed in a slow tracking shot. 

So if there'd been a crucifix and a plaque reading "Honor Student at St. Mary's Catholic School for Spookily Devout Girls", that'd be one thing.    Instead, the patented Zemeckis introduce-character-via-their-home-decor tracking shot in Contact shows that Ellie is already obsessed with radio and astronomy, etc. long before her dad's death.  He's raising a little scientist, not a little Christian - I don't think there's any indication that she had any religious beliefs to lose.   

Of course, I probably see that because that was my life too - I didn't "reject" Christianity any more than I rejected Zeus or Buddha or Cthulhu, I just wasn't trained to believe in any of them and religion has never been a factor in my life.   

I suppose you're right that a religiously-inclined person might interpret that scene the way you describe, but we already know that sort of person interprets a lot of things in the darnedest ways anyway, regardless of whether there's basis for it or not.     They make plenty of movies targeted for those people, but  I don't think Contact is one of them.

At the risk of spoiling Rocketeer for those who may not have seen it (and if not, you should), I'm curious what you think the "second magic trick" is in Rocketeer, I've never noticed one myself.   

The one trick I can think of would be "somebody invented a working personal rocket pack in the 1930's" which isn't even anywhere near the magic-trick level of  "Guy uses a ham radio to talk to his dead dad in the past" (Frequency) or "Sandra Bullock can send letters through time to Keanu Reeves" (The Lake House) and so on.   For the record, I liked both of those movies too - they both explored the ramifications of their magic trick pretty well, I thought.

Where's the double hocus pocus in Rocketeer, in your opinion?    You could rock my world here if you've found one. 

As for Bill Campbell, I liked the guy myself.  Always thought he should have had a bigger movie career, though he's done pretty okay for himself, just never became a household name.

You're right that ticket prices aren't directly tied to inflation - the Boxofficemojo list is actually based on a formula that calculates ticket prices in a given year.   And for extra fun you can adjust it to any year - Avatar's 1939-era gross is just over 22 million dollars, Gone With The Wind in 2010 comes to more than 1.5 billion, and that's just in the US.

And it's true that GWTW and other pre-1980's movies ran for longer than modern movies - while Gone With The Wind wasn't in release for 30 years, it didn't even go into what we'd now call "wide" release until 1941.   When I was a kid, the local theater ran The Sound of Music for well over a year - so long that they painted a big mural of Julie Andrews on the side of their building.    And Star Wars was in theaters for more than a year in its first release as well.

But although in the olden days movies stayed in the theaters longer, they also ran on fewer screens in a country with a then-smaller population.     The movie multiplex didn't exist until the '60's, and was still a rarity when Star Wars opened in a whopping 12 theaters nationwide in 1977. 

So it was months before you could just walk up to the one theater in Washington DC where Star Wars was playing and buy a ticket for the next show.  Until then you were lucky to get a ticket two or three shows in advance, if the whole day wasn't sold out already by the time you got there.    And if it was, your only option was to hop on a plane to New York, which was the next closest theater where it was playing.   Believe it or not.

Nowadays movies open on thousands of screens at once, so people have easier access to new releases - but if the movie's not a blockbuster then most of those seats are empty.    So I still think older movies' popularity can be validly compared to modern ones.  In them days we were just accustomed to having to wait a few months to see the latest popular flick, so while they ran longer, they also made their money more slowly.  And they only ran longer if the audiences kept showing up.   

Really, the reason that Gone With the Wind can never be beaten is it didn't have to compete with television and home video and the internet for its audience.   That's a handicap that no modern movie can overcome.

By the way, I'm working on a plan to make a movie and charge a billion dollars per ticket.   Sure, that's high, but I only need to sell one ticket to tie with Avatar for the biggest movie evarrr.