Here 'Tis...

The only people he insulted were the leader of North Korea (a lunatic) and fans of soccer, which a lot of people also hate.

Originally posted by Vits 1)I can assure you that, aside from 3rd World countries and countries with dictators, box-office results are similar.

Originally posted by saturnwatcher Originally posted by vits 2)I'm not a fan, but I still think it's better than your version of football. You see, Latinamerican hooligans are as dangerous as the british hooligans. In a football game, the players don't tackle one another, so that means there are less dead bodies. Ever heard of an American football riot? No. The reason there are soccer riots is because the game is so painfully boring the fans have to amuse themselves somehow!  But, permit me to offer one bit of praise for soccer. We teach it to 5 year-olds in order to find out whether or not they have sufficent athletic aptitude to play real sports.

An unnecessary sequel* vs a late Oscar-baiter with Razzie repeat offenders? I think the question should be "Which will be the #1 Worst New Movie... and which will be #2?"  

Depending on the country. Some of the European countries do have the data available. People just don't know where or how to find them, especially if it's in another language and they are unfamiliar with the distributer.
I'm not claiming that every country is well organized. But I doubt that the data provided is "pretty worthless" just because the screen numbers aren't found as easily as the numbers for North American screens.
I haven't taken the time to look into it, but I personally would be curious about cinemas in the Middle Eastern Region. I have a friend in Bosnia, who is into movies, and he said they get most of the American movies there. But I of course would not know where to check or how to find any of their numbers, so I understand what you are critisizing when we have the totals but not the screens and don't even know if it was a good screen average or the income of a movie is a hit for that country.

I just sent my ballot in. I used two write-ins: Adam Sandler in Zookeeper for Worst Supporting Actor and Katherine Heigl in New Year's Eve for Worst Supporting Actress.

The Golden Globe results are but a day old, and already the BAFTA nominations have come a knocking on our doors - LINK.

Firstly, thanks for providing that source. That subject is highly interesting to me. I understand they don't have any facts to prove it, but too bad that they don't throw out a few more examples. And I wished they could have taken the UK, Germany or African countries into the group.
One of my theories is, for fifty years or longer, they sold the "American Dream" story. And with no internet and high flight prices, not too many people were able to prove it either way. The idea of the Wild West and big romance definitely had something intriguing for a lot of people.
Nowadays people realize America is struggling just like everybody else. But even if the preferences have shifted, people still like to escape reality and be sucked into the movieworld. Too bad that I, for one, think what we are being presented, not only by Hollywood, gets worse and worse.

Secondly, while it is annoying when I can't find the data I want to know about for a certain country, I don't have a reason to mistrust the results any country is providing. I'll take whatever is provided, and I don't think it skews the overall impression of the success of a movie in general.
I admit, the worldwide success of Transformers 3 did startle me a bit. Your example of the Adam Sandler loving, korean meglomaniac is funny, but when you say you don't take the global box office too seriously it's good enough. I think that's how most people handle it, at least for some countries. I also keep wondering about some statistics, e.g. New Zealand joined with Fiji, but the data is good enough for me.

Now, what bothers me and drove me personally away from giving to much credit to many American critics and in some rare cases the box office of a movie, is, when you look through their write ups, the snark is unbearable, and so is the hype. Funny enough, I don't see myself owning the charachteristics of a person who mainly relies on critics described in the article, anyways.
Even if you excuse it with unfullfilled quality expectations and cultural values, they do influence the box office in a positiv or negative way. You can have all the data you want, but every now and then a movie is under- or overrated, independent on the quality. There's nothing one can do about it, but it does frustrate me. I try to be as flexible as possible and to see it from different perspectives, but I think we all know a movie or two which has not had the success it deserved, and more so here, we know about movies which are overrated.