Archive for June, 2009
June 30th, 2009
Best movie question of the day comes courtesy of critic Marshall Fine…
Who is it that keeps making Nia Vardalos movies? Or is it a sign of impending apocalypse that two such terrible ones have been released in one month? Really, isn’t it cheaper just to keep them on the shelf?
OK, that’s three questions, but they’re good ones.
He’s referring to I HATE VALENTINES DAY, which opens Friday, and MY LIFE IN RUINS, which opens a few weeks ago (and closed immediately afterwards). Admittedly, I’m not the target audience for these movies, but after MY LIFE IN RUINS earned a dismal $7 million at the box office (compared with a cost of about $17 million), I wonder if anyone is in the target audience?
Vardalos’ MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING was a genuine word-of-mouth blockbuster, earning more than $240 million on a budget of a mere $5 million, but that was back in 2002. The studios must think (or pray) another big rom-com paycheck lurks around the corner.
One more question: Why release a movie called I HATE VALENTINE’S DAY … on July 4th weekend? It would be like releasing INDEPENDENCE DAY at Christmas.
Oh, wait. INDEPENDENCE DAY made money.
* By the way, if I’m completely wrong and I HATE VALENTINES DAY is a big fat hit, I’ll happily admit I was wrong. But I still won’t see the movie.
June 30th, 2009
In this week’s Movie Man column, I’m reviewing TOKYO!, an interesting trilogy of short films directed by three visionary directors (Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon-Ho). And, because I have an extra copy of the DVD courtesy of the fine folks at Liberation Entertainment, I’m giving one away.
All you have to do is send me an e-mail at wpfeifer@rrstar.com with the word “Tokyo!” in the subject line. I’ll pick a random entry and send that lucky person their own copy of the film.
Get those e-mails here by Friday, and I’ll pick a winner next week.
June 29th, 2009
On the one hand, TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN made more than $200 million for the weekend. On the other hand, it got some of the worst reviews in recent memory.
Here’s my favorite, from Robert Humanick over at The House Next Door. Not only does Humanick (who, keep in mind, liked the first TRANSFORMERS movie) blast the movie on a creative level, he blames it for the loss of several lives…
I mourn the volume of human life being wasted on this thing. If the film makes $100 million this weekend and tickets cost $10 a pop, that’s ten million viewers and a total of twenty-five million hours, not including previews, travel and the time spent earning the wasted money. If the average person lives to be 75, that’s 38 lives.
(And, because TRANFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN topped the $200 mil mark, that’s at least 76 lives lost.)
Read the rest of Humanick’s review here. The language, as you might guess from one so enraged, gets a bit salty — starting with the title of the piece. Consider yourself warned.
June 29th, 2009
Via Cinematical, here’s a quote from Pixar animator Angus MacLane (via SciFi Wire) about the much anticipated third film in the TOY STORY series. MacLane created the funny BURN-E short that was included on the WALL-E DVD and worked on TOY STORY 2, where he created the Buzz Lightyear they met in Al’s Toy Barn. So, with all that Pixar experience at his disposal and a deep involvment with TS3 (in which Andy leaves for college), here’s what MacLane said…
“I feel like we’ve grown up making these movies, and each of the films represents where the filmmakers were at the time of making the films. Certainly we’re approaching this film 10 years later, so I think we’re sort of coming at it from the standpoint of [Andy] has grown up, and we’ve grown up with these toys, and we have a reverence for them, but we also have different things as a priority.”
If you don’t think this movie is going to break your heart, remember TOY STORY 2 (which Disney, in its endless wisdom, originally wanted to do as a straight-to-video quickie) contains The Saddest Song In Movie History…
June 26th, 2009
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Universal has cut a Michael Jackson-related scene from BRUNO for the comedy’s Los Angeles premiere today.
In the scene, Bruno (Sacha Baron Cohen) interviews an unsuspecting LaToya Jackson and asks several questions about her brother, Michael. The scene had been shown at recent press screenings, and critics hadn’t singled it out as being especially offensive — but that was before Jackson died Thursday.
From the article:
“We decided to take it out for tonight, and we’ll reassess before the release whether to keep it out,” director Larry Charles said at the premiere’s afterparty. A spokesperson for Universal also confirmed that it had not come to any decision on future showings.Â
The studio hasn’t announced whether or not it will include the scene in all prints of BRUNO.
June 26th, 2009
If you’ve got plenty to time to play around on the Internet today (and you’re tired of reading about Michael Jackson), here’s a link that will kill several hours: IFC.com has compiled its list of the 50 greatest movie trailers of all time, and thanks to the miracle of You Tube, you can both read about them and watch them.
Thing is, it’s one of those list where every trailer has its own page, so it takes a while just to click through them, even if you don’t watch every one. Here, to whet your appetite, is one of my personal favorites, which earned the No. 25 spot: Albert Brooks’ REAL LIFE. I especially like it when champion paddle ball player Randy Brown makes a guest appearance for no reason except the most obvious, shameless one imaginable.
The real joke, see, is the movie is not in 3-D.
June 26th, 2009
Michael Jackson didn’t make many movies, but his influence on the art of cinema is still being felt. That’s because music videos changed the way movies were made (and consumed) in the 1980s, and no single person did more to popularize the artform of music videos than Michael Jackson.
He’s been considered an out-of-touch weirdo so long it’s hard to remember when he was, in fact, the biggest star in the entire world. Premieres of his videos on MTV used to be accorded the same level of press coverage as a coronation. I still remember my family gathering around the set to watch the first showing of “Thriller,” Jackson’s extra-long video narrated by screen legend Vincent Price and directed by (then) big deal director John Landis.
Years later, with his “Black and White” video, he brought major-league morphing to the viewing audience. The same year TERMINATOR 2 wowed theatergoers with its computer-generated effects, Jackson’s video included a memorable sequence where one lip syncher changed into another (including a young Tyra Banks). Here’s the video, the morphing starts around the 5:27 mark. (And I should warn you, the video itself is painful to watch thanks to all its incredibly dated elements — little kids rapping, Macauley Culkin, the whole tough guy pose Jackson attempts and a psuedo documentary ending where you get a glimpse of director John Landis):
His only major actual movie appearance, though, was in the musical THE WIZ. He played the Scarecrow and was virtually unrecognizable under all that makeup. Back then, though, we couldn’t imagine just how unrecognizable he’d become.
June 25th, 2009
Over at the Onion’s AV Club, Noel Murray offers a look at one of the positive effects this doubling of nominated films may have…
And with more Best Picture slots open, studios and indies alike could be pushing harder to get their movies seen. What does that mean to you, the home viewer? It might–just might–mean that some smaller movies get longer runs in the big city arthouses, and even end up finding their way into the hinterlands. Everyone knocks the taste of the Academy (and often with good reason), but it’s not like everything that gets nominated is dowdy and self-serious and simplified. And it’s certainly true that plenty of excellent movies contend for the honor of contending each season. More of those excellent-but-low-priority movies may put up more than just a token campaign, and as a result, the average movie fan may become more aware of them, and may even get to see them.
Read the rest — including some potential downsides to the change — here.
Of course, with only two movie houses in the Rockford area (both owned by the same company), whether we’ll see any of these “excellent-but-low-priority” here is the big question. We might just get a dozen screens of more movies about Paul Blart.
June 25th, 2009
Mark Evanier, who works in Hollywood and does a great job of observing all that happens in that crazy town, offers this astute analysis of the doubling of Best Picture nominees…
Some number of powerful filmmakers and major studios pressured the Academy because they want the prestige and promotional value that comes with the nomination. A large reason for any award ceremony of this kind is to hype the product. The Academy probably also figures that it’ll bolster interest in the Oscars if there are nominations for films like THE DARK KNIGHT  and IRON MAN. I don’t mean movies based on comic books. I mean movies with a more populist appeal…the kind that traditionally get shut out of the nominations by films with loftier themes.
Read the rest here.
It’s pretty obvious this is a shameless effort to promote movies — but then again, that’s what the Oscars always are.
June 24th, 2009
According to this article by Timothy M. Gray of Variety, ten movies — not five, as in previous years — will be nominated for Best Picture for the next Academy Awards. The announcement was made today by Academy chief Sid Ganis, and those nominations will be announced Feb. 2, 2010.
I’m guessing the Academy decided to do this to counter criticism that the only movies nominated are critics favorites that the general public doesn’t care about, and with 10 slots to fill, there are bound to be some crowd pleasers in the mix. All I know is that my annual Oscar pool just got a lot more complicated.
Previous Posts
