Wednesday 17 February 2010

Hollywood Babble On & On #456: A Snarking I Will Go!

Welcome to the show folks...

After yesterday's juicy bit of corporate takeover strategic games, I'm now stuck with another day of minor bits that I can only snark about. So a snarking I will go!

1. Director Wes Anderson, who just a month ago defected from United Talent Agency to William Morris Endeavor has just defected right back to UTA. There are two possible reasons for this swinging back and forth.

A) Wes Anderson is a chip in the inter-agency poker game, which is held in Swifty Lazar's mausoleum on the second Friday of the month.

B) Wes Anderson is as indecisive and neurotic as one of his characters.

2. NBC is #1 in prime-time for the first time in years because of the Olympics. So Jeff Zucker is canceling NBC's entire line-up, except for Jay Leno's
Tonight Show, and replacing it with all Olympics all the time. Sure the Olympics only occur every 2 years, and NBC is expecting to lose $200 million, but Zucker doesn't mess with such petty details.

3. Speaking of petty details, a tip of my jaunty beret to our local Media Warrior, for this link about troubles with Jay Leno's return to the
Tonight Show. To sum it up, he's lost his bandleader, and is probably ditching his announcer, but to me that's the least of his troubles. Old Jay does have that teensy problem about booking anyone he thinks might replace him, add to that the "team Conan" people who might call him out on his perfidy in his late night coup, and the only guests he's going to book will be the cast of the Jersey Shore.

4. A company has announced plans to make a movie based on the "Erector Set" toy. I think that this whole toy-based movie thing has gone way past too far, and now arrests, summary trials, and deportations to hard labor camps in Antarctica have to be made.

Not only does this show a complete bankruptcy of imagination, it will be the first film with the word "Erect" in the title to be offered anywhere outside that back room at the video store. Not that I've ever been in a room like that, I'm just going on what I've heard.

5. George Lucas has taken over the film Red Tails, about the heroic Tuskegee Airmen of World War 2, and will direct the re-shoots himself. I guess he felt the acting wasn't wooden enough, and that the film needs a cameo from Jar-Jar Binks.

Hmmm... isn't a producer taking a film away from its "auteur" one of the things that George Lucas and his generation rebelled against? Could it be that baby-boomers engage in hypocrisy?

6. Disney has no interest in doing a sequel to their recent Sandra Bullock mega-hit The Proposal, despite the film raking in over $300 million in profits. There are two reasons for this:

A) Disney really doesn't want anything they can't turn into a ride at one of their parks, and then back into another movie, a line of toys, and other products for sale to kids.

B) Sequels to romantic comedies are troublesome, because it basically means that the struggles and happy endings in the first film, were all for nothing. You're not talking about James Bond, who can go from mission to mission, or
Star Trek going from planet to planet for adventures, you're talking about people finding true love and pledging undying love at the end. Having that love die in some vain attempt at scoring a quick buck, does not please the audience.

And finally...

7. Lionsgate and Sony's joint attempt to scoop up the Terminator franchise has failed.

Thank Xenu for that.

Lionsgate and Sony will no longer be in danger of joining previous
Terminator producers Hemdale, Carolco, and Halcyon in the realm of corporate oblivion.

3 comments:

  1. George Lucas...HMMM Do you think I can still sue him for damages caused me by watching Howard the Duck way too many times when I was 9. To be fair it was probably the best depiction of DUCK TITS ever in a motion picture.

    On the subject of What about that DAMBUSTERS film underway by Peter Jackson?

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  2. I mentioned that Zucker's dick move was going to totally ruin the tonight show at so far it looks like that will come to past.

    AN ERECTOR SET FILM, what demo are they trying to get? Do they even still make those toys anymore?

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  3. Blast Hardcheese18/2/10 12:50 pm

    As to D's first item, I'm going to have to go with B. Don't get me wrong, I loves me some Wes Anderson. I think "The Royal Tenenbaums" is one of the best movies around. It just goes to show that behavior that is lovable and quirky on the screen becomes irritating and destructive when one tries to apply it in real life.

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