Tuesday 11 January 2011

Hollywood Babble On & On #658: Furious D's Fast & Furious Sick Day Post

Welcome to the show folks...

I'm sick as a dog that's currently not feeling very well, so I won't be doing the sort of in-depth analysis that you crave like the salivating dogs that you are. What I can do are some quick notes.

BOND 23 HAS A DATE

And it's not with a saucy femme fatale. I mean a release date, November 2012. The film will star Daniel Craig, and will be directed by Sam Mendes. Mendes, the man behind American Beauty will mark a change of direction for the franchise, moving away from its spy thriller roots into a domestic drama about the soul crushing conformity of suburbia.

Good luck MGM, hope it makes a fortune, because you can use it.


HISTORY CANCELS HISTORY?

The History Channel has canceled their mini-series about
The Kennedys before it even aired, leaving this slice of American history to air on the Canadian History Channel. Their excuse is that it somehow wasn't "historic" enough for a channel that airs shows speculating that Nostradamus shoving Crystals Skulls containing the ghosts of dead aliens up his backside to tell us that the world will end in 2012.

The biggest problem they had with the Canadian produced miniseries was not the script, that had been carefully analyzed and pre-approved, it was with political and social pressure.

The mini-series was written by Joel Surnow, the man who created the TV series 24. Surnow is a rarity, a political conservative openly living and working in Hollywood. The knee-jerk reaction among Hollywood people is that as liberals they must idolize Kennedy, and that Surnow would treat Kennedy the same way they would treat a historic figure or character who is politically conservative. Basically, they were worried that Surnow would pull a right wing Oliver Stone.

The ironic thing is that most conservatives actually respect most of what Kennedy did and stood for policy wise. He stood up to the Soviets, promoted national defense, cut taxes, and did many other things that many American conservatives supported.

Of course that's not what the Kennedy family and their friends are worried about. If Surnow did a real "warts and all" biography, then there would some discussion of JFK's philandering, Joseph P. Kennedy's shady business dealings, RFK's crusade against only mobsters who voted Republican, the mysteries over the Chicago vote count, and other things.

That's biography, and the Kennedys and their allies only want hagiography. So they bring down all the political and social pressure they can bear on the project, and the History Channel's parent company AETN.

POLITICAL: AETN is part owned by Disney/ABC and NBC/Universal. Both are being carefully watched by federal regulators, especially NBC/U which is currently trying to be sold to cable giant Comcast. Suddenly questions start being asked about your company by Senate and House committees, and important business suddenly can't get done.

SOCIAL: AETN executives have to live in the small world of Hollywood. A world where influential can get you bounced from the list of the next $2,500 a plate fundraiser that all your Hollywood friends are going to. Or you could find the tires on your sports-car slashed by the razor-sharp cheekbones of Maria Shriver.

This is far more powerful than the public complaints that compelled CBS to dump a controversial mini-series about Ronald & Nancy Reagan, onto their Showtime cable channel.

So you tell me: Is this editing? And by that a purely business/creative decision. Or: Is this censorship? Where the decision was based solely on political/social pressure.

2 comments:

  1. Kennedy's from what I seen, that miniseries looks like CRAP. Also we have Katie Holmes, Mrs. Tom Cruise in this mess, that is pretty much a good gauge on how much Tom and Lord Xenu have pretty much ruined her career.

    Kennedy's yeah they are like the Jackson's want all movies and books about them to talk about their imagined divine status.

    The jacksoff family is also suing Jermaine's EX over a tell all book about the dirt on that family, they already used their legal power to stop a book that was co-wrote by the kid from the 1st jackson molestation allegations. Which mentioned some things in explicit pornographic detail.

    Problem with the cult-like self-worship is after awhile fantasy becomes reality and reality is denied. What was really "real" about Michael Jackson? There were allegations from various enemies such as him having so many coffee enemas he needed tampons to "plug" himself up, family having animal sacrifices..and so on.

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  2. Don't know much about this mini-series, but I do know how the mouse crushed my hopes of buying -The PATH TO 9-11- something out of their ancient decaying hands. Wonder why they decided to make a Mickey Mouse(TM) game now? Something about copyrights on property going out after 100 years comes to my mind...

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