Monday 16 April 2012

Hollywood Babble On & On #883: Miscellaneous Monday Musings...

It's Monday, the weather's good, and the news is slow, so I'm going to drop a few random musings on you.

1. BULLY NOT SO BULLISH.

Well, after months of hype, controversy, grandstanding, and other nonsense the PG-13 cut of the anti-bullying documentary Bully was released, and promptly fizzled

2 reasons for this...

A)  All the talk show appearances, and interviews, and outright campaigning since this nonsense started made everyone sick of the movie before it was even released.

B)  No one needs to be told that bullying is wrong.  Even the bullies know that, that's one of the reasons why they love doing it.  Trust me I've dealt with enough of them in my childhood.  A documentary isn't going to change their behavior, aversion therapy in the form of a humiliating public ass kicking is the only thing that will change their behavior.

2. DID SARAH SINK HER SITCOM?

The folks at the Wrap are speculating that an abortion joke made on Twitter by comedian Sarah Silverman might scuttle her upcoming NBC sitcom.

I doubt it.  She's made her career by being "shocking" but in a way that Hollywood is totally comfortable with by never attacking their own precious shibboleths.

What will scuttle her NBC sitcom is the fact that the overwhelming majority of people living outside of New York or Los Angeles don't really care about Sarah Silverman, or even know who she is outside of being "That chick who was on that episode of Voyager where they went to the 1990s."

3. PARTICIPANT WANTS TO PARTICIPATE IN TV

Participant Media, the brainchild of E-Bay billionaire/cinematic dilettante Jeff Skoll is expanding into making "socially relevant" television.

Considering that it wasn't that long ago that even the mainstream press considered Participant as more of a billionaire's hobby than a serious movie company expect some show's that offer a lot of sincerity, that win all kinds of awards, and critical praise, and far too few viewers.

4.  IRON MAN TO BE MADE IN CHINA

Iron Man 3 is to be at least partially shot in China as a China/USA co-production.  This deal will help get the film around China's strict quota system on foreign movies, but a few changes will be made.

The biggest change will be that the long promised villain The Mandarin will be rewritten into The Bureaucrat, and will be played by Josh Brolin with a Texas drawl.

4 comments:

  1. Participant movies like Furry Vengeance and The Crazies seemed to be more out for money than "making a difference", even if Jeff Skoll says otherwise. They ended up achieving none of those thing.

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  2. Wasn't "Furry Vengeance" supposed to have an environmental message, making it both inane and preachy?

    ;)

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  3. My point was they probably didn't expect the movie to win much awards.

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  4. But they probably thought the right sort of statement would be made, which would still get Skoll an invite to play with the cool kids.

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