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Hollywood Babble On & On #845: TV Has Them Now

2012-02-01T19:02:00.001-04:00

TV now has Bacon.

Not that kind of bacon, though it would be great all fried up nice and crispy..... hmmmm....

Anyway, I'm saying that feature film actor Kevin Bacon has just inked a deal to do a pilot for a TV series.

He's not the only actor to make the leap from the big screen to the slightly smaller HD screen. Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman, current Oscar nominee Nick Nolte, and character actor Don Cheadle have had their TV efforts renewed for a second season. People are also speculating on which movie stars should also make the leap to television.

There was a time, and it wasn't that long ago that the sight of a big screen star doing television was seen as a come down. People would cluck their tongues and say: "Oh dear, I guess they couldn't get another movie, now the poor person's stuck doing TV."

There used to be a stigma to doing television. It was the hyperactive little brother of the movies who had to wear a helmet all the time because it was prone to doing really stupid things. For a movie actor to do television was akin to prostitution, something they would only do if they were truly desperate for money.

Now that stigma is gone, and you're probably wondering what happened to it.

Now each actor probably has their own individual reasons for doing television, but the one reason they all share is STORY.

Television has become the home of stories and the characters who dwell within them. Movies have become the home of gimmicks, and story is usually the last thing they consider, and when they do, it's only to dumb it down to make more room for flashing lights and loud noises.

It's killing the movie industry, look at how desperately they cling to the slightest good news and use to crow that happy days are here again, only to box office receipts return to their ongoing downward slide.

Why does the box office keep going down?

Because people are at home, watching stories on the television.

One of the chief reasons the major studios have given up on stories is because developing good stories requires the people making them to understand the art of story-telling, to work hard and trust their instincts. Understanding the art of story-telling, hard work and gut instinct requires learning, effort, and taking responsibility for one's decisions.

They obviously don't teach understanding the art of story-telling at Harvard business school, and taking responsibility for one's decisions could put their fat paychecks, company cars, and quarterly bonuses at risk.

It's easier for them to pass off all the decisions to marketing focus groups. Then they can say: "It's not my fault, it tested well," and live to screw up another day. If a problem pops up, just throw their parent company's money at it until the focus group tells you what you want to hear.

Meanwhile, TV has tons of competition, because there are dozens of companies, running hundreds of channels, and the ones that put out the quality original content are the ones that win the viewers. This has made the TV business, specifically the cable channels, leaner, meaner, and more responsive to their viewers. If they don't deliver story, they don't get subscribers, and if they don't get subscribers, they don't make money and can quickly go out of business, or get taken over.

This attitude is slowly and surely creeping into network television as well, which for decades was even more inane than the studios when it came to bureaucratic buck passing.

I'll conclude with this excerpt from New York Times critic A.O. Scott's review of the Katherine Heigl movie One For The Money, I think it speaks volumes:

Not long ago it would have been possible to convey the bland, lazy, pedestrian qualities of this picture — its lackadaisical pacing, by-the-numbers performances, irritating music and drab visual texture — by likening it to a made-for-TV movie or an episode of a series on basic cable. But nowadays that would be praise, and movies like this must set their own standard for mediocrity.

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Cinemaniacal: Men Of Action...

2012-01-31T19:54:00.000-04:00

The Wrap recently recently did an article that declared Liam Neeson a genuine action movie star since his latest film, the wolf punching movie The Grey, had a boffo opening weekend. They crunched the numbers and showed that the 59 year old Irishman's relatively modestly budgeted action movies usually outperform the actors that Hollywood insists are the real action movie stars like Matt Damon and Vin Diesel.

I agree with the numbers, they are pretty clear cut, but there is one word of the article I disagree with. They used the word "improbable" to describe Neeson's action movie status.

Let's see what Mr. Neeson thinks of that description:

I think he disagrees with that description.

Personally, I've long thought Neeson would have made a good action star, because he has many of the qualities a good, long running action star needs.

1. Commanding Presence. Neeson is a big, strongly built man, and it shows on screen. He looks and acts like a man who can take care of himself, and others, and be able to take command when the situation turns bad.

2. Humanity. A good action hero can't be superhuman. A good action hero in films that people will remember and watch for decades to come has to be in way over his head in every movie, but have the will and the grit to see things through.

What keeps Vin Diesel and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson from breaking through to real consistent and substantial success outside the Fast & Furious franchise because there's too much posture and not enough humanity in their characters. They're arch, they're camp, they're not the sort of portrayals people really connect too beyond a fleeting comedic level. That "super-inhuman" quality is the main reason Diesel and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson seem forced to do family comedies to "humanize" their image.

Neeson's characters don't pose, they just do. That's why audiences seem to truly connect with his action roles.

Matt Damon always struck me as too boyish to be a consistent action star, and his Bourne franchise is essentially a ninja-superhero cartoon with very shaky camera work. Also, they strike me as just paycheck roles that he does so he can still get top dollar for doing things that don't perform as well.

Watching most action movies you never feel a twinge of doubt that this time might be it for our intrepid hero. They're presented as superhuman and destined to win no matter what, and that carries not one whit of suspense with it. With no suspense, you're not a story, just a stunt show.

3. Experience. Now most Hollywood "experts" would assume that Neeson was too old to become an action star while in his mid-to-late 50s.

Bull.

Action stardom is one of the few areas where age can actually work to your advantage. John Wayne, Lee Marvin, and Charles Bronson became legends, but they really didn't hit their stride until as action movie superstars until they were in their late thirties or forties.

An action star has to look like he's been through stuff, be it war, crime, or just a hard like. They need to look like they've lived a little, taken a few punches, know what it feels like to be hurt physically, but still keep going.

Too many of the actors pushed on us as "action star" either look like their experience is centered entirely on the gym, and/or the hair salon. You can't really buy them as a veteran of anything.

Sure, the bulk of Neeson's career was spent as a dramatic actor, and he's a truly talented dramatic actor, but there's nothing improbable about him being an action star outside of the fact that it didn't happen sooner.

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Hollywood Babble On & On #844: Why Oh Why?

2012-01-30T19:08:00.002-04:00

Today, I'm going to ask the question "Why?" and try my best to answer it.

First up, I'd like to announce that Universal Pictures did not do something stupid.

They dropped the plan to co-produce a big budget action-adventure movie based on this...

That's right, the old Stretch Armstrong doll, a speedo clad Adonis made of rubber and corn syrup. They had even signed Twilight hunk Taylor Lautner to star in the title role, though he's now out of the project as well.

So you're probably asking yourself.... Why?

Well, let's look at the facts of the case.

1. Now I was a little kid during the original Stretch Armstrong era and even had one.... he was pretty lame as a character. Especially compared to the Star Wars figures that were flooding the market at the time. Sure, he could stretch, but that was it.

2. What the hell kind of a story were they going to do with this property? A wrestler gets stretching powers, so he goes around stretching at people? At least Plastic Man was an all around shape-shifter and Mr. Fantastic was also a super-scientist with three super-powered pals. There is no real story behind the Stretch Armstrong character, and even the overactive imagination of sugar-cartoon-buzzed young kids were taxed trying to come up with situations that needed the help of a guy with blobs for hands dressed only in a speedo. Eventually the only entertainment value he had was just seeing how far you could stretch him before he started bleeding corn syrup.

3. Poor Taylor Lautner's first non-Twilight leading role, Abduction, was out of North American theaters before the opening credits were done. In the old days of Hollywood the studio would have "toughened him up" by putting him in a couple of war movies and/or westerns alongside a more experienced actor who looked like he could take a punch as well as give one.

4. The only plus for this project was that the toy company Hasbro was willing to partially back it, and that was only because they already owned Stretch Armstrong and hope that 70s nostalgia would sell some tickets and move some merchandise.

However Universal's fairly sound decision isn't the end of this story. In fact, I wouldn't be stretching the truth to say that there was still a little while left to go before this boondoggle in the making starts leaking corn syrup.

Relativity Media has picked up the project and are showing every intention of running with it.

Which makes me ask once more.... Why?

I think the answer is quite simple. Relativity's been losing money, investors, partners, and friends faster than a reality TV star loses their dignity. They need a big sized partner like Hasbro with deep pockets to keep their ship afloat, and if that means making Stretch Armstrong: The Movie, or Hungry, Hungry Hippos, to be directed by Lars Von Trier, then so be it.

UPDATE: Reader ILDC mentioned that Hasbro won't be "producing" and how that might mean that they won't be doing any direct financing of the films in question.

Well, the term "producing" has some very nebulous definitions in Hollywood. There are many hedge funds and investment firms that put money into films while not considered to be "producing" them, and there are people and companies that get credited as producers while contributing no money or effort to the movie but simply because they hold onto the rights to something that was necessary to make the film.

Also, having a big international manufacturer like Hasbro on your side is a great form of insurance if your company is having money and investor troubles. This is because there's nothing better guarantees that a film will be finished and released to other money sources, a real concern for investors, than having a big corporation with a vested interest in the film.

Then there's the inevitable marketing blitz Hasbro will have with their toys cross promoting the film, and doing a lot to cover the usually onerous prints and advertising costs that can often be more than a film's production budget.

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ASK FURIOUS D!

2012-01-27T19:00:00.000-04:00

That's right kiddies! Here's another chance for you to drink of the bottomless well that is my wisdom!

If you have a question about pop culture and the business behind it, then leave it here in the comments, and I'll answer it some time next week.

While you're composing your questions take a gander at these groovy fan-made titles for The Dark Knight Rises. Makes you feel that more movies need creative title sequences.

The Dark Knight Rises - Opening Credits Project from Doğan Can Gündoğdu on Vimeo.

Get asking!

Hollywood Babble On & On #843: SNARK ATTACK!

2012-01-26T18:31:00.001-04:00

I'm in a snarky mood, so let's get the vitriol flying...

1. An Australian politician was busted for plagiarizing a speech from the Michael Douglas movie The American President.

That's nothing, last month the same politician ended a speech with: "YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!"

2. California has made it mandatory for performers in pornographic movies filmed in the state to wear condoms.

Naturally the industry says that the new rule is just too hard-on them.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!

Anyway, filming porno movies will now have to begin with the director yelling: "THAT'S A WRAP!"

3. Rosie O'Donnell's struggling talk show on the ~~EGO~~ OWN Channel has got a new set and a new executive producer in the vain hope that it will save the show, and recoup the mega-millions spent on making it.

Of course all this is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, since the one thing the show desperately needs is a new host that doesn't repulse the majority of the audience.

4. NBC is considering a spin-off of The Office centering on the character Dwight Schrute played by Rainn Wilson.

They are also considering a new more honest slogan for the network:

Hollywood Babble On & On #842: Random Drippings From My Brain Pan

2012-01-25T15:35:00.003-04:00

HARVEY'S CAN STILL ROPE THEM IN!

Jack Selby, a former grande fromage at PayPal, has started an independent film company Incognito Pictures. The purpose of the company is to take $50 million and use it for “creating intelligent, genre-agnostic films with worldwide appeal.”

Which brings me to my first question: What the hell does he mean by "genre-agnostic?"

Are his movies going to be undecided if they're comedies, horror movies, or musicals, or will they just wander around wondering if there really is such a thing as a genre?

The mind boggles.

Anyway, while I applaud Mr. Selby for wanting to make movies and for having the cash to pull it off, I do have to ask a second, probably more important question:

Why on Earth did Incognito Pictures ink a distribution deal with the Weinstein Company?

The Weinstein Company is where the whole concept of the producer / distributor partnership goes to die. The company's business model is to not distribute movies that can't get the Weinsteins Oscars or money they don't have to share with anyone else. If your film doesn't fit into either category, you will be bombarded with all sorts of excuses for them to not release your movie, there will be lawsuits, counter-lawsuits, and then they're just going to be dumped into the discount DVD bin.

TWC is in an almost constant state of litigation with former partners. The only time a partnership has managed to come back from the brink of turning into a full on blood feud is with Relativity Media, and that's probably because both know that they only have the money to sue each other, or do the Crow remake that only they are asking for, they can't do both.

I'm really amazed that a survivor of the madhouse that is the online business world like Selby would dive head first into this black hole. There are other distributors out there that would love someone who can put out product on a regular basis. The Weinstein Company is only really good at selling Oscar bait, talking rich people into going into business with them, and making lawyers lots of money.

The mind boggles once again.

SPIKE LEE MAKES A POINT, BUT MISSES THE BIG PICTURE

Director Spike Lee went on a bit of a tirade at the Sundance Film Festival. The highlight of this spiel was his declaration that Hollywood executives "know nothing about black people."

He's right. Hollywood executives don't know a thing about black people.

But he also misses the big issue at hand.

Hollywood executives do know absolutely nothing about black people, but they also know absolutely nothing about:

- White people.

- Asian people.

- Christian people.

- Jewish people.

- Muslim people.

- Hindu people.

- Buddhist people.

- Poor people.

- Rich people.

- Middle Class people.

Hell, it's easier to just say that Hollywood executives don't know anything about anyone who isn't part of the upper class, Ivy League graduate, greater Los Angeles - Beverly Hills - Malibu Axis of Ego social clique that they belong to.

They live in a strange extra-dimensional bubble where everyone is either kissing their ass or stabbing their back, and possess a screaming ignorance of how the rest of humanity lives.

JAY'S JOKE TO BE JUDGED?

Jay Leno is being sued over a joke.

Apparently the ~~former comedian~~ late night host made a joke claiming Republican candidate Mitt Romney lived here:

The problem is that this isn't the lavish mansion of rampant capitalist excess Leno's writers thought it was, it is, in fact, the Harmandir Sahib; the Golden Temple of Amritsar, the holy center of Sikhism.

Now Sikhs are calling their lawyers and suing Leno and NBC for libel and defamation.

I'm actually surprised. I expected Leno to get hit with a class action suit by other comedians for rampant hackery way before he got sued by anyone else.

Hollywood Babble On & On #841: It's Oscar Time Everyone!

2012-01-24T15:12:00.003-04:00

Here are the nominations for the 84th Academy Awards, lightly peppered with my trademark bitter snarkasm...

Best Picture

“The Artist” Thomas Langmann, Producer- I can't really say if this film is worthy of an Academy Award nomination, something went wrong at the screening and I spent the whole time yelling "Turn it up, I can't hear a damn thing!"
“The Descendants” Jim Burke, Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, Producers- It's got George Clooney, domestic dysfunction, and according to reviews, not much happens, so it's a perfect awards movie.
“Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” Scott Rudin, Producer- I haven't heard of a single person saying that they liked the movie, and people seem to be avoiding it despite having Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, but since it's an overly sincere drama with a mopey kid with dead father issues, the nominations are pretty much guaranteed.
“The Help” Brunson Green, Chris Columbus and Michael Barnathan, Producers- Hollywood loves a movie where the noble white person helps the noble oppressed black people. So it's to be expected.
“Hugo” Graham King and Martin Scorsese, Producers- Many who saw it say it's a magical love letter to cinema. Too bad there weren't that many in North America who saw it.
“Midnight in Paris” Letty Aronson and Stephen Tenenbaum, Producers- Woody Allen made a movie that was seen by people outside of New York and Los Angeles, they had to nominate it.
“Moneyball” Michael De Luca, Rachael Horovitz and Brad Pitt, Producers- There had been so many problems during development of this movie I think the nomination's simply for getting the damn thing done.
“The Tree of Life” Nominees to be determined - Nobody knows what the movie was supposed to be about, and it also looks like nobody knows who produced the damn thing.
“War Horse” Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy, Producers- Spielberg is threatening to send the titular horse to the glue factory if he doesn't win.

Directing

“The Artist” Michel Hazanavicius- Token foreigner so the Academy could feel cosmopolitan. He might win if there's a split in the vote.
“The Descendants” Alexander Payne- Domestic dramas are Academy faves, plus it has the Clooney stamp of approval, so he might have a shot even though hardly anyone actually saw the movie.
“Hugo” Martin Scorsese- He made a magical love letter to cinema, but the biggest block against him is that he won just a few years ago after years of being shut out. To the Academy's gestalt mass-mind, he's had his turn and there's no drama to be had in giving it to him.
“Midnight in Paris” Woody Allen- Academy voters like him, but he's unlikely to show up for the ceremony, so he's probably not going to win.
“The Tree of Life” Terrence Malick- Many academy voters want him to win, but fear that his acceptance speech will start with him thanking the Big Bang, and going on from there. They only have five hours for the show.

Actor in a Leading Role

Demián Bichir in “A Better Life” - Never heard of him, or the movie. No chance.
George Clooney in “The Descendants”- The front-runner. An Oscar semi-regular, a past winner, past nominee, who is firmly entrenched in the club playing a dead eyed suburbanite who gets cuckolded.
Jean Dujardin in “The Artist” - If he wins, he should just walk on stage, mouth a speech, then walk off without making a sound.
Gary Oldman in “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” - Brilliant actor in by all accounts a brilliant performance, but a long-shot because he's not exactly "Hollywood's boy," plus the outspoken conservative political stances of his business partner/producer Doug Urbanski may hurt his chances with liberal Academy voters.
Brad Pitt in “Moneyball” - Despite his popularity in Hollywood, and the film actually being seen by people, there really isn't much "show-stopping" stuff in the role to overcome Clooney.

Actor in a Supporting Role

Kenneth Branagh in “My Week with Marilyn” - Long shot.
Jonah Hill in “Moneyball”- The Academy is going to demand Jonah regain the weight he lost since Moneyball to avoid confusing viewers if he wins.
Nick Nolte in “Warrior” - A real war horse of an actor, so starved for good roles in features that he's doing TV now with Dustin Hoffman in HBO's Luck.
Christopher Plummer in “Beginners” - Had a long and respected career, and while it was a barely seen movie, it could come to him as a lifetime achievement sort of deal. But that's only if the Academy has any sense of history.
Max von Sydow in “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close”- Someone had to be nominated from that movie, so why not give it to the long running, but under-appreciated von Sydow.

Actress in a Leading Role

Glenn Close in “Albert Nobbs” - Sorry Glenn, playing butch only works for Hillary Swank.
Viola Davis in “The Help” - By all accounts very deserving of the award, so that makes her a long shot.
Rooney Mara in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” -The manic pixie dreamgirl goes punk, and give the Academy a shot at pretending to be "with it."
Meryl Streep in “The Iron Lady”- Won't win because Academy voters will fear that voting for her will be considered a vote for Thatcher herself.
Michelle Williams in “My Week with Marilyn"- The Academy will see this as a little too blatant an attempt to woo them, and probably reject her.

Actress in a Supporting Role

Bérénice Bejo in “The Artist”
Jessica Chastain in “The Help”
Melissa McCarthy in “Bridesmaids”
Janet McTeer in “Albert Nobbs”
Octavia Spencer in “The Help”

Animated Feature Film

“A Cat in Paris” Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli
“Chico & Rita” Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal
“Kung Fu Panda 2″ Jennifer Yuh Nelson
“Puss in Boots” Chris Miller
“Rango” Gore Verbinski

Foreign Language Film

“Bullhead” Belgium
“Footnote” Israel
“In Darkness” Poland
“Monsieur Lazhar” Canada
“A Separation” Iran

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

“The Descendants” Screenplay by Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon & Jim Rash
“Hugo” Screenplay by John Logan
“The Ides of March” Screenplay by George Clooney & Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon
“Moneyball” Screenplay by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin. Story by Stan Chervin
“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” Screenplay by Bridget O’Connor & Peter Straughan

Writing (Original Screenplay)

“The Artist” Written by Michel Hazanavicius
“Bridesmaids” Written by Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig
“Margin Call” Written by J.C. Chandor
“Midnight in Paris” Written by Woody Allen
“A Separation” Written by Asghar Farhad

Art Direction

“The Artist” Production Design: Laurence Bennett; Set Decoration: Robert Gould
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2″ Production Design: Stuart Craig; Set Decoration: Stephenie McMillan
“Hugo” Production Design: Dante Ferretti; Set Decoration: Francesca Lo Schiavo
“Midnight in Paris” Production Design: Anne Seibel; Set Decoration: Hélène Dubreuil
“War Horse” Production Design: Rick Carter; Set Decoration: Lee Sandales

Cinematography

“The Artist” Guillaume Schiffman
“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” Jeff Cronenweth
“Hugo” Robert Richardson
“The Tree of Life” Emmanuel Lubezki
“War Horse” Janusz Kaminsk

Costume Design

“Anonymous” Lisy Christl
“The Artist” Mark Bridges
“Hugo” Sandy Powell
“Jane Eyre” Michael O’Connor
“W.E.” Arianne Phillips

Documentary (Feature)

“Hell and Back Again” Danfung Dennis and Mike Lerner
“If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front” Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman
“Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory” Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs
“Pina” Wim Wenders and Gian-Piero Ringel
“Undefeated” TJ Martin, Dan Lindsay and Richard Middlemas

Documentary (Short Subject)

“The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement” Robin Fryday and Gail Dolgin
“God Is the Bigger Elvis” Rebecca Cammisa and Julie Anderson
“Incident in New Baghdad”James Spione
“Saving Face” Daniel Junge and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy
“The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom” Lucy Walker and Kira Carstensen

Film Editing

“The Artist” Anne-Sophie Bion and Michel Hazanavicius
“The Descendants” Kevin Tent
“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall
“Hugo” Thelma Schoonmaker
“Moneyball” Christopher Tellefsen

Makeup

“Albert Nobbs” Martial Corneville, Lynn Johnston and Matthew W. Mungle
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2″ Edouard F. Henriques, Gregory Funk and Yolanda Toussieng
“The Iron Lady” Mark Coulier and J. Roy Helland

Music (Original Score)

“The Adventures of Tintin” John Williams
“The Artist” Ludovic Bource
“Hugo” Howard Shore
“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” Alberto Iglesias
“War Horse” John Williams

Music (Original Song)

“Man or Muppet” from “The Muppets” Music and Lyric by Bret McKenzie
“Real in Rio” from “Rio” Music by Sergio Mendes and Carlinhos Brown Lyric by Siedah Garrett

Short Film (Animated)

“Dimanche/Sunday” Patrick Doyon
“The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg
“La Luna” Enrico Casarosa
“A Morning Stroll” Grant Orchard and Sue Goffe
“Wild Life” Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby

Short Film (Live Action)

“Pentecost” Peter McDonald and Eimear O’Kane
“Raju” Max Zähle and Stefan Gieren
“The Shore” Terry George and Oorlagh George
“Time Freak” Andrew Bowler and Gigi Causey
“Tuba Atlantic” Hallvar Witzø

Sound Editing

“Drive” Lon Bender and Victor Ray Ennis
“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” Ren Klyce
“Hugo” Philip Stockton and Eugene Gearty
“Transformers: Dark of the Moon” Ethan Van der Ryn and Erik Aadahl
“War Horse” Richard Hymns and Gary Rydstrom

Sound Mixing

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” David Parker, Michael Semanick, Ren Klyce and Bo Persson
“Hugo” Tom Fleischman and John Midgley
“Moneyball” Deb Adair, Ron Bochar, Dave Giammarco and Ed Novick
“Transformers: Dark of the Moon” Greg P. Russell, Gary Summers, Jeffrey J. Haboush and Peter J. Devlin
“War Horse” Gary Rydstrom, Andy Nelson, Tom Johnson and Stuart Wilson

Visual Effects

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2″ Tim Burke, David Vickery, Greg Butler and John Richardson
“Hugo” Rob Legato, Joss Williams, Ben Grossman and Alex Henning
“Real Steel” Erik Nash, John Rosengrant, Dan Taylor and Swen Gillberg
“Rise of the Planet of the Apes” Joe Letteri, Dan Lemmon, R. Christopher White and Daniel Barrett
“Transformers: Dark of the Moon” Scott Farrar, Scott Benza, Matthew Butler and John Frazier

Hollywood Babble On & On #840: Sundancing Over The Cliff

2012-01-22T21:24:00.001-04:00

The Sundance Film Festival is currently clogging the streets of Park City, Utah with SUVs, stretch limos, stretch SUVs, celebrities, their entourages, and the paparazzi and reporters who buzz around them in a self-sustaining, if vapid, ecosystem all of its own.

The incomparable Nikki Finke took a moment to look at how the films that got all the buzz from last year's Sundance did with audiences.

If you're too lazy to click the link, then here's the short answer:

Not well, not well at all. In fact, it's making Don Draper cry.

The biggest film was the Weinstein Company stoner comedy Our Idiot Brother, which came and went like a puff of pot smoke, potentially making a profit after P&A, but at best only a small one, and was quickly forgotten. The biggest effect that film had on popular culture was giving me a cheap excuse to post a picture of its co-star Zooey Deschanel.

None of the other films failed to crack the $10 million mark, and most failed to crack even a million like Morgan Spurlock's heavily hyped documentary about product placement Pom Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold which only made $638,456 in theaters.

I really don't like this development, because I can remember when indie films actually mattered.

I was in film school during the indie film boom of the 1990s, and independent film was the most exciting thing in town, even with people who weren't film nerds. People outside the entertainment industry, and its watchers like me, talked about independent movies.

Why?

Because independent movies were giving the audience what they wanted. Intelligent movies that bucked the group-think and dependence on stars, money, and opening weekend grosses that dominated the films coming out of mainstream Hollywood.

They used their small budgets as an excuse to use a little something called "imagination" to get things done, and audiences appreciated it. Sure, most of the movies weren't big block-buster hits, but films and audiences could make that precious connection.

This golden age didn't last, especially after Hollywood discovered Sundance, the awards the movies could win for the studios, and the "credibility" that celebrities could get from doing independent movies.

Everything went to hell shortly after. Every major studio started their own "indie" division, and stars started inserted themselves in all sorts of independent movies.

Soon the connection between film and audience was forgotten. In its place was a new connection, between Sundance and Hollywood.

Instead of bucking Hollywood's group-think and dependence on stars, indie films were swallowed up into it. A lot of movies were getting made not because of their merits, including the merit of finding an audience, but whether or not they'd get a name actor an award nomination. The festival changed from one that built around finding an audience for indie movies to giving celebrities a spot for photo-ops to show off their apre-ski wear.

Now I'm not saying that independent filmmakers stopped making good movies. Lots were being made, but they were drowned out in a sea of faux-sincere, faux-edgy vanity projects.

With awards and riches failing to appear, most of the major studios shuttered their indie divisions, and the market more or less collapsed.

But that wasn't the most important thing that went down in the indie film market.

The most important thing that was lost was trust.

You see, the audience must trust that the film they're going to see is at least going to try to entertain them. They must trust that it will challenge them, and not insult them just for being them, and independent film completely lost that trust.

The film Margin Call got good reviews, but poor box office, because the audience couldn't trust the filmmaker to handle the subject matter of the 2008 financial crisis without making it into some sort of strident polemic against the lives that most Americans live. Even those who would have agreed with Hollywood's point of view avoided it, because they don't want to be lectured as much as the other guy.

Then there's the movie The Ledge, which pretty much embodies everything wrong with current independent film, and it's $9,125 box office take really shows it. It's a film with three name actors, Liv Tyler, Terrence Howard and Patrick Wilson, and it's all about how evil, crazy, and homicidal American Christians are.

The plot of the film revolves around a heroic atheist who has to sacrifice his life on the titular ledge to save his married lover from her psychotically evil Christian fundamentalist husband.

Now the American audience will take having their intelligence insulted as long as its wrapped in a colorful and entertaining package, but they will not stand to have their existence insulted. And even those who agree with Hollywood's only permitted prejudice will avoid the film, because the whole thing promises to bore the bloomers off them. So you get the majority of the audience insulted.

It still got made, because the purpose of the film wasn't to make money, or find any sort of audience. In fact, its failure to make money is seen as a positive. The purpose of this film was to make the people who made it and starred in it feel all smug and better about themselves. They get to claim to be "edgy" and "daring" while doing nothing that actual challenges the shibboleths and prejudices of anyone who might hurt their career within their immediate social circle. Then they can use the film's financial failure as a badge of honor and sacrifice in the face of the horrendous stupidity of the great unwashed who buy movie tickets.

The only audience that matters to too many indie films and filmmakers now is Hollywood, and even the citizens of the Axis of Ego don't have to see the movie for it to have the desired effect. Even films that actually are trying to find a wider, real audience, are burdened with a mark of Cain that seems visible only to the audience by these movies.

Technology has made it possible to do professional looking film-making at prices not seen since the advent of sound, new avenues of distribution are opening up, and it's now possible for indie films to find their audience, no matter how niche, yet independent film is struggling to find even niche audiences. It's struggling because it's turning into the English Canadian film industry, where that trust relationship with the ticket buying public is gone, and something drastic is going to have to be done to get it back.

Hollywood Babble On & On #839: DC Logo-A-Go-Go!

2012-01-20T15:45:00.002-04:00

DC Comics has formally debuted their new corporate logo, so hold your breath and prepare to be amazed....

What? You're not amazed, well maybe these jaunty variations on a theme will make you wet your pants with fanboy glee...

Still dry?

Okay, I admit it, I was seriously underwhelmed by the whole thing. In fact, when I first saw it, this is what I thought of...

That's right, I thought it was the logo for a place where you go to get photocopies made. This logo has reached incredible heights of banality, that I honestly didn't think were possible.

Now before I get to my point, let's meander a bit and take a moment to look at DC's past logos and see how they compare to the new one.

This logo is from 1949, and it's basic design tells the story of the company. On the top is the name of "Superman" their biggest star, in the center are the initials DC, which stood for "Detective Comics" their first big magazine, and at the bottom is National Comics which was the original name of the company.

It's not particularly inspired, but it's still better than the new logo.

This logo was adapted in the 1970s, and it's still pretty simple, and tells a slightly different story. Instead of just plugging themselves as the home of Superman, DC, which is now officially called DC Comics, it's shilling itself as the home of a whole universe of "super stars." It sort of looks like it belongs on the side of a football helmet, but it's still better than the new logo.

It was soon replaced by this logo...

This logo is not quite as narrative as the last two logos, but it is symbolic. The round shield shape, the stars, the bold blocky letters have an air of martial heraldry, like the sort of logos made up by members of military units during World War 2. It symbolizes heroism, teamwork, and patriotism, which is rather fitting since the foundation of the business is the making and selling of superheroes.

That makes it better than the new logo.

This was the last logo DC had before the new one, and it's still better. The bold streamlined letters, the swooping lines, and the star, symbolize motion, strength, and action.

Pretty fitting for a company that sells superheros. Still better than the new logo.

What does the new logo tell me, once I get past the thought of getting my manuscript photocopied for 5¢ a page and picking up some post-it notes on sale?

Well, it tells me that whoever designed this logo, and the people that approved don't seem to appreciate exactly what DC Comics is supposed to be selling. There's no hint of action, heroism, no dynamism, or excitement. Just one corporation "re-branding" another without much thought about what the corporation is supposed to do. It might as well make widgets.

Hollywood Babble On & On #838: SOPA DOPE!

2012-01-18T19:08:00.001-04:00

Today the internet is all aflutter and it doesn't involve Justin Bieber, but SOPA and PIPA.

The only Pippa I'll vote for!

SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act, and PIPA doesn't stand for England's hottest royal sister Pippa Middleton, it means the Protect Intellectual Property Act.

Both are supposed to stop online piracy of intellectual property, and no one of right mind wants to support online piracy, but there's a problem.

Both acts are supremely fucked up.

It boils down to this.

There is piracy online, lots of it, and it costs the movie and music industry several truckloads of cash every year. And if the creators of intellectual property can't earn money from their work, then there's going to be a lot less creating going on.

However the pirates running these operations are usually in Europe and Asia, and use distance to avoid prosecution and litigation from American companies. Now these same American companies could try to threaten the governments of the pirate's host countries with boycotts and such to make them do something, but that would be impolitic, and with certain countries, hazardous to your corporation's health. So the plan is to punish the whole internet for the sins of the relative few.

The laws basically eliminate due process, and the concept of innocent before proven guilty. All it takes is one person to post one link to something that a media company considers pirated material, and those media companies can shut down entire websites. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia, Blogger, YouTube, Tumblr, and others could all be blocked, their owners sued, and in some cases arrested or imprisoned, simply for not preventing piracy to the satisfaction of the media company that lodged the complaint.

It's the equivalent of using an atomic weapon to kill roaches that have gotten into your kitchen.

You destroy your kitchen, and the work and property of millions of innocent people all around you, and all for nothing.

Why?

Guess who can survive a nuclear blast.

Roaches.

Yep, the pirates can still operate freely.

Why?

Because SOPA and PIPA are badly written laws full of loopholes that real criminals can exploit, and lots of vague definitions and enough legal baffle-gab to make any sort of previously lawful use of copyrighted material constitute piracy.

Parodies like this old chestnut from the blog's early days could be declared piracy because they involve copyrighted and trade-marked material. It doesn't matter if centuries of common law allow parody, that will be gone if these laws are passed.

Home videos of pets and cute babies uploaded to YouTube could be declared piracy and makers sued, fined and/or imprisoned because of a song playing on the radio in the background.

Ironically, the key to killing SOPA and PIPA is the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Some key Republican players are bailing on supporting the bills.

Republicans have lots of reasons to dislike SOPA and PIPA.

1. The bills are terribly overreaching constraints on the last truly free market in the world.

2. Those constraints will stifle innovation as the big players use the vaguely worded laws to stifle competition in the form of new start-up companies.

3. The biggest supporters of the bills are the big media companies centered around New York and Hollywood, and this is where partisan politics come in, because those very same companies wouldn't give the steam off their pee to the Republican Party.

4. One of the chief architects of the bills is MPAA honcho Chris Dodd, who, thanks to his long political career, is already seen by Republicans as the bogeyman of government regulatory overreach, and crony corporatism. Opponents of SOPA and PIPA need to remind the Republicans in congress of this, and promise to use this fact against them the next time they seek their party's nomination for anything above dogcatcher.

As for Hollywood, there are things they can do to fight piracy.

1. Use the existing laws, but pick their battles wisely. Forget the dancing baby in the YouTube video and go for the big scale pirates and the money they make from piracy. You might step on the toes of certain governments that like to rattle sabers, but even they need to learn that respecting intellectual property rights is essential for an advancing society.

2. Make movies and music that people think are worth paying for.

Then you might be able to do something real about piracy, and not boondoggles like these.

Cinemaniacal: Attack Of The Killer "B"s

2012-01-17T15:23:00.001-04:00

When I was a kid I loved low budget genre movies or "B-Movies" as they are popularly, but inaccurately called. I blame The Great Money Movie, and it's late night sister show, Weird 2, both were TV shows from over the border in Maine, which showed them with the same hyperactive glee as they did the big budget movies from the major studios.

My pop culture diet was heavily larded with regular doses of rubber monsters, spaceships that were made out of parts of toys, and sets where the walls looked like a stiff wind would take them away.

I also became a bit of a "B Movie" history buff, reading everything I could about the people who made these movies, and the often crazy stories behind their making.

It was then that learned just how inaccurate the term "B-Movie" was. You see the term originated from the old studio system when you gave the guy at the box office your nickel, and in return you got two feature films, a cartoon, a newsreel, and a whupping to keep your mind on your business.

The two movies in the double feature would consist of an "A" picture which had a big budget, big stars, and some sort of classy pedigree. The other feature, the "B" picture would be shorter, cheaper genre movie designed to keep the kids on the balcony interested enough to keep them from tossing their popcorn.

What we usually think of as "B Movies" are in fact independently produced "exploitation" movies, and not studio made "B movies."

But enough of my usual know-it-all-ism, and let me get to the meat of this rant.

I've seen some of today's crop of so-called "B-Movies" and I have found them wanting.

What really bugs me about today's movies has roots in the whole "mockbuster" fad. Now making a low budget ~~rip-off~~ imitation of a big budget studio picture is a tradition that goes all the way back to the silent era. However, it has become a mini-industry all of itself, and it's actually kind of turning me off the whole thing.

Why?

2 things, their mission and their attitude.

I've always said that the big studios are creating huge gaps in the movie market with their insistence on blockbusters, and that it should be the mission of independent filmmakers to try to fill those gaps with the sorts of stories that the majors are ignoring.

All these mockbusters do is just rehash what the major studios are doing, only doing it with worse stories, worse directing, worse acting, and even worse production values.

I know people say that they're of the campy "so bad they're good" variety, but I just don't see it. I find them as entertaining as getting a root canal.

And I can't appreciate the camp value of these production because they really don't have any, because of their attitude.

There's this whole air of smug ironic detachment behind these movies that bugs me. A "this movie is supposed to be shit, so why bother trying to be original, entertaining, or interesting, just toss in a washed up pop singer or sitcom star with some CGI done on a Commodore 64 and call it a day" sort of attitude.

The thing that made me love the old B-Movies I remember from my childhood is that even though a lot of the movies were laughably bad, there was still a sincere desire behind their making, even if that desire was just to get paid and hopefully another job afterwards. The people making the movie were trying their best, and while their efforts were often thwarted by the limitations of budget, talent, technology, or all of the above, they at least tried.

Many of those old time "B Movie" makers who had serious talent learned to work within their limited resources, breaking new ground in the process, and moved onto bigger and better things.

I don't really see a desire to break new ground with today's movies, just an itch to scratch the surface.

Hollywood Babble On & On #837: Work It Didn't Work

2012-01-15T19:28:00.000-04:00

ABC has cancelled it's freshman cross-dressing comedy ~~Bosom Buddies~~ Work It, after just two airings. Who could have possibly seen that this show was going to be an unmitigated disaster? Turns out EVERYONE.

But in the spirit of being magnanimous, I'm going to help the ABC Network, out of the goodness of my flinty little heart, with sitcom premise ideas that are better than Work It.

1. THICKE & THINN. Two single girls, one is anorexic (Sadie Thicke), and the other is obese (Beulah Thinn), work as jingle writers for a Madison Avenue ad agency, and look for love in New York City.

2. CARSON THE ARSON PARSON. A well meaning minister name Carson dispenses advice to his flock while fighting his urge for sexual release through starting racially motivated fires.

3. ARE YOU THERE HEROIN? IT'S ME COURTNEY. A wacky family hour comedy about the wacky drug fueled antics of young Courtney Love.

4. LUNGERS' LANE. A heartwarming comedy about a group of optimistic tuberculosis patients quarantined in a sanatorium in the 1870s.... with sexy results.

5. FLEAS COMPANY! Two slobby single men are having no luck with love, until they start listening to the advice from the sentient fleas that live in their furniture... with sexy results.

6. THE GOLDEN GHOULS. A group of seniors in Miami discover the fountain of youth, eating the flesh of young people... with sexy results.

7. BOB & THE DEAD HOBO. Bob Bederbecker is an ordinary family man, but every week a series of wacky coincidences will leave the body of a dead hobo in his bed, and he's got to get rid of it before someone finds it and accuses him of murder... with sexy results.

8. MRS. KRAVITZ & HATCHET HARRY. She's a nosy neighbor living next door to a sadistic serial killer, wackiness ensues!

9. BEST TWEAK EVER! The lives and loves of happy go lucky methamphetamine addicts trying to keep their addictions fed... with sexy results.

10. FREAKS & FREAKS. Two clans of circus freaks are seemingly trapped in an endless feud, until the Lobster Girl from one family finds love with the Dog-Faced Boy of another... with sexy results.

If you have any pitches for sitcoms that would have been better than Work It, leave them in the comments so I can steal them and sell them to the idiots at ABC for MILLIONS! BWAH-HAH-HAH-HAH!

Hollywood Babble On & On #836: Green Arrow Misses The Target.

2012-01-13T15:43:00.001-04:00

If you always wanted to know why DC Comics is trailing behind Marvel when it comes to making movie and TV adaptations of their characters this story will explain it to you.

Perpetual baby network, and until recently the home of Smallville, the CW has announced that they're ordering a pilot called Arrow. The show will be based on the long running DC Comics character The Green Arrow, who was also featured as a regular character on Smallville.

Now that little fact alone doesn't explain it, this line from the story will:

I hear that David Nutter will likely direct the project, which takes the comic book character, created by Mort Weisinger and George Papp, and sets him in a new world with an original story that is NOT based on the comics, published by DC Entertainment.*

Yes, that's right, they're going to do Green Arrow, but they're going to get rid of EVERYTHING about the Green Arrow.

Let's see what the character himself thinks about this development:

He doesn't seem too keen about it either.

So why would a TV network go to all the trouble of commissioning a pilot based on a popular comic book character, only to announce that they plan to jettison everything about that character?

It's the same reason why they made a complete dog's breakfast out of the Green Lantern movie.

It's the same reason Warner Bros. wasted 15 years and $50+ million on Superman Returns before a single frame of usable film was shot.

It's the same reason they pissed away millions developing a Wonder Woman TV series with David E. Kelly.

It's the same reason they made that piece of shit Catwoman movie that had nothing to do with the character it was supposed to be based on.

The CW is 50% owned by the Time Warner media empire. This same empire own DC Comics, and all the characters in the DC roster. (There's some complications with Wonder Woman, via the estate of her creator, but I don't have the space to explain its intricacies.)

That's where the trouble begins, and I'll break it down into simple bullet points.

- Warner Bros. is massive operation with multiple levels of management and producers before any project even gets close to someone who can give it a green light.

- Those levels are staffed with people who:

A) Often don't have much in the way of knowledge or appreciation for the source material, and don't really care to learn.

B) Assume that as long as it has the familiar name of a superhero on it, will assume the geeks will buy it, and all the related merchandise like the brainless salivating dogs that they are.

- This leads these executives and producers to assume that they can meddle with the characters any way they want, even if it makes it unrecognizable to the character's core fans. Plus the meddling is a great way for them to justify their existence and their expense accounts whether it's remotely helpful to the franchise or not.

Now it doesn't matter to these people that projects that mangle beloved characters beyond recognition usually fail miserably, and that projects that remain truthful to the source material tend to do well. They will never learn that lesson, because if they did, they might be tempted to NOT meddle, and not meddling is going to pay for their Mercedes Maybach company car.

The only way it seems DC/Warner Bros. can make a decent adaptation is if the project is run by someone with enough testicular fortitude and fan support to stand up to the corporate machine, like Christopher Nolan.

Marvel doesn't have this problem, or at least it didn't until recently. Because they were licensing their characters to the studios, they had the option of raising hell, if the studio bastardized their characters. And since most executives desperately try to avoid trouble, they play along to get along.

DC, which is just a cog in a massive unfeeling and unthinking, machine, doesn't have that option.

Now since Marvel was bought by Disney, and the licensing deals with Fox, Paramount, and Columbia are going to eventually expire, they will probably sink into the same corporate mire that currently makes DC's output so uneven.

-------------------

*Emphasis added by me for those who can't be horrified by the obvious.

Cinemaniacal: A Call To Action

2012-01-12T19:27:00.002-04:00

Like anyone who spent their childhood in the 1980s I was big fan of action movies. Lively movies with loads with chases, fights and shoot-outs, each one more elaborate than the last, and plots based around revenge, rescue, good old fashioned evil plot foiling or all of the above.

Lately I've been thinking about action because the movie channel package I recently got showed a bunch of action movies from the 1970s, and I watched Sam Peckinpah's The Killer Elite (1974), starring James Caan, and Robert Duvall. It's not Peckinpah's best film, it lacks the elegiac emotional impact of his westerns like The Wild Bunch or Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, and the or the near surreal madness of his hard to classify neo-Western Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia, but it's not without its charms.

As I watched it I started thinking about how rare it is when I really enjoy, or even sit all the way through, a non-James Bond action movie that's been made in the last 20 years. The problem I seem to have is that too many modern action movies, especially the ones dribbling out of Hollywood are either overdone, unoriginal, or both.

Here's how I see it...

OVERDONE: I really shouldn't have to explain this, but if I didn't there would be a blog. This is where the hero is some sort of unstoppable killing machine, many of them musclebound behemoths sweating creatine and human growth hormone, blasting everything and anything in their path with a seemingly infinite amount of ammunition or some sort of near magical martial arts skill.

There's no real sense of suspense coming from these movies, because they establish from scene 1 that the hero is unstoppable, so should anyone bother trying to stop them. There are no limits to their abilities, and in the desire to top one another, and somehow compete with the superhero franchises, they, and their antics, become often more outlandish than the superheroes.

When you look at the roots of modern action cinema in the 1960s and 1970s they at least tried to create some element of suspense. They gave the hero limitations, either like in The Killer Elite, by having star James Caan overcome a bum leg, and a bad elbow. Or they could just have them being ordinary people who looked tough, instead of cartoonish, who used what skills and tools they have at hand to survive and eventually overcome the bad guys.

The point is they're not superhuman. So you actually get a sense that they're in danger when they're supposed to be in danger.

UNORIGINAL: I saw the preview for Steven Soderbergh's Haywire, and basically saw a rehash of the plot just about every American espionage / action movie made since the 1990s. American spy gets betrayed by his own agency, for reasons that really make no logical sense, leaving him/her to kick the ass of every US government employee in the world until they take down the people who turned on them.

Look at this partial list of recent movies that all have the same plot:

Haywire

Hanna
Salt
Red
The A-Team
Green Zone
The Losers
The Bourne Identity
The Bourne Supremacy
The Bourne Ultimatum
Shooter
Mission: Impossible 1
The Long Kiss Goodnight

No wonder James Bond is the only secret agent out saving the world, the CIA is too busy hunting down their own people for reasons that make sense only to people who live inside the Axis of Ego.

Since all these movies have the same plot, the filmmakers have to make them stand out by... OVERDOING THEM. They crank up the explosions, the gun-play, and the chop-socky fights to levels that make cartoons look realistic.

I know I've harped on this in the past, but damn it, someone has to do something about this. The lack of interesting stories is why Hollywood is losing its audience.

If the movie industry made action movies with real suspense, they wouldn't have to overload them with expensive digital effects, and overwrought stunt work. That's the lesson of the movie Taken, which cost $26 million to make, had a middle aged hero, who was more grimly determined than invincible, and made over $200 million at the box office.

The average movie has to make between 2X to 3X it's production cost to break even. That movie made 10X it's production costs.

It should make the folks in Hollywood think.

Hollywood Babble On & On #835: Britain, Bucks, & Box Office!

2012-01-11T18:55:00.000-04:00

David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, has come under some criticism for saying that the British film industry should use the subsidies provided by the National Lottery to make films with "commercial appeal."

He's being called every sort of Philistine, and it's only a matter of time before one of the smart set calls it "censorship," which it isn't, but like it or loathe it, he has every right do it.

You see Cameron is the man with hands on the purse. He who pays the piper calls the tune. What he's asking for is not censorship, because he's not using the force of law from keeping people from making or exhibiting films, he's just saying that if you want the government's money, you should have at least a chance of getting a return on their investment.

Now Ken Loach, the dean of British social-realist "Damn You Margaret Thatcher" school of film-making has joined the chorus. He declared to the BBC that no one knows if a film is going to be a hit or not, and that this decision would make British films cheap imitations of the crassest product plopped out of the Hollywood studios.

And he, and the other critics, have a point.

But they're also incredibly wrong about the whole thing.

While it's a scientifically proven fact* that no one person, or formula can guarantee that any given project will be a hit, it's also a scientifically proven fact that one cannot predict if any given project will become a great work of art that will be remembered forever.

Remember William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens?

They are considered two of the greatest writers of the English language. Did they do it with no expectation of reward beyond a stipend provided to them by bureaucrats?

No. They wrote what they wrote because they believed that there was an audience out there that would enjoy their work, and pay them money to make more.

Was it all a gamble?

Yes, all creative endeavors are gambles. Like I said no one can predict the tastes of the public, or whether or not any work of art will enter the cultural zeitgeist.

However, there is basically a smell test one can give a film that says whether or not it has at least a slim chance of winning an audience.

Now a lot of the critics of the decision say that the Oscar winning, $400+ million dollar selling film The King's Speech would never be made under these guidelines. They said a period costume drama about royals and stuttering would never get a greenlight.

Seriously?

Then let's look at the facts of the case.

1. British television costume dramas sell all over the world, scoring big ratings, especially in the USA, who can't seem to get enough of them.

2. It's a story about a little known facet of well known, and beloved historical figures, especially the Queen Mother, with loads of human interest and drama, as it deals with the stress of overcoming problems and becoming a leader during a time of war.

3. It can be done cheap in comparison to the big Hollywood studio films with a $15 million production budget.

4. It fills a gap in the market place by appealing to adults with disposable income who are being ignored by the Hollywood studios who prefer teens and kids.

What do these cold, businesslike, calculations say?

GREENLIGHT.

Even if it doesn't sell out in theaters, you can at the very least break even, if not profit, with television sales. (Being a period piece, sans dated fashions, with good production values it could be re-sold almost into perpetuity.)

As it turns out the movie made $400 million internationally. Which is pretty damn sweet return on investment.

Do you see how they got it all backwards?

You see the big cautionary tale is Canada's film industry, or to be more exact, the Canadian English language film industry. It is even more dependent on government handouts than the British industry, because you can't get Canadians to pay to see an English Canadian film.

Why?

Because long ago the audience was taken out of the equation. Whether or not a film gets made has little or nothing to do with the commercial appeal of the film, or the merits of the project, but on who has the deepest connections with the ruling funding bureaucracy.

The bureaucrats have their little fiefdoms, populated with their favorite filmmakers, and woe betide any interloper who tries to enter these sacred circles without some sort of blessing from the in-crowd.

These filmmakers take taxpayer's money, make their little films, they get a nice screenings and parties at some film festivals, all taxpayer funded, and then film is never seen again.

And if an English Canadian filmmaker actually wants to make a film with broad commercial appeal, they are hampered by the industry's inability to sell it, and the stigma of English Canadian films being a "no audience required" art form.

Now it's not all hopelessness in Canadian film. French language Quebec cinema is a model of robustness compared to its Anglo brother. They've found a model that works very well for them, making films with broad commercial appeal to help get the more art house projects made.

How does that work?

1. Quebecois buy tickets, DVDs and even related merchandise. A good chunk of these profits are plowed right back into making more movies.

2. Quebec actually has their equivalent of "stars" among their actors and filmmakers. Audiences trust them to the point where they will give a more "artsy" film a chance.

Inside Quebec their domestic films often out-perform the big Hollywood pictures. They also export their films to other francophone countries, often to critical and commercial acclaim.

That's the model the British should look at, and not just when it comes to audience/artistic balance, but also production. The Quebec production system is legendarily efficient, allowing them to make films quicker, and cheaper than anywhere else.

Plus, the British have the advantage of a massive English language market, crawling with anglophiles, that they can exploit. If they play their cards right, they can build an industry that no longer government funding, and then they can make any damn film, any damn way they feel like with their own damn money.

Do you get my point?

---------------

*All scientifically proven facts proven scientifically by the Furious D Institute For The Advancement Of Smug Know-It-Allism & The Lifestyle Of Furious D.

Hollywood Babble On & On #834: Why?

2012-01-10T18:44:00.001-04:00

WHY PUT SUCCESS OUT OF REACH?

Disney's upcoming sci-fi adventure John Carter of Mars has to be a record breaking hit if it's to make money after it's $250 million production budget, and upcoming minimum $120+ million P&A outlay.

Now the question I have to ask is...

WHY?

Why was the film's budget allowed to get that obviously out of control especially at the usually cost conscious Disney?

Why are the big Hollywood studios shooting themselves in the foot by making movies cost so much they are going to literally price themselves out of profitability and possibly business?

Sometimes I feel like that guy who ran for governor of New York on the platform that rent in New York City was too damn high...

He's right you know.

WHY REDO A CLASSIC?

AMC has announced plans to develop a TV series based on the events that inspired Martin Scorsese's classic gangster movie Goodfellas.

Now some are you are probably asking...

WHY?

And to that I say...

WHY NOT?

Goodfellas, which was based on series producer Nicholas Pileggi's true crime book Wise-Guy. In case you don't remember it, it was based on the life of Henry Hill, a half-Irish/half-Sicilian hoodlum who worked the fringes of the Lucchese crime family, and was involved in everything from drug dealing, and arson, to the multi-million dollar 1978 Lufthansa heist.

Goodfellas was a great movie, but it was really a greatly condensed version of the people and events it depicted. A well done TV series could tell a more complete version of the story, including many of the events the movie had to skip.

WHY ARE THEY EVEN THINKING OF THIS?

The Lifetime Channel is reportedly in talks with Lindsay Lohan to play Hollywood legend Elizabeth Taylor in a biopic about her relationship with Richard Burton.

Now if you have more intelligence and taste than a cow-pat you're probably asking...

WHY

Lifetime thinks that this woman...

...could possibly portray....

...this woman?

I mean Lohan has pretty much burned out any of the talent or charisma she showed as a child star, and is now best known for wooden acting, drug addiction, and unprofessional on set behavior, and that's if you can actually get her on set. And to play the famously porcelain complected Taylor would probably require an inch thick coating of make-up to cover up the tramp stamps, accidental cigarette burns, and sun damage.

The only rational reason I can think of is that Lifetime knows they have a turkey on their plate and are hoping that making it an attention grabbing complete train wreck will get them some publicity and hopefully ratings.

Hollywood Babble On & On #833: Lionsgate + Summit Sitting In A Tree M-E-R-G-I-N-G!

2012-01-09T18:48:00.001-04:00

Well, it looks like it's all done but the signing. Lionsgate Pictures is reportedly just inches away from signing a deal that will merge them with upstart indie Summit Entertainment. Some are saying that this is a good deal, especially for Lionsgate, because it will connect them with Summit's expertise in foreign distribution, but I fear the whole thing is a sort of mixed affair.

So let's look at the Pros and Cons of this deal...

PROS:

1. PRICE. Reports say that the final price will be about $350 million in cash, $50 million in stock, and the assumption of Summit's debt. That's not a bad price for even a mini-movie studio with the all important library Lionsgate needs for its growing television assets. Now the debt is expected to be wiped out by...

2. TWILIGHT FRANCHISE. The epic saga of teen angst, necrophilia, that teaches girls that true love can only be found with a old predator, has sucked hundreds of millions, if not billions, from hysterical tweens and teen girls. The finale of the franchise, which has been chopped into two parts, the last part is forthcoming, is expected to pay off all the debts, and pave the way for Lionsgate's Hunger Games franchise.

3. INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTION. Reports say that Summit has got a lot more knowledge and experience in international sales and distribution than Lionsgate. So anything that eases the way into the increasingly important foreign markets is a plus.

CONS.

1. TWILIGHT FRANCHISE. With the release of Breaking Dawn Part 2, it's over, done and dusted. While the final chapter is pretty much guaranteed to make a mint and a half, there are no guarantees that the merged company's follow ups will catch on that big. Why?....

2. THE FICKLE FINGER OF FRANTIC FEMALES. The folks at Lionsgate/Summit are counting on The Hunger Games to take up the mantle of Twilight and run with it.

Well, that's really, really risky. There is no sort of fame more dangerous than tween/teen girl fame. When you have it in your hands, it's a license to print money because it is so intense. However, it's like a very fragile bird, hold it too tight, and you can kill it, hold it too loose, and it will fly away to something else. And the problem is that this little bird has an expiration date, and no one knows exactly when that date is.

The one thing people do know is that when that date comes, everything associated with the one time source of such intense hysteria, becomes anathema. That means you can't use that franchise as a selling point beyond its camp value.

3. LIONSGATE'S OVERALL STRATEGY. Lionsgate made its bones on low budget genre movies that the major studios were mostly ignoring. Lately though its strategy seems to be to imitate the big studios, but to try to do it cheaper. Now while some may argue the merits of this strategy, I think they're missing the point. Doing what's already being done by the majors does nothing to fill the huge gaps in the marketplace between the big studio blockbuster movies and the indie-art house films.

Paramount is having success with their micro-budget Insurge division, but since it's a major studio, it's only a matter of time before they screw it up. I'm sure that right now the President of Paramount is looking at the returns from The Devil Inside and thinking: "This film would have had a way bigger weekend if it had a $100 million budget and starred Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts."

4. ONE LESS COMPANY. If you're an independent producer, this merger means one last company available to buy your movies, and it means less competition for the big boys to worry about.

Anyway, those are the facts as I see them.

Cinemaniacal: Something I Saw On TV...

2012-01-08T16:30:00.001-04:00

My satellite TV service just added four new channels, all movies all the time. There is an all Warner Bros. Channel, there's an all MGM/UA channel, and one channel dedicated to big blockbusters from other studios, and another dedicated to smaller indie / art house / award monger type movies, all broadcast with a vivid high definition picture.

The scheduling is eclectic, veering between classics created by and starring movie legends, to some real crap-fests, created by and starring hacks. But it reminds me of when I was a kid and stations used to run movies of all stripes, at any time they could cram them in. Now I'd like them to run more black and white flicks, but they maybe coming down the pike once they're more established.

Anyhoo, these channels have been giving my PVR a workout, and have allowed me to catch up on some favorites the way they were meant to be seen by the original filmmakers, and to be honest, they're kind of depressing, especially when you compare it to today's film making.

One such film is the 1974 thriller classic The Taking Of Pelham 1-2-3.

The premise is pretty simple, 4 men, led by "Mr Blue" played by Robert Shaw, armed with sub-machine guns take a subway car with 18 passengers hostage. They are demanding $1 million in 1 hour, or they will kill a hostage for every minute they're late.

In the middle of the situation is Lt. Zachary Garber, played by Walter Matthau, of the New York Transit Authority Police. He's in charge of security for the subways, and it's his job to get the hostages out alive.

The suspense of the film comes from the very simple fact that hijackings and hostage situations were still fairly new in the early 70s, and nobody then was exactly sure how to handle them. "Rescue" operations consisted of storming the occupied building and shooting everything that moved, a strategy that was being rethought in the wake of the disastrous Attica Prison riots of the 1960s.

Add to that New York's status in the 1970s as an "ungovernable" city that was flat broke, overrun with crime, official corruption, and managerial incompetence. Those who actually could do their jobs were hobbled by not only the things I just listed, but by the simple fact that most of the technology they were using was last upgraded during World War 2.

Everyone on the side of the good guys is in way over their head. Lt. Garber is forced to literally make everything up as he goes along. The Mayor is sick with the flu, wildly unpopular, and scared out of his wits to make a decision as illustrated in this scene where the Mayor, his Deputy, and other top city officials debate on whether or not to pay the ransom:

Deputy Mayor Warren LaSalle: All right, Al. You've heard from the Three Wise Men. Now what do you say?

Mayor: What are THEY going to say, Warren?

Deputy Mayor Warren LaSalle: "They" who?

Mayor: Who? Everybody - the press, the man on the street.

Mayor's wife: He means the voters.

Deputy Mayor Warren LaSalle: You know what they're going to say. The Times is going to support you. The News is going to knock you. The Post will take both sides at the same time. The rich will support you, likewise the blacks, and the Puerto Ricans won't give a shit. So come on, Al, quit stalling!

Mayor: Will you stop bullying everybody, Warren? This is supposed to be a democracy!

Deputy Mayor Warren LaSalle: Wise up, for chrissake, we're trying to run a city, not a goddamn democracy! Al, quit farting around - we've got to pay!

Mayor: Jessie, Jessie, what do you say?

Mayor's wife: I know a million dollars sounds like a lot of money. But just think what you'll get in return.

Mayor: What?

Mayor's wife: Eighteen sure votes.

Mayor: All right, all right. Warren, Warren, arrange for the payoff!

Deputy Mayor Warren LaSalle: Hallelujah.

Face it, the only people in the film who are not struggling to gain control of their situation is Mr. Blue, the lead hijacker, and Deputy Mayor LaSalle.

Director Joseph Sargent masterfully shows the full scale of the event, and by doing so, ratchets up the tension. While you're watching you know that the whole thing can go all wrong, and people will die, if just one of these people screws up their small part in it. Add to that David Shire's relentlessly driving musical score, clever doses of dark humor, and you've got a thriller with great re-watching value.

Now sadly, something that is re-watchable is something that Hollywood thinks is worth a remake.

They first did it for television in 1998, with Edward James Olmos as the cop and Vincent D'onofrio as Mr. Blue. But that was forgotten before the end credits ran, so I'm going to talk about the 2009 reboot.

Now the world of 1974 is wildly different from the world of 2009 and that's reflected in the remake. Take for example Mr. Blue, the villain. In the original played by Robert Shaw.

In the original the character is a professional mercenary. A man with a military background especially with detailed planning, complete disregard for human life, and what he believes to be complete and total control of the situation. Now he deliberately disguises himself to appear as bland, and innocuous as possible, in fact, every member of the gang wears the same disguise. That's so witnesses would have a hard time describing them. He's taken every detail into consideration, and his only weakness is his confidence in his own intelligence.

But a villain who proves himself ruthless and dangerous comes in second to a villain who looks like he's dangerous, like they did with the new villain played by John Travolta.

Where the original villain wanted to be a blank slate to facilitate his escape, the new villain telegraphs that he's supposed to be mad, bad, and dangerous to know, who is completely out of control. Of course this time, he's not an unemployed mercenary, he's some Wall Street guy who did time for insider trading and is looking for revenge and money.

Because so many Wall Street guys shoot people.

But that's not the most inane part. Now simply taking hostages for ransom, even one 10X the ransom in the original movie just isn't enough, the villain has to be using the chaos caused by the hostage taking for an elaborate stock scam.

Stop and think about that for a second. The villain literally puts himself in the line of fire not for money, but to set up the conditions he needs to make money.

That's a scheme from a completely different movie, and completely negates the necessity for Travolta's "Ryder" to be even in the subway car. Other kinds of terrorist attacks, done by other people that are kept at arm's length from him, could have had the same effect. So the writer's attempt to "update" the villain's plot, simply makes the villain pretty stupid. (An obvious reason to get Ryder on the train, would be for the hostage taking to be a cover for a heist using New York's vast underground tunnel network. But studio bosses wouldn't like that because it doesn't let them use the "businessman as villain" cliche they love so much.)

And let's not forget that in the days after 9-11 the doctrine is to assume that any hostage taker is going after mass casualties. Then there's the fact that NYPD has elite officers trained to handle such scenarios by trying to get the hostage takers to talk, to give said elite officers time to get in position to take them out as quickly as possible.

Now let's go to the hero of the story: Garber. In the original he was played by:

Walter Matthau embodied Garber as an overwhelmed civil servant, uncomfortable in the role of hero, just trying desperately to keep the body count to a minimum while he figured out what the hell to do next.

In the remake Garber was played by Denzel Washington.

Denzel Washington is probably one of the best actors working in Hollywood today. He brings an air of heroic command and manly confidence to any role, and that's why he was wrong for the part. He's too manly, too heroic, and putting some padding around the middle and some glasses on just aren't enough to make him the overwhelmed schlub that Garber is supposed to be in order to amp up the suspense.

The closest comparison to Denzel Washington's casting would be if the producers had cast John Wayne as Garber in the 1974 original. The suspense would be dampened because who could beat John Wayne?

But Hollywood has the feeling that audiences don't have the patience to actually discover a story, so they have to telegraph everything about the movie, including the ending, before the opening credits are done, and that's if they even have opening credits. Then, with the story pretty much spent right at the beginning, they then try to make up for it by tossing in tons of money to pay for lots of over the top action, and hyper-shaky/pseudo-suspenseful camera work and choppy music video style editing.

As I've written about on this blog before, the box office take is down, DVD sales are collapsing, and this are going to keep getting worse, because audiences are going to television, the internet, and older movies available via streaming services like Netflix.

Why?

Because that's where they're finding stories.

When it comes to the movies from the major studios, the bigger the picture, the smaller the story. And what little story they do have has been picked apart by executives saying things solely to justify their existence, market research gurus pulling stuff out of their ass because they really don't have a magic bullet, and stars obsessing about things that have very little to do with the quality of the story.

Hollywood needs to look at its own past, not for remake material, but for lessons about telling stories.

Then maybe its downward slide can be stopped.

Who Does What? : The Host

2012-01-05T19:20:00.000-04:00

No, I'm not talking about someone who is carrying a sinister alien parasite that will one day burst out to rule the world. I'm talking about people who host TV shows. They come in many varieties to cover the varieties of TV shows that need hosts. Today I'm going to do one of my glib and superficial overviews of hosts, what they do, and how they do it.

VARIETY/EVENT HOST- The job of this form of host is to essentially act as the master of ceremonies for any broadcast that features three or more performers, either in direct competition against each other, or as just pieces of a whole bundle of different acts.

It is not the job of this kind of host to be the star of the event. That role is to be taken by the acts they introduce. A good variety host knows that, and when they step on stage they need to perform these tasks:

1. Restate the identity of the last performer for the viewers that missed the introduction.

2. Take care of any important business, like giving viewers the numbers they need to vote for that supporter, plugging where they will be performing next, or consoling and/or congratulating the performer and/or contestant.

3. Usher that performer off the stage, and bring the next on in.

4. Do these tasks within the time prescribed by the event's director so that everything can move smoothly between commercial breaks and the audience never learns what a dog's breakfast of chaos the backstage work really is.

As you can see, it's not an easy job, and surprisingly few people can actually do it well, usually sunk by a desire to be the center of an attention that really shouldn't belong to them.

LATE NIGHT HOST- The job of the late night host is different. This sort of host has more of a starring role in the show, but like the variety/event host, has to step back to let others have their moment, because that's what good hosts do.

The tasks of the good late night host are:

1. Do an opening monologue or comedy routine that is topical and funny, reflecting the opinions and/or concerns of their audience.

2. Smoothly introduce the guests in a manner that makes the guest look good.

3. Conduct a short conversation with the guest that enables said guest to plug whatever they're selling, and hopefully have an amusing story to go along with it.

4. Most important is that the host really has to listen to their guests in order to draw out the most entertaining elements of the chat for the audience.

And that's one of the reasons I find most of today's big late night hosts to be lacking. Some are only there to mark time and cash paychecks, some feel they're too important for their job and handle it, and their guests with an element of disdain, and only a couple seem remotely interested in trying to be the sort of all round entertainer/gracious host that the job requires.

JOURNALIST HOST- Now this type of host is the kind with more of a background in journalism than show biz. The trademarks of a journalist host is a minimum of "glitz" associated with their show, and longer, more involved interviews with their guests about topics more serious than selling their movie.

A sub-species of this kind of host is the "pseudo-journalist" host. This kind of host puts all the trappings of the "journalist" type interview, including dedicating an entire episode to a particular guest or topic. However pseudo-journalist hosts tend to stick to the shallow waters, so to speak, and doesn't really burn many calories doing research or digging too deep with their questions.

DAYTIME HOST- Now there are two types of daytime talk show host. There is the "Uplift" host who at least pretends to be unlocking the secrets of losing weight, improving your life, and generally being a better person. Then there is the "Lowbrow" host. This type of host is the kind who goes for the lowest common denominator, dealing in double-dealers, deviants, and deadbeats.

Both types of daytime hosts are obsessed with sensationalizing whatever topic they're discussing in order to win ratings and sell copies of the latest fad diet or lurid expose.

GAME SHOW HOST- The job of the game show host is fairly straight-forward. Introduce the contestants, lay down the rules of the game, and present the questions and/or challenges in a way that keeps the audience interested, and to build suspense when needed.

PUNDIT/PANEL HOST- Now you would think that the job of such a host would be to present lively and entertaining debate, but usually it involves agreeing with those they agree with, and shouting down those they don't agree with.

EDUCATIONAL SHOW HOST- These hosts come in two varieties. The "Teacher Host" and the "Student Host."

The "Teacher" type of host is best for shows aimed at kids. They're job is to present an entertaining, and interesting voice of authority and expertise.

Now if you're trying to sell an educational show to adults that goes beyond a straight documentary, then you might be better served by a "Student Variety" of host. Someone who is not an expert on the subject at hand, but is both interested in it, and willing to learn.

You see adult viewers of such shows would find an expert host condescending, and unwilling to ask the stupid and obvious questions that viewers would like to see answered. Such a host would have to be able to do their jobs with a certain amount of charm and humor, but without resorting to maudlin sentimentality or clownish mugging.

And that is my glib and superficial explanation of what hosts do.

Hollywood Babble On & On #832: SNARK ATTACK!!!

2012-01-04T19:00:00.000-04:00

1. KIM TO CARRY CARRIE, BUT WHY?

MGM and Screen Gems have hired Kimberly Peirce to direct the latest remake of Stephen King's novel Carrie.

My only question is why make the movie in the first place?

It's been done before, first there was the 1976 Brian DePalma film, that very well at the box office for its time, earning back 15 times the original production budget.

And that was where the success associated with the franchise ended.

First came the Broadway musical in the late 1980s, which flopped and went splat harder than a bucket of pigs blood. It's since become a shorthand for a Broadway disaster.

Then came the sequel, The Rage: Carrie 2, which failed to woo either critics or audiences.

But wait, there's more!

Then came the 2002 NBC TV movie remake, which changed the ending to have 18 year old Carrie White, played by the then 29 year old Angela Bettis, survive. Why? Because they wanted to make it into a weekly TV series. Anyway, those dreams came to naught, because the TV movie came and went faster than a popcorn fart in a hurricane.

Now you'd think this would make people think twice before sinking serious money into another remake.

Not in remake drunk Hollywood. They'll flog a dead horse long after it's bones and dust if it has a familiar name with "brand recognition."

2. ROLAND EMMERICH GOES BACK TO 2012

Not content to just make overpriced disaster movies on the big screen, Roland Emmerich, the auteur of the overwrought premise is dipping his toe into TV.

The ABC network has green-lit a pilot for a series set during and somehow about the 2012 election that has something to do with an astrophysicist who discovers that their destiny involves heaven and hell.

Personally, I think the only people associated with this product tasting heaven will be Emmerich when he cashes the check ABC is giving him, while the audience gets a taste of hell.

I just can't see the series being a success for the following reasons...

1. Emmerich is a very expensive filmmaker, and this show will cost a mint and a half.

2. The premise somehow involves the 2012 election and we've seen how the audience reacts to Hollywood's treatment of political issues, one half gets insulted while the other half gets bored, both halves tune out.

3. This is Roland Emmerich we're talking about. One of the few filmmakers more bombastic and less coherent than Michael Bay.

Of course what should we expect, this is the same network that gave us the creative abortion known as Work It, the show only watched by masochists and those to dumb to tell their asses from a hole in the ground.

Hollywood Babble On & On #831: Missed Opportunities & Answering A Question

2012-01-03T19:25:00.003-04:00

ALLIANCE FOR SALE, WHO IS BUYING?

Investment firm and overall power broker Goldman Sachs & crown corporation Investment Quebec are selling their stakes in Canadian film distributor Alliance Films.

Now I can understand them wanting to get out of the movie biz, with box office in some of the worst doldrums seen in 16 years and Brad Pitt being named Hollywood's most bankable star of 2011 despite starring in two films that bombed, badly, (Tree Of Life, Happy Feet 2) and one movie that did moderately OK (Moneyball).

But there's more to this story than investors wanting to flee the sinking ship of the movie business, the story of Alliance Films is a story that embodies the Canadian film industry that has lessons for Hollywood, because it is a story of missed opportunities.

Alliance Films started out as Alliance Communications in 1984, as a partnership between formerly independent film and television producers looking for strength in numbers. Mostly under the leadership of producer Robert Lantos the company enjoyed steady growth throughout the 1980s, mostly in television. However, the 1990s were a golden age for the company. As the Canadian theatrical and home video distributor for American and international indie companies like New Line, Miramax and others they got to enjoy a share of the profits made by films from The Nightmare On Elm Street franchise, the early films of Quentin Tarantino like Pulp Fiction, to the Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

They also enjoyed growth in television providing programming to the rapidly growing Canadian and international cable/specialty channel market. In 1998 Alliance merged with fast growing TV producer Atlantis Communication, and boss Robert Lantos left the head seat to go back to being a hands-on producer. A couple of years after the merger the company took a gamble with a TV show produced by Jerry Bruckheimer that had been rejected by every other studio in the business.

That unwanted show was CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

Now you think having the #1 show in the world, and its two big money spin-offs would inspire Alliance-Atlantis to become even bigger players in the TV production business. They had a big show, and were producing shows in Canada that were gaining critical acclaim, and could, if marketed properly, been sold to the big, plump, juicy US market.

It became a bigger player, but not in TV production.

The management of Alliance-Atlantis decided that making TV shows wasn't the future, broadcasting them was.

One by one they shuttered, or sold off every show they made, even CSI, and invested everything they had in specialty cable channels. The problem with that plan, was that it left them with little or no ability to produce the shows they needed for their new specialty channels.

Faced with lots of channels, but little content, the Alliance shareholders decided to cash out. The once big fish in a small pond was filleted and sold for change. All that was left was the Alliance Films theatrical distribution business, which is basically all that's left.

The company had a lot of opportunities to become a real competitive powerhouse in film and television, but they missed them to cash in on short term trends.

Really a shame.

Anyway....

A QUESTION! A QUESTION!

Sandy Petersen asked... So here is my question for the might of Furious D's potent cranium. The SyFy channel is renowned for its inept and stupid movies. Yet they are somehow able to recognize and host some good television series (Battlestar Galactica springs to mind). What gives?

The short answer: The SyFy channel probably has a different team of executives handling the inept movies, and another set of executives handling the TV series.

Which actually illustrates one of the SyFy channel's biggest problems: Not enough people working there seem to like or appreciate the genres they're supposed to be broadcasting.

The channel started out during the early 1990s and the first explosion of specialty channels in the USA. No doubt the original intent of the channel's founders was to run an endless loop of Star Trek reruns and 1950s monster movies, and watch the money roll in.

Then it sank in that you could only milk reruns for only so long, and have to dip your toe into original material. And this is where the channel's management seems to split in two.

One side at least tries to show some appreciation for the science fiction and fantasy genres, while the other side thinks any old crap will do as long as it has a cheaply done CGI monster involved.

So you get shows like the Battlestar Galactica reboot, which scored lots of critical acclaim and good ratings, but you also get movies with titles that have the words "MEGA-__________ VS MEGA-__________" in them. I tried to watch a couple of those movies, but they were so poorly and lazily done, I couldn't even see any camp humor value in them.

This management schizophrenia is probably why SyFy varies so widely in quality.

Hollywood Babble On & On #830: 12 for 2012!

2012-01-02T13:36:00.001-04:00

2011 is done and dusted, 2012 is upon us, so I'm going to use my psychic ability to tap into the time stream and predict THE FUTURE!

I have 12 predictions for 2012!

Let us begin...

1. Justin Bieber's career will go into decline when his body develops a resistance to the drugs his management's been giving him to stave off puberty.

2. Adam Sandler will be involved in the making of a shitty movie.

3. Hollywood studios will attempt to fight the doldrums that made 2011's box office so poor by remaking every film released in 2011, but doing it louder, and in 3D.

4. Scientists will invent time travel in 2012. Then again in 2005, 1993 & finally in 1986.

5. The comic book movie trend will reach its nadir with the release of the $350 million production of Little Lulu 3D starring Julia Roberts in the title role.

6. The world will learn the secret the success of the Kardashian clan. Stupid people who buy their shit.

7. Al Pacino will have a moment of clarity and realize that he's been hamming it up way to much for a very long time. Sadly, that moment will be brief.

8. ABBA will reunite to do an album of Lady Gaga songs called "Bjorn This Way."

9. Charlie Sheen will learn the true meaning of the word "winning" when he suddenly realizes that he really is not winning.

10. The decline of the movie star as a cultural force and box office draw will continue.

11. Hollywood's denial of the decline of the movie star will become even more adamant, and star salaries will continue to climb.

12. The Mayan Calendar Doomsday bullshit will not end until December 31st 2012.

Hollywood Babble On & On #829: Selling Summit

2011-12-29T19:21:00.000-04:00

Indie movie studio Summit Entertainment is up for sale, but the sale itself probably won't go through until some time in 2012.

Now I think I should start with a little history to flesh out the story, before I get to the issue at hand.

Summit Entertainment started in 1991 primarily to handle sales of film rights to foreign markets for a partnership of independent producers. As the 1990s progressed, the company's mission expanded into co-producing movies, and finally evolving into the independent producer and distributor we all know today.

It's first few years were iffy, suffering a series of box office bombs but kept afloat by its position handling the foreign language release for the lucrative first American Pie movie.

Summit Entertainment finally achieved real mega money success in 2008 with the Twilight franchise. The films, based on the epic book trilogy about a moody teenage girl torn between choosing to lose her virginity to necrophilia or bestiality raked in huge heaping piles of money from other moody teenage girls all over the world.

Lionsgate first started sniffing around Summit as a possible buyer around this time, but the deal was never consummated.

Now Lionsgate is back looking to climb the Summit, but this time it has competition with a bid from hedge fund Colony Capital.

So let's look at what both company's probably want from this deal, and what they will most likely do with the company...

Lionsgate is already the biggest independent movie distributor in North America. So it doesn't need Summit's distribution capabilities. What it most likely wants is to have the lucrative Twilight movies in their library.

Now let's look at the other suitor...

Colony Capital has been investing heavily in the independent movie business, and are co-owners of the once venerable Miramax company.

Now there are two possible scenarios behind their purchase of Summit.

#1. In keeping with the way they're running Miramax, they are simply looking to beef up their film library, primarily with the Twilight movie franchise, and all the moody teenage girl money it can bring in. Summit's other films are just extras because, let's be honest here, the company hasn't exactly peaked with their non-Twilight movies.

Or...

#2. Colony Capital is looking to set up their own distribution for Miramax, and revive it as viable and functioning independent movie studio that produces and releases new films instead of just trying to coast on what others have made before them.

Personally, I hope that scenario #2 is what Colony Capital is looking for. Because while the domestic box office is at a 16 year low, that low is primarily caused by massive gaps in the market caused by the inattentive, narrow minded, major studios. There is room for an enterprising, lean and efficient movie company to step in and fill those gaps.

When the bidding starts afresh in the New Year, I hope the best bidder with the best plan wins.

Hollywood Babble On & On #828: A Not So Sweet 16

2011-12-28T19:15:00.001-04:00

16 years.

Movie box office in 2011 hasn't been this low for 16 years. And is just another chapter in an ongoing decline in the whole movie business, with only occasional monster mega-hits like Avatar creating the increasingly rare upward blip.

Why is the movie biz in such doldrums?

Well, it's the movie business's own damn fault and here's why...

1. THEY FORGOT WHAT BUSINESS THEY'RE IN: Go find any movie studio CEO and ask them what they do and you will get a whole load of hooey about how their job is to maximize shareholder value blah blah through asset management blah-blah on a quarterly yadda-yadda and a whole lot of bullshit that you can only get with a Harvard business degree.

What this corporate baffle-gab forgets is exactly how they maximize shareholder value, and that is by selling stories to the public.

It's a vital need people have whether they know it or not, and the proof can be found in everyone's childhood. What's one of the first things a child asks for that doesn't involve immediate survival issues?

They say: "Tell me a story."

People want stories, they crave stories, and they are willing to pay money for a wide variety of them.

The problem with Hollywood is that they show as much respect to the story as you would to something you find stuck to your shoe. Story to Hollywood is an inconvenient necessity, a cheap excuse to string together increasingly expensive gimmicks like 3D and so-called "movie stars."

2. THEY'RE DISCONNECTED FROM THE AUDIENCE & THE AUDIENCE IS THE ONLY ONE THAT KNOWS IT: I call the area that encompasses the movie business the Axis of Ego because it is definitely not part of the real world.

It's like that scene in an old episode of The Simpsons where they try to teach Krusty the Clown to do "observational humor," and his first attempt involves a story about his butler and his sock garters.

In Hollywood that's not too far from the truth. We're talking about a community insulated from reality through layers of money and media adoration. A crippling sense of group-think dominates the movie business, and this group-think dictates to them that anyone who lives or believes differently from them is somehow less evolved and/or outright evil.

They think that all they need to do is bombard the screen with gimmicks, loud noises, and pretty faces, and the sheep-like masses of the great unwashed will flock to the theaters. The problem is that the gimmicks are now being seen by audiences as a sign of the poor quality of the movie's story, and are voting to stay home and watch the more narratively rewarding product popping up on TV, or the internet.

3. THE BLOCKBUSTER IS KILLING THE SLEEPER: When I was young it wasn't uncommon to see something called a "sleeper hit." Sleepers were films that weren't meant to be big blockbusters, but they had qualities that appealed to audiences and thanks to word of mouth and modestly budgeted but well structured marketing campaigns became very profitable and popular.

Nowadays films that would otherwise have been sleeper hits, are being buried by the studios and their hunger for big blockbuster opening weekends. They can't buy TV advertising to find their audiences because the big movies and their massive blanket-style ad campaigns sucked up all the air time. Now while the internet has created alternative outlets for them to get the word out about their movie, it doesn't really matter. These same films can't book screen-time because the majors are cramming the latest Adam Sandler ~~anus~~ opus into 3,000 screens on the same opening weekend as the 4,000 screen release of the latest remake, and the 3,500 screen release of the latest re-imagining of a board game into a big budget movie.

Why bother hiring a sitter, getting in the car, driving across town, paying for parking, tickets, and snacks if the movie you're actually interested in isn't going to be there?

Hollywood is trying to replace the "sleeper" with the "awards movie" because they don't have to be sold to the punters in flyover country. Sure, awards movies don't make much money, but it's not like the people running the movie companies are going to lose sleep over that, their big media-conglomerate parent companies will keep them afloat.

If these trends aren't changed, and soon, I think the entire movie business might reach...

Hollywood Babble On & On #827: Who Watches The Watchmen?

2011-12-27T19:01:00.002-04:00

Suspected Watchmen 2 artwork.

Unless you've been living in a cave without internet, you've probably heard the rumors of DC Comics preparing some sort of a prequel and/or sequel to their seminal 80s miniseries The Watchmen. Those rumors kicked into overdrive when some possible test-art was leaked.

Now some folks are screaming blasphemy. These nattering nabobs of negativity are saying that Watchmen is the comic equivalent of holy writ, and that DC should never touch it.

Hmmm.... now if what I'm talking sounds like complete gibberish, I'll deliver some background.

Watchmen started out as a passing notion at DC Comics in the early 1980s. They had recently purchased all the superhero characters from the failing Charlton Comics company, and were looking for something to do with them.

DC wanted to do something really radical with these characters, so they contacted British writer Allan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons to do it. Except Allan Moore's ideas were a little too radical for DC Comics, since it involved most of the expensive Charlton characters ending up dead and/or out of action and DC decided to incorporate them into the mainstream DC continuity instead.

But DC told Moore to go ahead with his idea, but to create new versions of the Charlton characters and use them instead. Moore and Gibbon created the Watchmen and history was made.

Watchmen broke new ground as probably the most intelligently constructed comic book of all time. Every facet of the comic book medium was used to tell the story from the dialogue and drawings to even the panel layouts.

It spawned legions of imitators and one movie that itself spawned mixed feelings, and changed the comics medium forever, for better and for worse.

Now let's get back to the issue at hand, which is DC comics and their proposed sequel or prequel to Watchmen.

There is one simple, undeniable fact about Watchmen that you must know.

It is the sole property of DC Comics.

The project was started by DC comics, Allan Moore and Dave Gibbons were hired to create a project that DC would own, even the characters they created for that project are pastiches of DC property. Besides, Moore washed his hands of any involvement with Watchmen and DC Comics back in the 1980s. He won't even accept royalties or credit for it.

That means that DC Comics and its parent company, Time-Warner can do whatever the hell they want with Watchmen.

That means that if they want to do this....

They can.

But we live in a free society, so that means that if you are one of those people who are currently having a shit-fit about new Watchmen material, you have an option...

DON'T BUY IT.

As my grandfather said: "Don't even ignore them." No one is going to force you to buy it, or even pay attention to it.

It worked for me after the first Star Wars prequel, and I used this method to good effect with Indiana Jones & The Crystal Cup Of Metamucil.

Face it, we live in an age where the people in charge of popular culture think the only way to succeed is to completely bastardize the childhood memories of my generation. The only way to make them stop doing that is to stop such bastardization from being profitable.

That means when something like this comes up, and you feel offended by its very existence: Ignore it and don't spend money on it. The hype they get from these "controversies" combined with the cult of fanboy completism are why comics publishers think they can get away with anything and everything, and usually do.

Fans need to put their outrage and their eagerness aside, and let projects sink or swim on their own merits and not for the hype they can generate.

It's just that simple.

A SPECIAL HOLIDAY MESSAGE...

2011-12-23T09:26:00.000-04:00

MERRY CHRISTMAS

See you all after Boxing Day.

Hollywood Babble On & On #826: Xmas Drippings From My Brain Pan...

2011-12-22T18:40:00.005-04:00

CRASH CASH BASH!

A court has ordered independent producer Bob Yari and his companies to shell out $12 million to writer/director Paul Haggis, star Brendan Fraser, and others over profits from the film Crash.

The fact that what should be a normal business procedure requires lawyers, judges, and various and sundry recriminations is a sad statement on the way the movie biz operates.

MERRY XMAS MOVIES AREN'T THAT MERRY

Mike Shaw at Britain's Independent newspaper wrote a piece about how Hollywood's attempts at making Christmas movies usually fall short because they're unwilling to embrace the darker emotions found around the season. It sort of fits a piece I wrote last year about Hollywood's inability to drum up the sincerity needed to make a decent Christmas movie.

AARON SORKIN'S GOT A TITLE & IT'S FAMILIAR

Hollywood uber-scribe Aaron Sorkin's new HBO series about behind the scenes in a cable TV newsroom now has an official title: The Newsroom.

A little on the nose, if you ask me, but also a tad familiar.... at least to me.

You see, Canada already had a series called The Newsroom. It was created by writer / director / actor Ken Finkleman who returned to his native Canada after years slogging in the Hollywood trenches grinding out sequels, Madonna movie, and script-doctoring on sitcoms to do his own show his way.

It starred Finkleman as George Findlay, a petty, vain, selfish, insensitive, ignorant, scheming neurotic with chronic constipation, who was the producer of a nightly TV news show. The show was darkly funny as Findlay tried to get ahead, get laid, or get both with things becoming more abstract and surreal as the show progressed. It was also unique in the fact that it had several limited run dramas spun-off the show also featuring the Findlay character that ran between the three seasons of The Newsroom.

Now while it has the same title, I'm sure that Sorkin's show will be very different. Loaded with lot's of noble archetype journalists walking up and down hallways talking very quickly as they declare their integrity and complain about Fox News.

Hmmm.... now that I think about it, maybe they should hire Finkleman for a rewrite.

Trailer Trashing: Happy Hobbitukkah!

2011-12-21T12:04:00.004-04:00

It's Hanukkah, and the trailer for the The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has come out. Watch, and pass your judgments in the comments...

Hollywood Babble On & On #825: Two Random Drips...

2011-12-20T18:19:00.002-04:00

DRIPPING #1: 5 MORE CRAIGS?

Micheal G. Wilson, long-time producer, and occasional writer for the James Bond franchise, said that he would like current Bond, Daniel Craig, to do 5 more 007 movies and beat Roger Moore's longevity.

Now I like Craig as Bond, and I've been a fan of the franchise since I was a little kid and saw Dr. No back in the days when they showed older feature films on network TV, however, I don't think he's going to make it to eight Bonds.

He's 43 now shooting his third film Skyfall, and in a best case scenario there would be a new Bond movie out every two years, meaning that he will be 53+ by the time he wraps up that sort of commitment. Now we all remember Roger Moore's long run with the franchise, but instead of remembering his wit, and romantic charm, we remember that he was kept a little too long at the fair. Even he noticed that his "Bond Girls" looked more like daughters than lovers.

And that's if there's a best case scenario. MGM's financial situation hasn't been particularly stable in a very long time, and that situation caused Skyfall to be set back four years after Quantum of Solace.

I personally see Craig doing two more after Skyfall at the most, if the 2 year schedule's maintained, and then retiring gracefully to a younger actor. Might I suggest....

Think about it...what I lack in wit, charm, sex appeal, and he-man action heroics I make up for in... uh.... hmmm.....

DRIPPING #2: MAKE DEALS, NOT MOVIES?

The new owners of the one time indie powerhouse Miramax Pictures have discovered a new business model for the movie company.

Don't make movies.

And it seems to be working, deals involving the Miramax film library have added up to $325 million.

Now while this sounds all well and good, it's not the best way to run a movie company. Having a nice, desirable library with a lot of award winning or popular movies is wonderful, and the revenue that such a library can generate is even nicer.

However, there will come a time when the outlets who pay for access to that library will take a look at what you have, sigh, and say: "What else have you got?"

If you don't have anything else, then you're screwed.

Movie libraries need to be constantly and consistently replenished, because their value lies in their constant and steady growth, because that growth builds long term relationships between the companies who own the libraries, and the outlets who pay good money to put out those movies. Outlets will ask themselves:

"Hey, do I want to buy movies from Company A that has X number of titles, and Y number of new titles that come in every year? Or should I buy from Company B, who have Z number of titles, and nothing new coming down the pike?"

In the long run they will prefer to deal with Company A, because they know that once they burn through the current library, there's new product on the way. Companies that don't constantly and consistently create new product, eventually get swallowed up by those who do.

Which may be the whole plan behind the new Miramax in the first place.

Hollywood Babble On & On #824: Share Of What?

2011-12-19T18:35:00.000-04:00

The year is almost over and folks are looking back at the year that was, and Nikki Finke posted a report on where the studios stand, market-share wise....

1. Paramount - projected $1.9B

They're number one, but this one comes with an asterisk since they acted as just a distributor for some of their biggest money-makers rather than the usual studio role as producer and distributor. They did unseat Warner Bros. from the top slot for the first time in three years, and are considered likely to hold onto it if Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol lives up to the promise shown in its initial limited release.

2. Warner Bros – projected $1.8B

First time in 3 years they haven't been the number 1 studio, but they really have nothing to complain about since they've been either #1 or #2 for most of the past decade. What they do have to worry about is what they're going to after next year when Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy wraps up, and the Harry Potter money factory closes its doors.

3. Sony Pictures - projected $1.3B

Sony went for a low risk/high reward strategy. Cutting back on its output of obvious big budget blockbusters this year, going for smaller budgeted but commercially appealing films. It seems to have worked well, keeping them safely in the middle of the pack.

4. Disney – projected $1.2B

Muppets had a good opening, but quickly ran out of steam, and Cars 2 made money, but mostly because it was the only major Pixar release this year, and Pixar is pretty much a license to print money, even with the lackluster Cars franchise.

5. Universal - projected $1B

While no longer at the bottom of shit creek, Universal did drop more than few bombs and pretty much owes their position as next to the bottom to Bridesmaids and that last Fast & Furious sequel.

6. Fox - projected $950M

As I wrote before, Fox has pretty much out-foxed themselves by not knowing the difference between being cost-conscious and just plain cheap.

But what does it mean to be to be #1 or #6 when overall box office is in an ongoing, and seemingly never-ending slump, and people, like the folks at Filmdrunk, are starting to blame the slump on the studios, their laziness and their extreme lack of imagination? It doesn't matter if you're on top of the shit-pile or the bottom, you're still going to stink.

The folks at Filmdrunk have a point when they ask when was the last time you were actually excited to go see a movie in a theater? How many times were you excited to see a movie, only to be disappointed by a lackluster story and overdoses of visual trickery?

These are questions the studios should be asking. There's a terrible disconnect between show-business' Axis of Ego and the rest of the planet Earth. The problem is that the people running Hollywood are so scared of getting fired before they cash out their next quarterly bonus they honestly have no idea what to do, and will do anything and everything in their power to keep out anyone who might rock the boat and empty it of all the dead weight that slowly sinking it.

Hollywood Babble On & On #853: Offensive Or Just Unfunny?

2011-12-18T11:55:00.003-04:00

Various Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans-Gender groups are up in arms at the ABC network over their plans for a new mid-season sitcom called Work It.

The show is about two men who are so desperate to find work disguise themselves as women to get jobs as sales reps for a pharmaceutical company. The LGBT groups saw the promotional material for the show and are demanding that it be banned before it's even aired because it will somehow make them the objects of scorn, if not violence by the yahoos of the world.

Now while I don't like the thought of banning any sort of media, even if it offends people, I do have to wonder why on Earth was the project green-lit in the first place.

I saw most of the same promotional materials, including clips of the show, that the offended groups saw, and I didn't see anything that would subject them to scorn or possible violence.

What I did see was evidence of a painfully unfunny show based on a flimsy premise that leaves the creators and the network responsible for it as objects of scorn and possible violence by fans of comedy.

There are only 3 reasons why the ABC Network would put this show on the air...

1. ABC hates people.

Not LGBT people, but the whole of humanity in general. They want everyone within broadcast range of this show to suffer. Centuries from now aliens will come across the signals of this show bouncing through the cosmos and treat it as an act of war.

2. The creator of the show has incriminating stuff on top ABC Brass.

Blackmail is definitely a possibility, though if I did have proper extortion material on the brass of a TV network, I would have at least tossed out a better premise. Like my idea for a sitcom about optimistic meth addicts called "Best Tweek Ever!"

3. ABC somehow thinks they can recreate the golden days of Bosom Buddies.

For those of you too young to remember Bosom Buddies was the last time someone tried to use cross-dressing as the foundation of a sitcom.

It starred a young Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari as two guys struggling to make it in advertising who disguise themselves as women to get a spot in the women-only Susan B. Anthony Hotel after losing their apartment.

Now the show did have a strong opening, mostly due to the appeal, chemistry, and improvisational skills of Hanks and Scolari. However the first season was cut short by labor troubles, and ratings plunged in the second season, ending the show pretty quickly. In 1984 the NBC network ended up owning the show and ran it as summer filler because Hanks had exploded as a movie star thanks to the success of Splash, and Peter Scolari's scene stealing work on the hit show Newhart. The reruns did very well for NBC, but since the stars had moved onto greener pasture any thoughts of reviving the show faded quicker than its original run.

Now even Bosom Buddies dropped the cross-dressing aspect of the show as quickly as they could in the second season. Having their secret revealed to their neighbors and them being granted permission to stay as the building's token men. They didn't try to prolong it any further because even the people behind Bosom Buddies knew it was a thin premise based on, according to legend, a misunderstanding during the pitch session that made the network brass think they were getting a TV ~~ripoff~~ re-imagining of Billy Wilder's cross-dressing comedy Some Like It Hot.

The premise is fitting for, at best, an episode of a sitcom, but not an entire sitcom. The fact that no one at the network seems capable of seeing this says a lot more about the near-sightedness and piss-poor comedic instincts of ABC's management than any potential offense to the LGBT community.

Now the really sad part of this fiasco is that at the heart of this is a missed opportunity. If the pharmaceutical sales field is as female dominated as the show says it is, then you have a possible premise with legs. Two guys from a normally male dominated sales field, like cars, get laid off and are hired to be the "tokens" in a sales department staffed and run almost exclusive by women. The men suddenly find themselves the "minority" and are viewed by their new colleagues as incapable because of their gender. Stories could come from interactions with their bosses, co-workers, customers, and clients.

That might have worked, but it's the sort of idea that isn't a rehash of a fairly vague memory so no network would touch it.

Cinemaniacal: Robert E. Howard & TV: Never The Twain Shall Meet?

2011-12-15T19:14:00.002-04:00

Regular reader Rainforest Giant asked...

Hey Furious, When are we going to get more question and answer sessions?

How about a short one right now. Gotta question?

I want to know why R.E. Howard hasn't been successfully adapted to the little screen (other than 'Pigeons from Hell'). He has had a deeper influence on the fantasy field than anyone other than Tolkien and his stories are kick-ass action, manly-men, and beautiful women in various stages of undress-distress. 'The Horror from the Mound' is a classic creepy short story that raised the hairs on my neck when I was a kid. Conan has a good name and would guarantee an audience

I guess you didn't like the animated and live action attempts simply because they sucked the balls of Thoth-Amon?

Well, it's a much more involved question than you might think, so I going to have to go off on one of my lecturing tangents.

For the illiterate out there who don't know nuttin' about nuttin' Robert Ervin Howard was a Texas based writer active in the 1920s until his death by suicide in 1936 at the age of 30.

During his short life he was extremely prolific, grinding out dozens, if not hundreds, of short stories, novellas, and poems at a nearly super-human rate.

Howard wrote in multiple genres, Westerns, Detective Stories, Historical Adventure, Boxing Stories, Horror, and the genre he practical invented, the Sword & Sorcery sub-genre of Fantasy fiction starring Conan the Barbarian of Cimmeria.

Sword and Sorcery was a grittier, grimier, and greasier version of fantasy fiction. It dealt with rough and tough characters living in a brutal world of mystery and magic surviving by their wits and strength. No character was rougher and tougher than Conan the Barbarian, described thus by Howard:

"Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet."

Conan was not a noble knight on a quest to save the whatever from the dark forces of whosis. He was a thief and a mercenary who was usually busy looking out for number one, himself. That's not to say that he didn't fight evil doers. Conan had his own moral code, and many of those who did evil during Conan's "Hyborian Age," made the mistake of pissing him off.

Conan was a wildly popular character among fans of the fantasy and adventure pulp magazines that published them, and was adapted several times. First into comic books by Marvel, and then into a feature film that marked a then semi-unknown Arnold Schwarzenegger as an up and coming star. That movie was a modest hit, but the franchise was pretty much killed by the general shittiness of its sequel Conan The Destroyer.

A proposed Conan the Conqueror film was put on hold by the smell coming off of Destroyer, and by Schwarzenegger fulfilling his contract to Dino DeLaurentiis and getting as far away from the franchise as he could. A version of the project was eventually made as the inane Kull The Conqueror, replacing Conan with one of Howard's less famous creations, Kull of Atlantis.

But then there were the TV adaptations. There were two animated versions of Conan, the less said about them the better, and then there was the live action TV series Conan (AKA Conan The Adventurer) that ran for one season in the late 1990s.

How can I sum up the Conan live action TV series? Let me think.... hmmm.....

Oh, I got it.

Shit.

The producers saw the popularity of the campy fantasy shows like Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and Xena: Warrior Princess, and said:

"Hey, let's take a familiar name like Conan the Barbarian, slap it on some scripts rejected by those other shows, hire a big German that will remind people of Schwarzenegger and we'll have a smash-hit!"

Of course to follow the whole Hercules/Xena fad they also transformed him from the sullen and violent warrior and thief into a lovable lug in a loincloth assisted by a cadre of cutesy sidekicks to flesh out the hopefully inevitable toy-line.

The show sank faster than the Lusitania, and most fantasy fans tried to block it out of their memories.

Now you folks know a little history, let's take a moment to examine the pros and cons of bringing the works of Robert E. Howard to the small screen.

PROS:

1. Howard is still a very popular author with a wide range of fans.

2. Howard wrote hundreds of short stories in multiple genres, most of them loaded with lots of colorful characters, over the top physical action in exotic locations. Each short story is a nice compact episode of of action and adventure.

3. Howard created many characters and settings that could go beyond their source material to provide exciting genre television if they were done well. There's:

-Conan, natch.

-Solomon Kane, a dour Puritan in the early 1600s who battled evildoers from vandals to vampires and everyone in between.

-Kull of Atlantis, a barbarian conqueror of an ancient empire rife with decadence, black magic, and palace intrigue.

-Bran Mak Morn, king of the Picts who battled both Roman invaders and supernatural forces.

-Sailor Steve Costigan, the hero of a series of comical tales about a boxing sailor with "fists of steel, a will of iron and a head of wood."

-El Borak, the Arabic nickname of F.X. Gordon a Texas gunslinger who becomes a legendary adventurer in Afghanistan in the 1900s.

-Dark Agnes de Chastillon, a short-tempered red-headed swords-woman making her way in the man's world of 16th century Europe.

Now this is just a partial list of the characters and stories Howard created. You could literally do an anthology series rotating between his characters, and probably have more than enough stories for a strong seven season run, with just the material Howard wrote.

3. Developments in production and visual effects technology, and the opening up of distinctive shooting locations in Eastern Europe means that you could produce historical and fantasy themed programming much cheaply than you could ever do before.

Now let's look at the

CONS:

1. This is Hollywood we're talking about. The biggest problem they have when it comes to adapting Howard's work is that they're almost always trying to mold it into something else. Even the first movie tried to change Conan's nature into some sort of avenger out to get back at the people responsible for the death of his parents.

In the original stories, Conan just left his family and never looked back. He's an unsentimental, uneducated Hyborean equivalent of a hillbilly who is only looking for gold, good times, and bad women. He's not a classically heroic figure, but someone who gets thrust into being heroic against his wishes and better judgment.

Hollywood just can't seem to accept that, either making him into a Charles Bronson with a sword avenger, or a Kevin Sorbo Hercules rip-off with bigger muscles and a Teutonic accent.

2. There's always an element of covert sexuality in Howard's work. Many of the women in Howard's stories are strong, independent minded, and, more often than not find a reason to be scantily clad. In adaption the scantily clad part is usually the only one that seems to survive. This makes these adaptations seem a too tad sleazy to those crowing PTC types especially since many still view fantasy genre programming as still essentially kids programming.

3. Violence is definitely not covert in Howard's stories. Beheading, disembowelment, mauling, mutilation, and simple bare knuckle beatings permeate his stories. Any remotely faithful adaptation of Howard's stories would have to be on cable to avoid being censored into a shoving match for the same reasons that people might crow about the sexual content.

But all is not lost kiddies...

Now the success of the definitely mature audience oriented Game Of Thrones may open the door for the sort of faithful adaptation that Robert E. Howard's work cries out for.

All they need is someone willing to put some serious money down to get the ball rolling.

Which brings me to...

CON #4: Investors maybe iffy about this sort of project because of the recent failures of the Conan and Solomon Kane big screen features. They will be naturally gun-shy about the whole thing, even though it's probably a better medium for the project.

Hollywood Babble On & On #852: Hollywood Could Use Someone Like This Now...

2011-12-14T15:04:00.000-04:00

Producer Bert Schneider has passed away at the age of 78. Now many people may not know his name, or his face, but a lot of you know his films, because he was part of the generation that saved Hollywood from itself.

You see in the 1960s Hollywood was a sorry state. Since the advent of television in the 1950s the entire industry had been flailing around trying to find something, anything, that could butts in theater seats. They tried mega-budget epics loaded with lots of big name stars and special effects, they tried gimmicks like 3D, and for the most part they dropped more expensive bombs than Curtis LeMay.

Into this stumbled young Bert Schneider, the son of Abraham Schneider, a former President of Columbia Pictures, who had recently been expelled from Cornell, and rejected by the army. His father's status in the industry helped the then aimless Bert get a job at Columbia's Screen Gems TV division under the White Man's Affirmative Action Plan.

However, once he had his foot in the door he started to make a name for himself. He joined forces with another young go-getter named Bob Rafelson, to form Raybert Productions, and put together a little show called The Monkees.

Not willing to rest on their laurels, or cash from The Monkees franchise, the partners branched out into feature films that attempted to break from the studio dominated norms and target audiences that had either been ignored or insulted by the majors. Their film Easy Rider became a break-out hit, and producer Stephen Blauner soon joined the team which was reformed as BBS Productions.

BBS Productions then went on to produce such seminal films of the 1970s as Five Easy Pieces and The Last Picture Show before he dropped out of the movie business entirely in the early 1980s.

Now let's take a moment to look at how Hollywood history is repeating itself.

We're seeing dwindling audiences who are finding entertainment from other mediums, skyrocketing budgets, huge gaps forming in the movie market, gimmicks like 3D, over-paid and under-performing stars, and a stifling group-think controlling Hollywood to the point that anyone dwelling outside its permitted attitude range is viewed as either alien at best, or sub-human at worst.

Yep, history is repeating itself... except I don't see any Bert Schneider's coming around to shake things up from the inside like he did. In fact, I see an industry that would rather risk seeing itself die out completely before changing how it operates.

Six Seasons & A Movie...

2011-12-13T19:06:00.001-04:00

Had a really busy day today, and while I was being so busy the news sort of slowed to a crawl when it came to the sort of things I rant about, so here's a funny little video that may inspire you to support the currently benched NBC sitcom Community...

Hollywood Babble On & On #851: Random Drippings From My Brain Pan

2011-12-12T14:03:00.001-04:00

NUMBER ONE WITH A TURD...

Garry Marshall's latest star saturated romantic comedy New Year's Eve is currently #1 at the box office.

Normally it would be a time for much rejoicing in the hallowed halls of Hollywood, but this time not so much.

You see, it's the #1 movie in what is turning out to be the most sluggish ticket sales in 3 years. Yep, sales are right where they were during the middle of the financial meltdown of 2008, a time when people weren't keen on buying anything they couldn't eat. It's sort of like being the king, but your kingdom is a heap of cow shit.

What does this development tell us?

LESSON #1: STAR POWER IS NO LONGER MEASURED IN MEGAWATTS. Let's face it, movie stars don't really deliver the way they used to. Yes, there once was a time when people went to see stars shine on screens, because the star's image appealed to them, or they just assumed a certain level of quality with said star.

That isn't true anymore.

LESSON #2: NOVELTY ONLY WORKS ONCE IF YOU CAN'T DELIVER A STORY TO GO WITH IT. This film was a blatant attempt to cash in on the success of Marshall's last film 2010's Valentine's Day, which did pretty much the same thing, with everyone in Hollywood involved, and made over $200 million at the box office.

At the time it came out a movie starring literally everybody in Hollywood hasn't been seen since the days of Irwin Allen's disaster epics. To most viewers it was new and it was novel, and it sold tickets.

However, when they see New Year's Eve's promotional materials all they see is essentially the exact same movie, with a different date, a mostly new cast, and one of the kids from Glee, because the Garry Marshall thinks they'll really bring in the kids. What they didn't see was anything that promised a new story, so why bother.

Novelty only works if it is constantly presenting something new. Try to do the same thing again, with nothing new added, and people won't see novelty, but a rehash, and they'll stay away.

SKYFALL SHOULDN'T SUCK HONEST

I'm really beginning to like Daniel Craig, not just as an actor, or as James Bond, but for being a refreshing breath of honest air. Something that's exceedingly rare in movie circles these days.

The inspiration for this bonhomie comes from an interview he did with Time Out magazine, promising that the next Bond film Skyfall, won't be as incoherent as Quantum of Solace. Specifically:

TIME OUT: It seems that the script is sometimes an after-thought on huge productions.

DANIEL CRAIG: ‘Yes and you swear that you’ll never get involved with shit like that, and it happens. On “Quantum”, we were fucked. We had the bare bones of a script and then there was a writers’ strike and there was nothing we could do. We couldn’t employ a writer to finish it. I say to myself, “Never again”, but who knows? There was me trying to rewrite scenes – and a writer I am not.’

Thank you Mr. Craig. Thank you for having the stones to admit that as an actor, it is your job to say the words, not create them. Thank you for not pulling a Jessica Alba and claiming that you improvise everything. Thank you, your honesty may finally mark the beginning of the end of the myth started by Marlon Brando & the method school that claims that actors do it all by themselves.

SMOTHERS BROTHERS ON THE BIG SCREEN?

George Clooney and his partner Grant Heslov have optioned the movie rights to a book about the Smothers Brothers.

Now to those of you under the age of 40 the Smothers Brothers are Tom and Dick Smothers, a musical comedy duo with a career spanning 51 years. They came to prominence in the 1960s with a comedy and variety show that regularly tackled controversial topics like race relations, religion, and the Vietnam War, and were cancelled by the CBS network for their outspokenness.

The had a brief revival on TV in the late 1980s when CBS brought them back to fill time during a writer's strike. (Since they and their guests wrote their own material they didn't break any union rules)

Now while their story is interesting and tackles many things, I'm just not sure it's going to go very far as a feature film.

1. Recreating classic comedy performances is extremely tricky. They're never as good as the fans remember the originals and they'll judge the rest of the movie pretty harshly over it.

2. The Smother Brothers saga is really only of interest to baby boomers, and they don't go to the movies anymore. Anyone younger than that who isn't an amateur pop culture historian has probably never even heard of them. I don't see any teens or twenty somethings spending money to see people make jokes about Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson.

Now I'm not saying that they shouldn't do the story. I'm just thinking that putting it on the big screen might be aiming a little high. It might make a great TV movie, perhaps on HBO, but on the big screen, I think it will just fizzle out faster than you can say "Mother always liked you best."

Hollywood Babble On & On #850: Hollywood Psycho?

2011-12-09T18:12:00.001-04:00

They say madness is repeating the same action over and over again in the vain hope that this time the outcome will be different.

Well, in Hollywood, what others call madness is called business as usual!

The latest occasion of repeating something in the hope that the result will be different for some reason is Lionsgate's announcement that they will be doing an ultra-low budget remake of the 2000 movie American Psycho.

Now a lot of people are asking a certain question about this decision.

Why?

Think about it, the 2000 movie, starring Christian Bale as Patrick Batemen, the titular Psycho, had some attention due to its sexual/violent content, and Bret Easton Ellis' novel, and enjoyed some relative success on the art house and festival circuit, really didn't make a dent with the general public.

Lionsgate thinks that the story about a rich young Wall Street player whose madness makes him prefer to commit murders and assassinations over mergers and acquisitions would capture the zeitgeist of our current age.

Why do they think this?

Because of this...

Yep, they're re-doing American Psycho, because of Occupy Wall Street.

They think the anti-capitalist protest movement endorsed by millionaire Hollywood celebrities, hip-hop moguls, the American Communist Party, and the American Nazi Party, reveals a brand new hatred of Wall Street, and American Psycho will become a blockbuster hit because of it.

Which makes me dip into my nearly infinite well of knowledge to answer this question:

Was there ever a time when people actually liked Wall Street?

And I'll be buggered if I can find such a time that didn't have at least an undercurrent of hostility and resentment toward Wall Street running through it.

The image that people have had of Wall Street pretty much since the day after Alexander Hamilton held the first meeting of the New York Stock Exchange under a tree has never been a good one.

Most people view it as a place where elitist snobs with WASP pedigrees and Ivy League stamps of approval sit in luxurious oak lined offices trying to get other people to let them gamble with their money. Gambles that use weird arcane trickery that only the Wall Streeters understand, and even then, only partially.

Even during the 1920s, which opened with a mini-Depression rapidly followed by an unprecedented economic boom that was centered around the Stock Market, viewed Wall Street, its institutions, and the people who work in it, with suspicion, and the popular culture reflected that. You could make your fortune there, but always accompanied with the great risk of falling victim to the hordes of cheats, liars, and manipulators that called Wall Street home.

When the Great Depression hit in 1929 Wall Street was seen as the place to go if you wanted to be financially ruined and hurl yourself out of a window. An image that persisted in popular culture for 50 years.

Interest in world of Wall Street was revived in the 1980s. The economy escaped from the malaise of the 1970s, mergers and acquisitions were happening left, right, and center, everyone was playing the stock market, and conspicuous consumption was the thing to do.

What was the image people had of Wall Street?

Well, let's look at the most obvious pop culture example...

A movie about a brash young player, ashamed of his working class roots, who falls in with a shady character, does lots of shady things, loses his soul, and then regains it by ratting out his boss, and probably going to prison.

Hmmm.... Doesn't look all that positive to me.

Oh, and let's not forget that this is the same era that ushered the creation of Bret Easton Ellis' original American Psycho novel.

I don't think Lionsgate is tapping into anything particularly special and I don't think this remake is going to be anything particularly special.

I could be wrong, but what's the likelihood of that ever happening? ;-)

Hollywood Babble On & On #849: Riding Back From The Sunset...

2011-12-07T18:07:00.001-04:00

It looks like the Western is making a comeback on television. Buoyed by the success of Western styled modern-day shows like Justified, and the popularity of the Coen Brothers' remake of True Grit on the big screen people are now willing to take a risk on a genre long thought dead.

Personally, I think it's about time.

Westerns were once the foundation of film-making and television. A lot of the advancements in movie technology, storytelling, and subject matter in the first half of cinema history happened because of Westerns.

The simple fact that we refer to the movie/TV business as "Hollywood" comes from the fact that filmmakers started migrating there in the 1910s-1920s. Why did they migrate to Hollywood and make it the center of the movie universe? Because it was easier and more realistic to shoot Westerns outdoors in southern California than in the movie biz's original base of New York City.

Early Westerns from the 19-teens through the 1940s were mostly confident tales of Manifest Destiny. Brave heroes went into the wilderness, fought outlaws, and Indians angry over losing their land, and always won in the name of civilization. The size of the films went from Poverty Row cheaply made shoot-em-ups to grand big budget epics made by the major studios, and audiences couldn't get enough of them.

In the 1950s television literally exploded in the middle of pop culture, and Westerns played an important part.

Most of the early TV Westerns were reflections of the sanitized view of the Old West presented in the pre-WW2 movies.

Most were straightforward action - adventure shows, however Gunsmoke, was played as more of an attempt at serious drama, that tried to scrape at least some of the polish off the genre to show some of the grime beneath. The formula must have worked, because the show went on to run for 20 years.

This was happening as well on the big screen. Filmmakers who experienced the horrors of WW2 cast a more cynical eye on the normally myth-heavy genre, with films like The Ox-Bow Incident and The Searchers. Westerns even changed how Hollywood does business when Jimmy Stewart broke the old star system, and made himself a full partner in the profits from the movie Winchester '73 instead of being just a paid contract player.

The 60s marked another shift in the Western genre on the big and small screens. Italian filmmakers, both in love with the image of the lone western hero, and fired by fashionable Marxist rhetoric, took German money to Fascist Spain and gave birth to the Spaghetti Western.

These films took post-war cynicism to the limit, showing a world riddled with capitalist corruption, and coated in a layer of grime and sweat.

Not wanting to be outdone by the Italians, American filmmakers, specifically Sam Peckinpah, broke their own new ground. Usually this was in the field of how to shoot action, as seen in the beautiful/horrifying ballet of death and destruction seen in Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch.

However, the Western on television stayed more of less the same. Most Western shows were viewed as strictly "family entertainment," and were unable to take advantage of the advances coming from Europe and their big screen colleagues.

The Spaghetti Western's rebellious exuberance started to fade in the early 1970s. Europe's Marxist student rebellions of the late 1960s fizzled into the self-centered hedonism of the 1970s. Leone, the John Ford of Italian cinema, reflected this disillusionment in his last Western movie Duck, You Sucker! (AKA A Fistful of Dynamite). It portrayed revolution, as the youth of the 1960s envisioned it, as needlessly destructive and ultimately futile.

TV Westerns however, continued to be, for the most part fossilized, and one by one, they fell, until none stood. Every once in a while a new Western would pop up, sometimes in modern dress, but like their predecessors they were treated as family entertainment and not worth much creative effort beyond thinking of ways to couch them with some sort of moral lesson.

That changed with HBO's Deadwood, which was a warts and all portrayal of the Old West more akin to the films of Peckinpah and Leone than predecessors like Bonanza. The didn't catch on as big as its gangster counterpart The Sopranos, but it left its mark. Now many channels are saddling up to bring the Western back, possibly because they realize that there really is some life left in the genre and interest on the part of the audience.

Now this is where you, my readers can chime in: What do you think about Westerns making a comeback?

Hollywood Babble On & On #848: Hack Gets Flak & Hackneyed Ideas

2011-12-06T18:22:00.001-04:00

THE GREAT HOLLYWOOD TERRITORIAL PISSING CONTEST OF 2011

Producer Scott Rudin and New Yorker movie critic David Denby are in a massive pissing contest over Rudin's next opus The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. They held an advance screening for critics on the agreement that they wouldn't put out their reviews until a time pre-approved by the studio. Denby decided to put his review out right away, and sparked one of Rudin's legendary nuclear fusion powered conniption fits. Rudin called the breaking of the embargo "lousy & immoral," and folks in Hollywood are debating just who holds the moral high ground in this issue.

Well I have the answer....

They're both wrong.

Personally, I don't really care for these sorts of review embargoes. If you don't want people posting reviews until a certain time, don't let them see it until the time you want the reviews coming out. It has the unseemly whiff of the studio using its corporate weight to attempt to control the media.

However, Denby was acting like a petulant douchebag by posting his review before everyone else. Despite what he claims, I'm pretty sure he's not the total naive greenhorn he claims to be, and by participating in the special screening, he tacitly accepted the terms of that embargo.

Personally, I think Rudin did overreact when Denby broke the embargo. You don't go around yelling and hurling threats when someone does something like that. Simply say that he thought Denby was acting like a brat for breaking the agreement, and then quietly refuse to invite him to any other screenings in the future.

RETURN OF THE HACKNEYED CLICHE

Conservatives and Fox Business News are peeved by the The Muppets, because the movie's villain is an evil oilman hell-bent on destroying the Muppet's theater so he can drill for oil in the middle of Hollywood.

There's a line from an old episode of Seinfeld where Jerry talks to a priest about his dentist converting to Judaism for the jokes. The priest asks Jerry if this offends him as a Jew, and Jerry responds that it offends him as a comedian.

That's pretty much how I feel about this whole issue.

The whole idea of the evil businessman wanting to destroy something beloved for reasons that illustrate the writer's lack of understanding of economics was pretty much done to death during the days of the Li'l Rascals. I also don't think you can count the movies made over the decades where the villain is some middle aged white businessman in a suit, it's a dead horse that is consistently and constantly flogged by Hollywood.

Maybe Segel's intention was to send up the cliche, by making everything around the character so clownish, even naming him "Tex Richman," and giving him the wildly implausible, even for a Muppet movie, plot of drilling for oil in the middle of Los Angeles when the state of California is notorious as a terrible place for oil companies to do business, let alone new drilling.

Then again, maybe Segel's intention was to use what is essentially an old screenwriter's shortcut, because time spent trying to come up with an original villain with a plausible scheme, is time not spent figuring how to toss Muppets into electric fences.

Hollywood Babble On & On #847: An Excess Of Taste?

2011-12-05T18:27:00.001-04:00

Folks are speculating about the future of risk-taking movie producer Graham King and his GK Films after their latest film the 3D family spectacular Hugo, the company's biggest production to date, suffered a lukewarm reception at the box office, despite the good reception by critics and word of mouth, the failure of Johnny Depp's $45 million dream project The Rum Diary, and the near complete disappearance of their $25 million film London Blvd., starring Colin Farrell and Kiera Knightley.

Here are my theories behind the failure of these films...

1. HUGO: Was hurt badly by being a 3D movie, because so many times in the recent past 3D was used as the proverbial lipstick on the proverbial pig. The audience has been burned too many times, and decided to go see the Muppets instead.

2. THE RUM DIARY: The general public doesn't really worship at the altar of Hunter S. Thompson as much as Hollywood does. Where Thompson in prose comes across as a sardonic social commenter with a solid and imaginative control of the English language, in a visual media like film, he comes across as an obnoxious arrogant drunk and drugged out asshole.

3. LONDON BLVD.: Didn't even know it was a movie that was actually released into theaters.

But enough about those movies, let's talk about Mr. King and his situation.

He's an experienced producer with a reputation for upscale tastes in projects, and a partner with a couple of billion in oil bucks in the bank. That should be a recipe for doing the happy dance, but here we are with people publicly speculating about the future of his company.

The most prevalent theory is that King has shown an excess of taste in his projects, aiming for "classier" material, attached to big stars like Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie.

That's the root of his problem.

I'm not saying that he's wrong for doing trying to be classy, but it ignores the three noble truths you need to know if you're an independent movie mogul like Mr. King....

1. AN INDIE PRODUCER'S EXISTENCE IS PRECARIOUS. While it's nice to have a billionaire as a business partner, it's not the same as having a massive multinational media conglomerate with hundreds of billions of dollars, and the immense amount of clout with theaters and broadcasters that comes with it.

It doesn't matter how rich an individual your partner is, if things look like they'll make him go broke, they will back out. Then the dream is over and done with.

2. INSURANCE IS ESSENTIAL. When you're an independent mogul with their own company, you must protect yourself and your company from the inevitable vicissitudes of life in the movie business. I call it a form of insurance.

3. WHAT IS THIS INSURANCE? Well, the first thing an independent producer has to do to protect themselves is to not be so beholden to movie stars and their pet projects. Movie stars aren't worth what they're used to be, no matter what their agents say, and their "dream projects" are worth even less. If they were worth something, the major studios would be clamoring to do them.

If you are going to do a "dream project" for a movie star, then you must ask these two questions:

A. Is there actually an audience for this project, and does the film's budget reflect the size of that audience?

B. Can you afford to have the whole thing blow up in your face?

If the answer is no to either or both questions, then don't do it.

Then there are the "money projects."

Yes, you're going to have to do these, because movie companies need money, and these sorts of movies can make money with a minimal of investment and risk. I'm talking horror films, action/thriller films, and comedies that don't need big budgets, big stars, or big marketing, just a clever hook that gets fans of the genre interested.

These don't have to be bad movies, in fact, original, well done genre films tend to have longer shelf lives in theaters and in home video, and are, in the long run, better investments than just grinding out a forgettable knock off.

Once you have developed a firm enough cushion for your company, then you can afford to move on up the ladder to bigger and better things.