The troubling part of this Variety report about increased movie theater advertising revenue is the third paragraph that basically says that the ads are working and that people don’t mind them anymore.
I suppose it’s not that big of a deal, but I’m tired of being sold something everywhere I turn. I’ll go out of my [...]

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 17 Comments »

Though I never lived through them, I think I miss the studio days when the buzz around a movie or a celebrity’s image was carefully controlled. At the very least, I’d like to go back to a time before the Internet when behind-the-camera movie gossip wasn’t dressed up as breaking news.
These days, director’s tirades turn [...]

Filed under: Analysis, Movies, Opinion | 18 Comments »

The AP takes time out from keeping tabs on the world flushing iself down the crapper to make a big deal out of the shared October 24 release date of Angelina Jolie in Changeling and Jennifer Aniston in He’s Just Not That Into You. You’d think the former Brad Pitt squeeze and the current Brad [...]

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 16 Comments »

The real aftermath of the 2008 Universal fire can’t be photographed 
(AP Photo/Ric Francis)
The recent Universal fire claimed more than a few facades and burned more than a few prints of old movies. It struck at the very heart of what will (hopefully) be one of the enduring legacies of the United States of America and [...]

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 5 Comments »

Besides all the other things that have irritated so many people about the new Indiana Jones movie, has anyone noticed the sound dropping out at random during your screening?
Joel brought this Boing Boing post to my attention where a movie theater posted a sign apologizing for sound drop outs during Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal [...]

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 17 Comments »

The Internet is getting its collective panties in a twist again. The big trades like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter are routinely ’scooped’ by various Internet movie sites with news on upcoming projects. When the trades get around to making the news ‘official’, they never credit whoever broke the story.
Both Collider and Latino Review have [...]

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 21 Comments »

I know this is an industry town, but is a review of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull really front page news?

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 33 Comments »

 
Standards torch-bearer trips on shoelaces, starts forest fire
I was going to make fun of a column in yesterday’s NY Times, but then I realized David Poland already did it. After a cup of coffee, I decided to go ahead and do it anyway. I can’t afford to be choosey, but neither apparently can the NY Times.
If [...]

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 10 Comments »

All the cool kids are waiting for Iron Man and Dark Knight. Me? Bring on Speed. 
I’m as surprised as anyone to find that I’m getting increasingly excited about Speed Racer. I know, it’s weird. Normally summer kind of bores me and I have a low threshold for corniness. Somehow though, Speed is appealing to the little [...]

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 28 Comments »

Where is Travis Bickle when we need him? 
This is a little far removed from movies and a little too close to the kind of salacious Entertainment Tonight/TMZ nonsense I hate so much, but it’s all over and since it involves Disney, it plays.
As you probably know, Annie Leibovitz took some creepily sexualized photos of teen [...]

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 9 Comments »

Go Speed Racer Go Music Video
A new Speed Racer music video that riffs on the original theme song has been kicking around for a couple of days and the fanboys are grumbling about it. As you can see above, it’s corny as hell.
Is it possible that the creators of their beloved Matrix movies have [...]

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 9 Comments »

Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir makes the most compelling case so far in support of the minority opinion that Guillermo del Toro is not the right choice for The Hobbit. He’s no fan of the idea of a Tolkien-less sequel either.
Unlike some Jackson/Rings scolds, O’Hehir appears to love and understand both saying “I’m a big fan of [...]

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 12 Comments »

“There’s more writing about movies these days than ever before. In print and online, it’s never been worse-especially on the Internet where film buffs emulating the Vachel Lindsay-Manny Farber tradition are no longer isolated nerds but an opinionated throng, united in their sarcasm and intense pretense at intellectualizing what is basically a hobby.”
So begins Armond [...]

Filed under: Analysis, Movies, Opinion | 44 Comments »

I’ve already described the great pleasure of going into a film that has a bad critical reputation and discovering that the critics got it wrong. For me, this most recently happened with Wong Kar-Wai’s lovely My Blueberry Nights. Currently boasting a lowly 46% Tomato Rating at Rotten Tomatoes and an even lower 29% among the [...]

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 15 Comments »

The folks at SlashFilm point us to an interview at Fearnet.com asking fanboy scourge Uwe Boll if he’s aware of the online petition signed by 18,000 people asking him to stop making movies. It turns out the much-maligned director of such critically pummeled videogame-to-big-screen adaptations as BloodRayne and Postal is well aware of the campaign [...]

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 8 Comments »

The one positive about Bill O’Reilly’s continued existence is that it gives me an excuse to keep using the word ‘asshat.’ I know asshat is a couple of years behind the curve of cool, but it’s a funny word. It makes me laugh every time someone says it and every time I see it in [...]

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 14 Comments »

When I read in The Hollywood Reporter last night that the fools behind YouTube sensation Ask a Ninja were planning on remaking Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, I was going to make jokes about it, but really the joke speaks for itself.
The original was an intentional cult movie; an unfunny spoof of bad ’50s sci-fi that [...]

Filed under: Movies, News, Opinion | 13 Comments »

ShoWest kicked off today. This is the convention where, among other things, the studios trot out their summer tent pole product to theater owners to get them juiced about the coming blockbuster season. They hand out awards so that celebrities will show up and they do it all in Vegas so that booze and hookers and [...]

Filed under: Movies, News, Opinion | 3 Comments »

Internet rage is brewing over the IFC/Blockbuster deal I wrote about the other day as people begin to mull over the consequences. Stu VanAirsdale (AKA The Reeler) begins by quoting the official IFC press release from IFC sales stooge Lisa Schwartz:
We’re delighted to join with Blockbuster as we continue our mission of making independent film [...]

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 8 Comments »

The Chinese have a long history of censoring films and punishing filmmakers for going against the government and it seems like it’s only getting worse.
Though he’s now generally embraced after nationalist epics like Hero, Zhang Yimou (Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern) once routinely ran afoul with Chinese censors. He was barred from entering his [...]

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 10 Comments »

Karina at SpoutBlog points us to this little bowl-circling floater at Movie City News and I was suddenly reminded why I rarely read David Poland. Most of us see the recently announced September 12th wide-release of Joel and Ethan Coen’s Burn After Reading as cause for celebration, but Poland puts on his Oscar colored spectacles and [...]

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 24 Comments »

I seem to recall the Tribeca Film Festival taking a fair amount of crap in recent years for some of their selections. The US premiere of Spider-Man 3 last year, for example.
Well, if the trailer is to be taken at face value, Tribeca has sunk to a new low this year with its opening-night film: Tina Fey [...]

Filed under: Movies, News, Opinion | 23 Comments »

 
That’s too bad because, according to a boring business report in Variety, it cost $49.2 million on average for one of the studios’ specialty divisions to crank out a movie in 2007. That’s a 60% increase over 2006. Meanwhile, marketing jumped 44% to $25.7 million.
The article doesn’t say what the average studio picture cost (and [...]

Filed under: Analysis, Movies, Opinion | 11 Comments »

Perhaps because television ratings of the Oscar broadcast dropped to an all time low this year, but the golden Oscar dust hasn’t even settled and, in three different columns, Variety is already asking the annual question “How do we make Oscar not suck next year?” The first one addresses the always controversial music, foreign language and documentary [...]

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 46 Comments »

If I was in charge of handing out the Oscars, here’s how it would all go down in the major categories:
Screenplay - Adapted
This is one of the strongest categories and I have no complaint about any of the nominees. Having said that, I’m hoping for a giant No Country sweep and that the award for [...]

Filed under: Awards, Movies, Opinion | 47 Comments »

 
In the pages of Variety, Justin Chang looks into the heart the movies in 2007 and returns with a story of boys vs. girls.
Are we really going to reduce one of the greatest movie-going years in recent memory to just that?
Chang sees a stark divide in the best picture Oscar nominees with Juno and Atonement [...]

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 28 Comments »

Watch out movie stars, Cloverfield is coming for you…Maybe. 
With the possible exception of financial reporting, the entertainment beat seems to be in a class of its own when it comes to seizing upon an item, spinning it into a phony trend and then spending untold numbers of column inches pondering the trend until the inevitable [...]

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 2 Comments »

Ticking off the most recent list of axings and exits including the retirement of New York Daily News vet Jack Matthews (but no mourning for Pete Hammond), Variety talks around the phenomenon of the disappearing newspaper film critic, but manages to miss the bigger picture.
Both broadcast and print media outlets have long been gnawing away at themselves, [...]

Filed under: Movies, Opinion | 18 Comments »

Razzie nominations for the worst movies and worst performances of 2007 were announced this morning and I couldn’t care less. I hate bad movies as much as anyone, but dwelling on them long after they’ve done their damage in theaters is absolutely pointless.
Rather than waste time talking about things that suck, there is always another [...]

Filed under: Awards, Movies, Opinion | 11 Comments »

Ellen Page in Juno
From time to time I like to take a look at what other people are saying about a movie I’ve reviewed, especially when my opinion doesn’t seem to match up with the majority. This week I think it’s about time I owned up to my minority stand by examining the Juno Juggernaut.

Filed under: Analysis, Movies, Opinion | 19 Comments »