hollywood | the m0vie blog

Perfect ’10? Summer So Far…

Posted on July 5, 2010 by Darren

Am I the only person hugely disappointed with the summer so far this year? I mean, the summer isn’t traditionally where you find the best movies of the year, at least no more or less than any other time of year, but I’m not looking for great movies, just good ones. just solidly entertaining ones. At the most basic level, I’d settle for just an excuse to go to the cinema on a Friday night (although I’m sure my better half is glad of the weak string of movies – it really frees up our schedule). What the hell is wrong here?

Leo's looking for good movies too...

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: blockbusters, cinemas, films, get him to the greek, hollywood, Inception, Movies, predators, robin hood, summer, summer movies, toy story 3, world cup | 20 Comments »

In This Day and Age? The IMDb/DoB Fiasco…

Posted on June 25, 2010 by Darren

Sometimes I’m amazed at how Hollywood works. Sometimes I’m disappointed. This time, I’m both. Part of me enjoys the stories tear open the seedy underbelly of how Hollywood really operates and reveals the sort of corruption that would make a hard-drinking monologuing private detective blush. Paying Variety to make a negative review disappear, for example. Now it appears that actors are fighting the geeky paradise of the Internet Movie Database in order to get their dates of birth removed from the pages.

According to his resume, he's only 27...

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: age, ageism, date of birth, dob, hollywood, imdb, sag, wag | 14 Comments »

Are Spin-Offs the New Sequels?

Posted on June 10, 2010 by Darren

It seems that year-on-year, the cinemas are flooded with sequels to banal action movies. This year we have Iron Man 2, Shrek 4, Predators and Sex and the City 2, among others. It’s been that way for years. If you summer blockbuster isn’t an adaptation (of television show, novel, comic book, earlier film or even video game), chances are that it is a sequel (or a prequel). It makes shrewd business sense. Given the huge amount of money spent on these tentpoles ($150m for just the production budget, let alone other costs), so it feels somewhat safer to spend it on a known quantity. Franchises have built in fanbases, more merchandise, already had several DVD releases (which means more people are aware of it than casual cinema goers), which means a bigger audience, more awareness and more money. It can be quite exhausting, however, from a cinema goer prospective. However, Hollywood likes to innovate in its own insanely boring way. Much as they redefined cinema by bringing back a gimmick from the fifties, and turned the glut of sequels into prequels, it appears Hollywood has found a new way of generating money from established properties: the spin-off.

Think of the Gross, baby!

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: aldous snow, business, films, franchises, get him to the greek, hollywood, les grossman, Movies, sequels, spin-offs, tropic thunder | 20 Comments »

Sequel Query: Hollywood’s Fascination With Sequels…

Posted on June 10, 2010 by Darren

Can you remember a year when the summer wasn’t dominated by sequels or spin-offs or reboots or prequels? If you can, most of them were probably adaptations. There’s been a lot of back-and-forth recently about the abundance of such films in the summer lineups, so I thought it might be worth a little exploration into the history of the sequel and of Hollywood blockbusters, and also worth considering the suggestion that has been mooted a lot recently: are movie-goers tiring of sequels?

: Even death couldn’t keep Spock out of the next Star Trek movie…

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: audiences, films, hollywood, Inception, lowest common denominator, Movies, original films, originality, prequels, remakes, sequels, sex and the city 2, spin-offs, studios | 2 Comments »

Sight Unseen: Killers and the Future of Film Criticism…

Posted on June 2, 2010 by Darren

I remember it was only a few years ago that it was just really unapologetically bad movies with built-in audiences that refused (or simply couldn’t be bothered, knowing the inevitable trashing they’d receive) to be screened for critics. You know the films I’m talking about: horror remakes, horror sequels, horror in general. However, it seems that since G.I. Joe demonstrated that blockbusters can still bust blocks even without advanced critical presence. Perhaps it’s a side effect of the viral age we live in, but you don’t need a review in the Friday papers to put bums in seats. Anyway, apparently it looks like there’s more to come: Killers will not be screened for critics either.

Do we have a hit on our hands?

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: critics, hollywood, katherine heigl, killers, Movies, press screenings, reviews, romantic comedies, the killers | 12 Comments »

What Does Box Office Failure Even Mean these Days?

Posted on April 22, 2010 by Darren

It’s already happening. We’re already calling Kick-Ass a failure. Even though it managed to narrowly slide into first place at the US Box Office over the weekend, there are tonnes of pundits ready to dogpile on top of it and describe it as the most epic kind of failure. It seems to be a cyclical experience every time that a big geek film emerges, that has experienced a large amount of pre-release hype on the old interweb: Snakes on a Plane, Watchmen and Grindhouse among others. So how come Hollywood keeps pandering to a niche that never seems to show up?

Did Kick-Ass get its ass kicked? Should we call it Ass-Kick?

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: box office, economics, failure, films, geeks, grindhouse, hobo with a shotgun, hollywood, home video, kick-ass, machete, Movies, nerds, snakes on a plane, studios, watchmen | 13 Comments »

Hollywood & The Race Lift

Posted on April 14, 2010 by Darren

I had to represent. Cause they had one good role for a black man, and they gave it to Crocodile Dundee!

-Alpa Chino, Tropic Thunder

Earlier in the week, Cinematical ran an article on M. Night Shyamalan’s new film, Avatar: The Last Airbender. For those unaware, the movie is an adaptation of a hit anime, long due a trip to the screen – I hope it ends up either significantly better than, or significantly trippier than, Speed Racer, the most recent such attempt (seriously, it’s what I imagine really hard drugs are like). Of course, this being Hollywood, Shyamalan has secured a predominantly white cast for his film. Well, except for one of the major roles, which will go to Dev Patel. The fact that that role is the role of the villain probably doesn’t help none, nor does the fact Patel was only the second choice. So why does Hollywood insist on the race lift?

Is the cast ethnicity a sticking point?

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: avatar, avatar: the last airbender, ethnicity, hollywood, M. Night Shyamalan, minorities, movie-making, prejudice, race lift, racism, racist, recasting, zoe saldana | 10 Comments »

Do We Live in the Age of the Forty-Something Leading Lady?

Posted on March 23, 2010 by Darren

Jennifer Aniston’s romantic comedy The Bounty Hunter may not have quite set the US box office alight last weekend (coming third behind Alice in Wonderland and some film even I’ve never heard of), but she’s still one of Hollywood’s biggest name leading ladies currently on film – and I don’t see that changing. And she’s 41 years old. Sandra Bullock, that darling of the nineties romantic comedy, spent last year reaffirming her golden touch, with the surprising-even-by-the-standards-of-the-genre romantic comedy The Proposal and an Oscar-winning role in The Blind Side. There was also a Razzie-winning role in All About Steve, but she even managed to use that to demonstrate that she is still one of the queens of Hollywood. And she’s 45 years old. Are the attitudes towards women – particularly leading women – changing in Hollywood?

Is Aniston on a winning Streep?

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: age, ageing women, ageism, films, gender, hollywood, jennifer aniston, leading ladies, leading roles, meg ryan, middleage, Movies, Oscars, sandra bullock, sexism, the bounty hunter, women, women in their forties | 6 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Deal

Posted on March 3, 2010 by Darren

You know the kind of movie The Deal is. It’s about an over-the-hill writer who decides to screw with the Hollywood system and play it against itself, while seducing a beautiful woman and generally just being a cad. In short, it’s a movie writer’s fantasy. That’s by no means a bad thing, to be honest – when done right, you get the dark comedy Robert Altman’s The Player, a story of a writer’s revenge on a corrupt studio executive; unfortunately, when you do it wrong, you end up with a self-indulgent mess like The Deal.

Deal or no deal?

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: cinema, elliott gould, films, hollywood, ll cool j, meg ryan, Movie, non-review review, review, the deal, william h. macy | Leave a comment »

Who Killed The Golden Compass Franchise?

Posted on December 16, 2009 by Darren

It’s like a Hollywood blockbuster murder mystery brought to life. I can see it now: Bruce Willis as a cocky private detective investigating the dispatching of a controversial emerging star. A lot of people are mumbling in their drinks, but everyone’s afraid to say what they know. That is, until a surly-voiced stranger straightens up and says what’s on everyone’s mind. Cue Sam Elliot:

The Catholic Church happened to The Golden Compass, as far as I’m concerned. It did ‘incredible’ at the box office, taking $380million. Incredible. It took $85million in the States. The Catholic Church … lambasted them, and I think it scared New Line off.

Did the Catholic kill The Golden Compass, a potentially viable fantasy franchise in the mould of Harry Potter or The Lord of The Rings (or at least as far as fans would have you believe)? Let’s investigate.