intellectual property | the m0vie blog

365. Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey (-#56)

Posted on February 3, 2024 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Ciara Maloney and Dean Buckley, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT.

This week, Rhys Frake-Waterfield’s Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey.

As a child, Christopher Robin befriended a mysterious group of animals in the Hundred Acre Woods. However, as Christopher grew up and went to college, he abandoned his magical friends. With nobody to care for them, the creatures turned feral. Returning to the Hundred Acre Wood with his fiancée, Christopher ends up unleashing a primal and unexpected evil.

At time of recording, it was ranked 56th on the list of the worst movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The Bottom 100 | Tagged: ciara moloney, copyright, dean buckley, exploitation, fair use, horror, imdb, intellectual property, podcast, public domain, rights, slasher, The 250, the sundae presents, violence, winnie the pooh | Leave a comment »

363. Halloween Ends – All-o’-Ween (#—)

Posted on January 20, 2024 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn, Darren Mooney and Joey Keogh, this week with special guests Niall Glynn and Richard Drumm, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT.

This year, we are running a season looking at the films in the Halloween franchise. So this week, David Gordon Green’s Halloween Ends.

In the aftermath of his second brutal massacre, Michael Myers has disappeared. He has retreated into the memory of the suburban town of Haddenfield, leaving only open scars in his wake. The survivors, like Laurie Strode, have done their best to move on with their lives in the wake of unimaginable tragedy, but there is something stirring beneath the surface of Haddenfield, just waiting to bubble up in the right circumstances. Evil is stirring. Evil is growing. Evil is waiting, but not for long.

At time of recording, it was not ranked on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: corey cunningham, david gordon green, endings, expectations, Folklore, halloween, halloween ends, horror, intellectual property, Jamie Lee Curtis, joey keogh, John Carpenter, laurie strode, male anger, michael myers, niall glynn, podcast, richard drumm, sequel, sexuality, slasher, stephen king, The 250, trilogy | Leave a comment »

359. Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker (#—)

Posted on December 23, 2023 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, this week joined by special guests Luke Dunne and Richard Drumm, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every second Saturday at 6pm GMT, with the occasional bonus episode between them.

This time, JJ Abrams’ Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker.

A long time ago in a galaxy far away, somehow Palpatine returned.

At time of recording, it was not ranked on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: blockbuster, brands, disney, fan service, film, franchise films, franchises, hollywood, imdb, intellectual property, jj abrams, luke dunne, podcast, reviews, richard drumm, star wars, The 250 | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “The Flash” as a Movie About the Horror of “The Flash”…

Posted on June 19, 2023 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With The Flash releasing this weekend, it seemed like as good an opportunity to talk about the themes of the movie, and how those ideas exist in direct opposition to its central purpose.

Thematically, The Flash is a story about how the idea of a “reset” is fundamentally pointless. It is a tale about how individuals are often the sum total of their life experiences, including the traumatic ones, and that any attempt to erase those traumas would be to erase the person that they created. However, this is very much at odds with what the film functionally is. It is an opportunity for Warner Bros. to shift around their established continuity and intellectual property, to reset characters and to recast actors. In short, The Flash is a movie about its own monstrosity.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: continuity, film, intellectual property, metaphor, Movie, production, reboot, reference, reset, the flash, theme, trauma | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On “The Flash” as a Two-Hour-Long Shareholders’ Memo…

Posted on June 18, 2023 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist on Friday. With the release of The Flash in cinemas, it seemed like a good opportunity to consider the movie.

What is interesting about The Flash is that it is a movie almost entirely devoid of any artistic sentiment whatsoever. It is a movie that does not exist because anybody working on it had a brilliant idea that needed to be realised. It exists largely because Warner Bros. decided that they needed a Flash movie, and so – against all laws of nature and reality – simply willed that movie into existence.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: auteur, director, Ezra Miller, intellectual property, media, plot, reality, shareholders, the flash, theme, Vision, Warner Bros, warner discovery | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On Understanding Michael Bay’s “Transformers” Films…

Posted on June 11, 2023 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist yesterday evening. With the release of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at Michael Bay’s Transformers films.

Bay’s Transformers films are not good. It’s important to stress that. However, they are a fascinating piece of blockbuster cinema, the work of a genuine action auteur who bends an intellectual property so completely and so thoroughly to his artistic sensibility. It’s something that could only have happened at a particular moment in Hollywood, in the transition from director-driven blockbusters to brand-driven mega-franchises, and exists as a historical quirk on the bubble between those two trends.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: auteur, Filmmaking, franchise, hollywood, intellectual property, mark wahlberg, michael bay, toys, transformers, violence | Leave a comment »

315. Tomorrowland: A World Beyond – Bird Watching 2022 (#—)

Posted on December 3, 2022 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Deirdre Molumby and Graham Day, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT.

This week, we’re finishing up a season focusing on the work of one particular director: Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland: A World Beyond.

As a young boy, Frank Walker discovered a secret society of geniuses who lived apart from the rest of the world in the hopes of creating a better tomorrow. However, Frank was soon cast out, and found himself increasingly disillusioned with the future. At the same time, a young woman named Casey Newton finds herself drawn back into this web of secrets and possibilities. Can Frank and Casey save the world? And Tomorrowland?

At time of recording, it was not ranked on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: athena, ayn rand, bird watching, Brad Bird, colin trevorrow, damon lindelof, deirdre molumby, disney, future, george clooney, graham day, hope, hugh laurie, intellectual property, jj abrams, nostalgia, objectivism, optimism, original, podcast, star wars, The 250, theme park, utopianism | Leave a comment »

New Escapist Column! On How “Fantastic Beasts” Fails to Capture the Magic of “Harry Potter”…

Posted on April 1, 2022 by Darren

I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the upcoming release of Fantastic Beasts: Secrets of Dumbledore, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back at one of the more inert major franchises of the past decade or so.

The success of the Harry Potter movies made the extension of the franchise inevitable; and the intellectual property has expanded into theme parks and stage shows. However, the attempts to expand the world into feature films has met with frustrating results. So far, the Fantastic Beasts franchise has felt a little lifeless and inert, a blockbuster franchise driven by exposition and apocalyptic spectacle, rather than allowing the audience to really immerse themselves in the world as they did with the earlier stories.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: brand extension, fantastic beasts, franchise, harry potter, intellectual property, JK Rowling, wizarding world, wizards | 2 Comments »

New Escapist Column! On Hollywood’s Next Franchising Trend, the “Requel”…

Posted on August 1, 2021 by Darren

I published a new column at The Escapist today. The success of David Gordon Green’s Halloween and the announcement of his upcoming Exorcist trilogy seemed like a good time to discuss one of the more interesting modern trends in studio franchising: the rebooted sequel, or the “requel.” The idea is that if an original movie is iconic, but subsequent sequels have devalued the brand, the studio can just roll the franchise back to the earlier beloved film and effectively start franchising again from that point onwards.

It is a frustrating and unsettling trend that illustrates the cannibalistic feeding frenzy that is modern franchising. Hollywood has already franchised every viable property, but this approach allows studios a second (or third) bite of the apple by effectively erasing perceived mistakes and rolling the clock back to earlier and more nostalgia-friendly points in the shared continuity. It’s interesting to see this approach becoming increasingly mainstream.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.