studios | the m0vie blog

New Escapist Column! On “The Witcher: Blood Origin”, and What Happens When Television Becomes a Six-Hour Movie…

Posted on December 29, 2022 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist this week. With the release of The Witcher: Blood Origin on Netflix, it seemed like a good time to discuss an unsettling trend in modern television: the idea that modern shows are really just super-extended movies, and the consequences of that.

Blood Origin demonstrates what happens when a studio treats a television show like a movie. The series was written and filmed as six episodes, but was horrible cut down in the editting bay. Two whole episodes were stripped out of the show, leaving it incoherent and nonsensical. In many ways, this was exactly what happened with Joss Whedon’s cut of Justice League, which was similarly cut down to have a runtime of under two hours. If television shows are just films now, they are subject to the same sort of meddling.

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

Filed under: Television | Tagged: blood origin, cutting, executive meddling, films, justice league, media, Movies, structure, studios, Television, the escapist, the witcher, the witcher: blood origin, trimming | Leave a comment »

311. The Iron Giant – Bird Watching 2022 (#250)

Posted on November 5, 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 kicking off a season focusing on the work of one particular director: Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant.

Hogarth Hughes is a lonely kid coming of age in fifties Maine, when he comes across a very strange creature living in the local wilderness: a gigantic metal man who has crashed on this planet from another world. The two strike up a deep and abiding bond. However, Hogarth very quickly discovers that other forces are also trying to track down his new friend.

At time of recording, it was ranked 250th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: 1990s, adults, animation, bird watching, Brad Bird, Cold War, disney, iron giant, kids, nineties, podcast, Russia, self-actualisation, sexy, studios, The 250, the cold war, Vin Diesel, warners | Leave a comment »

158. The Wizard of Oz – w/ The Movie Palace – Winter of ’39 (#–)

Posted on November 30, 2019 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, The 250 is a fortnightly 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, a special crossover episode with The Movie Palace Podcast, a film podcast hosted by Carl Sweeney taking a look at the classics of Hollywood’s golden age. Carl suggested a crossover episode taking a look at the list, and particularly some of the classic movies listed on it.

So this week, Victor Fleming, George Cukor, Mervyn LeRoy, Norman Taurog, Richard Thorpe and King Vidor’s The Wizard of Oz.

After a freak hurricane scoops her home off the ground and deposits her in a vibrant magical land occupied by talking scarecrows and wicked witches, Dorothy Gale must confront a shocking reality: she’s not in Kansas anymore.

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

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: america, auteurship, authorship, carl sweeney, fantasy, L. Frank Baum, mgm, musical, studios, the wizard of oz, wizard of ox | Leave a comment »

157. Ford v. Ferrari (Le Mans ’66) – This Just In (#156)

Posted on November 26, 2019 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, 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 Saturday at 6pm GMT.

This time, James Mangold’s Ford v. Ferrari.

In response to the worst sales slump in American history, the Ford Motor Company embraces a radical idea: it will build a car to beat Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. However, in order to do that, it needs to recruit and work with two radicals who have their own unique approach to engineering and racing, Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles. These two mavericks soon discover that their allies in Ford might be as dangerous as their enemies at Ferrari.

At time of recording, it was ranked 156th on the Internet Movie Database’s list of the best movies of all-time.

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Filed under: This Just In | Tagged: auteurship, awards fare, cars, christian bale, dad movies, Ford, ford v. ferrari, henry ford ii, James Mangold, matt damon, movie stars, netflix, racing, studios | Leave a comment »

How Do Studios Decide What Movies Get Sequels?

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Darren

This is a question which has bothered me for quite a while now, because it seems like there should be an obvious answer, but I can’t really make a lot of decisions fit based on that. The deciding factor, one would assume, in any industry as to whether a product gets a continuation, a re-release, or a spin-off, would be that of box office. You imagine that the studio executives include an option for sequels in the contracts of any actors they want to stick around, and then wait for the box office totals to come in before they finally decide if they want to make the investment. However, this doesn’t always seem to be the case.

Should I get on my bike?

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: box office, dreamworks, entertainment, hugh jackman, movie sequels, Movies, Real Steel, sequel, Shawn Levy, studios, tron: legacy | 15 Comments »

Trail me Lies, Trail me Sweet Little Lies: Hollywood Trailers, Omission of Facts and Downright Lies

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Darren

Movie trailers are a fickle bunch. Some spoil movies by revealing crucial plot twists. But there’s arguably something far more sinister than an advertisement which innocently gives a plot twist or two away: the movie trailer which actively lies to the audience. It’s a very dodgy advertising strategy, but sadly one that movie studios seem to be quite comfortable resorting to.

Machete: A Romantic Comedy...

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: ads, advertisements, arts, cyrus, film, films, foreign films, greenberg, hollywood, indie, international, lies, marketing, Movie, movie trailers, Movies, musicals, studios, subtitles, sweeney todd, trailers, trailers always lie, world cinema | 8 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Player

Posted on September 2, 2010 by Darren

I love The Player. I really do. When I was in college, I used to organise movie screenings – we’d show The Player once a year and it would always pack out. It was just one of those films that everybody had heard nothing but good things about, but never got a chance to see. Indeed, I would go so far as to say The Player, with all its wacky fourth-wall meta-ness, is my favourite Robert Altman film.

Who would want to kill this producer? Answers on the back of a postcard...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: cameos, celebrities, classic, classics, executives, film making, fred ward, hollywood, long shots, movie-making, Movies, murder, non-review review, references, review, robert altman, studios, the player, tim robbins | 3 Comments »

Why Inception Matters…

Posted on July 19, 2010 by Darren

I spent a great deal of last weekend heavily anticipating the box office figures for Inception. Of money it makes won’t change the fact that I think it’s an amazing film, but it will affect the impact that Christopher Nolan’s latest will have on the movie industry. And that, my friends, is very important. In fact, I’d go out on a limb and suggest that Inception might be the most important summer blockbuster of the decade, and possibly longer.

More movies like Inception? Hopefully not just in my dreams...

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: audiences, big budget, blockbusters, box office, challenges, Christopher Nolan, dumbing down, films, hollywood, ideas, Inception, Movies, smart, studios, Warner Brothers, why inception matters | 6 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 »

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?