Hey, Hollywood. Quit making movies. Nobody wants to see them. Just keep the Hollywood sign up and keep telling people who Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner are doing.
I have not seen GET SHORTY. I can't attest that the film is boring or anything, and I doubt that it's not interesting. But that premise just seems like the definition of Hollywood butt kissing.
Hollywood is a section of Los Angeles, California where movies are made. That is the end of my emotional attachment to the name Hollywood. Yes, thank you to those of you residents of Hollywood, CA who have helped bring about such awesome movies like 12 ANGRY MEN, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, THE GRADUATE, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE THE EXORCIST, TAXI DRIVER, BEING THERE, STAR WARS, E.T., GHOSTBUSTERS, FORREST GUMP, A TIME TO KILL, GOOD WILL HUNTING, AMERICAN PIE, and many others. Thanks to you all. I have no thanks what so ever for the marriage of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner. I wish them both well, together or apart, but their contributions to the tabloid pages I am not grateful for. The tabloid magazines themselves I have no qualms with. They're just doing their job. Ben Affleck seems to have two jobs: acting in motion pictures and not coming across as a snob for thinking he's entitled to at least some level of privacy. As for Jennifer Garner, her acting talents are minimal and she's managed to find a comfy job as spokesperson for some credit card company. Ben Affleck is no Tom Hanks. Gwyneth Paltrow is no Meryl Streep. But when's the last time Tom Hanks did a movie that couldn't have been delivered just as well with some other actor? Or better yet, could have just not been made in the first place? Would anybody care of the books of Dan Brown were never adapted to celluloid? CAPTAIN PHILLIPS had a 98% rating the first month or so it was out on Rotten Tomatoes. I doubt it's because it's THAT GOOD of a movie. There's just some movies that nobody has anything bad to say about and if you ever find yourself feeling like you have nothing to do or say or think about, then by all means, watch CAPTAIN PHILLIPS. I'm busy typing this at the moment....but back to my most prior train of thought ---- My point was/is, if you didn't catch on, that most movies don't require great acting. I don't disrespect Ben Affleck. He seems like a serious actor. If it weren't for his co-penning of GOOD WILL HUNTING, I probably would have less respect for him. He's not quite as serious as Brad Pitt, which has served as an advantage to Ben Affleck in recent years where seriously * good movies that Brad Pitt is a good fit for are few and far between. Any of Dennis Vellenuve's movies *could* have had Brad Pitt in them, but the actors they chose over him were better fits, IMO. I can imagine Brad Pitt taking over for James Brolin in SICARIO. It doesn't seem right. I can imagine him playing Jake Gyllenthal's role in PRISONERS. Didn't Brad Pitt already do a slam dunk job playing a homerun detective in an equally gritty and disturbing movie with religious overtones? Uh, yeah...right. ARRIVAL? That movie was already borderline sappy. Having Fabbio alongside Amy Adams is just what Late Night TV needs. Seriously, whoever the new Jay Leno is -- you need to get on that! I don't have any video editing know how, so....
BTW, It does seem as if Brad Pitt has finally found a project that seems to suit him, both as an actor and as a die hard liberal, some military satire or something, right up his ally it sounds like, a Netflix exclusive.
Anyway.....yeah. Hollywood, I have no love for. My mom dismisses the idea that different locales have their own personalities. She's always saying "It's just a place." But Hollywood? It really is bland from everything I do know about it. Is it not 90 degrees fareinheit a vast % of the time? I've seen nothing on TV or other method of broadcast to indicate any kind of architectural trends worth noting. When I think of Hollywood, I think of a big group of compound looking buildings where people go to check their mail and have meetings. And then a little further over, maybe some girly gift shops lined up along one another. NYC and San Francisco are cities worth noting for their existence, people or no people. I was born in and reached adolescence in Monterrey Bay Area, so I have an odd attachment to that sort of thing, the smell of fish does not bother me like it supposedly does most people. I like the air that I used to breath in Monterrey Bay Area. Occassionally I'd get a whiff of it in Missouri where I finished off adolescence and trasnitioned into what passes as adulthood for me. And the fact that San Francisco is a CITY means it's loaded with options for buying whatever the heck tickles your fancy. I like living in Metro Atlanta. I always loved the mall. It got kind of sad going there in Cape Girardeau, Missouri b/c there was nothing but clothing stores and I kept becoming more and more unable to conceive spending money at the few places that weren't clothing stores, the more I looked at my budget vs. what the mall has to offer and how much of it I can afford. I was blown away by the mall close to my sister's house. Sugarloaf Mills I think is what it was called. It was a kick ass mall to begin with ****AND* there's an AMC cineplex or "theater" built into it. Freakin' amazing! NOT because that's where Ben Affleck proposed to Jennifer Garner or because there's a famous photo of Ben & Gwen that the paparazzi captured before he proposed to Jen --- but because that's where you can go in and ***watch a movie***! I also love the layout of the exterior of the ehater. I didn't have enough money to go in and try it out and I was low on time as well and haven't had any opportunities to go since. Yes, movies generally aren't my thing nowadays. But when they are, they really are. I'm eagerly awaiting the next thing Dennis Vellenueve does. ARRIVAL was just *wow*. LOVED that movie! I finished that movie about a month ago now and was reeling from it for at least a week afterward. Way more satisfying than chit chatting about Benefer and the end of Benefer and the Ghosts Of Benefers past........
NY is, from what I can tell, laid out like a lot of those old mammoth Catholic churches. Even the Manhattan skyscrapers have an elegance to them, if 1984's GHOSTBUSTERS is any indication, although I realize 42nd St as it was then no longer exists (not sure how much else has changed & how). Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS was supposedly inspired by a view of NYC skyscrapers from underwater. Kind of a scary thought. Any sea life from that timeframe very well may have had a difficult time coping with the installation of those towering buildings, supposing they have the same human tendency to sweat the small stuff (and it's all small stuff!)
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
Friday, June 2, 2017
state of the art
Paul Feig is such a whiner. "Once upon a time I loved the internet" Yeah, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt when it came to his ability to do the 2016 GHOSTBUSTERS. The guy has no talent. He's good with comedy, but GHOSTBUSTERS was not a comedy. It's a bit like 1982's CREEPSHOW, except instead of the exploitation of 42nd street broadcasts, it relied more on the suspense model provided by Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO (1960) and THE EXORCIST (1973). The suspense driven horror film was derivative of other movies before it but if it'd been an all out horror film, it would have been boring at worst and too scary to watch at best, neither one good for business. I personally don't recall ever being scared by the film. I've been watching the film since I was 2 years old and even though I can piece together a composite understanding of why people all over LMAOd, I honestly have never had an extreme funny bone reaction to GHOSTBUSTERS. But it is still a fun movie. The only thing one can argue with against it is the ambiguous (at best) stance the filmmakers have on Christianity. The notion of ghosts definitely defies general understanding of God's Word. And as far as being "important" -- the film is definitely not any kind of instruction. It provides no spiritual nourishment and it is not a means to any profitable end to the general public. It's what many would call a "waste of time". In fact, this blogpost is taking way too long to complete, but I can't exactly stop now.......
But I think there is still a spirit of optimism that sweeps through even the grimmer sequences and I think the world at large could benefit from more pondering on the merit of optimism it it could withstand the mental stamina needed to do so between work hours or after.
There are so many elements that worked well with each other in GHOSTBUSTERS (1984). Many people talk about them when comparing it to GHOSTBUSTERS II and people do that even still with the remake.
The fact of the matter is the same things that made GHOSTBUSTERS a smashing success would not have worked with 1993's JURASSIC PARK. Nor would they have worked with 1973's THE EXORCIST. Nor would they have worked with CADDYSHACK or LIAR LIAR or MEN IN BLACK or BACK TO THE FUTURE. Obviously, there needed to be something unique to the original that was re-used in the remake. Gus Van Sant's 1998 re-make of PSYCHO was pointless --- unadulterated mindnumbing WTF POINT-LESS! It's in color. Oh, so now snotnose brats can enjoy it! Except they didn't because the 1960 remake that was re-shot frame by frame (in color and with a different cast) is extremely slow moving by 1998 standards. Those old enough to appreciate the quality of the storytelling probably don't mind the 1960 orig. being in color. In fact, if reading and literacy were not so perrenially unpopular, the movie PSYCHO would have been pointless given how closely it kept to the rather short book in which it was based. However, there is indeed something to be said of how skillfully Hitchcock put the thing together.
Talent does not stem from intellect or preconceived notions of graphic design. A lot of people interested in clothing insist that polka dots and stripes don't go together. Bull. That's the same logic that Hollywood executives have about so-called "blockbuster" movies. "Put monsters and randomly inserted large doses of destruction with a little bit of dialogue interspersed and money will follow" Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. It worked with JURASSIC WORLD big time. Not as much for GODZILLA (2014) and not at all for INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE. Art is a complicated blend of things that have to go together just so or it just doesn't fly. If you don't want to look like you've failed, don't try. Don't bother wearing polka dots and stripes if you have no idea how to make yourself look good in it. Some people probably literally cannot pull it off. Some people literally cannot pull of a GHOSTBUSTERS remake. Sony Pictures and Ghost Corp. may as well have thrown their money down the toilet. It would've incited less disappointment in a lot of people.
I tried to enjoy it on a second viewing, knowing it was a weak ass film compared to the original. I thought maybe Sigourney Weaver's comments on the film maybe had merit. It's not much of a wonder why nobody sees her in anything anymore except people who have too much time on their hands and rent movies like TADPOLE and THE GUYS. The rest of the Ghostbusters cast and major filmmaking players also seem to have lost their touch. Dan Aykroyd might still have his, but he hasn't been in show business much the past 20 years, which I can hope is in correlation to the decrease in quality motion pictures, but then again why was he in Ghostbusters? Maybe he had unrealistic expectations of the movie based on a loose draft of the script. He generally doesn't do movies that he thinks poorly of, at least that's what he said in an interview one time with Oprah or someone. Also, he'd been the GB franchise's biggest cheerleader since 1990 and might've been afraid of what his absence in the film would do to the future of the GB franchise. It'd been dead for so long, maybe he was OK with it having such a rocky re-launch .... I really do hope Sony & Ghost Corp. do better with any further attempts to come if any. Ivan Rietman is still in show business, and who keeps hiring him and why?? Ernie Hudson, the smaller name in the GB cast, but easily recognizable, just basically keeps busy as he always has.
Paul Feig might've been able to do a better variation of the film had he had more unbiased feedback. There was a lot of gender based hatred spewing from the public. There was a lot of idiotic "sequel, don't remake!" comments floating about, and a lot of Hilary Clinton-type "girl power!" comments (and asskissers for sure) but none of that is productive and none of those in and of themselves, alone and/or in part contributed to the lack of quality in the movie. He stated his technique generally is to test screen which scenes give the biggest laugh. He said he would try different takes of the same scene even. I think a lot of people just were not interested in the idea and were not going to be pursuaded to be. There was obviously a lot of pre-release anticipation and it opened with a bang, but quickly declined in sales. The home video sales were also strong. There obviously was/is an audience for the film aside from those who went back to the theater to see it -- which were obviously fewer in number, hence the decrease in ticket sales as week 2 and 3 came to a close. I can only guess that the Los Angeles/SoCal area has more bias than the nation & the world at large? I don't know. It's quite possible the SoCal residents were a lot harder to please given the onslaught of junk coming out of Hollywood. How can anyone who was old enough to be watching an average R rated movie in 1994 even stomach being reminded of how low film's quality has sunk since the days of Summer 1984? ESPECIALLY in a town/area where everyone *wants to be* a filmmaker (actor or screenwriter) but can't be because the stupid executives can't just put out a good movie and let that be that. Heck, the movies that come out these days aren't *bad* movies. They're just so damn middle of the road. 2001's NARC, recently bought for $0.99 with some store credit @ CD Warehouse after having memories of the little bit I'd seen of it before giving up on it (possibly unfairly) and the critical response it had overall, had some elements that made it watchable. It was an entertaining 2 hrs, if what the word getting spread out on the street is indeed true. But how many people in SoCal have submitted much better screenplays, dealing with subject matter that isn't so tried and tired? Surely Paramount Pictures could have scrapped whatever stupid ass box office bomb came out that summer and released such a screenplay and it probably would not have been any bigger of a financial disaster. I wouldn't think the barrage of sexism that flooded the internet would be such a driving force in SoCal....but then again....idk.....I really do wonder about that whole thing. Maybe the final product really was the best Paul Fieg could muster.
But I think there is still a spirit of optimism that sweeps through even the grimmer sequences and I think the world at large could benefit from more pondering on the merit of optimism it it could withstand the mental stamina needed to do so between work hours or after.
There are so many elements that worked well with each other in GHOSTBUSTERS (1984). Many people talk about them when comparing it to GHOSTBUSTERS II and people do that even still with the remake.
The fact of the matter is the same things that made GHOSTBUSTERS a smashing success would not have worked with 1993's JURASSIC PARK. Nor would they have worked with 1973's THE EXORCIST. Nor would they have worked with CADDYSHACK or LIAR LIAR or MEN IN BLACK or BACK TO THE FUTURE. Obviously, there needed to be something unique to the original that was re-used in the remake. Gus Van Sant's 1998 re-make of PSYCHO was pointless --- unadulterated mindnumbing WTF POINT-LESS! It's in color. Oh, so now snotnose brats can enjoy it! Except they didn't because the 1960 remake that was re-shot frame by frame (in color and with a different cast) is extremely slow moving by 1998 standards. Those old enough to appreciate the quality of the storytelling probably don't mind the 1960 orig. being in color. In fact, if reading and literacy were not so perrenially unpopular, the movie PSYCHO would have been pointless given how closely it kept to the rather short book in which it was based. However, there is indeed something to be said of how skillfully Hitchcock put the thing together.
Talent does not stem from intellect or preconceived notions of graphic design. A lot of people interested in clothing insist that polka dots and stripes don't go together. Bull. That's the same logic that Hollywood executives have about so-called "blockbuster" movies. "Put monsters and randomly inserted large doses of destruction with a little bit of dialogue interspersed and money will follow" Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. It worked with JURASSIC WORLD big time. Not as much for GODZILLA (2014) and not at all for INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE. Art is a complicated blend of things that have to go together just so or it just doesn't fly. If you don't want to look like you've failed, don't try. Don't bother wearing polka dots and stripes if you have no idea how to make yourself look good in it. Some people probably literally cannot pull it off. Some people literally cannot pull of a GHOSTBUSTERS remake. Sony Pictures and Ghost Corp. may as well have thrown their money down the toilet. It would've incited less disappointment in a lot of people.
I tried to enjoy it on a second viewing, knowing it was a weak ass film compared to the original. I thought maybe Sigourney Weaver's comments on the film maybe had merit. It's not much of a wonder why nobody sees her in anything anymore except people who have too much time on their hands and rent movies like TADPOLE and THE GUYS. The rest of the Ghostbusters cast and major filmmaking players also seem to have lost their touch. Dan Aykroyd might still have his, but he hasn't been in show business much the past 20 years, which I can hope is in correlation to the decrease in quality motion pictures, but then again why was he in Ghostbusters? Maybe he had unrealistic expectations of the movie based on a loose draft of the script. He generally doesn't do movies that he thinks poorly of, at least that's what he said in an interview one time with Oprah or someone. Also, he'd been the GB franchise's biggest cheerleader since 1990 and might've been afraid of what his absence in the film would do to the future of the GB franchise. It'd been dead for so long, maybe he was OK with it having such a rocky re-launch .... I really do hope Sony & Ghost Corp. do better with any further attempts to come if any. Ivan Rietman is still in show business, and who keeps hiring him and why?? Ernie Hudson, the smaller name in the GB cast, but easily recognizable, just basically keeps busy as he always has.
Paul Feig might've been able to do a better variation of the film had he had more unbiased feedback. There was a lot of gender based hatred spewing from the public. There was a lot of idiotic "sequel, don't remake!" comments floating about, and a lot of Hilary Clinton-type "girl power!" comments (and asskissers for sure) but none of that is productive and none of those in and of themselves, alone and/or in part contributed to the lack of quality in the movie. He stated his technique generally is to test screen which scenes give the biggest laugh. He said he would try different takes of the same scene even. I think a lot of people just were not interested in the idea and were not going to be pursuaded to be. There was obviously a lot of pre-release anticipation and it opened with a bang, but quickly declined in sales. The home video sales were also strong. There obviously was/is an audience for the film aside from those who went back to the theater to see it -- which were obviously fewer in number, hence the decrease in ticket sales as week 2 and 3 came to a close. I can only guess that the Los Angeles/SoCal area has more bias than the nation & the world at large? I don't know. It's quite possible the SoCal residents were a lot harder to please given the onslaught of junk coming out of Hollywood. How can anyone who was old enough to be watching an average R rated movie in 1994 even stomach being reminded of how low film's quality has sunk since the days of Summer 1984? ESPECIALLY in a town/area where everyone *wants to be* a filmmaker (actor or screenwriter) but can't be because the stupid executives can't just put out a good movie and let that be that. Heck, the movies that come out these days aren't *bad* movies. They're just so damn middle of the road. 2001's NARC, recently bought for $0.99 with some store credit @ CD Warehouse after having memories of the little bit I'd seen of it before giving up on it (possibly unfairly) and the critical response it had overall, had some elements that made it watchable. It was an entertaining 2 hrs, if what the word getting spread out on the street is indeed true. But how many people in SoCal have submitted much better screenplays, dealing with subject matter that isn't so tried and tired? Surely Paramount Pictures could have scrapped whatever stupid ass box office bomb came out that summer and released such a screenplay and it probably would not have been any bigger of a financial disaster. I wouldn't think the barrage of sexism that flooded the internet would be such a driving force in SoCal....but then again....idk.....I really do wonder about that whole thing. Maybe the final product really was the best Paul Fieg could muster.
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