I can haz Nostalgia?

Nostalgia Porn: Hollywood’s Calculated Science Of Profit

Back when I was in high school I wrote a research paper on subliminal messaging. It was a topic that fascinated me, mainly because I believed that massive corporations and governments were constantly brainwashing us with wave after wave of subliminal messages, and that that was the only reason people bought Coke and popcorn at the movies, so I actually did a ton of research on it. I’ve long forgotten the name of the marketing book I was drawing from or who wrote it, but I do recall a passage about how modern-day ad men aren’t selling oranges, they’re selling the smell of citrus from the summer you ate oranges every day at your grandparents’ house; they’re not selling anti-aging cream, they’re selling a reminder of how things used to be. Nostalgia: it’s the best kind of subliminal messaging there is. No one has taken that fact to heart harder in recent years than Hollywood.

The place where dreams are made has turned into the place where old dreams are remade. This year alone we’ve already seen remakes of Edge of Darkness, The Wolfman, The Crazies, Alice in Wonderland, Clash of the Titans, Death at a Funeral, and A Nightmare on Elm Street, which is an average pace of a little over one remake per month. That rate is about to get a statistical bump this Friday with the release of both The Karate Kid and The A-Team, but I’m not here to lament a lack of originality in Hollywood; I’m here to take a closer look at why nostalgia is such a powerful force. It doesn’t apply to everything (for example, I doubt many are nostalgic for the original BBC miniseries Edge of Darkness), but when it comes to historical pop culture staples like Elm Street, Karate Kid and The A-Team, nostalgia renders most people powerless against the homesick calls of the film.

The obvious reason these films do so well, which is precisely why there are so many of them, is because of brand recognition. But title awareness can only account for so much. People aren’t just turning up opening weekend out of muscle memory and then moving on; they’re actually enjoying these films. They’re making them blockbusters and #1 DVD sellers. Why? It’s science, of course.

Nostalgia prompts your brain to do three main things:

1. Use less brain power.
2. Associate the experience solely with positive memories.
3. Misremember how much you actually liked something.

The “less brain power” aspect of nostalgia is an easy concept to understand. You spend less time analyzing what has evoked your nostalgia simply because you’re already intimately familiar with the material. And as we all know, the Hollywood movie mantra has long been one of “the less thought is involved, the better the film is.” However, studios in the remake business do have to bank on your thoughts in one very crucial way: nostalgic memories are almost always positive. Studies have shown that rarely does someone feel nostalgic for something with which they have a negative association. This means that not only are nostalgic films like A Nightmare on Elm Street expecting you to think less about the new film, they’re expecting you to direct that already lowered level of thought toward positive memories only.

Now, as all of us know, just because a remake inspires you to be nostalgic for the original film does not mean that you have to like the remake. Strong nostalgia is often the catalyst for backlash as cognizant people are actively offended at blatant attempts to exploit fond memories. But that’s actually not too big of a problem for a studio because of the third principle of nostalgia: thinking you liked something more than you did. You might show up for The A-Team and suddenly remember that you didn’t actually like the original series, you just liked smashing together action figures with your brother while it was on TV in the background. At that point it’s too late, though. It doesn’t matter, you’ve already shown up. You fell for the smell of the oranges. - By Peter Hall, Hollywood.com Staff

I can haz Splice?

Are Audiences Ready for ‘Splice’?

The movie business is known for happy accidents. Filmmakers can blow chunks of their budget on, say, making a life-size mechanical replica of a great white shark, only to discover that whenever they want to show more if it on screen they end up having to show less simply because the massive thing isn’t working. However, once all those welcome moments of improv during production are sealed and in the can, there are no more accidents. Marketing a (studio) movie is a heavily calculated, meticulously timed event backed up by hundreds of hours of test screenings, branding tests and focus group pokings and prodings. So by the time the public sees that first trailer for the film, unless the filmmaker in question is J.J. Abrams, they are not seeing what the director wants them to see; they’re seeing what the marketing department determined was the best possible sell of the film based on a legion of statistics culled from all of the human guinea pigs at the mall who said, “Sure, I’d love to be a part of your survey about an unreleased movie!”

I bring all of this up because, though the marketing process is scientifically refined, the yield isn’t always all that accurate. And when this happens, it’s almost always intentionally so. Take Splice, the latest film from Cube director Vincenzo Natali, for example. This is the case of a major studio, Warner Brothers via their genre-label Dark Castle, buying the distribution rights to a highly buzzed Sundance film and then having absolutely no idea how to sell it to mainstream America. So they conducted their battery of tests and the magical marketing plan the system spat back out dictated that the best way to sell Splice was as a straight-up horror movie with a sci-fi twist. It looks like any number of other Species rip offs about people in lab coats who try to hide a creature from the world only to be in over their secretive heads once it gets out. That’s not to say the film looks bad, it just looks incredibly familiar.

And that’s a huge problem considering Splice is only vaguely that kind of film. Sure, its plot about two scientists (Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley) who create a new creature fused with human DNA is another permutation on the Frankenstein formula, but that’s just the framework. Beyond that, however, Splice alternates between a weird-you-out horror movie, a hard boiled science fiction film, and a dark, dark comedy. In a lot of ways it’s as though Natali set out to make the anti-creature feature; a beast that is both a parody of the worst the niche has to offer and a love letter to its finer points.

I’d love to be there for each and every screening of the film to see the looks on people’s faces once they realize that the tone of Splice is not at all what they were expecting, but the downside of how much fun that would be is that this reversal of expectations is exactly what’s going to kill it at the box office. I had people walking out of the screening I was in wondering quite loudly how a Syfy channel film ended up getting released in theaters. And that would be all well and good if Splice was anything like a Saturday-night cable premiere, but anyone who compares the brilliant fusing of genres that is Splice with the network everyone loves to hate clearly doesn’t actually watch movies like Mega Piranha. The two couldn’t be farther removed.

People won’t care, though, because they’re going in expecting a monster-kills-everyone horror movie and what they’re actually going to get is an intelligent, thought-provoking creature feature that could have slipped out of a time warp from 30 years ago were it not for the fact that Splice delights in being a bit more brash in what it shows than even the great creature features of the ’80s were all about. I really hope people give it a shot, though. I hope that once it breaks from the mold they’ve assumed it has been cast from that they still stick with it and don’t start laughing like immature jackasses (as several people at my screening did) because they don’t know how to deal with a filmmaker who is out to make them feel uncomfortable without using jump scares or teen scream queens. I hope a smart, original sci-fi-infused film like Splice can survive the Hollywood machine (and to Warner Brothers’ extreme credit, they didn’t actually trim the film from an R to a PG-13 after buying it), but sadly I don’t think it will.

That’s a pity, because those of us who want more sci-fi films that risk everything on originality and less films based on toy lines from the 1980s are probably going to suffer down the road because of it. But, hey, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe mainstream theater goers won’t be bitter about being misled by the trailers for Splice. I wouldn’t count on it, though.

I can haz remake?

Who’s to Blame for All the Remakes?

There is no practice in this industry that I find more irritating, more hypocritical and more disingenuous than the constant bleating by the blogging community about the evils of remakes. “When will the madness end?!?” they cry. Yeah! Right? When will Hollywood get around to making original films again instead of remake after remake in what Drew McWeeny recently coined as “karaoke culture”?  My guess? When the bloggers of the world stop providing Hollywood with millions upon millions of dollars in free advertising.

If there is any reason we’ve been inundated with more and more remakes, I believe it is this: the blogs write about them ceaselessly. The hardest part of selling movies isn’t making good ones, it is getting people to show up at them – which means making people aware that they exist. Recently, a site run by a buddy of mine wrote up a story talking about an unmade remake purchased at a Cannes pre-sale. While dozens of films were no doubt bought and sold before Cannes officially opened, this was the one story the site ran about them. Why? Because it was a remake of a film he was familiar with. And like it or not, remakes bring reads.

The web is driven by click culture. We make or money by having you click on stories. Whether you read the story or not is sometimes immaterial. We just need you to click it and see the advertising. When a website posts a story on a film announced by a director you’ve never heard of (most likely a commercial director) on an unknown topic, with a working title and the name of an attached screenwriter and a producer you should have heard of but don’t remember, there’s a good chance that you don’t care. So what, right? You have no idea what that is or what it will look like and you won’t click the story. And unless a big name gets attached and some production photos get sent around, there’s a good chance you won’t hear about it again until it is set to come out – if at all.

But a remake is different. You know what the original film looked like. You know what that kind of movie is supposed to look like in this day and age. And like it or loathe it, the idea of it will get you to click the story to find out the details. While almost every blogger I know opines constantly about the steady stream of remakes, they are also the first to write up a story of their opinion on the announcement of the remake, the casting of the remake, the first stills of the remake, the marketing of the remake and the release strategy and opening weekend of the remake – both pre- and post-coverage. It is the golden goose of marketing. If you want to make a modestly budgeted film that gets talked about incessantly by those blogs that cater directly to alpha filmgoers, you make a remake. They can’t keep themselves from talking about it.

As much as the blogs hated the idea of A Nightmare on Elm Street (until Jackie Earle Haley was aboard) and then hated the film when they reviewed it, they covered every single casting announcement and press release that came out of that thing. And guess which film made its production budget back off of its domestic opening weekend gross, shattering the opening weekend cume of every previous incarnation with Elm Street in the title?

If you stop talking about these films, you cut down on the awareness of these films; if you cut down the awareness of these films, you cut down the interest in these films; if you cut down interest in these films, you cut down the box office of these films; if you cut down the box office of these films, they will stop making them. It’s that simple. The blogs are where people are getting their movie news now. It’s okay to dislike remakes, but it is disingenuous to pay your bills with remake clicks with one hand while typing up how much you hate remakes with the other.

Stop writing about them or stop whining. It really is that simple.

By C. Robert Cargill, Hollywood.com Staff

I can haz summer movie?

The 2010 Summer Movie Season: Eight Burning Questions

Hollywood’s annual Summer Movie Season begins this week in suitably grandiose fashion, as Iron Man 2, the year’s most anticipated action film, debuts on the largest number of screens in movie history. And while Jon Favreau’s $180 million superhero sequel is all but guaranteed to break box-office records, it represents one of the few sure things in a season plagued by uncertainty.

Here are some of the biggest questions we’ll be looking to answer as the summer movie season unfolds:

Is 3D already played out?

When handed a golden goose, the instinct of the typical Hollywood studio exec is to not only kill the precious creature, but to repeatedly gang-rape its lifeless corpse. Consumer backlash over the recent spate of overpriced ersatz-3D offerings has led some to wonder if the enhanced format is already endangered. But How to Train Your Dragon‘s lengthy reign near the top of the box-office rankings proves that folks still dig 3D, so long as it’s the real deal. It also helps if the movie doesn’t suck. Look for this summer’s animated releases, Shrek Forever After, Toy Story 3, and Despicable Me, to keep the 3D flame alight.

Is Jake Gyllenhaal a viable action star?

The Spider-Man and Batman franchise honchos certainly didn’t think so — Gyllenhaal was famously passed over for roles in both of those high-profile comic book sagas. If anyone can give the Brokeback Mountain star an action-hero makeover, it’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who pulled off a similar feat in 1996 when he cast an oddball indie star, Nicolas Cage, as the lead in The Rock.

Is the comic book era ebbing?

Life is still good for Iron Man, Wolverine, Batman, and the rest of the A-list residents of the comic book universe, but their less prominent counterparts haven’t fared nearly so well of late. Recent fanboy-approved adaptations of Kick-Ass and The Losers underwhelmed at the box office, and January’s Legion, though branded a success, didn’t earn nearly enough to warrant the “franchise” label. And 2009′s Watchmen ranks among the most spectacular disappointments in recent memory. Can summer releases Jonah Hex and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World buck the discouraging trend? If not, the days of studios snapping up the rights to any publication with a picture and a word balloon may be over.

Does Tom Cruise still matter?

The memories of his scientology-fueled public image meltdown having sufficiently receded from the collective consciousness, Cruise hopes to reclaim his lost megastar status this summer with the action thriller Knight and Day. But buzz on the film, which reunites him with Vanilla Sky co-star Cameron Diaz (because who could forget that magical pairing?), is indifferent at best, and — forgive me for being glib — Cruise’s last starring vehicle, 2008’s WWII thriller Valkyrie, didn’t exactly blitzkrieg the box-office. If Knight and Day doesn’t perform, the budget — and by extension, the fate — of Mission: Impossible IV could hang in the balance.

Will Eclipse eclipse New Moon?

No one’s ever gone broke betting on the voraciousness of Twilight fans, but New Moon’s worldwide box-office tally of $710 million is a awfully daunting mark to overcome. Eclipse’s bottom line will no doubt get a boost from higher ticket prices for 3D showings, but its foreign gross — responsible for over half of New Moon‘s earnings — could be hampered somewhat by the film’s June 30 global release date, smack-dab in the middle of the 2010 World Cup. Tweens may not care about the competition, but their soccer-obsessed parents almost certainly will.

Is Shrek really finished?

Oh, if only that were true. Shrek Forever After may be billed as the last theatrical installment of Dreamworks’ blockbuster animated franchise — and even that claim sounds dubious — but the profitable green ogre and his bankable circle of friends will undoubtedly live on in various spin-offs and straight-to-video toss-offs. I mean, what else is Mike Myers going to do, resurrect Austin Powers for another tired cash-grab? Oh wait, he just might. F**k me.

Where are the chick flicks?

Each summer, the major studios traditionally offer up a few bits of so-called “counter-programming” to complement the usual array of testosterone-soaked action flicks and male-oriented comedies. In 2009, Ghost of Girlfriends Past, The Proposal, The Ugly Truth, Julie & Julia, and The Time Traveler’s Wife all were geared toward the fairer sex. This year, aside from a certain perimenopausal monolith that invades at the end of May, there are just two studio releases aimed at women who are old enough to vote: Julia Roberts’ Eat, Pray, Love and Drew Barrymore’s Going the Distance.

Can M. Night Shyamalan rebound?

Film critics may risk losing one of their favorite punching bags if M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film, The Last Airbender, can’t break the writer-director’s extended streak of flops. The live-action adaptation of the popular children’s animated series represents a make-or-break moment for Shyamalan, who leaves his wheelhouse — the supernatural thriller genre — for the first time. With Airbender, he at least has the advantage of working with an established franchise; on the other hand, he’s still saddled with the formidable handicap of an M. Night Shyamalan script. It’ll be an uphill battle.

By Thomas Leupp, Hollywood.com Staff

I can haz break-out?

The Should-Be Breakout Stars of the Summer

For every Jake, Angelina, Leo and Julia this summer, there are countless actors trying to become those household names — and ‘tis the season for the latter to propel themselves to the former; for a ‘That’s that guy from that movie’ to become a ‘No last name necessary.’ Here are the up-and-comers — not to be confused with unknowns — we expect to take one giant leap forward during Blockbuster Season 2010.

Matthew MacFadyen

Where You’ve Seen Him: In Death at a Funeral, the (British) version that nobody saw. Indeed, more than likely you’ll recognize this Brit from his lead role as Darcy, opposite Keira Knightley’s Elizabeth, in the critically beloved 2005 adaptation of Pride & Prejudice. Depending on TV viewers’ degree of anglophilia — and cable package — he’ll also ring a bell with fans of the BBC show MI-5.

Soon to Break Out In: Robin Hood. He plays a pretty central role (the Sheriff of Nottingham) … alongside some pretty big names (Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett) … in a pretty highly anticipated flick. Pretty good summer.

Next Up: A lead role in Michael Winterbottom’s political thriller The Promised Land and an almost-wrapped TV adaptation of Ken Follett’s book series The Pillars of the Earth.

Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson

Where You’ve Seen Him: In the ring, as a champion mixed martial artist primarily in the Ultimate Fighting Championship league. Those with an eagle eye might’ve also spotted his brief appearances on both the big (Miss March) and small (King of Queens) screen.

Soon to Break Out In: The A-Team. Rampage is stepping in for Mr. T as Sgt. B.A. “Bad Attitude” Baracus in the Joe Carnahan-directed update of the TV show of the same name. Not a bad breakout gig.

Next Up: As of now, it’ll be a steady diet of A-Team promotion and more UFC fights (including a long-delayed bout with Rashad Evans). And probably some protein powder.

Jaden Smith

Where You’ve Seen Him: As a surprisingly credible and emotion-provoking son to his real-life father, Will Smith, in The Pursuit of Happyness; as an unsurprisingly annoying supporting character in the neo, er, Neo Day the Earth Stood Still; and on many a red carpet with Will and Jada.

Soon to Break Out In: The Karate Kid. And is he not a twin of the original Danielson, Ralph Macchio?! All kidding aside, the reboot of the franchise ushers in a whole new vibe — not to mention character name: Dre — and little Jaden has landed the most coveted role in the ‘tweenage-acting circle. Because, well … franchise potential!

Next Up: Jaden will probably have his pick of the litter as far as roles, but he apparently remains attached to the long-dormant, Will-produced action-adventure movie Amulet.

Noah Ringer

Where You’ve Seen Him: You probably haven’t. Anywhere. Ever. Unless you’re a family member or friend — or casting director.

Soon to Break Out In: The Last Airbender. Ringer,12, landed the lead role — and his first of any kind — after a casting call conducted by Airbender director M. Night Shyamalan, who knows a thing or two about picking the right child actors. Ringer plays Aang, who must stop the Fire nation from enslaving the Air, Water and Earth nations. Much more simply put, though, he’s carrying the movie.

Next Up: His high-profile Airebender role helped him snag a part in one of Hollywood’s buzziest preproduction asset, Cowboys & Aliens.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Where You’ve Seen Her: Where haven’t you seen her? She’s been in everything from bad horror (Black Christmas) to bad TV (the justifiably short-lived Wolf Lake), but Winstead’s meatiest role to date came as the lead in 2006’s Final Destination 3. Her key, albeit brief, turn as a pseudo-cheerleader in Quentin Tarantino’s half of Grindhouse was easily her coolest flick — until now.

Soon to Break Out In: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. She’s had plenty of opportunities to bust out of relative anonymity, but Winstead has never been gifted with a character like heartbreaker/sorta-superheroine Ramona V. Flowers, a role to potentially endear her to the fanboy contingency for all eternity.

Next Up: It’s safe to assume she’s already fielding offers, but in the meantime she’ll be the lead damsel-in-distress in the remake of John Carpenter’s The Thing.

Gemma Arterton

Where You’ve Seen Her: If you’re a Briton, almost everywhere, for a good while now — but for Americans she burst onto the scene quickly and, well, hotly, as Strawberry Fields in Quantum of Solace. We recently caught another glimpse of Arterton in the not-so-little remake of Clash of the Titans, currently raking in the box office dough. So, yeah, file her under “Set for a Major Breakout.”

Soon to Break Out In: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. She matches Jake Gyllenhaal in not only the looks department but also in screen time — well, almost. Arterton plays a high priestess in the Bruckheimerized video-game adaptation, which really could be headed for Pirates of the Caribbean-like big things; a theme-park ride seems like a foregone conclusion even before Prince of Persia has been released.

Next Up: So far, just Stephen Frears’ quaint Tamara Drewe, a much smaller adaptation, by comparison, than Persia. But she’ll have to keep her schedule open for an all-but-guaranteed franchise situation.

Alice Braga

Where You’ve Seen Her: As one of the few survivors in I Am Legend (one of the others, of course, being Will Smith) and more recently starring opposite Jude Law in March’s Repo Men. In the past two years, she has also appeared in the star-studded dud Crossing Over, the uber- weird Blindness, and David Mamet’s Redbelt.

Soon to Break Out In: Predators. The Brazilian actress plays a Special Forces sniper-turned-jungle prey in the conceived-last-century sequel to the onetime Schwarzenegger vehicle, co-produced by Robert Rodriguez. Braga is pretty much front and center, for the first time in her career.

Next Up: No roles lined up just yet.

Walt Dohrn

Where You’ve Seen Him: Unless you’ve paid close attention to the end credits on Shrek the Third or a few episodes of SpongeBob Squarepants, or you’re in the DreamWorks inner circle, you’ve probably never heard of, let alone seen, Dohrn. He has heretofore only worked behind the scenes, and often very behind the scenes.

Soon to Break Out In: Shrek Forever After. Dohrn’s first-ever “starring” role (aside from a tiny voice part in the previous Shrek installment) is a biggie — and it came about only after DreamWorks bigwig Jeffrey Katzenberg found Dohrn’s voice irresistible as a placeholder in an early version of this summer’s big fourquel. He’s the villainous Rumpelstiltskin!

Next Up: Don’t be surprised if Dohrn seamlessly slips back into his behind-the-scenes comfort zone following Shrek-mania. But also don’t be surprised if the vocally gifted animator turns up in other non-live-actioners down the road!

I can haz game movie?

Gears of War is grinding to a halt. Here’s a game movie I’d rather see, anyway

There’s no denying that Gears of War is a popular video game franchise. Eleven million copies sold worldwide to date for the first two games is no insignificant feat. That’s why it’s no leap in logic to assume that there are millions of people out there eagerly awaiting the previously announced Gears of War film to be directed by Underworld and Live Free or Die Hard helmer Len Wiseman. I’m not one of them.

Last week the LA Times reported that production on the film had gone stagnate. I rejoiced a little. For starters, even though I’m not a stalwart fan of the third person shooter, I’d like any film adaptation of it to at least do the bombastic, each monster is bigger than the next game, justice. So if New Line Cinema’s run at the property has lost its stride because no one wanted to make the film after its budget was cut, well, that’s good news in my book. No movie is preferable to a cheap movie, there’s no question about that. But I also cracked a bit of smile because I knew the news of the great Gears of War stalling would give me a nice excuse to rant about a game I’d rather see turned into a movie in its steed.

Now, I could give myself a wicked case of carpal tunnel syndrome if I were to rattle off my dream team of video game movies, so instead of a normal list I’ll opt for a run down of a single older, perhaps forgotten property. Because, let’s face it, I’d rather see a Half-Life or Fallout movie over Gears of War no matter what kind of a budget the latter had. Hell, I’d rather see a Half-Life film over just about anything else on the planet, but choosing a huge title like that is too easy.

No, for my ideal video game movie I’d like to see a studio reach back to the vintage years of LucasArts, the game arm of LucasFilm. The fanboy in me would love to see any title from their early-to-mid ’90s catalog make the transition to film, but there is one that I think would make a legitimately outstanding film; The Dig. This should be a no-brainer considering the story for it was first conceived by Steven Spielberg as an episode for his “Amazing Stories” TV series and then as a standalone film. Spielberg eventually convinced himself the story was too expensive to film, though. I suppose the proper telling of astronauts who go to blow up an Earth-killing asteroid only to find its hollow interior is actually a transport to another planet would cost a pretty penny. It then fell into the laps of LucasArts who turned it into a point-and-click adventure computer game.

The Dig is no simple point-and-click game, though. It’s got an astounding amount of pedigree standing behind its story, what with dialogue written by Orson Scott Card (author of Ender’s Game) and a terrific novelization written by Alan Dean Foster. It’s got a young, gender-diverse quartet at its core, so it’d be easy to cast four attractive actors while keeping some sexual tension; always a plus for studios (the lead, Commander Boston Low was voiced by T-1000 himself, Robert Patrick). There’s more than enough spectacle to go around thanks to an entire alien planet complete with a fully-constructed civilization that was seemingly abandoned. There are still a few alien creatures lingering to allow for the expected quotient of action set pieces. Even to this day I remember playing The Dig as a kid and being terrified at having to use an alien dinosaur’s jaw bone to cut off a comrade’s trapped hand, not to mention the strange eggs that bring the dead back to life…

On top of all that, The Dig is bursting with the kind of heady ideas that make the genre so attractive. Though admittedly it would be a bit of a challenge to visually communicate a planet whose entire race has built a device that allows them to leave their corporeal bodies and become an ethereal, immortal collective conscious. But hey, that’s not my nut to crack; that task belongs to the phantom director of this phantom film. As long as we’re playing fantasy, we might as well fill those shoes as well.

If you had asked me 15 years ago when the game first came out, little gamer/movie-nerd me would have died to see Spielberg actually make the film. The wiser, older me knows what kind of a streak The Beard has been on these days, though, so I’d rather see a relative newcomer tackle the feat. I know he’s everyone’s fantasy draft pick at this point, but I really do think it would be a snug fit for District 9 director Neill Blomkamp, a man who has proven capable of Spielberg-level spectacles for a third of the budget. The abandoned alien world, the creatures, and the characters’ journey to it all seem an ideal match for his wheelhouse.

But, hey, like I said; it’s all just wishful thinking. It does have me feeling a might nostalgic for good, old games, though. Here’s to hoping Gears of War teeters either into are fully out of production again, that way I can use its news as a great cover for another trip down memory lane.

By Peter Hall, Hollywood.com Staff

I really want to see this movie

P.S. sorry about doing this posts late (in my country its late xD) but I haven’t got time today, school has started and stuff bla bla bla you get the picture.

Another thing, I’ve changed to Opera (internet browser) lately, Mozilla Firefox was wild and REALLY slow so I had to change, and here I can’t seem to put images fine in the posts, the earlier posts were in Firefox so they have pictures.

I can haz win over Pixar?

Why It’s So Hard to Beat Pixar

In the kingdom of animation, Pixar is the current undisputed lord of the realm. Their winning streak is remarkable: Toy Story, Wall-E, Up, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo…you get the point. But there’s another team of artists producing some great animated films these days as well. With titles like Shrek, Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon, DreamWorks Animation has established itself as the leading contender to usurp Pixar’s coveted throne. But while critics’ often praise their films, there’s this sentiment that seems to hover over every DreamWorks release like a dark cloud, and it’s typically expressed in the form of backhanded compliments like “It’s the best animated film not made by Pixar,” or “It’s great…but it’s no Pixar.”

So why does Pixar continually dominate the genre? Why are their films so much better than the rest?

Disney Ties

Pixar was purchased by Disney in 2006 and is now one of the many tentacles of the Mouse’s Empire. Since then they’ve done everything in their power to establish themselves as an autonomous entity capable of producing equal and often better films. But there still exists a large faction of the movie-going public that considers the two interchangeable. While this could be construed as a negative for a company seeking to sever the strings Disney once held over them, the fact is that the name recognition helps Pixar. Whether accurate or not, this enduring connection in the minds of die-hard Disney fans provides a built-in audience that supplements Pixar’s widening fanbase.

Voice Actors, Not Just Celebrity Voices

DreamWorks seems to have been operating under the delusion that the sole ingredient in the recipe for a successful animated film is celebrity voices. More often than not, more time will be devoted to nabbing big name talent than to crafting a worthwhile script. The best example of this backfiring for DreamWorks was when they secured both Brad Pitt and Catherine Zeta-Jones for the wildly unpopular Sinbad fiasco. Pixar recruits wonderful actors, but unlike DreamWorks, it doesn’t rely on the latest issue of People magazine to determine its hiring strategy. Not that Pixar doesn’t sometimes get big names, but when it occurs, as with Tom Hanks in Toy Story, it is the exception and not the rule.

Unspoken Greatness

If you really need proof that the folks at Pixar are masters of both animation and character development, take a look at Wall-E. Pixar takes a very risky move by having the audience spend the first half-hour of the film with a robot that does not say one word…and it’s impossible not to fall in love with him! In the swelling tide of animated film characters having to fill every conceivable moment with chatter and/or terrible jokes, Pixar has honed and perfected the art of subtle characterizations that invoke strong emotional bonds. This is something born of their days creating shorts; there’s not one word uttered in any of those masterful films.

Beaucoup de Heart

While DreamWorks manages to provide a tender moment here and there, Pixar speaks to audiences at their core and uses animation to connect with their inner child. If you are watching the opening montage from Up with someone who doesn’t at least let a lip quiver escape, you’d best check their circuits, because they may be a robot. The concepts at the core of almost all of the Pixar films are not only universal, but convey a concrete understanding of the human condition. Up and Wall-E both explore the agelessness of child-like wonder while Finding Nemo is about the conflict between allowing independence and dealing with separation anxiety. These form the roots of Pixar’s various projects and the characters and environments are constructed around them, which is what makes them so fantastic.

Pixar has established a clear-cut formula for success that DreamWorks is just beginning to emulate. How To Train Your Dragon cuts way back on its fetish for selling a film based on celebrity voices; Gerard Butler is arguably its only recognizable star. They also have created, in the dragon Toothless, their most heart-warming and lovable character to date — and he doesn’t say a word. How To Train Your Dragon is by far DreamWorks’ best film to date — and proof that the perennial also-ran may finally be ready to give Pixar a run for its money.

By Brian Salisbury, Hollywood.com Staff

I can haz Sitcom?

Suggestions for the Star Wars Sitcom

I’ve gotten to the point where nothing surprises me about George Lucas and any decisions he makes regarding the Star Wars franchise. Tomorrow he could announce that he’s converting the original trilogy to smellovision and I wouldn’t bat an eye lash. Between all of the merchandising, the spin-offs, and, of course, the prequel trilogy, I’m no longer phased by anything the billionaire filmmaker-cum-toymaker does. That’s why it makes perfect sense to me that LucasFilm has announced that its putting together an untitled Star Wars sitcom with TV veterans from the likes of The Daily Show and Robot Chicken. Oh, don’t get me wrong, if you asked me yesterday to make a prediction of where Star Wars would be heading next, I probably would have guessed “This Ain’t Star Wars XXX” over a damned animated sitcom. But, hey, I’m still not surprised; either make perfect sense now that we live in a post-Jar Jar Binks universe.

No one knows what kind of animated sitcom it will be, though. That to me is more frustrating than the actual knowledge that there will be a sitcom of any kind. I enjoy Robot Chicken well enough and would likely follow anyone involved with writing The Daily Show into television hell, but I can easily imagine a Star Wars sitcom somehow burrowing itself even deeper than hell and into the special ring of TV torture where shows like the Geico Caveman Sitcom reside. Since I severely do not want to see a repeat of a sitcom about a fleeting commercial fad nor anything resembling the dreadfully unfunny web series-turned-Sci-Fi Channel series Tripping the Rift, I offer up three Star Wars-set situational comedies I’d actually consider watching on a regular basis.

It’s Always Sunny on Tatooine

When I think of Star Wars, the first things that leap to mind are along the lines of Jedis or the Force or Darth Vader. When I try to visualize Star Wars, however, there’s always one image that jumps right out: the cantina on Tatooine. I imagine a smokey bar filled with aliens of all shapes and sizes doing Yoda knows what it in every shady corner of the joint. I imagine an oddly lawless place where patrons really aren’t all that bothered by one stranger loping off another’s arm with a lightsaber. I imagine shrimp faces and sweet, intergalactic lounge bands. Why not head to the Mos Eisley Cantina?

Take the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia route and just follow a group of four helpless Tatooine farmers who decide to buy a bar in Mos Eisley. The creators would then get to bank on a familiarity all older Star Wars fans share without having to lock themselves down with bringing back big characters like Luke, Leia, or that one droid who looks like a praying mantis. (Okay, so maybe that last character isn’t exactly one of the biggies, but damn did he creep me out as a kid.)

Buffy the Sith Slayer

Granted Buffy the Vampire Slayer wasn’t exactly a sitcom, though it certainly had its fair share of comedy every week, but it is a great example of how one can take the Scooby Doo gang formula and mature it. And I know that Star Wars isn’t big on prophecies and chosen ones and what not (I’m excluding the prequels here), but I can’t help but think its vast universe of alien weirdos is a perfect match for the monster-of-the-week formula. Just keep things light and breezy, kind of like how the short-lived CW show Reaper did recently, and you’re good to go. The animators can have a ton of fun with the alien side of things while the writers can have a blast fleshing out all of the smaller, glossed over characters from films past. It certainly wouldn’t be my top pick for a Star Wars sitcom, but if Buffy the Sith Slayer keeps a sitcom about how Jawas were mistreated a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away off our back, I’m all for it.

Parks and Recreation: Endor

Faux-documentary shows are all the rage these days and just because this untitled Star Wars project is animated, that doesn’t exempt it from the trend. Watching a bunch of office workers aboard the Death Star might be a little too boring, but I’m game for a Parks and Recreation-style show set on Endor. We can watch as a few inept employees battle how to best clear away Ewoks from the future site of a new rebel bunker. That may not sound all that riveting at first, but neither does the sales pitch for any of the faux-documentaries kicking ass these days. Plus, just re-watch the video of drunken Ewoks on The Today Show and you’ll be instantly reminded how ripe for comedy those harry little bastards are.

By: Peter Hall, Hollywood.com Staff

‘Harold & Kumar’ Duo to Reboot ‘American Pie’

The American Pie franchise is making a quasi-comeback (since it has always lived on via straight-to-DVD spinoffs), and the creators of Harold & Kumar have been brought on to direct.

Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg will reboot the raunchy teen-comedy series with American Pie 4.

The duo has already starting writing the script for the fourth installment, and Hurwitz and Schlossberg are reportedly hoping to bring back the original cast members.

Shouldn’t be too hard: Eugene Levy apparently can’t say no to any Pie movie, and Tara Reid is in no position to turn down an acting job!

As a result, the next Harold & Kumar adventure, A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas, will be directed by rookie Todd Strauss Schulson. – By Brian Marder,  Hollywood.com

I can haz 3D movie?

The Great 3D $hakedown

Are you ready for a gargantuan summer line up, complete with mind blowing films, long pined for sequels and visual effects that will make your brain leak out of your ears? Good – Because so are the theater chains. In preparation of a huge and potentially record-breaking summer, they have once again raised prices across the board on a number of their products. While normally they do this incrementally – a quarter here and a quarter there – over the course of seasons and years, occasionally they have been known to raise prices all at once. This time, however, things are a bit different. And that has caused a tremendous amount of complaining, second-guessing and negative stories in the press about the overall decision.

So what’s the big deal with the cost increases of 2010? 3-D pricing. Normal ticket prices have indeed risen, but not dramatically. Here in Austin, Texas the price jump ranged from 75 cents at one theater chain (our beloved Alamo Drafthouse cinemas) to a dollar at the major chains (AMC, Cinemark and Regal). Full price, prime time, mainstream films will now run you roughly $10 in this part of the country, up from $9 just one month ago. And while your price increases nationwide may vary, like mileage, this is roughly what people are looking at when going out to a regular film on an average night. A dollar more.

This is not uncalled for, nor is it unprecedented. Historically, theater chains raise their prices at once, tipped off by a promising season or huge, blockbuster film looming on the horizon. 1999, 2002 and 2005 all saw major price increases on the opening weekend of each Star Wars: Episode 1 The Phantom Menace prequel. And while Avatar might be the highest grossing film of all time, it still has yet to eclipse the adjusted gross of its sister film Titanic, released 12 years prior – down by a whopping adjusted $230M domestically. The average ticket price last year, taking into account matinee pricing, (according to IMDB owned Box Office Mojo) was $7.61, while the average ticket price in 1997 was $4.59. Truth be told, they will be paying roughly $4 more than they were last month in prime time. (Box Office Mojo tells me that we’ll have a solid average by next month.)

Unless they want to go see a movie in 3-D. That’s where this increase will be hitting you. The big shock claim is that in NYC, you will pay nearly $20 to see a film. This is true – if you see it in 3-D at an IMAX theater. That’ll cost you $19.50 per adult and $16 for the kids. In the most expensive city in the Western Hemisphere, it will cost a family of 4 a mind-boggling $71 to see HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON at an IMAX theater. Nationally that price is a bit lower, but still on the rise.  The price increase is roughly the same in terms of percentage, but when compared with the 2-D prices they are dramatic, creating a mathematical disparity between the cost of seeing something like ALICE IN WONDERLAND in 3-D or seeing it the old fashioned way.

People now pay more for 3-D films because there is a perceived value difference between the two products. Seeing How to Train Your Dragon in 3-D is better than seeing it flat, right? The people who disagree pay for the cheaper product. The real question is, was this price increase premature? This weekend CLASH OF THE TITANS opens as the first 2-D, non-principally-CG film to get post-production 3-D treatment, and the result is staggeringly awful. Critics are universally warning audiences to watch the 2-D version of the film instead of the much more expensive and visually spastic 3-D presentation.

Unlike Alice in Wonderland, which primarily used computer generated 3-D sets as backgrounds – thus giving the 3-D modeling computers something to work with when trying to create the 3-D effects – this film was shot conventionally, and thus doesn’t have data on a number of the angles and positions needed to create stunning 3-D and as a result has wobbly, float-y and sometimes very jarring visual effects. You haven’t seen terrible 3-D until you’ve panned past a tree that seems to be jumping in place as the computer tries to find out where to put it. And if audiences react the same way to it as critics have, we might see a very sudden departure from the love affair currently fueling the higher 3-D ticket prices.

One way or the other, as is the case every time cost increases occur, people will grumble, then they’ll pay and get so used to the new price they’ll groan when the prices go to $11. But are the movie theaters gambling on the longevity of the 3-D craze, or hedging their bets against it and making as much money as they can before it is over with? – By C. Robert Cargill, Hollywood.com Staff

I can haz movie?

Why the Original Clash of the Titans Still Matters

This weekend, Titans will clash! That oversaturated tagline will more than likely infest your senses at least two dozen times before this thing hits video. Remakes have been the language of Hollywood for quite some time now and Clash of the Titans is but the latest rehash from my favorite decade: the ’80s. The remake stars Sam Worthington as the mythic hero Perseus, son of Zeus, who must battle all manner of evil beings to save the princess Andromeda. I am not fully sold on Worthington as an actor, but he can’t be any more dim-witted or beef-headed than Harry Hamlin from the 1981 film. I am however convinced that there is no crime in remaking this film mostly because the original endures as a classic. Is it a perfect film? Far from it! But I think you would find consensus among film buffs that the original Clash of the Titans (1981) retains a certain amount of replay value. But is it just nostalgia that allows the original to stand the test of time? While that is a major component, there are several reasons we still love Clash of the Titans.

First and foremost it would be egregious to not pay homage to the monsters. You can espouse the merits of CG and tacked-on 3D until the Krakens comes home, but I will always be of a mind that practical effects trump computer-enhanced effects every time. There is a craft and artistry to practical effect that CG cannot afford. Beyond that, none other than Ray Harryhausen himself crafted the creatures in the original film! If you are unfamiliar with this genius, indoctrinate yourself immediately by renting 20 Million Miles to Earth, Jason and the Argonauts, and of course Clash of the Titans.

While his contemporaries in the 1950s were using actual animals against a sea of miniatures to dupe audiences into accepting the massive size of the monsters, Harryhausen used stop-motion technology to bring these monsters into fully animate existence. While Clash of the Titans may not represent Harryhausen’s most polished work, the sheer scope of the world he created with his bountiful beasts is awe-inspiring. We went nuts for these monsters as kids because…well, they were monsters. We were thrilled by the mere sight of them and how awesome they were. But as adult film fans, we appreciate the technical achievement and the artistry of the effects. In this way, a principle feature of the film grows up right along with us.

A lot of what has allowed Clash of the Titans to weather the years gracefully is its epic story. We loved this film as kids, but Clash is not a film that exclusively plays to a particular age group. It appeals to children with its bevy of monsters and its fantastical adventure, but it never panders to children either. The biggest problem with most contemporary family films is they not only alienate the older members of the viewing family, but also treat the children as if they were idiots. Not only must anything even remotely challenging be edited out, but the juvenile humor usually inherent in these films must be even further lobotomized. Alvin and the Chipmunks is of the more arrant perpetrators of late, but it’s a disturbingly growing trend. The one exception in Clash is of course that damn Bubo, the Jar-Jar Binks of his time, but even he is based on an actual pet of Athena’s.

Clash of the Titans makes the wise decision to give even the younger audience members some credit. Yes, there are winged horses and sword fights to satiate the youth market, but the film is also about a dark, if slightly fabricated, Greek myth. There are human sacrifices, decapitations, sexual jealousy, and even bare breasts. One could make the argument that Clash was designed for slightly older children and therein lies its propensity for heavier content. But the story is told with a completely adult approach to Greek mythology; the underlying, universal values of these ancient parables perfectly exemplified. Honestly, if this film were meant for children, would defying your creator be one of the principle themes?

Honestly, the only appeal for kids in the film is the monsters — and they are only present because they existed in the source material. When the appeal for a child is the byproduct of a story and not the marketing agenda, we have a film that can therefore be appreciate well after that child has entered adulthood. - By Brian Salisbury, Hollywood.com Staff

Just a curiosity, compare the two movie trailers, they are so different! Isn’t this suppose to be a remake? Only the main story is the same, the rest totally different.

Clash of the Titans is actually a movie I want to see, I love mythology, and this kind of movies so yeah it passes in my “check list”

I love the new trailer, the way they match the music with the movements happening, the effects, everything about this trailer makes me droll

I can haz movie again?

Where to Go with the Independence Day Sequels

It’s no grand secret that 20th Century-Fox would love to make sequels to Roland Emmerich’s 1996 classic alien invasion flick Independence Day. Hey, no one ever said classics actually need to be good, they just need to be relevant and important to the time period they came from. To that end, ID4 can easily be considered one the ‘ones that got away’ for the studio. It grossed just shy of $900 million in world-wide box-office revenue; and that’s not even beginning to guess how much coin it ranked in from marketing tie-ins (anyone else have found memories of the game for Sega Saturn?), cable licensing fees, and DVD/Blu-ray sales. Basically, it’s one of the rare billion dollar films that a studio hasn’t made into a franchise.

Until now. If IESB.net’s reports are true, Fox is finally making moves on not one, but two sequels to Independence Day. It would seem that the major hold-up in the past has been the cost of having Will Smith, one of the highest paid actors in history, return for a sequel. Things have changed a little bit for the studio in the last few months, though. Will Smith still commands the same pay scale, but a little movie about blue cat people on an alien planet has made them a buck or two and sources say they’re sure going to spend it.

Let’s imagine for a second that Fox drops some of their Avatar money to secure Smith for ID5 and ID6; where do they take the franchise? The obvious guess is to the stars. One would like to assume that if they’re going to pull a Pirates of the Caribbean and film the sequels back-to-back, they must have some kind of rudimentary frame work in place. The clear bet is that the first sequel will find the aliens sending some kind of force back to Earth 15+ years later. Smith and Vivica A. Fox are going to be middle aged, while their son should be in his early twenties. Smith’s posting at NASA poises him to be right at the center of the new invasion, while his son, no doubt having followed his father’s footsteps into the Air Force, will get caught up in a Shia LeBeouf-esque sidekick role who may or may not be the progeny for a second franchise down the line.

A lot of “Awww, Hells Naw!” will abound and Earth will probably be saved for the time being. The threat isn’t over, of course, and so ID6 will find Smith and the governments of the world (remember, ID4 was all about putting aside differences in a time of crisis) sending the secret spaceships they’ve been reverse engineering from the alien wreckage left over from 15 years prior toward the alien home world as a countermeasure. This way we’re not seeing two films worth of aerial battles in boring Earth air and the studio gets a crack at creating another alien planet to hopefully wow repeat viewers the way Pandora did.

And really, is there any where else they can go with the franchise? They can’t make two films about Earth getting attacked, nor can they make two films about Earth invading another planet. The only logical course is to split the difference across the pair of films. I haven’t exactly been wracking my brain to exhaust all the possibilities, but if these two sequels move forward and if Will Smith is attached to both, I’ll be shocked if they don’t follow that basic path above. The big question is, will they bring back Jeff Goldblum? He hasn’t exactly aged as gracefully as Smith has (not a problem since Smith’s 20-something son will allow the studio to put sex appeal back into their equation), but he’s still working and he’s still got the same charm, so if they wanted to make it a buddy movie in space, they’ve certainly got the makings for it lined up.

Personally, I’m game if they take that two-part ball and run with it. Independence Day is one of those movies that I still love to watch even if older, wiser me now realizes how stupid it is (and yet it’s still strangely Roland Emmerich’s best film). I don’t hold the material in any kind of high regard, so I’m perfectly fine with them taking it in whatever direction they see fit. And I even think there are some cool places they can take it. My only remaining concern at this point is how they’re going to top Smith punching an alien in the face and saying, “Welcome to Earth.” Lightning like that just doesn’t strike twice.

By Peter Hall, Hollywood.com Staff

P.S. I will not post these articles in a regular basis because they don’t come out in a regular basis, unlike games, there are not lots of news about movies coming out day-by-day, at least the ones that are interesting XD

I can haz movie?

I’m starting this new thing, where I will put articles about movies, not  made by me notice, those I will say that were made by me. These are made by other people, and they get their rightful praise.

Women in Film: Why Indies Get it Right

Earlier today a friend called me to pass the time with idle chat. I told him I couldn’t at the moment because I was writing an article about the dearth of complex roles available to women in Hollywood films these days. His oh-so-clever response: “What do you know about women?”

He was just being an ass, of course (I’m happily married, so I must at least know something), but it did get me wondering: If recent — for the sake of brevity, we’ll define “recent” as the last 12 months — Hollywood’s studio films were my sole source of information data set, what would they teach me about women?

I would basically learn that women are indecisive, weak-willed, too forgiving of infidelity, allergic to more than two layers of clothing, manipulative, easily dispatched with a whole host of sharp objects, and apparently an endangered species after they turn 35. That may sound callous, but what else is hypothetical-me to glean from the likes of New Moon’s Bella Swan (who is meek and selfish to the point of hurting pretty much everyone around her, which I’ve been repeatedly told is endearing in the books but is hardly so in the film adaptations); or the career-minded women in The Proposal, Amelia, Leap Year, and The Time Traveler’s Wife, who discover men are the actual key to their happiness; or the pieces of eye candy that occasionally deliver lines in Transformers, Friday the 13th, and Sorority Row; or the female cast members of Valentine’s Day and Couple’s Retreat that seemingly exist only to embody long-standing behavioral stereotypes?

Now obviously, I’m not of the position that all women are like that, but if a faraway alien race is somehow tuning into Cinemax, that’s pretty much what they’d deduce about the female of our species. But what if we step outside the studio system? What if we take hypothetical-me and feed him a steady diet of independent film? The picture changes drastically. Women start to face far harder decisions, beyond “Should I date the long-haired guy with the rippling six-pack or should I date the short-haired guy with the rippling six pack?” and their characters (and performances) reflect it. Just look at the Oscar nominations. Of the ten nominees for Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress, only three mainstream films were apparently capable of delivering complex performances by women: The Blind Side, Julie & Julia, and Up in the Air — and that’s in a year when the Academy actively sought to branch out to more accessible films!

The task always falls to the independent and foreign filmmaking sectors to fill the void. For every lame, spineless romantic comedy Hollywood puts out, there are five indie gems waiting in the shadows to be discovered. Sadder still is the fact that most of these movies never do get discovered outside of the festival circuit. Without an Oscar nomination to guide them there, most moviegoers would never find women making the difficult life choices that, sticking with the Oscar theme, are made by Carey Mulligan’s character in An Education, Gabourey Sidibe’s in Precious, or Maggie Gyllenhaal’s in Crazy Heart.

That’s not to say that without films like An Education your average moviegoer is going to assume that all women are supposed to be bubbly, man-craving and man-pleasing vessels without lives and dreams of their own, but it does beg the question as to whether or not this cycle is in any way a good thing. I suppose you can argue that Hollywood’s poorly-executed romantic comedies are just as fanciful and dismissible as all the stupid action movies they release each year, but I don’t buy that. With dumb action movies there exists a mutual understanding along the lines of, “You don’t call us on this bullshit and we won’t pretend that we’re smarter than you are.” Studio romantic comedies don’t operate that way, though.

No one is supposed to relate to Jason Statham surviving a fall to earth in Crank, but most romantic comedies are banking on the hope that women will relate to their characters. That’s why they stack them with broad and basic archetypes for viewers to latch onto (I’m totally a Samantha). Once that’s done, however, they never challenge the characters with tough, real-world problems. In doing so, they only perpetuate the notion that all women filmgoers want is to live in a romantic fairy tale, where everything is wrapped together in a tidy package within 90 minutes.

Well, I’m not a woman, but even I’m getting tired of that thought process. I’m not saying that the major studios need to mimic their independent rivals, and I certainly don’t want to see every movie saddled with the heavy emotional grit associated with the indie roles I mentioned above, but they at least need to step up their game. I thought maybe things were heading in the right direction after a couple of rare, mold-breaking studio comedies with both heart and brains arrived fairly close to each other (here’s looking at you, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Juno), but then a $56 million opening-weekend haul for the deplorable Valentine’s Day reminded me that little had changed. The mostly-women audience of date-draggers have voted with their dollars, once again opting for basic, interchangeable female characters over the flawed beauties so commonly found in smaller films. And when I ponder that, I can’t help but think my friend was right: I really don’t know anything about women. – By Peter Hall, Hollywood.com Staff

I don’t have much to say because I completely agree with what he said. In indie movies you can see much better emotions, from both woman and man, than in those romantic comedies or hollywood big movies.