Summertime Blues: Movie Releases SUCK EGGS!
Advance reviews have me leaning toward the following prognostications: Iron Man will trounce Batman while Hellboy will deal with The Incredible Hulk as he does with all the other, ah, abominations he meets...
Or, actually, Kung Fu Panda will pummel and clobber the Dark Knight the moment he comes out, while that WALL-E will obliterate Iron Man at the first sign of rust - and tow his sorry carcass off to the junkyard! I'll stick to Hellboy and Hulk killing each other in a most graphic manner - unless Hancock slaughters both!
But really - what is so interesting anymore about the lousy special effects-laden comic-booky adaptations that they keep wanting to release for the summer season at the movies, eh? The only ones worth checking out are either on cheap cable (Mystery Men, The Specials) or on DVD/VHS/BluRay or whatever "the next thing" is, already...! In the latter-case, I guess it is "Super Hero Movie" that I am talking about; because all the other "picks" are guilty of the exact same things: overrated fluff, no story and nothing but hollowness in the end! It is like watching an extremely-long COMMERCIAL and getting nothing out of it, except maybe knowledge that there are 1001 derivative products available "out there" (merchandizing is key to cover production costs in CGI alone) AND after a whopping 2 hours of our lives wasted forevermore and that we know we will NEVER get back in any way, shape or form, we got confirmation, also, that Hollywood most definitely *is* creatively-bankrupt! But we knew so much already...
They've run out of ideas in Tinseltown! They pressed all of their lemons DRY! So, now, they look towards other "properties" - novels and short stories will get to be adapted to the big screen in greater numbers, old TV shows will be remade as feature films (usually disastrously, especially if Ben Stiller is involved) and, last but not least, the comic-books will be given a shot (no kidding they will: even ANT-MAN is in talks, these days! ANT-MAN! Why not make an ATOM ANT live action disaster movie while you're at it! Oh no - now they probably WILL TOO!!! Shades of "Antz vs A Bug's Life" or whatever those two films were titled again...!)
Anyhow, some find it fascinating that a "whole new (nearly underground) culture" is getting a shot at mass-mediatization, such as a movie can bring... See it duly analyzed (sort of) in the document below:
Dossier : les héros de la BD au cinéma
Me, I wonder how they all can be oblivious to the fact that this long-thought "impossible" mesh of mediums is going to promptly RUIN everything, every which way you look at it! Comic-books, already on a steep decline, will look lame and boring in comparison with the movie version and the obligatory video game that will come with it...! Those who attach too much of an importance to the original medium (mainly due to the fact that each panel of a comic-book can convey a certain effect of "timelessness" - which is unique to that medium indeed.) will be disappointed by any movie that is ever made with a "four-color hero". And then there is the movie industry itself; doesn't it know that, once they start making silly things such as a man in a bat suit or a gigantic green guy, "the norm" in films today, you can only find greater difficulty going back to "traditional filmmaking" afterwards? From where are low-key, philosophical, character-driven, dialogue-based, socially relevant, NORMAL films going to come from now? Exclusively from the INDIES - most likely! And those NEVER make much of an impact - at the box-office anyways...
One quick glance at the summer of 2008's line-up of films scheduled to hit theaters (not to mention clobber moviegoers; I mean, these are going to be BAD, folks! And the price of admission is at an all-time high...!) including a bunch of flicks slated to chime in at the box-office in the months and YEAR that follow, and one can see the rather HEAVY influence "super-heroics" and the like has these days on Tinseltown productions:
I.O.U.S.A.
Babylon A.D.
Iron Man
Bottle Shock
Stone Angel
Quantum of Solace (Bond. James Bond.)
Valkyrie
Kabluey
What Happens in Vegas...
Tale of Despereaux
Burn After Reading (good idea...)
American Teen
Speed Racer
Step Brothers (just another Will Ferrell flick...)
Brothers Bloom
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (not sure I even heard of "1"...)
Made of Honor
Traitor
Righteous Kill
Get Smart
Baby Mama
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Mirrors
Duchess
Blindness
Eagle Eye
Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay
Hancock
Harold
Madagascar Escape 2 Africa
Kung Fu Panda
Brutal Massacre: A Comedy
Disaster Movie (most probably from the same people who brought you Scary Movie, Superhero Movie and Sex: The Movie.)
Harry Potter blahblahblah...
Gonzo: yaddayaddayadda...
Journey To The Center Of The Earth
The Forbidden Kingdom
Nim's Island
Nobel Son
Australia
Miracle At St. Anna
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Reprise
Religulous
Savage Grace
Sangre De Mi Sangre
How The Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
War, Inc.
Postal
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Sex and the City: The Movie
Swing Vote
The Strangers
Foot Fist Way
Kicking It
Kung Fu Panda (kids will rather see it again...!)
You Don't Mess With The Zohan
Mongol
Igor
The Incredible Hulk
Kung Fu Panda (might as well watch it a 3rd time instead of Inedible Bulk there - after all, a well-trained panda can take out the Hulk; we all know that!)
Diminished Capacity
The Dark Knight (holy moley, no audience left for this one, Batman!)
Batman: Gotham Knight (much less this one)
Prom Night (or this one)
Twilight (it is - indeed)
Nights In Rodanthe
Mad Detective
The Spirit
Elegy
Flash Of Genius
Star Wars: The Clone Wars (animation clones are in vogue)
Star Trek
Space Chimps
Children Of Huang Shi
Foot Fist Way
Redbelt
Rocker
Visitor
Go-Getter
Bigger, Stronger, Faster
Longshots
Garden Party
Happening
Tell No One
Love Guru
He's Just Not That Into You
Hamlet 2
Mamma Mia!
Fall
Take
Meet Dave
X-Files: I Want To Believe
The Edge Of Heaven
Wanted
Taken
Encounters At The End Of The World
In Search Of A Midnight Kiss
Gunning For That #1 Spot (better than having a G-Spot film - after SATC, one never knows...)
Transsiberian
Pineapple Express
Quarantine
Promotion
The Last Mistress
Tinker Bell
Choke
Miss Conception
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Finding Amanda (a long-awaited sequel to Desperately Seeking Susan?)
Rachel Getting Married
My Best Friend's Girl
Wonder Woman
The Women
The Wackness
Perfect Game
Punisher: War Zone
Marley & Me
Boy A
Bolt
Sixty Six
Frozen River
Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor
Death Race (what - no year attached to this one?)
Futurama: The Beast With A Billion Backs
WALL-E
Watchmen
Yes Man
How To Lose Friends And Alienate People
Beer For My Horses
Everybody Wants To Be Italian
Ashes of Time Redux
Saw V
W.
If it's not silly super antics, it's over-the-top surrealistic, would-be-comedic fare. That Zohan film, by the way, is surefire proof (to me anyhow - it is) that Adam Sandler is so envious of all of these super-hero types that he wanted to be ALL OF THEM AT ONCE (not to mention Chuck Norris-like) in this umpteenth farce on his personal long list of farcical wastes of celluloid. Notch it up as one more ego-driven crappy film for the SNL alumnus, aye, to also prove that he remains a Tinseltown minus, not a Hollywood heavyweight as he wishes to be so desperately (so obviously).
Not many "down to earth/normal" films in there, are there? They're all highly... hmm, what's the word... implausible? Aye, they sure are! And they'll keep churning them out that way because, with the levels of competition they get nowadays from all over the place, they have to be mighty-promising "spectacles" in order to get people to fork over the cash and go to a multiplex theater in the first place!
Notice though the PROPER ORDER given to three of them "new releases" that are coming out soon, below...
First the ITALIAN SPIDERMAN; then the mock confessions; and THEN the "dark knight" (who was never knighted either! Fake all the way...!)
NOW THAT is more like it, EH?
Strangest Spidey ever?
As long as SOME sort of logic is respected, we can deal with these sort of blues - can't we?
Us, the thinking filmgoers, I mean!
Labels: cinema, rotten celluloid, trends