Sequential Art, Seventh Art & Other Arts: August 2013

Aye, Tinseltown would have been the victim caught in the crossfire here: as it was, time and again, throughout recent times that have seen it produce such horrid dreck as it once again has done, this summer season of two-thousand and thirteen - Anno Domini...
Take the latest two horrifying examples presented here for your disapproval and immediate (as unconditional and irreversible, too) repudiation...
One features an old-timer and a younger actor - the other stars a veteran and a punk! The first is all about action - the second is all about guns! The former is senseless drivel meant to make a bundle quick at the box-office over the summer season - and so is the latter, I'm sure!
So what is the difference between these two pieces of rotten celluloid (rotting as they are, already - even before their official release - especially given the subtext of the first and the subject of the other!) - can anybody guess here... HMM?!? None! None whatsoever! After all, Jeff Bridges and Denzel Washington, aside from their obvious differences, are virtually interchangeable - and so are Ryan Reynolds and Mark Wahlberg! The first two are washed-up veterans; the latter two no-talent wannabee thespians! Any combination of these two categories (and, we all know it, there are plenty in Tinseltown that fall into either one of those categories...) would have yielded the exact same results: two worthless films not even worth the time wasted watching the mindless trailers promoting them - nor any time at all lost trashing them, as they sorely deserve, as we just did... here!

Amazing how Jeff Bridges looks more and more

like his dad Llyod - when he starred in films such as

Airplane!

As for Reynolds - he's no Burt.

How about calling it simple, Marky Mark said.

And they followed his limited wit...

Denzel can use the levity though, these days...

So, then, let us not waste any more time or energy with these pieces of rotten celluloid (as someone funny once coined) and let us, instead, go over the sad state of the box office overall, this summer (and all summers really) as we are seeing so many clunkers being dished out, we cannot believe it... (The French call them navets - turnips, as they are well-known to be the blandest of all vegetables! One of the worst-tasting, too; although beets give them a run for their money... But that is another question!!!)

At blogging time, the top five films at the box-office right now are as follows:

Despicable Me 2 - about a bunch of sentient bananas... is it? As if those execrable Bananas In Pyjamas that we all hated so much in our childhood came back, full of steroids, for revenge...! Yikes!

Grown-Ups 2 - another insufferable Adam Sandler and friends flick - arrrrgh!

The Smurfs 2 - see a pattern developing here?!?

Turbo - an animé about super-fast snails - you read that right, snails!!!

and The Conjuring - a horror film apparently based upon real events (what - AGAIN? Weren't Exorcismus, The Shrine, White Noise (2005), White Noise: The Light (2007), An American Haunting, Paranormal Activity 1, 2, 3, 4, Insidious, I Saw The Devil, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Last Exorcism (2010), The Last Exorcism Part II (2013), Grave Encounters 1 and 2, Apartment 143 and the rest enough already...?!?)

Apparently not - we needed more reminders that true horror exists in the most innocuous and boring of places, right in our own backyards... And, to tell the truth, that is really, in fact, an extremely useful public awareness message - so, thank you for that, at least, Tinseltown - honestly!

But that's only valid for The Conjuring and the trend conjured up behind it, that made it come forth in the first place; for all the other crap on the screens right now, there is nor rhyme, nor reason... whatsoever!

The fact that this brand of crap has prevailed over another brand, deemed to be far superior, is another perplexing aberration that leaves observers and insiders, alike, deeply puzzled (we're talking about the sub-genre supreme, of late, that which focuses upon the super-heroes: Man Of Steel was humiliated lasting only one week on top of the box-office before being knocked off by another piece of rotten celluloid akin to the top four there: Monsters University! That doesn't bode well for Kick-Ass 2, coming up next... And where has Iron Man 3 gone to? To heck - I hope! Sure, The Wolverine will temporarily reverse that in the favor of the ubermenschen (lest they are untermenschen, really? Bwah-ha-ha!) but, realistically now, how long will the common public be interested in these fights between a savage who hails from north of the 49th parallel and a bunch of samurai-wannabees from a Godforsaken feudalistic parallel-universe Japan...?!? Come on!!! In olden days, when common sense prevailed, such fare would have aaaaaaaaaaall gone straight to DVD - or blu-ray - or VHS and Beta, really! BETA being the best name to aptly describe its viewership and content, all at once! I know, I know; I am digressing now... yet again! And all that was then - and this is now.)

All we can say at this point, is this...

We had hoped that the indies would be the salvation of filmmaking overall -

alas, when even Independent Cinema comes out with such drivel as this:

Raven Banner Entertainment