I thought I'd start with an amendment to Monday's piece about The Simpsons Season Twenty. While the episodes are, in fact, in high definition, so far there's nary a widescreen presentation to be found. Based on the opening credits, I may have mistaken the jump from 4X3 to 16X9 by a season. The current run (season 21) has different opening sequences, many of which poke fun at the wider image. Still, I'm a little confused why Fox pushed so hard to rush season twenty out, since it technically misses the 20th anniversary and it's Blu-Ray release doesn't take advantage of the screen in the way fans are going to expect.
Additionally, there is literally one extra on the disc: a three minute teaser with Morgan Spurlock for a forthcoming Anniversary Special. Unfortunately, there's no indication of when the special is airing, or if it's going to be available. None of the commentaries from other seasons are present, or deleted scenes, commercials, making of's, or anything else. It screams of a quick cash-in, and I'm really not going to be shocked if you see this season released AGAIN sometime before season twenty-one.
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For anybody with Netflix's "watch it now", while you can't see any new Warner Brothers releases, what you can do is catch two movies that are a little trickier to see: Big Fan and Che. Now Che comes out from Criterion next week, but Steven Soderbergh's four-and-a-half hour Benicio del Toro as Che Guevara epic is going to be a little steep on DVD or Blu-Ray. Luckily, you can watch Part One and Part Two in HD streaming right now. I might just do that in a bit.
While Big Fan technically came out yesterday, no store in the area was carrying the DVD and Amazon has it on a two week back order, so I wouldn't be seeing it that way until the end of the month. Netflix, sensing this problem, not only has Big Fan to watch Instantly, but they one-upped the DVD version by offering the film in HD. Since there's no Blu-Ray release listed, you're getting a bonus here.
I did watch Big Fan, but I'm going to save that review for tomorrow. In the meantime, if you have access to the movie (instantly or on disc) I highly recommend it. Patton Oswalt is excellent, the character study is engrossing, and the ending was a bit surprising. I'll say more tomorrow, but go seek Big Fan out now.
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The Cap'n promised I wouldn't make you sit through another pan of Terminator: Salvation, and so you won't have to. I won't tell you about the reasonably interesting action sequences hampered by an idiotic story punctuated with massive plot holes. I won't tell you about the squandered opportunities or the myriad references to other films that were bungled. I won't mention the stupid ending, a weaker version of the "John Connor is a terminator!" twist that leaked prior to filming. I won't mention how toothless the film feels with a PG-13. I won't tell you all about how fake the digital Arnold face looked or the REALLY STUPID plan by Skynet that JUST DOESN'T MAKE SENSE, or how Sam Worthington's accent goes from "Southern" to his native Australian while he's hanging by a car frame. Above all, I certainly won't mention how the film feels exactly like the exercise in futility that I thought it would, but somehow manages to be even less interesting than I expected.
No sir, you won't have to sit through that, and I won't have ripped off a Harlan Ellison article to not tell you.
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In the wake of having written my defense of Rob Zombie's Halloween II - which is the best way to prepare someone for that film, because it really is Rob Zombie's singular take on the series - I'd like to hear from Cranpire and find out what others thought. Don't get me wrong; I've seen a lot of bad reviews, but none from people I know. So if there are some guest bloggers out there, I'm asking for your input.
Showing posts with label Morgan Spurlock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Morgan Spurlock. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Monday, September 7, 2009
3-D's Nuts!
I wasn't alive in the 1950s and 60s, but the Cap'n is slowly understanding why the 3-D fad died off the first time around. And we haven't had our eyeballs sodomized by Avatar yet!
Like the remake, if the zombified corpse called Hollywood sniffs anything that turns brains to dollars, it fixates and overproduces... wait. Bad metaphor. The desperation is right, the zombie part ties to the desperation... hmmm. Okay, I've got it.
Let's say that Morgan Spurlock decided not to eat ANYTHING for thirty days. Then, on day thirty-one, presuming he hadn't died from malnutrition, he returned to find the only place open in a one thousand mile radius was McDonalds. So he ate it, and had what passes for sustenance, and decided he really liked McDonalds.
Now, McDonald's takes this small sign of appreciation as an indicator that everyone will want AS MUCH McDonald's ALL OF THE TIME, so they start opening more and more fast food joints, cramming the market with their shitty yet affordable food. Perhaps in the short term people love it more, yes, but eventually everyone, including Mr. Spurlock, gets sick of it.
Right now, Hollywood is McDonalds AND Morgan Spurlock. They're desperate for anything that people will like, so they've been throwing just about anything they could find to see what stuck. Right now, the apparent answer is Remakes and Just About Anything in 3-D.
Accordingly, if you look at announcements for movies coming out in the next year, the somewhat limited 3-D market of even two-to-three years ago is about to be flooded. The Three Musketeers, Iron Man 2, Piranha, Drive Angry, Avatar, Halloween 3, Saw VII, Astroboy, A Christmas Carol, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Alice in Wonderland, Shrek 4, Toy Story 3, The Hole, The Gate, Frankenweenie, Tin Tin...
Yeesh! And I doubt this is even close to the number of movies being fast-tracked for 3-D. This is not including the rumored re-releases of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, Toy Story 1 and 2, and George Lucas' Star Wars Trilogy in three dimensions. Oh yes, they're going back and making those 3-D now too, so we'll enjoy them more.
We've come a long way from Robert Rodriguez releasing Spy Kids 3-D and Sharkboy and Lavagirl, and I'm already a little 3-D'd out. We had two of them at Summer Fest and I'm not even sure I'd want to do one for Horror Fest again this year or any time soon.
The argument against my complaint is that "Demand is high for 3-D now, so if we don't capitalize then people will simply lose interest", leaving Hollywood grasping at straws and continuing to simply make movies we've seen before and not bother changing the title. I get that. On the other hand, flooding the market may temporarily satiate demand and maintain interest, but before too long it becomes passe, the flavor of the month that everyone is into and six months later is being mocked soundly on VH1's "I Love the _____'s."
I'm no marketing genius (believe that; if I were more people would read the blogorium) but there is such a thing as cultivating interest and maintaining it without giving too much too soon. That is possible. Admittedly, it runs the risk of not working (take, for example, wildly successful campaigns for terrible movies like Godzilla and The Phantom Menace), but you can carefully dole out something in a way that brings people back and wanting more. Just because My Bloody Valentine and The Final Destination do well in 3-D doesn't mean EVERY horror movie needs to be in 3-D as soon as possible. Ones that really take advantage or benefit from the process, maybe.
The point I'm trying to make is that even when someone does very well exploiting a gimmick, like a William Castle for example, it's not merely the presence of the gimmick itself that sustains audience interest. I've never seen House on Haunted Hill in "Emergo", but the movie still works aside from the gimmick. Maybe the flying skeleton really did make the difference, but it doesn't rely on the trick to work. If you want to keep 3-D fresh, consider very carefully just how much of the movies being fast-tracked would benefit from the process, of it it's just a cheap gimmick.
Because cheap gimmicks die the faster death. The Creature from the Black Lagoon and House of Wax endure, with or without the glasses.
Like the remake, if the zombified corpse called Hollywood sniffs anything that turns brains to dollars, it fixates and overproduces... wait. Bad metaphor. The desperation is right, the zombie part ties to the desperation... hmmm. Okay, I've got it.
Let's say that Morgan Spurlock decided not to eat ANYTHING for thirty days. Then, on day thirty-one, presuming he hadn't died from malnutrition, he returned to find the only place open in a one thousand mile radius was McDonalds. So he ate it, and had what passes for sustenance, and decided he really liked McDonalds.
Now, McDonald's takes this small sign of appreciation as an indicator that everyone will want AS MUCH McDonald's ALL OF THE TIME, so they start opening more and more fast food joints, cramming the market with their shitty yet affordable food. Perhaps in the short term people love it more, yes, but eventually everyone, including Mr. Spurlock, gets sick of it.
Right now, Hollywood is McDonalds AND Morgan Spurlock. They're desperate for anything that people will like, so they've been throwing just about anything they could find to see what stuck. Right now, the apparent answer is Remakes and Just About Anything in 3-D.
Accordingly, if you look at announcements for movies coming out in the next year, the somewhat limited 3-D market of even two-to-three years ago is about to be flooded. The Three Musketeers, Iron Man 2, Piranha, Drive Angry, Avatar, Halloween 3, Saw VII, Astroboy, A Christmas Carol, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Alice in Wonderland, Shrek 4, Toy Story 3, The Hole, The Gate, Frankenweenie, Tin Tin...
Yeesh! And I doubt this is even close to the number of movies being fast-tracked for 3-D. This is not including the rumored re-releases of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, Toy Story 1 and 2, and George Lucas' Star Wars Trilogy in three dimensions. Oh yes, they're going back and making those 3-D now too, so we'll enjoy them more.
We've come a long way from Robert Rodriguez releasing Spy Kids 3-D and Sharkboy and Lavagirl, and I'm already a little 3-D'd out. We had two of them at Summer Fest and I'm not even sure I'd want to do one for Horror Fest again this year or any time soon.
The argument against my complaint is that "Demand is high for 3-D now, so if we don't capitalize then people will simply lose interest", leaving Hollywood grasping at straws and continuing to simply make movies we've seen before and not bother changing the title. I get that. On the other hand, flooding the market may temporarily satiate demand and maintain interest, but before too long it becomes passe, the flavor of the month that everyone is into and six months later is being mocked soundly on VH1's "I Love the _____'s."
I'm no marketing genius (believe that; if I were more people would read the blogorium) but there is such a thing as cultivating interest and maintaining it without giving too much too soon. That is possible. Admittedly, it runs the risk of not working (take, for example, wildly successful campaigns for terrible movies like Godzilla and The Phantom Menace), but you can carefully dole out something in a way that brings people back and wanting more. Just because My Bloody Valentine and The Final Destination do well in 3-D doesn't mean EVERY horror movie needs to be in 3-D as soon as possible. Ones that really take advantage or benefit from the process, maybe.
The point I'm trying to make is that even when someone does very well exploiting a gimmick, like a William Castle for example, it's not merely the presence of the gimmick itself that sustains audience interest. I've never seen House on Haunted Hill in "Emergo", but the movie still works aside from the gimmick. Maybe the flying skeleton really did make the difference, but it doesn't rely on the trick to work. If you want to keep 3-D fresh, consider very carefully just how much of the movies being fast-tracked would benefit from the process, of it it's just a cheap gimmick.
Because cheap gimmicks die the faster death. The Creature from the Black Lagoon and House of Wax endure, with or without the glasses.
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