sillstaw

Bad example/phrasing. I guess what I should've said is that Indiana Jones movies before "Crystal Skull" never used animals as, essentially, a pointless joke. I eagerly await being proved wrong on this.

I was more astonished to see that the trailer showed Jon Polito and Michael Lerner in small-but-apparently-important roles. Did the Coens not have anything they could throw their way?

I think the need varies from movie to movie. The lack of CGI works for, say, "Moonrise Kingdom," because it's a movie set in a fictional, lakeside town, so they just needed to find a bunch of houses that didn't look modern and were conveniently located. Additionally, most of the movie is set in the forest, which looks pretty much the same whether it's in the modern day or hundreds of years ago. And with "The Master," lots of scenes are interiors, and lots of exteriors are either limited in what we see (a field, a boat in a dock), or again use old-fashioned exteriors. I haven't read "The Great Gatsby" all the way through, but from what I recall in the trailer, it looks like it's at least partly set in New York City. That's a big place, with a big skyline, and it's not a place that's been frozen in time since the 1920's. The CGI seems necessary to fake that kind of thing. Whether that excuses ALL the CGI in the movie is up to debate, but I think there are legitimate reasons to use it. (As for "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," yes, a lot of the CGI in that was stupid and unnecessary. After all, we didn't see Indiana Jones commanding elephants in the previous movies, so why do we suddenly need Shia LaBeouf to meet CGI monkeys?)

You just know that Disney was looking at this whole movie as the next "Titanic." A romantic story juxtaposed against a historic tragedy, with running times in excess of three hours, and both directed by egotistical asshats (that last part was most likely coincidental). I recall hearing that Disney, most likely not satisfied with the amount of money it made, planned a rerelease around December, to be closer to the anniversary. (Oddly, "Titanic" used this same tactic, albeit with post-converted 3D added in, because what three-hour romance couldn't use 3D?) The plans were scuttled after September 11 showed just how horrifying an attack on the US plays in reality. I can't find anything about that on the IMDb or Wikipedia (my only memory of it is from an article shortly after September 11 discussing how Hollywood was reacting), but I did find this in the movie's trivia page: Which, if true, pretty much says it all.

Normally, I'm not one of those people who goes on about Hollywood types being out of touch with common America. But holy crap, how detached from reality do you have to be to try and make a movie where kids paying to watch a prostitute get naked is played as a positive experience and NOT as the prelude to a murderous-child story?

If I recall correctly, this is referring to Armond White, whose main hobby seems to be trolling people. If you don't know his reputation, this is the man who in 2011 hosted the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, and nakedly insulted all the filmmakers who were nominated, including Darren Aronofsky and Noah Baumbach (the latter of whom he once suggested deserved retroactive abortion). As for being targeted, aside from the obvious Internet dwellers, Rotten Tomatoes supposedly kicked him off for his review of "Jack and Jill," as well as other offenses like ruining "Toy Story 3's" 100% rating. That's his story. According to Rotten Tomatoes, what really happened is he moved from one publication to another, which requires him to get in line with all the other publications who want to be on their site. Although they did admit that they were going to take into account his controversial opinions, that's about the end of the"persecution." Sorry I ignored the rest of your post, but I felt like I had to share all that.

I don't think it'd work. Much like "Videodrome," it's intended to be creepy and depressing, and the fact that it succeeds doesn't make it bad. Although I'm sort of thinking that if they wanted to do a Paul Schrader movie, they might as well wait for "The Canyons" to come out. Never mind the much-hyped "Lindsay Lohan and a porn star" casting; just imagine how bad your movie has to be to get rejected by both Sundance and SXSW.

I think recommending a movie like this to people is actually prohibited under the Geneva convention. I recall opening a YouTube video of the music from this movie and being compelled to turn it off in under a second. Everything about the movie seems like it wants to hurt you.

One of the gayest horror movies ever that wasn't directed by the man who made "A Talking Cat!?!" (If you haven't seen it: I'm not saying "gay" as in bad or stupid or whatever uncultured 12-year olds mean when they call things gay. It's actually full of gay innuendo.)

A website I used to frequent used to use Amazon reviews to advertise products. This movie had one of the more amazing ones (only showing the bit used in the ad):

Which is massively disappointing to me. At least then, it sounded like it could be a gloriously insane disaster rather than just another Western.

I was turned off by the news surrounding his trailer on the set of "Men in Black 3." Somehow, reading about a two-story, 53-foot long trailer not a mile away from his luxury apartment dissipated a lot of his approachable, everyman charm. Personally, I think a less action-oriented, more "human-condition"-based movie would please most people who read the book, and would annoy about 95% of everyone else. (Just ask the people who saw "The American" expecting it to be an action movie.) The filmmakers are hedging their bets and hoping more people would appreciate a less-faithful version with more action. Besides, people who want to watch the story of survivors trying to adjust to the apocalypse always have "The Walking Dead." Supposedly, Johnny Depp is part Native American. Emphasis on "part" and "supposedly." (And now I'm picturing Dave from "Happy Endings" playing Tonto. "I'm 1/16 Navajo!")

In terms of financial failures, I'd bet on "RIPD," "The Internship" (because I can't honestly remember the last time anybody said, "Oh boy, a new Vince Vaughn movie!"), "After Earth" (although they are being smart and keeping M. Night Shyamalan's name quiet in the ads) and possibly "The Lone Ranger" (because seriously, it's a $200 million Western). I'm also quite surprised that "300: Rise of an Empire" is actually coming out this year, considering I hadn't heard anything about it for a while. And I can see "World War Z" being a flop; the horror stories about its long road to completion almost guarantee it won't be a good movie. I'm pulling for "The Great Gatsby," because I like Baz Luhrmann (although "Australia" was disappointing) and Carey Mulligan. But I doubt it will appeal to the coveted youth demographics, since in high school I heard classmates saying they hated the book because they had to read it for school. Thankfully, I was never in an English class that was forced to read it (although one of my teachers did force me to read "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens"—in 2008), so if and when I do read it, it'll be for fun rather than work. As for "The Wolverine," it's possible, but even as somebody who's baffled by how practically every major superhero movie makes hundreds of millions of dollars (considering they're all pretty much the same thing), I doubt that it's going to be a major money-loser. I think it'd have to be roughly as disappointing as the last Wolverine movie to bomb.

Oddly, the actor originally cast in Jeff Bridges' role was Zach Galifianakis. I'm not saying it would've been a better movie if he had stayed in the role, but I think it would've lessened the "Men in Black" comparisons a bit if Ryan Reynolds' partner was around his age bracket. (Incidentally, this is Bridges' first acting role since "True Grit," or at least the first one anybody's seen. No wonder everybody is comparing his accent to Rooster Cogburn.) The only reason I watched the trailer was because somebody said it almost immediately became his #1 bet for flop of the summer. I can't say I disagree.

For what it's worth, there's only one animated sequence in "Stay Tuned."

Part of the problem with Netflix's original programming strategy (and most likely Amazon's and whoever else tries to get in on this) is that they don't feel like they need to make the figures public. They can basically say that most of their subscriber base streamed "Hemlock Grove" or "House of Cards," and that's the end of it. They don't need to say that it was 1/8th of the base, or that a certain amount of them only streamed one episode, or if the subscribers who streamed it rated it 1 star, or anything. It makes it kind of hard to say with any certainty that it's a competitor to an existing business model like broadcast or cable TV when you don't say for certain how many people actually watch it. (Though, of course, if they're making a second season of "House of Cards" even though they say it costs more than $4.5 million an episode, either a lot of people watch[ed] it or Netflix likes to burn money.)

The AV Club review I linked to basically turned the line "That woman is what she says she is like a Mexican hates fireworks" into a minor meme in the comments. Lines like that are astonishing usually because somebody wrote them, then someone else said them, and then someone else edited them in without anybody asking what the hell it meant. But, according to the comments, that line is verbatim from the book this show is based on. So somebody wrote it, several other people copy-edited it, someone else wrote it into a script, someone else said it and someone else edited it in without anybody saying, "Wait, what now?"

I imagine it was made because someone thought, "Denise Richards and Pamela Anderson? In a buddy comedy? That can't lose!" Unfortunately, they thought this about 12 years too late. for this is astonishingly bad on a technical level. At several points, the trailer has the sound from the movie playing, and you can hear the "wacky" background music from the movie, underneath the music the trailer had added. Meaning that whoever provided the movie to the trailer editors didn't provide a copy without music. It was like watching one of those amateur-edited trailers that make movies like "Fight Club" look like romcoms, except it was supposed to be a professional ad.

... Were you seriously expecting taste from a movie called "The Man with the Iron Fists?"

Except for "Don't Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23." That was a perfect title. For whatever reason, one late night I read the Wikipedia page for this movie, which is kind of bizarre. I mean, the cast listing actually details the fates of the characters, down to who coaches the football team years afterward. I get that it's all in the movie, but it seemed like whoever wrote it all believed they were real people instead of characters in an MTV movie. (MTV Films, incidentally, has one of the most schizophrenic track records for a mini-studio ever. You have stuff like "Joe's Apartment," "Dead Man on Campus" and "The Perfect Score" mixed in with enjoyable stuff like "Orange County" and "Beavis and Butthead," and even the odd legitimate good movie like "Hustle and Flow" and "Election." Of course, now they seem to be dedicated to doing 3D concert films based on intolerable pop idols like Bieber and Katy Perry.)

That sounds like the kind of thing that's appealing in theory but difficult to do well. I mean, setting aside how fast you'd have to write and send a message to get it on screen before whatever you're talking about has passed, most people probably wouldn't have the kind of jokes or observations that would be fun to read for two hours.

Okay... but you never finished the first part. I'm kind of curious what she did in this movie that made you lose all respect for her. (From what I've heard, her part in the movie just seems to be as a female warrior who doesn't even seem to do anything funny.) I don't know, most movies that feature drug use get R ratings, though I agree about the rest. That might not be what you meant, though. In any case, it's probably just that so many people are open about smoking pot that it's becoming a non-issue that most puritans won't get too upset about, but there are still groups of people who get upset over sex and nudity.

This movie pisses me off, not just because it's a bad movie or because it wastes an interesting premise, but because the director made good movies like "George Washington" and "Snow Angels" and then wasted his time and talents on three worthless comedies. (I'm not a fan of "Pineapple Express," likely because I didn't watch it while high.)

I heard that the best part is that Hester's A is a gold color. I mean, how do you overlook that? The only possible reason they chose this book to adapt over literally any number of Harlequin romance novels is that with this story, they wouldn't have to pay royalties to the author. Why else would they take a story about a hypocritical priest and the shaming of an adulterer, and make it into something one step below a softcore porno? (Incidentally, I don't know if anybody's getting tired of his post-death canonization yet, but it's worth mentioning that Roger Ebert's review of this is a work of art. The online archive is missing the first sentence, which basically says that the problem with adapting it is that the story begins after the sex has happened, but the rest is still golden.)

It's from the fact that the series apparently kills off every young woman who even thinks of having sex, and lingers on their corpses, then completely forgets about them. Add in extraneous "fucks" and "cunts" and you've got it.