Tag: Hollywood

Is NOTHING Sacred?

sevenI didn’t bitch when you turned the Green Hornet into a lard-ass slacker.  I didn’t complain when you made the Lone Ranger and Tonto look like a couple of transcendental boobs.    Hell, I even bit my tongue over the Ben Affleck Batman affair.  There’ve been so many Batmans (Batmen?) anyway that nobody cares anymore.  (Actually, a lot of people think that Cate Blanchett should take a crack at the cowl.0  But there is a point when every person has to cowboy-up and finally say WTF?  I’m talkin’ to you, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.  What, by all that’s holy, gave you the idea you could remake The Magnificent Seven?  THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN?  Arguably the best Western ever made (sorry, High Noon) and you think you can just casually redo it?  For shame!  Five shame!

Here’s the deal.  If — maybe — perhaps — you got Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Charlize Theron, Russell Crowe, Jason Statham, Idris Elba and if Steve McQueen came back from the dead to play Vin, then I might consider it.  Otherwise, you’re sucking pond water.  In fact, you’re just cashing in on a famous name, you insatiable whores!

And it’s not as if Hollywood has any kind of a track record for treating the classics with any class.  Look at these less than honourable money grabs:

Star Trek – In an alternative reality (shoot me in the head, right here!) Kirk is an overgrown juvenile delinquent, Old Spock wanders around looking miserable, young Spock has a temper tantrum (and, oddly enough, a girlfriend) Sulu looks as if he’s lost without Kumar, and the one requirement to command a Starship is you show up on a motorcycle and eat apples!

King Kong – What Peter Jackson did to that monkey oughta be illegal.  Where the hell is PETA when you need them?

The Ladykillers – Every once in a while, the Coen bros go nuts and think they’re cinematic gods.  This movie proves them wrong.  Tom Hanks should have run screaming from the studio when he read the script.  Unfortunately, he didn’t.  Now, he wakes up every morning and begs the ghost of Alec Guinness for forgiveness.

Around the World in Eighty Days – Turning a 50s epic into a Jackie Chan kungfu movie is bad enough.  However, trying to shoehorn homage to Michael Todd with cameos by Schwarzenegger, Cleese. Johnny Depp and the brothers Wilson is just insulting the guy’s memory.

Planet of the Apes – Mark Wahlberg spends most of the movie looking surprised that he’s even in this movie, Charlton Heston plays an ape, Paul Giamatti is an unusually short orangutan and Helena Bonham Carter plays a chimp (with mixed results.)  The plot is based on coincidence, the climax is like five seconds long, the ending is stupid and when Wahlberg and Bonham Carter get all inter-species, the whole thing just gets icky.

The Wicker Man – Nicholas Cage deserves the bees.

Alice in Wonderland – Every stoner east of Malibu Bay is saying “Whoa!  Alice gets a sword!  Cool!”  The Mad Hatter is a demented revolutionary.  They stole the White Queen from the Wizard of OZ and Helena Bonham Carter plays herself (with mixed results.)  And the frightening thing is Disney did it to themselves.

I’m not even going to get into Psycho, Swept Away, Godzilla or The Pink Panther.

Hollywood needs to just stop.  The Magnificent Seven?  My God! What next?  Gone with the Wind?  Casablanca?  Leonardo diCaprio as the Little Tramp?

I’ve had enough.  If there are no original ideas left south of the San Fernando Valley, so be it, but quit carving up other people’s masterpieces!

How to Write a Horror Movie

horror3The last horror movie I paid money to see was The Exorcist in 19 whenever-it-was. I was old enough to know better.  Since then, I’ve lived a full and rewarding life without ever again shelling out coin for cheap adrenaline thrills.  Actually, I’ve had the hell scared out of me for real a couple of times, and I’m in no great hurry to have those feelings artificially induced.  Besides, contemporary horror movies are totally unimaginative.  For the most part, they’re just a series of heart-jolting surprises, stuck together with bursts of exaggerated gore — literally.   Let me show you how it’s done.  Here’s a simple three part program that will help you write your own horror movie, and depending on how ambitious you are, take you to the very gates of Horror Movie Heaven: The Slasher Franchise.  SPOILER ALERT (If you watch Horror Movies for the storyline, stop reading right now.)

First of all, horror movies are driven by the vivid portrayal of a single requisite character: the half-naked young woman.  She is as essential to the horror movie as the horse is to the Western.  If you don’t have at least one girl falling out of what’s left of her clothes, you simply don’t have a horror movie.  Ideally, you need one Alpha female and a couple of expendable best friends (who get butchered early on, to prove the villain/monster/psycho is serious.)  Strangers will do, but it’s better if the skanks know each other.  The Alpha female needs a bit of a personality — perhaps a name or a hair style.  But don’t sweat the details for the rest of the girls; they’re just there to lose their clothes and do some screaming.

You also need a boyfriend (he can be a husband as long as he’s newly-minted.)  The boyfriend/husband is the catalyst that causes all the problems.  He’s the guy who ignores everybody’s advice to get the hell out of there and convinces them all to hang around and get slaughtered.  He comes with his own set of friends, usually a larger, stronger man and an idiot.  The larger, stronger guy gets hacked up somewhere around halftime to prove the villain/monster/psycho can’t be stopped, and the idiot is there for comic relief.  He runs around doing stupid stuff, but nothing much ever happens to him.  Likewise, the boyfriend/husband is rarely killed; however, he must suffer at least one (and sometimes more) debilitating injuries.  This allows the Alpha female to jump up at the last moment and save his dumb ass.

HW-2337Secondly, you have to drop everybody’s IQ by about 50%.  Once again, this is a fundamental feature of the horror movie.  The future corpses have to be dumb as a box of hammers and take an active part in their own demise.  For example, when confronted by a dark, rambling mansion, deserted campsite, scary island or what-have-you, they must do the stupidest thing possible: split up and go exploring.  Together, they could probably protect themselves or possibly even beat the villain/monster/psycho bloody; individually, however, they’re just candidates for a toe tag.  Nor should you let your characters arm themselves with anything more dangerous than a toothbrush.  The villain/monster/psycho should have any number of ingenious hacking/stabbing/slashing weapons available to him, but your folks should never even think of picking up a rock.  Nor should they grab a garden tool, a kitchen knife, a heavy book of poetry or — heaven forbid — in a country as gun crazy as America, a pistol.  There is a willing suspension of disbelief in all movies, but the coffin fodder of horror flics must defy all reasonable logic.  Therefore, they should run headlong down blind alleys; wander aimlessly in dark, creaky hallways, basements and derelict buildings, and never — under any circumstances – bring a flashlight or simply turn on the lights.  In short, they should be stupid enough to get outwitted by sheep.

Third, and least importantly, you need a villain/monster/psycho.  Actually, this guy really doesn’t matter; all he needs to behorror4 is somewhat grotesque, clearly demented and have a steady supply of sharp and/or pointy things to jab into people.  The only important thing to remember is NEVER kill him off at the end of the movie – just in case the studio wants to pick up an option on Freddy Jason Myers, Part II.

So there you have it.  All you need to do is write it up.  Yeah, yeah, yeah!  You’re going to need a plot (maybe) scene selection, action and dialogue, but these are just tricks of the trade you can pick up along the way.  Or, you can forget about all that and go buy some old Archie Comics, piece together a couple of their adventures, add a villain/monster/psycho to massacre a few of them, and you’re practically half way to Hollywood.  Oops!  Somebody’s already done that.  Oh well!  Nobody’s going to notice.

What We Learn From The Movies

movieMack Sennett, one of the greatest directors ever (over 1,000 films) believed that movies were just an excuse for a chase scene, and for a hundred years, Hollywood directors lived (and died) by this credo.  Fortunately, today we live in a far more sophisticated age, and contemporary audiences are not sucked in by such tricks.  These days, movies are complex windows into the human condition.  They show us our world without cheap cinematic varnish.  With that in mind, here are a few truths we have learned from recent movies, especially the Action/Adventure features, which, btw, have always been a box office favourite.

Detectives, firemen, Special Forces personnel, Forest Rangers and Boy Scouts all have a sordid past.  This has left them jaded, sleepy, slightly constipated and somewhat saddened by that condition.  They live alone, mainly in squalor and even though they have maximum trouble relating to women (past, present and future) are not gay (at least, not overtly.)

Evil men are good looking, usually corporation rich, have impeccable taste, beautiful wives and/or girlfriends but despite being highly intelligent, always surround themselves with some of the stupidest henchmen in history.

All Assistant District Attorneys, world-renowned scientists, cryptographers, secretaries and American Vice Presidents wear push-up bras.

Dumb-ass sidekicks are always smart enough not to get caught by evil men or their stupid henchmen.

The deadliest marksmen in the world will always miss the first shot and then go nuts, spraying bullets around like they’re throwing pennies to the poor.

And speaking of which, bullets love plate glass windows.

When confronted with evil, men will have body armour, guns, knives, grenades, poison darts, a jousting lance, nunchucks, assorted landmines, two bazookas and a small tank readily available. Their female companions, however, will have a thong, high heels, that push-up bra again and a butter knife.

High speed car chases always occur in congested urban areas where normal commute times are measured in days and itmovie1 would take you or me somewhere between 20 minutes and 2 hours to make a left turn.

Men can successfully fend off five, six, ten, two hundred or more determined attackers, but when faced with a feisty female in a love-tap play fight, they will drop like somebody shot them.

When fleeing an explosion, if you run as fast as you can, you will get flung into the air and bounced on the ground like a rag doll.  However, if you just calmly walk away you will not be touched.

After having sex, women are normally naked, whereas men usually have their underwear on.

Hand guns prefer to be just out of reach.

Villains never just shoot detectives, firemen, Special Forces personnel, Forest Rangers or Boy Scouts as soon as they catch them but always take a few quality moments to reveal and outline their nefarious plans.

When you hear subtle North African music, innocent North Americans are going to die.

Men can be hit by a train, dragged behind a speeding motorcycle, trampled by a herd of panicking wildebeests and beaten senseless by sixty blood-crazed Shaolin monks, but will only wince when a female dabs their wounds with a Kleenex.

All old buggers are grouchy, but like prostitutes and crack addicts, normally have a heart of gold.

Any criminal investigation, including parking tickets, will eventually end up at a strip club, a seedy bar or a scuzzy hotel.

So, what have we learned?

After over a hundred years of movie making, audiences are no longer fooled by cheap theatrics.  They demand more from their entertainment dollar than a series of phony chase scenes.  They want sophisticated storylines and complex characters.  But mostly they want a true reflection of the world they live in, portrayed with realism and intelligence.  Just take a look at Argo.  Last year, it won an Academy Award for Best Picture.