Backlash – FRED Entertainment

Backlash: WOLVERINE’s Snikt-er-doodle

UncaScroogeMcD — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:37:47 +0000

X-Men Origins: Wolverine: The Off-Screen Comedy Hit of the Summer

The day is fast approaching, X-Men fans. The day when you can legally plunk down your money and see X-Men Origins: Wolverine on a big screen and not have to worry if the neighbors down the street could see you watching the bootleg copy you downloaded from Pirate Bay through the window.

Now by all indications, Wolverine is pretty good. The advance screenings have gone well, the advance buzz from the press has been good so it’s a fair bet that, if you liked the X-Men films, you’ll like Wolverine. Yes, I’ve seen it. Both versions, just to give full disclosure – the version screened for press and the version that’s been floating around the net that got Roger Friedman fired over at FOX. I like this film more and more every day and not because of what’s on the screen.

The leaking of the mostly complete work print of the film has been one of the most unintentionally hilarious chain of events in recent entertainment history. As soon as the film hit the peer to peer networks, the studio raised the alarm. Which meant that the story was all over the press, not just Access Hollywood & Entertainment Tonight. That one act probably added more users to Bit Torrent than anything since, oh, maybe the last film that got leaked to the web early.

It isn’t that I don’t want to see the studios make a profit on films that genuinely deserve it and to be honest, Wolverine deserves it. And yes, the studio has to try and aggressively protect their copyrights, especially in situations like this. The person responsible, who probably will be found, is going to be spending a lot of time in the new Jack Valenti Re-Education wing of the State Penitentiary. But recent actions prove that the people calling the shots in Hollywood still just haven’t got a clue where this internet thing is concerned.

FOX’s big plan to make sure they get all those potential popcorn munchers into the seats opening weekend? Circulate two sets of endings on different prints. What the fuck?

Okay, for the 5 of you out there who didn’t download Wolverine or watch a copy at a friend’s house who did, the film features, like all recent Marvel Comics-based movies, a couple of “Easter eggs” (I really hate that term being used for extra scenes in credits but that’s a rant for later *-see below) during the closing titles. One is early and the other is a tag after the final credits have rolled. The prints shown to most (but apparently not all) press screenings contain two scenes that are different from those seen in the leaked copy. Not that those two bits have been scrapped, mind you – they still appear on half the prints. The other half of the prints have the tags from the press screening.

Confused yet? It gets better. There’s no way to tell which print you’re going to see. It’s like buying 100 boxes of that damn cereal to finally get Enterprise com badge from that new movie to with the 99 Klingon badges you’re giving away to people in the street. So this is how FOX is being a stern parent with us bad little kiddies who only live to give them cash – you were bad so now you have to keep paying us to make sure you completist fanboys (and girls) get to see everything.

Can I lead the congregation in a resounding “fuck you“?

Every indication is that Wolverine will follow in the steps of some of the most widely distributed peer to peer theatrical releases which have also made massive amounts of money at the box office. The Lord of the Rings films and the Star Wars prequels are perfect examples of films that don’t seem to have had their box office dented in any significant way by being traded over the internet. FOX apparently has a good film but instead of letting the film perform, they’ve decided to try this bait and switch tactic with viewers.

Listen, FOX, I get that you’re pissed off about the leak. Really, I do. It would piss me off too. But it happened and unlike some other films this has happened to, it has resulted in almost universally positive reactions. Making people just kind trust blind luck and drop more money to make sure they see what amounts to maybe two minutes of different footage at the end of 90 minutes of film? Not making yourselves any friends with your public, gang. There’s a reason theaters started posting which ending of the film Clue they were running – theatergoers were getting pissed off if they saw the same ending twice. The gimmick worked well enough for that film (God knows, that clusterfuck needed a gimmick) but it’s not going to work for you here.

Why, you ask?

Because within 24 hours the additional “Easter eggs” will be posted online for all to see. Frankly, if I’d slapped down somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 bucks to see a film and didn’t get to see all of it, I’d feel justified in downloading it.

You’ve got a little time left, FOX, to do the right thing. Come up with some kind of code or ticket or some goddamn thing for people who buy a ticket to the film so they can see all four of the tags online. It’s not perfect – if you intended to run 4 tags during the credits then you should run all four of them as far as I’m concerned. It’s at least something that doesn’t make it look like you’re trying to steal money from the very people who are actually spending the money to go to the theater. You aren’t penalizing the people who downloaded your film, you’re punishing the very people who stand to help you make some good money. That’s like sending the clerk at the convenience store to prison after he got robbed because you couldn’t catch the thief. Just relax, FOX, Wolverine is still going to make money.

Provided, of course, that Star Trek doesn’t kick your ass next week.

##

* Okay, “Easter eggs”.
By definition, “Easter eggs” are something you have to hunt for, not something you sit on your ass and wait to be handed to you. If that were the case, they’d be called welfare checks. The whole point of an “Easter egg” is having to find it either hidden in the menus of a DVD or on a web site somewhere. An extra tag in the credits is not an “Easter egg”. Jackie Chan’s outtakes at the end of his films are not “Easter eggs”.

No, if FOX wants to take the four Wolverine tags and hide them on the film’s web site, that would be an “Easter egg”. Sorry, gang, I’ve just been seeing the studio and as a result the press throwing the term around all week and it has just bugged the shit out of me,

Backlash: A Fistful of Frak

UncaScroogeMcD — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 04:44:32 +0000

I am officially convinced that Battlestar Galactica is being written & produced by refugee chimpanzees.

No, seriously. Never in my life have I watched a better example of a television series throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks on a weekly basis than what we’ve gotten from Galactica. We’re talking major, industrial grade amounts of crap here, people. The kind of tonnage that you could only get by reassembling the simian cast of Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp and tossing in Clyde from the Clint Eastwood movies and feeding them a whole lot of laxatives.

I’ve wanted to like Galactica from the start but the series started contradicting itself and the universe it was trying to create in the bloody pilot. Note to producers: if you have a great plot inconsistency in your series, try not to feature said inconsistency in the opening titles. The inconsistency I’m singling out (because there are a helluva lot to pick from) is the inexplicable downgrading of the humanoid Cylons from the pilot to the rest of the series. Every week, we have a shot of Baltar (James Callas) being shielded from a nuclear blast by what we now call Caprica Six (Tricia Helfer). She doesn’t move, doesn’t even flinch but before long, we’re capping the humanoid “skin job” Cylons like they’re shuffling zombies in George Romero film. But that’s not enough – we go on later in the series to show that you can kill a Cylon by ejecting them out an airlock only to then show Boomer (Grace Park) functioning perfectly well in a vacuum aboard a Cylon base ship. But don’t make the mistake that possibly Boomer & Caprica Six are some kind of super-Cylons – Boomer takes a bullet just like anyone else and dies (at least, as much as any of the Cylons actually “died” at that point). The Cylons really need to outsource their work to Skynet – at least it knows how to build humanoids that can take a pounding!

I have had to tolerate fans and even national publications trying to present this series as “the best fraking show on television” for years now and, I hate to tell you, it’s just not that great. Edward James Olmos, an actor that I enjoy and greatly respect, has spoken in glowing terms about the quality of the series and how he never imagined he’s be doing science fiction on cable. To be certain, the actors love the series and why wouldn’t they? The series is a succession of actor-moments, scenes where actors get to scream, cry, rend the fabric of their clothing and generally chew more scenery than Vincent Price ever could. But a collection of acting moments does not a good series make. Granted, you’re working within the confines of science fiction, you’ve got people confined to space ships on the run from evil robots so there’s some limit to the amount of “reality” you can truly expect. Having said that, you expect people who worked within the confines of the Star Trek universe, arguably one of the most defined fictional universes in the history of entertainment, to be able to set up some basic rules and stick to them. Its one thing to find a way around an old, established rule like Trek‘s old “can’t send a transporter beam through shields” and quite another to play fast and loose with the basic building blocks of your own universe. If the producers don’t care enough to color inside the lines, why should the viewers give a damn about anything that happens between the opening titles and the end credits?

I’m not just railing about this because of the problems I’ve seen during the run of the series. The producers themselves talked about not really knowing what the hell they were doing in the commentary for a recent episode. We’re in the home stretch for this series and viewers should rightfully expect that the producers have at least a vague idea what they’re going to do in the final episodes. You’re at a point where you don’t have the luxury of a toss off episode; every episode has got to build towards your climax. So why, pray tell, would the producers suddenly realize that their original choice for the ‘final’ Cylon contradicted previous storylines? First of all, I wonder why they just started worrying about this now when they’ve been content to contradict themselves since the pilot but more importantly, how do they not pay attention to the plots they’ve already produced?

The answer is simple: pure laziness. Their solution: pull an answer out of their asses. At this point, it looks like they’re having to reach so far up their own rectums the producers are in danger of feeling a strange tickle in the backs of their collective throats.

It’s not like Galactica is complete waste. The series is at its best when the shooting starts, as seen by the recent two part mutiny storyline. Yes, we had to have some of the series’ trademarked convoluted storytelling to get us up to that point but there were many, many ways to get there that made more sense and would have felt less like treading water for a few hours. So many episodes of Galactica play out like extended teasers, just begging you to blow another hour of your time in hopes that something, anything, might happen. As evidence, just look at the episode that followed the mutiny – more tossing stuff at the audience that only serves to frame something else down the road. While you need to set up the events that are going to happen later in the series, a good series will do that by weaving those plot developments into an actual story, instead of just stringing them all together for 42 minutes and calling it a day.

The series is also unrelentingly grim. Even big fans of the series have told me that they have to get themselves into the right frame of mind to watch the series every week, many of them recording it to watch later instead of viewing it during its live broadcast. As one fan told me, she had to make sure to watch the series at a time when it wouldn’t make her want to immediately slit her wrists. The darkness of the series combined with the general mood in the world at the moment makes it hard to gain a lot of escapist enjoyment out of Galactica.

For that reason alone, I can’t say I’m surprised that the decision was made to bring Galactica to an end as even the most incontinent of monkeys will run out of feces eventually. I’ll still be watching, hopeful that the series will come to some sort of satisfactory end but tempering that hope with the realization that disappointment has always lurked just around the corner with this series.

I’m looking at the prequel series, Caprica, with a wary eye as well. Let’s see, Galactica without the action. I don’t really see the appeal here but the fans seem stoked about it, so I’ll give it a chance. But it doesn’t get the same amount rope Galactica did from me and, I suspect, from the rest of the audience, either. Say what you will about the Stargate franchise (and God knows it has it’s own set of major problems) but it at least delivers on it’s promises 90% of the time, which is a lot more than can be said for Galactica. One wonders what kind of series we’d have gotten if the producers spent as much time on the series itself as they seem to on the animated vanity card at the end of each episode (often the best part of any Galactica episode).

So, as the series stumbles towards the finish line, I have to wonder what the ultimate fate of “the best fraking show on television” is going to be. Like many serialized series, it’s popular now and everyone is willing to sing the praises of the self-indulgent train wreck that has spewed onto television screens around the world for the past 6 years or so. But when it comes time to look back at the finished product as a whole, how will people react? I suspect time will not be kind to Galactica as the realization sets in that this was not some grand, epic story told over the years but a slipshod collection of half thought out ideas, none of them ever realized as well as they could have been while others should never have made it to the screen. Only the performances of actors like James Callis, Mary McDonnell, James Hogan and Edward James Olmos will endure, as they should, rising above the material that surrounded them.

Backlash: Best Picture? Hardly.

UncaScroogeMcD — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 06:44:19 +0000

The Oscars are coming, whether we like it (or care) or not. The disappointment felt by fans and the event’s organizers over the snub of The Dark Knight has finally died down and the campaigning has hit the home stretch, even if the economy has subdued the usual onslaught of in-your-face begging this time around (thank God).

I never subscribed to the notion that The Dark Knight had to get the big nominations to vindicate it as a good film or to somehow make the Oscars relevant to current audiences. But the films that were nominated were one of the weakest sets of nominees in recent history. Be that as it may, I do think I have figured out the logic – instead of giving us a film to root for in The Dark Knight, the Academy has given us something better; a film to root against.

I am speaking, of course, of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, one of the most excruciating 3 hours you’ll ever spend in a theater and I’m counting watching uncensored footage of Nazi war atrocities. Based on a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the movie follows in the tradition of films like The Bridges of Madison County in that you could probably read the original story enough times to memorize it in the time it takes to get to the final reel. The Academy saw fit to give this cinematic forced march 13 nominations, the most of any film in the mix this year. The only choice that could have possibly been a bigger slap in the face to any other potential nominee would have been to nominate the mini-series masquerading as theatrical film, Australia. Thankfully, there’s a cash crisis at the moment which means there isn’t enough money in Hollywood to buy that thing an Oscar, even if they did manage to slap in one of the film’s stars as host this year.

Back to the crapfest at hand. I’m on record as saying that I think Brad Pitt is a good actor and he’s definitely worthy of an Oscar. Having said that, I have an aversion bordering upon hive inducing allergy towards obvious Oscar-bait and Benjamin Button is one of those films that is the awards equivalent to dynamite fishing. There’s not a person involved with the project that didn’t sign on because they thought it would be a ‘marquee’ film. It’s not that I object to artistic films, it’s that I object to films that could have been artistic and even good, only to see them become bloated, overbearing, ponderous wastes of celluloid and worse, the viewer’s time. Pitt’s been on this track for a while now – just take a look at the equally long, ponderous but definitely more entertaining Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Lesson learned in that film: don’t let an up and coming actor steal the spotlight in your Oscar-bait. Not a problem with Benjamin Button.

The first time I sat through the film, it was like being slowly beaten to death by a mob of dwarves wielding NERF bats. After seeing that it was getting some buzz, I tried getting through it again, in case I somehow “just didn’t get it”.

This time, it was like the dwarves had ditched the foam weapons and had instead resorted to punching me in the groin.

Wearing gauntlets.

With spikes.

By the midway point, I was about ready to gouge my own eyes out using the scoop from the over priced nachos. I am now fairly convinced that I didn’t “miss” anything and that the film just sucks.

Of course, the one flaw in the logic of having something to root against is that there has to be something you’d rather see win. While I’d like to see just about any film win that isn’t Benjamin Button, I can’t say that any of the other nominees really scream that they deserve the award, either. Frost / Nixon is good if only to prove once again that the best actors to portray Richard Nixon on film originate from outside the United States. Sorry, Rich Little – looks like other people are finally pushing their way into material that has been exclusively yours since sometime during the Carter administration. Milk, with Sean Penn’s critically acclaimed (for good reason) performance as San Francisco’s slain gay rights pioneer, Harvey Milk, is good but not Best Picture good.

The Reader, you ask? Oh, for fuck’s sake, let’s get over this wave of trying to find some kind of sympathy for those poor, misunderstood Nazis, already. They were fucking Nazis! There’s a reason the word “Nazi” has become shorthand for “evil, villainous prick”. I don’t care if we do get to see Kate Winslett’s boobies (like we haven’t seen those before), I’ve now had enough of this little genre that has helped bring us overblown bullshit like Valkyrie and manipulative crap like The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Yeah, I know, the world isn’t all black and white. I don’t believe anybody ever got up every day and told themselves “damn, I’m evil” in the mirror (except, possibly, Dick Cheney). But let’s put things in perspective before we find ourselves in the middle of a screening for a warm, fuzzy retelling of the life of Hitler. The reason Nazis make great recurring villains in popular entertainment is because they were some of the most horrible, scum-sucking human beings to ever cast a shadow on the face of the Earth. They earned that horrible distinction and it’s gonna stick to ’em like stink on shit for eternity. So, no, I won’t be casting a vote for The Reader. Sorry, Kate, maybe next year.

Which pretty much leaves us with Slumdog Millionaire. Is it Best Picture good, either? Uhm, well, no. Is it a better film than Frost / Nixon or Milk? I can’t really say that, either. What I can say is that it isn’t like watching a dramatized version of a History Channel documentary, which earns it a few extra points in my book. It holds together well, travels at a better pace than the other two films and is just a little more watchable. Plus, it has a cool, Bollywood-esque number at the end that would have only helped any of the other films nominated this year. But this is a long way from being a film that people behind the big broadcast would have liked to promote as a ‘popular favorite’.

Of course, this will be a different kind of Oscar ceremony by the Academy’s own admission. A more “intimate” (read: cheaply produced) ceremony with supposed new twists. Okay, this isn’t an episode of Law & Order, it’s an awards ceremony, people. About the only major change you could make that would make anybody give a damn would be a new rule that states winners must be present to win. To make things even more interesting would be the way the award would then be given to a nominee who is present: an all out fight to the death with the last one standing coming away with the Oscar. Just think of how much the audience would hope the winner for Best Supporting Actress couldn’t make the ceremony so Hugh Jackman could ask the stage hands to drop the cage and roll out the pudding vat. Not only that but it stands to open up the categories for other artists in the future. Anything short of that is just a cheat to the viewers.

The Academy Awards will be presented live on Sunday, February 22nd. Place your bets now.

Backlash: The Bat-Oscars

admin — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 09:18:22 +0000

Are the Oscars As We Know Them Doomed? We Can Only Hope….

As the entire world seems to pause for a moment for the Inauguration of President Barack Obama, some of regular life goes on, even in Fantasy Land, better known as Hollywood, USA. The Motion Picture Academy announces their nominees for the Oscars this week and with nothing better to do than talk out their collective asses, a fair portion of the entertainment media are squawking about whether or not the awards can survive if they don’t crown a ‘popular’ film Best Picture (read: Batman: The Dark Knight).

There’s some logic to the argument if you look at the awards in a purely television special / ratings extravaganza event. Last year’s Oscar telecast was one of the lowest rated in years and some attribute that to a lack of a popular choice among the moviegoing public, something for them to ‘root for’, as though this were a NASCAR race. I’m sure the network would love for there to be a choice like The Dark Knight among the Best Picture nominees on Thursday and they might get their wish. Fact is, Christopher Nolan made a pretty good film in a year when some of the most interesting films to come out of Hollywood were in genres traditionally ignored by the Academy. Filmmakers have finally figured out that viewers can take their heroes with some flaws, something comic readers have been able to handle since the 1960’s. The heroes of Iron Man and The Dark Knight appeal to the general public in a time when the world is viewed in ever-darkening shades of gray, making those films as relevant as any to hit screens in recent years. If Warners can manage to not completely fuck up Watchmen (which I still have my doubts about), it might even be in this conversation a year from now. But to actually state that not nominating a film like Dark Knight for Best Picture could signal the end of the Oscars as we know it is such a complete load of bullshit that you could smell the odor in Australia.

It has also been something of a banner year for the much-maligned (usually with good reason) Animated Feature Film (or, as I like to call it, “The Oscar We Just Give to Pixar Every Year They Release a Film”). Pixar, as usual, made a good showing, this time with Wall-E and proved once again that the important part of any film, animated or otherwise, is a good script. For that reason, Wall-E is even being mentioned as a potential nominee in some of the non-traditional categories for animated films, such as Best Screenplay and even as a possible longshot for Best Picture. Disney, long absent from any conversation concerning a good animated feature that wasn’t co-produced with the aforementioned Pixar, managed to release Bolt, a film that looked a whole lot like it escaped from Pixar (in some respects, that’s just what it did). Even some of the releases geared straight for the kid market weren’t as mind numbing as they’ve been in the past. Just as a bit of full disclosure, I have actively voted against some Pixar films in the past when I’ve thought another film deserved the honor more, which is why the critic’s group I was a member of at the time gave the award to Wallace & Gromit over Cars. There will be a year when an animated feature is in the mix for Best Picture but this won’t be that year. The year it does happen, that film will have to defend itself against some pretty good animated films that came before it.

First of all, the argument that the nomination & win of a “populist” film would be some sort of groundbreaking event is not only inaccurate, it’s ignorant. Titanic was a massively popular film, the highest grossing film of all time to date (Dark Knight currently sits at number two) and it took home the Best Picture award that year. So there’s the ‘blockbuster’ argument cut off at the knees. You can’t even make the ‘fantasy film’ argument any more since Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King made a pretty good showing that year, including taking that Best Picture statuette home to Hobbiton. Previously, high grossing science fiction or fantasy films would be thrown the bone of a nomination without a snowball’s chance in hell of winning. Films like Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark and others really just took a spot away from films that might have had a slim chance of winning Best Picture. The way the Academy is structured now, any SF / fantasy film that is good enough to get a nomination in the Best Picture category has as good a chance to win as any other film that’s nominated.

Which brings us back to The Dark Knight. I can’t remember a year when everyone from the film fans to us blowhards in the media haven’t carped on and on about how lousy the films were all year, only to be faced with a pretty tough decision when comes time to vote for the various awards. This year is no exception, with some really good films being considered as the nominations are being made. Gran Torino is possibly one of the best films Clint Eastwood has ever made. Slumdog Millionaire is this year’s “out of nowhere” film that is not only an art house choice but popular with general audiences that have seen the film. There are far more than five films that can be mentioned in this conversation but only five will be nominated. To say that Dark Knight should only be considered because of its popularity is the traditional slap in the face that these kinds of films almost always get from the ‘traditional’ press and members of the Academy who rely on the DVD screeners because their iron lungs won’t fit into the theaters. Thankfully, those contingents have been getting marginalized as time goes on, partially due to the internet but also because so many of the ‘old guard’ are either passing away or have figured out that a fantasy film no longer involves Buster Crabbe and might really be worth watching, even if the great-grandkids have a picture from the film on their lunch box or have downloaded it to their iPhone.

The Dark Knight won’t be any kind of ‘hero’ to the Oscars regardless of whether it gets a Best Picture nomination or not and it shouldn’t be. The history of the Academy Awards is full of Best Picture winners that are little more than cheap rentals (if you can find them on video at all) while the runners up have gone on to become cherished classics of the medium. I have no doubt that, a decade from now, Dark Knight will be remembered and viewed a lot more than most of the films in the Oscar discussion this year. But the Oscars shouldn’t be about what film will be best remembered a decade from now but what the voters believe is the best film now. And that’s the way it should be, regardless of ratings or any other external influence. Of course, it won’t be that way, it probably hasn’t been for a whole lot of years and may never be that way again but we can all hope.

–KJB