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12/17/2023 4:52 am  #121


Re: Coming Soon

Rock wrote:

Cmon JJ, they brought back Serge. Serge!

Bronson Pinchot?  Oh, when was the last time I saw.....1993?  True Romance?  Oh!  It's like I'm watching the BHIII all over again.


 

12/20/2023 4:54 pm  #122


Re: Coming Soon








I like that Robert Eggers is basing his color scheme on the original Nosferatu's tints.
 


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3/07/2024 9:41 pm  #123


Re: Coming Soon




I really don't know whether this will be any good, and not even sure whether I'll bother to see it, but I am sure that none of that matters because the film's existence is sufficient to applaud it, as a sharp rebuke against IP-mongers, making it an even more radical subversion than the lame official Joker, and as a crowning embarrassment to everyone from WB/DC to Lorne Michaels/SNL/NBC who tried to shut it down and prevent its release on "rights issues".  If it's moderately funny, it'll be a pleasant surprise, but it's already earned my respect.
 


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3/07/2024 10:20 pm  #124


Re: Coming Soon

Yeah, that was the big story of TIFF that year. Great that it's finally getting a release.


I am not above abusing mod powers for my own amusement.
 

3/20/2024 2:56 pm  #125


Re: Coming Soon

It's difficult to overestimate the depths of depravity that I feel browsing through movie news these days.  Gee, what do we have on the horizon guys?

Roadhouse remake (which even the director is boycotting)

35-year-old new sequels to Ghostbusters and Beetlejuice

25-year-old reboot of the X-Men cartoon

Reboot of a Neverending Story "franchise"

Yet another Alien

Another live-action Popeye

Another live-action Cat in the Hat

Another Crow (only cringier!)

And probably the only piece of depraved news that could give me a small dose of evil cackling joy: Someone thought it was a good idea to put Ricky from Better Off Dead in charge of all of the children at Nickolodeon in the '90s.
 


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4/10/2024 6:37 pm  #126


Re: Coming Soon

It's been really pitiful reading all of the prognostication on the fate of Francis Coppola's long-awaited new film, Megalopolis.  Coppola had wrapped production last year, and has just screened the film for the first time just before Easter to the industry distributors.  The film has just recently been included for this year's Cannes line-up as well.  But the industry distributors were apparently unimpressed, and that's all that any of the film press seems to want to talk about.  The one critic review from that screening, from Deadline, was positively glowing, but never mind that.  The all-knowing wizards of cinema finance were baffled and confused, so much so that they couldn't even remember their own names for any on-the-record comments, choosing instead, like sniveling cowards, to hide their spite behind anonymity.  (And wouldn't it be wonderful if one of these entertainment news organizations had the snark to drop a "anonymous quote from a distributor who may have had a strong passing resemblence to Ted Sarandos", since everyone in that screening room knows everyone else, but, in this day and age, movie journalists are just as sniveling as the hands that feed them.)

Coppola has already paid for the (reported) $120 million production budget, so he's only asking for a distributor to put up the advertising money.  And it's true that Coppola is asking for $80-100 million for that, but then again Coppola has never been good with math.  I assume that he'll happily take a deal with a $20-30 million advertising budget.  But even with that being said, there are no takers willing to step up just yet.

Since these Hollywood suits are sniveling cowards, they can't rightly blame their own dim wits for finding the film so baffling and confusing, and so they naturally place the blame on the dimwitted American public.  Or more precisely on the terribly stupid youth who neither know who Coppola is or care to learn about his movies.  This "under 30" audience simply has no patience to sit through some Boomer's metatextual allegory on Roman/American decadence.  And this "under 30" audience is apparently too stupid to understand how insulting this broad assumption is to them, so they continue to politely agree.  These companies flatter the Zs for their "savvy" but they're really just applauding their ignorance and softening up their gullibility so they can recycle the same old scams that they assure the youth they don't need to learn about from history.  It's the same scam of generational navel-gazing that media companies pulled on the Boomers when they were young, ignorant and gullible.

A film that's too weird, after all, is hard to market, and it's more likely to flop in theaters.

I was unaware that people no longer want to watch weird movies.  What I'm reading here is more along the lines of "this is making our already over-compensated jobs too difficult and we really don't want to lose all of this unearned income by admitting that we really don't know what we're doing beyond marketing campaigns based on elementary demographic semiotics".  And this position is all the more surreal when one considers how poorly all of the more carefully curated demographic marketing campaigns have been at acheiving box office receipts in the past couple of post-pandemic years.  I'm sure that stuff like Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones and First Omen are all safer to market, but that didn't actually mean it put very many asses in seats.  (We'll just blame it on kids who don't even know what a stay-puff marshmellow man is.)

Here's some real insanity though.  One of the articles I viewed on this was from Screen Rant, one of the typically terrible "movie blogs" out there, and I noticed at the bottom there's a link to an article about a Labyrinth 2.  Not shocking, but depressing still.  This article is making the claim that Labyrinth 2 is already expected to make $100 million box office.  But there's a couple of problems with that projection.  There has yet to be a single frame shot of the film, I see where no actors have yet been hired, and the director recently left the pre-production.  So, I dunno.  I'm not very good at math either, but at some point, maybe, a lot of this industry economics is built on a Babylonian tower of bullshit and solid brass balls.  Maybe that's why they took Coppola's film so personally.
 


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4/10/2024 6:57 pm  #127


Re: Coming Soon

I was going to write something about what I read about this Coppola nonsense earlier today, but it just made me want to punch myself in the face and forget how these fuckhead studio executives are actually on the same planet as me.

Yes cowards.

Yes stupid.

Yes maliciously ignorant.

You can almost see their stupid faces when they are saying those stupid comments they anonymously leaked.

Fuck them. I hope their souls get brain tumours.

And no, I don't have to see the movie to know how wrong they are.

 

4/10/2024 8:54 pm  #128


Re: Coming Soon

But how fun is it to read through all of the studio plants in the comments?  "You know, these guys have a really tough job and they're doing the best they can..."

Buncha Burkes out there: "This installation has a substantial dollar value attached to it....If you're smart we can both come out of this as heroes and we'll be set up for life..."
 


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4/11/2024 5:04 pm  #129


Re: Coming Soon

Jinnistan wrote:

But how fun is it to read through all of the studio plants in the comments?  "You know, these guys have a really tough job and they're doing the best they can..."

Buncha Burkes out there: "This installation has a substantial dollar value attached to it....If you're smart we can both come out of this as heroes and we'll be set up for life..."

I was reading that NYTimes piece that Filmbuff posted about the recent trend of shelving films for the tax write-off which included a depressing paragraph which I think best articulates this resignation among the entertainment press, and collectively the consumers, meekly accepting their fealty to their corporate overlords.  There's an air of inevitability and a gloss of futility:

Art has always been commerce, and studios like Warner have long controlled the media we’re offered. For almost a century, they have scrapped projects and let ideas languish, mostly without our ever knowing much about it. We might complain today about pop culture governed by algorithms and data, but it’s not as though 20th-century decisions about which movies hit Blockbuster or which songs dominated the radio were based on some high-minded meritocracy; we have always been at the mercy of boardrooms.

I like the "media we're offered" part.  Like we're all Oliver Twist hoping for more gruel.  Charitable sonsofbitches, these execs.  And the part about "high-minded meritocracy" echoes the sentiment of "I don't believe in quality".  It was all just a dream, folks, and pray you never have to wake up.  These bootlicking cucks can tell themselves this tale, so they can feel less ashamed of being utter cogs, and then try to convince us all so they won't feel so defeated.  Let's all be grateful that our Media Masters allow us to watch anything at all.


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4/11/2024 6:14 pm  #130


Re: Coming Soon

But nevermind the swine.  Let's get to the Chateaubriand.

Our annual reminder that, despite 'pop' opinion, there are plenty of films out there which do not require the greasy graces of our Hollywood peckernecks to be bestowed upon our bowls.

Let's start with the buried lede, which is that we're getting a new Leos Carax film, C'est pas moi, described as an autobiographical "cut-up" of his 40-year career.

And now with the headlines:



Coppola's Megalopolis will be seen by people who are not preoccupied with devising a collectable popcorn bucket.




Yorgos Lanthimos' follow-up


Plus:

New David Cronenberg, The Shrouds
Paolo Sorrentino's Parthenope, with Gary Oldman
Guy Maddin's Rumours, with Cate Blanchett and Alicia Vikander
Yet another Quentin Dupieux, The Second Act, after the two he put out last year (that I can't keep up with)
George Miller's Furiosa

And new films from Sean Baker, Paul Schrader, Jia Zhangke and Ariane Labed (Yorgos' wife)

I'm sure there's several others under my radar, but these are the ones I'm excited about.
 


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4/11/2024 7:40 pm  #131


Re: Coming Soon

Not to mention Beverly Hills Cop 4 and Bad Boys 4.


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4/11/2024 8:15 pm  #132


Re: Coming Soon

This PM is killing me.


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4/11/2024 9:07 pm  #133


Re: Coming Soon

Ah, the PM. The time when Bill Cosby was raping people, as a wise man once said.


I am not above abusing mod powers for my own amusement.
 

4/11/2024 10:49 pm  #134


Re: Coming Soon

What are you looking forward to at Cannes, Rock?


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4/12/2024 10:26 am  #135


Re: Coming Soon

Jinnistan wrote:

Jinnistan wrote:

But how fun is it to read through all of the studio plants in the comments?  "You know, these guys have a really tough job and they're doing the best they can..."

Buncha Burkes out there: "This installation has a substantial dollar value attached to it....If you're smart we can both come out of this as heroes and we'll be set up for life..."

I was reading that NYTimes piece that Filmbuff posted about the recent trend of shelving films for the tax write-off which included a depressing paragraph which I think best articulates this resignation among the entertainment press, and collectively the consumers, meekly accepting their fealty to their corporate overlords.  There's an air of inevitability and a gloss of futility:

Art has always been commerce, and studios like Warner have long controlled the media we’re offered. For almost a century, they have scrapped projects and let ideas languish, mostly without our ever knowing much about it. We might complain today about pop culture governed by algorithms and data, but it’s not as though 20th-century decisions about which movies hit Blockbuster or which songs dominated the radio were based on some high-minded meritocracy; we have always been at the mercy of boardrooms.

I like the "media we're offered" part.  Like we're all Oliver Twist hoping for more gruel.  Charitable sonsofbitches, these execs.  And the part about "high-minded meritocracy" echoes the sentiment of "I don't believe in quality".  It was all just a dream, folks, and pray you never have to wake up.  These bootlicking cucks can tell themselves this tale, so they can feel less ashamed of being utter cogs, and then try to convince us all so they won't feel so defeated.  Let's all be grateful that our Media Masters allow us to watch anything at all.

Is that quote from the author of the article, or a quote from one of the studio dinks in charge of what gets produced?

If it is the latter, no surprise that they are trying to elevate what they do to some kind of valuable art in and of itself. They are simply figuring out what the audience wants so they don't have to themselves, and they aren't getting their due credit for thinking their audiences are a bunch of slop guzzlers. They are clearly doing God's work by shelving films that would appeal to a minority of people.

But if it is from the actual journalist, it's sad that they don't recognize what they are saying here isn't that far from the attitude that no one actually needs the New York Times either since people are already getting what they want with click bait articles. So who are they to complain when all other media starts to collapse in on itself due to the challenges presented by reading full paragraphs or anything longer than 100 words. The world is too dumb for you too NYT, so fuck off and stop complaining.

The most frustrating thing though is how much actual audience members guzzle up this pandering shit. And I guess maybe that means the majority of us do deserve to be looked down upon and treated like that brain rot that we are. At least half of the posters at movieforums either eagerly accept this or passively shrug about it when it's pointed out.  And they are supposed to be real movie fans. At least enough that they presumably want to discuss them.....but of course they don't. They just want to make lists of the things they've seen and then jerk eachother off with questions about the weather and how much popcorn that can fit in their mouth at once.

It's just all so sad and pathetic. Maybe if the standard movieforum cunts like Yarn or Skizzerflake would stop being so obsessed about others who can enjoy or appreciate things they can't, and actually had a little patience with any worldview that isn't theirs, maybe they could grow into something that isn't so pathetically boring. But of course they won't, and that's exactly the problem with so many out there. They are too busy being resentful of something that makes them feel like they are on the outside, that they don't even listen. They think it is beneath them to understand anything that isn't already speaking directly to them.

It's almost like this attitude is mirroring exactly what is happening in political discourse. Which is why Yoda's no politics rule at movieforums is obviously pointless, because the embrace of any artistic philosophy and then the ensuing demands that this same philosophy should be the only one that gets parroted over and over again, is in itself political. At it's root is a demand to tell everyone else how they should be thinking, preferably, in lockstep with them. And it seems that the reasons there is such resentment for those who don't accept this reasoning, and by default refuse the notion that art is nothing by a byproduct of capitalistic enterprise (and definitely not something to engage and challenge a populace) has to do with free thinking. And free thinking I suppose is now something only certain types of people do. Enemy type people. And what is a better way to diminish the power of those who think differently than if you delete or diminish those things which reflect their different belief systems.

It's not only that the films themselves are supposed to be viewed as 'bad investments'. So are the people who want to see them.

 

 

4/12/2024 11:43 am  #136


Re: Coming Soon

crumbsroom wrote:

Is that quote from the author of the article, or a quote from one of the studio dinks in charge of what gets produced?

It was the NYT writer's own view (which is a whole other problem - the piece wasn't an editorial).  The writer was overall critical of the practice, which is not just the shelving of finished films but the overall shrinkage of accessible catalogues, either from streaming platforms or physical media, that has been easily apparent.  This "vaulting" is a whole other kind of investment strategy, to increase a film's value through inaccessibility, so that when it is made available - "limited time only!" - it's more lucrative.  Disney is already the king of doing this with their own archives, but even since they bought the Fox catalogue, and they stopped allowing prints of Alien or The Fly for special Halloween screenings, or pulling all of the Simpsons DVDs off the shelf.  It's manufactured scarcity.  Perhaps when these shelved films have peak word-of-mouth enthusiasm, they'll make such an "event" out of their release.

But even as critical as this writer is, I still have to take issue with the feeble "well, this is just the way it is and always has been for a century" attitude.  Yes, there have always been media gatekeepers.  That's a lazy way to avoid holding our current gatekeepers accountable.  History is not so flat.  You also see variations of this in political discourse.  It's the cynical "wisdom" used to evade analytical critique.  "Well, you know Cain, so...."  These kinds of flaccid excuses, however begrudgingly worded, are meant to reinforce the sense of the audience's powerlessness, and that this lack of power is the natural order of things.  It sucks but it is what it is.

crumbsroom wrote:

At least enough that they presumably want to discuss them.....but of course they don't. They just want to make lists of the things they've seen and then jerk eachother off with questions about the weather and how much popcorn that can fit in their mouth at once.

The bigger point is how much of the design of "social media" isn't very conducive to discussion of any type.  Message boards like these have given way to more pithy postings on Twitter, Reddit, or some random comments section.  It's indicative that even Letterboxd isn't built for more formal interactive discussion.

crumbsroom wrote:

And it seems that the reasons there is such resentment for those who don't accept this reasoning, and by default refuse the notion that art is nothing by a byproduct of capitalistic enterprise (and definitely not something to engage and challenge a populace) has to do with free thinking. And free thinking I suppose is now something only certain types of people do. Enemy type people. And what is a better way to diminish the power of those who think differently than if you delete or diminish those things which reflect their different belief systems.

I think the capitalistic aspect is clear, which is to transform our value systems into transactional gratifications.  All of our pleasures and meaning become mere transactions, like buying a latte or a new car.  Art is commerce, "a night out".  Film and music are simple, mindless pleasures, instantly but temporarily gratifying.  Sex becomes pornography, instantly but temporarily gratifying.  Food becomes "happy meals", instantly but temporarily gratifying.  We'll all be back tomorrow for our fix.  Any meaning or purpose in our lives becomes strictly economic.  Even celebrating our passions and interests online has become primarily about "building your brand".

crumbsroom wrote:

It's not only that the films themselves are supposed to be viewed as 'bad investments'. So are the people who want to see them.

I do feel as if some of this is almost vindictive, maybe even payback, because audiences have been so lukewarm to the studios' perceived "good investments" over the years.  "Oh, you didn't like our Justice League?  No Batgirl for you!"  We're being trained to be acquiescent to whatever they've determined a good investment to be.  That NYT quote certainly isn't the first time I've seen this sentiment that audiences should be more grateful.


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4/12/2024 12:59 pm  #137


Re: Coming Soon

The thing I'm becoming increasingly resentful about in regards to this, is how much those who champion this transactional nature of art frame the argument. They are the ones enjoying films. They are the ones having fun. And anyone else who might want to add more to the discussion of a films value, are straight up telling people not to have fun or enjoy anything. Because, in the immortal words of Skizzerflake (paraphrased) 'being bored means it's gotta be good'. Clearly, some are unable to separate their own feelings from anything else a completely different person may be thinking or feeling. Clearly some don't understand fun can be a multi-layered experience.

And so as a result I (or anyone else who talks about a movie beyond how cool or fast paced it is) become the all too serious crank, telling people not to enjoy anything, and that its best if they just stay bored when watching a movie. Because that's the surefire way towards being able to brag about having good taste.

Not that I need to explain any of this here, but thought does not negate enjoyment. Patience doesn't erase fun. Pushing back a little against being completely ignorant, isn't passionless intellectualism. I've been just as stimulated by Raid 2 or Troll 2 as I have been towards The Turin Horse or Andrei Rublev. But it seems imperative for these sorts that anything that isn't presented as basic entertainment should be quarantined off from even brushing up against anything a fun loving action fan prefers. They are mutually exclusive. Enjoying one of these, somehow, threatens the very fabric of a life where anyone can ever enjoy anything (even when it's pretty clear that if anything like this is true, it's the complete opposite)

And frustration only mounts when time after time I explicitly spell this distinction out, and yet the same limp dick responses still come immediately after. Art needs to be fun. Fun produces capital. So, too bad, if your no-fun thinky-pants movie doesn't qualify as being an actual movie. It's lucky to even exist, because who wants to invest in a handful of chinstrokers who enjoy being bored (and there is that 'just be happy with whatever you get' bullshit, yet again)




 

 

4/30/2024 7:55 pm  #138


Re: Coming Soon



 


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5/01/2024 1:35 pm  #139


Re: Coming Soon

The promotional materials for the above film, Longlegs (Oz Perkins latest), is pretty insane.  compelling enough to intrigue and inspire one to avoid spoilers at all costs.  Thankfully, no one seems to know anything about the film yet, but there's enticing details.


There's a quick shot in the above trailer - at the exact 1:00 mark:





And someone on Reddit brightened the image to reveal the following.....



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5/04/2024 7:18 pm  #140


Re: Coming Soon



 


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