No Comment
Just a photo that needs to be shared. As much as possible. Uncropped version after the break.
Just a photo that needs to be shared. As much as possible. Uncropped version after the break.
Good grief. Summer is coming to an end not with a bang, but with a whimper. The crop of big studio fare shuffling into theaters this weekend is barely enough to raise an eyebrow. There doesn’t seem to be all that much happening on the independent side of things, either. But there is an upside: the Oscar season unofficially starts on Wednesday with the release of George Clooney’s classy international thriller ‘The American’ (to quickly be undone by the bargain basement trash of ‘Machete,’ out on Friday). What I mean to say is: hang in there. It’s almost over. Oh, and if you haven’t seen ‘Piranha 3D‘ yet, correct that immediately.
By now it’s clear: I thought ‘Piranha 3D‘ was pretty great. And I’m pretty sure it’s not the heat stroke talking. I saw the movie twice this weekend, and both times the theater (the largest one at my local bijou) was at least half-empty, if not more. I tried to figure out why exactly this movie, which should be delighting audiences from coast to coast, didn’t connect with audiences. It barely made any money at the box office, and I heard some scuttlebutt last night that it might not have even made enough to stick that #5 placing. So, in the interest of scientific exploration and aimless speculation, I present to you five reasons why people aren’t jumping in for ‘Piranha 3D.’ To quote ‘Lost’ co-creator Damon Lindelof’s recent Tweet: “Am I seeing Piranha 3D tonight? Yes. Will I need to see it again immediately afterwards to determine whether it was a dream? Again, yes.”
I’ve got a case of good new/bad news for horror fans. The good news is that William Friedkin’s classic frightfest ‘The Exorcist’ is coming to Blu-ray in October, and will also have a special theatrical event in late September. The bad news? The theatrical screening will only be the recut extended version that nobody likes. There’s also a very strong chance that Friedkin will dick around with the movie’s colors the same way that he desecrated ‘The French Connection’ recently.
A bunch of mid-level studio movies entered the box office roller derby this weekend, and more than a few came out the other side with a black eye and dislocated shoulder blade. Summer is winding down, school is starting again in many parts of the country, and the crop of new movies wasn’t particularly inspiring (to anybody, it seems). ‘The Expendables’ being on top for the second weekend in a row says less about that movie’s quality (because it stinks) and more about how mediocre everything else is. Not even a bunch of murderous piranhas flying out of the screen in 3-D was enough to get a rise out of anybody.
I’m not sure I saw this coming. ‘Piranha 3D’ – which has been rescheduled for release several times, handed over creatively at least once (Chuck Russell, director of ‘The Mask‘ and ‘Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors,’ was attached to direct initially), and not even screened for critics in advance of its release – is probably the most surefire, start-to-finish entertaining movie of the entire summer season. That’s not just because it delivers on the late night cable thrills that movies like ‘Snakes on a Plane‘ or ‘The Expendables‘ promised (and failed to do). This movie is smart and has a wicked sense of humor. Also, it’s sexy. When was the last time any Hollywood horror movie was smart, funny, scary, and sexy? Yeah, I can’t remember either.
So this is what the dog days of summer look like – a pool of water filled with razor-toothed piranhas. Also: mediocre studio run-off. There are only a couple of weekends left in the summer, and it seems like the studios have more or less given up. We’re trapped in that twilight zone limbo of “after the big budget studio fare” and “before the upper-crust Oscar contenders,” where there’s virtually nothing exciting going on. At least around this time last year we had Rob Zombie’s underrated ‘Halloween II‘ and Quentin Tarantino’s certifiable masterpiece ‘Inglourious Basterds.’ This year we have…
I know that I’m not alone in saying this, but I loved ‘Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.’ Forget whatever else you had planned to watch and check it out. It’s easily the best film I’ve seen this year without question. It helps, of course, that the movie is replete with videogame references.
Tell me I’m not crazy here. After the break, you’ll find the trailer for the new… ahem… “musical drama” called ‘Burlesque’, starring pop idol Christina Aguilera and Cher. As far as I can tell, this is a straight-up remake of Paul Verhoeven’s gloriously trashy cult movie (and notorious mega-bomb) ‘Showgirls’. Except that it appears to be PG-13. Who in their right mind thought that a PG-13 remake of ‘Showgirls’ was a good idea? Who in their right mind thought that any kind of remake of ‘Showgirls’ was a good idea?!
Well, in the long, sad history of me being wrong about stuff on this blog, I couldn’t be wronger or sadder to report that the king of the box office castle this week is none other than Sly Stallone’s action movie starring a bunch of dudes on Viagra (both literal and metaphor), ‘The Expendables.’ Ick. I was certain that Ryan Murphy’s ‘Eat Pray Love,’ based on Elizabeth Gilbert’s best selling self help memoir-y thing – and the first female-centric summer movie since ‘Sex & the City 2′ came out in May – would win the prize. Nope, Stallone and the boys took home the top honors. As the saying goes: some people’s taste is relegated to their tongue.
Comments