Movies

Writers Strike Deathwatch: The Golden Globes

January 9, 2008 by Jim Connelly

The Writers Strike has been a bit underground in the past month or so, since there is a normal holiday downtime for new original TV shows anyway. This week, however, it took down what might be its biggest casualty yet: The Golden Globes.

With the Screen Actors Guild boycotting the event, The Globes’ massive pointlessness ramped up past the usual level, and so NBC has reduced it from a major telecast to a um, er, press conference.

Ladies and Gents, while the Golden Globes is the first major awards show (I don’t really count the People’s Choice Awards as anything but more money for Dick Clark) that the WGA strike is going to affect, it is by no means the last.

Whatever Happened to…Wal-Mart’s Video Download Store?

January 1, 2008 by Kassia Krozser

We admit it freely: sometimes we can’t help the snarkiness. It just comes out. For example, let us return to this gem from ”The Daily Loper – February 7”:

Headline: Wal-Mart entry to video downloads a â€˜game changer’
Us: Yeahhhhhh . . . no.

Like most of you, we read the Reuters piece — classic journalism filled with breathless anticipation and so-far-off-base-it’s-funny commentary from media experts — with a dose of skepticism. Despite the fact that Wal-Mart has a strong brand name, we simply could not fathom how the Wal-Mart product could change the game. In fact, our analysis of the service suggested quite the opposite. Still, Memory Lane is a fun place, so let’s look back at a fun comment:
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What a Swell Party This Is: Three Moustache Rides at the Castro Theater

December 13, 2007 by Sherilyn Connelly

The Midnites for Maniacs series at the Castro Theater in San Francisco aims to “emphasize dismissed, underrated and forgotten films,” usually in the form of double or triple features. Not all the movies are dismissed, underrated and/or forgotten, but I’m the first to admit that not all the movies we do at Bad Movie Night are necessarily bad, either. (Though some, like Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights, are so horrifyingly bad as to defy any sort of rational description.) Though they frequently unearth genuine obscurities like Skatetown, U.S.A or Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains, for what’s probably is a combination of practical and nostalgic reasons the movies tend to be teen or horror movies from the early eighties. Which is cool, and I got to see a 70mm print of Tron because of Midnites for Maniacs, so it gets nothing but the love from me.

This sort of show is always more fun when grouped into themes, and tonight’s was Burt Reynolds: At Long Last Love, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and Smokey and the Bandit. I was mostly there to see At Long Last Love, legendary among film buffs as one of the most critically reviled films ever made, mortally wounding director Peter Bogdanovich’s career. Whether or not it was one of the worst movies ever in addition to being the most hated made was difficult to say, since few people saw it during its brief theatrical run, it’s never been released on video, and it only played on teevee a few times.

For better or worse, its reputation was kept alive by the Brothers Medved kicking it when it was already down in their insufferable books The Golden Turkey Awards and The Fifty Worst Movies Ever Made (the latter of which was directly though unintentionally responsible for the (re)discovery of Ed Wood in the early eighties). As lost films go, it’s only slightly less mysterious than The Day the Clown Cried. More people have seen At Long Last Love than The Day the Clown Cried, but that isn’t saying much.

Remaster and Servant (On Not Quite Seeing Star Trek: The Menagerie in the Theater)

November 21, 2007 by Sherilyn Connelly

Yeah, I’m Paramount’s bitch. Or would I be CBS’s bitch, since they own Star Trek now? Hell, I’d like to think that on some corporate DNA level I’m still Desilu’s bitch.

From the moment I saw it on startrek.com, I knew I was going to the big theatrical screening of the remastered version of the two-part Original Series episode “The Menagerie.” To the uninitiated, what’s unique about that particular episode is that much of it is a diegetic flashback to the original series pilot “The Cage,” which featured a different cast of characters except for Spock.

I was momentarily deterred by the fact that the closest showing was at the horrible googolplex in Emeryville. As I’ve expounded on in the past, I hate those places, and if I have to deal with one I’d prefer it at least be in town. But, no. Evidently the Evil Ex-Sony Metreon and the AMC 16 (originally called the AMC 1000 in reference to its location at 1000 Van Ness but renamed a few years back because people wondered where the other nine hundred and eighty-four screens were) didn’t want to lose out any valuable showings of Bee Movie, so I had no choice but to leave the City and County of San Francisco. No choice, you understand. This was something I simply had to do. The opportunity to see an episode of the original Star Trek projected, from the season when the cinematography mattered, to get a close look at details that would be lost otherwise? Oh my yes. I anticipated spending much of the time studying the backgrounds and corners of the screen, much like I’d done in the past with The Motion Picture.

Making Us All That Much More Stupid: Bad Movie Night at The Dark Room

November 9, 2007 by Sherilyn Connelly

Oh, we piss people off.

The schedule for the next few months is posted on flyers outside the theater, and on December 15, we’re doing It’s a Wonderful Life. There was already some internal conflict about it, and some anonymous wag wrote on one of the flyers: “It’s not a bad movie, you S.O.B.s!!!” With three lines under S.O.B.s, so we’ll know they mean business.

Yeah, some people don’t like Bad Movie Night so much.

Me, I do. It’s my baby. I didn’t create the show—that honor goes to Jim Fourniadis and Ty McKenzie—but I was there on the first night: Red Dawn, March 27, 2005. Coincidentally, I broke up with my girlfriend of seven years earlier that afternoon. As a result I almost didn’t go to the show at all, but I was looking forward to it, and the point of the breakup had been (among other things) so I could go do the stuff I wanted, and Bad Movie Night was very much the stuff I wanted to do. I became a frequent co-host, eventually ~~weaseling~~ working my up to de facto curator. It’s still the most fun thing I do on a regular basis.

Six Unanticipated Consequences Of The Writers Strike

November 7, 2007 by Jim Connelly

As you obviously know, the Writers Strike started this week. And it looks like it’s going to be a long, hard slog that may not be resolved for months — maybe not even until the Actors and Directors contracts are up next June. That’s a long time, and while there are any number of articles discussing the anticipated consequences of the strike, what about the unanticipated consequences?

By definition, of course, those are impossible to predict. Which is why I’m going to predict them. So, without any further ado, here are six unanticipated consequences of the writers strike.

Book, Movie, Audience: Bringing Forces Together

September 17, 2007 by Kassia Krozser

So it follows the course of human events that popular (and not-so-popular) novels are made into movies (prompting the ever-after statement, “The book was better.”). Once upon a time, books and movies, rightly, occupied different spheres. How would they meet? It’s not like they sold books in movie theaters or screened films in bookstores.

Ah, to return to those innocent times. The joy…

Seriously gang, it’s 2007. Nearly 2008. A new age has dawned and all that. So it makes perfect sense that one key way to promote books-made-into-movies is to, well, you know, work both sides of the media spectrum. Cross-promote, build on the audience of one for the other. Use modern technology the way the Internet gods intended it.
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The Definition of Unwarranted: Appreciating the Slow, Boring Star Trek Movie

July 20, 2007 by Sherilyn Connelly

It’s the big sci-fi movie of my childhood, the one against which all others are judged. Watching it still gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve seen it, but it’s a whole hell of a lot, and I can quote lines or do entire scenes. I recognize that it’s a highly flawed movie, and for the most part I liked the rejiggered effects in the “Director’s Edition.” At least they didn’t try to shoehorn in bathroom jokes like the later, much suckier movies in the series.

Even if you haven’t already read the title or seen the accompanying picture, in this post-ironic age you’ve probably figured by now that I’m not talking about Star Wars. Instead, I refer without irony to Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

I can hear the witty rejoinders already: “You mean Star Trek: The Motionless Picture, don’t you?”

Yeah. That one.

Thanks to my family having remarkable taste (which also resulted in a lifelong love of The Beatles and Dylan), I’ve been a Star Trek fan from a very young age. Most of my fellow Generation X’ers hate the movie, though. As do Boomers. I haven’t asked any Millennials, but I’d gather that for them, Star Trek movies start with the Khan one, and they all kinda suck anyway. Story of my life, loving something everyone else hates.

Actually, I don’t know anyone who actively hates Star Trek: The Motion Picture. (Though I imagine a few haters will chime in in the comments section. Hello, haters!) Most people just dismiss it as “the slow and boring first movie,” even if they haven’t seen it in a decade or three. It doesn’t raise the well-deserved ire of the underbudgeted, poorly written and incompetently directed Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, or the overbudgeted, poorly written and incompetently directed Star Trek Nemesis, the latter being the one Trek movie I cannot sit through. Gods, Nemesis was horrible, so talky and unwatchable. (Irony alert: many people feel that way about The Motion Picture.) At least The Final Frontier has a certain ramshackle charm to its badness. Watching it can be like a parlor game: there’s something wrong with practically every scene, every shot, every line of dialogue. See if you can spot them all! Just be sure it isn’t a drinking game, lest you have alcohol poisoning by the time Spock plays “Row Your Boat” on his lyre. It’s like the Turkish Star Trek with a thirty million dollar budget, and I mean that as the highest praise.

Harry Potter and The Search For “Harry Potter Spoilers”

June 26, 2007 by Jim Connelly

It’s no secret that people who write these types of online journal thingies pay attention to our traffic. And occasionally an old post that we figured was long dead and buried rises out of the morass and gets a lot of traffic. In the last month, a post I wrote back on February 3 called “Harry Potter and The Gynormous Spoiler” has become our third most-visited page.

Because the piece itself is pretty much a trifle — it’s essentially me whinging about how I’m sure to be spoiled on Harry’s fate prior to actually finishing the book, poor me! — I’m surprised that it got any traffic at all. But I think that it just reflects the public’s appetite for and anticipation of the ending of these books, an appetite that has suddenly ramped up, and is just about to explode.

9 Reasons Why I Like The A.V. Club

June 8, 2007 by Jim Connelly

The A.V. Club started out as what seemed like a weird afterthought. I first noticed it as a link from its parent site, The Onion. Given the name and the context, I assumed that it would be full of fake news about popular culture. Instead, what I found was straight commentary on popular culture — snarky, for sure, but sincere.

It felt out of place to me. After all, The Onion itself was so full of irony and snark, that an adjunct that was essentially straight-ahead pop culture commentary seemed, well, like a bit of a joke in and of itself. But it wasn’t, and over the years, the writing became sharper and more focused, and the A.V. Club became a brand in and of itself. I’m not sure when, exactly, but I’ll bet it was when they started tossing out high-quality content on a daily basis. That always helps.

So while I still don’t know exactly why it exists in the first place, I do know this: in the past couple of years, it has become one of my very favorite places to visit on the entire Web.

Here are nine reasons why: