Dude! Joe&#39;s Jottings, Mostly Junk

I'm not sure there has ever been an original idea in Hollywood (though one of my coworkers swears that Groundhog Day was original, and I have to admit, I cannot think of another source that may have inspired it.

But anyway...

I found a list of 2008 movies that indicates which are sequels and/or remakes. To be on the list, a movie has to have played for at least a week in LA and NYC.

The quick stats: 573 movies, of which 40 were sequels/remakes (if I counted correctly).

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now match that against the top-20 grossing movies of 2008 and you'll discover something terribly wrong with our culture today...

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and one could say Groundhog Day was "Our Town" with more repetition but a happy ending...

or maybe not. best I could come up with. :)

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Here's the list (from this random website, and yes, there are very few "originals" in there. What's really sad is that only 2 of the best pic noms made it -- people simply don't want to see quality, they want to see pretty colors and things going "boom!"

The Dark Knight
Iron Man
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Hancock
WALL-E
Kung Fu Panda
Twilight
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
Quantum of Solace
Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!
Sex and the City
Gran Torino
Mamma Mia!
Marley and Me
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Slumdog Millionaire
The Incredible Hulk
Wanted
Get Smart
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

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I'll take a look at it and pass it on to the coworker. Thanks!

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mandrakan.livejournal.com

Are there any good "4"s? Star Wars Episode IV doesn't count, for obvious reasons. Let's say, "good by the standard of the series, and the series isn't so terrible that that's faint praise."

The only one I can think of is Star Trek IV, and that was more of a serial than "Well, we've done a trilogy and there's still money to be made..." Maybe something in the horror genre (which again, serial).

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The problem with a bunch of the best picture nominations is that they don't get the publicity push that Momma Mia! got AND they don't get the number of screens. There have been several times when we've wanted to go to the movies and all that was offered at the theatres we go to are either 'popular' movies that we are not interested in or movies we have already seen. I did see most of the ones on your list but some were fairly late into the game (Button, Slumdog). I think that Slumdog was shown on more screens after the Oscars than at any point prior (no I don't have data to back this up).

For example I understand "Every Little Step" is a good movie but it played 1 week in Annapolis and I couldn't easily make it that 1 week. The week before or after and I would have.

We really should try to see more of the non-mega-blockbusters that seem to come through the one theatre. Just to support the small films.

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I liked Indiana Jones & The Crystal Skull

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Star Wars Episode IV - A New Hope was a good movie

grin, duck, run

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Looking up info on Our Town led me (via various tangents) to the concept of "time loop" as a sci-fi motif. Wiki article on time loops

thanks again!

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I really enjoyed "The Madness of King George III" -- I wish they had made a fouth one.

I'm still looking for the first two on DVD.

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Star Trek IV was a rewrite of Time After Time (David Warner and Malcolm MacDowell) by the same author - the plot: nice guy from Utopian society does the time travel thing and gets to comment on the hell that is the late 20th century. They even set them both in San Francisco, for crying out loud.

and the old series had already done its commentary on the 20th century with time travel, several times.

As "Trek" magazine commented a few years later (reviewing the film on video in hindsight), ST4 was a good, fun "movie", but relative to others, it was lousy "star trek".

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How do you count 4 for Batman
1966 - 1
1989 - 2
1992 - 3
1995 - 4 (I liked Batman Forever)

Or do you start with 89 and have 97 (Batman & Robin) as 4?

Or do you cound the 1943 Movie serial?

Also, how do you count the Bond movies?

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If I got out to the theaters more often, I'd probably support the local art house theater more, that is if they carry what I want to see.

Personally, I think a lot of the pictures that are Oscar fodder aren't nessicarily the "best pictures" but are the type that would get nominated for those awards. There seems to be a artistic prerequisite for some of these pictures. Some are rightly passed over as the critics figure out that a particular film isn't really that great despite fitting the formula, but a lot get through. There are plenty which might have been considered great for the moment, but doesn't have long-term staying power.

I also expect that pop fare will be at the top of the list, and I don't have a problem with that. Fact is, even the best of the "art house" films won't attract a large audience because of their nature. I expect the films above to attract the LCD and that's fine. Most of the above were pretty decent flicks that probably deserved the box office that they got.

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Yes, and I'm sure The Hobbit will be horrible because it is a remake of a movie based on a book...

Some of the 2010 movies that might be unique (or at least not remakes or sequels) and fun:
Hero of Color City
How to Train Your Dragon
Letters to Juliet
The Matarese Circle
Morning Glory
Priest
The Sorcerer's Apprentice (may be a remake, not clear from the description)
The Zookeeper

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Well, the 4th James Bond film was Thunderball. Not a bad film certainly, but not as iconic as the film before it.

The thing is that most series seem to be trilogies, so they end naturally before that 4th film. There aren't too many "series" films left, with Bond being one of the only ones out there. Back in the early days of film there used to be more of that. (I think of stuff like The Thin Man, Topper, and Charlie Chan.)

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And Thunderball is indicative of that other side of Hollywood: the remake/reboot for no reason other than they couldn't get the rights to do anything else ("Never Say Never Again").

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It is Disney, and it is based on the original story, but it is live action, "Mickey" is nowhere to be seen, and who knows if they'll actually really end up using the Dukas music.

I ranted about that a while back - like the recent Dr. Seuss movies, and just about every Stephen King short story ever made, you can not take a 10 minute gem of perfection and create any real art of a 90+ minute duration without first losing the essence of simplicity that made the original work in the first place.

Edited Date: 2009-07-08 05:29 pm (UTC)

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Speaking of "art house" movies, I love that Fox has a division (Searchlight) that focuses on distribution of smaller films. I've never seen a Searchlight film that I didn't really like.

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"Priest" is based on a Korean graphic novel. "How To Train Your Dragon" is an adaptation of a children's book. "Letters to Juliet" is another book adaptation.

As for "original" films, I'm kinda looking forward to "Hot Tub Time Machine". ;^)

There are some adaptations I'm looking forward to seeing. I'm hoping that M Night's adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender doesn't suck, because that could be a fun film. Tim Burton's take on "Alice In Wonderland" looks intereting on the surface. I also would like to see the new Gatchaman film (made by the same people who did the animated TMNT movie a few years back).

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faeriquene.livejournal.com

Pirates was never supposed to be a trilogy in the first place - it became so because there was money to be made. So now it can become a series for the same reason.

Geoffrey Rush, though on board to be in it, did not sound overly enthusiastic about it. :-/

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More like the (endless) attempts of Kevin McClory to profit over his one piece of the Bond franchise he claims he has.

It also was the film that marked the start of Connery's comeback from obscurity. It also came at a good time since Roger Moore was starting to become stale as Bond. Overall, I thought it was a solid film, even with the bizzare sight of Rowan Atkinson in the film.

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I just did a quick glance.

Hot Tub Time Machine?????

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It can focus on how they meet and start to work together and on what happens after the famous scene (the 2 sentence blurb I found didn't make me think it was the same story but...)

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Yes, and I'm sure The Hobbit will be horrible because it is a remake of a movie based on a book

I don't think

acroyear70 is saying that what Hollywood is producing is necessarily horrible, just that it is unoriginal. The Lord of the Rings movies and the Harry Potter movies have been pretty darned good, but would they have been such big blockbusters if they didn't have an eager adn rabid fanbase drooling over them even before they were finished filming? Even if the movies had been crap, they would have made a huge profit because they had a built-in fan base, just like the Star Wars prequels and more recently the new Transformers sequel. Hollywood isn't willing to riske 100s of millions of ISK to put together a fabulous movie unless they can guarantee an audience.

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which brings me to a rant i just had on a blog about the Captain Nemo preview that Disney's been trying to get together for a while now: movies can make better "art" if they DON'T tell us everything. the movie world can be better if we don't know everything. there's not always an f'in' need for a "prequel" scene to a well-known story.

and this is most definitely one of those times.

as i said, it is taking an absolutely perfect gem (original story, Dukas's score, the "new" Mickey, and all of the love that Walt put into Fantasia) and destroying it by padding it with everything that is utterly irrelevant to that story. Short stories work BECAUSE they're not novels, and can almost never be made better with all the padding a novel (or a 2 hour film) requires.

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