Random Factoid #473

13 11 2010

Well, that was quick.

According to Vulture, only a month after the Chilean miners were freed from being trapped underground for 69 days, there is already a movie completed on the situation.

“The first movie about the Chilean miners, Antonio Recio’s ‘The 33 of San Jose,’ is completed and looking for distribution. The movie started filming just five days after the miners were safely rescued. It stars 32 Chileans and a Bolivian, was shot in part on location near where the miners were trapped, and will use real news footage.”

That’s an impressive turnaround, but surely I can’t be the only one crying “too soon!”  Heck, five years after 9/11, people were protesting the release of “United 93” and “World Trade Center.”  Granted this is an entirely different story since the outcome is positive, but a month is no time at all to film and complete a feature-length movie.

In my mind, this is too soon because the greater impact of these miners being trapped underground without contact with the human world makes for one of the most fascinating psychological experiments the world has ever seen.  A movie this soon will be rather shallow and ignoring the greater implications that this crisis carries.  So sometimes, sooner isn’t better.


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Random Factoid #472

12 11 2010

The New York Times ran a piece this week talking about the impact of celebrities on charitable work, talking specifically about Sean Penn’s work in Haiti and Brad Pitt’s work in New Orleans.  Obviously, any celebrity who does work for charity is a good thing, as giving back is the right thing to do (this coming from a member of my school’s community service committee).

However, charity work has become a great PR stunt in recent years, and I feel at home in a generation full of skeptics who doubt the motivations of the celebrities at times.  I feel like Sean Penn does these things out of the good of his heart, but he’s a radical at heart with some sort of secret political motivation.  Pitt, on the other hand, I have little doubt is genuine since New Orleans is his home.

Anyways, for my personal connection to this article, I felt compelled to give to a charity after a celebrity sponsored it.  I was 8 years old and obsessed with celebrity “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” and developed a bit of a crush on Tyra Banks after she sat in the chair across from Regis Philbin.  All the celebrities were playing for a charity, and hers was T-Zone.  What the charity actually was I had no idea, but I wanted to make contact with Tyra Banks!

So I worked odd jobs around my house and neighborhood, gathering my profits in a Quaker Oats box.  I wound up making about $65, which I enclosed along with a personal note for Tyra Banks to T-Zone.  Hopefully they got something out of my small contribution.  The moral of the story: the generation uncorrupted by skepticism can be inspired to do great things by celebrities they see working for charity!


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Random Factoid #471

11 11 2010

I know I have spoken quite vocally about the influence that Roger Ebert has had on my film criticism, but today, I think it would appropriate to recognize the other big influence: Gene Shalit.

The Today Show‘s resident film critic for over 4o years, Shalit would often offer his take on the weekend’s releases every Friday as I was walking out the door for school.  And for a good chunk of my life, I listened.  I recall many times getting dressed and hearing my mom yell, “Marshall, Gene Shalit is on!”  Upon hearing this, I would accordingly rush what I was doing and run to the TV.

Today marks Shalit’s last day on The Today Show, a sad day for all those who know what great influence the man with the afro and the mustache have had on the craft of reviewing movies.  I’ll forever miss the theatrical aspect of his weekly reviews and the fun he brought to them.  The way movie reviews are done today, one would think they are meant to be taken entirely seriously and academically.  Yet thanks to what I learned from Shalit, I know that reviews can be fun – and I hope they have been for everyone who reads them.


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Random Factoid #470

10 11 2010

My life is complete for two reasons today.  First, I just found out that the Houston Cinematic Arts Festival will be giving me the chance to see “BLACK SWAN” on Sunday, nearly a month before the general viewing public!  Needless to say, I’m pretty pumped!!!

But on a different level, one that you will probably appreciate and enjoy much more, a childhood fantasy may be coming true.  About a week away from the release of the first installment of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the invisibility cloak that a very young Harry Potter sports way back in the first film may become a reality.

Here’s the story according to Cinematical:

“AOL News reports that researchers at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews have come up with a fabric called ‘Metaflex,’ which is a step towards ‘smart fabrics’ that can ‘manipulate light waves to make objects, like clothing, invisible.’ At first, their studies only produced light-bending atoms on hard surfaces, but after continued research, they were able to develop the flexible Metaflex membrane, which should lead to smarter, wearable fabrics.”

I remember hearing about invisibility cloak technology being created a few years ago with cameras used to capture what was going on around the wearer.  But this is totally legitimate, and I can’t wait to put on my invisibility cloak and feel like Harry roaming through the halls of Hogwarts.  These scientists and researchers need to make one that dementors can’t see through, though.

However, this will mean that the powers of many a hero will become irrelevant.  Sorry, Violet Parr from “The Incredibles.”


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Random Factoid #469

9 11 2010

I was ten when “Spider-Man” hit theaters and suddenly made the comic book movie cool again.  Suddenly, every comic book was getting a movie adaptation and making hundreds of millions of dollars.  Running almost concurrently was the explosion of the video game movie, making significantly less money but still came pointless adaptations of games clearly not meant for the silver screen.

Now that the video game movies are starting to die down again (at least until the “Halo” movie finally gets off the ground), Hollywood needs a new novelty to adapt into movies.  They have strangely settled upon board games.  I was OK with “Battleship,” skeptical when the “Candy Land” movie was announced, and genuinely worried when the Ouija Board was getting the cinematic treatment.  But today, the movie industry officially crossed the line.

According to /Film, a movie based on the Rubik’s cube – you heard me, the Rubik’s Cube! – is being developed.  Talk about a cinematic low point.  How on earth does something like this get financed?

“We’re going to pass on the probing adult drama and go with the Rubik’s cube,” says the studio executive with the power of the purse.  So bored with proposition after proposition, he glances at his desk and decides to finance a movie based on the first object he sees.  Coming in 2014: “Roladex, The Movie” and “Inside Newton’s Cradle” battling out “Paranormal Activity 6” for #1 at the box office.

(P.S. – Today’s post is one the first in over a month that I have published on time.  Phew, it feels good to be caught up.)


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Random Factoid #468

8 11 2010

When the highly esteemed actress Jessica Alba, whom the Oscars lavish with nominations and wins every year, opens her mouth with theories on acting, the world should listen.  She knows what she’s talking about.

In a cover shoot for Elle, she spewed this enlightened remark on acting:

“Good actors, never use the script unless it’s amazing writing. All the good actors I’ve worked with, they all say whatever they want to say.”

Talk about one of the dumbest things to say; this ranks only slightly below Jenna Maroney’s “I hate the troops!” outburst on “30 Rock.”  Yet now there is no mystery why Alba has been nominated for four Razzies (the counterpart to the Oscars) for SEVEN movies!  She does it all herself, and so does everyone else in her movies!

The screenwriter knows better than the dumb actor, who looks at a script and goes “BS, BS, my line, BS, my line, BS, my line, BS, end.”  They know what the movie should be, and they entrust their words to these actors who they hope will do it justice.  Looking at Alba’s resumé on IMDb, I couldn’t help but wonder what those terrible movies would look like if the actors had stuck to the script.

But I only take this from a blogger’s imagination.  Here’s John August, an actual screenwriter on Alba’s dumb quip:

“I have to believe she was misquoted, or excerpted in some unflattering way … Oh, Jessica. Where to start? … Following your logic, you’ve never been in a movie with both good actors and amazing writing. That may be true, but it might hurt the feelings of David Wain, Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller. … Screenwriters can be your best friends. We are pushovers for attractive people who pay attention to us. I wrote that bathtub scene in ‘Big Fish’ because Jessica Lange made brief eye contact with me. So if you’re not getting great writing — and honestly, you’re not — ask to have lunch with the screenwriter. I’ve seen you on interviews. You’re charming. That charm could work wonders.”

I acknowledge that some great scenes have come from improvisation in some of my favorite movies, like Paul Sorvino slapping Ray Liotta in “GoodFellas” and Kevin Spacey chunking the asparagus in “American Beauty.”  But those are to enhance the script, not replace it.  So until Alba comes out and says she was horribly misquoted, she should be written off entirely.


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Random Factoid #467

7 11 2010

Eek.  I hope this doesn’t mean I’m some freak of nature with my memory.

On her blog “Monkey See” for NPR, Linda Holmes wrote a post about pop culture misconceptions that we all have.  Her reawakening to the idea has an interesting genesis, which I’ll quote below:

“… it somehow came up that The Flash and Flash Gordon are not the same person. By which I mean, “it came up that I was not aware that The Flash and Flash Gordon are not the same person.” (I think I sang the Queen song when The Flash was mentioned.)

I have no idea how I’ve lived as long as I have while laboring under this particular misconception, but let me tell you: Monkey See comics guru Glen Weldon, as you can imagine, was filled with … I don’t even know if it was contempt. He later claimed it was just pity, and that was supposed to be good news. ‘So,’ I said to him, ‘you’re telling me that there is both Flash and The Flash.'”

I hate to say it, but I really haven’t had many of these for the movies.  Just look at Random Factoid #184 and understand how I’m “that person” who knows every movie, every actor, and every release date.  The day a movie comes out is how I calculate time; movies are my relative measure.

I’d say the closest I ever came to a misconception was back in 2009 confusing “A Serious Man” and “A Single Man” all the time because you can’t be Oscar contenders and have the same initials.


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Random Factoid #466

6 11 2010

Sorry I missed this whole saga…

Apparently even in 2010, we can still believe that time travel existed back in the 1920s.  There has been a huge controversy over what looks like a cell phone in someone’s ear in 1928 at the premiere of a Charlie Chaplin movie.

Check out this Cinematical expose:

“It’s a wacky theory hatched by filmmaker George Clark: a person from the future visited the premiere of the Chaplin classic. The evidence? Bonus footage on the DVD, showing what appears to be an old woman (or, as Clark suggests, a man in drag) strolling toward the premiere while talking on a cellular phone. Seeing that the first cell phones weren’t invented for, oh, another fifty-some-odd years, this is it, definitive proof that there are time travelers among us!”

Turns out enough Americans were stupid enough to believe that she might be holding a cell phone that Live Science dedicated some time to it.  If you really want to know that it’s just an ear trumpet, something deaf people used to help their hearing, feel free to spend 9 minutes of your life watching this video:

But honestly, is this not ridiculous?  I don’t really buy into conspiracy theories, and this is one of the most ridiculous I’ve ever heard.


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Random Factoid #465

5 11 2010

“We don’t have an obligation to give consumers what they want when they want it.”

That’s a real quote from a studio executive, and if this profit-hungry motivation doesn’t have you up in flames, I don’t know what will.

I understand that the movie industry is losing money across the board (so much for the cries of recession-proof, eh?), but taking advantage of your consumers is NOT the way to make up the deficit.  According to /Film, this is the state of the industry:

“Despite a few prominent successes at the box office this year, the industry is in a state of financial turmoil, with DVD sales cratering, Blu-Ray sales not compensating, and the rise of rental companies like Netflix and Redbox, offering consumers a way to see a movie for cheap.”

I think Netflix and Redbox are great (I have become avid users of both this year), and with the latter announcing plans to go digital, the future is not in discs anymore.  It’s on the Internet.

Universal, Fox, and Warner Bros. have all been skeptics of the new frontier, waiting four weeks to release their movies digitally out of fear that it will affect DVD sales.  They are only about to get worse, according to /Film.  A Warner Bros. executive said, “To be honest, I think [the window] a little short today versus what we probably need … that will get revisited as those deals expire.”  And to make matters worse, they plan on limiting the movies released to Netflix instant streaming, which is quickly becoming their most used feature.

I buy few DVDs anymore, and thanks to iTunes and Netflix offering HD rentals and streaming, I don’t feel the need to buy a Blu-Ray player.  We are entering the digital age of movies, and it’s time that the studios embrace it.  I have embraced it, so should they.  There will always be a place for these discs, although first it will be in the dust and soon after in a museum next to the VHS tapes and LaserDiscs.

(For all those desiring a more business-savvy approach to this topic, check out the great piece that The Los Angeles Times ran a few weeks ago.)


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Random Factoid #464

4 11 2010

Whatever you say, James Cameron.

According to 3D’s biggest cheerleader, “Once we get to auto-stereoscopic, that’s watching 3D without glasses, it is going to be the way we watch all of our media. That’s probably eight to 10 years away.”  Apparently two dimensions haven’t been enough to satisfy moviegoers for over a century, so now we have to watch everything in an extra dimension from now on?

He predicts that just like color made black-and-white movies obsolete, the third dimension will make the second go the way of the dinosaur.  At the moment, I don’t think I’m ready to have every movie in 3D, mainly because I don’t feel like every movie needs it.  Even when the technology becomes available, it’s going to take several more decades for the technology to trickle down into the price ranges of independent filmmakers.

But until then, can you imagine a time when your movie theater is all 3D?  When there isn’t a 2D Best Picture nominee?  When you show your kids a 2D movie and tell them that all movies used to look like this?

So I’m calling it: as soon as everything is in 3D, James Cameron will be making “Avatar 4D,” a revolutionary experience in adding yet another dimension to your moviegoing experience.


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Random Factoid #463

3 11 2010

Big Brother, is that you?

How’s this for an invasion of our privacy – according to Cinematical, “Aralia Systems is taking this one step further and is using a grant ($350,000) to devise marketing-friendly technology that gathers data about ‘attention and audience movement’ in regards to films and advertisements.”  In other words, you had best be keeping your phone in your pocket or the government will file a lawsuit against you!

I’m not paranoid nor schizophrenic (I’m reading “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” in my English class so I know both of those), but this seems like a bit much.  There have got to be better ways to catch movie pirates than by surveilling everyone who attends a movie.  People were upset to know that the government was watching them when the Patriot Act was introduced to catch terrorists; how do you think people will react to find out that they are being watched to catch people illegally recording movies?!?  Those two causes aren’t in the same ballpark!

Technology makes everything harder for artists, and I understand how angry they are when people steal their work.  But this measure just screams of overstepped boundaries.  Of course nothing will ever stop me since I love going to the movies and I wouldn’t dream of pirating them, but won’t less avid moviegoers see this as yet another reason not to attend movies?

If something as silly as piracy leads to the decline and death of the movie theater, I think I’ll have to go vomit in a bucket of Blockbuster popcorn.


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Random Factoid #462

2 11 2010

There has been pressure on the Academy to recognize stunt performers at the Academy Awards; the Screen Actors Guild recently added a category to award the best stunt ensemble of a movie.  If the Oscars do decide to add a new category any time soon, I definitely think this should be it.

I’m not a particularly daring person when it comes to attempting physical feats.  I wasn’t the kid to climb a tree to the top or try the giant leap down.  I’ve often watched a movie wondering how any sane human being could do some of the feats being performed.  I’ve grown a little more cynical with the dawn of CGI, but I know there are still many daring stunt performers at work in Hollywood.

I’m also pretty amazed when I hear about actors doing their own stunts.  This summer, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Angelina Jolie did the work for “Inception” and “Salt,” respectively.  But they are all about to be put to shame by Tom Cruise, who pulled off a stunt dangling from the side of the world’s tallest building in Dubai.  I don’t care how much you pay me or how much publicity it got me, as an actor, I would NEVER do this stunt myself.

Although it doesn’t technically count as stunt work (at least to my knowledge), I still chalk up the most daring feat in acting of my time to Christian Bale for standing at the tip of the tallest building in America for “The Dark Knight.”


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Random Factoid #461

1 11 2010

I sure have had a lot to say about “Up in the Air” in the past year, largely because so much of my life has been up in the air.  In particular, my future come this May – in other words, college – has been something particularly up in the air.

While I don’t think it’s possible for anyone’s life to be entirely not up in the air, a very large part of mine has come down to earth.  The burden that is my future education has been decided.  When I got home from school today, I received a very large packet from Wake Forest University.

Inside the package was my acceptance letter to the university.  So come next August, I will be a Demon Deacon in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and I couldn’t be happier or prouder.  While my access to independent film will be significantly diminished, I look forward to continuing to provide the same great quality from my new hub.

COLLEGE! (Maybe it’s time for me to watch “Animal House.”)


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Random Factoid #460

31 10 2010

Happy Halloween, everybody!  I broke the trend I described last Halloween (Random Factoid #95) and didn’t dress up as a movie character for my school’s Halloween dress-up day.  The costumes are just too expensive; $50 for the Spock costume last year was awfully steep.  So I decided to be creative and be a teacher, and it turned out pretty well.

I guess one cinematic Halloween tie-in I could provide today was back in 2nd grade, I won a pumpkin decorating contest for my Grinch-inspired pumpkin.  My dad helped me spray paint it green, and then we stuck a Santa hat on it and called it art.  (This was just a few weeks before the Jim Carrey movie came out, to put this in a historical context).

But as for pumpkin decorating, I think you all would probably be more interested in this:

Have fun trick or treating – or just answering your doorbell!


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Random Factoid #459

30 10 2010

Is “No Country for Old Men” really the most representative movie of the great state of Texas?

Several movie blogs I read have linked to this map (whose source/origin I am unaware) that lists the movie that best defines the state.  Check it below and see where your state fits in.

As scary as Javier Bardem’s psychotic killer Anton Chigurh is with his cattle gun and ’80s nightmare haircut may be, I don’t think he represents Texas.  The tumbleweed vision of the state hardly fits in with the recession-proof metropolitan state I know and love.  If you are looking for a movie to encapsulate the more rural side of Texas, I think a better pick would be Robert Duvall’s “The Apostle.”  It may lack as a movie, but it’s pretty spot-on in getting the atmosphere right.  “Friday Night Lights” is also good for that matter.

Come to think of it, there really aren’t many movies that capture the true spirit of the modern, urban Texas – save “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” which doesn’t pain the most flattering portrait of Houston business.  So I guess that begs the question: when will someone do my state justice?

Did this map assign a deserving movie to represent YOUR state?


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