Evangelism
The Half Dozen: 6 Most Interesting Looking Movies for June
Thought I’d try an experiment. Seeing the amount of movies that I do, I not only try to plan ahead as far as possible, but it’s my hope that there is enough worth watching each month to justify the amount of my spare time I spend at the cinema. So for this month, I’ve picked out six movies that look interesting.
Just to qualify that description, I’m not saying that these are going to be the best six movies released, just that these six have caught my eye and, unless they get especially bad reviews before release, I’m likely to be lining up to see these at some point.
At the end of the month, I’ll see how far I got with this six, and if anything else I saw should have made this list. Here goes.
EDIT: Apologies, the embedded videos here originally were generating huge amounts of spam, so have been replaced with links. I hope this doesn’t spoil your enjoyment of this page.
Michael Winterbottom seems to have divided the critics and stirred up controversy with this one. Will be interesting to see if the cast all bring their A-game, especially given the varied acting talents on show.
Rachel Weisz rarely makes bad choices, and the trailer sells it as a fair amount of fun. Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo are less consistent in the material that they pick, so here’s hoping they picked well. This one does seem to have been hanging around a while, but hopefully that’s not a reflection of the quality.
Refreshing to see Ben Stiller not in a poor quality, mainstream Hollywood comedy, and there looks to be a good supporting cast. Word of mouth looks strong on this one at present.
Here’s where the definition of interesting comes in, because I can’t escape the feeling with this one that this is a collection of people who deserve quality material but should’ve known better. Would like for this to turn out to be good, but I’m nervous.
I do like to get a good mix of the art house and the mainstream, and there’s a lot of smaller films coming out this month – this looks to be the pick of that crop.
Francis Ford Coppola is responsible for some of the greatest works of cinema of the seventies, and while this is not expected to be one of his major works, it should still be worth spending time with.
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Why I’m almost feeling sorry for Sex and the City 2
I’m a middle-aged, heterosexual white man. So if you’re talking demographics, I don’t appear on the target audience for Sex and the City. To me, the most important thing it’s doing this weekend is that it’s showing on 8 of the 31 cinema screens within normal travelling distance for me, so there’s no [REC] 2 playing anywhere near me, and I had to catch Lebanon last week before it got shunted off. (And if you like claustrophobic war movies, you should catch it too, but I digress.)
But I became aware of Sex and the City by osmosis; in the same way that I know all of the words to most early Take That and New Kids on the Block songs, through having to hear them from my sister’s bedroom when growing up, my wife has three of the box sets of the series and watched regularly on late night comedy channels. And while it didn’t appeal to me, it wasn’t hard to see why it appealed to so many others.
I did go with her to see the original movie at the cinema, under my philosophy that I will see anything she want to. And I thought it was a 4/10 movie. My main issues were twofold; it seemed to continue the trend from the end of the series of undermining the core philosophy of the characters, making them into simpering cyphers rather than the strong role models they once were, and also that it was 152 minutes. That’s the equivalent of almost seven and a half episodes, like going to watch a box set at the cinema. And it was stretched far too long.
NBC Cancels Heroes: 6 Reasons Why They Should Make A Movie
Warning: This article presumes that you have watched all four seasons of Heroes. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
I’m now seriously starting to wonder what I’m going to have to watch next season, as all of the US TV hour-long dramas that I was watching are now ending this year. At least 24 is heading into cinemas with the upcoming movie, so we can still get more Jack SackTM action after that ends in a couple of weeks.
The one I’m probably most sad about is actually Heroes, which has just been announced for cancellation. While rumours are already starting of a mid-season TV event to finish the whole thing off, the cinephile in me thinks that it would actually work best if the Heroes of the small screen made the jump to the big screen. Here’s why:
7 Reasons Why Paramount Shouldn’t Have Passed on Anchorman 2
I’m new to this blogging malarkey, but also fairly new to this Twitter business. However, my first experience is that all it brings is doom and gloom. From Adam McKay’s Twitter feed last night, came this:
“So bummed. Paramount basically passed on Anchorman 2. Even after we cut our budget down. We tried.”
Followed about four hours later by this:
“To all who asked: no we can’t do Anchorman 2 at another studio. Paramount owns it.”
Maybe it’s understandable in the current economic climate a studio not wanting to take a risk, but there were enough good commercial reasons here for Paramount to feel that this wasn’t a risk at all, as well as some less commercial reasons.
1. Comedy sequels regularly do good business
What do the following franchises have in common? American Pie, Harold and Kumar, Austin Powers and The Naked Gun? In each case, the most successful movie at the US and worldwide box office wasn’t the first movie. In Austin Powers’ case, the take was around four times that of the original. Each of these franchises are live action comedies, not targeted at a family audience. Now of course, for every Naked Gun there’s a Police Academy, but Anchorman should have had enough going for it to ease any such concerns.
2. It may not need to make that much money anyway to make a profit
I know nothing at all in actuality about movie economics and profit making, but the beauty of blogging is that it doesn’t stop me speculating. Back in the 1920s, when all of the money made by movies was made in the cinema, it was said that a movie had to make two and a half times its budget in its theatrical run to turn a profit. Since then, the advent of videos and then DVD have changed the market drastically, and the majority of profits now come from DVD sales and rentals. Given that the original made $85 million in the US alone off a $26 million outlay. Now while the sequel would be likely to cost nearer $100 million, based on the higher profiles of the talent involved, the opportunity for some double-dipping with the DVD, such as releases alongside the original, would surely have helped to offset any cost concerns. And other Will Ferrell movies like Talladega Nights and The Other Guys aren’t cheap, but they’re still getting made.
3. There’s a strong, and young, fanbase
Without conducting extensive polling exercises or market research (which are out of my current resources, for I am a mere blogger), it would be good to know what the audience reaction would likely be to such a sequel. Well, here’s where internet sites such as the Internet Movie Database and Rotten Tomatoes come in.
Consider the Austin Powers comparison. Comparable ratings on these sites (7.1 out of 10 on IMDb and 65% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes; 7.0 and 64% for Anchorman, and around 75,000 voters on both movies on IMDb). But when looking at the demographic breakdowns on Anchorman, Anchorman scores a much higher percentage of 10/10 scores of the total votes and has better scores in the under 18 and 18-25 demographics and also scores equally well with males and females at those ages. So surely
4. The cast will sell the movie more than they were able to originally
When the original was released, Paul Rudd was probably best known as Phoebe’s boyfriend in Friends and Steve Carell was one of those guys off The Daily Show. Since the original came out, Carell has made Little Miss Sunshine, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Get Smart, Date Night and The Office, and Rudd has also stepped up to bigger roles in the last couple of years, with Knocked Up, Role Models and I Love You, Man, and they’ll be reteaming this summer for Dinner For Schmucks. If you put a teaser trailer together with no footage, no Anchorman 2 title card but just the names of the lead actors, you would get bums on seats. Are we suggesting that if they thought it was an Anchorman sequel, it would be less appealing than that?
5. There could be two movies for the price of one
One of the original’s most appealing features wasn’t the movie at all, it was the deleted scenes. There were so many that they were formed into another feature, which almost acts as an alternate universe story to the original – certain aspects (Veronica going to the show, for example) appearing in both, but there’s also a stack of new material here, and the best bits are as good as the original. For example:
If a similar amount of footage is filmed this time, take the opportunity and make a second, fully formed feature out of the offcuts, almost guaranteeing an absolute stack of money. It’s like the Sex Panther of marketing strategies. (And if you’ve seen Anchorman, but not Wake Up, Ron Burgundy, go seek it out now. Stop reading this and go. Go on.)
6. Will Ferrell actually needs a hit, and this is his best character
Will Ferrell has made a career out of Shouty Man-Child (TM), but Ron Burgundy is undoubtedly the most rounded and nuanced (and arguably grown up) of these characters. Through Talladega Nights, Semi Pro, Step Brothers and Land of the Lost, there’s been a law of diminishing returns in action. The best way to turn this around would be to allow Ferrell to go back to the original, and best, character he’s created.
7. Because it’s Anchorman, for crying out loud
I don’t need to paste in links here to news stories to remind you of the world we live in, and how serious it is at the moment. Anchorman was one of the best exponents of consistent quality silliness of the first decade of this century. Endlessly quotable, with surreal scenarios, it was also elevated by the touching love story with added competitiveness and swearing between Burgundy and Corningstone, but the defining quality was the undoubted bond between the four anchormen, and their constant battle to triumph over adversity. So please, Paramount, dig into your pockets and allow this to become a reality. Because the world needs more Burgundy.
Did I mention I preferred Dodgeball?
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