stupid movie season

....it's that time again in Los Angeles when we start to look forward to the year's big summer movies and the euphoria and sense of well-being that typically accompanies them. Just as the weather turns brighter, monolithic billboards rise up to blot out the sun and remind us that not only is this The Movie You Have Been Waiting For Your Entire Life, but also that This Movie Now Has A Catchy 2 or 3-Character Alphanumeric Acronym To Improve Its Popularity In Non-English-Speaking Countries. (What are they going to call the sequel to "Titanic?" T2 2? T2II? Tit2?)
...Even though I have a good feeling that "Brick" is going to be the only good American movie to appear in a theater this year, I'm probably gonna go see the Mission Impossible movie, just because it is impossible to make a completely bad movie with that theme song. Also will check out that X3 crap, even though Brett Ratner is a hack and has nothing better to do but stalk me. I have too much love for the X-people not to go, and I just got all geeked out looking at the Wikipedia entry and seeing that they are including some relatively obscure characters like Arclight and Psylocke (whom they even cast correctly with some hapa Asian-European chick, woohoo!). I don't know about that Superman movie. It looks kind of gay. I mean, I'm kidding, And I'm not a homophobe. But really, it does.
...A new class of tasteless summer blockbuster that I'll definitely not see is the "Movie Based On 9/11." There are two of these fuckers coming out. WHAT A TERRIBLE IDEA. I watched the trailer for "United 93" online. It's utterly boring. Except for the part where you realize....Oh yeah! It's based on the most terrible day of all of our lives! Pay ten dollars to relive it again why don't you? It's not that I'm against making films about real life events or major tragedies....it's just that, thanks to all that video camera footage, the most horrifying film based on that day has already been made, and we've all seen it a hundred times. The idea that any filmmaker working in the studio system could somehow add anything to our feeling and understanding about that day is, at the risk of repeating myself, IDIOTIC. Unless, somehow, the filmmakers had and incorporated new information about what happened on that flight, but in that unlikely case the info should be made public and not put in a movie that we have to pay for.
....Or maybe I'm being too harsh. I'll bet someone will walk out of one of these movies and gain a new perspective on our troubled world. That person will think, "Gee, I really didn't think about it too much when I saw that plane crashing into the World Trade Center...but now that I've seen a film by An Important Director that helps bring to light the human tragedy of that event, I now understand that it actually happened. Boy, that sure makes my petty disputes with Nicole look silly by comparison. I'm going to rededicate my life to becoming the next Mother Teresa, or perhaps playing her in movies."
...I think I will see that "Take The Lead" movie though. It looks sexy.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Heh. Good rundown. In spite of myself I thought the "X3" trailer looked exciting, though. But then a lot of trailers do. (I remember thinking after seeing the trailer for "Practical Magic", edited to that Meredith Brooks song "I'm a Bitch," that it would be THE feel good feminist blockbuster of the century.)

I can't imagine why anyone would go see a 9/11 film. I think they're going to be sorely disappointed when the ticket sales suck. There is no lesson to be taken from any of this, and any heroic Hollywood character arc they try building out of these peoples' tragedies is going to be tasteless.