Tuesday, June 15, 2010

[Entertainment?] Weekly

Okay, I am aware that there is a massive catastrophe currently happening in the Gulf as 3 million gallons of oil spill everyday. I am also aware that Obama needs to get his shit together, turn this off, and clean up, then hand BP the bill.

However, I want to discuss something much more disturbing to me, notice the slight sarcasm. My mother graciously brought home this week's Entertainment Weekly because TrueBlood was on the cover. I thank her for that, and out of pure boredom because I had just read two 400 page books in two days (The Hunger Games, Catching Fire--amazing!), I had nothing else to read and thus read this cover to cover.

And then I saw this, THE CHART, of the top 20 movies out right now.
1.Shrek Forever After, 2. Get Him To The Greek, 3. Killers, 4. Prince of Persia, 5. SATC 2, 6. Marmaduke, 7. Iron Man 2, 8. Splice, 9. Robin Hood, 10. Letters to Juliet... etc.

I don't even care to continue this list. All I have to say (right...) is WTF?! I swear, you know there must be a problem in the movie industry when a fat, green monster takes the first. I know Shrek is popular with the kids, and I'll admit I liked the first a bit, but four... common Dreamworks, think of something else already. And speaking of this, Iron Man 2, and Sex and the City 2... does anyone left in film have any original ideas?

And I admit, I like sequels, on occasion. But the reviews of all of these are horrendous. The quality in films have plummeted. They all simply try to appeal to the mass audiences without taking a break to work on a focus group. Disney movies now contain ideas and issues that children should not even been exposed to yet, and certainly cannot understand, just to sell tickets. This may be a good thing, you ask? No. I'm sorry, I want to watch a movie that has some depth, some pain, some compassion, and some real, raw human emotions. I do not want to see a collaboration of every issue ever between humans, aliens, men, women, children, financial crisis, race, sex, etc. Start centering your audience! Not everyone wants to see Megan Fox's body thrown about with rushed action sequences.

I equally do not want to see Katherine Heigl, ever, again. The Killers actually gave me a headache. I was sitting in the theatre next to my best friend (who asked me to go, and I said yes only because I'm a good friend, and there was NOTHING ELSE I WANTED TO SEE) in the theatre willing myself to go to sleep so that I didn't have to kill any more brain cells. If I see one more romantic comedy with her or anyone else (that means you, Jennifer Aniston!) where the girl is portrayed as a needy, dumb-on-purpose, uncomfortable in her flawless body woman, I am personally going to Hollywood and hit them over the head with Atlas Shrugged. Seriously? Let these women have some power, have some actual, intelligent lines, and maybe, yes, maybe, even let them break out of this stereotypical "I will succumb to the man's world" attitude. I thought we had a winner with Angelina until she decided to marry Hollywood's Golden Boy and adopt a freaking country of children, and then made Changeling, where she spent the duration of the movie crying and getting herself put in a psyc ward because the men didn't want to give back her kid. It's what, 2010? And we're still portraying woman as these feeble little feathers. And don't even get me started with Megan Fox, parading around with nothing on, pouting her lips and fighting crime? No. Just leave.

All I can think of is the joy that I felt after watching Garden State. I literally was crying at the end of that movie simply because of it's brilliance. I honestly haven't seen a good movie since. There has been a couple of smart indie films which I enjoyed, Sunshine Cleaning, Remember Me (minus the awful ending), Into The Wild, The Hurt Locker, Atonement, and Becoming Jane, which instantly have moved up the ranks of my movie lists. However, nothing has come out in the last 5 years which has really made me sit up and say, "WOW, that's a freaking movie." It's sad really, these kids are going to grow up thinking that a movie must consist of a superhero, Megan Fox, and CGI action sequences to be good. This breaks my heart. Gone are the days where you literally want to watch the movie again right after, simply because your heart aches that these characters are no longer in your life. Gone are the days when you hear a line, or see a scene that makes you think differently about life, they will never show you the beauty of living anymore. Instead? We have four women going off into Abu Dhabi buying Prada and producers pillaging through the Literature section at Borders and settling for everything ever written by Nick Sparks.

After this devastation of summer movies, I may have to quit my quest for a secondary education certificate and write a decent script. But wait, my writing usually doesn't consist of Ogres or super heroes.

2 comments:

  1. Thank goodness I'm not alone on this. Explosions, computer graphics, and superheroes have little appeal to me. I like a movie that makes me think, where clumsy, awkward scripts aren't covered up with lots of CGI.

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  2. Very well written and very true! And you're spot on about Garden State--I yearn for more films like it these days.

    -Tony

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