It’s not that I don’t care that today is the 35th anniversary of the original theatrical release of Star Wars. Nor is it that I am usually all that concerned about general inability to scrape together an original thought about anything ever. But the combination of these two things strikes me as good reason not to get into it with the Star Wars thing, right now.
Let me be totally clear about this: I do not condone the slapping of children by grown-ups. That said, if you’re in a movie theater, if it’s dark, if you’re ten years old, and if you refuse to shut your goddamn mouth, remember this is the sort of thing that might happen to you. So, I don’t know, maybe you ought to behave. Just sayin’.
Hollywood film-making tricks follow their own fashions–and, apparently, implosions are hot right now. How apropos that the movie industry’s current obsession is a gigantic sucking… thing.
Of course, we, the viewing public, know exactly what to do when confronted with an implosion.
{via}
Do you remember any part of the past fifteen years? If so, you might recall somebody mentioning that we now live in a highly fractured entertainment environment. The prevailing notion was that our popular culture, once a vast monolith of consolidated culture comprised of three television networks and single-screen movie theaters, had begun to slowly shatter into a million billion niches, each capable of holding only a dozen or so highly specialized fanatics at a time. We were all supposed to become so engrossed in our own peculiar, esoteric interests, that we would eventually lose the ability to talk to one another, since we no longer shared any common entertainment. Thanks a lot, Internet!
Or… maybe not?
What if I described for you a man who was incapable of naming more than one title in the Hunger Games series? A man who isn’t entirely sure what a hufflepuff is. Who hasn’t been to a movie theater since, oh, I don’t know, whenever it was that Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was released. A guy who can’t afford the really good cable package that everyone else seems to have, and therefore is beginning to suspect that A Game Of Thrones is some sort of soft-core “Skinemax” series that a bunch of hipsters have ironically decided to take seriously, but he can’t actually prove it. (And also believes–but also cannot prove–that George RR Martin manages to type up his novels despite the full-on erection that must constantly be getting in his way.) A man who thinks Girls is one third of a really old Motley Crue album.
Why, I do believe you’d say this hypothetical man (ahem, yes) is out of touch. Which raises the question: out of touch from what?
A-ha, MONOCULTURE! It was you all along!
Er… that’s not quite right is it?
Because it isn’t just mass culture–it’s also the fractured, fractal culture that was there all along. There’s been fanzines and samizdat and specialist mailing lists, and midnight movies, and underground booksellers, and subculture since the dawn of mass culture. It’s just been hidin’ sorta. The Internet made it easier to find, is all–but mass culture is still alive and kicking! Look how weird it feels when you talk to someone who doesn’t know much about it.
Niche interests didn’t–and probably won’t–kill our shared enjoyment of big, mass-market entertainment. Because you can have both! You can do obscure things and popular things at once! You do not need to live two lives to do those things! I mean, do you have any idea how much money the Hunger Games made? Do you really believe that, out of all the people who went to see that movie, there isn’t at least one person in that group who doesn’t collect handmade erotic thimbles, just to pick a hobby at random? Of course there is! Of course!
I’m no sociologist. And I know that human culture is varied and changes over time. But it seems like there will always be a few big things, and a whole lot of little things, to be interested in. Or, at the very least, we’re probably going to be stuck with that arrangement for rather a long while yet. I mean… probably. I don’t know. I’m pretty obscure myself, after all.
I don’t have much to say about the movie Titanic — I wasn’t a fan when it came out, so I haven’t really been thinking about it. It’s just not my kind of movie. But here’s the best part:
“So, in summary, suck shit.”
- Topless Robot responds to Michael Bay’s decision to alter the backstory of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
“Someone Is Remaking the Garbage Pail Kids Movie, Apparently on Purpose.” Sweet Jesus, no. The cards were charming, in their juvenile way, but that Garbage Pail Kids movie was horrifying. Even David Lynch can’t bear watching it. (I can’t prove this, but itsounds right.)
Incidentally: If they’re going to keep making old television dramas into wacky film comedies, then I think it’s completely okay for filmmakers to turn slightly off-putting children’s fare into cinematic expressions of dread and mortal tension. It’s the only way we’re going to get an HR Pufnstuf movie, anyway.
“This is a smart excavation of the marketing campaign for John Carter, and this is an excellent point: ‘Because the Barsoom books were so influential to cinema’s greatest sci-fi auteurs, just about everything in it had already been plundered and reused by other hits. And as a result, the more that was revealed of John Carter, the more derivative it looked, even if its source had originated these ideas.’ Totally true!” {From: Tim Riggins in Space | The Awl.}
This is similar to the problem I had when I read the original Jekyll and Hyde story. I’ve seen so many parodies, re-tellings, and homages over the years, that the original was almost intolerable. Especially since all of the tension in the story is meant to come from the mysterious relationship between the two title characters.
Oddly enough, I have read A Princess of Mars, and I liked it well enough. But I don’t expect older books to be fresh and exciting (I’m after something else when I read them, usually), whereas I do sort of expect that kind of thing from big-budget sci-fi epics. Which means that I guess I don’t mind if the movie completely departs from the book? That sounds weird, but it’s more complicated than I have time for.
“The 1964 NYC World’s Fair is legendary — birthplace of animatronics and Belgian waffles, the zenith of exuberant goofy corporate futurism and the beloved coming-of-age for millions who entered a modern world filled with promise. Documentarians are raising funds to produce ‘After the Fair,’ a doc featuring any amount of droolworthy archival footage of the great fair.” {From 1964 World’s Fair documentary raising funds on Kickstarter – Boing Boing.}
At last, we may finally learn who was at the DuPont Pavilion.
Streaming rights to the Whitney Houston movie The Bodyguard were revoked at Netflix after her death. According to a Netflix rep quoted by Dan McDermott, the production company Warner Bros., per IMDB ‘saw an opportunity to make really a very large amount of money on the DVD sales of her movies.’ {From: Whitney Houston movie yanked from Netflix streaming – Boing Boing}
Ghoulish? Maybe. Disrespectful? Probably. Capitalism? Definitely!
