Can the San Diego Comic-Con really make or break a movie? That’s a yearly question asked in the days leading up to the annual geekfest, and few experts ever provide a definite answer. Most people point to weak Con receptions of footage from ultimately failed films like The Spirit and Catwoman as proof of the event’s influence. Meanwhile, there’s the corresponding recognition that positive buzz at the Con for certain niche titles like Twilight and 300 led those films to boffo box office.
But despite the few times Con attendees have been on the same wavelength with the rest of the moviegoing public, it’s important to remember the many movies that had geeks excited in San Diego but which couldn’t garner much interest from mainstream audiences in theatrical release. After the jump, we take a look at ten such movies that buzzed well at Comic-Con only to fizzle at the box office. …Read more
SpoutBlog is sitting out this year’s San Diego Comic-Con International, but that doesn’t mean we’re not paying attention to the geek mecca from afar. In a way, we get to have a more sane perspective without all the screaming and crowdedness (between Twilightand Johnny Depp, it’s apparently madness). Plus, we’re checking out all of the direct coverage, and I do believe we’re getting a more comprehensive experience this way.
I’ve selected some of my favorite coverage from the last 24 hours so that you may share in the appreciation as a fellow outsider (or maybe you’re there and want to see what others have seen/heard). Check out all the best comments, videos and links after the jump:
I am all for holidays, especially those having to do with movies. But they should have some sort of meaning, whether they honor an anniversary or birthday (real or fictional person’s), inception date (remember when people celebrated HAL’s birthday on January 12, 1997?) or similarly significant event. They shouldn’t just exist to exist. Star Wars Day, which is apparently today (interestingly, mere days before Star Trekhits theaters), is nothing more than a joke turned into a pseudo-holiday, for which the only purpose is to be able to say that it’s Star Wars Day. You don’t get a free comic book out of it, you don’t get off from work to hold a Jedi-based mass and you certainly don’t get to wear your Star Wars costumes around town without getting beat up. Especially not if your only reasoning for being in droid-garb is the silly pun “May the 4th be with you.”
Don’t get me wrong, I love puns, I love Star Wars(some of the movies, at least) and I do appreciate the joke from which the thing originates. But actually trying to turn the date into an officially recognized holiday — for members of the Jedi church, of course — is just plain silly. Geeks, feel free to watch a marathon of Star Wars movies today if you wish, but please stop with the “Happy Star Wars Day” greetings already. Bah humbug!
Check out some of the bloggers who annoyed me with this nonsense today, after the jump:
It’s amazing, and really quite sad, that nearly a decade after the release of The Phantom Menace, people are still complaining about George Lucas. Sure, he also messed up his Indiana Jones franchise last summer, but whatever, there’s nothing we can do about it except skip out on further Lucas productions. The diehards are still apparently with him enough to have gotten the Clone Wars TV series renewed, to continually dress up in Star Warscostumes for comic conventions, and to eventually even buy Fanboyswhen it hits DVD (the movie’s terrible $200,000 gross in its first week isn’t so much a reflection on fan interest so much as it’s the fault of The Weinstein Co.’s distinterest).
So, is there really any reason for the film The People vs. George Lucas, which is still a year away from release, to exist? Hasn’t the internet supplied plenty of documentation on the hatred of Lucas over the past ten years? Now that we have an early trailer for the film to look at, here’s what the blogosphere has to say on the doc and the issue in general:
If you’re a guy who lives in your parent’s basement, writes a movie blog, even vaguely resembles the Comic Book Store Guy’s tumescent mien, and have actually watched one of the Star Wars prequels in the last five years by choice, chances are you’ll probably enjoy Kyle Newman’s long-delayed (and for good reason) Fanboys… If you’re an adult, who refuses (or better yet forgets how) to quote episodes of The Simpsons, chances are you won’t.
That’s 75 of the 165 words The Playlist devotes to reviewing Fanboys, in a post appropriately titled ‘Fanboys’… Whatever.
It makes a certain kind of sense that *I* never bothered to see this film (although we did cover its Kevin Spacey-presented screening at Comic-Con last summer) and forgot it was even coming out this week. But I wonder if even the target audience alluded to in that pullquote is still desperate (if they ever were) to see this thing? After all the rigamarole with the Weinsteins and the cancer subplot, and literal years of chatter about it online, is it possible that Fanboys peaked long before it was released?
Fox may frustrate fanboys once again. Though not as sharp a jab as the studio’s Watchmen lawsuit, an option Fox holds on Emily Blunt could potentially keep her from playing Black Widow in Marvel/Paramount’s Iron Man 2 (a role she’s perfect for). Instead, she’ll have to settle on starring opposite Jack Black in Fox’s reimagined adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels.
And speaking of disappointing fanboys: as if Scott Derrickson hasn’t already done enough damage to science fiction with his recent remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, he has just been tapped to direct a single movie combining two of Dan Simmons’ Hyperion novels.
2009 Oscar nominee John Stevenson (Kung Fu Panda) will direct the new He-Man movie, Masters of the Universe. Worse than that, however, is Variety’s reminder that another 2009 nominee, Frank Langella, costarred as Skeletor in the godawful 1987 Masters of the Universe.
2009 Oscar nominee Mickey Rourke (who is also slated for Iron Man 2)will star in a kind of anti-Slumdog Millionaire, an American gangster flick titled Broken Horses, that will be scripted, directed and co-produced by Indian filmmakers. It will be the first Hollywood film from Reliance Entertainment since the company funded the DreamWorks exit from Paramount last year.
“Breaking a longstanding taboo, Fox is releasing male-driven pic Taken on Super Bowl weekend,” begins the weekend box office preview from Variety. While I may believe that Taken could indeed be a guy movie, it certainly hasn’t been marketed as such. Anyway, I never understood the concept of a Sunday event keeping men from going to the movies on the Friday and Saturday before. So, if the film does take the top spot this weekend, I for one won’t be too shocked.
Those who have spent the last three or four years following the parallel production nightmares of Fanboys and 5-25-77would be excused for assuming that all films involving teenagers and early cuts of Star Wars films are cursed. The former, which Kevin reviewed at Comic-Con, should have been the nerd toast of summer 2007, but reshoots, reedits and a scuffle with the Weinsteins over the film’s pesky downer undercurrent mandated a number of shuffles down the calendar; it’s now tentatively scheduled to hit theaters at the end of next month. Geek excitement for 5-25-77 hit fever pitch when the film’s first trailer hit the web way back in January 2006 (and subsequently the won Golden Trailer for the best promo for a film that wasn’t actually released — yes, such an award exists). A rough cut screening (apparently, very rough) followed a year and a half later, and a year and a half after that, Patrick Read Johnson’s long MIA autobiographical epic, now simply called ‘77, had its official World Premiere this weekend at the Hamptons Film Festival, where it won a Heineken-sponsored indie auteur award. But don’t get too excited yet — it’s still not finished.
For all the griping about how critics just don’t get the stuff that fanboys love, a show of the numbers suggests that reviews from Tomatometer and Metacritic ranked critics are more friendly to movies based on comic books than maybe any other single genre. Jim Emerson elaborates on his findings.
Rumsey Taylor on the “brand ambience” of Mad Men: “When Draper is describing each of these products, you’re held rapt by his words, and how they pronounce, with consummate precision, their transcendent significance. It’s all bullshit, of course, but what wonderful, wonderful bullshit.”
Last night at Largo in Los Angeles, “Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen performed a series of light and effortless vignettes co-written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.” According to Vulture’s Nick Confalone, the performance felt “like sneaking a peek at P.T. Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love notepad, exploring that movie’s notion that there’s someone for everyone, even though everyone is a little bit weird and fucked up. Whatever the future for this show, last night it made us grin like an idiot and tell our friends, ‘Love is awesome, right?’” Wonderful bullshit indeed.
Kevin Spacey was on hand to introduce the movie he produced two years ago, and which has become the film that won’t come out, and the movie that wouldn’t die. Spacey joked during the introduction, “I’d like to welcome you to our third annual Comic-Con screening… and wait until you see what we have for you next year! More footage! Then we’ll have a DVD release with more extras! And then… we’re going to series!”
It ain’t too far from the truth. This little movie about friends who take a roadtrip from Ohio to Skywalker Ranch in Northern California in order to steal a copy of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace for their friend who is dying of cancer has had two major bonuses that have turned into setbacks. First, George Lucas saw the movie, basically gave his blessing to the film and offered up the chance to use actual Star Wars sound effects. Then the filmmakers got more money, and decided to add some scenes which required reshoots. However, the actors weren’t available, so that affected the setback even more.
Two of the biggest stories populating the movie blogs this week have to do with George Lucas. Well, the Fanboyscontroversy has less to do with the Star Warsdirector, but obviously he’s connected in some way. The other story has to do with Lucas’ statement that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skullis (gasp) just a movie. Here is the quote, from USA Today, that’s putting fear into the minds of movie geeks throughout the galaxy:
“When you do a movie like this, a sequel that’s very, very anticipated, people anticipate ultimately that it’s going to be the Second Coming,” Lucas says. “And it’s not. It’s just a movie. Just like the other movies. You probably have fond memories of the other movies. But if you went back and looked at them, they might not hold up the same way your memory holds up.”
Yes, he goes on to reference the reception of The Phantom Menace, which is obviously fair, but also a bit unbalanced. Certainly our disappointment with the Star Wars prequels had enough to do with their stand-alone quality (or lack thereof), in addition to but separate from them coming with such high expectations.
Get out your violins: Hollywood is depressed! Seems that an expected post-WGA strike production boom hasn’t happened, due to some mix of the shitty economy and impending SAG-strike anxiety. An anonymous lawyer quoted in this story describes the situation thusly: “There’s a huge amount of crankiness right now, and everybody — particularly agents — feels like they’re getting screwed.”
The Weinstein Company, acquiescing to protests from Star Wars nerds, has announced they’ll release both the director’s version of Fanboys(which includes a subplot about cancer), and the studio’s cancer-free cut on DVD. The nerds have yet to release a statement, but Fanboys producer Keith Mann is not pleased. “This is more about avoiding picket lines at [Weinstein's Superhero Movie, which opens this weekend] than it was about making a decision about the release of our movie,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.
Killer Films and Moxie Films are joining forces to spin a feature out of Anthony DePalma’s book, The Man Who Invented Fidel: Castro, Cuba, and Herbert Matthews of the New York Times.
Last week a photoshop of Harvey Weinstein as Darth Vader made my birthday. Today, a whole video featuring “Darth Weinstein” has made my week. And it’s only Monday. The animated companion to the Stop Darth Weinstein! campaign comes to us via Harvey’s biggest fan, Stu Van Airsdale of The Reeler, now in his second full-time week over at Defamer (in case you haven’t been paying attention). Though the video is pretty stationary for the most part, it’s worth at least listening to for its dead-on parody of where Harvey’s head is likely these days. Be sure to watch the opening intro, though, and the end, which gives more details on the Weinstein Co. boycott protests happening in NY and LA (and, if you organize, your town) this Friday. I might just have to venture up to the AMC in Times Square for my own look at the protesters who attend in costume (it’s being encouraged).
And don’t forget, if you love Star Wars and want to see Fanboys as it was meant to be seen, then boycott Superhero Movie this weekend.
If I had a nickel for every time I heard a movie fan, blogger, filmmaker or anyone else complain about Harvey Weinstein, I’d be as rich as George Lucas. And speaking of Lucas’ money, the Star Warscreator ought to take some of his coin and throw it at ol’ “Harvey Scissorhands” — to purchase Fanboys, that is.
Turns out Weinstein is once again guilty of taking a film into his own “hands”, as it were, according to Wired’s Underwire Blog. This time it’s with Kyle Newman’s Fanboys, which tells the story of some uber Star Wars fans who attempt to see The Phantom Menacebefore it’s official release date, because one of them is terminally ill with cancer and might not be around by then. Apparently, in the latest edit the boy’s illness is played down (notice how it isn’t mentioned in the trailer above either) and the overall tone of the film is more mocking towards Star Wars fans in general.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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SpoutBlog is sitting out this year’s San Diego Comic-Con International, but that doesn’t mean we’re not paying attention to the geek mecca from afar. In a way, we get to have a more sane perspective without all the screaming and crowdedness (between Twilight and Johnny Depp, it’s apparently madness). Plus, we’re checking out all of the direct coverage, and I do believe we’re getting a more comprehensive experience this way.
I am all for holidays, especially those having to do with movies. But they should have some sort of meaning, whether they honor an anniversary or birthday (real or fictional person’s), inception date (remember when people celebrated HAL’s birthday on January 12, 1997?) or similarly significant event. They shouldn’t just exist to exist. 
It’s amazing, and really quite sad, that nearly a decade after the release of 
For all the 
Two of the biggest stories populating the movie blogs this week have to do with George Lucas. Well, the 
