The news that Disney is buying Marvel for $4 billion has taken the entertainment industry by surprise. But while the deal itself came out of nowhere, it’s not too shocking that these companies would see the benefit of coming together. They each involve an enormous universe full of characters, stories and, most importantly, licensing opportunities. And at a time when original plot ideas are difficult to come by, this acquisition could mean a surplus of comic book and film synopses based solely on the possibilities of team-ups, battles and other crossovers between the Disney and Marvel worlds.
To give you an idea of where this deal could lead, we’ve come up with ten potential movies that we’d love to see come out of the Disney-Marvel relationship. Check them out after the jump. …Read more
One thing you have to love about the fanboys, they’re always a glass-half-full kind of people. Whenever one of their beloved movies gets ripped apart by critics, they point to the box office results with pride. Critics are meaningless, they remind us, because Transformers and the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels and the Star Warsprequels made so much money. And now, with their Watchmenhaving received both mixed reviews and a relatively disappointing opening weekend, they’re still defending its success to the end. Drew McWeeny of HitFix said it best in a Tweet this morning: “Box-office talk is absolute death to me. I just don’t care. It got made. I liked it. I win.”
McWeeny may not exactly be the king of the geeks, but he does inadvertently represent them today. Because whether or not Watchmen has technically underperformed (or “failed” in any way) should not be their concern any more than the negative reviews (or our list of reasons claiming the comic adaptation is unnecessary). But if they are going to use the defense that the box office doesn’t matter, they aren’t allowed to celebrate grosses this summer when Transformers: Revenge of the Fallenreceives bad reviews yet still has a strong opening.
More on the debate on the topic of Watchmen’s success or failure after the jump.
If there’s one actress working today who best reinforces the theories of Lauren Mulvey, it’s Jessica Alba. And she encourages the male gaze by maintaining a career centered on playing eye candy, whether she’s having her skirt ripped off to expose her underwear (Good Luck Chuck), spending the majority of a film wearing a bikini (Into the Blue), playing a stripper (Sin City), being used to invoke jealousy (Meet Bill) or invoking erectile gags out of Mike Myers (The Love Guru). Perhaps someone should write a lengthy article on the myriad ways in which Alba relates to feminist film theory. I think her role as Invisible Woman in the Fantastic Fourmovies and her blind character from The Eye (who identifies herself with the dead woman whose eyes she acquires) can each inspire a few interesting theses.
Obviously Alba is aware of the male gaze and may in fact be controlling it. It’s possible even that her participation in the online staring contest at ibeatyou.com is a matter of ironic reflexivity. Watch the clip of her first-place-winning stare and you’ll understand what I mean. It’s like she’s welcoming our lustful eye and then seemingly returning the gaze, hypnotizing us into thinking she desires us, too. Certainly there are a number of men out there becoming simultaneously turned on and disturbed by this video. And hopefully there are some feminist critics taking notes on it as well.
In related news, Fox somehow managed to swing a deal to earn money off of Halo toys without having to shell out for the upcoming pic’s special effects.
In what I think is the first instance I’ve seen of a trade publishing a casting item on a documentary, THR reports that Martin Scorsese, Haskell Wexler and Dennis Hopper are among the notables set to be interviewed for a tribute to cinematographers Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond, “two refugees who changed the look of American cinema.” Related: the above clip is a PSA Kovacs shot for Pain Awareness Month.
Insert “Tuesdays with Happy Gilmore” joke here: Adam Sandler’s production company has purchased an as-yet-unfinished script from Mitch Albom. No details on the script’s content, but we’re sure it has absolutely nothing to do with a youngish stoic dude who reluctantly learns a little something about life.
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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One thing you have to love about the fanboys, they’re always a glass-half-full kind of people. Whenever one of their beloved movies gets ripped apart by critics, they point to the box office results with pride. Critics are meaningless, they remind us, because Transformers and the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels and the Star Wars prequels made so much money. And now, with their Watchmen having received both mixed reviews and a relatively disappointing opening weekend, they’re still defending its success to the end. Drew McWeeny of HitFix said it best in a Tweet this morning: “Box-office talk is absolute death to me. I just don’t care. It got made. I liked it. I win.”
