The Troma panel at Comic-Con gets smaller every year, but the sense that you’re at a really fucked up family reunion never dissipates. “What I find is amazing about Lloyd, is that everybody is connected to him in some fashion,” said panelist Steven Paul at yesterday’s session. He gestured at the room––the smallest I entered all weekend. “I bet everyone here has acted in a Lloyd Kaufman film.”
Not quite, but part of the reason to show up to this thing every year is to see which disparate characters Lloyd will rope into making an appearance. This year, there wasn’t a guest more unexpected than Paul, a producer on Ghost Rider, the visual effects producer on Karate Dog (!!!), and the man responsible for a number of upcoming “is that really necessary?” video game adaptations, including Castlevania and Tekken. What, exactly, was this guy doing on what Kaufman himself billed as “a panel of independent thinkers?” “I at one time was Steven’s teacher,” Kaufman boasted. “So there’s a little bit of Troma in the mainstream world!”
Maybe more than a little bit. Seated on the far end of the table was Mark Neveldine, co-writer/director of the budding Jason Statham franchise, Crank. “You’ll have to excuse me, because this is the first panel I’ve been sober for,” Neveldine cracked with pitch perfect post-frat bravado––now that nerds are inheriting the earth, an awful lot of them look and sound suspiciously like recurring characters on Entourage. What’s this guy’s connection to Kaufman? He’s apparently Troma’s most dedicated plagiarist.
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Two big movies arrive in theaters this week, The Incredible Hulk and The Happening, and each has had its share of bad buzz. From what I can tell, though, the former is recuperating quite nicely with mostly favorable early reviews. And it’s sure to gross in the hundreds of millions, just like its big brother, Ang Lee’s Hulk, did a few years back. The latter, however, is still struggling through the muck, with writer-director M. Night Shyamalan doing everything he can to assure us that his film is merely a B-movie and shouldn’t be the victim of high expectations.
If The Happening bombs, though, 20th Century Fox won’t be able to blame its bad buzz. Especially if The Incredible Hulk comes out a big winner this weekend. When a movie is good, or at least has some goods that audiences actually crave, it can overcome bad buzz. The list of films after the jump is evidence of this, although it’s possible that some of the older titles might have been less successful in the globally conscious age of blogs.
- Titanic - James Cameron’s romantic disaster film arrived in the early days of mass internet usage, but it didn’t need high-speed gossip to spread word of its troubled production. Any reader of entertainment news learned of the drug-induced food poisoning, the crew illnesses and injuries that came with filming in cold waters and the other problems that put the shoot way over schedule and way over budget. Then there was the matter of its release date being pushed back from July, 1997, to December. Yet Titanic had the goods, and it went on to become the highest-grossing film of all-time and win 11 Oscars, including Best Picture.
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Another interesting perspective from our film studies friend Dodd, known as “moviedodd” on Spout.
Friday means different things for different people, from getting out of town to hitting the bars for a long stretch of “unwinding.” For movie-lovers, it’s the ripe time to hit Rotten Tomatoes and check for reviews on the latest weekend releases. Usually everything seems in order, as most of the major releases have been branded positive or negative. However, there is sometimes one major release with nothing next to it. Despite the heavy promotion for weeks–sometimes months–on end, not one major critic has given his or her two cents. Have you ever noticed this?
I’m sure that by now most moviegoers are familiar with the films that are not screened for critics. Sometimes these are flicks that have been shelved for years. Other times they are fresh off the studio lot. It was recently announced that the long-delayed Ghost Rider will not be screened for critics. The action film features Nicholas Cage as a rough-around-the-edges biker with a CGI flaming skull for a head. Not screened for critics? Imagine that.
It seems quite clear why critics are forbidden to see these films. If a release has “disaster” written all over it, then it would be poor publicity to release it upon the masses with stamps of disapproval from the nation’s trusted film experts. However, people are beginning to get what’s behind non-exhibition for the critics. Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper even bestowed The Wagging Finger of Shame upon these films to indicate the foul smell they emanate.
While some may immediately recognize a dud, the tactic is certainly not flawed. Epic Movie recently debuted in the number one spot despite not being screened for critics and blatantly presenting itself in previews as one of the most awful things to hit screens this year. However, the unscreened comedy Let\’s Go to Prison was a monster flop in 2006 (this goes without mentioning possible box office competition).
As a self-proclaimed movie aficionado, I see this restriction as a kiss of death. On rare occasions, some titles are worth the blind venture into the multiplex. You better believe that a critical ban did not stop me from checking out Internet phenomenon Snakes on a Plane. However, it is easy to recognize when a movie studio is so ashamed of a picture that they keep it hidden from the press.
What is your take on the black sheep of the box office? Do you decide to go see if there’s potential in a film not screened for critics, or do you see a toe tag that might as well be marked “Dead on Arrival?”
The Happening had a much better opening weekend than expected (or is it feared?), coming in at third place with $32.1 million domestically, and actually beating The Incredible Hulk overall overseas. Meanwhile, Universal and Marvel insist that their superhero movie is a hit, even though it mad six million dollars less in its opening weekend than Ang Lee’s supposedly disastrous Hulk five years ago.
