There will be sequels to both Star Trek and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Not only are these now officially greenlit, but they’re also what we call “likely sequels” prior to their certainty — meaning we all saw them coming way before Paramount and Fox, respectively, announced them. However, it’s not necessarily a given that a successful movie will always spawn a follow-up. For example, box office record-holder Titanic could never become a franchise.
Of course, people will always joke about the possibilities for a Titanic sequel, and that kind of humor is what makes the Twitter meme #unlikelysequels so entertaining. Unfortunately, 140 characters allows for little more than a proposed sequel title (and yes, “Titanic 2: Jack’s Back” is among them), so we have decided to expand on ten favorites by providing the synopsis and, for some, casting suggestions. …Read more
Is romance dead? David Carr seems to think so, at least in American cinema (both Hollywood and “Indiewood,” as he inclusively clarifies). While celebrating the subway station meet-cute from the beginning of Milk, a scene he claims to be of an increasingly rare sort, Carr states that American filmmakers “can do romantic pathology and entropy, but the kind of love for the ages, a big-movie kind of love? Not so much.”
If you agree with him, blame the back-to-back Best Picture winners Titanic and Shakespeare in Love for feeding us the kind of romance that’s so cheesy it clogs our arteries and gives us a coronary. Left with a burst heart and a lack of quality Nora Ephron movies, most of us have been cynics when it comes to love stories these past ten years. Yet cynics can still be swept off their feet, and American filmmakers have adequately supplied them with new kinds of love for the ages.
Just take a look at these ten films from the past decade. They may be full of cynicism, but they’re also filled with big-movie love, in their own way. If you can’t see the romance, then the problem is with you, not the movies.
I saw Christmas decorations in a storefront Sunday, so I guess it’s already time to break out the holiday movies. And it’s evidently time for distributors to release holiday fare to theaters, even if Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël), which hits theaters this Friday, isn’t exactly the latest crowd-pleasing installment of the Santa Clausefranchise. In fact, with such ingredients as estrangement, mental illness, alcoholism and cancer, it doesn’t seem like a very happy holidays kind of film. Even if it is actually a comedy.
But then how many holiday movies are completely void of depressing themes and scenes? I’m sure to have grown up thinking more about the homeless, suicide and family dysfunction from films set at Christmas and Thanksgiving than I did thinking about the happiness that comes with these holidays. One of the most tearjerking moments for me as a kid was certainly seeing Mickey Mouse crying over his dead son in Mickey’s Christmas Carol. It’s no wonder so many people get sad this time of year. Movies are influential, and for every bit of slapstick we see this season, there’s potentially room for thoughts of abandoned children to go along with it.
Worse for our tearducts are the films that aren’t necessarily thought of as “holiday movies,” which are typically more honest about how much of a bummer holidays can truly be. So get out your hanky and check out our list of ten most depressing holidays in movies:
Everyone loves Bill Murray, but only the die hard fans recognize the majority of his work. The rest, unfortunately, concentrate too much on his greatest films, such as Stripes, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, Lost in Translationand all of his collaborations with Wes Anderson. Yet while each of these films, and Murray’s roles and performances in them, are certainly deserving of their preferred and predominant praises, Murray is the kind of actor who is so talented and entertaining that he can be enjoyed in even the worst movies on his resume. In fact, he’s probably the only A-lister who could lend his voice to a bastardized CG version of a beloved cartoon character and get away with barely any contempt from his devotees.
This week, Bill Murray makes an appearance in the new kiddie sci-fi flick City of Emberas the selfish mayor of a doomed underground metropolis. And it’s sure to be one of his less-appreciated roles, whether because it’s in a children’s movie, because it’s a supporting part in an ensemble filled with many talented actors, or because it’s not Ghostbusters 3. But those who really love Murray will likely flock to the movie primarily to see him, just as they did and do for the rest of these movies with underrated Murray roles:
Your Blogger is having some computer issues this morning. While I get sorted, check out this blog post from Roger Ebert , in which he ponders the never ending Democratic primary in cinematic terms. “It must have been a species of torture for the anchors at CNN, who seemed caught in a Groundhog Day loop… The problem with a screenplay based on these events is that there would be a merciless sameness.” That quote brought to mind two things. First, this has probably been done already, but someone should do some kind of linguistic/historical study, charting the evolution of references to that movie as a universally identified synonym for eternal recurrence. Also: YouTube! The above clip, Groundhog Day in 5 Seconds, which reduces the Bill Murray classic to nothing but merciless sameness.
Inspired the news that Bill Murray was stopped in Stockholm on suspicion of drunkenly driving a golf cart (yes, seriously), I just spent an hour on YouTube watching fan tributes to the former Ghostbuster. It’s amazing how many of these somehow involve Bill Murray successfully or unsuccessfully attempting to save the world. The clip above is my favorite–I just think it’s really funny that even with the Power Rangers egging him on, our hero just isn’t very good at flying–but there’s also this clip, in which Bill Murray “rebuilds the WTC in godlike miracle.” And really: on some level, isn’t Lost in Translation just a little girl’s fantasy of Bill Murray rescuing her from adulthood? Especially if you assign any merit to this interpretation of the final scene.
Is the idea that Bill Murray will bail us out of catastrophe just ingrained in the collective consciousness of our generation? Has everybody really seen Ghostbusters as many times as I have? Or is it more of a Groundhog Day, “he’s A god, he’s not THE God” type of thing?
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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