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
Movie posters have become increasingly more controversial in the past decade, or else people have become a lot more sensitive. Either way, it seems like there’s a new and controversial movie poster or billboard being banned somewhere. Usually it’s for one of two reasons: sex or violence, with violence being far more popular. One of the first sexually banned posters I could find was 1981’s For Your Eyes Only, which featured an A-frame design that was banned. It wasn’t so much the vaginal roof as it was the exposed buttocks, so they had to release a retouched version that covered more derriere.
It’s been more than 25 years since that poster was sent back to the drawing board, so why do posters keep getting banned? Marketing people know that controversy can turn into a marketing campaign of its own, so maybe they’re pushing the boundaries in the vein of “there’s no such thing as bad publicity.” With that in mind, here’s a look at controversial movie posters from the past several years. Prepare your innocent eyes and take a look after the break.
Finally the infamous toilet scene from The Spirit, shown last month at Comic-Con, has been leaked online. And it’s just as bad as I imagined. Actually, it’s worse. Our own Kevin Kelly, who liveblogged the clip, described the setting as “extremely muddy and watery,” but I’d go so far as to say that stuff looks like shit. Considering the fact that a toilet is involved, I’m sure it is indeed shit, literally. I don’t think there’s been so much excrement in a movie since Trainspotting.
Now that I’ve seen the clip, I have to believe the makers of The Spirit actually mean for it to be humorous, but I wonder if those on stage (writer-director Frank Miller, producer Deborah Del Prete and actors Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson and Jaime King) realize that the audience is laughing at the scene, not with it. OK, maybe some of the panel attendees seem to actually be enjoying the footage, but I definitely hear some awkward reactions in there, as well.
Over at Pullquote, the Cinetrix has reminded me of one more movie that fit in with this so-called “Year of the Unplanned Pregnancy” trend: Shoot ‘Em Up. She doesn’t really go into details, though, of how it fits in. So, allow me to elaborate. First off, as far as I recall, the pregnancy isn’t actually unplanned. But no matter, I’m going to have fun with this anyway. So, let’s pretend that Shoot ‘Em Up is a pro-life movie. Despite the fact that the baby in the film is already born, there’s a bad guy trying to kill it. Let’s call him the abortionist (aka the pro-choicer). Then there’s a do-gooder hero who aims to keep the baby alive. Let’s call him the pro-lifer. Guess who wins out in the end? And you thought the movie was just a silly take on the gun control issue. There’s political topics all over the place!
As you can probably tell, I’m being a bit ridiculous. But sometimes it’s important to get absurd when you’re dealing with too many serious people out there, and too many year-end labels and summaries. Yes, there were surprisingly a lot of preggers movies out in 2007 (Waitress, Knocked Up, Juno), but there’s much more to mention than simply lumping those similarly themed movies together and clapping your hands and saying “yeah!” The more significant thing to address is how these movies and others this year provided balanced discussion fodder for the abortion issue. Each of those unplanned pregnancy comedies could be interpreted as being pro-life, yet each could also be interpreted as being pro-choice (don’t forget, choice can also mean choosing not to abort).
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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