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4 items from 2012

1 August 2012 5:20 PM, PDT | SoundOnSight | See recent SoundOnSight news »

There are all kinds of producers: hucksters, hustlers, con men and schlockmeisters. Some are in it for the glory, some like to walk the red carpet with a starlet on their arm. For some, the biggest award is a box office hit and it doesn’t matter what kind of crap they throw on the screen to earn it. There are producers like Harvey Weinstein who will spend more money to promote himself to an Oscar win than he does on actually making the Oscar-winning film. And there are producers like Joel Silver who once said the only proper role for women in film was either as a dead body or naked.

And there are those – who, to be honest, may also have a touch of all of this – who are mainly driven by a desire to make good movies. Like Dick Zanuck.

I don’t think anyone will argue »

- Bill Mesce

29 July 2012 3:44 PM, PDT | SoundOnSight | See recent SoundOnSight news »

There are all kinds of producers: hucksters, hustlers, con men and schlockmeisters. Some are in it for the glory, some like to walk the red carpet with a starlet on their arm. For some, the biggest award is a box office hit and it doesn’t matter what kind of crap they throw on the screen to earn it. There are producers like Harvey Weinstein who will spend more money to promote himself to an Oscar win than he does on actually making the Oscar-winning film. And there are producers like Joel Silver who once said the only proper role for women in film was either as a dead body or naked.

And there are those – who, to be honest, may also have a touch of all of this – who are mainly driven by a desire to make good movies. Like Dick Zanuck.

I don’t think anyone will argue »

- Bill Mesce

18 May 2012 6:40 AM, PDT | The Backlot | See recent The Backlot news »

Battleship - or as I should probably call it, Battleship!!!, considering that it is officially the Loudest Movie Ever Made - plopped into the pop culture consciousness last year like so many Alka-Seltzers on a list of Wtf film projects announced by the esteemed Hasbro toy company (alongside Candy Land and Ouija, if memory serves).

The response was one of resounding confusion - the idea of turning a game that we all spent our childhoods trying to avoid playing with our Scotch-hazed grandfathers into a massive action film about an alien invasion was as logical as turning Connect Four into a musical about polygamist online dating.

The trailers have been roundly scoffed at, the promise of pop tart Rihanna defending humanity against an interstellar threat widely ridiculed (will it be revealed that the creatures have a fatal weakness to the sound of someone rhythmically slapping their pubic mound?), and the »

- brian

8 March 2012 12:36 PM, PST | The Film Stage | See recent The Film Stage news »

Even if Paramount brass didn’t express the desire to go with Mission: Impossible V before Tom Cruise is older than Wilford Brimley in Cocoon: The Return; even if Ghotocol wasn’t the series’ highest-grossing entry, unadjusted for inflation; and even if we all hated Brad Bird‘s movie, Mission: Impossible V would probably be happening. But it was the series’ highest-grossing entry, and I haven’t met anybody who hated it (although not all of us were fond)… so, basically, you knew this was coming.

When Viacom’s CEO, Philippe Dauman, was asked if Paramount had ambitions for another chapter in the story of Ethan Hunt, his response was as simple as “Oh, yes.” Nothing about Bird returning, no word on what cast members are sticking around, or what part of the world Imf will have to infiltrate after being set-up. Only “Oh, yes.”

Which, to be fair, is »

- jpraup@gmail.com (thefilmstage.com)

4 items from 2012