the vynsane asylum

Rollo Tomassi wrote:And Disney is sending out HUGE signals that it has no faith in the picture.

Disney had no faith in Atlantis, Dinosaur, The Princess & The Frog, or Lilo & Stitch, four of their best toons from the last several years. Based on the promotions, they had no faith in The Muppets. And don't ever forget the immense amount of faith Warner had in Speed Racer.

I'm not saying it will be great, just that the studios don't know what the fuck "good" is anymore.

The trailers at the theatre made John Carter look about as good as Stargate meets (late 70s) Flash Gordon.

There's been nothing but bad buzz surrounding John Carter.

Admittedly, my "buzz" comes from a Disney employee....

...who has now actually seen the movie and not disjointed pieces of it, and says it's practically a live-action Pixar movie.

Gonna definitely watch it in the theaters if I can. Though, truth be told, The Secret World of Arriety is much higher on my list (and likely to not stick around in theaters too long, given the shitty marketing), simply because it's Studio Ghibli, who can do no wrong. (I just wouldn't recommend watching Pom Poko with your daughter, because those raccoons have some massive fucking balls.)

Ed Brubaker went on Facebook/Twitter last night and praised John Carter quite a bit.

They removed the "of Mars" from John Carter partly due to Mars Needs Moms underperforming last year, apparently. It's an incredibly retarded reason, but there it is.

The movie really does just look like Avatar plus AOTC, but that's likely due to the original story's impact on later sci-fi. Due to the timing, it looks like a ripoff of newer stuff, when really it's been around much longer. I'm vaguely interested in it due to the Andrew Stanton connection, but I don't know if that's interested enough to see it in the theater.

They make stupid name changes for arbitrary reasons. The Princess and the Frog underperformed, mainly because they didn't advertise, "Hey, we went back to 2D and made the first 2D Disney movie in years that's not utter shit!" Disney decided that it was because boys didn't like Disney princess movies (despite, oh, what, 80+ years of evidence to the contrary?), so they changed the name of the then-upcoming Rapunzel to Tangled, and tried to market it as a screwball comedy about Flynn Ryder. (Turns out, it was actually quite good, too, and not the shitty Shrek knockoff they tried hard to make it look like.)

Disney changed The Bear and the Bow to Brave for reasons I don't know. The original title is much more memorable, I think.

Paramount changed the name of the Matrix in the Transformers movie to the uber-retarded "Allspark" because they thought people would mistake the name of something that'd been iconic in Transformers for more than 25 years for the movie The Matrix... and, I guess, associate it with the inferior sequels?

I just did a survey about a movie this morning, and they're trying to decide on the name (and told me astoundingly little about what the film's about). The frontrunner is "People Like Us." The other choices are the equally-cliche "Closer to Home" and the more memorable (I think) "Welcome to People." It's amazing that no one in the boardroom pointed out, "Dude, two of these titles sound like old movies from like 1988, and the other one is completely unique."

I know there are a lot of other examples, but I'm not coming up with them right now.

People Like Us? Closer to Home? Will this film be airing on the Lifetime Network or the Oxygen Network?

I dunno. It seemed like it from the title and poster (which is all they gave me to go on).

Ho. Lee. Shit. I just saw a commercial for American Reunion.

I am shocked....that they dug up Chris Klein!! Heyyy! [Rrrrimshot!]



No, but seriously. American Reunion??

Concerning the Three Stooges movie. My first impression is that this is the third film in the franchise. Y'know, like they made the first two movies with big name stars, and by the time this one came out, they could only get Sean Hayes to star. This is like the direct-to-DVD sequel of the film that had Jim Carrey and Benicio DelToro and Sean Penn in it.

RoIIo Tomassi wrote:This is like...the film that had Jim Carrey and Benicio DelToro and Sean Penn in it.

That 3 Stooges movie was hilarious. I think it's the first time in Oscar history that three lead actors got nominated from the same film. They all lost to Jim Belushi in that movie about the gay Pittburgh Steelworker who runs for congress.

I still think they split the vote. Damned shame. I loved the cameo by Steve Buscemi and Ian McShane as Laurel and Hardy, and John Williams' score was his best by a mile.

They definitely split the vote. But, that was a really good year for the best actor category. Ernie Hudson's serial killer in Maze was phenomenal. That's one of the all time best FBI cops/robbers movies ever. And Bill Murray's directing was amazing. He totally deserved to win the Oscar. It's hard to believe that film started out as a Ghostbusters reunion movie, and completely morphed into Maze. That opening scene where Rick Moranis is killed is one of the creepiest scenes ever. I can't watch Honey I Shrunk the Kids anymore without thinking of that scene.