The TV Addict 

By theREELaddict

George Clooney, James Marsden, Hugh Jackman and Paul Rudd as my best friends and wingmen.

Zooey Deschanel as my holiday date (I’ll also accept her as my forever date, i.e. girlfriend), or if she is unavailable, Scarlett Johansson as my holiday fling.

That everyone on the net take a six month sabbatical on inane BATMAN 3 rumors, and just let Christopher Nolan take his time (without any pressure) to figure out how to properly follow up THE DARK KNIGHT.

M. Night Shyamalan to finally make a good movie again, so I can stop apologizing for him and stop feeling perpetually more unjustified in having written my Masters Thesis on his movies.

For nobody to ever ask me “How about a magic trick?” and then subsequently produce an ominous pencil.

Kate Mara to teach me how to appreciate American football.

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This isn’t the first time I’ve ranted about celebrities driving drunk, but this time it stings a little more because I genuinely like Shia LeBeouf and have stood up for him. Ever since his Disney TV days of “Even Stevens” I’ve enjoyed watching his career flourish and especially explode astronomically in the last two years alone. He has a charming, natural movie presence that makes him fun to watch no matter what he’s in.What I don’t like watching is seeing him piss his career away Lindsay Lohan style just as it is taking off and people like Steven Spielberg have put their creative trust in him. What I like to watch even less is him pissing his career away by being an inconsiderate asshole who I think should be put behind bars (even if the accident wasn’t his mistake, as it turns out).

Young people will make mistakes, sure, but if they make ones that recklessly endanger other people’s lives, they should have to pay for them. Full stop. All the more so when - as I said in my previous rant - there is no f***** reason a celebrity of his financial status can’t call a cab or a limo service.  As John’s excellent (though a bit more colorful) rant over at The Movie Blog points out, LeBeouf (and those like him) are making an arrogant choice, and should face the consequences of that.

I am capable of separating the person from the artist, which means I will still go check out EAGLE EYE and TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, but as soon as the credits roll I’ll still probably mutter to myself: “Idiot.”

These days you’d be hard pressed to go a week – sometimes even a day – without some useless set photo of Shia LeBeouf looking at clouds, or a picture of a car that might be a Transformer in the film, or a production design of a car that does turn into a Transformer, or a blue print, or fan created designs, or storyboards of deleted ideas, or … well, you get the idea. Basically, just go to your favorite blog of choice and see what pops up when you do a category search for TRANSFORMERS 2. Put some time aside. You’ll be busy, because there’s an insane amount of stuff on the film out there. For a movie whose marketing machine hasn’t even revved up yet, TRANSFORMERS 2 is already ridiculously over exposed.

Admittedly I ranted about something similar not too long ago. The thing is at the time TRANSFORMERS 2 was in the infancy stages of production. I never could have predicted how quickly things would change. Since then the whole thing has not only gotten worse, my argument that this kind of stuff may dilute the fullness of one’s theatre experience seems to be all the more pertinent now. Seemingly every aspect of the production is now broadcast all over the internet, to the point where I almost feel the blogosphere might as well me an actual member of the crew with an all-access pass. That may be cool in theory, but is it also in practice?

It raises all sorts of questions for me though. Who actually cares enough about the sequel to want to know this much about the making of the film? Yes, TRANSFORMERS was a tremendous financial success, but was it really so great for some people that it would inspire this kind of obsessive interest? On that note, I’ll reiterate my earlier point. Is this actual interest coming from fan based demand, or is this all just the next stage in what is deemed movie news on blogs? If that’s the case, is TRANSFORMERS 2 the test baby because it’s just a high profile sequel, or why else? Also, when you’re dealing with this amount of information, how does that not cross that line of spoiling the experience instead of building excitement for it?

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I spy movie fans with a little too much time on their hands.

While it may be all the rage these days for over-eager movie fans to flood websites and blogs with blurry and grainy photos of highly anticipated upcoming movies, and it’s arguably become an accepted given of internet movie fandom, this REEL addict simply doesn’t get it.

Don’t get me wrong, I do get the appeal. It’s not so much about what you’re seeing (however boring it often is), but what it suggests about the film being shot, especially with first films of a series like IRON MAN or BATMAN BEGINS where people are desperate to see how the filmmakers translated the material. But how are people able to get themselves excited about blurry long-rage shots of lots of military equipment and explosions in TRANSFORMERS 2? Does that really come as any surprise? It’s a TRANSFORMERS movie. Duh. What did fans expect? Optimus Prime sitting down for afternoon tea?

The real question I have though is has the internet movie fan community really become so desperate for anything to tickle their anticipation that they’re willing to invest themselves earlier and earlier in the stages of a film’s development? Are publicity stills no longer good enough, and now boring set photos are needed? Is this a case of an actual demand from online movie news readers, or perhaps something blogs have found nicely fills up some of the daily news quota? In other words, is this actual legitimate news that bloggers have to report on because – well, it’s their job – or is it something that we’ve been lead to believe is news worthy, when I would argue that it really isn’t? Or am I just being an asshole here and biting the hand that feeds me (expect that I don’t actually get fed, since I as of yet make no money off this blog)?

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More robots in TRANSFORMERS 2 …
One complaint – and some people had many – about the first TRANSFORMERS was that there weren’t enough robots, especially robots fighting. Well, those people can rest easy, as over at Don Murphy’s site screenwriter Roberto Orci revealed that there may be almost 20 transformers in the sequel, ten fighting on each side. That’s a lot of metal flying around should good old fashioned fisticuffs ensue. Which they will. Except I think when robots fight you can’t really call it fisticuffs anymore. But I just like that word. Unless I could replace it with a new word called roboticuffs. Except I’m not sure robots have cuffs. Damn it. Anyway, the only issue that will emerge then is if the human characters seemed to overshadow the robots in the first film, doesn’t this news mean they’ll over shadow the human character? Actually, why am I even saying that’s an issue? That’d be awesome. Who the heck watches a TRANSFORMERS movie for humans? That was a momentary lapse of reason on my part. Clearly.

More people in Roland Emmerich’s 2012…
Despite the fact that Roland Emmerich hasn’t made a decent film in a while (if ever, one could argue, but I maintain INDEPENDENCE DAY is a silly hoot), and his last film 10,000 B.C. holds the distinction of being his worst outing yet, he’s still somehow drawing some impressive actors for his next film, 2012. In addition to John Cusack already being on board, word now comes that Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, and Oliver Platt are in negotiations to join up as well. Given some of these actors it makes me wonder whether this project might actually be good, or if it’s another case of actors wanting to “have fun” in a sillier project, or slum it, or just make money to put food on the table.

As a border-line obsessive nerd when it comes to all things time-traveling , alternate-realities, and apocalypses, I’m certainly intrigued by the premise that Cusack’s character “opens a portal into a parallel universe and makes contact with his double in order to prevent an apocalypse predicted by the ancient Mayans.” It does fly in the face of something I can’t get my head around, specifically how a universe containing two versions of the same person doesn’t just completely implode. Either way, given that this is Emmerich we’re dealing with, it’s pretty much guaranteed we’ll see plenty of footage of the world exploding.
Source: Cinematical

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If someone had told me five years ago that 3-D would catch on the way it seems to be doing now, I’d probably have politely guffawed in their face. I mean, while I was growing up any film that was 3-D was usually extremely cheesy and low-budget science fiction or horror films, requiring you to park in a drive-in and wear cheap, goofy looking glasses. No studio would have dreamed to make a big-budget film in 3-D, and yet that’s exactly what’s happening now. I’m not sure which film you can blame for the resurrection of 3-D. On the one hand SPY KIDS 3D: GAME OVER, was a relatively high profile use of it, but I would argue it was really the surprise success of the 3-D IMAX version of THE POLAR EXPRESS that really cemented the trend, particularly for kids films. I mean, just have a look here to see how many films in the last few years had some 3-D elements to them.

It seems now that a studio will take any chance to make a film 3-D if they can. For better or worse the trend seems to be staying. The recent HANNAH MONTANA concert film proved very popular, and there are several 3-D projects currently in development as well. The announcement that prompted me to write about all this, actually, is that Disney is planning on making STEP UP 3-D.

Now, I’m not sure what is a bigger shock at this point for me. The fact that I didn’t realize until now that the STEP UP series even was Disney? (Well, technically, Touchstone, but that’s owned by Disney. I guess I never could be bothered enough with the film to even check who made it.) The fact that there was even a sequel in the first place? The fact that the sequel did well enough that it merited another one? Or the fact that the third installment for some reason needs to be in 3-D?

I don’t mean this to sound too catty, but who is actually going to watch STEP UP 2 in the theatres? What’s the demographic like? It must be tweens and teenagers, because that’s the only reason I can determine why Disney would feel the third installment of the series would be a good choice for 3-D, because they are the demographic that seems predominantly tempted by 3-D. Of course to some degree the property lends itself to the format, allowing viewers to see dance moves jump right out at them. The thing is, I just don’t see 3-D as anything appealing. You could tempt me with the new INDIANA JONES film being in 3-D, and I still wouldn’t see it because I see the format as nothing more than a novelty that – to me – detracts, not enhances, my experience of a film.

But to a much younger demographic, the novelty of 3-D is presumably what makes it so appealing to them. I’ll admit, a twelve-year old me would have been excited about a 3-D version of INDIANA JONES, because I would totally confuse the novel and gimmicky nature of 3-D as something that was “cool.” And I think that’s exactly why the studios are making so many films now with that technology. I doubt that they see the format as anything more than a novelty, but I also know that what they see more predominantly is the dollars that this particular gimmick can produce for them.

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Roland Emmerich hates you
Admittedly our world sometimes has its darker moments, but I’m really beginning to wonder what the heck the world ever did to Roland Emmerich to make him take it so personally and want to blow it up in every one of his movies. As of last night, his latest project 2012 (a mighty jump in time from his upcoming 10,000 B.C.) sold to Sony after every studio in Hollywood was foaming at the mouth for it. What’s the project about? Well, this time it seems Emmerich got tired of some of the more novel ways of taking down our world a notch (aliens, global warming, Mel Gibson), and is now going right for the jugular: the apocalypse. You see, many people believe that December 21st, 2012 will be the apocalypse because something in the Ancient Mayan’s calendar or something. So it seems once again everyone on planet earth’s lives will be threatened. Now since there are no specifics as to what shape or form this apocalypse will take, based on Emmerich’s other films, I’m going to go ahead and say it’s some sort of imperialistic invading force. I base this on the fact that every film he’s ever done has had one. In INDEPENDENCE DAY aliens want to colonize Earth. In THE PATRIOT, America was a colony and didn’t want to be, so England tried to squash the ensuing revolution. In THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, nature itself essentially invaded mankind to re-colonize Earth without humans in it. In 10,000 B.C. (or as I refer to it, APOCALYPTO 2) from what I can tell it’s the same deal. At times I wonder – give that he is German – if the prevalence of invading forces in his films is possibly a subversive critique of American imperialism, just wrapping it around the kind of grand spectacle everyone loves, cleverly using one of the central mediums of cultural American imperialism (bid budget Hollywood films) to simultaneously criticize it. Kind of like an ideological Trojan horse, if you will. But then I realize a) my MA in Film possessed me for a moment and let me get out of hand, and b) that’s really giving him too much credit, and I really just think he likes blowing stuff up.
Source: Variety

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