Thursday, January 20, 2011

Look At My Briefs -- 1/20/11

I present to you now the 50th anniversary edition of my brief comments on various subjects I like to call Look At My Briefs. No, it's not really the 50th anniversary but, if you want to call your boss and say you're taking the day off for the anniversary, I'll back you up.

I'm not the least bit upset that a new sequel/prequel/whateverquel to Alien has now been shelved. There are too damn many completely needless sequels made at the expense of new and interesting projects. New and interesting projects like, let's say, the movie Prometheus that producer Damon Lindelof and director Ridley Scott is going to do instead.
“While Alien was indeed the jumping off point for this project, out of the creative process evolved a new, grand mythology and universe in which this original story takes place,” said Scott in a statement. “The keen fan will recognize strands of Alien's DNA, so to speak, but the ideas tackled in this film are unique, large and provocative. I couldn't be more pleased to have found the singular tale I'd been searching for, and finally return to this genre that's so close to my heart.”

"In a world flooded with prequels, sequels and reboots,” stated Lindelof. “I was incredibly struck by just how original Ridley's vision was for this movie. It's daring, visceral and hopefully, the last thing anyone expects.”

That actually gets me excited, especially when I think that these two aren't hacks who think of this as an excuse to do a slasher film set in space to make a quick buck. Good luck to Scott, Lindelof and everyone else involved, unless Prometheus is about robots who shapeshift into trucks and helicopters.

If you told me today Max Bialystock was a real guy and was producing the Spider-Man musical on Broadway, I would believe you. There have probably been rockier openings in Broadway's long history but I never heard old time theater people talking about the number of deaths involved when Gigi first premiered.

Speaking of "too many sequels". I would say no to the TRON: Legacy sequel but I would have said no to TRON: Legacy and Disney doesn't care what I think anyway, especially when they figure that I, as a movie fan, will probably see it if they make it. Hell, if the numbers worked, I'd make it if I were Disney. That's one of the problems with the movie industry that, to my surprise, this blog has been very ineffective at correcting.

Apparently,and I'm not sure if anyone is interested in this, Anne Hathaway has been cast to play Catwoman in the new Batman movie. Really, is that something that would generate any interest whatsoever? Probably not. I'm not really sure why I'm mentioning it.

My favorite line of this article in which Seth Rogen recounts the apocalyptic beliefs of George Lucas is, "Lucas assures Rogen he doesn't have a spaceship." Well, it's a good thing he went out of his way to confirm that because I was wondering.

If Ricky Gervais had spent two hours doing "Mike Clear is an asshole" jokes, I would probably be pissed. He didn't, though, so I found him funny. The controversy surrounding his role as Golden Globes host reminds me of the time Stephen Colbert spoke at the White House Correspondents Dinner and was actually funny and entertaining at the cost of injuring the delicate feelings not only of the politicians but of the members of the Washington press corps in attendance. The entertainment press is similar to the political press in that too many of them see themselves not as observers but as active members of the community on which they are supposed to be objectively reporting and thus engage in knee-jerk defense of the people they see at cocktail parties. If nothing else, Gervais' performance will be remembered for years just as Colbert's was whereas whatever inoffensive piece of milquetoast that the Globes' producers hire next year will be remembered in the same way that the guy who replaced Stephen Colbert was.

One reaction to Gervais' I'm interested in is that of Big Hollywood. After all, it was only a few weeks ago that the right wing movie site published several articles like this one from their editor, John Nolte describing Gervais as the worst thing ever for an article he wrote extoling the virtues of atheism. Hey, wait a minute, it turns out that BH's Nolte absolutely loved it and even described it as speaking truth to power.
In the bubbled, hypocritical mind of some in Hollywood, the only reason Gervais crossed a line is because he went after them. Had he been as relentless in ripping apart Sarah Palin, her young children, Jesus Christ, or George W. Bush, today the comedian would be celebrated as “edgy” and “courageous” — because only in Hollywood is throwing red meat to a hard-left crowd considered “edgy” and “courageous.” But Gervais didn’t do that. Instead, he trained his satirical fire on Hollywood Power and today there’s serious talk about whether or not the comedian will be brought back to the Golden Globes next year as host.

Of course, if Gervais had given Sarah Palin, Jesus Christ or George W. Bush the treatment he gave members of the movie industry, Nolte would be accusing Gervais of trying to destroy everything good and pure in America, the land Jesus came from. How do we know this? I already posted the link of Nolte's reaction when Gervais talked about his atheist beliefs but maybe Nolte's changed in the past three weeks and isn't simply applauding Gervais because the comedian went after people he didn't like. I think he has changed and all I have to do to believe that is ignore these articles published just yesterday describing Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert in what are literally Orwellian terms for segments they did on Sarah Palin. Of course, all Hollywood would have had to do to be spared the wrath and jealousy of John Nolte was to regard this movie as the greatest thing ever put on celluloid.

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