Friday, September 21, 2007 Rant Archive
Millions of viewers tuned in to the premiere of SURVIVOR: CHINA Thursday night. That’s the good news; the bad news is that while SURVIVOR won its timeslot in the coveted 18 to 49-year-old demographic, it was the lowest rated premiere in the show’s history. This is the 15th season of the groundbreaking series that changed the landscape of TV, and some are saying it may have run its course. But that may be a bit hasty, because if memory serves me last season’s installment began in much the same way. But as tvsquad.com
points out “it was down 14% from the ‘Fiji’ season,” and that does not bode well.
I think the problem is twofold. First of all we are all hip to the fact that these people are going to immediately try and scare up an alliance or two. And we know that most of these will fall apart within the first week. Second, there is so much competition in the Reality TV genre right now that SURVIVOR isn’t as fresh and exciting as it was in the beginning. That really sucks for them, since they were really the first – or at least the biggest hit – of all the Reality TV shows out there.
The era of free TV downloads has begun. But what does this mean for Apple’s iTunes?
ABC and AOL have just announced a new deal to offer viewers free downloads of many of ABCs newest and most popular shows on video.aol.com. This is following the announcement made by NBC that they will be offering free downloads of their shows on “NBC Direct.” Does this mean that powerhouse Apple is losing their steam? After parting ways with iTunes over cutting the cost to download in half, NBC decided to offer their shows for free, but the catch here is that there will be interactive advertising that goes along with it. ABC and AOL will be doing much the same with their new service. Now you may think this provides viewers with more options to choose from, but in actuality we may be getting less. If all the major networks are creating outside downloading deals, where will that leave iTunes, in terms of providing downloadable TV?
Another snag in this setup is the fact that all the NBC shows expire a week after the airdate, on “NBC Direct.” Now ABC's
press release doesn’t mention anything about an expiration date, but again, there will be up to three interactive advertisements per show, and plenty of each of their logos floating around. While I’m all for free TV, part of the reason many of us choose to download our favorite shows is to keep away from annoying commercials.
Lately it seems as if legal trouble is following Wesley Snipes around like a dog follows a bone. His latest trouble stems from what zap2it
says is, “an oral agreement Snipes made with the United Talent Agency (UTA) for helping him get hired for four films.” The four films in question are BLADE, TRINITY, CHAOS and MIDDLE MAN. The total amount UTA claims he owes them is 1.7 million dollars. Wow, that’s a lot of dough, even for somebody who makes several millions per picture.
But I have to ask, what is going on here? Snipes is already in the middle of a court battle over alleged tax evasion, so you would thing he would keep the rest of his economic house in order. Granted, I don’t know all the details of both sides of this story, but you know that old saying “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” It just strikes me as odd that a person who makes millions of dollars for their work wouldn’t want to make sure their bills were paid. Millions of Americans who survive on far, far, far less manage to do it on a daily basis. The talent agencies in Hollywood are heavy hitters, and you don’t want to be messing around with their bottom line. This could come back to haunt Snipes in the worst way, a lack of more work coming his way.
While it’s true that Hollywood seems to forgive many actors’ transgressions, taking money out of their pockets may be the one thing that’s unforgivable. When you think about it, it isn’t that the powers that be in this town are so magnanimous.
There is a scene in THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD where a dead body is dragged through the woods and dumped in a ditch. Sadly it was not mine. My fate was to sit through this two-and-a-half-hour rambling mess.
There have been published reports that this was a problem project that went through numerous editing changes and test screenings. For the record, the reports were correct and the screenings and changes did not help. One of the ways you can usually tell a film is in trouble if big stars wind up with seemingly minor roles.
For example, Mary-Louise Parker, who plays Jesse’s wife, Zee, is on screen for no more than four minutes. Oscar-nominated Sam Shepard, who plays Jesse’s brother Frank, is visible less than half that. These weren’t uncredited cameos, the kind Big Stars sometimes play in small pictures. Both actors get top billing (and presumably pay) for roles that no doubt ended on the cutting room floor. Almost certainly the script that they signed on for is not what you see on screen.
The film is based on a book of the same name by Ron Hansen. It tries to explain the seemingly strange relationship between the famous outlaw and the man who shot him. It also deconstructs the legend of Jesse James (Brad Pitt), who apparently wasn’t the Robin Hood popular mythology makes him out to be. But the problem is it doesn’t define James or Ford (Casey Affleck) any better than the myth did. The film lacks focus, and seems more like several movies crammed together. It’s certainly long enough; in fact, there were a couple of times during the screening where I was convinced the film was over only for it to move forward several months or years.
Let’s be clear about this. There are certain conventions to inspirational athletic films. When the film goes to slow motion, the good guys score. It doesn’t make a difference what sport it is, the downtrodden athletic masses will rise and overcome the oppressors. Very slowly.
It is also important to note that when the slow motion begins towards the end of the film it will take a long time – enough to go the fridge and get a beer if one is so inclined. (I’d have suggested a glass of wine, but this is not a wine people movie.)
WE ARE MARSHALL is a film with slow motion. It is formulaic, it has sappy moments. But it is also joyous, heartwarming and, yes, inspirational. There are a couple of things that raise it far above standard feel-good fare. For one, there is the surprisingly sensitive direction of McG, more noted for CHARLIE’S ANGELS than filming scenes that offer emotional sustenance. But there is also the subject matter.
On Nov. 14, 1970, a plane carrying the Marshall University football, its coaches and a group of team boosters crashed in the Appalachian Mountains on its way home from a football game in North Carolina. It was, of course, a tragedy at the time. However, in the years since then, since 9/11, sudden mass deaths, particularly of young people, have taken on a new resonance – at least for me. It significantly heightens the film’s impact.
It looks like America has spoken, on the issue of the new Reality TV show, KID NATION. After suffering through bitter condemnation all summer long, KID NATION hit the ratings bonanza last night, after winning in its time slot. KID NATION “placed first in its 8:00 – 9:00 p.m. time in adults 18-49, children 2-11 and children 6-11,” according to preliminary Nielsen Live Plus same-day ratings. In fact,
according to thefutoncritic, “CBS research estimates that when Nielsen tallies all DVR playback, across-the-board ratings should increase by +5%.”
That is huge news, in the world of TV. Maybe it was all the buzz generated for the past few months, or maybe the show actually strikes a nerve. Either way, the first episode was an enormous success, by anybody’s standards. Whether that is a good thing or not is up to the viewers. While the kids on the show do get monetary rewards, the network was able to bypass the strict child labor laws because of the nature of the show.
The first five minutes of Eastern Promises immediately plunges you into the sordid, not-for-the-squeamish world of famed director and auteur David Cronenberg. The film opens with a brutal throat slashing (throat hacking, rather) and a mysterious pregnant girl, bruised and beaten, collapsing in a pharmacy with blood hemorrhaging from her womb. Next we see the newborn babe, still slathered in bloody embryonic fluids, lying on a hospital table fighting for air from the respirator over her face. It’s five minutes of some of the more horrifying, perturbing, gross and moving imagery seen on film recently, and it indicates why David Cronenberg’s name is beginning to transcend the cult world, finding mention amongst of today’s most lauded directors.
In this latest outing Cronenberg guides us into London’s seedy underbelly, where crime syndicates still operate according to savagely archaic codes of order and retribution and where the slave trade (young immigrant girls specifically,) is still a reality. If this latter part echoes familiar, it’s because Steven Knight, the scribe of 2002’s similarly themed Dirty Pretty Things wrote the script.
The plot is set in motion when Anna (Naomi Watts,) a midwife at the hospital where the mystery girl’s child is born, takes the diary of the baby’s mother, who has died in childbirth. We learn that Anna herself has recently miscarried, so she has an almost maternal need to see to it that the child end up in the loving care of family, rather than become another child turned over to the harsh care of the state.
SYDNEY WHITE is part ELECTION, part REVENGE OF THE NERDS and part SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS. It is a movie that shouldn’t work, but does. The temptation is to say it succeeds despite itself, but that’s wrong.
It works because screenwriter Chad Gomez Creasey turned a clichéd idea inside out and made it funny.
It works because director Joe Nussbaum’s minimalist direction moves the plot so fast you don’t notice inconsistencies.
It works because top to bottom the actors are perfectly cast.
But most of all, it works because of Amanda Bynes, who brings alive the title character and makes you believe that beauty and brains are not mutually exclusive. Now if we can just keep her away from the Lohan-Spears-Hilton crowd, we have the makings of a giant superstar.
Sydney White was brought up by her widowed father and hung around the construction sites where he worked as a plumber. She goes off to Southern Atlantic University and pledges Kappa Phi Nu, not because she’s an airhead. Rather, that was her mother’s sorority, and she feels if she joins that sorority it will bring her closer to her mom. But she’s the anti-sorority girl, level-headed, unconcerned about artifice, prepared to judge everyone by their actions, not their appearance or finances.
16 castaways, 2 tribes, 39 days…ONE SURVIVOR!
They may change locations but the key to this show is the casting. Always has been and it always will be. In the granddaddy of reality competitions, CBS’s SURVIVOR: CHINA challenges a whole new crop of players to outwit, outplay and outlast each other on the way to a one million dollar prize.
The return to 16 players is a welcome one as even in the premiere it was fairly easy to keep the competitors straight. In the spirit of giving back, I’ll eschew complaining about fancy editing that drives the storylines by knowing the outcome already. I’ll just give over to it and tell you what I saw as well as what I know from watching this show since its debut in the summer of 2000.
Suburbanites all over get ready to shudder, because POLTERGEIST is headed back to a neighborhood near you!
The smash hit that terrified children and adults alike, is celebrating its 25th anniversary by being re-released for one day only. Latimes.com
says “the digitally remastered film will be screened in theaters and then released on DVD Oct. 9.” Just when I thought it was safe to build that pool I was thinking about.
A real good ghost story is hard to find, and this offering by Steven Spielberg has always stood out as one of the best. Besides scaring the pants off of millions of people, the movie was surrounded by tragedy and mysterious illness and death for many of the cast and crew, which only heightened the chill factor. While there were some awesome special effects for the time, the magic of this movie was in the story itself. It was written by Spielberg, which further proves his dominance in film. As far as marketing goes, it’s a brilliant move to cash in on a movie classic 25 years after it was originally released.