Saturday, October 06, 2007 Rant Archive
Bilbo Baggins may be back on track. Say that three times fast.
The long-standing feud of words and lawsuits between THE LORD OF THE RINGS director Peter Jackson, and New Line Cinema co-chairman Robert Shaye, had almost killed all hopes of ever seeing LOTR prequel, THE HOBBIT, reach theaters. However, as is often the case where billion-dollar franchises are in concerned, cooler heads are beginning to prevail.
According to
Entertainment Weekly, Jackson and New Line have re-opened the lines of communication, taking meetings and even beginning some preliminary negotiations whose goal, sources are saying, may be to usher THE HOBBIT into theaters before the end of the decade.
“There has been a détente,” says one insider. There is now the beginning of a discourse between Peter Jackson and New Line that’s running parallel to the litigation proceedings.”
For those who don’t remember those “litigation proceedings” began in 2003, around the time The Two Towers was raking in it’s billion dollar worldwide take Cast members working on LOTR began to realize that their pockets were not seeing the same weight of coin the studio was enjoying from ticket sales, merchandising etc. Soon complaints from cast and crew were piling up, many of them threatening New Line to various degrees to give them their due. The situation reached a flashpoint that same year when Jackson launched a full audit of New Line’s books—a move that rankled Shaye, who felt that he alone had given Jackson the freedom to make the LOTR films according to the vision the director had long battled for. Though Jackson’s films had in-turn raised New Line’s status as a studio, egos got the best of a mutually beneficial union and a rift formed. Harsh words and lawsuits piled upon counter-lawsuits widened the divide over the next few years, until studio and director were at one another’s throats like two hobbits fighting for the one ring. All hope seemed lost, until an unlikely hero, Benjamin Franklin (the green guy,) set out to do what no other would: convince the feuding parities to put-aside their differences and give us THE HOBBIT movie we want to see.
In a not so secret way this is my favorite show on television. If you’re thinking it’s because of the stellar acting or fantastic storylines think again. Basically, Sam & Dean, the Winchester brothers (Jared Padalecki & Jensen Ackles respectively) are the best looking pieces of ass on television. I would like for everyone to pay extra special attention to Dean as he’s the sort of hot headed, know-it-all, party animal that makes my black heart melt.
Last season we left Sam & Dean as they allowed the yellow eyed demon to kill Sam, forcing Dean to make a pact with another demon to resurrect Sam in exchange for Dean’s mortal soul, which will be collected by said demon a year from the date of the agreement. And while all this chaos is going on they eventually manage to kill the yellow eyed demon even though they do not manage to stop the demon from opening up the gates of hell until it is too late. And then they had tea and crumpets and talked about baseball, WRONG.
This season Dean’s character expresses his most hedonistic side. Anytime Sam comes into contact with it he has to turn a blind eye as Dean reminds him that he has less than a year to live so he might as well enjoy the time he has left. I feel the same way Dean—I’m living in Los Angeles and I promise to show a dying man a great time, sigh. Anyways, Dean and Sam find it highly suspicious that nothing terrible has happened even though hell has come to earth. Guess what I find it suspicious also. I guess I should join their demon killing team and be awesome with them using a crossbow or something equally cool to slay monsters/demons/devils/vampires.
In July 1973, martial arts action star Bruce Lee died unexpectedly at age 32. Not long after, his last finished film, ENTER THE DRAGON, was released. It became an international success and that along with his untimely passing made him more than just a star; he became a legend.
Lee left behind a dozen minutes of an action sequence of GAME OF DEATH, a film he thought of as a passion project. So we have a studio with 12 minutes of film featuring one of the biggest stars of the time in its vault. What a shame. What a waste. If only they could salvage it, they’d make a fortune. But how to do that? Why not use the footage and awkward camera angles of someone else made up to look like Lee?
This sounds like a stupid idea that couldn’t possibly take hold, even in Hollywood – except that’s what really happened. GAME OF DEATH “starring Bruce Lee was actually released six years after his death.
Filmmaker Justin Lin uses that as a starting point for FINISHING THE GAME, a mockumentry about the process of casting a Bruce Lee replacement. Presumably, Lin wants to make some statement about the role of Asian-Americans in the film industry, but what that statement is isn’t clear.
Lin’s first theatrical movie was the highly regarded indie project BETTER LUCK TOMORROW. He followed that with studio films, ANNAPOLIS and THE FAST AND FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT, both only so-so, though the latter did well at the box office.
In the filmmakers notes distributed to the press, Lin says the idea for FINISHING THE GAME came to him before BETTER LUCK (2002), but he was glad that he waited until he had film industry experience. I suggest that was a mistake. Had he made the movie when he was more of an outsider, he might have been less self-referential to the business, making it more accessible. And in any event, it is so long after the actual events occurred and they are so obscure to most movie-goers, I don’t see how the average fan will relate.