With Six You Get Linkroll
Friday, August 16, 2013 at 2:49PM New York Times a fascinating discussing about"strained pulp," the trend of low culture and disreputable genres being remade as art films by Nicolas Winding Refn, Steven Soderbergh and more.
Cinema Blend more drama for the fantasy Seventh Son (trailer discussed) with Julianne Moore which is still having trouble getting into theaters
MNPP Lovelace in 200 words or less
/Film Loki continues to hold the Thor franchise hostage. Reshoots to give him more screentime
Playbill on that rare breed: musicals based on movies that were better than the movies from the obvious (Kinky Boots, The Producers) to the highly arguable (Hairspray, Once) and others inbetween
IndieWire Qu(e)eries why don't LGBT films make money in movie theaters anymore? Fascinating article! Depressing topic.
Reader Comments (7)
Tom Hiddleston seems like a great guy and to an extent I understand the rabid Tumblr fandom, but Loki's popularity is incomprehensible to me. He was easily one of the weakest parts of The Avengers and is barely watchable even in his own movie. Just another case of Marvel chasing the fanbase (and by extension the dollar), to the surprise of no one.
Totally disagree. Loki is one of the best parts of The Avengers and is endlessly watchable in Thor. Also I don't think Marvel has been guilty of chasing the fanbase too desperately in the past, though this does seem potentially problematic. Hopefully it is as Alan Taylor says, simply a matter of creating new scenes to balance the tone of the film, and those scenes happen to feature Loki.
The Indiwire article is very complete. We all are a little more lazy these days, that's true, but frankly, where I live Keeps the Lights On and Laurence Anyways -which is very long- completely vanished from theatres after just two weeks. You really need to be super fast!
As far as I'm concerned, this new market sucks.
Love the discussion about strained pulp in The New York Times. Would it be sacrilegious to include Django Unchained in their discussion? I know, it comes from the guy who made Pulp Fiction, but one of the problems I had with the movie was not only why recovering spaguetti western when there're so many other (better) things to do, but that all through the movie I couldn't help but think Robert Rodriguez with a much less known cast and much less money truly revived pulp in Machete, while Tarantino's was just being Tarantino (sorry for that sentence). You know it felt a bit like those things people do to make their new furniture look old, or paying a higher price for some worn out jeans when you'd never let yours get as old as that. They just feel inauthentic.
Also, about the depressing state of LGBT movies and the box office, I wouldn't count off as a defining factor, that any action gets a reaction. With the latest advances in LGBT rights around the world, it worries me that there's this increasing negative reaction to all of it. So much so that people not only don't hide their bigotry, but quite the opposite, feel they have the right to be bigots (cough Russian sportswoman, cough).
The Loki-Hiddleston fandom (which happened during Thor which is incomprehensible given it is a small part that is poorly written and almost shoe-horned in) borders on how Rocky Horror fans feel about Tim Curry at this point.
Re: "strained pulp" and Refn in that discussion. Yes, Drive felt like a slower version of a few better movies made in the 70s and 80s. I actually don't think Only God Forgives was outright pulp, however, but more of Jodorowsky, Tarkovsky, and Noe- not really known for speedy pacing. I think that is why I liked OGF better than Drive. Though a knock-off it was a knock-off of the same skin that is pretentious as hell but with the high-brow execution and commitment to it because there was something personally nightmare-ish to it. Drive did feel like a story told already and much more transparent of what it derived from but had much more of the 'Ryan Gosling is a movie star' charm to it. Had Luke Evans starred in Only God Forgives like it originally was planned, I think the reaction from it would be different.
iggy- I disagree about the Grindhouse movies. Tarantino ran circles around Rodriguez with Death Proof. Then again, I know plenty of people who feel the opposite.
Wait a minute! The musical The Producers is not better than the original version. That movie is a thing of beauty.