These previews have been approved for appropriate audiences--now what the hell does _that_ mean?
Well yay! the annoying whiny part of the book is over!! (Yup--just saw Deathly Hallows.) On the other hand, the first four previews demonstrated that my childhood is being trashed, one movie at a time. Green Hornet, Yogi Bear, Red Riding Hood, and Gulliver's Travels. Fortunately the trailers for Green Lantern (I think I may have seen Sinestro in the Green Lantern Corps [before he went all evil-evil]), Voyage of the Dawn Treader (yay--more Reepacheep, and, bonus!, Caspian eye-candy), and Tron took the bad taste out of my mouth (OMG the CGI they did on Bridges is...stunning). Though, to be fair, Katherine Tate as the Queen of the Lilliputians may make GT worth the price of admission. And has anyone heard anything about Sucker Punch? Looks seriously weird.
As I was watching the trailers it occurred to me that the high proportion of films related to icons from my childhood tells me something about the age of those greenlighting productions in TinselTown. They're signing off on movies that plug into their nostalgia, that they tweak to appeal to the current youth market. It's a bit pathetic, really, if you think about it.
Frankly, I don't care that the movies are based on recycled material--it's a long proud tradition that includes Homer, Ovid, Shakespear..., and in movies includes many really great films (The Maltese Falcon, Gone With the Wind, Philadelphia Story, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Rebecca, From Here to Eternity, Ben Hur [book, then silent film, then the Heston film], The Graduate, True Grit, Jaws, etc., etc., etc.). But some of the current crop, to me, don't seem to be trying to make good movies, based on other material. They just seem to be cranking out product to cash in on. I could be wrong.
Oh, well, time to stop dithering and do some work.
As I was watching the trailers it occurred to me that the high proportion of films related to icons from my childhood tells me something about the age of those greenlighting productions in TinselTown. They're signing off on movies that plug into their nostalgia, that they tweak to appeal to the current youth market. It's a bit pathetic, really, if you think about it.
Frankly, I don't care that the movies are based on recycled material--it's a long proud tradition that includes Homer, Ovid, Shakespear..., and in movies includes many really great films (The Maltese Falcon, Gone With the Wind, Philadelphia Story, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Rebecca, From Here to Eternity, Ben Hur [book, then silent film, then the Heston film], The Graduate, True Grit, Jaws, etc., etc., etc.). But some of the current crop, to me, don't seem to be trying to make good movies, based on other material. They just seem to be cranking out product to cash in on. I could be wrong.
Oh, well, time to stop dithering and do some work.