This news breaking today after I had a fun weekend at GalaxyCon St. Louis where the highlight for me was the delightful and touching live commentary screening of Muppet Treasure Island (with Steve Whitmire)...there are no words for how disappointed I am that this ad campaign exists.
Ultimately Disney has to take the bulk of the blame here, they're the company that won't move forward with a Muppet Show revival or keep at least the movies easily available on physical media, but they'll happily let Walmart exploit the property.
As audiences have been now trained to go to brands not actors, it feels like most mainstream movies aren’t driven by acting any more. You don’t see HEART OF THE BEAST or PRACTICAL MAGIC 2 to go on an emotional journey so much as hang out with familiar faces. Partly because acting involves changing.
When all this is over, we must remember and punish the people who did this to us (created and shared boomer rants with AI-distorted Peanuts and Looney Tunes characters)
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The War on Christmas will not end until Christmas stops its illegal occupation of October and early November. Thank you for your attention in this matter!
Sadly according to my dad my first movie was the 1980 Song of the South reissue, when I was 2. My memory doesn’t stretch back that far but he says I fussed terribly and had to be taken out of the theater.
First film you saw at the cinema. The real first one, not the pretend one you tell people!
Mine: The Empire Strikes Back, 1980, Wigan. We were near the front and I can still remember how massive the AT-ATs looked, looming over us out of the snow :)
Film, year, where, and whatever stuck with you.
I do have vague memories of The Great Muppet Caper (I had weird feelings about hot air balloons for a while?) and reissues of Cinderella and the 1973 Robin Hood but the first screenings that legit imprinted on me, both at the dearly-departed Westlake multiplex in Peoria, were Annie and E.T. in ‘82.
Heck, the actual 2016 election was bookended over October/November with two TV musicals (Fox's Rocky Horror Picture Show remake and NBC's Hairspray Live!) that could never get greenlit now with the casts and subject matter they had; no, not even on cable.
There is a series I don't have in me to do of looking at the film/tv projects that came out in 2017/18 that clearly started development under the belief "She's got this in the bag."
Not just the queer/drag aspects either, they both featured non-Caucasian performers and even (with the choice of actor for the narrator in Rocky Horror) someone with a visible disability!
That sounds about white. (Though I don't think the seeming talent drain going on at Disney is helping matters right now; they know they can't get Lin-Manuel Miranda back anytime soon, and Moana 2 ended up one of the biggest forgot-busters of recent years without him.)
Encanto, while its success was qualified by breaking out only on streaming - the only theatrical flop I can think of offhand that found an actual aftermarket there - is also the ONLY non-sequel Disney Feature Animation film since the original Moana to be any kind of success. So this is sus.
But have you seen the Trail of the Pink Panther opening sequence that has the PP and Inspector Clouseau animated characters doing a parody of Pac-Man at one point? #FrightClub
I find it a laugh that the Disney version of Hunchback considered using the tagline "Animation comes of age" because 1) that happened way before 1996 and 2) that's the very thing half of the movie is NOT trying to do. The OTHER half is often sublime, but The Prince of Egypt ate this one's lunch.
The Majestic...I am a Jim Carrey fan and there are few films of is that put him in this true leading man light (and show off how handsome he really is) and it's a wonderful setting and uplifting basic story...but it's also swimming in Americana syrup and tweeness, no wonder critics were hard.
Legend is one I have more patience for (admittedly more easily with the U.S. cut) than a lot of people seem to, but it only completely finds its primal potential in Tim Curry's scenes. I've tried reading romantasy novels but they're all the second pressing of the grape after the Lord of Darkness.
Don’t know how to say it other than, creatives are currently enduring an Era of Punishment from rich people who just despise people with functioning brains.
Have been around long enough to see several movie theaters and small chains start out with ambitious (and successful!) plans, audiences and programming, then gradually devolve into the exact same black boxes showing the exact same movies with seating pulled from the spaceship in WALL-E
I don't think this movie hitting theaters just two months after David Cronenberg's The Fly did it any favors, it's more deft in its mixture of black comedy, gory horror, and odd romance. #FrightClub
It's almost so I'm grateful for it, because there's still a lot to see this month, but it's interesting watching the majors realize they have to adapt or the smaller outfits will continue to eat away at them, and to top it off, all their golden geese have avian flu.
This is unfair, I should say 9 screens of Captain Glurpo 14 and one screen for a Christian movie about a dog named Tugger who teaches an alcoholic football coach how to go to church again.
This past week I've seen Pan's Labyrinth, Verity, Digger, Primetime, The Devils, and Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother in theaters. Some I liked, some I didn't. But this is such a healthier state of affairs than 9 screens of Captain Glurpo 14.