The (Surprising) Ineffectiveness of the Social Media

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Horror, the devil inside, faux documentary, january, critically panned, twitter, facebook, social media, william brent bell, paranormal activity, insurge, paramount pictures, box office, marketing

There’s a pretty fascinating possibility surrounding what’s going on at the theatres right now.

You see, this cheap genre horror offering, “The Devil Inside”, which has been universally reviled, not just by critics but by audiences as well (reports of booing and yelling at the screens), has just opened to $16.85 million on Friday alone.  According to Paramount Pictures, the films distributor under its low budget Insurge label, 16 percent of the audience gave the film an “A”, while 19 percent gave it an “F”. The Insurge label was created to:

“…find and distribute crazy, unpredictable, and hopefully awesome movies – movies that make you want to line up to see at your local theater with all your friends (and us). Movies that a big studio would never release because they’re too risky, too silly, and they don’t star Sandra Bullock.”

That’s all fine and good, but here’s my question, in this day and age of Twitter, Facebook and endless other social media connections, where everyone seems to have a blog, journal, or in-person YouTube opinion on just about everything, why is it that a studio can still go to the bank for an entire weekend with way below average genre offerings, which many are promising will make their worst of the year lists (even in the first week of January)?  How can all these social connections fail to connect us in the most basic ways, by warning each other against spending our hard earned dollars on worthless, cynical money grabs?

In the old days (and by old days I mean, of course, pre-Internet) people would read the reviews for a film on the day of its release and decide, based on how in tune they were with their chosen critics, whether that film was worth their time.  Of course, the studio could wreck havoc on us by simply denying a press screening, leaving us to fend for ourselves with their marketing blitz and walk in blindly based on our friends/dates desires to be entertained.  But nowadays? Does that archaic game of Russian Roulette sound even remotely like where should be today?

It’s a given, with genre offerings and expertly promoted popcorn films (I saw the trailers for “The Devil Inside” as well, they did their job), that a film such as this will open big, but then crash on the Saturday and then fall even further on the Sunday.  By the following weekend, the audience will have eroded 65-80%. But that is a statistic of a past world.  This should not be the world we live in today.  ”The Devil Inside” made $16.85 million in one day.  When it drops 30-35% for Saturday, that number will be at $10.95, and when it drops another 35% on Sunday, the film will have racked up close to $35 million dollars.  On a budget of $1 million.  Paramount Pictures and whomever handled their expert marketing campaign have banked a 3500% profit in 3 days.  That’s an obscene number for them to get away with for a film that is bringing hatred from almost all that have viewed it (the film, reportedly, ends not with a legitimate climax, but a plug for the films website!).

What does it take for those that are constantly connected, those that don’t make eye contact with human beings anymore, from being buried in their virtual world, to warn the rest of the planet of their impending doom.  In this day and age a film like “The Devil Inside” might get away with its $16.85 opening day, but it should, with the help of the social media policing the common, everyday public’s hard earned money, it should crash to almost nothing by day two.  The social media has that power but no one seems to be using it.

Can you imagine the sense of pride that we, as an internet-savvy society, could have if we knew that we helped to crash a truly terrible motion picture? That we, in one fell swoop, destroyed a studios attempts to fleece us with artless, pathetic, cynical genre offerings, and possibly halted their plans to do it time and time again in the near future? They wouldn’t know what to do next. They wouldn’t be sure of what marketing could actually accomplish anymore, because we could unite in a consensus of what is worth paying for and stop them in their tracks.

That is what is possible.  That is what should be happening.  I refuse to end this article on a cynical note, I don’t want to be a part of that tribe.  But it does raise the question though, is a technology worth anything if it doesn’t live up to its potential?

“Rock of Ages” (USA) Trailer

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Adam Shankman, Alec Baldwin, Broadway, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Julianne Hough, musical, Paul Giamatti, Rock of Ages, Russell Brand, Tom Cruise

It’s been a little while since my last post, but with the debut of the new trailer for the broadway musical, “Rock of Ages”, I wanted to chime in with a few words.

First off, I’m unabashedly in love Hollywood movie musicals.  I grew up with them.  I love the idea of them, the other worldly nature of them, and the energy and how they wear all their larger than life emotions on their sleeves.  The old-time classic movie musicals were where the audience was as much a participant as the characters were.  They were invited to stand up and cheer, sing along, applaud after a great number, it was as close to a stage experience as we got in a movie theatre.

When the movie musical disappeared for a number of years, it was because the world had become too cynical to accept that style of filmmaking.  When it made its comeback (in the 90s), in my opinion, it was still holding back, coating the musical numbers in MTV glitz and refusing to let the audience in on the experience (see “Chicago”, “Nine” and “Evita”).  Adam Shankman, an award-winning choreographer, brought back the exact style and optimistic exuberance that was missing from those previous “movie musicals” with “Hairspray” and I’ve been awaiting his follow up.  He seemed to be the only working filmmaker you got the stylistic concept of the movie musical.  It wasn’t about quick cuts, jumping locations, or singing on a stage, persay.  It was about facing dead out at the audience, and directing the musical numbers for their enjoyment.  Those musical numbers always broke away from the “reality” of the film, that’s what made them so unique as a stylistic ploy.

In looking at the new trailer, Shankman’s love affair with choreography and movie musicals is still apparent (thankfully), but the trailer is playing a little coy with the breakout energy of those musical numbers, which I know he’s employed.  This is a teaser trailer as such, and taken that way, it works a charm.

On a side note, I’ve read some rumblings about present day movie musicals not using “original” songs.  I’ll accept the idea of this criticism, as we’ve sort of grown up with the Disney musical where original songs were created for the stories.  However, it must be acknowledged that a great deal of the classic Hollywood musicals were populated with songs that were pilfered from the studios back catalogue.  Movie musicals were a relatively cheap form of film entertainment and, rather than commission new material, they simply looked through what they had at their disposal and wrote a story around those songs.

“Singin’ in the Rain’ is the classic, and most successful, example of this, as every one of the songs, including the title tune, was taken from a previous film or an unpublished song from another production.  ”An American In Paris” was designed around classic Gershwin tunes, and “White Christmas” was an Irving Berlin showcase.  The other type of Hollywood musical was the stage adaptation, such as “The Music Man” and “On The Town”, which is where “Hairspray” fits in.  ”Rock of Ages” is an interesting amalgam of both styles of movie musical, being a stage adaptation, but also employing previously written and published song material.

Bottom line, if you’re a fan of film history, and of Hollywood movie musicals, this is an adaptation that should give one reason to hope for a great night out.

The Unsung: Halloween Edition

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Cliff De Young, Halloween, Horror, I Madman, Jenny Wright, Joey Lawrence, Michael Dougherty, Mystery, Paul Golding, Pulse, Shallow Ground, Sheldon Wilson, Suspense, Tibor Takacs, Trick 'r Treat

‘The Unsung’ is an ongoing series looking at overlooked or forgotten films, actors and filmmakers.

Here’s four fantastic and unjustly little known horror-suspense films to try and track down for the Halloween night (if you can).  Even if you can’t find em tonight, any night is a good night for a scare.

“Pulse” (1988)

This is a film that impresses with its attention to detail.  It preempts “Final Destination” in its Rube Goldbergian personification of everyday objects trying to murder the lead characters.  In this films case, it’s an unexplainable electrical force that forces its way through a suburban neightbourhood and delights in killing the occupants of the household and then concealing the crime as an accident or suicide.  It’s a malicious force and the film does a spectacular job of giving it life with intense macro-level photography, to such a degree that we really feel we’re witnessing an alien being.  But that’s the films purpose, to show us how alien and strange the mundane and accepted lifestyle we lead is.  We accept it and are complacent with it, but we don’t understand it in the least.  Writer-director Paul Golding makes us feel like we’re living a life of constant Russian roulette.  It’s only a matter of time.  Cliff De Young anchors the film well, in a rare lead role, and Joey Lawrence is convincing as his estranged son.  A solid, intense, non-exploitive horror film.

“Shallow Ground” (2005)

As much as I love independent horror, the awful truth is that it is often the place where aspiring filmmakers, with little or no talent, try to make their mark.  The landscape is littered with the shells of marketable independent horror titles with absolutely no substance to speak of.  No scares either.

“Shallow Ground” from 2005 is something different.  This is the kind of horror that scares you with what’s right in front of you, not with what’s lurking off camera.  It’s a horror film with ideas and a good, solid mystery plot to back up the rich photography and way, way above average makeup effects.  The film concerns a mysterious boy, covered head to toe in blood, arriving at a remote police station, one year after the brutal unsolved murder of a local girl.  This arrival opens up all emotional wounds with the locals, particularly with the sheriff, played with haunted eyes by veteran actor Timothy V. Murphy.  The film keeps changing form, shifting under our feet, and the murder mystery effectively motors us from one end to the next, culminating in a nice visual flourish.  This is what successful independent horror looks like.

“Trick ‘r Treat” (2009)

And this is what unjustly abandoned studio horror looks like. The storied history of “Trick ‘r Treat” is well known to horror hounds.  They screamed from the mountain tops to secure a release for this film, but it fell on more than deaf ears.  What “Trick ‘r Treat” does is successfully resurrect the type of anthology horror that has been a staple for decades in Hollywood films, right up until the cynicism of the late 90s kicked in.  These type of anthologies are like reading a great book of short stories, or sitting around a campfire and telling the best tales you’ve accrued over your years.  Writer-director Michael Dougherty scripted four separate, and tonally different, tales, and then ingeniously interweaves them without us noticing.  The way these stories wrap around themselves is one of its many pleasures.  It’s a small film, but at times it seems ready to burst at the seems with extravagant visual design and giddy macabre. Especially in the creation of the diminutive Sam, a demonically playful faux child, with a sack strung around his head.  He figures in the climactic tale, and it’s well worth the wait.  Criminally underseen.

“I, Madman” (1989)

My personal favourite of the bunch.

I’ve already written a lengthy review, detailing my love for this concoction (full review here), but let me just reiterate what a small miracle this film is.  It defies categorization and it challenges all to keep their feet planted in the real world. Director Tibor Takacs (of “The Gate” fame) does such a bang up job of blurring the line between fiction, dream, imagined reality and the real, that we almost give up trying, and just succumb to the dream-like horror presented to us.  It’s romantically in love with cinema, and with horror in general.  A masterpiece.

That’s it for this Halloween kids.  See you all next year.

Paranormal Activity 3 Review (★★★1/2)

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Chloe Csengery, Christopher Nicholas Brown, Dustin Ingram, franchise, Horror, Jessica Tyler Brown, Katie Featherston, Lauren Bittner, Oren Peli, Paranormal Activity 3, Supernatural, Thriller

Living in this world of franchises, as we do, it’s difficult to really convince when one of real quality arrives.  The very act of creating a third film in a series screams of dramatic inertia, cash grab and the like.  But ‘Paranormal Activity 3′ is a truly frightening film, with real, grounded, believable performances and some of the best scares I’ve seen all year.

The real key to the success of this film is that it finds a simple hook that makes it distinctive from the others in the series.  Firstly, setting the film in the technologically Jurassic 1988, and bringing us into the backstory of the two sisters from the previous films.  Then, the real hook is in having the youngest sister, Kristi, befriend an imaginary friend named Toby.  It seems simple enough, but it’s a situation most of us can relate to, at least from the outside, and then the fun of the mystery is in trying to read the youngest sister’s relationship and to find out what Toby really is.  Is he a thing or a person? How old is he?  How tall is he?  What rules does he live by, and most importantly, how controlling is he?

Toby turns out to be the most playfully frightening villain since the original Michael Myers.  He loves toying with these people, but at the same time he may react like a petulant child if neglected, albeit a quite violent one.  His playfulness and unpredictability leads to the most imaginative and effective set pieces of the series, particularly one involving a ghostly bed sheet and cute babysitter (sound familiar?).  The directors, Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, have a lot of fun with the genre conventions.  They know when they’re introducing a disposable character, and they know where our expectations are heading every step of the way.  This is the kind of horror that is fun to frightened with.

The Ides of March Review (★★★★)

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Drama, Evan Rachel Wood, Farragut North, George Clooney, Marisa Tomei, Paul Giamatti, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, politics, Ryan Gosling, The Ides of March, Thriller

This is a quiet thriller that gets a lot of mileage out of a raised voice and a stern glare.  It understands the inherent makeup of equal parts comedy and tragedy within the broken, present state of politic gamesmanship.  You never laugh out loud, but you very often shake your head with resigned, sad, human comedy, all the while being riveted with dramatic gamesmanship.

The basic framework of the story is in following the last days of the campaign of Governor Morris (George Clooney) and his staff, chiefly Paul Zara (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling), leading up to the Democratic Primary.  The focus on the story is narrow, choosing instead to allow the decisions which these characters make have the far reaching effects. We care more by hearing about the effect of a decision made, rather than seeing those repercussions.  It’s the off screen effect.  It works just as well in drama as it does in horror.

David Hess (1942 – 2011)

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Andy Williams, composer, cult star, David Hess, David Patrick Kelly, Elvis Presley, Horror, Last House on the Left, Pat Boone, Road Leads to Nowhere, soundtrack, Swamp Thing, Wes Craven

Growing up, the two actors that frightened me the most were both Davids.

David Hess and David Patrick Kelly, with no discernible tie between them except their penchant for characters with a twisted morality, and sometimes a total disregard for anyone’s motives but their own.  They frightened me with their single-minded intensity and their unending confidence.  They simply knew they were in the right, no matter how vicious or off-putting their actions were.  There was an unease that emanated from someone that never entertained the notion that they were wrong.  It takes great courage to push a character to the finish line like that, without letting the seams show.  David Hess, for a time at least, was that kind of actor.

Footloose Review (★★★1/2)

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1984, Andie Macdowell, Craig Brewer, Dance, Dennis Quaid, Footloose, Julianne Hough, Kenny Wormald, Kevin Bacon, Miles Teller, Ray McKinnon, Remake, Revival

Update: While the majority of the reviews for the new Footloose have been very positive, there have been a handful of lazy ones, from fairly prominent critics, who clearly choose to misunderstand the premise of this new film. They keep stating that the town has banned music and dancing and that this idea is clearly ridiculous.  However, if you actually watch the movie, what is smart about the updated premise is that they did not just ban dancing and music.  They simply tried to protect their children by controlling when and where they did these things.  They specify that a dance has to happen under controlled supervision by the town elders, and that it must happen before the enforced curfew.  The idea of controlling that which cannot be controlled has been a staple of musicals for all time, from “Sound of Music” to “Seven Brides” to “West Side Story”, and this film does a good job of straddling reality and movie musical fantasy.  It is a musical.  And within the world of the musical, of course everyone is a fantastic dancer (the other flip criticism they toss around), and that was never called into question in those aforementioned classics.  These critics really need to carefully pay attention (sarcasm) to the film that is presented to them, not to the one they’re already looking forward to criticizing in their cynical minds.

Original review:

There have been an exorbitant number of remakes in the last few years.  Way more than can be justified, and most of them are purely crass, commercial laziness.  In looking at this new version of ‘Footloose’, I think there needs to be a new way of thinking about remakes, and possibly ditching the remake name altogether.  The term ‘remake’ is such a loaded term now, when you think about it a ‘revival’ might be a more accurate label.  This film is the equivalent of a new stage version of a popular theatrical show.  The story beats are the same, but the interpretation, the details, the character relationships are all new.

This movie is dripping with attitude, almost literally.  The director, Craig Brewer, is a unique talent you loves the south, the good and the bad.  He knows the landscape, the nuance, and the physicality of it, inside and out.  There are many ways that this version is superior to the original, but the most important is in the realization of a multicultural community.  The 1984 original was pretty much an entirely white community, at least as far as the film’s scope was concerned.  That was also as far as the pop cultural impact as well, the songs and the style of that film were primarily directed at a white audience.  This version doesn’t force the multiculturalism to the fore, it simply is, and the music reflects that now as well.  And it isn’t divisive, as it sometimes is in society. What I love so much about this film is that every music type, and every character type, is open to the next.  This movie is truly colour blind in all respects, it never even enters the conversation, and that was refreshing.  The attitude of the film and the dancing gets amped up even further because of this, the irresistible draw of raw inspiration and energy, from all pulses of life.

Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark Review (★★★1/2)

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Bailee Madison, Comic Book, Creatures, Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark, Gothic, Grimm Fairy Tales, Guillermo Del Toro, Guy Pearce, Haunted House, Horror, Katie Holmes, Latchkey's Lament, Thriller, Troy Nixey

Here is an opulent and haunting horror-thriller.  It revels in its shadows and the dark, richness of its colour palette, and it also has the courage of its convictions, taking the story into much darker and frightening terrain than was originally expected.  It’s a hermetically sealed world of gothic fright.

Katie Holmes and Guy Pearce star as Kim and Alex, a couple in a relatively new relationship, and invested in restoring classically old manors to their originally glory.  The wonderful young actress Bailee Madison plays the real lead of the film, Sally, who’s sent to live with here father (Pearce) from her off screen, and obviously unfit, mother in L.A.  Within hours of arriving, Sally begins to suspect that there is something else living within the house. Something that is whispering to her through the vents to come and play with them.  From here, the story hooks are in, and we’re off into the dark land of fairytales once more, overseen by old reliable, Guillermo Del Toro.

Warrior Review (★★★★)

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Fighting, Gavin O'Connor, Genre, Jennifer Morrison, Joel Edgerton, Miracle, MMA, Nick Nolte, Rocky, Sports, Tom Hardy, UFC, Warrior

‘Warrior’ is a masterpiece of populist entertainment. The term ‘populist’ might be considered, by some, to be a lesser artform, but really it’s not.  It’s an artform that’s a balancing act, that carries certain preconceptions from the audience coming in and one that isn’t afraid to swing for the fences with emotion and ground-swelling action.  That’s where “Warrior” comes from.

The backbone of the story is sports genre boilerplate, where down on their luck figures convince friends/family of their worth, then train and fight for a specific title or purse.  That’s the kind of baggage that populist entertainment comes with.  It’s almost like taking stock B-movie plots and then juicing them up with as much character, past hurt, psychological damage and real life colour and interest so as to make the audience forget that they’ve been here many times before.  It may take longer for some, but I believe that by the end of this film all audience members will have gotten there.

Top Ten Coolest Runners in Film

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Elisabeth Shue, Matthew Broderick, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Sean Astin, Running, Kevin Costner, Rachel McAdams, Michael J. Fox, Charlie Cox, James McAvoy, Top Ten List

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a little strange in the things I obsess over. Obsess not in an overly analytical or critical sense, but more in the sense of getting lost in a kinetic visual stream or hitting AB Repeat on the DVD player to get another look at a specific movement of an actor/actress, over and over again.  I’m fascinated by movies and moviemaking, to be sure, but I’m also just a plain old fan of the looks of people. Their balance, their imperfections, their motivation for performing an action in a certain way.  I love the differences between people, probably more so than their similarities.

And then there’s my love of running.  From where this stems, I have no idea. It’s probably something that grew over time, like the best of interests in life.  I grew up with a certain type of kinetic, adventurous filmmaking, and that had something to do with it as well.  I also wasn’t a particularly graceful kid, to start with anyway (although it’s debatable if I ever fully outgrew that), but the one thing I could always do well was run.  I loved running, still do.  It’s something that I can obsess over, not just to lose myself in, but to watch it happening as well. In films, I’ve noticed, there are just those actors that move better than others. Running is a natural occurance.  Sure, there’s something there that you can train to perform differently, perhaps more efficiently, but on the whole it’s inherent in ones body makeup.  Your balance, your intent, your focus, your beauty, everything that physically makes up who you are is there in that moment.  At least that’s the pleasure I take from watching it.  It’s like the purest, most honest version of one’s physical self.

And so, with that introduction I’d now like to present a window into what I find the most beautiful or exciting in the world of filmic foot races.  This is my list of the Top Ten Coolest Runners in movies, a strange list to be sure.  These are the ones that I never tire of watching, their personality is in their gait and their velocity.

Buckle up kids, here we go …