Friday, March 14, 2008

Snap Judgment: Still Not Dead

Let's get right to it, shall we? Not only do I have no introductory comments; I don't even have a witty line referring to the fact that I have no introductory comments.


Never Back Down (rated PG-13, directed by Jeff Wadlow, written by Chris Hauty)

I see... so, it's Karate Kid but with Djimon Hounsou in the Pat Morita role, with a little Fight Club thrown in. You can make fun of this one all you want, but I think it's doing a tremendous social service. No, hear me out! By taking a movie that should clearly be direct-to-video and putting it exclusively in theaters (at least for the first few months weeks days), the producers will very likely draw out huge quantities of shut-ins who can normally only see films like this at home.

Anyway, I'm told that if the movie is successful, the branding experts have already planned a variety of spin-offs in completely different genres but with similar nomenclature. To wit: A cautionary tale about Trader Joe's parking lots at rush hour (Never Back Out); an IT orientation film demonstrating the importance of critical data redundancy (Always Back Up); and a fascinating character-based piece about a man searching for the right chiropractor (Sometimes Back Hurts).



Doomsday (rated R, written/directed by Neil Marshall)

The poster tells us that "Mankind has an expiration date" but apparently, the cyberpunk genre does not. How fortunate for us! It saves a trip to 1983 in the time machine -- and with gas prices what they are these days, that's starting to be an expensive jaunt... sure, carpooling can help, but there's always one person who wants to stop off in '88 to catch a Soul II Soul concert, and then before you know it you're a decade behind schedule and the car is loaded up with Crystal Pepsi bottles and Go-bots and whatnot.


Horton Hears a Who! (rated G, directed by Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino, screenplay by Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul, based on the book by Dr. Seuss)

So, Dr. Seuss's widow Audrey Geisel gave permission to do this movie to the company responsible for both Ice Age movies. I'm sure she had her reasons (possibly as many as a couple million of them), but... y'know, come on. Blue Sky Studios are the very embodiment of what the kids these days call a try-hard. They're like, "Look at us, look at how great we can render icy landscapes and squirrel-fur and all that! And we have all these big-time actors graciously willing to accept seven-figure salaries to come in for 20 minutes to record their parts! Please, look at us? This time we got Jim Carrey and Steve Carell, just to be on the safe side." Meanwhile Pixar is off in the corner tapping its foot on the ground, mumbling "Um, yeah, could you make it kinda snappy over there on account of we're waiting for you to leave so we can break another box office record. Also, quick memo, bragging about your technology is so freakin' 1997."

1 Comments:

At 3/14/2008 12:39 PM, Blogger Myasorubka said...

I confused the DOomsday poster with the poster for Sometimes My Back Hurts. That chick clearly needs an alignment.

 

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