Charles Bramesco
Paramount Blames ‘Ghost in the Shell’ Box Office Flop on Whitewashing Controversy
Kyle Davies, the President of Domestic Distribution for Paramount Pictures, is not having a great week. The early eruption of a backlash to his studio’s newest release (the generously-budgeted Ghost in the Shell remake) and its whitewashed casting was cause for concern. But up until recently, he could assuage his shareholders’ worries by clinging to the notion that hackle-raising on the Internet would not have any tangible effects on the box-office receipts. That changed after this past weekend, when the Scarlett Johansson vehicle mustered a piteous $19 million in wide release. Left to answer for the film’s commercial failure, Davies has placed the blame on the controversy over tapping confirmed white woman Johansson to portray an Asian role, to which the whole of the Internet will now respond with a hearty “DA-DOY.”
Netflix’s New Rating System Is the Closest We’ll Get to Hooking Up With Movies
Sex with movies — until now, it’s been an impossible dream. But Netflix is a company of innovation, and they’re not going to stop at reshaping the home-entertainment industry top to bottom. Much ruckus was raised recently when Netflix announced that they would do away with their widely reviled star ratings and switch to a thumbs-up/thumbs-down system for recommendations, but a new video from the streaming giant released today clarifies the nature of this new recommendations engine. At long last, we can decide which movies we want to do it with, as if the film industry was one big textual Tinder. And that’s not my comparison, either — Netflix wants you to think of this like a dating app!
John Travolta to Star as Murdered Speedboat Pioneer in ‘Speed Kills’
Born in 1927, Donald Aronow made a name for himself as the pioneer behind the modern-day speedboat. He devised several models of seafaring vessel that matured into industry standards, and personally built boats for such luminaries as George H.W. Bush, the Shah of Iran, and Lyndon Baines Johnson. Aronow’s signature creation, the so-called ‘cigarette boat’ (you know, the long and slim ones they use in Miami Vice) became a favorite of cocaine merchants due to its great speed and nimble maneuverability. This would bring Aronow some measure of fame and wealth beyond his wildest dreams, but on the downside, it also resulted in his unceremonious murder in 1987 near his boat-retail facility in Miami. The man lived an eventful life, and now his memory will receive the ultimate commemoration: a biopic-thriller in which John Travolta will most likely wear a goofy hairpiece.
The Shrek-oning Approaches With ‘Big Reinvention’ and Fifth Installment in the Works
In the years since Shrek Forever After, our most recent check-in with the friendly Mike Myers-voiced ogre, DreamWorks’ animated franchise has matured from a massively successful creative property into something vaster and stranger. Gradually but undeniably, the Shrek films have turned into a Whole Big Weird Internet Thing, with various denizens of the World Wide Web creating disturbing fan-art and cracking absurdist jokes about the smart-alecky series of animated films. In certain online circles, even uttering the words “Some-BODY once told me” is enough to prompt a barrage of surreal humor and warped image macros. And now that Shrek lives on as a sense-stymieing parody of its former self, what better time to revive the franchise?
Mark Your Calendars and Protect Your Faces, April 26 Is ‘Alien’ Day
The hardcore Alien superfans among us already know full well that the moon of Acheron, the home of the ruthless extraterrestrial killing machines known as Xenomorphs, was scientifically classified as LV-426. And just as Star Wars devotees used a little in-joke to lay claim to a day of their own (May 4 is Star Wars Day, as in, “may the fourth be with you”), now April 26 will be henceforth recognized as Alien Day. A new press release has claimed the twenty-sixth of April as a day to recognize and celebrate Ridley Scott’s seminal sci-fi horror fusion, with plenty of special activities and events planned to commemorate the occasion.
Katherine Heigl Won’t Let You Off the Horse in Latest ‘Unforgettable’ Trailer
Sure, maybe April is early to declare a movie that hasn‘t even been screened for the public yet to be the best of the year. (It’s only the third of the month, so who knows, it might be early to declare anything the best of April.) And yet, watching the latest trailer for the upcoming Katherine Heigl/Rosario Dawson erotic thriller Unforgettable, I feel secure in my convictions. The first trailer was a whirlwind of psycho ex-girlfriend-sploitation, replete with darkly surreal home invasions, laptop-assisted masturbation, and Heigl’s super-serious killer-face. The final trailer has surfaced today, and if you weren’t convinced that this film will be an unassailable masterpiece — for people obsessed with low-rent suspense pieces about sexual obsession, such as myself — then Heigl’s got six words for you:
Michelle Williams, Mark Wahlberg, Kevin Spacey Lining Up for Ridley Scott’s Getty Kidnapping Drama
Even as stories about high-profile kidnapping go, the yarn of John Paul Getty III’s abduction is pretty out-there. In 1973, the 16-year-old was taken while vacationing in Rome and ransomed for $17 million. Getty’s father asked his father — the moneybags in the family — for the sum in question, who refused on the grounds that if he paid off this ransom, then all of his other 14 grandchildren would expect him to pony up when they inevitably got kidnapped. (This, like everything else in the paragraph to come, is real and not a joke.)
Channing Tatum to Voice an R-Rated George Washington in ‘America: The Motion Picture’
After the release of the shocking Sausage Party racked up an equally shocking $140 million (far more than any of us expected a movie involving anal beads forcibly yanked out of an anthropomorphized hot dog bun to make), it was only a matter of time until more bawdy animation followed. Cartoons for grown-ups may be on their way to a moment in the sun, as today brings the news that Netflix has launched production on an R-rated project in a similar vein. But they won’t stop at desecrating the sacred space of the grocery store. This time, nothing short of our nation’s origin story will provide the canvas for whatever vulgarity they’ve got in store.
Early Reactions Suggest ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales’ May Be… Good?
After the fourth installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean saga debuted to a critical shellacking, many believed the film would be a franchise-killer for the swashbruckling adventure series. (“Swashbruckling” is an industry term for Jerry Bruckheimer-produced films that include swordplay.) But because On Stranger Tides also raked in a cool billion dollars worldwide, yet another sequel was inevitable. Between the dire notices for the most recent film, the six-year gap between entries, Johnny Depp’s declining public profile, and the motivator of a financial imperative, fans braced to greet No. 5, Dead Men Tell No Tales, as more studio-mandated pap. What this article presupposes is... it might not be?
‘Wreck-It Ralph 2’ Gets a Title and Release Date, and It Will (Literally) ‘Break the Internet’
What exactly does the term “break the internet” mean? Web-surfers understand the definition as “causing a commotion of such great size and scale that the World Wide Web could shut down as a result of its enormity,” and yet the phrase only conjures one image to mind — that of Kim Kardashian on her notorious Paper Magazine cover, popping champagne directly onto a glass balanced atop her buttocks. So when Disney announced yesterday that their sequel to video game hodgepodge Wreck-It Ralph would bear the subtitle Ralph Breaks the Internet, we may interpret it one of two ways. Either Ralph’s going to go on an epic quest through the online wilds, or the 8-bit hero is about to blow our minds with the roundest ’donk in the history of animated cinema.
Jake Gyllenhaal To Out-Hero Mark Wahlberg With New Boston Marathon Bombing Drama
What is a David Gordon Green film? The answer to this question has perplexed film scholars for years now: he began his career with the dreamy lyricism of tone poems George Washington and All the Real Girls, took a detour into stoner comedy with Your Highness and Pineapple Express, returned to difficult character studies for Prince Avalanche and Joe (or as I like to call it, Irrefutable Evidence That Nicolas Cage Is Still a Good Actor), then whipped up a studio-sized flop in haywire political satire Our Brand Is Crisis. Predicting his next move is all but impossible, so what luck that today brings the official news of what he’ll do next — and prepare yourself, because it just as incongruous with the rest of his scattered filmography as you’d expect.
John Cena Voices a Friendly Spanish Cartoon Bull in the Adorable ‘Ferdinand’ Trailer
Though he looks like he eats cement and can crack dudes in half like Bane snapping Batman across his knee, John Cena’s just a big ol’ softie on the inside. The professional fighter has always been warm and cordial to his many fans, he loves posting dumb jokes online (the ultimate Celebrities! They‘re Just Like Us move), and he proved himself a game comic performer in 2015’s Trainwreck with Amy Schumer and Sisters starring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. In this respect, he’s the perfect choice to voice Ferdinand, a mighty bull with a kind and gentle heart. If the role was any more squarely in Cena’s wheelhouse, he’d be romancing an esteemed comedic actress.