Posted on 07/04/2005 4:12:15 PM PDT by timsbella
It's a spectacle, I'll give it that. But the script was inhuman -- machine made. I suspect they fussed with it and fussed with it until every single piece of individuality or quirky humanity was eliminated. The script radiated fear of making a mistake under the burden of $130 million. Compared to Independene Day with Will Smith, which had a lot of quirks and humaness to it, WOTW was a grim and sterile machine.
No doubt it'll make its money back, particularly in the international market, but I left the theater with a shrug and a "so what?"
Wow!
A strong analogy, durasell!
Roger Corman may be known as "The King Of The Bs". I still have a warm spot in my heart for the original "The Little Shop Of Horrors", which was shot over a long weekend.
He also has an eye for talent (Bogdonovitch, Hopper, Scorcese, Coppola, De Palma, John Landis, Ron Howard. All started as "Roger Corman Commandoes") that's been proven to be Second To None.
Jack.
Throw in Joe Dante. And I believe Corman helped out Spielberg in the mid 60s as well.
Yes, the scenes with the car pulling away and the train were great "shots." But I don't go to a movie to see great shots, I go to see human beings.
Also, and I have to be perfectly honest here, as a New Yorker I objected to the referencing of 9/11. The dust and the pictures posted. I'm not going to go crazy about it and start ranting, but I did find it offensive.
The future is Video on Demand. Hollywood will premiere movies on High Def in your home theater.
Going to the movie theater will be a memory.
Corman movies were always fun. They were fun because the people who made them were having fun. War of the Worlds was a big budget death march.
I could have done without the 'Wall of the missing' otherwise its almost impossible to make a movie about an urban calamity like that and not have those references pop up. There are visual allusions to the Holocaust as well. Have you read the novel? The movie is quite faithful to its spirit. The novel is Holocaustic.
Yes, and references to ET, i.e. the alien playing with the bike. Spielberg has spent waaay too much time being Spielberg. The guy needs a break.
You're quite right about Joe Dante. Borges.
Couldn't remember his name. Spielberg caught Corman's eye while Spielberg was at USC.
What was cool about Corman was that he'd write, direct and make a film. Sell it to distributors for strings of Drive-Ins. Take that money and make another film. A simple procedure that worked. Over and over again.
I guess that after attaining an Engineering Degree, Corman hated to waste time and money. Historically, Corman almost always brought in films under-time and under budget.
Jack.
Has anybody done an analysis of how much of Hollyweird's output consists of remakes, in comparison with earlier eras?
I'd like to see a decade by decade breakdown of remakes as a percentage of total output.
It seems to me that the percentage of remakes has shot up in the last two or three decades, but that's just my subjective perception.
Not letting that stand in my way, I hypothesize that the requirement for political correctness having trumped the requirement for talent, they just don't have very many of the kind of creative people they need to make good movies.
The left has always practiced far more blacklisting than was ever directed at them.
Remember that only came about because Hollywood was in the crapper deeper than it is today, as nobody really wanted to see sh-t like "Paint Your Wagon."
It's not just that Hollywood hasn't produced anything good...TV has produced excellent programs these past few years. I'd much rather stay home and TIVO anything on FX (The Shield, Nip/Tuck, Rescue Me) or HBO (The Sopranos, Deadwood) than go to a theather, spend twenty dollars and see something that disappoints me.
My guilty pleasure has always been Russ Meyer.
I believe that Corman never lost any money on any picture that he made.
Gosh could it be that I wait till .99 new release rental day, to rent dvds of the actors who are not on my personal "blacklist"?
Often, I rent three or four movies and watch maybe one all the way to the end. I still save money from going to the theater.
Naw that couldn't be it.
Reminds me that I need to pick up the DVDs of "The Fall of the House of Usher" and the "Mask of the Red Death."
I'm just as pissed at the motion picture industry for not releasing "The Conformist," "The Spider Strategem," "The Seven Ups," and "Serial" on DVD.
the mid60s was such a bad time for American made movies that Meyer's 'Faster Pussycat Kill Kill' may be the best American film of the early to mid 60s. Either that or a couple of Sam Fuller films.
The rise of the re-makes is in direct proportion to the rise of budgets. Whenever big money gets involved there soon follows people who try to quantify the process with "rules" and "formulas" for success.
The one exception to this -- and let the flaming begin -- was Miramax. The Weinsteins, for all of their faults, genuinely loved movies and were capable of taking big risks.
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