I think it'll be a good one. [video=youtube;6W6gL64G0c8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W6gL64G0c8[/video]
I'll definitely watch it. I was in a movie with Chadwick about 2 years ago and he was an amazing guy. Want to support the man!
The problem for me with this one is that it looks exactly like what you'd expect it to look like, like Ali. Even if you don't know his whole story you can still storyboard the movie in your head with a reasonable degree of accuracy.
...what about Movie 43?! [video=youtube;8jDp2D2zWMI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jDp2D2zWMI[/video]
Agreed 100%. With the storyline alone, it'll get some nods from the academy, it'll get a lot of white kids spending their parents money to see it, and a lot of their parents will see it as well out of white guilt and their foggy memories of Robinson. At the end of the day though, it looks like an unoriginal piece of shit. I'd rather see a movie about Wilt Chamberlain banging 20,000 women, or the downfall of guys like Rumeal Robinson... just something that's not so desperately pandering and exploiting people's sensitivities. Jackie Robinson's career is an interesting storyline, but it's one that we're all very well familiar with, and making a movie out of it is paying less homage than it is trying to steal hard earned cash out of the suggestable movie-going pulic. It's the same concept as every shitty WW2 movie that's been made in the last two decades. A lot of shitty movies have come out, but we'll still see them... why? Because our father, grandfather, uncle, or someone in our life served in WW2, and we have reverence for that war. Bottom line is, I don't want to be drawn into paying money to see a crap movie of an event just because it's something that was culturally relevant. If I'm going to see a movie, I'd like to know that it's a good movie with an original storyline, and not just something that marketing execs at Paramount just thought to capitalize on to sell tickets.
How about the movie 61* ? It was about some obscure baseball player who had a magical one season in the big leagues.
Not having seen it, I can't say whether NOVoodoo's pre-review is right or not. But then, he hasn't seen it either! I like baseball and there is family history. My father was at Robinson's first major league game. When my nephew was in high school they had to write an essay on someone famous, their choice, he wrote about Jackie Robinson and was able to get first hand reminiscences from a fan who had been there (my father). Not a movie buff. It may be like Brokeback Mountain, the one flick every 5 years of so I actually take the trouble to see.
Come on man, you can say that about 90% of the shit that gets made in Hollywood. They aren't going to make it if it's not going to make money. Plain and simple. The economics of film has significantly changed in the last 20 years. I know some people in the business, and a movie has to essentially make its killing in the first week or they consider it a flop. Of course there are some anomalies that flop in the theater and then go on to be successful on video, but Hollywood has never played it this safe in the past. They are only using a handful of stars, especially in comedy, and they won't try any new blood. Of course they're making a ton of WWII movies. It was the last honorable war. There was a true villain, and the American people gave their lives to free Europe. There were so many stories of heroism that we couldn't possibly run out of stories to tell. Nobody wants to look at Korea, or Vietnam, or Iraq because all of those wars make us look bad. I remember when it would take six months for a movie to go from theaters to video. Now that shit takes like 2 months. A movie can be in and out of theaters in two weeks. It's just crazy. Hollywood is a joke right now. Just look at all the shitty remakes they've pumped out in the last ten years. Red Dawn Footloose Planet of the Apes The Shaggy Dog Charlie and the Chocolate Factory The Bad News Bears Miami Vice The Day The Earth Stood Still Conan the Barbarian All they care about is making something that marketing execs think will sell to capitalize on tickets. Plain and simple. The art is gone completely from Hollywood.
There's plenty of studios making "art" still if you want. Am sure the business is as much about making money as it has always been. What's a company to do? Put out stuff they feel won't make money and force them out of business, because it's arty?
They certainly aren't taking as many risks. They aren't finding as much new talent (especially in the male category). How many fresh young comedians are making comedies? When I was working down in Hollywood there was something like five comedians that made movies, and that list hasn't really changed. Will Ferrell Adam Sandler Vince Vaughn Ben Stiller ??? (Can't remember the fifth guy off the top of my head) Basically you had to attach one of these guys to your movie or it didn't get made. The point is that Hollywood is just doing remakes and sequals. They are regurgitating old movies or comics because they know they have a following. What was the last original film you saw that really knocked your socks off?
What was the last big comedy Vince Vaughn was in? Seems like there was a shift from a few of those guys. Seth Rogen became a big draw. Judd Apatow's films in general, without consistently having those big names to go to. Sandler's films probably only get made now because he has his own production company. As for originality, it's, again, seemingly always been that way.
So Holywood regurgitating comics now is laziness, but Superman ad Incredible Hulk in the late 70s was...what? You have to make movies people want to see. So you get a generation our age who might have grown up on cartoons of something, and you make that for them. When did it become bad, to you? When originality ended?
Having "villains" and "heros" is fine but real people have warts. Since WWII was mentioned, I'm more into drama than war flicks, and The Diary of Anne Frank, showing real people who at times were petty, pissy, and unpleasant, as real people are, was far stronger than Holocaust with one dimensional perfect people and one dimensional villains. I'd hope that Robinson, a strong man but not a god, is shown as the person he was, a far better tribute than trying to make him perfect.
