Archive for June 2010

Hollywood Tactics

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Starsky and Hutch, Fame, Alice in Wonderland. We do love our remakes, don’t we? Sometimes they’re a hit, sure.. othertimes they’re.. well.. either of the 3 film names I’ve just mentioned. It seems that it’s okay for Hollywood producers to take an old film, remove everything we loved from it in the first place and sell it off for far more than it originally made.

The A-Team, for example, if you like cigars, vans.. blowing stuff up and saying cheesey things. It was well recieved back in the day,but that’s not what we’re digging anymore, Mr California. This guy is one of many who just cannot untangle the modern version from the old concept.. is it good? I don’t think so, but if I’m honest.. I have absolutely no idea. Is it even a film? Again.. I have no idea. You’d have just as much luck finding a decent van hire service, a couple of wannabe film-stars and another Hollywood film producer.. It may not make a similar amount of money, but you’d end up with a film that was of just a high calibre. Job done. I say this from a fairly cynical viewpoint, and it’s fair to say that the industry has managed to stumble into an alternative reality.


According to this report the new tactic is to find a suitably shoddy film and spitshine it:

They include The Shadow, Red Sonja, The Black Hole, Overboard, Dune, Real Genius, and Red Dawn.

In vain hopes of dragging these horrors from the mire “Hollywood” has decided the best port of call is to cast superstars in the main roles. It’s worth me pointing out at ths point that I have absolutely no taste for celebrity gossip (which may skew my take on this ever-so-slightly), but I really don’t see how this is going to make box office flops succesful.. not in the conventional sense at least. I’d be tempted to pay a little in order to watch some of the better known names on our telly-boxes make complete fools of themselves as they desperately cling to a sinking ship. Cue Jennifer Aniston and Hugh Grant in a remake of Lost Horizon. Just me? Oh wait..

A Modern version of the 1994 film starring Alec Baldwin, The Shadow, is set to be remade by Sam Raimi while a new version of Red Sonja, a 1985 movie which grossed only $6.9m, is set to star Megan Fox.

Overboard’s remake will include Jennifer Lopez while David Lynch’s 1984 space odyssey which made $29.7m but cost $40m is to be taken on by the director of From Paris With Love, Pierre Morel.

Buckle up then, folks. We’re in for a treat.

/sarcasm

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Humour, In the news, On the web, Stuff | 3 Comments »

World Cup Unveils Earle

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Robbie Earle. That’s a name you might recognise without being able to place exactly who it is. First things first. This is Robbie Earle:

Stoke City – Port Vale – Wimbledon was the shape of his playing career, until he retired in 2000 and instantly became one of the more recognisable faces in football punditry. In my experience he’s made many worthy, well articulated point and given the general public every reason to believe that he’s a fairly sensible and down to Earth chap. Sensible until the hype of this, our 2010 World cup, saw him draw his last straw for ITV.

Staff for the bigger companies involved in the tournament are allocated a certain amount of tickets to bring friends and family with the strict FIFA ruling that none find their way to third parties, and that none are passed on for a profit. It goes without saying that tickets for the World Cup are going to be amongst the more expensive in football tickets (just looking at the pricing made my current accounts shudder), so you’d like to think that everyone there is either deserving, or paying just as much as you.

Sadly for Robbie it was a house-of-cards scenario that began with a handful of orange clad young ladies. 36 of them stood together in one section wearing clothing that advertised a Dutch brewery, and that was the beginning of the landslide. This article gives us the low-down on what happened.

“Following claims by Fifa that official 2010 World Cup tickets may have been used for ambush marketing, ITV has reviewed its entire ticket allocation for the tournament,” ITV said in a statement. “Immediate investigations indicated that a block of ITV tickets would appear to have been used for unauthorised purposes during the Holland v Denmark match.

“Further inquiries have revealed that a substantial number of tickets allocated to Robbie Earle for family and friends have been passed to a third party, in breach of Fifa rules.”

Sadly Mr Earle was a much loved member of the ITV team, and it’s only because of fairness rulings that he’s had to be let go. If you ask me he’ll be on the BBC before we know what’s going on. It’s not like they’re shy in the savings accounts department, and it’d be quite the return fire for this sly move.

Come along, gentlemen: it’s all fun and games, really.

Tags: , ,
Posted in In the news, Sport | No Comments »

« Older Entries

Newer Entries »