(Semi-)Annual Dubious Achievement Awards Part 1

(Semi)-Annual Dubious Achievement Awards Part 1

Nicholas Cage Award for Most Egregious Sell-Out:

Nicholas Cage – Ghostrider 2

Johnny Depp – Dark Shadows

Eddie Murphy – 1000 Words

The Rock – Journey 2

SURPRISE WINNER: George Lucas– Star Wars Rights Sold to Disney

This is like the Usual Suspects of egregious sell-outs, except Depp, who usually plays Hunter S. Thompson instead. Depp presumably shows up whenever Tim Burton calls without asking questions. Nicholas Cage loses out in his own award only because he was contractually obligated to sell-out by making the first Ghostrider. One wonders if Cage making a series of movies about having sold his soul to the devil is semi-autobiographical. The Rock’s agent seems to insist on throwing him at kid’s movies until he finds his inner- Kindergarten Cop. Eddie Murphy is definitely making a strong play to put his name on this award but no one saw 1000 Words…it’s not a sellout if you’re not making money.

Nothing can compare to selling off Star Wars to the Disney Borg. Indeed, Lucas’s failings as a story teller had damaged the brand with its core customers even as they landed it right back in the child-to-pre-teen wheelhouse he needed to create a new generation of fans. But selling his baby is a startling admission that perhaps Lucas was never that enamored with the empire he created, that he didn’t love it as much as its fans did. 

I admit to being tempted at the thought of professional screenwriters (i.e. not George Lucas) being allowed to write a Star Wars movie (instead of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy7QMYpElD0). On balance, though, Disney chews up everything pure and creative that it touches in its relentless drive for strong quarterly results. I’m a filmgoer, not a Disney investor. We might get a good Star Wars movie out of this. More likely we’ll get a lot of 2-hour ads for children’s toys. For a preview of where this is headed…

Most Worrying Development:

Brave – Is Pixar done?

Brave isn’t a bad children’s movie. It’s just not a good one. It’s on par with everything else out there. That’s a problem. Pixar, pre-Disney, was clicking on the face of a digitally animated God. Brave seems only to have been made to indulge a talented animator’s fascination with rendering hair movement. Nothing else in it is special. Star Wars fans…you’ve been warned.

Least Necessary Sequel (non-children’s film):

American Reunion

The Expendables 2

Paranormal Activity 4

Silent Hill: Revelation 3D

Taken 2

Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning

Wrath of the Titans

WINNER: The Bourne Legacy

Can you believe they’re still making Universal Soldier movies?

Most of these movies are middling action franchises trying to squeeze out a few more bucks, which we can all understand. Special desperation points go to American Reunion, which, to make the timing work, places the characters as attending their 13^th high school reunion. Is this an event that has ever been held?

The Bourne decision seems the most desperate. What purpose could there be in resuscitating the US Government’s stubborn insistence on creating new super soldiers that it must betray and fail to kill when everyone on both sides of the betrayal had moved on with their career? The only thing I could think of was that Jeremy Renner’s agent wanted to call him “the next Matt Damon,” by putting him in this role. Instead, it makes him “The poor-man’s Matt Damon,” which I guess is a selling point, but I wouldn’t put it on a business card. I do like the idea of a Team America World Police Jeremy Renner puppet also saying, “Matt Damon,” instead of Jeremy Renner.

What we have to look forward to:

The Bourne Serenity – i.e. the one where the government doesn’t try to betray and kill its best agent

The Bourne Actuary – i.e. the one where the government creates a super race of accountants and clerical workers that it must then betray and kill

The Bourne Rhinoplasty – i.e. the one where they explain why Matt Damon isn’t in the movie through the magic of plastic surgery. Still with the government betraying and killing, like it do.

The Bourne Celibacy – i.e. the one where Bourne doesn’t stumble upon a fairly attractive, emotionally vulnerable female love interest who, through a series of coincidences, finds herself helping him escape betrayal and death at government hands.

The Bourne Diplomacy – i.e. the one where a super-race of diplomats resolves the world’s intractable political and ethnic disputes through the magic of dialogue, mutual respect, and a few good cocktail parties. Only to be betrayed and killed by the government.

The Bourne Redundancy – I think they already made this one. It was called The Bourne Legacy, Haywire, and/or Safehouse. Perhaps at some point the government won’t send its best agent on a mission that requires betrayal and murder. Perhaps it will learn from its mistakes and not betray its agents. Wouldn't it make sense to just betray lesser, easily killed agents?

JACK BLACK AWARD (ADAM SANDLER AWARD?) FOR SHOCKINGLY UNFUNNY COMEDY:

Casa de mi Padre

Dark Shadows

That’s My Boy

This Means War

The Three Stooges

WINNER: Casa de mi Padre

My Spanish is good enough to know this movie isn’t funny in Spanish. My Spanish is bad enough to know this movie isn’t funny in English.

WHY YOUR FAVORITE MOVIE SUCKS: The Hunger Games

My last quarter at UCLA, I walked into a final a few minutes early to find the previous test wrapping up. What I’d walked into was a sociology final and the questions were written on the board – they were questions that especially earnest 2nd years debate at parties about the effect of television on society. I looked at the clock and saw maybe 10 minutes to go, and felt confident that I could have turned in an A- essay without ever having taken the class. It wouldn’t have been insightful, but at least it would be readable. Having known a few graders in my time, points come easy if you can just string coherent sentences together.

I hoped the teaching assistant having to read all the carping dreck about celebrity culture had a sense of humor about the whole endeavor. Perhaps some hipster as jaded about his degree as he was about the world. Perhaps he majored in philosophy and picked up girls with clever lines like, “So once I have my doctorate, I can think deep thoughts about being poor.”

But perhaps not. Perhaps they took it all so seriously. Perhaps they found veined within all that undergraduate prose and misplaced references to class readings some essential ore of truth, yearning to be loosed from the mortar of these young minds. And then this laboring soul of a PhD entered the labor market and found no purchase for their Sociology degree. But, because they could edit, they got a job reviewing scripts at a film studio and green-lit the script of The Hunger Games.

This movie is based on a popular novel series, and stars instant supernova Jennifer Lawrence. Those are the positives. Then there’s the movie. The introduction is half the movie, and nothing happens. Did you notice how long my intro to this movie review was? Imagine it multiplied over 142 minutes.

Woody Harrelson is channeling a non-humorous version of his Kingpin character. Everyone else is devoid of any personality. The other actors are generic teen nobodies who can’t pull the lowbrow melodrama up to epic status and are a few years away from being the people in the background of the latest workout video.

Finally the competition begins and Jennifer Lawrence manages to kill other children in suspiciously non-violent, shaky-camera ways. There appears to be some kind of unexplained solidarity hand gesture most likely pulled from the novel or pushed to the editing room floor. Eventually they release some mildly scary dogs to chase the protagonists to a flaccid anti-climax. The competition ends with Jennifer Lawrence generally too classy for this tweenlight material.

This movie grossed over 400 million dollars for no entertainment value and the threat of more to come. Released at roughly the same time, the much better written and more entertaining Lockout made 14 million dollars. If there’s any solace to be taken from such injustice, one hopes that at least one Sociology PhD made some money this year.