It is, it has to be said, a strange way to promote an upcoming remake of a children’s classic – to wheel out an actress who boasts of having “hated” the original film, made by the same studio, and who disdains much of the story on which it’s based. And who does so seemingly on-message. Especially when the future of Disney, its very existence, is looking uncertain.
And as The Drinker and others have noted, the glib and joyless ‘strong female character’ trope now sounds much more hackneyed and cringeworthy than a tale in which unlikely friends are made and love is found, and in which a malevolent, magic-wielding queen is chased by dwarves and an entire forest of critters, before being crushed under a giant boulder, rightly, and then devoured by vultures.
Embrace Hollywood!
“Pure brain cancer in movie form” – a movie review for the ages. (h/t Maikeru)
I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Writing Overlords
“Democrats need to embrace Hollywood because this is where they need to come to learn how to tell a story.“ – Michael Moore.
The first draft is the most lucrative step in any feature writer deal. A rule of thumb is that a “rewrite” pays two-thirds of a “first draft.” So if you’re being paid $75,000 for a rewrite, you should expect to get $100,000 for the first draft. In practice that gap tends to be a little bigger but for our purposes, two-thirds is a good benchmark (Remember that calculation because it’s going to become very important later on in our discussion of A.I.).
“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”
History and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer: A review by Rick McGinnis at Steyn Online.
Cardi Vanilli
Cardi B has a drink thrown at her onstage. She throws her
2 things:
1. Cardi B encourages degeneracy, criminality & trash behavior. Don’t be shocked when your “fans” behave the way you tell them to
2. The song didn’t stop. Y’all listening to an iPad
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) July 30, 2023
Embrace Hollywood!
“Democrats need to embrace Hollywood because this is where they need to come to learn how to tell a story.“ – Michael Moore
…Barbie goes to plasticine hell. Diversity hires America Ferrera and Issa Rae give abominable speeches about Latino and black feminist sacrifice, and Rhea Perlman appears morphing Barbie inventor Ruth Handler into Ruth Bader Ginsburg. New Lizzo and Billie Eilish songs provide feminist equity. Things get more child-unfriendly when Gerwig tosses in terms such as “irrepressible thoughts of death,” “Proustian flashback,” and “patriarchy anxiety.”
Embrace Hollywood!
“Democrats need to embrace Hollywood because this is where they need to come to learn how to tell a story.“ – Michael Moore
Former Paramount CEO Barry Diller delivered a grim prediction for Hollywood on Sunday, warning that the industry is facing an “absolute collapse” if the Writers’ and Screen Actors Guild joint strike extends into the fall.
“What will happen is, if in fact, it doesn’t get settled until Christmas or so, then next year, there’s not going to be many programs for anybody to watch. So, you’re gonna see subscriptions get pulled, which is going to reduce the revenue of all these movie companies, television companies, the result of which is that there will be no programs,” Diller said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday. “And at just the time, [the] strike is settled that you want to get back up, there won’t be enough money.”
Well, that’s a story I suppose.
The “W” Word
A Snow White with darker skin literally makes no sense, of course, because she was quite literally Snow White, named after her abnormally White skin. “The fairest of them all,” I seem to recall. But whatever. My objection is not particularly that the races were swapped, but by how tediously predictable doing so was.
Groomer Kingdom
Disney has all-but-killed Star Wars and Marvel, Pixar appears to be on life support, and the new Indiana Jones has brought a scimitar to a pistol fight.
What high-priced IP does Disney have left to squander?
Judge them by the company they keep.
Starflation
How much would you pay to see a Taylor Swift or Beyoncé concert? I couldn’t be bothered in any event but price doesn’t seem to be an object for quite a number of concert goers these days. I’ve heard similar things from a friend who looked into purchasing tickets for an Adele concert in Vegas recently but changed his mind after seeing the prices.
A perusal of ticket-purchasing sites makes the sticker shock clear. On reseller Stubhub, the cheapest seat for a July Taylor Swift show in Seattle is $1,200; tickets for an August Mexico City show cost $500 each.
“I had to get nine phone numbers for three different accounts on Ticketmaster under three different credit cards,” said Joel Barrios, a Beyoncé fan in Los Angeles. He spent about $7,000 on three U.S. shows for himself and friends – as well as another $6,650 for several shows in Europe.
Embrace Hollywood!
To paraphrase Mark Steyn: you can take the man out of Austria, but you can’t take the Austria out of the man.
Groomer Kingdom
The firings will continue until the grooming improves: Following the failures of Disney’s race-swapped The Little Mermaid and Elemental featuring a non-binary character, Disney’s chief diversity officer is out of a job.
Embrace Hollywood!
“Democrats need to embrace Hollywood because this is where they need to come to learn how to tell a story.“ – Michael Moore
Embrace Hollywood!
“Democrats need to embrace Hollywood because this is where they need to come to learn how to tell a story.“ – Michael Moore
Embrace Hollywood!
Honey, I Finished The Internet
Embrace Hollywood
Embrace Hollywood!
“Democrats need to embrace Hollywood because this is where they need to come to learn how to tell a story.” – Michael Moore
The phone call I mentioned above was with a person who works in the entertainment industry and said they obtained—through connections—vaccination record cards for use by major Hollywood celebrities and others.
These aren’t counterfeits, but actual cards purloined from a hospital pharmacy where the vaccines were sold and included batch numbers but without names attached. In essence, they were contraband.
The person claims to have been inspired to do something for people in the face of forced vaccination after news emerged that the virus might have been the result of a lab leak in Wuhan, China, and that the government had been lying about the pandemic in general.
My interlocutor says they began selling the cards in early April 2021. Between then and early October 2021, calls were apparently coming in every day for contraband cards.
Embrace Hollywood!
“Democrats need to embrace Hollywood because this is where they need to come to learn how to tell a story.” – Michael Moore.
h/t Adrian
Honey, I Finished The Internet
From the makers of Phantasm and Army of Darkness, the Bubba Ho-tep Official Trailer (2002). h/t Alain P.