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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Oct 30, 2016 20:37:46 GMT -5
The last castle is the only one that was obscure for me, and I found out about that one a few years ago after looking through gandolfini's filmography when I was on a sopranos kick. All the others films I had either seen or saw commerical/trailers for by the time 2002 was over. But that is the movies so far. I do not remember domestic disturbance at all though, and for the rest of the movies yet to be covered, life as a house, affair of the necklace, and the shipping news are the only I don't have a clue about. I guess getting free premium channels from Comcast helped out! Look forward to me tearing the shit out of all of those films— especially The Affair of the Necklace. My review of The Shipping News will be a Siskel and Ebert-style co-review with my mom, who adores it. |
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Post by Desert Dweller on Oct 30, 2016 21:35:52 GMT -5
I do not remember domestic disturbance at all though, and for the rest of the movies yet to be covered, life as a house, affair of the necklace, and the shipping news are the only I don't have a clue about. Ha! Well, I don't remember "Domestic Disturbance", either. However, I HAVE heard of those other three. In fact, I've even seen "Life As a House"! Though, I didn't see it in 2001. I remember renting it in the summer of 2002. I read "The Shipping News", does that count? |
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Oct 30, 2016 22:13:24 GMT -5
I do not remember domestic disturbance at all though, and for the rest of the movies yet to be covered, life as a house, affair of the necklace, and the shipping news are the only I don't have a clue about. Ha! Well, I don't remember "Domestic Disturbance", either. However, I HAVE heard of those other three. In fact, I've even seen "Life As a House"! Though, I didn't see it in 2001. I remember renting it in the summer of 2002. I read "The Shipping News", does that count? The Shipping News movie would probably piss you off. |
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Post by Powerthirteen on Oct 30, 2016 23:24:13 GMT -5
What is amazing to me is that I don't even remember that a few of these films ever existed. There was a Hearts in Atlantis film? The Last Castle? Some stupid Lance Bass movie? Not sure I even remembered Bandits. The Glass House, Don't Say a Word, Hardball... Good grief, I have no memory of any of these. Fall of 2001 was my last semester in college. I was taking a couple of time consuming classes and was working an internship. I was obviously not in tune with movies at that time. Ghost World and Zoolander are the only two so far that I've actually seen. And I saw those much later. If only I could have also forgotten about Phenomenon and City of Angels. Wow, those were bad. Never saw K-Pax. If you say it is similar to those others, then I'm glad I missed it. Really hated those other two. I remembered all of these pretty vividly (I was 13/14, delivering newspapers, and watching the movie listings in said newspapers like a hawk) except for that Lance Bass thing. Not only do I not remember it occurring, I don't remember ever hearing about it since. |
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Post by MarkInTexas on Oct 31, 2016 10:39:39 GMT -5
I'm a movie buff, but was an even bigger one back then, so I do remember all these movies coming out (subscriptions to Entertainment Weekly and Premiere helped, of course). What is sort of wierding me out is that I'm not remembering actually seeing any of the October releases in the theater. Of the five movies from October I've seen (Training Day, Bandits, Corky Romaro, From Hell, K-PAX), I am positive I saw all of them on DVD or PPV. That was during my (first) senior year, so I'm sure I was busy with schoolwork, and I had football season tickets, but according to Wikipedia, we only had two home games that month (both of which I remember attending--we lost both). I'm still trying to figure out why I didn't seem to go to the movies once that month.
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Nov 2, 2016 11:59:29 GMT -5
 Domestic Disturbance
Dir. Harold Becker
Premiered November 2, 2001
It’s The Stepfather. This movie is literally The Stepfather. Just a version without the slow buildup, clever political allegory, Terry O’Quinn, or any blood (gotta keep it PG-13). And it’s from that surprisingly long period when Vince Vaughn tried not being charming or funny. Let’s dig in.
Maryland boatmaker Frank Morrison (John Travolta) maintains a healthy relationship with his ex-wife (Teri Polo), but their son Danny (Matt O’Leary) has begun engaging in delinquent behavior as mom gets ready to marry the wealthy and mysterious Rick Barnes (Vince Vaughn). At the wedding, a stranger named Ray (Steve Buscemi) shows up from California, claiming Rick owes him money. Rick’s coldness has driven Danny to paranoia, hiding in Rick’s car to catch a ride across town when he sees Rick stab Ray to death (completely bloodlessly, of course). Naturally, when Danny tells the police, nobody believes him except Frank.
In the real world, Domestic Disturbance would be fifteen minutes long. When Frank and Danny call the cops, they go to the scene of the crime, a brickmaking facility, but don’t bother looking in the kiln where the body was disposed, accuse Danny of crying wolf because of his past of lashing out, and then invite Rick into the room while Danny tells the police what happened, which of course shuts him up. This last point is infuriating– the police would never allow the accused into a deposition for this exact reason!
Having extended the film to feature length with an episode of unexamined police misconduct that would make the Cosa Nostra proud, the movie suddenly realizes it has to wrap things up, which it does by making this cold criminal mastermind turn into a blithering idiot– knocking Frank unconscious and burning down his workshop, giving himself a serious burn and leaving his jacket at the scene.
In A Year at the Movies, which was written in and about 2001, Kevin Murphy lamented that Hollywood in its then-present state was content to make “products” instead of “experiences,” which, although familiar with the Hollywood Dark Age, I didn’t fully understand at the time. Now I do. Domestic Disturbance altogether is a product– anonymous, crapped out cinema that nobody wanted to make and nobody wanted to see. It’s hardly the first such film in this series, nor the last– and look how many comments I’m getting for it.
Signs This Was Made in 2001
Everyone wears lots of brown. Vince drives a Chevy Suburban, the family car of the turn of the millennium (and it’s always referred to as “the Suburban”).
Additional Notes
- Early in the film, Danny is arrested for truancy, something I’m not sure has ever actually happened in real life.
- Danny says Frank was the captain of his high school baseball team. Baseball teams don’t have captains.
- Danny also isn’t believed by the police because he never attempts to describe the murder victim. That’s preposterous in itself, but I guess the screenwriter couldn’t think of anything besides “he was just kinda funny lookin.’”
- When Frank tries to take Danny home from school with him, a random man who appears to know him gets in his face before Frank punches him out. I assume this is the same character as Steven from The Room.
How Did It Do?
Domestic Disturbance grossed $54.2 million against a $75 million budget, no doubt inflated by star John Travolta’s salary. It also earned a 24% rating on RT, with most critics calling it tossed-off and many (including my mother) comparing it to a TV movie. Vince Vaughn took a year off acting and then returned to comedy. Director Harold Becker never worked again.
I don’t know what I can say about Domestic Disturbance that I didn’t already say about Don’t Say A Word; they’re remarkably similar– they have the same rating on RT; they’re both plot hole-ridden PG-13 thrillers; they both had overinflated budgets owing to their stars; they even both feature climactic fight scenes shot in the dark, in closeup, that involve a shovel. Let’s just move on.
Next Time: Monsters, Inc.
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Nov 3, 2016 18:07:09 GMT -5
Monsters, Inc.
Dir. Pete Docter
Premiered November 2, 2001
It’s weird to look back and realize I’ve seen Disney rise from the ashes, fall, and rise again. 2001, needless to say, was the “fall” period. This is mostly Michael Eisner’s fault.
Eisner, the former Paramount executive, was once credited with saving the company from two decades of leaderless wheel-spinning after Walt Disney’s death. He doesn’t deserve that credit. In 1986, he supported shutting down Walt Disney Animation Studios, the flagship enterprise which brought the company back to respectability and profit in the 90s. His only real insight was to release the Disney catalog on home video, which every other studio was doing anyway and should’ve been common sense. And the more control Eisner got, the more trouble Disney ended up in, eventually causing a decade-long campaign within the company to fire him.
This is where we find ourselves in 2001. With the exception of Lilo & Stitch, the early 2000s were an embarrassing drop in prestige; the company’s increasingly humorless image inspiring a wave of fashionable cynicism and revived interest in slanderous conspiracy theories (see: antisemitism, frozen heads, etc). At the time, the only viable property associated with Disney’s brand was the one Disney didn’t actually own.
Pixar was not yet a legend of animation– today’s film would help get it there– but it was easily the most promising young company in the business; comprising an eclectic gang of creatives and technical aces that, in 1995’s Toy Story, gave the world not only the first computer-animated film, but one with an original outlook and a unexpectedly wry sense of humor that stands up today despite having been made in an era when having access to CGI meant not having to make an effort. It’s telling that, when WDAS’ Jeffrey Katzenberg left to found Dreamworks Animation, that famously derivative studio’s first release Antz aped Pixar rather than Disney itself.
In November 2001, however, Monsters, Inc. was still a big gamble. Pixar had only released three films up to that point, one of which was a sequel to their first big it, and it was not at all clear whether they could keep up with original ideas, much less whether parents would take their kids to the movies when they weren’t willing to go themselves.
Playing on the childhood fear of monsters at night, Monsters, Inc. depicts a world in which said fear is the lifeblood of an entire hidden world, as the titular company uses a wide variety of fantastical beasts to get the children of Earth to scream, which generates electricity for the New York-ish city of Monstropolis. The top scarer at Monsters, Inc. is James “Sully” Sullivan (John Goodman), who is best friends and roommates with his diminutive cyclops assistant Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal).
Unfortunately, Monstropolis is suffering from a severe power shortage as children have become harder and harder to scare; putting Sully and his slimy competitor Randall (Steve Buscemi) in competition to meet their quotas. While the company seems to run a tight ship, Sully comes across an unattended door one night– closet doors acting as interchangeable portals for the scarers– and accidentally lets a child into the facility, which Monsters believe to carry catastrophically deadly germs. While hiding the child (known only as Boo) from authorities, Sully begins to bond with her, as he and Mike discover that Randall has found a new and more terrifying way to elicit children's screams.
Although I remembered the film pretty well from seeing it in the theater, it didn’t leave that much of an impression– I was nearly twelve years old and on the cusp of an (admittedly light) “Disney sucks” phase. Watching as an adult, however, the film is stellar– funny, clever (there’s a restaurant called Harryhausen’s), adorable, and surprisingly heartfelt, particularly the relationship between Boo and Sully. Where lesser studios increasingly split the difference, having fart jokes for the kids and dated pop cultural references for the adults, Pixar made and would continue to make the best kind of kids’ film: something that people of all ages can enjoy as a whole, and which is just as good– if not better– after you’ve grown up.
Signs This Was Made in 2001
The idea that children are harder than ever to frighten plays on a wave of bipartisan moral guardianship that seized the entire 1990s. I’m not sure such fears were ever true– I, for one, was terrified of raw meat, oleander, the street, the sun, and that my dad playing Cesaria Évora’s song “Sodade” would summon Saddam Hussein to attack me with poison gas because “Sodade” sounded like “Saddam.”
How Did It Do?
Monsters, Inc. earned an astronomical 96% rating on RottenTomatoes and grossed an equally astronomical $577.4 million against a $115 million budget. It also helped establish Pixar as a guaranteed crowd-pleaser, a defiant force for originality in blockbusters; and proved that a critically-acclaimed, high-profile family film will get people in the theater even under threat of death. If the rapture happened tomorrow, people would still skip it to see the new Pixar movie.
In a single week, Monsters, Inc. was already the most financially successful film of 2001, keeping Disney out of the red in an exceptionally bad quarter.
It would hold this title for exactly two weeks.
Next Time: The One
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Post by ganews on Nov 3, 2016 20:38:34 GMT -5
"Monsters Inc." is still a top contender for my favorite Pixar. Even if much of the concept is ripped off Howie Mandel's "Little Monsters", Pixar did it far better.
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Nov 3, 2016 21:43:53 GMT -5
ganews! I was just thinking of you! Remember when you said Tomcats was overstuffed? That seems to be a common feature of bad comedies in 2001. Whereas the bad dramas are mostly boring, Corky Romano, On the Line, and (coming soon) Joe Somebody all seem to have been written in the belief that cramming four movies' worth of subplots into ninety minutes will make it funny.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Nov 3, 2016 22:49:32 GMT -5
This is where we find ourselves in 2001. With the exception of Lilo & Stitch, the early 2000s were an embarrassing drop in prestige; the company’s increasingly humorless image inspiring a wave of fashionable cynicism and revived interest in slanderous conspiracy theories (see: antisemitism, frozen heads, etc). At the time, the only viable property associated with Disney’s brand was the one Disney didn’t actually own.
[SNIP]
In a single week, Monsters, Inc. was already the most financially successful film of 2001, keeping Disney out of the red in an exceptionally bad quarter.
It would hold this title for exactly two weeks.
A friend of mine was pretty high ranking in Disney at this time. When Katzenberg left he tried to recruit her Dreamworks. She turned him down because of Disney's job security. Edited - Needed to clarify timeline of this rant: But, 2001 was a real test of her loyalty. She had poured years of work into "Treasure Planet", it was the most senior role she'd ever had on a Disney project. Will never forget the phone call I got from her late in 2001: "They're trying to kill my movie! They're KILLING IT! They are releasing it NOVEMBER 27TH, 2002!!!!! Do you know what comes out November 15th?!?! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Should have gone to Dreamworks! The pay was better!!!!" She had a miserable year that year. it really stunk for her because she wasn't high enough up to be involved in storytelling decisions. She was the assistant art director. In 2001 she was working her ass off trying to make "Treasure Planet" LOOK good. It was very disheartening for her to realize Disney really didn't care much about it, or trying to make it viable. They informed her about this in early December 2001. By which point it was freaking obvious that Disney intended it to buried at the box office behind a blockbuster sequel that was all but guaranteed to crush it. |
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Nov 3, 2016 23:02:27 GMT -5
Desert Dweller Treasure Planet came out November 27, 2002, not 2001. Though it did have to compete with a Harry Potter movie, a terrible Bond movie, and (God forgive me for seeing this in the theater) Eight Crazy Nights. EDIT: Ah, I see.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Nov 3, 2016 23:04:24 GMT -5
Desert Dweller Treasure Planet came out November 27, 2002, not 2001. Though it did have to compete with a Harry Potter movie, a terrible Bond movie, and (God forgive me for seeing this in the theater) Eight Crazy Nights. Yes I just clarified what I posted. She called me so upset about this in early December 2001. She had worked on this film for years. And by December 2001 it was obvious that with the Nov. 27th, 2002 release date that Disney was purposefully trying to bury it. Your review talking about the awful state of Disney animation at this time and the reference at the end to Harry Potter triggered the memory of this story. Her calling in December so upset about the release date, after Harry Potter had put up these monster numbers, and wailing about how Disney would rather just bury the movie than even attempt to fix it. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 3, 2016 23:55:04 GMT -5
First of all, baseball teams can and have had captains. David Wright is captain of the Mets.
Second, you shafted Emperor's New Groove, which is better than Lilo & Stitch. Also, Disney didn't bomb(in quality) till the mid 2000s with home on the range and chicken Little. Atlantis and Treasure Planet were better than DreamWorks at the time, once again quality wise. I know Shrek did huge, but my god would I rather go back to the traditional animation of those two over the now dated CG and also dated everything else that is Shrek.
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Nov 4, 2016 0:57:15 GMT -5
Desert Dweller Treasure Planet came out November 27, 2002, not 2001. Though it did have to compete with a Harry Potter movie, a terrible Bond movie, and (God forgive me for seeing this in the theater) Eight Crazy Nights. Yes I just clarified what I posted. She called me so upset about this in early December 2001. She had worked on this film for years. And by December 2001 it was obvious that with the Nov. 27th, 2002 release date that Disney was purposefully trying to bury it. Your review talking about the awful state of Disney animation at this time and the reference at the end to Harry Potter triggered the memory of this story. Her calling in December so upset about the release date, after Harry Potter had put up these monster numbers, and wailing about how Disney would rather just bury the movie than even attempt to fix it. That's very disappointing— and confusing. Clements and Musker did Hercules so that they could be allowed to make Treasure Planet. Did your friend ever say why the company wanted to bury it? |
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Post by MarkInTexas on Nov 4, 2016 10:55:00 GMT -5
I'm finding the discussion of Treasure Planet being buried to be fascinating, because it opened the day before Thanksgiving, which I had always thought was a prime release day. However, going back through Box Office Mojo the last decade and a half, I'm finding that, often, Thanksgiving Wednesday releases are relatively minor films, and the the Friday before Thanksgiving is the actual day to release huge blockbusters, which usually win the long Thanksgiving weekend as well. This isn't to say that no mega-movie ever comes out Thanksgiving Wednesday. It's just that they turn out to be far fewer and far between than I thought, and often, even the major films end up looking up at the blockbuster that opened the previous Friday.
To wit: The Friday before Thanksgiving 2000 saw the release of the live-action How the Grinch Stole Christmas. It easily repeated at #1 over the holiday, beating out both Unbreakable and 102 Dalmatians. I'll skip 2001 in deference to this series, but in 2002, Treasure Planet proved to be such a flop that it opened below the 3-week-old Chamber of Secrets, the 2-week-old Die Another Day, and even the 5-week-old Santa Clause 2.
Thanksgiving 2003, in a battle between former SNL stars starring in awful family comedies greenlit primarily for marketing purposes, The Cat in the Hat, which had opened the previous Friday, edged the first weekend of The Haunted Mansion. Thanksgiving 2004, National Treasure and The Incredibles both beat newcomer Christmas With the Kranks. In 2005, The Goblet of Fire and Walk the Line both topped the opening Yours, Mine, and Ours. 2006: Happy Feet and Casino Royale beat Deja Vu.
As our host will attest to, 2007 was interesting, as it marked the first time in ages that the Thanksgiving Wednesday opening beat the previous Friday holdover, with both Enchanted and This Christmas topping Beowulf. It happened again in 2008, as Four Christmases beat both Twilight and Bolt. 2007 looks like they got the release dates wrong, as of course a family-friendly Disney musical with animation was probably going to have more appeal than a wierd-looking motion-capture adaption of an old Norse poem. 2008 was a surprise, though, as Twilight was, of course, Twilight, while Four Christmases was a relatively low-key comedy.
The norm reverted back in 2009, as new opener Old Dogs finished far behind holdovers New Moon and The Blind Side (and just behind the 3-week-old 2012). In 2010, Deathly Hallows Part 1 beat newcomer Tangled (but just barely), in 2011, Breaking Dawn Part 1 beat The Muppets, and 2012 saw Breaking Dawn Part 2 and the even older Skyfall and Lincoln beat Rise of the Guardians.
In 2013, Frozen was technically in its second weekend, but its first had been in one theater in LA, and Thanksgiving Wednesday, it arrived in over 3,700 more. It still finished second to Catching Fire (though I'm pretty sure any disappointment at Disney about coming in #2 that weekend has long since passed). In 2014, Mockingjay Part 1 finished well ahead of Penguins of Madagascar, and last year, Mockingjay Part 2 finished well ahead of The Good Dinosaur.
This year, the big release the Friday before Thanksgiving is Fantastic Beats and Where to Find Them. History suggests it should win Thanksgiving weekend as well, even with competition from Moana, which opens Wednesday.
Anyway, thanks for indulging my nerding out over box office numbers, and I'll return you to your regularly scheduled discussion of Monsters, Inc.
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Nov 4, 2016 15:04:41 GMT -5
The One
Dir. James Wong
Premiered November 2, 2001
2001, I’ve said before, was not the worst movie year ever, but it certainly came at a dark time for the industry as a whole. Whereas with 2007 I bemoaned the inability to make even a comprehensive top twenty list, a top ten list of 2001 would still include some inessential films. So, in light of the lowered expectations one might presume existed that year, I’m surprised The One was so hated by critics. Even Kevin Murphy, who had already suffered through Corky Romano while writing A Year at the Movies, went out of his way to bash it, and he of all people should have had a good time.
Interdimensional criminal Gabriel Yulaw (Jet Li) has been hopping from one alternate timeline to the next, killing off his alternate selves. Because every version of him shares the same lifeforce, he can become more powerful by having fewer doubles to share with, until he becomes “The One.” For his crimes, he is being pursued throughout the multiverse by Multiverse Authority agents Rodecker and Funsch (Delroy Lindo and Jason Statham). Yulaw has only one double left to kill, a happily married police officer in our world’s Los Angeles. But the redistribution of life force goes both ways, and the more time the two Yulaws spend in the same world, the stronger the good Yulaw becomes as well.
Directed by X-Files veteran James Wong, The One evokes Hong Kong cinema but also fits neatly into the canon of ‘90s B-movies like Timecop or (God forbid) Futuresport, with a similar look, production values, and emphasis on its star’s physical prowess. It’s not a good film by any means, but beyond that I’m genuinely divided on how to feel about it. On the one hand, it is definitely self-aware– it gleefully indulges lame tropes like cat scares; and despite a very large budget, it chooses to recycle sets and film mostly in Downtown Los Angeles at a time when nobody lived there. Hell, American Movie’s Mark Borchardt has a cameo!
On the other hand, the film lacks self-awareness in some crucial areas– like the plot, which is built around a clever conceit, but never escapes its B-movie trappings. Unlike actual genre parodies and homages which utilize schlock with actual craftsmanship, The One is never good enough to rise above what it claims to be better than, and for that, I can’t recommend it.
Signs This Was Made in 2001
Holy fuck, the soundtrack. This film contains the musical stylings of Drowning Pool, Godsmack, Papa Roach, Linkin Park, and an incidental drum-and-bass score.
Additional Notes
- In “our” timeline, President Bush signs a bill establishing universal healthcare. I’m surprised people from Hong Kong know that the US doesn’t have that to begin with!
- Though many, many films have set scenes in Los Angeles Union Station (including the New York-set K-PAX), this is the first I’ve ever seen to make use of the Station’s east portal, an Art-Deco revival structure built in 1995. They actually make great use of it!
- Special thanks to Tea Rex for convincing me that other people had seen this.
How Did It Do?
The One grossed $72.7 million internationally against a budget of $49 million. It was trashed by critics as well, earning a 14% rating on RottenTomatoes. Most complained that it was derivative of other, better action movies, especially The Matrix. I personally find the Matrix connection dubious; except for the use of the phrase “the one” and the fact that Yulaw can dodge bullets, there’s no narrative or visual similarity between the films.
Action B-movies had spent the 1990s in decline, and The One was among the last of its kind. The following year would see the release of Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, perhaps the last of these, and canonically the worst Hollywood movie ever made.
Next Time: Gosford Park
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Post by Desert Dweller on Nov 5, 2016 0:45:19 GMT -5
That's very disappointing— and confusing. Clements and Musker did Hercules so that they could be allowed to make Treasure Planet. Did your friend ever say why the company wanted to bury it? She thought Disney was so uninterested in hand drawn animation at this point. They were trying to get rid of the entire division that did this. She felt they weren't very supportive of what the art team was trying to do with the fancy technology combined with the hand drawn art. Of course, my friend was hired on at Disney as a *computer animator* about 15-20 years prior to this, so her position was likely secure. She had worked so hard to integrate the hand drawn animation of the film with the computer animation. She also suspected there was a lot of arguing going on about story that she wasn't privy to. She felt that management just decided a year in advance that the story was blah and they couldn't fix it, so they would just bury it behind Harry Potter and take the loss. She definitely never believed that opening the day before Thanksgiving was a vote of confidence. She was sure nearly a year in advance that Disney was trying to bury it behind Harry Potter. |
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Nov 5, 2016 11:42:27 GMT -5
Desert Dweller Holy shit! Your friend did the Big Ben sequence in The Great Mouse Detective, the ballroom in Beauty and the Beast, and the treasure hunt in Aladdin!
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Post by Desert Dweller on Nov 6, 2016 0:18:05 GMT -5
Desert Dweller Holy shit! Your friend did the Big Ben sequence in The Great Mouse Detective, the ballroom in Beauty and the Beast, and the treasure hunt in Aladdin! She did some brief work on the ballroom scene. Didn't work much on Beauty and the Beast, not too much CGI in that one. (Don't even know if she's screen credited for that one.) She was way too busy working on Aladdin to be much involved with Beauty and the Beast. She worked extensively on computer animating the magic carpet in Aladdin. The carpet was entirely computer animated. She worked a lot on The Little Mermaid, as well, especially the scene when Ursula raises the wrecked ships from the sea. Don't know about the Big Ben scene in Great Mouse.... I know she animated one of the minor mouse characters. She got to keep a cell she did. Her best Disney story is how she got a $40K Christmas bonus for The Lion King. She didn't work on The Lion King. *Everyone* got a fat bonus for it. Ah well. Was fun while it lasted. She probably had more fun there than she would have had at Dreamworks. But, yeah, by 2001 she was very frustrated. Your assessment in your Monsters, Inc review triggered some memories of her complaining while working on Treasure Planet. You are right that Disney was much more focused on promoting Pixar. I mean, promoting Pixar isn't a bad decision. I got the impression from her that Disney was all in on that. The problem was, as you point out, Disney management at that time was a complete mess. What happened with Katzenberg was a clusterfuck. She said Katzenberg tried to poach a lot of top level Disney talent when he left. (She went so far as going over and getting a tour of the Dreamworks studios. Which she said were MUCH nicer than Disney's.) And that isn't even counting what happened with Eisner himself. Anyway, yeah, Pixar was way outperforming Disney during this period. Monsters Inc was a really fun film. It put up numbers that nothing from Disney could ever hope to see. It was obvious that Disney needed to adapt. But, management was too dysfunctional for way too long. But yeah, Monsters Inc is a great film. I totally loved it. I took my dad to see it. He thought it was fantastic. He particularly loved the interactions between Mike/Sully and the little girl. He gave me a plush Mike for Christmas that year. I think he kinda wanted one for himself. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 6, 2016 1:21:43 GMT -5
I don't think I've ever been more jealous from this site than I am now. I wish I had a disney insider as a friend that I could just hear all the real behind the scenes stories.
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Post by Powerthirteen on Nov 7, 2016 12:46:13 GMT -5
Her best Disney story is how she got a $40K Christmas bonus for The Lion King. She didn't work on The Lion King. *Everyone* got a fat bonus for it. ... You are right that Disney was much more focused on promoting Pixar. I mean, promoting Pixar isn't a bad decision. I got the impression from her that Disney was all in on that. The problem was, as you point out, Disney management at that time was a complete mess. What happened with Katzenberg was a clusterfuck. She said Katzenberg tried to poach a lot of top level Disney talent when he left. (She went so far as going over and getting a tour of the Dreamworks studios. Which she said were MUCH nicer than Disney's.) And that isn't even counting what happened with Eisner himself. Holy fuck that bonus. Aso, it in no way surprises me that Dreamworks would have incredibly nice office space. It just seems right that a company that works that hard at producing mediocrity would be super into making its environment comfortable, although I'm not sure WHY exactly. |
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Nov 9, 2016 11:12:09 GMT -5
Gosford Park
Dir. Robert Altman
Premiered November 9, 2001
Supposedly, time heals all wounds, and that includes deliberately misleading trailers. Even so, the light-hearted whodunit I was promised fifteen years ago was still in my mind when sitting down to watch Gosford Park, Robert Altman’s sometimes painful deconstruction of Agatha Christie-style novels.
The film features a weekend at Gosford Park, the stately home of a ruthless 1920s industrialist (Michael Gambon) who married into the British aristocracy. Amongst the guests are a business partner (Charles Dance) and his charming but mysterious valet (Clive Owen), a down-on-his-luck silent film star (Jeremy Northam), a Hollywood producer doing research for a murder mystery (Bob Balaban), and his Scottish manservant (Ryan Philippe), who is really an American actor doing some research of his own. The head of the house is cruel, miserly, and all-around despised, so when he is found murdered– seemingly twice– there are more than enough suspects.
Screenwriter Julian Fellowes used the British class system and the archaic nature of this particular house to dizzy the viewer, and it comes through in the production. The nature of the set gives the sense that the characters are wandering through a maze, and nobody knows the way out. Though Fellowes later lionized the class system in his show Downton Abbey, his voice here is far more cynical. Gosford Park is about what happens when the system doesn’t work. A man is dead, but nobody is really bothered because he’s a dickhead. The detective (Stephen Fry) is incompetent, while his more diligent sidekick (Ron Webster) is ignored. But it shows us without judging the individuals, be they upstairs or downstairs. No one person is really at fault for society, as evidenced perfectly by the double-murder of a single man.
Sign This Was Made in 2001
True to director Robert Altman’s signature style, Gosford Park is impressively star-studded. In addition to the players mentioned above, it features such established heavyweights as Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith, Kristin Scott Thomas (who is also in that weekend’s Life as a House), Derek Jacobi, Richard E. Grant, Charles Dance, and Emily Watson. The odd man out of course is Ryan Philippe, who has never gone away but seemed destined for greatness in 2001 when he also starred in the heavily-advertised but barely-seen Antitrust.
How Did It Do?
Gosford Park got 86% on RottenTomatoes and was nominated for seven Oscars; Fellowes won for Best Original Screenplay. As movies of this type go, even considering the accolades, Gosford Park was a surprise hit, grossing $87.8 million against a $19.8 million budget.
Next Time: Life as a House
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Nov 10, 2016 0:38:16 GMT -5
Life as a House
Dir. Irwin Winkler
Premiered November 9, 2001
(note: I'm posting this a few hours early as I have work early tomorrow)
One of the biggest differences I’ve discovered between 2001 and 2007 is the studios’ seeming need in 2001 to bore their audiences. I know the 2007 project only covered some 40% of that year’s movies, so I was being a little selective, but even the worst films of that year were mostly unique and clearly driven by passion. The Dark Age of Hollywood, meanwhile, was a veritable font of boredom. Boring comedies! Boring post-apocalyptic adventures! Boring political satire! And most emblematic of all the boring ‘90s movies, the midlife crisis tearjerker, for which Life as a House was something of a coda.
After being fired from his job as an architectural modelmaker, George Monroe (Kevin Kline) is diagnosed with terminal cancer– we never get his exact diagnosis or prognosis. A lonely divorcée openly loathed by his bourgeois Palos Verdes neighbors, George decides to use the time left to him to demolish his decrepit home and build his dream house with his estranged son Sam (Hayden Christensen).
The wayward Sam, who lives with his mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) and smug, distant stepfather (Jamey Sheridan), is none too pleased with this plan, as he was intending to spend said summer abusing opiates in Tahoe, but that changes as he gets to know his father better, goes clean, and woos his foxy former neighbor Alyssa (Jena Malone).
This movie isn’t just boring, it’s weird. There’s a microscopic subplot about male prostitution and building codes (together at last!). There’s also a ton of fucking in this movie: Sam’s friend Josh (Ian Somerhalder) has an affair with Alyssa’s mom (Mary Steenburgen); Alyssa even puts a move on George, who has also reignited passions with his ex. And despite setting up the overeager Alyssa as a love interest for Sam, the film continually seems to tease that Sam might be gay– perhaps unintentionally. And all of this is treated with all the innocence and cheer of It’s a Wonderful Life.
The intent of the film of course was to show the general public that Hayden Christensen could act, in anticipation for his role as Anakin Skywalker in 2002’s Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Christensen was lauded by Roger Ebert and was nominated for a Golden Globe for playing Sam, but fifteen years on, his performance is laughable; Sam is nothing more than a pile-up of out-of-control teenager clichés, brought to life with tone-deaf overacting that borders on self-parody.
Life as a House is most clearly inspired by two films, mixing the plot of Terms of Endearment with the upper-middle-class suburban angst of American Beauty, but without any of the writing talent or visual style that would imply. The result is a dumbed-down weepy, a weirdly hypersexualized Capraesque tearjerker that attempts to manipulate its audience into feeling pathos and still fails.
Signs This Was Made in 2001
- Sam has blue hair, pierced lips, wears eye makeup, and wears long sleeves under short sleeves. He also listens to lots of industrial and metal, and owns two Marilyn Manson posters. He also has a DARE sticker on his wall, despite being an avid drug user and also being over eleven.
- George works in the recently-completed California Plaza atop Bunker Hill in Los Angeles. He even rides the train to work, a rare sight in Los Angeles-set media even today.
- Alyssa is inspired to avoid shaving her pits or legs– clearly the filmmakers didn’t anticipate the SATC-driven Great Pubic Hair Purge of 2001. Funnier still is that Alyssa is inspired to do this by Paula Cole, whose music, like this film, is an artifact of a carefree time when when people rejoiced in boredom.
- Demerol is “non-addictive,” and consequently given out like candy.
Additional Notes
Here’s a question for those of you who were once straight teenage boys– if a hot girl tried getting into the shower with you, would you recoil in fear? Because Sam does! The film’s treatment of budding sexuality is nearly as befuddling as that in The Glass House. Nearly.
How Did It Do?
Life as a House garnered $23.9 million against a $27 million budget, and got a 47% rating on RottenTomatoes. While the film industry was still months from recovery, movies like Life as a House would never enjoy financial success again, nor would Hollywood studios greenlight them. In the age of existential terror in America, the movie's ersatz-American Beauty philosophy, in which people use sex and drugs to cope with the alleged artifice of unbridled peace and prosperity, was no longer credible. It still isn’t.
Next Time: Shallow Hal
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Post by ganews on Nov 10, 2016 8:51:37 GMT -5
Sam is nothing more than a pile-up of out-of-control teenager clichés, brought to life with tone-deaf overacting that borders on self-parody.
You didn't like it? Was it coarse and rough and irritating and going everywhere? |
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Post by Powerthirteen on Nov 10, 2016 11:27:21 GMT -5
I know I saw Life As A House on tv when I was, like, 14, but what puzzles me about this memory is that I vividly remember getting a reasonably informative look at Mary Steenburgen's middle-aged breasts, which seems incompatible even with the more relaxed standards of late-night Canadian tv.
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Nov 10, 2016 13:06:43 GMT -5
Powerthirteen probably because that isn't in the movie. The most we get of her is in a comparitively chaste, semi-high-waisted number. ganews Not like here. Everything here is soft and smooth.
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Post by Powerthirteen on Nov 10, 2016 13:27:52 GMT -5
Powerthirteen probably because that isn't in the movie. The most we get of her is in a comparitively chaste, semi-high-waisted number. ganews Not like here. Everything here is soft and smooth. I remember boobs! Boobs!!!!! |
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Nov 11, 2016 9:22:37 GMT -5
Shallow Hal
Dir. Peter and Bobby Farrelly
Premiered November 9, 2001
I was prepared to hate this movie. The trailers said enough: ha-ha, this girl is fat, but Jack Black can’t tell! And that’s there, but mostly I ended up hating the Farrelly Brothers’ Shallow Hal for different, much weirder reasons.
Hal Larson (Jack Black) is a wannabe poonhound with unreasonably high expectations for how the women in his life should look, as a result of his late father’s dying wishes to “never settle for less.” Why on Earth does Hal’s titular shallowness require such a concrete backstory? Is it too unrealistic for him to just be an asshole?
On his way to work, Hal becomes trapped in an elevator with motivational speaker Tony Robbins (playing himself), and as they get to talking, Robbins hypnotizes Hal into “only see[ing] women for their inner beauty.” Except he doesn’t. Think about it. If this were the case, shouldn’t attractive women look uglier to Hal if they’re bad people? Because they don’t– except for one occasion, as well as one occasion where two men look much more handsome than reality. If the Farrellys had ever explored the implications of their own setup, they might have made me laugh at least once.
The result, of course, is that Hal falls head-over-heels for Rosemary Shanahan (Gwyneth Paltrow), the morbidly obese daughter of Hal’s boss, who naturally appears to him as a total fox. But of course, Hal’s heart grows three sizes when he sees the way other people treat her.
And...none of it really matters. You know how The Invention of Lying doesn’t work, because not only do people never lie, they also say whatever they’re thinking, have no critical capacities, and are never wrong? This is kinda like that, but without even the one-off humor or the pretense of consideration for the inner workings of the premise. It’s not funny, it’s not insightful, and it’s not even insulting.
Signs This Was Made in 2001
- Hal works one of those ambiguous office jobs favored by Chandler from Friends, a sort of service economy descendant of the generic blue- and white-collar occupations of sitcom dads in an earlier age. The film actually involves a business subplot that manages to dance around any indication of what Hal’s business actually does.
- Aside from that, Hal’s taste in women other than Rosemary seems to consist of skinny, pouty model types with uniformily vacant eyes. Very of its time, but if The Neon Demon is any indication, vacant eyes are not actually something models themselves see as desirible.
- “Who Let the Dogs Out” is name-dropped. Also, gas is $1.55 per gallon.
Additional Notes
- This is the only movie I believe I’ve ever seen that takes place in Charlotte. Not by name, but if you’ve been there, you’ll immediately recognize the skyline. At least it isn’t Rhode Island again.
- Jason Alexander is in this movie, as the obligatory slimeball rom-com best friend. He has spray-on hair. His name is Mauricio. Has he ever been in a good movie?
- There’s a scene in which Hal smears vaseline on his eyes while pretending to have pink eye, and it’s by far the grossest thing in the movie.
- The movie has a weirdly out-of-place music cue: Cake’s then-blacklisted song “Comfort Eagle.”
How Did It Do?
Shallow Hal was unbelievably a hit, grossing $141.1 million against a $40 million budget. Criticism was also surprisingly divided, with Roger Ebert calling it “funny.” I don’t know what movie he watched. Jack Black, who had recently charmed audiences with his supporting role in the excellent High Fidelity, and would shortly charm audiences with his supporting role in the underrated Orange County, became a name actor and went on to much better comedic roles, for which I’m very glad.
Next Time: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
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Post by MarkInTexas on Nov 11, 2016 13:06:56 GMT -5
- Jason Alexander is in this movie, as the obligatory slimeball rom-com best friend. He has spray-on hair. His name is Mauricio. Has he ever been in a good movie?
Your mileage may vary, but Pretty Woman is pretty good. He also had an extended cameo in The Paper. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 11, 2016 13:41:27 GMT -5
I thought I escaped the orange county love when I moved away from my sister, goddamnit.
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