In honor of today’s top two funny men – Dennis Miller and Adam Carolla – here are some rants I’ve been itching to get off my chest:
- Dear cable channels, if you broadcast an HD movie that has those bars on the left and right hand side of the screen, I’m off to the next channel. This is 2011, OK? It’s widescreen or nothing for movie buffs.
- Why do so many Blu-ray disks have a thousand movie previews which can’t be skipped?
- The trailer for “Battleship” might be even worse than we feared …
- Ryan Reynolds is having a lousier summer than Obama …
- I hate those Will Rogers’ pleas for donations at the movies. I’m not against charity, but I wanna see how much the actors in those promos give. And Sarah Jessica Parker – if you care so much about the cause please don’t plug your movie during the commercial. Classless.
- Let’s hope body switching comedies go away for good.
- They’re making “Resident Evil 5,” a “Dirty Dancing” remake and a film based on the kiddie learning tool “Flat Stanley.” Do I have to even say anything ’bout this?
- so … what do you want to get off your chest?
Related posts:
on 
on 
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
1.) No more regular TV commercials before the movie trailers, please. If you’re going to put anything up on that screen, I’d rather have movie trivia and a jazz soundtrack while I wait on my precious previews. I’m at the movies, broseph. Make me feel like it.
2.) I’ll see your ‘Resident Evil 5′ and raise you a ‘Captain Planet.’ God help schoolchildren everywhere.
3.) Ok, this is the big one. The release date of Kathryn Bigelow’s “Osama” movie almost guarantees that the film will be aimed at influencing the 2012 election. Moving the release to after the election- even a week after, for crying out loud- is the ONLY decent thing to do.
Our SEALS deserve NOT to have their efforts politicized.
1. Re: the Battleship trailer, speak for yourself. Peter Berg hasn’t let us down yet, and this looks like an awesome popcorn movie.
2. Stop with the 3D already. Just stop. Nobody cares.
3. No more corporations as the bad guys. It’s been done to death, and as a premise it’s utterly laughable. I’ve worked for many companies in my life, and exactly none of them have a private army that they use to assassinate whistleblowers.
I honestly don’t mind the commercials, but maybe that’s because I’ve been lucky enough to get the 60-second version of KIA Hamsters quite a bit (I wouldn’t buy a KIA, but love me some Black Sheep “The Choice Is Yours”). Also dig the previews for FX and TNT shows which the AMC chain showcases. Movie trivia and jazz all well and good, but everyone’s gotta pay the bills somehow.
As cool as The Avengers looks to be (potentially) shaping up, no more super hero movies, please, at least not ones with Dark Knight or Captain America in the title (liked the Superman pic, but will wait till that’s released before passing full judgment).
P.S. Jimmy C, they just haven’t gotten to you … yet.
“Dear cable channels, if you broadcast an HD movie that has those bars on the left and right hand side of the screen, I’m off to the next channel. This is 2011, OK? It’s widescreen or nothing for movie buffs.”
With the caveat that if the OAR is meant to be 1.33:1, it should have bars on the left & right. We don’t want to see a trend where old movies have the tops and bottoms cut off just to make it WS (which they have done with some ’70s TV shows on Universal HD).
“Why do so many Blu-ray disks have a thousand movie previews which can’t be skipped?”
I love trailers, so I don’t mind having them on the disc, but they should be able to be skipped completely with a tap of the menu button. We paid for the disc, we should be able to watch it the way we want.
My big rant is the dumping of catalog titles on Blu-ray. For example, there are several Stallone film coming out next week, including the great “Demolition Man.” By all reports, the film looks and sounds great. But the extras are the same extras when the DVD came out almost 12 years ago – a commentary (that was recorded for the laserdisc) and a trailer. That’s it. Yet in that commentary, they mention multiple deleted scenes throughout the movie. Why not include them? I understand producing new featurettes for older films cost money, but you can’t simply sift through the archives and pull out the deleted scenes?
I don’t mind the unskippable trailers on movies I have rented, not because I like the trailers, but because I only have to see it once. When I buy a DVD or Bluray, I OWN it even if Hollywood does not agree. They should not be able to force me to watch their krep over and over again. Beside, it’s just pathetic to see a five year old trailer for a box office bomb. And Hollywood wonders why their DVD/Bluray sales are cratering. It’s because they don’t respect their customers.
1. Shakey cam….beat senseless any director who continues to use it and imprison whoever came up with the idea.
2. Lightning fast quick cutting…..make action scenes where I can actually tell what’s going on and not be made sick by the chopped up mess on the screen.
3. Heavy duty computer hacking done in few seconds with just a lap top
4. The pilot who can fly any and all aircraft.
5. Being slapped in the faced or sucker punched by a political message
The list could go on and on and on………..
Lazy dialog. It you need to have your characters who are supposed to be experts in their fields explain what they are doing to each other then it’s lost. Likewise, covering plot holes with such dialog is cheap and lazy, and really, it doesn’t respect the material either. If you respect the material, respect the audience.
Likewise, undeveloped 2D characters usually written to be comic foils and demonstrate how great the hero’s of the film are. If you really want to get to an audience, make these types of characters have some humanity or other traits and develop them as if they were the main focus of the story. That way their actions are better informed. Stock characters are the hallmark of hack writing.
Ever see a trailer and know it’s one of those stupid ideas put together via committee, smoke tested and developed to appeal to the lowest common denominator? (Battleship). Not even a film I would consider purchasing from the five dollar bin in four months. And you gotta figure, if the trailer conveys this message, what kind of a film could it be?
How many different Rom-Coms could have their titles switched and no one would know the difference?
Its been awhile since I have genuinely looked forward to the release of a film.
I honestly don’t mind the commercials
Ouch.
When your life is summed up at the end, and all the experiences, thoughts, feelings and interactions with your friends and loved ones get put in the balance – are you really going to think that the couple of weeks, in sum total, you were forced to spend waiting for the movie to start while allowing M&Ms candy marketing execs to dictate what you were thinking – is going to make your life experience on this earth more or less rewarding? All for saving the amount of money they’d charge you for a cup of water at the concession stand?
I can’t speak for you, but in my experience, some of the best conversations I’ve had with friends, and even a few fairly profound thoughts occurred to me prior to movies while listening to the jazz or classical pre-movie theater music.
Finally, I commend this article for your consideration:
http://tinyurl.com/3lhtyhl
Bad link above
This should work
http://tinyurl.com/3vpxjzd
1. No more remakes. Really. If you can’t come up with an original script, try adapting a book or short story. There is an endless supply of ideas just waiting to be discovered. As you’ve already figured out with LOTR, HP and Twilight, this almost always guarantees that fans of the book(s) will see the movie(s). It doesn’t have to be a popular book, just one with a decent plot and characters.
2.Stop making trailers that give away major plot points, the end, and/or the best jokes.
3. Actors need to stop with the botox, collagen injections, fillers, etc. I can’t stand watching a movie where an actress cries yet her face doesn’t move, or there is a grandparent who has absolutely no wrinkles. It’s just weird and it takes me out of the story. Really jacked faces like Mickey Rourke’s make me wince & turn away.
@K — All well and good for you, but as I typically go to the movies by myself, the need for a conversation starter, as dictated, er, influenced by audio the theatre’s pumping in or trivia they’re showing, a moot point anyway. Apparently the commercials aren’t working on me, either, or I’d be driving a KIA instead of the cardboard box I call my Grand Prix. I also smuggle in my own $1 boxes of Milk Duds or Swedish Fish. However, always buy a giant Coke. With theatres paying out such a big percentage of the ticket sales to the studios (at least in the early weeks of release), do like to contribute to the concession coffers, overpriced though they definitely are.
Thanks for the link, though, just please don’t get me started on the constant barrage of noise baseball parks throw at you in the name of between-innings “entertainment.”
@EricP
The funny thing about commercials is that nobody seems to think they work on them. I’ve never met anyone who thought they were being influenced. Yet, somehow, these useless, fruitless commercials that don’t influence any one just keep getting made and keep getting stuck under our noses. It’s a mystery.
I work the concessions the other way. If they’re going to charge big bucks, I go to an expensive store and get premium goodies and smuggle them in. Besides, Milk Duds = dental bills in my case.
I realize this will be an unpopular opinion, but I am so tired of movies about comic book super heroes. They bore me to tears.
For those 3D naysayers out there, you are aware that you do have the option of seeing the same movie in 2D, right? No one ever has or ever will lash you to a theater seat and force you to endure a 3D flick. You can rent any DVD, turn off the color and pretend you’re a whippersnapper of a 1940s fellow who appreciates film’s purest form. That said, lay off the rest of us who find 3D a fascinating tool for storytelling. History tells us that people also derided sound when it came into the movies, they lambasted color pictures as being “gaudy,” and now it’s 3D’s turn. Trust me, in 20 years, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a 2D flick.
I think there’s WAY too many animated features we all could have done without in the last year or two alone, even compared to the superhero movies…