One of the stories on the AP wire this weekend is Paramount Pictures has been asked to pull billboards promoting rapper 50 Cent's new movie, Get Rich or Die Tryin' because 50 Cent is holding a gun in his right hand. Here's the story if anyone is interested:
Yahoo! News Story
Reports have said community leaders especially want the billboards pulled from areas near schools and areas with high instance of gang violence. This I would have to agree on. The poster is not appropriate for those areas. Location aside, people against the poster are focusing on the gun in 50 Cent's hand in the poster. Lest we forget:
The Terminator
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088247/
Tomorrow Never Dies
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120347/
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0356910/
Desperado
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112851/posters
There are a number of other movies that could also fall under the same 'poster gun toting' objection. So my question is what is the difference between these posters and 50 Cents'? Or are all posters equally reprehensible that show the main characters with guns in their hands? I've heard arguments the difference between those posters and 50's poster hinge on the relatibility of the main characters. 50 Cent is an easily relatable character because to some kids there individuals 'like' him in their immediate vicinity. And being a British secret agent with a license to kill, killer cyborg from the future, or gun slinging married contract killers for is less relatable. Oh really? How many kids have put a cape on trying to be Superman or Batman, jumped off of buildings trying to be Spiderman, or some other far out fictional character?
I am loathe to agree that the easy answer is that hip hop has made itself an easy target. Artist looking, acting, and singing about thug life sell records so they get tons more attention in development. As they say the proof is in the pudding: In 2003 Eminem, one of the most contraverserial artists out there virtually carried the entire music industry during a time depressed CD sales. Hip hop is not the easy answer. Hip hop is the obvious answer. Besides rap, I listen to a lot of other forms of music...rock, metal, alternative, you name it. Whenever some senator, activitist group, or PAC gets on CNN and CSPAN and denounces the obvious it turns my stomach. Denouncing the obvious, makes it easy to prey on people's fears and predjudices to score political points. What about those rock, metal, speed-metal or God knows whatever sub-genres of rock and metal with violent and lude lyrics? Because they don't garner the same level of popularity, they are less important? Come on people.
For the record: no, I don't advocate the glorifying of ANY 'thug' lifestyle, be it drug dealers, mafia, or whatever else. This issue is too deep to get into in just one post. We've got First Amendment issues, personal responsibility issues, and proliferation of mores (all different sorts, from all different sorts of interested individuals). I'll make a note and hopefully revisit this later.
In my previous post I wrote about how movies these suck, in a huge loud slurpy kinda but with TEETH! Few movies and TV shows these days reallty do a lot for me. One movie however just came on and inspired this post: The Shawshank Redemption. This movie is for sure one of my all time favorites. I own this particular movie, but when it comes on TV, I go wtf why not watch it. You can't watch The Shawshank Redemption with all the colorful metaphors bleeped or edited out!!
My love of this movie lies in the title: redemption.
Dear Hollywood Movie Maker:
My name is Tony an avid movie goer for most of my life. Ever since I was a kid I looked forward to heading to the movies, back in those days it was either Cinema One or 4 Winds Plaza. I'd pay the 2 or 3 bucks and accompany whoever was saddled with taking us little kids to the theater. I remember my first PG-13 movie I was able to see on my own which was the dramatization of Frank Herbert's Dune book, starring among others Sting and Patrick Stewart. To this day, when that movie comes on TV, I literally stop what I'm doing and watch. It was truly that good.
Lately, in the news we've been hearing Hollywood is experiencing money problems due to low box office ticket sales. This weekend's ticket sales seem pitiful. These are taken from MovieTickets.com:
Weekend Box Office as of 10/24/2005
1.Doom $15,400,000
2.Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story $9,300,000
3.Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit $8,700,000
4.The Fog $7,300,000
5.North Country $6,470,000
6.Elizabethtown $5,725,000
7.Flightplan $4,712,000
8.In Her Shoes $3,900,000
9.A History of Violence $2,700,000
10.Two for the Money $2,400,000
I am no Hollywood ticket analyst, but this seems like a pretty paltry take for a weekend with these sort of movies and the stars in them. At #1 is Doom a highly anticipated adaption of the cult-classic video game starring at least two A List stars. The rest of the fims on this list includes several big name stars: Jodie Foster (Flight Plan), Kirsen Dunst (Elizabeth Town), Al Pacino (Two for the Money), Tom Welling (The Fog), Charlize Theron (North County) and there are several others on this list but won't go into them all.
Hollywood, your problem obviously isn't star power. Your problem is more subtle and more obvious all at the same time. Blaming P2P file sharers isn't the answer to your problem either. These people rarely get their hands on movies in time to make a difference. And even if they do, the quality is shoddy and watching a movie on a computer quite frankly dimishes movie watching experience.
Problem #1:
The scripts suck. Rarely are there movies out there at that grab at our heart strings or cause that gut visceral reaction to make us really want to see it. And when we do see these kinds of movies, they are part of the summer block buster parade of action flicks built around franchise characters or directors e.g. Spiderman, X-Men, Nathan Hunt (Mission Impossible). Where are the Schindler's Lists of today? Where are the Life Is Beautitful? Recreating these films is a horrible idea, but the concept is still sound: there are few movies that grab people.
Problem #2:
The movie going experience is way too expensive. Once upon a time the "dinner and movie" date was an affordable, low risk way of testing the waters with a new person. Now, the tally of such a date reads like a bad Mastercard commercial: Movie tickets for 2: $20; Popcorn and drinks for 2: $15; Red Vines: $4. Then you have to eat real food, and dinner for 2 at a decent place: $50. So a couple going out 'just' for dinner and movie is looking at almost $100. And $100 to see a subpar movie. We would all the hope the company makes up for this overpriced outing. Granted there are matinee showings, but even those prices are overinflated and are oft times associated with limited showings. Some theaters only count their FIRST showing that day as a matinee.
Problem #3
It's cheaper to stay home. This statement becomes increasingly true when you factor in more people heading to a theater, like the average family of 4. Anyone can pick up a good sounding surround sound package at a local electronic retailer for less than $500. Figure in a decent TV at a $1000 and a online movie renting service, you're looking at around $1700. For a couple that's 17 trips to the movies with dinner, an easily attainable feat if they go to the movies about 1.4 times a month in a given year. And for families, they could see a return on their meager surround sound investment even faster. Tied in here too is the ever increasing speed with which movies and TV shows (an issue for later) are released on DVD and Pay Per View.
Sure one could spend more on LCD/DLP/Plasma and higher end components, and then the impetus to stay home grows. Why? Simply because today's movie goer is more discerning. They EXPECT the high end sound and video technologies, and when dated poor sounding/looking equipment is experienced we know it. And for almost 10 bucks a pop of tickets, we should get it.
In closing: Hollywood, if you want more people to go and see your movies and pay through the nose to do so: give us a reason to go. Give us good stories, good actors, and a good experience. Then we'll come back en masse. Till then Hollywood, you'll only see those spikes in sales less and less frequently. In short, expect to lose money.
The Treehouse is back up and running again! There was a major snafu with my registrar that resulted in my site being down. This means any email anyone has tried to send to me over the past 2 weeks or so have not reached me. In addition of course the Treehouse itself hasn't been on the internet. Let's just say we came to agreement. I'll get into it later.
I'm back.
I realized today that I haven't posted a new entry in about a week. And I was just about to write, all I've been doing is relaxing and not doing a damned thing. Well, this would be very NOT true. My days are spent usually job hunting in California, reaching out to folks or doing something related to my move to San Diego. Today I got a hold of some IT staffers in SD and talked to live bodies. For all of my love of the internet, sending an email or registering on some random site doesn't feel/seem as effective as telling a person who you are and what you're trying to accomplish. I've also been procrastinating in setting the days of when I need to move and get into SD. Before when I was doing this for school, it seemed a fairly simple excercise. And perhaps it still is, andI am just making things more complicated for myself. My lease runs out next month, so for sure, I can't be here for that. HA!