By George Robbins
Kevin Smith is an acclaimed indie director who found his place by making a bunch of indie films in the 90’s people fell in love with. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that his movies from that era will go down as anything other than classics for their time. What makes them so interesting is the fact that, at least for some of them, the movies take everyday situations and give them these big and crazy plots. What is just supposed to be a day at the mall following being broken up with turns into this crescendo of things like taking place on a dating game show after knocking out the other contestants. This is the plot of ‘Mallrats‘ and it is easily one of the most memorable of Smith’s earlier films.
In the ‘Mallrats’ movie, two slackers who were dumped by their girlfriends head to the mall as a way to cope with what just happened to them. They find out once they get there that one of their exes is going to be going on a dating-game style show which will be televised from that mall while the other’s is already dating someone else. That someone else just so happens to be the character of Shannon, a store manager played by Ben Affleck. Interestingly enough, Affleck was not really going to end up being the film because producer Jim Jacks did not want him in it originally. If not for Smith insisting on his being in the film, he would not have been a part of it.
Jacks’ reason for not wanting him in the movie is a pretty silly one in hindsight because the reason was that he saw him in ‘Dazed and Confused‘ and didn’t like his “potty mouth.” Considering how much bad language is thrown around in Smith’s films, it is easy to see why Smith didn’t really care and still felt he served a purpose in the film. His appearances in Smith’s films definitely feel like they made the rest of his career possible and his role in ‘Mallrats’ may have been small, but it was important. Perhaps this time, his role will be expanded a little bit in the upcoming sequel, but that is still a ways off before we actually get the chance to see that happen. Still, it is crazy to think that he may not have been in the film due to acting from another hit film.
By George Robbins
There are many films out in the world that remain classics to this day no matter how long it has been since they originally released. Classics are something that, no matter the age, people who watch the movie end up falling in love with it and it stays that way. Those films just happen to be the ones that many people can relate to in some way or another and very few movies are actually capable of making people appreciate them in that way. One of the most well known fantasy classics is the movie ‘The Wizard of Oz‘ which is one of the oldest classics out there right now, having been made in 1939. No matter who actually ends up watching it, it remains a film that people will always love to watch, defining it as a classic.
‘The Wizard of Oz’ was a film with a famously rough production that nearly resulted in it dying out before it was released a number of times. Luckily, there was eventually a release for the landmark film which firmly cemented it as an instant classic due to how the film plays out. The film is a fantasy film unlike any other because it sees a young girl going to a land that seems familiar in some ways and makes people think it could be a dream. Over the years, various forms of media have tried to dissect the movie and created various other movies and shows based around it. Now it seems that we will once again be getting another treatment like this, but set around a smaller, but important character.
There is now talk of a new ‘Wizard of Oz’ animated movie in the works which follows the character of Toto the dog. Apparently the animated movie is going to follow the original tale but through the eyes of the well-known, yet tiny companion Toto. Not only will the movie be animated, but it will also be a musical which is no real surprise considering the fact we have seen musicals surrounding this film for ages now. Needless to say this will be a movie that fans of the time-honored classic will be watching out for, but there is no telling how the quality will be. There have been plenty of animated versions of the film over the years, but they really aren’t close to what the classic movie was.
By George Robbins
This pandemic that we have all unfortunately found ourselves trapped in is one that is causing a lot of things to happen in the world. Without the pandemic, things were already not getting along very well but the restrictions we have found placed on us by the outbreak have expedited some things. For instance, many of the ways businesses are now interacting with the public at large have been affected by the pandemic and it is very easy to notice this change. According to a few companies now, they have been changing the way that they conduct their business moving forward and they have said they wanted to enact this change for awhile now. The pandemic has been cited as the biggest reason these things have been moving forward.
One of the biggest industries being affected by the pandemic at the moment has been the movie industry as a whole. We have been hearing about the movie industry extensively over the past couple of months and it is now becoming an even bigger issue as time goes on. Movie theaters are perhaps the biggest part of the industry being affected by the pandemic and it is resulting in some pretty drastic changes as time goes on. At first, like most public businesses, theaters were temporarily shut down to prevent more people from getting infected with the virus. This was meant to only be a short period of time until countermeasures could be put into place which would protect customers and theaters alike. Unfortunately, this plan did not go over so well as the months rolled on.
The idea for the reopening of public businesses was going to be that they would get to open their doors back up again when individual locations felt it was safe. This became an issue very quickly when many states simply would not allow them to reopen their doors to the public because they were too high risk to reopen. Thus, the months continued to fly by as theaters remained one of the last institutions to reopen their doors to the public. They couldn’t just reopen their doors though as they had to have rules in place in order to follow new health and safety standards to prevent the pandemic from getting worse. This wasn’t even the worst thing that theaters had to deal with in order to open their doors back up again.
Theaters that actually could reopen their doors didn’t really want to for the longest time because they had no new movies to show to draw people in. Movies were delayed for a long time and a second smaller wave of infections caused studios to push back some of their releases. What was created from this was a cycle where movies needed theaters and theaters needed movies so that they could open. Eventually, AMC felt that they had waited long enough and even if they had no movies to show, they would be opening in the middle of August. This is what made studios decide that they would try and release a couple of their films and see if the market was really back on track to what it was before.
Unfortunately for both studios and movie theaters alike, even when movies ended up coming out, it didn’t really matter. The vast majority of people are still not willing to put their and their family’s health at risk just to go to the movies. Although theaters state that there has yet to be a case that traces back to theaters, this is because there are so few people going to them in the first place. Ever since movie theaters have reopened they have been going downhill because there is almost no one going out to see movies and beyond that, there are no new movies to show. Yet again, the cycle of theaters and movie releases continues and this time, theaters are really going to be in trouble. In fact, there are almost no movies set to release through the remainder of the year and even early next year.
After ‘Tenet’ released and it was pretty much deemed a failure considering how much they are still in the negative, studios pulled their movies from release rosters. This has led to a now tremendous problem being faced by movie theaters where they are now losing money hand over fist for maintenance to theaters that are getting no use. This has even resulted in theater chains like Regal Cinemas shutting their doors once again for the foreseeable future to make up for the fact that they aren’t getting any revenue. Going even further beyond just closing down for awhile is the issue that the AMC theater chain is currently dealing with which is the fact that they will apparently have no money left by the end of the year. This has just shown how bad it has become for the movie theater industry thus far.
AMC being the biggest theater chain in the world doesn’t help its own cause, but seeing this shows just what the future holds for other theaters as well. Movie delays have essentially destroyed the market for movie theaters, but you can’t blame studios for doing it. They have every right to believe that they will lose almost all of the money they invested in their delayed films if they release them now instead of waiting. Plenty of films have now been delayed by their studios and there are very few which remain in this year’s line-up. A fair number of those films are still set for December releases, but news regarding them comes in every single day. For instance, the movie ‘Soul‘ was set to release in December, and while it may still be doing so, it is releasing straight to Disney+.
This trend is starting to become more and more common nowadays with the way movies are being delayed because studios don’t want to keep themselves from earning revenue. Disney is chief among these studios at the moment and they are among the group that actually has a couple of films left in this year’s roster. They have been trying to adapt to the scenario unfolding around them and, as such, they have most of their bigger films moved into some time next year. This is all so that they can try and hold out for some breakthrough with the pandemic because they want to have their films release theatrically. Even though this seems to be the case, they have made it clear they want to focus much of their efforts on the streaming side of things for now.
Although the Disney+ release for ‘Mulan’ has become a controversial disaster in a way, it gave Disney some clarity. The release of the film itself was not really disastrous, it was everything else surrounding the movie that was, and so it isn’t too surprising that the film actually created a revenue stream through their streaming service upon release. With that, they knew that they would actually be able to make money with releases because even with a somewhat bad release they brought in some money. According to Disney, their focus has been shifting to their streaming service for some time now, but now they plan on making it their main focus from this point on. Even though they said this, they are apparently not foregoing all theatrical releases.
Disney is still planning on continuing their original release methods for films, with them actually having theatrical releases still. Disney CEO Bob Chapek announced that the new regulation will allow company officials to decide whether a film is made for the cinema or for streaming. This will make it so that their biggest releases that they plan on making the most from will actually remain theatrical releases. Whereas films that they believe are better suited for families and small groups that are best off being watched at home will be put on their streaming services. This means that they have found a way to release the films they want to release even when they normally can’t and bring in revenue of some kind.
By George Robbins
Movie theaters are definitely among the businesses who are the worst off right now because they are making so little income that they cannot afford to continue on the way they always have. What many people forget is the fact that theaters only end up getting a portion of their money from ticket sales and the rest from concessions. As always, they only get a percentage of the money from ticket sales back as their own revenue while the rest goes back to the studios and now, this has become something of a perilous venture. Nobody is really willing to go out to theaters anymore and it is creating a lot of issues for the movie theater industry as a whole since they kind of rely on that sort of thing. AMC has been one of the biggest movie theater chains at the front and center of all of this and they are suffering for it.
AMC, like all other movie theater chains, was set on reopening their doors to the public as soon as possible, but when they were finally given the greenlight, issues started cropping up everywhere. One of the biggest issues was a surge in virus cases which resulted in movie delays, so they decided to push back their opening until eventually they decided they didn’t want to wait anymore. This prompted movie releases to start happening and we finally got new movies in theaters for the first time in months with not so great turn out. It turns out there was a reason why theaters should have stayed closed as it could have ended up saving them money they are going to need. No one in the general public is really willing to put themselves at risk going out to the movies at a time like this and so movies that were released are now failures.
AMC in particular has been very out there in terms of letting people know how much trouble they are in and have just recently announced that they will have no money left soon. They have said that by the end of this year, or some time in early 2021, they will no longer have any money left as they are losing too much right now. In an effort to save money, Regal Cinemas shut down not too long ago to avoid this very scenario and while AMC doesn’t quite seem like they will be following in those footsteps just yet, they won’t really have a choice soon. The truth is that they have no movies to show people and even if they did, they may not be able to bring people in at all because people are far too wary of places like that right now. Theaters are in trouble and AMC specifically may end up losing everything if they don’t play their cards right moving forward.
By George Robbins
Disney has had a lot to think about over the course of almost this entire year thus far and they will only be continuing to deal with these things as time goes on. Right now, their biggest concern has been how they are actually going to continue making money while this pandemic continues onward. Truth be told, the pandemic is going to be something that will be ongoing for a very long time to come and it is dangerous for us to think otherwise. Many people, and companies, were hopeful that there would be some kind of quick resolution, or at the very least, a better contingency for the virus moving on. This has essentially become a debunked way of thinking and companies now have to change tactics.
Disney, like many other media companies, was trying for the longest time to just delay their releases and focus more heavily on getting them out in a proper way. This very quickly became impossible as they were inevitably forced to further delay the release of many of their films due to things beyond their control. Movie theaters reopened and now many have shut their doors again because no one is willing to go out to theaters and this caused companies to delay their films moving forward. Disney took this opportunity to explore an alternative means for making money while their theatrical releases were delayed. What they found out has apparently changed the way they are going to function moving forward.
Over the course of the past month or so they have been dealing with a variety of issues with the release of ‘Mulan’ being at the center of a couple. What they got out of the experience is the fact that they certainly have the wide-range capacity to make money through their streaming service which was proved upon the aforementioned movie’s release. This has made them expedite a process that they have apparently been willing to commit to for some time now. They, like most other companies, are moving away from the traditional movie theater and television style of releases and are moving more towards the streaming side of things. With this pandemic, they have decided to fast track that decision and they will now be trying hard to get things running better with streaming as their focus. This just goes to show how much media is changing.
By George Robbins
Nowadays, there are a ton of horror movies out there in the world and there continues to be new ones cropping up all of the time. Horror movies change constantly due to the fact that trends are always different in different societies as time goes on. This is why so many horror movies seen in the United States are so different from horror movies in other countries. What some people think are horrifying ventures are different types of experiences for entirely different groups of people. This is why culture is such a huge part of what makes a horror movie as terrifying as it is and it is what draws people in to watch these things. Hence the reason we often see the same traits and tropes pop up in media.
There are obviously some differences between horror movies that we see coming out of various countries, but there are also some similarities. There are most certainly things that everyone around the world finds horrifying, but some places just find some things scarier than others. One of the most universally understood forms of horror is one that focuses heavily on body horror. This type of horror is something that very easily becomes a subject of ridicule and this is not always fair because they can sometimes turn out to be great films. Body horror films see the people in the movies being torn apart or some other creature defying what we would define as a humanoid appearance for the sake of horror.
Body horror is very pervasive and can easily be seen skulking about in other sub-genres in the horror genre itself. We can say that slasher films have some element of body horror to them because we see bodies being taken apart and terrible things are then done to them. One fine example of this type of horror is seen dramatically in the movie ‘The Thing‘ and it is there as a way to simply amplify the suspense in the film. The truth is that the movie did not sell well and it actually kind of bombed critically, but this is not the end-all be-all for that film. In fact, as time went on, people got used to seeing that type of horror in that film and came to appreciate it for what it was.
Films with body horror are often seen this way no matter how much time has gone on and it usually takes time before the masses start liking them to some extent. The issue stems from the fact that people have to get past the horror aspect of the film before they can enjoy it. People still live based upon instinct and so when they see a horror movie, they instinctively may not like it because of the response their body has to it. Over time though, knowing what will happen in said film and knowing that it has a good plot can change that view and people start viewing it in a better light. This is what happened with ‘The Thing’ and now it has easily become a cult classic the likes of which people will always sing praises about when discussed. In fact, it helped pave the way for some films because it helped show that, although body horror is not seen in a great light, you could still make a good film with it.
Although criticisms may never fade surrounding those films, horror movie buffs will continue to love those films and they will become loved by more and more people as time goes on. These praises and spread of information about these films make them popular among a certain group and that group usually ends up being pretty widespread. It is due to this phenomenon that movies end up getting the title of “cult classic” as they eventually ended up creating a fanbase that is nothing but in love with the movie. This isn’t a concept that is exclusive to horror movies, but many horror movies are cult classics because of the general public’s reaction to them. Cult classics yet again vary wildly by culture, but the way that they end up coming about is pretty much the same no matter where you go in the world.
Cult classic films are a response to people generally not enjoying a film upon its release because they felt like they didn’t really enjoy it all that much. What we enjoy from a movie can vary drastically depending upon the genre that the movie belongs to which is why horror movies often fit this description. That feeling that horror movies produce where you feel fear creates a response in our bodies telling us to feel a certain way about the film. When a movie has a good story, many people can acknowledge that fact and therefore, a large group of people can react similarly to that movie. This is why the highest critically rated films out there are movies that the general public can all watch and say that they enjoyed whereas, it is a different story for horror films.
Horror movies fit that unique dynamic where everyone reacts differently to the movie and the story being told in the movie. Most of the time, people react in a negative way to the things they see on screen because given a similar situation they really don’t know what they would do. Many people say what they would do, but there is really no way of knowing unless someone is actually in a similar situation. People who can get past this fact are often the ones to find the good things in horror movies and they can often enjoy the plot of the films. Then, of course, there are the people that just genuinely enjoy horror movies in their entirety and like the adrenaline boost they give while watching them. This is actually kind of the case for all those who saw Paul W.S. Anderson‘s ‘Event Horizon.’
Paul W.S. Anderson is a name that we are all very aware of by this point for his role in the creation of video game movies such as ‘Mortal Kombat’ and ‘Resident Evil.’ He was also responsible for the movie ‘Death Race’ as well as other films in the same vein and he is now working on the ‘Monster Hunter‘ movie. Everyone knows that these movies were received poorly, at least critically, but they have most certainly become films that we will never forget. No matter how much time goes on, his legacy as a director will not be forgotten even if his films don’t win any awards. Among the films that he has made though is one that no one will ever forget and that is the movie ‘Event Horizon.’ This horror film is unlike most of what we had ever seen before and helped inspire science fiction horror moving forward.
‘Event Horizon’ took many different ideas from many other types of horror films and them its own in more ways than one. It can kind of be said that the movie took the fear of the unknown and made it into a feature length film while turning some things on their heads. For instance, in a horror movie, the group doesn’t usually turn away at first when things don’t feel right. In this movie, the first thing they try to do after arriving at their location is run because they know something is off. The movie sees the crew of a spaceship trying to survive the hell that found its way onto another ship which suddenly reappeared after an experimental warp for faster-than-light travel. What we ended up with from the film was a cult classic body horror film which just created an air of depression and uneasiness which is what made it so popular.
Obviously, when a movie becomes really popular, talk starts coming up about a possible sequel being made for the film. For ‘Event Horizon,’ this took longer than most films as it is a cult classic and not a film which was immediately beloved upon release. When asked if he would return for a sequel to his now beloved sci-fi horror film, Anderson replied that he is not interested in being part of an ‘Event Horizon’ sequel. In fact, he is concerned that a sequel would ruin feelings surrounding the original movie which is more than likely true as the way the original movie ends is perfect for the story it tells. A sequel would not fit the purpose of the original movie and it would more than likely ruin the aesthetic of the original film.
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