mainstream Hollywood media: it is to laugh
Sometimes, ya just gotta scream.
Media by Numbers, the home of “lead box-office analyst Paul Dergarabedian [who] has been the industry’s most widely respected and widely quoted expert for nearly 15 years,” a site that purports to offer us “unique insights... [e]xpert commentary and analysis...”, has this to say about this past weekend’s box office:
Of course no weekend would be complete without a sports-themed Will Ferrell comedy...
more below the ad... scroll down...
Love Will Ferrell’s sports-themed comedies or hate ’em, it must be said that this is completely, blatantly, obviously untrue. Clearly, many weekends are perfectly complete without a sports-themed Will Ferrell comedy.
Though I suppose one could call “pulling random nonsensical shit out of your ass” a “unique insight”...
This is worse, though:
Desson Thomson in The Washington Post says this about The Other Boleyn Girl:
Its message here is unintentionally self-hating: Men may be pigs, it tells us, but women -- especially those women-- deserve everything they get. Send 'em all to the Tower!
Again, this isn’t a matter of loving the movie or hating it: this “message” is nowhere near the movie... and it’s hard to imagine what kind of misogyny it takes to read that into this film.
Then again, The Washington Post is the same paper that this weekend published an op-ed opining that women are stupid. Too stupid to realize, it would seem, that if they try to take power by whatever meager means men leave to them, they deserve to be beheaded.
Our serious corporate media outlets at work.
(Technorati tags: Sem-Pro, Other Boleyn Girl, Washington Post)
comments
posted by JT (March 3, 2008 6:20 PM)
Of course no weekend would be complete without a sports-themed Will Ferrell comedy...
I think this is a statement about the abundance of Will Ferrell sports comedies (4th to date) rather than on the quality of the movie. I don't think he means Will Ferrell "completes" weekends like Dorothy "completed" Jerry Maguire.
As for The Other Boleyn Girl, I'd watch it to see if Thomson is right, but it looks too awful to sit through.
posted by MBI (March 4, 2008 9:19 PM)
"They contain no profound messages, no artistic purpose, but just enough emotional high points to make us believe we've had a meaningful experience for 20 bucks."
This quote from the Post piece pisses me off more than the one you picked out. That line about The Other Boleyn Girl is wrongheaded and inexplicable, granted -- you don't even have to see the movie to see the flaws in it, you can just read his own description of the movie from that same fucking column.
But this one -- holy shit. The purpose of art is precisely to make you believe you've had a meaningful experience, you fucking idiot, Thomson. Someday critics will realize that popcorn movies, even really bad ones, have artistic purposes.
posted by MaryAnn (March 5, 2008 6:59 PM)
Some critics already realize this. Not that *all* popcorn movies (or all arthouse movies, for that matter) have artistic purposes, but that they *can.*
I guess Thomas likes being fucked around by filmmakers. I don't want to be fooled into thinking I've had a "meaningful experience" -- I either want to have a real one, or I want to see a movie that doesn't pretend to offer one. Cuz those can be fun, too. (See: *Transformers.*)