question of the day: Is it unfair to expect actors and other celebs to be role models?
Does it make a difference if the celeb is someone who is particularly famous with children?
talk amongst yourselves
question of the day: How important is DVD packaging and presentation to you?
I’m not talking about digital content such as video featurettes or commentary tracks. I’m talking purely about the physical container holding all the ones and zeroes.
question of the weekend: What sounds from the past do you wish you could hear?
I can think of a few things: the roar of a Tyrannosaurus rex; William Shakespeare delivering lines from one of his own plays; someone speaking the Proto-Indo-European language…
question of the day: How would you adapt this now-offensive pulp novel to make it work for today’s audiences?
Seems to me like this jaw-dropping concept could be used as the beginning a pulp-style film today…
question of the day: What great thinkers — writers, philosophers, scientists — whom Hollywood generally ignores should inspire more films?
Ray Bradbury, who died yesterday at age 91, inspired, both directly and indirectly, generations of filmmakers. Stephen Hawking’s ideas inform both Battleship and Prometheus this summer. What other thinkers should storytellers be looking to for inspiration?
question of the day: Are classic pulp novels too dated to make faithful transfers to the big screen?
John Carter doesn’t work, but with some updating and shifts in emphasis, the Victorian Sherlock Holmes and War of the Worlds have made recent — and very successful — transfers to the big screen. Has entertainment moved on too much for popcorn crowds to care about classic pulp presented classically?
question of the day: Do film and TV production subsidies provided by local governments make sense?
Subsidies bring in jobs, right? Or are they a convenient windfall for projects that would have happened anyway?
question of the day: With so many expensive movies sinking this year, will Hollywood step back from the blockbuster?
Or will the industry double-down and take even bigger gambles with $500 million movies in coming years?
question of the weekend: Are you commemorating Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee?
Feel free to use this as an open thread on general discussions of royalty in the 21st century, if you like.
question of the day: What old TV shows desperately need to be reinvented or rebooted?
I vote for Star Cops, the BBC’s criminally short-lived near-future science fiction series from 1987, which would be fabulous to revisit…
