How to Fix ‘True Blood’ (or Please, Please Kill Sam Merlotte)
True Blood is the hottest show on television, scoring the highest ratings HBO has seen since The Sopranos. I doubt that the execs at HBO are looking to tweak the two-parts-sex, one-part-blood (with a pinch of weirdness) recipe. Still, there’s something very wrong in Bon Temps. At the end of season two’s penultimate episode, I had that itch I get when a show is no longer the show I fell in love with. It happened with The X-Files when the alien conspiracy became the show’s focus. It happened with Weeds when Nancy moved to Ren Mar. It happened with The West Wing when Aaron Sorkin left. Now, with weak love triangles, one-dimensional characters, and ridiculous storylines, True Blood feels like the life has been sucked out of it. So as the second season finale approaches, here are three ways...
Read MoreDisney buys Marvel
In the age of the Internet, how this remained a secret, I will never know. But it was announced this morning that Marvel Entertainment would become part of the Walt Disney Co., giving Disney the outlet it needed to appeal to males ages 13-30. It’ll still be a few years before we hear the Touchstone and Disney fanfares in front of Marvel Studios releases, so I’ll drink the Kool-Aid for now. Both Marvel and Disney this morning made an effort to compare the deal with the one the Mouse House struck with Pixar Animation Studios, which only happened three years ago. Truth be told, we haven’t really seen what the Disney-Pixar deal means for Pixar motion pictures… or for Disney for that matter. Up was already well into production at the time of the merger. Bolt is only half-Pixar....
Read MoreIn defense of Katherine Heigl?
EW’s Ken Tucker took it upon himself to write a blog post on why Katherine Heigl doesn’t deserve the negativity that is coming at her from all sides after the release of her disastrous rom-com The Ugly Truth. As someone who has disliked Heigl for some time now, I thought I’d give Mr. Tucker a chance to convince me otherwise. To quote KT: As a result of this and other perceived sins, the L.A. Times has published a piece about contempt for Heigl, and a blogger I respect, the first-class TV writer Ken Levine (whose terrific blog you can also find my blogroll), has published a ferocious entry about Heigl as a diva. I respectfully disagree. Me, I’ll defend her. Her Letterman appearance, if you watch the whole thing, was funny and smart. You have to be on your...
Read MoreThe Week in Pirate News: Marshall for ‘Pirates 4’, plus ‘Captain Blood’
I really wasn’t hot on the news that Warner Bros. is updating the 1935 Captain Blood movie and putting the pirate, once played by Errol Flynn, in space. But it looks like that news lit a bit of a fire under the asses of the Disney execs. Variety is reporting that Chicago helmer Rob Marshall is in line to direct the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. From Variety: Disney is on the verge of putting Rob Marshall in as director of a fourth installment of Pirates of the Caribbean, a move that puts the film on track for a 2010 production start, with Johnny Depp back as Captain Jack Sparrow. There hasn’t been a director at the helm of the pirate ship since April, when Gore Verbinski stepped out to focus on a movie version of the vidgame...
Read MoreA Trip to the Moon
Forty years ago today, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to walk on the Moon. A lunar landing was the stuff of myth just 67 years prior, in 1907, when George Melies told the story of a manned trip to the Moon in Le Voyage dans la lune. Going from the Earth to the Moon, both for human exploration and film, serves as an inspiration for what can be achieved when great people with visionary minds push the limits. Let’s remember these epic feats today and hope that we can rediscover that same pioneering spirit that has defined other...
Read MoreWall Street should leave the filmmaking to Pixar
I don’t know much about Wall Street, but it’s good to know Wall Street knows even less about Hollywood. Richard Greenfield of Pali Research says he was “dead wrong” when it came to predicting the box office prospects of Disney-Pixar’s hugely successfully Up. Greenfield’s comments from the NY Times: The recent success of Pixar’s ‘Up’ (well ahead of our forecasts) has renewed investor confidence in Disney’s creative capabilities. The comment about “Disney’s creative capabilities” proves he still doesn’t get it. But in this brave new world of movie making, who really knows the whole equation anyway. Well, other than Pixar. You think people would have stopped second-guessing Pixar when their team turned a story about a rat into the studio’s third highest-grossing film worldwide. I’m more concerned about Toy Story 3 than I ever was about Up. It’s a...
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