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    File 62201153258 PMPQMIjun 4 Today ENOUGH

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    Dave Vachon
    Jim Slotek provides a list of 10 movie trends and tropes that have worn out their welcome in Hollywood. These include an overreliance on 3D effects, motion capture technology, shaky camera work, remakes of foreign films, and movies based on pop songs, toys or old TV shows that are overly long and lack creativity. Slotek argues many recent blockbusters rely on these crutches rather than trying anything new, for fear of financial failure. He calls on Hollywood to take more risks and be more original.

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    File 62201153258 PMPQMIjun 4 Today ENOUGH

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    Dave Vachon
    67 views1 page
    Jim Slotek provides a list of 10 movie trends and tropes that have worn out their welcome in Hollywood. These include an overreliance on 3D effects, motion capture technology, shaky camera work, remakes of foreign films, and movies based on pop songs, toys or old TV shows that are overly long and lack creativity. Slotek argues many recent blockbusters rely on these crutches rather than trying anything new, for fear of financial failure. He calls on Hollywood to take more risks and be more original.

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    Jim Slotek provides a list of 10 movie trends and tropes that have worn out their welcome in Hollywood. These include an overreliance on 3D effects, motion capture technology, shaky camera work, remakes of foreign films, and movies based on pop songs, toys or old TV shows that are overly long and lack creativity. Slotek argues many recent blockbusters rely on these crutches rather than trying anything new, for fear of financial failure. He calls on Hollywood to take more risks and be more original.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    67 views1 page

    File 62201153258 PMPQMIjun 4 Today ENOUGH

    Uploaded by

    Dave Vachon
    Jim Slotek provides a list of 10 movie trends and tropes that have worn out their welcome in Hollywood. These include an overreliance on 3D effects, motion capture technology, shaky camera work, remakes of foreign films, and movies based on pop songs, toys or old TV shows that are overly long and lack creativity. Slotek argues many recent blockbusters rely on these crutches rather than trying anything new, for fear of financial failure. He calls on Hollywood to take more risks and be more original.

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    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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    of 1

    today

    MOVIES: No holds are barred as Jim Slotek lets ’em rip on his top 10 pet peeves

    Enough
    already JIM SLOTEK
    QMI Agency

    Awards season is long past, and Hollywood can stop pretending


    it cares. Now come the months where they — hopefully — pay the
    bills with explosions, superheroes, $3 3D glasses and $6 popcorn.
    What it’s really about, though, is paralyzing fear — fear of any-
    thing new lest it fail and cost the studio hundreds of millions, fear
    of deviating from what made money last year or even 10 years ago,
    fear that creates a “blockbuster season” where you basically have
    six movies to choose from, from now until September.
    I see 200 movies a year so you don’t have to. But after a while
    even I have to say, “Enough already!” Herewith — and sidestepping
    earlier pieces by Kevin Williamson and Liz Braun about superhe-
    roes and romcoms — some more stuff that really, really needs to be
    addressed before karma straightens it all out with a natural disaster
    in Southern California.

    3D world ended before Pirates of The Jim Slotek has


    Look, it didn’t work. It Caribbean: At World’s End did. reached his
    was a pyramid scheme. The first boiling point.
    guy (James Cameron) made Adam Sandler
    money. Even the second guy Eternal man-child. In his MARK O’NEILL QMI agency
    (Tim Burton) did. But after that, next movie, Jack And Jill, he’s
    everybody just started pouring playing drag. Next step is fat drag.
    good money after bad. It was as if And what do you want to bet he
    some billion dollar industry bet punches somebody in it? You’re
    its entire mortgage on Pet Rocks. about to turn 45, you’re a husband
    It gives people headaches, it and a father. Grow up, dude.
    wrecks the lighting. Cameron Your kids shouldn’t outgrow
    is so addicted, he produced your humour in middle school.
    a 3D movie, Sanctum, that
    mostly took place in pitch dark Randy Newman
    underwater caves. Nice use of Waaaay back when I was
    that new technology, Jim. in high school (actually, it was
    Adults never liked it in called the Cave of Learning
    the first place, and kids are back then) Newman put out
    as unimpressed with 3D songs of scathing social satire
    as Playstation 1 now. like Political Science. Then he
    Horribly bad movies like The discovered the payoffs of writing
    Nutcracker in 3D or Gulliver’s frothy songs for blockbuster
    Travels would make people kids movies. Now he so much as
    angry in any format. Make coughs up a furball and he gets
    them pay extra and consider an Oscar nomination. Please,
    how much it poisons the well. Randy, write a real song again.

    Motion Capture Hollywood remakes


    People like Robert of anything French
    Zemeckis have been obsessed or English or Swedish or
    with digitally creating realistic Japanese
    humans. And so we’ve stared into Seriously, did the kid-
    the dead eyes of pasty-skinned vampire movie Let The Right
    pseudo-humans in films like The One In HAVE to be remade
    Polar Express, Beowulf and Mars with bratty Hollywood kids?
    Needs Moms. The fact that most Was there anything wrong
    real humans are creeped out by with Ringu in the first place?
    this has taken a decade to sink Does anybody even remember
    in, but Zemeckis seems to have the dog’s breakfast they
    finally gotten the message. More made of La Femme Nikita?
    importantly, the people who gave Do yourself a favour and rent
    him money to waste also clued in. the original Brit/non-Nic Cage
    version of The Wicker Man.
    Shaky Cameras And, oh God, Godzilla! What
    Almost two decades ago, did Roland Emmerich do to you?
    Lars “I Am A Nazi” von Trier
    started a collective called Dogme Toys made into
    95, that ironically embraced movies
    “anti-Hollywood” techniques I mean, Toy Story had
    such as hand-held cameras. an excuse, but G.I. Joe?
    A few years later hacks were Transformers? And coming up
    using it in ER, in Twister and — I kid you not — Battleship!
    in the beach-landing scenes The latter is part of a six-
    in Saving Private Ryan. Add in year deal Hasbro has signed
    movies whose entire premise with Universal, that also
    is that somebody is catching a includes movie projects for
    spectacular or dramatic event Monopoly, Clue, Ouija, Magic:
    on personal video (The Blair The Gathering and Stretch
    Witch Project, Cloverfield, Armstrong. I’m waiting for
    George Romero’s Diary Of The that big Slinky movie in 3D.
    Dead, In The Valley of Elah).
    We get it, it’s organic. But Hit songs that
    it’s as dated a technique as The become generic
    Matrix’s “bullet-time.” Buy a movie titles
    tripod, stupid. Or start selling It’s bad enough that oldies
    Tylenols at the concession stand. on the soundtrack have been
    the lazy-director’s mood-setter
    Boomer/Gen X since The Big Chill. But when
    TV Shows a golden oldie becomes the
    Made Into Movies title of the movie without any
    The Dukes Of Hazzard? Starsky connection whatsoever — like,
    & Hutch? Charlie’s Angels? say, American Pie (granted,
    Bewitched? Miami Vice? The there was a pie), One Fine Day,
    A-Team? And, coming up, The Something To Talk About, Pretty
    Fall Guy? And we wonder why Woman, The Kids Are Alright,
    Generations Y & Z hate us? The Happening — you know that
    everyone at that meeting was
    Popcorn movies just flipping through their iTunes
    more than two hours (or the Billboard Chart Book
    long before that), the creative right-
    Gone With The Wind, side of their brain having long
    Bertolucci’s 1900, even Dances since withered away and died.
    With Wolves arguably had
    sprawling stories to tell. But when AND ONE FOR THE ROAD: In the
    a Transformers movie runs more ’80s, people like Arnie and Bruce
    than two and a half hours just so Willis ran away from explosions,
    they could toss in an extra hour thus escaping harm. Now the
    of robot fights, it tells you that, cool thing is to walk nonchalantly
    in the name of all that’s holy, away from an explosion (a la Clockwise from top left: Jim Slotek is sick of hit songs that become
    somebody has to wrest final cut Fast Five). Or at least it was generic movie titles (American Pie); of 3D movies (Gulliver’s Travels);
    from Michael Bay. Ditto Gore cool in 2003. Just stop it. of Hollywood remakes of anything French or English or Swedish or
    Verbinski who did the first three Japanese (Let Me In); and of shaky cameras (Blair Witch Project).
    Pirates of The Caribbeans. The [email protected]

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