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

Motion Capture Hollywood remakes

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