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[Art] jail
Atomika
Live fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered User regular
Live fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered User regular
Recently, director Richard Kelly of questionable Donnie Darko and The Box fame stated that he would like his next project, should he get the funding, to be a prequel to his abominable 2007 flop, Southland Tales. The movie, if you've been lucky enough to miss it, was a film (much like A New Hope) that starts off in Chapter 3 of a story that tells of how Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnston is resurrected by God to stop a fascist takeover of America by the Republican Party, who plan to take over the world's oceans and turn them into a giant power generator. In his travels, he meets up with porn star played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, a lunatic cop trying to find his lost twin (which might actually be himself from a different dimension, or something) played by Seann William Scott, Venice Beach arms dealers played by Cheri O'Teri and Christopher Lambert, and an evil general played by Kevin Smith. The finale bears witness to the sight of the Biblical apocalypse, which begins when Seann William Scott flies (yes, flies) an ice cream truck into a blimp that holds within the Republican supervillians (who are being testified to by The Rock who suddenly develops stigmata) and blows the whole thing up with a bazooka. Also within that pile of bat-shit insanity is a context-free sighting of Jeanine Garofalo as a military commander, as well as an entire musical number featuring Justin Timberlake lip-synching (I know, right?) The Killers' "All These Things That I've Done."
Southland Tales went on to become one of the biggest losses in film history. It was booed out of the theater at its Cannes premier, and Kelly worked on the film for another year, whittling over an hour out of its running time, but still keeping it almost 2.5 hours long. The final budget on the film was estimated to be near $20 million dollars. It made back $270,000. So, with that in mind, when I heard that Kelly had the audacity to think of returning to that incomprehensible quagmire, my immediate thought was, "Why should you ever get to work again?"
Which brings me to the point: Who should be in Art Jail? Who are the people that took initial goodwill in their respective fields, wadded it up, rubbed it in shit, and threw back at those who gave it to them? List your recommendations and concordant arguments.
Fiction:
Music:
Let's hear your picks.
Southland Tales went on to become one of the biggest losses in film history. It was booed out of the theater at its Cannes premier, and Kelly worked on the film for another year, whittling over an hour out of its running time, but still keeping it almost 2.5 hours long. The final budget on the film was estimated to be near $20 million dollars. It made back $270,000. So, with that in mind, when I heard that Kelly had the audacity to think of returning to that incomprehensible quagmire, my immediate thought was, "Why should you ever get to work again?"
Which brings me to the point: Who should be in Art Jail? Who are the people that took initial goodwill in their respective fields, wadded it up, rubbed it in shit, and threw back at those who gave it to them? List your recommendations and concordant arguments.
Fiction:
I've picked Gregory Maguire, the author of Wicked. Maguire had some only modest success as a children's author when he published his first adult novel, Wicked, telling the story of the Witch from Oz that tormented Dorothy famously. Released in 1995, the book was in fact not a runaway smash, and Maguire went on to mine the "famous villain POV" well again with a book about Cinderella's stepsisters, another about Snow White's stepmother, and yet another about Jack the Ripper, all to little accord. It wasn't until the chance happening of Wicked's tale being turned into a blockbuster success on Broadway as a musical did the book find life again. However, the smash hit play bears little similarity to book's tone or events, and the play digs out a cohesive narrative that Maguire's work has never possessed. Since the public adoration of the musical put Maguire back on the sellers' lists, he went back to the Oz wheelhouse, churning out two more volumes in the saga, each worse than its predecessor. As well, he has a fourth volume planned to be released some time in 2011. Plainly, the books are awful; poorly characterized beings moving without motivation from random place to random place. They're like Lord of the Rings, if Frodo didn't have a ring and was going to Mordor just because he felt like a walk. The worst of the bunch is the third, which finds a tertiary character of Maguire's creation having a talk with the Cowardly Lion for two hundred pages about their respective back-stories. And then nothing else happens. Seriously. That's it.
So, fuck that guy.
So, fuck that guy.
Music:
I've selected Weezer. The Blue Album, the Green Album, and Pinkerton were the soundtrack to my (and many other's, I'm sure) days of youthful rebellion and revelation. But now I'm almost 30, and the guys in Weezer are over 40. Their output hasn't been hurt; they've put out four albums in the last two years. Except these albums all suck. Really, really hard. Instead of being wryly self-aware youngsters, they've turned into overly-sentimental schlocksters who try desperately at every turn to prove their hipster cred with the kids these days, and it comes off like your grandpa doing the Macarena. Take a look at these lyrics from the Red Album release, "Heart Songs,"
"Eddie Rabbit sang about how much he loved a rainy night
Abba, Devo, Benatar were there the day John Lennon died
Mr Springsteen said he had a hungry heart
Grover Washington was happy on the day he topped the chart
These are the songs...
these are my heart songs
they never feel wrong"
So, for being the band that went from self-aware to self-parody, and certainly for now being official spokespersons for Axe Body Spray (for real) . . . . fuck those guys.
"Eddie Rabbit sang about how much he loved a rainy night
Abba, Devo, Benatar were there the day John Lennon died
Mr Springsteen said he had a hungry heart
Grover Washington was happy on the day he topped the chart
These are the songs...
these are my heart songs
they never feel wrong"
So, for being the band that went from self-aware to self-parody, and certainly for now being official spokespersons for Axe Body Spray (for real) . . . . fuck those guys.
Let's hear your picks.
Atomika on
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A) they still are great live
and
Hey. Hey.
I know I'm in rare company when I say it, but I loved Southland Tales. This was the movie The Rock was born to be a part of. And, yes, I know there are things wrong with it, (I've actually read the prequel comic book trilogy, I shit you not), but I have to tell you, I loved that movie. I bought it twice.
Mainly because I realised it's probably what would happen if Terry Gilliam and David Lynch attempted to co-direct a disastrous adaptation of Akira and then some poor bastard had to try to edit those fragments into one movie.
But I still approve this thread. I think we'll get some real good discussions out of this.
Of course, fans love it now, it's the "lost gem" and other bullshit they tell themselves to make themselves feel better about how they, the fans, turned Weezer into what they are today.
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If you're gonna rip on music, rip on bands that are actually bad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa6qpgLvH30
Weezer release bland albums that aren't as soulful as their earlier efforts, while these parasites release aural torture.
I want to see southland tales still although I know it's awful. It just seems interesting. I like the idea of something that wacked out.
also just to keep this post specifically on topic I'll mention one of the more obvious guys in film, though I was never really a big fan myself
M Night Shyamalan
from the sixth sense to the last airbender in 15 years.
I didn't really get that vibe since most of the OP is just ripping into Richard Kelly, but fair enough.
God Metallica went downhill. Cliff Burton would be rolling in his grave if he knew about any of the band's output over the past twenty years. How the band who released the absolutely vicious Ride The Lightning went and crapped out something like Stanger is beyond me, but they're really no longer relevant. Them and the rest of the big four should just stop trying while they're still ahead.
Axl Rose should be completely locked out of all things artistic - he got together some of the greatest musicians in the world for the new GNR and completely squandered it. and it shouldn't have been called GNR.
And I loved Southland Tales. My friend hated it so much he wrote NO ONE EVER SHOULD WATCH THIS EVER and took it back to the lending library at work. It's sat there ever since.
He went from Beverly Hills Cop to Norbit, The Adventures of Pluto Nash and Daddy Day Care.
Everything since Sound Of White Noise has been awful, and that album is iffy at best.
And oh dear god yes Axl Rose is so fucking terrible now raaaaaawrgarble. When they came here, they played 20 minutes before going off stage. People waited around to see if they were coming back out, the house lights came on, people got moved on and while they were leaving, Alx went into the car park to shout at the fans for leaving. He then went back on stage and finished the set two and a half hours after the curfew.
Yea, that's what I am saying. White Noise was supposed to be the album to end all albums. It was supposed to be this amazing brilliant album - and it wasn't (it does have very specific moments of great though)
I want to see Anthrax matched what they promised.
The Sixth Sense was pretty good. It may have been more successful than it deserved to be, but it was pretty good.
Then, like George Bush the Lesser taking his slim 2.5% margin victory in 2004 as a "clear mandate of public will", MKS took the good will of his audience and started peeing on their collective faces.
When they started to choke and sputter he took this as his cue to start shoveling dog shit into their mouths.
He doesn't belong in art jail, he should be drug out into the street and shot.
Mean Girls and Parent Trap, offhand. Mean Girls was probably the best film she was in.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Tim Burton's not at this level yet, but he's in the danger zone.
Everything after that has been bland mcblanderson to me.
But I think the ultimate "JESUS CHRIST STOP THAT" for me is Phantom of the Opera 2: Love Never Dies. With Andrew Lloyd Webber quoted saying: "I don't regard this as a sequel – it's a stand-alone piece". As every upstanding citizen I like Phantom of the Opera for what it is: a fairytale set in upperclass 19th century Paris with very romantic music to listen to when you've been dumped and feel sorry for yourself. The original work has been ridiculed many times, but it's a nice fairytale at heart. You can't go wrong with mopy bad guys, noble princes and beautiful opera singers.
The sequel takes place in the US and ends with the gem that Christine
She also had amazing chest before the drugs.
Who sold ALW the cocaine necessary to convince him that it was a good idea and however did they smuggle all fourty-six tonnes of it over the border?
EDIT: Lohan's fall boggles my mind, because she hasn't exactly stumbled from great heights. She's that actress that did exactly one movie with her career and has been coasting from it since. She made The Parent Trap when she was, what, fourteen? That's what your using as her argument for her films? Is that all we have to work with here?
The only film she did worth a damn was Mean Girls. I thought that was supposed to be her "breakout" film; the one that gets your foot into the door to bigger, better roles. But nope, she took her small slimmer of box office success and flushed it down the tubes faster than an unwanted pregnancy on prom night. Lohan tumbling from Mean Girls would be like Anne Hathaway killing her career after making The Princess Diaries.
I got no sympathy for Lohan, and the constant media attention she gets from her rehab stunts drives me nuts.
I did! but you put way more into it
Next up: Jesus Christ Superstar 2?
Also Tav you don't like Sound of White Noise? Booooooooooo.
Yeah, Lohan never really did enough good stuff to deserve art jail. Lucas on the other hand, spawned not one but two excellent movie franchises, then shat all over them. A drawing of him in a striped prison uniform with a ball chained to his leg is on the sign outside of art jail.
This, of course, would then lead to Jesus returning one last time in Jesus Christ Superstar 3, which would be about Armaggedon.
And I don't know about you, but a musical about the end of the world would be pretty sweet.
Why would they need to stretch that out in three parts? All Jesus did when he was resurrected was chat with a bunch of folks for about a month before ascending to Heaven.
That would make for a very boring play. Skip straight to Armageddon in part 2.
Wait, what? I loved Alice.
EDIT: Agreed on George Lucas. He's like an idiot with a nuclear weapon at his disposal.
I'm sure there's a topical cream for that.
Would've been even better if it was less PG, but it worked.
I think Depp once said he'd have sex with a platypus on camera if Burton wanted him to.
But seriously, I don't see what Burton's doing differently. His films still have the same aesthetics, I think.