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Sat 4 Feb, 2006 07:21 am
I recently saw two adventure movies, a la Indiana Jones dash Tomb Raider, namely the TV film The Librarian and the blockbuster Sahara (The latter being by far the more amusing and action packed).
Although I will allow for reality to be stretched in amusing adventure movies, these ones went rather overboard: In Sahara the heroes take off in a small boat from Lagos (in Nigeria) to go to Mali via the river Niger.
FYI the mouths of the river Niger are well over 200 miles of ocean from Lagos, the Niger river delta is a pirate infested maze of swamp and from there all the way to Gao is over 1000 miles including stretches of rapids that are not navigable and at least one hydroelectric dam. And they had to be back in 72 hours. Yeah right!
Also in that film: Tuaregs do not ride horses, but camels, and do not live in adobe hill villages but in tents or huts since they are nomads. The men would not show their face in the presence of a foreign woman.
I wonder if at least the book on which this story is based explain what the hell the ironclad was doing in Africa in the first place?
The Librian is possibly even more insipid: The supposedly best protected place (The Library) gets broken into immediately. People jump from the front of a passenger jet and are NOT sucked into the engines. Baddies find the heroes in the middle of the Amazon rain forest (saying they have a good tracker does not do the trick since you don't know where they came down after they jumped from the plane). A bridge across a chasm is destroyed after the heroes, but the baddies are not even slowed down by this. Countless rounds are fired from automatic weapons during the film, but nobody ever gets hurt. Maya priests have alledgedly travelled all the way from Guatemala to the middle of the Amazon rainforest to build a huge temple that is in mint condition and not even overgrown after centuries of abandonment, etc etc. etc. I understand that it is just a story, but couldn't they have made just a little bit of an effort to make it a little more believable. These things are a definite turn off for me.
Disposable cinema indeed. The films end at the bottom of the popcorn box. "The Librarian" did not do particularly well in the ratings but "Sahara" was a decent action adventure that racked up an average box office. It was not a block buster.
I think anyone would know they are about to insult our intelligence -- it's well broadcast in the ads and in the reviews. Ya have to leave the grey cells outside the cinema doors, or in the case of "The Librarian," change the channel?
"Sahara"'s lackluster box office. Note the production cost:
Domestic Total Gross: $68,671,925
Distributor: Paramount Release Date: April 8, 2005
Running Time: 2 hrs. 4 min. Production Budget: $130 million
MPAA Rating: PG-13 Est. Marketing Costs: N/A
The film in order to make money would have to do at least $200M to break even as promotional costs would eat up many millions.
(In other words, the movie goer is verifying your thoughts that the movie insulted their intelligence and word-of-mouth caused the poor box office, perhaps made up for by the DVD release).
Hi LW,
I did not know the figures, called it a blockbuster on account of the inferred amount of money that went into the SFX, I should have called it a big budget movie rather than a blockbuster.
I do not find it hard to accept fantastic reality, but films that supposedly play in the real world should make an effort not to be unnecessarily taxing on common sense. If they get the mundane details right, it becomes easier to accept the fantastic elements. For example, a very fantastic film like Jurassic Park (I mean, live dinosaurs!) becomes believable because of the attention that went into making the central premiss believable and populating the story with real people who act like one would imagine real people would act when faced with such an incredible reality.
Lightwizard wrote:The films end at the bottom of the popcorn box.
I like that quote
(although I don't like popcorn, am more of a red wine and cheese person)
You get red wine and cheese into the movie theater?
I'm impressed.
Lightwizard wrote:You get red wine and cheese into the movie theater?
I'm impressed.
At my local multiplex,UCI,at certain times,we have a choice of normal seating or "Gallery" seating.The Gallery consists of the last three rows of seats,more like padded leather armchairs, at the rear of the auditorium.The armrests in between the seats are moveable so you can create a "cuddle seat" if so inclined.Gallery patrons also have the facility of a Bar,drinks are added to your bill and are brought to yor seat/s,when requested,by the staff.Popcorn,crisps(chips to you guys),peanuts are included in the ticket price.
That sounds like a great idea for a theater barry. Around here the "Society of Bluenosed Protectors of our Morals" would immediately put a stop to any such civilized accommodations.
There are some dining theaters in L.A. where they will serve one dinner but not sure about alcoholic beverages. I think if "Brokeback Mountain" were playing to the inebriated, it would give a new meaning to crying in your beer.
Paaskynen wrote:Lightwizard wrote:The films end at the bottom of the popcorn box.
I like that quote
(although I don't like popcorn, am more of a red wine and cheese person)
I use to hang out with these guys that would breing 22oz bottles of budweiser into the movies. One time they knocked a full one over and you could hear the bottle rolling down to the front through the whole theater pouring out beer the whole way.
I don't go to movies with those guys anymore.
Was this to the tune "Roll Out the Barrel?"
I think the tune was "Roll Out the Security"
Lightwizard wrote:You get red wine and cheese into the movie theater?
I'm impressed.
Actually, the red wine and cheese, are usually consumed on my sofa in front of the box, but I do know one theatre in the Netherlands where such fare is served (the seats are in pairs at small tables, you can summon the waitress with a button, but they do not serve "noisy" snacks like crisps or popcorn, you want to enjoy the film after all and the food merely serves to heighten the enjoyment). Needless to say this theatre caters only to a certain clientele, no blockbusters that would attarct hordes of adolescents are featured.
I used to serve wine and cheese for the movie parties we had in the Seventies, pre-video. We brought down a CinemaScope projector from Warner's and borrowed films from their library (nice to have a roommate who was the assistant to the President of Warners/Burbank Studios). I served white wine when we screened "What's Up Doc" as I was afraid of red wine being spit up all over my carpet. I still have the roll down CinemaScope screen stored at a friends house in Laguna Beach.
No amount of red wine could save the horror-flick Forest of the Damned (2005). I have seldom seen such an utterly and intensely bad horror film: predictable into the extreme, bad acting, bad effects, bad shooting, bad assinine script and a half-ass director who in his commentary bashes in advance everyone who will criticise his film.
This is a B-film in which the B stands for BAD!
I absolutely loathed The Perfect Storm.
Also remeber all of those hyped up, yet incredibly horrible Batman films? (though the most recent one and the very first one were both decent.)
Paskynen wrote:Also in that film: Tuaregs do not ride horses, but camels....
Maybe they had to put the camel in the shop for repairs and the horse was a "loaner".
And in The Rundown which was otherwise an amusing film, they had (African) baboons "inconveniencing" the hero in the Amazonian rain forest (apparently the new world monkeys weren't scary enough for the job). The huge pit goldmine displayed in the film was undoubtedly based on the one that featured so prominently in Powaqatsi.
Wasn't the Librarian geared towards a teen-aged audience? I know I have seen the TV show featuring Noah Wiley ( the guy from E.R.). Same principle?
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