Untapped goldmine: Disney Princesses 'to the rescue'.

There is a spot near the beginning of Peggy Orenstein's Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture that details the origins of the Disney Princess brand that originated around 2000.  Long-story short, the compromise for allowing all of the various Disney princess characters to appear on the same merchandise was that they not actually interact with each other in any way.  You may not realize it, but you've never actually seen a Disney Princess t-shirt or storybook with Jasmine and Belle playing tennis together or Aurora and Cinderella picking out party gowns.  They are always staring either at us or off into the distance, but never at each other.  I bring this up because in the midst of all the 'who should be in Expendables 3' or 'who should be in that female Expendables spin-off', I realized that Disney was in fact practicing a remarkable bit of restraint when it came to financially mining their properties.  Imagine: Jasmine, Belle, Mulan, Cinderella, Aurora, Pocahontas, Snow White, Ariel, Tiana, Rapunzel all in one spectacular adventure to do some kind of derring-do and/or saving the proverbial day.  Of course since most of their arch villains are suffering from a slight case of death, the already-established antagonists would be pretty limited (although Jafar and Dr. Facilier would be the easiest to resurrect since they both perished via magic).  But putting aside the whole 'art' argument, can you imagine how such a film wouldn't gross hundreds of millions of dollars in theaters?  Can you imagine how many untold millions of DVDs or Blu-Rays such a thing would sell? Say what you will about the alleged greed of the Walt Disney studios, but it says something that they haven't leaped at such a seemingly obvious opportunity to rake in untold amounts of money.

Scott Mendelson        

Review: The Expendables 2 (2012) - tastes great, less filling.

The Expendables 2

2012
103 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

The good news is that The Expendables 2 is that it gives you more of what you wanted the first time around.  There is a greater volume of action and the film has even more A-list action stars offering their services this time around.  The picture is rarely dull and often amusing, but at what cost?  The film barely tries to pretend that it exists as an actual motion picture, with the various onscreen tough guys openly referencing their iconic roles or real-life biographies in a manner that takes you out of the movie each time.  The first picture may have been light on the A-level firepower, but it attempted to be a real film with an actual story and token attempts at depth.  The original Expendables (barely) worked as a metaphor for a modern America that could still do the right thing for the right reasons in a manner honoring its alleged superior morality.  This new film has 'more of what you came to see' but is paper thin without a hint of substance or even dramatic credibility.  Comparing the two films is a classic example of 'trying and (perhaps) failing' versus 'failing to try'.  

"Your movie stinks, see ours instead!" Question of the day: Should movie marketing campaigns bait each other?

It was my first thought walking out of The Bourne Legacy last Monday.  "I bet Sony and MGM wishes they could somehow attach a Skyfall trailer to *the end* of every Bourne Legacy print, purely out of spite."  Obviously that really isn't possible in today's theatrical distribution model, but why wouldn't Sony do the next best thing?  Why wouldn't they cut a new Skyfall trailer explicitly commenting on how mediocre the latest entry in the would-be heir-to-Bond franchise is?  Cue: various underwhelming clips from The Bourne Legacy.  "Wow... that bloody sucked!  That Aaron Cross sure is a wanker!  Let a real professional show you how its done... (cue Bond theme and fade in accordingly)."  Or whatever, you get the idea.  For reasons that may involve actual regulations or may just be a kind of mutual gentlemen's agreement, rival film studios don't generally call each other out like that.  But maybe, just maybe they should.  It may not be polite, but it would make modern film marketing that much more fun.

News Commentary - By Grabthar's Hammer, Dean Parisot to helm Red 2!

One of the great mysteries over the last decade or so is deducing why Dean Parisot hasn't made a half-dozen more movies since 1999.  The guy's second film, Galaxy Quest, is not only one of the best comedies of the last twenty-years but remains the best Star Trek movie ever made, bar none (ironically, there were actually a few elements from said parody that were cribbed with a straight face in the 2009 J.J. Abrams reboot).  The film didn't become an out-and-out smash hit, partially due to a boycott of Dreamworks movies from Regal Cinemas at the time.  But his second film, the underrated and ahead-of-its-time Fun With Dick and Jane (yes, it's a remake, but its middle class family struggles with economic obsolescence was about three years two early) was the last live-action Jim Carrey film to crack $100 million in the US back in 2005.  And up until yesterday, Parisot has been relatively MIA.  Variety is reporting that Parisot has been hired to helm Red 2, the sequel to Summit Entertainment's surprisingly successful 'retired spies get back in the game' action comedy from late 2010.   

Right idea, wrong execution: Paramount makes the wrong scheduling moves for GI Joe: Retaliation and Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol.

As expected, Paramount was the first to blink this afternoon, moving Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol away from its December 16th release date where it would have gone head-to-head with Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked.  The Brad Bird-directed sequel will now open five days later, on Wednesday, December 21st.  Unfortunately, instead of facing one major would-be blockbuster, it now faces several.  Opening on the same day or two days later are The Adventures of Tintin, The Darkest Hour, We Bought A Zoo, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  The Tom Cruise/Jeremy Renner vehicle very well may win that long Christmas weekend and benefit from those famous year-end legs.  But there was another even more prime release date with absolutely no competition whatsoever.

The Expendables II gets generic poster, hilarious plot synopsis which reveals just who is 'expendable'.

The film doesn't even have a director (I hear Sophia Coppola is available), but it does have a release date: August 17th, 2012.  It now also has a poster and plot synopsis courtesy of Nu Image.  The poster pretty much speaks for itself.  But the plot synopsis is a spoiler-filled hoot.

“The Expendables are back and this time it’s personal! After Tool (Mickey Rourke), the heart and soul of the Expendables, is brutally murdered on a mission, his comrades swear to avenge him. They’re not the only ones who want blood. Tool’s beautiful young and wild daughter Fiona embarks on her own revenge mission, complicating matters when she is captured and ransomed by a ruthless dictator plotting to destroy a resistance movement. Now Barney and the Expendables must risk everything to save her and humanity.”

It does seem that Mr. Can't-Play-Well-With-Others is indeed being written out of the series, and it's the least surprising choice all-things considered.  It also works as a rebuttal to those who justifiably complained that a film called The Expendables didn't actually 'expend' any of its heroic mercenaries, even absurdly keeping Lundgren alive despite his apparent second-act demise (not saying I'm not glad that Dolph won't be around in part II, but...).  So, poor Rourke bites it in the opening act, but that's okay, because he's got a daughter who of course is "young",  "beautiful", and "wild".  But that doesn't mean  Fiona is "competent", as she also ends up spending (at least) the third act as a hostage.  The first film played into the whole 'macho he-men save helpless babe-in-peril' cliche, and alas the sequel seeks to play the same game.  But my favorite part of this plot summary is the final sentence, where we're told that the Expendables are not only trying to save 'insert hostage-babe here', but HUMANITY!  The first film merely concerned a fictional Latin American country that was being oppressed by a dictator (who in turn was being manipulated by a corporate villain), but the sequel puts the entire planet in peril.  Which leads me to ask, just who is this despot that threatens the entire world?  Will this be The Expendables versus. Darkseid?  The Expendables versus Cobra (no, not Stallone's Corba, the OTHER Cobra)?  Which world-threatening foes do you want to see our 80s/90s heroes facing off against in the sequel?  Oh wait... I got it!  The Expendables versus Dr. Claw!        

Scott Mendelson

Bill O'Reilly's straw-man argument: Of course The Expendables is (slightly) patriotic, but it's not 'NATIONALISTIC'. Altough he has one good point...

It's a common tactic brandished on the Right, and occasionally used by the Left, to create a straw-man argument and then bring on someone to validate or combat said viewpoint. Bill O'Reilly himself has been famous for his annual 'War on Christmas' series that seems to crop up every December. I know of no one who has discussed The Expendables in anything but the broadest social terms (it has no real agenda other than to entertain and make money), and certainly not a single critic has vilified Stallone for the film's content aside from its worth as an action drama. The film is subtly patriotic, but it's not NATIONALISTIC, which is what O'Reilly is defending it against. For what it's worth, the film's villain is an American imperialist tycoon, and the bad guys use water-boarding to torture a damsel in distress, and righteous Americans do battle to put a stop to it. In other words, heroic Americans do battle with evil Americans and save an indigenous populace for outside invaders because they basically want to do a 'mitzvah' for once in their greedy, soulless lives (yes, it's the same broad idea as The Wild Bunch).