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Under discussion:

Hook  (1991)

Nikki Finke says her sources tell her that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and NBC have worked out a compromise to be able to produce a Golden Globes telecast that the WGA can’t picket. Nikki’s using the word “scraped” in her headline, but that doesn’t really sound accurate at all; it seems that the show will go on, just without the montage bloat.

The plan is to apparently throw “a news event??where the actors can still get all glammed up”??????basically, a glorified press conference, with most of the “content” stemming from the winners’ ostensibly improvised acceptence speeches.?? Presumably, such a set up would allow NBC to keep their ad revenue whilst the HFPA gets to keep both their licensing fees and a teeny-tiny shred of dignity. Even better for us the viewers, Steven Spielberg will get to accept his Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award, whilst we’ll be spared the clip reel attempt to legitimize Hook.

Under discussion:

Reality Bites  (1994)

Todd at South Dakota Dark introduces the Superficial Blogathon, to take place February 1-8:

…sometimes, you just want to look at attractive people doing witty things. I mean, we’re all human!

You could write an extended treatise on a work where the superficial pleasures led you to a deeper understanding of the piece as a whole. Or you could make a list of people you find attractive. Or you could just post pretty pictures. So long as it has to do with something in the arts or pop culture and it’s something you enjoy on some sort of shallow level, it’s fair game.

Karina’s note to self: this is probably the perfect place for that piece you’ve been thinking about writing about the time you went to see Janeane Garofalo at Comix, and she solicited the audience for painkillers and eventually traded a girl sitting up front some kind of hand-beaded bracelet for a handful of Vicodin, which in turn prompted to you to ponder the allure of Reality Bites. Which, you should probably admit right now, you saw four times in the theater when you were 13, and which today, though totally cognizant of its faults, you still can’t really help but like a lot.

[Via GreenCine Daily]

Under discussion:

Bulletproof Monk  (2003)

Hellboy  (2004)

Pan's Labyrinth  (2006)

Hellboy II: The Golden Army  (2008)

Guillermo Del Toro’s previous film, the Spanish fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth, scored three Oscars (half of those it was nominated for), received honors from 15 separate critics groups and featured on at least 91 end-of-year top ten lists (or 94, if you count this year’s lists, too). But it didn’t quite make as much money as Del Toro’s movie before it. Actually, that movie, Hellboy, also ended up some top ten lists, but really it was just another well-made comic book movie. And by well-made, I mean that it looked great (shot by Pan’s Oscar-winning cinematographer, Guillermo Navarro) and was directed efficiently. I certainly don’t mean that the writing was all that remarkable. In fact, with all its generic ancient paranormal stuff, Hellboy’s plot was terribly derivative (I can do without the non-Indian Jones-based Nazi baddies for awhile, thanks) and even got confused in my memory with Bulletproof Monk, which was probably my least favorite film of 2003.

So, you can imagine I’m not all that excited about Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Yet thanks to this trailer, I’m a little more interested than I had been. Never mind the lack of Nazi bad guys, this trailer really wants to capitalize on the fact that it was directed by the guy who gave us Pan’s Labyrinth. First, we see a little insect-like creature that evokes the fairy/mosquito thing from Labyrinth. Then there’s a shot of Doug Jones (who also returns as Abe Sapien) as the Angel of Death, an eye-less character evoking Jones’ Labyrinth characters, Fauno and Pale Man, and a scene set in some Autumnally leafy place that closely resembles Labyrinth’s labyrinth. Yet the trailer also plays on this capitalization by addressing the fact that this world is not part of someone’s imagination (as in the case of Labyrinth’s Ofelia). Will Universal be able to combine the audiences of the comic book movies and foreign language films with this strategy? Well, Hellboy II isn’t going to be winning any Oscars, and it’s probably not going to gross more than the first Hellboy. But at least Del Toro (who has acknowledged the parallels between Labyrinth and Hellboy II) seems to be trying to respect his fans and appeal to the whole spectrum in which they exist. That isn’t something all filmmakers who fluctuate between highbrow and lowbrow fare are able to do successfully.