My Secret Garden by Nancy Friday
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Read 'em both.
Huh… I contributed to Ascenray’s thread, too. What the heck is it that draws me in here?
Still haven’t seen that shark/octopus movie with Debbie Deborah Gibson…
I think what the OP’s after, ftg is that ripping off big films with mockbusters is evil, and he’s wondering why nobody does anything about it.
Maybe it’s not the place of the government to crack down on producers like this (perhaps because they’re not actually breaking any laws), but mor importantly, why does Redbox sully themselves by make this excrement available when, as the OP so deftly notes, they only have a limited capacity in their machines?
The only thing I can gather is that it must be profitable, and the bottom line is the bottom line…
… although I must admit that my six-year-old daughter does like some of the knock-off princess movies based on public-domain fairytales.
Yes, it doesn’t violate any laws. You’re allowed to have a similar story with a similar title, especially if it’s based on public domain material.
My thoughts exactly. My mom exactly, too.
At a retailer I used to work for we were not supposed to return opened movies. This led to a lot of problems when customers would return to us with their mock titles, explain they thought they were buying something else, and we were supposed to turn them away.
We usually helped them out and let them return it but it led to us eating the cost of the movie since the distributors refused to take them back opened. We had a huge box in the back filled with opened mock titles for employees to take if they wanted them. Nobody of course did so we would throw them away.
Eventually we had the media department keep an eye out for these titles when we received them and then they were presented at morning team meetings to all the cashiers so they could inform the customers at the registers BEFORE they bought them that it was a mock title.
It cut waaay back on our returns and customers were always very thankful that we let them know.
Just a FYI about Redbox and one of these films: “Kiara the Brave” is now listed as just “Kiara”. The user reviews are … not good. There is a recent 5 star review in there. It couldn’t possibly be anyone associated with studio, as that would be wrong and these studios are as pure as the driven snow.
Abraham Lincoln Vs Zombies has much better reviews by comparison.
In related news, there’s going to be a new Harry Potter movie. Right.
While chowing down those McDowell’s hamburgers.
When Breyers ice cream started showing up in the stores here on the west coast, I thought it had to be a cheap knock-off of the real thing.
Interesting! Around here, we call it Edy’s.
Dryer (California, 1920s) and Breyer (Philapdelphia, 1860s) really were two different people. Mostly a coincidence, I guess, unless there is some prediliction for German-Americans (?) toward the ice cream business.
Every time I see these, I am reminded of a former roommate of mine regularly ended up getting the wrong movie from Netflix (and other places) due to not really paying attention. Once, trying to rent Inside Man, the Clive Owen/Denzel Washington heist film, he ended up with The Inside Man, a cheesy submarine-based spy film with Dennis Hopper.
He accidentally rented the shot-for-shot Gus Van Sant remake of Psycho.
But my favorite was when he was excited to watch Tootsie, the cross-dressing Dustin Hoffman comedy, then was disappointed to realize that he had actually added Tsotsi to his queue (although that was a good movie, just not the movie he thought it was).
I don’t like what these film producers are doing, but I’m comfortable with their actions being legal. Dreamworks shouldn’t have any exclusive claim to the character Puss in Boots, simply because they have a big budget.
It seems to me that the place for this to be stopped is in the curators. Redbox is doing its customers a disservice by stocking these movies. If people complain enough, they’ll probably stop doing it.
Stupid is not the right word, but the adage “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” is surely in play on this front.
Like the OP, very early in my life I fell for a knockoff bargain that was exactly what I was looking for, only to discover it had indeed been “too good to be true”. Of nearly exactly the same type, too: I used my stash of saved allowance money to buy an LP record entitled Disco’s Greatest Hits!! or something like that [forgive me, it was 1979 and I was maybe 8 years old!], only to discover said hits were orchestral instrumental covers with a beat, kind of like Hooked On Classics but for then-contemporary music. No wonder I was able to pick it up for $3 or something like that.
The letdown was memorable and since then, I have always been on the lookout for the knockoff angle whenever the price or availability of something I know to be popular, expensive or rare is surprisingly within reach. And I learned that lesson when I was eight.
So for your mother, may blessings be upon her, it is to her credit that she is not jaded and cynical. I assume it’s because she either has not experienced the outraged disappointment of receiving a cheap ersatz version of what had been expected for one’s money and/or time, or genuinely isn’t that bothered about it (“Eh, so it’s the story of Pocohantas told a little differently, it’s still Pocohantas right?”)
Hmm, maybe it’s time to dust off my longstanding pet project, a fantastic alt-history WW2 movie called Inglorious Bastards.
+1!
I think that’s the heart and soul of this thread.
[nm too snarky]
I preferred the C Thomas Howell one. Closer to the book.
Am I the only one who first read that as ShotFromGuns?
Re: McDowell’s…ha! And I thought it was just a joke from a meh Eddie Murphy film (Coming to America.) Or maybe the Milwaukee joint is trying to make sly reference to the same film. Whoa, meta!
Yeah, I rented The Iron Lady and there wasn’t a chick in a flying robot suit in sight.
But what about the people who legitimately want to watch these “films.” Surely, someone like that must exist.
To jump off one of the titles above, Sunday School Musical wasn’t marketed as a mockbuster, it was pushed as it’s own separate movie that fans of High School Musical and/or Christian kids would like.
You should check out Bubblegum Crisis, Appleseed, or Gunbuster.
I didn’t know there was a current Asylum thread when I wrote in praise of their American Warships, better than Battleship, not that it’s a high bar.