FWIW, the reviews are coming in for Uptown Girls and, well, don’t look for a sequel. If Yakin did this for the money (which I don’t have a problem with as long as he admits to it) then his next movie better kick serious ass.
It wouldn’t be the first time my dime went up in smoke.
(Deletes self-indulgent screenplay-in-progress and begins work on the Cheech and Chong comeback vehicle.)
I agree that the preview makes it look fucking stupid. This is not the first time a studio’s marketing department has tried to tailor a film’s previews to try to appeal to the biggest possible audience, instead of just showing an honest representation of what the movie is like, thus getting a smaller audience, but a lower percentage of disappointed moviegoers.
Film marketers don’t care about ANYTHING but the opening weekend, and the entire marketing process is designed to get as many people as possible into the theatres those first two days. The most common strategy used by a big-studio marketing machine is to go for the lowest common denominator, and to make DAMN sure the preview doesn’t show a film’s ambiguity or complexity; just the quick, cute bits that they think they can (cynically, dishonestly) sell to the largest possible audience.
Um, what planet do you watch movies on? Previews from big studios RARELY reflect exactly what a film is really like. They’re not made by the director, but by the marketing people, and they’re not ABOUT the movie, they’re ABOUT the desired audience.
Apparently not. Here, for example, is Ebert, who also disagrees with you: “Remember the Titans is a parable about racial harmony, yoked to the formula of a sports movie.”
Here are a few more blurbs, from Rottentomatoes:
"The film is a lot about character and a little about football. Not a single boring, slow, or unnecessary second. "
“It’s slick Hollywood product, all right, but it also may be the most moving and entertaining movie so far this year.”
–and–here’s my point:
“In the hands of a lesser director, this film could have fallen to pieces under all of the clichés.”
Don’t get me wrong; Remember the Titans is not Yakin’s best film; but it was his first big studio film–a thin script given to a hired director. And he made a much better film than most other directors would have made. So I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt until I can see what he’ll do with the obviously cliche material that was dumped in his lap on “Uptown Girls.”
None of those quotes support the film being called “astonishingly original”
Well, Ebert’s entitled to his opinion and so are you, but I think generic sports movie + generic racial harmony movie != great, original movie. I’m not saying that I wasn’t entertained by it, but I found it to be entertaining in the exact same way as most of the other formulatic Hollywood fare.
FTR, I haven’t see any of the director’s other movies.
As a skateboard enthusiast myself, I am none too happy about Grind. It looks like a movie made by all the 14-year-olds who fancy themselves as the next Bam or Tony Hawk. It’s gonna suck raw ass, and further brand people who skate as stupid.
Well, if I cared about the general skater population at least. I’d be happy if they all burned in a Julia Roberts hell.
“Hey, Marsha?”
“Yeah?”
“Do I have a mole on the back of my neck?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh.”
[credits roll]
Well, his first two features, which he wrote and directed, were astonishingly original and well made. “Fresh” was the story of a 12yearold kid in the ghetto, dad played by Samuel Jackson as a homeless chess genius. The kid gets sucked into being a drug runner, and the only way out is to somehow outsmart the whole drug machine he works for.
Ebert gave it four stars: “You may think, having seen an urban thriller or two, that you can guess how “Fresh” feels and sounds. You would be wrong. The soundtrack is not filled with loud, angry music. The plot is not manic, but focused and perceptive. Fresh, the central character, is played in an extraordinary performance by Sean Nelson, as a boy who sees and understands much, and keeps his own counsel.”
His second feature, “A Price Above Rubies,” is–wait for it–astonishingly original and well made. Ebert gave it three stars: “Zellweger plays Sonia, the daughter of gemologists who steer her away from the family business and into an arranged marriage with a young scholar named Mendel (Glenn Fitzgerald), who prefers prayer and study to the company of his wife. (During sex, he turns off the light and thinks of Abraham and Isaac.) Sonia’s unhappiness makes her an emotional time bomb, and it is Mendel’s older brother Sender (Christopher Eccleston) who sets her off. First, he tests her knowledge of jewelry. Then, he offers her a job in his business. Then, he has sex with her. It’s rape, but she seems to accept it as the price of freedom.”
This newspaper’s Jonathon Rosenbaum had this to say: “. . . Boaz Yakin’s 1997 second feature (after Fresh), about the painful break of a young wife and mother (Renee Zellweger) from her husband and Hasidic community in Brooklyn’s Borough Park, is for me a potent and very moving polemic about the oppressive misogyny often found in Orthodox Jewish life, predicated on a kind of patriarchal mind-set that seems surprisingly close to attitudes found throughout the Middle East. . . . a powerful and persuasively acted piece of dramatic agitprop about a neglected subject, provocative and spellbinding.”
His third feature, “Remember the Titans,” was the first not written by him: he’d proved himself to the big studios and they hired him for a big project. I will say again, comparing the initial material with what Yakin was able to pull out of it, that “Titans” was astonishingly orginal and well made: any other director would have, NOT very astonshingly, made it no more than the script deserved: a jumble of hacked cliches.
Now, granted, at least judging by the previews, “Upton Girls” looks like the worst piece of crap a director could have been handed, but based on Yakin’s track record of spinning straw into gold, I’m gonna give it the benefit of the doubt until I see it.
Doing a fair job with a shitty script does not mean the movie was astonishingly original. Because it wasn’t. Christ, the movie was “Hoosiers” with a dash of race relations.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but “Grind” is rated PG-13, isn’t it? If that’s the case, there’s not even the hope of decent nudity to salvage this film.
lissener, stop and think a minute. If everybody is saying “The trailers for these movies look stupid,” and you say " … the preview makes it look fucking stupid," why are you arguing? Nobody’s saying the director kills puppies for fun, or that you’re wrong for thinking he’s the greatest director in the history of the world. They’re saying the trailer looks stupid, along with trailers for a lot of other movies.
If I understand lisserner correctly, his problem is people are judging the film based solely on the previews.
He says he’s willing to give the movie a whirl based on the track record of the director. I say screw that noise, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
Does anyone else look at Uptown Girls and think of Ally Sheedy?
inkblot
Getting back to the OP…
You know, it’s funny, I saw the commercial and though the very same thing - so when I saw this thread, you have no idea how happy I am that someone else feels the same way.
I can’t stand that line “Release those twins” and I can’t stand that guy who says that line. He just seems like a total asshole. Totally arrogant and totally clueless - a very dangerous combination. We all know that kind of guy - totally tactless. Completely classless and rude.
I really hope that guy is just acting that way and that he is just really good at playing such an obnoxious character. I’m curious to see what else he’s acted in.
Funny how so many people are getting the same reaction from literally 3 seconds of a preview.
So, let’s see, Ebert gave A Price Above Rubies three stars. Okay. He also gave Gigli 2½ stars.
To go slightly off topic, Leonard Maltin gave Laserblast 2½ stars.
Why do we even have critics? If their job is to make Hollywood make better films, it ain’t working. If their job is to stop more people from seeing sucky movies, it ain’t working. If their job is to encourage people to see really great, but underrated, films, that ain’t working either.
Yeah, I mentioned earlier that critics are ripping Uptown Girls to shreds, but it was to prove a point. They liked Boaz’ earlier works, but not this one.
The purpose of critics is to give people some idea whether they should go and see a particular movie. If Roger Ebert says he likes or dislikes a movie, I may or may not agree. But I can read his review and–given what I know of his tastes–form an opinion on whether the movie will be worth seeing.
The critic should be working for the movie-going public, not the studios.
Or who fancy themselves the current Tony Hawk: Gaylord Films production head Casey La Scala will helm the skateboarding comedy “The Grind” for the company’s specialty films division Pandora, producer Billy Gerber and 900 Films, the company founded by skateboarding champ Tony Hawk, Matt Goodman and Morgan Stone
World Eater
Is there a way one can short sell a movie? 'Cause I’ve already baught 0 tickets. Is there a way I can buy fewer?
Um, sauron, perhaps some of the posts were saying " . . . ‘The trailers for these movies look stupid,’ " but then those were the posters I agree with, and there I was NOT–wait for it–arguing with them. I was arguing with idiotic posts such as the following: “You’re supposed to judge a movie by the preview, you choad! That’s what previews are for!”
. . . and there’s already a backlash begun against the kneejerk trashing of Gigli; I’ve seen at least two articles pondering why there’s such a critical bandwagon to jump on when the movie’s not actually that bad. Now, of course, that there’s a controversy, I’m actually curious to see Gigli. It doesn’t look very good, but the critical party line is not always valuable: Ishtar and Showgirls are in my permanent collection.
Nope, that’ll do just fine.