Tuesday 7 December 2010

Hollywood Babble On & On #642: Christmas Movies & I See Dead People On Screen!

Welcome to the show folks...

SANTA ISN'T GOING TO HOLLYWOOD THIS YEAR

For the first time in my living memory there isn't a single Christmas movie coming from a major studio this December.

Now some may say that this is just another
shot in the ongoing culture war between Hollywood and the predominantly Christian American audience.

I think the answer is much simpler.

Hollywood can't make a decent Christmas movie anymore.

Think about it, what made the Xmas movies you watch every year so great. They were great stories of redemption, belief, and sincere emotion.

Can you imagine anyone in Hollywood capable of producing something like that these days?

Most of the Xmas and Xmas-related movies of the past few years have tanked, mostly because they were either brain dead slapstick farces, dreary FX overloads that had all the warmth of an icicle from Pluto, or something like the direct to DVD flick
Santa Paws, the only Xmas related release of any kind this year is a steaming pile of saccharine hoping to grab cash from harried parents with cute puppies and some regurgitated catch phrases and cliches. It's the sort of film I used to make fun of when I was a kid.

Personally, I don't think anyone can top what I consider the trinity of Xmas movies,
A Christmas Carol (AKA Scrooge) with Alastair Sim, It's A Wonderful Life, and Miracle On 34th Street, and it looks like Hollywood isn't even going to try this year.

WHEN THERE'S NO MORE ROOM IN FOREST LAWN...

....the dead will walk again in Hollywood.

At least that was the rumor yesterday. Comedian and director Mel Smith made a comment that George Lucas was buying the rights to the images of dead celebrities for use in a CGI movie.

Lucas took a moment from rolling around a bin full of $1000 bills to deny this rumor.

Now Smith was probably joking, but his joke was a little too believable and instantly became the rumor that got people going all over the word.

Lucas is notorious for his disdain for working with living actors, his love of old movies, the people who starred in them, and his dream of making a film without actors in the vein of the films that shaped his childhood.

Personally, I think Robert Zemeckis is going to try it first, finally making a mo-cap film where the characters don't look like re-animated corpses by actually casting reanimated corpses.

What do you think about these stories? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

2 comments:

  1. Xmas, by and large has become a holiday that is more torture than joy. Shitty Xmas films make it even worse.

    I tend to see that most of the good xmas fare tends to be special episodes on Nick and Disney Channel these days.

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  2. The nice thing about a movie with CGI animated actors is that Angela Jolie won't be in it.

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