Indiana Jones and the Management of Fanboys
May 26My fanboy sense is tingling – and not in that special, Wilma Dearing sort of way. OK, now they’re tingling in that Wilma Dearing sort of way, but only because I mentioned her, and I got to thinking… I shall reign myself in.
Is it just me, or did we get manhandled a little over the new Indy movie? The film’s opening weekend is officially over and the worldwide bean counting says that a $200M investment turned into $300M, and there’s a whole Summer to go, then the DVD for Christmas. Which is great for the filmmakers. We’ve been griping for years that we wanted more Indy, and they did it… and it looks like they took steps to ensure that we, the unwashed nerds, who helped keep the dream alive (meaning, more than a decade of free word of mouth), wouldn’t shoot them in the foot. Because, let’s be fair – we can push for a dream movie, and then kick it in the nuts if it doesn’t leave us twitching like Joe Dorsey in Brainstorm. But we, as fanboys, can’t pay for a Summer blockbuster – the straights have to go see it as well.
Two things about the opening weekend have piqued my interest, and suggested we’re being handled – and firstly, let’s be fair, the studio had more than enough heads up that geeks everywhere were starting to grumble that they weren’t experiencing multiple oh-faces over Indy 4 – something any studio suit worth his front-door parking spot wouldn’t want leaking out into the general populace. The general populace may not stand up and be counted a geek, but they like the same things about genre movies we do, and they often listen to what the well versed nerd has to say. So – holiday weekend coming, the geeks are poised to critique… what to do?
1) Friday became a holiday – while Canada had their long weekend the week before, and America wasn’t having it’s holiday until Monday, Indy 4 started showing everywhere at Thursday, midnight. Before the weekend had officially started, the movie buzz had it raking in $25M. And buzz like that sounds like quality to the average, ordinary bears.
2) So, offhand, what’s Indy 4’s Tomatometer rating? Go ahead, I’ll even let you go check out the front page of Rotten Tomatoes… what’s that? It’s not there? Surely not – after all, it made double the coin that Prince Caspian did. But there you have it – if you search for the title, you can find it – a respectable, but by no means Earthshattering 79%. Why? Why isn’t the biggest movie of the holiday weekend listed on the front page? It has features on the front page coming out the USB ports, but there isn’t an encapsulated rating anywhere. It couldn’t be an oversight, so one can only assume it was deliberate – someone wanted to make sure that there wasn’t even a whiff of “meh” or (shrug) for the opening 4 days.
And I don’t know how I feel about that.
"Someone who loves you."
May 24In all the Indy 4 hooplah, one commemoration has been forgotten: the silver anniversary of Return of the Jedi.
Yep-25 years.
I plan to spin up my bootleg copy of the original laserdisc. Thus will I celebrate my birth as a geek.
Geek CV: Johanna Draper Carlson
May 21It’s sort of weird to call someone a “veteran of the internet,” like what does that even mean? That they’ve somehow managed to maintain their damn blog for at least a year? But Johanna Draper Carlson is totally (here it comes, deep breath!) a veteran of the internet. She started her site, Comics Worth Reading, back in ’99 and was hanging out online way before that.
CWR features an array of reviews, commentary and other tidbits, all delivered in Johanna’s distinctive voice — there’s a thoughtfulness to her writing that I greatly admire, a willingness to dig thoroughly into the work she’s discussing. Take, for instance, her review of the Amanda Bynes flick Sydney White. I think a lot of the Snarky O’Bloggertons out there would be pretty quick to couch their liking of this film with all kinds of hipper-than-thou qualifers or merely dismiss it all together because of its teen-y sheen. Johanna looks at it like she’d look at any other review subject and finds that it’s pretty dang charming (and she’s right, you guys! I loved every geek girl minute!).
Anyway, in order to learn more about lovely Johanna, we asked her a few burning nerdly questions…
Go Girl, Please Destroy Go Girl
May 20There’s a radio commercial running right now that makes my brain and guts wilt every single time it airs. It features a focus group-y type gathering of ladies sitting around and discussing the sheer awesomeness of a new energy drink “for women” called Go Girl, which apparently boasts the following desirable attributes:
1) It’s sugar free
2) It only has a few calories
3) It comes in a bright pink can!
No, really. At the end, they make a point of saying “look for it in the BRIGHT PINK CAN!” The whole thing sounds dated and dumb and like someone put together a simplified-to-the-point-of-mental-impairment matrix for “how to sell stuff to girls.”
Anyway, after my brain and guts have somehow righted themselves a tiny bit, I always wonder what Trina Robbins would think. Because, if you’ll recall, she penned a comic that bears the same name. I never completely fell in love with this series (I did fall a little in love with Go Girl’s kicky mod outfit, but that’s probably a discussion we should have some other time), but it seemed like something that might appeal to younger readers, particularly girl readers, and I’m all grossed out that this dumb-ass product decided to name itself that as well. (And by the way? There might not be any sugar, but there’s apparently as much caffeine as there is in a cup of coffee, so I guess the goal is to hype you the fuck up without, you know, making you fat. Yay?)
I would like to request that Go Girl — the real Go Girl, not the pink drink — maybe team up with U-Go Girl and take this shit DOWN. Or at least make them stop airing the commercials.
JMS=Oscar Bait?!
May 20I’m just sorta stunned at the buzz that J. Michael Straczynski’s upcoming flick The Changeling is drumming up. He wrote the screenplay, based on a true story…and Clint Eastwood is directing it, with Angelina Jolie starring.
I like JMS’ writing well enough, often enough, but still–this is the Babylon 5 guy we’re talking about, right? The One More Day writer?
It’s like finding out Alex Ross will be exhibiting his paintings in the Louvre.
