The Good, The Bad and the Ugly Films

Posts Tagged ‘Saturday Night Live’

Sorry for the late post, but I totally forgot to edit everything. Listen in to John, Ross and myself as we discuss Saturday Night Live, MacGruber, and its attempts to break into the movie market.

We also give our Good, Bad and Ugly SNL movies. Do you agree with us? Think we’re way off? Send us an email to podcast@goodbaduglyfilms.com or a voice mail via Skype to let us know what your favorite SNL movie is and why.

Mark

GOOD: Blues Brothers BAD: Blues Brothers 2000 UGLY: It’s Pat

John

GOOD: Wayne’s World BAD: Superstar UGLY: The Ladies Man

Ross

GOOD: Wayne’s World BAD: Night at the Roxbury UGLY: Stuart Saves His Family

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Good

Someone actually found an unintended use for Twitter. Beyond the micro-blogging, the ranting, and the messages about the Shit My Dad Says, it turns out to be a fairly accurate predictor of a movie’s box office revenue.

Researchers, Sitaram Asur and Bernardo Huberman from HP Labs in Palo Alto, counted over 3 million “tweets” over 3 months, then compared them to box office revenues. The frequency of tweets correlated directly to the money coming in. More accurate than any other method to date.

However, when it comes to the accuracy of forecasts, counting the rate of tweeting trounces the Hollywood Stock Exchange, say Asur and Huberman: “Our predictions are consistently better than those produced by an information market such as the Hollywood Stock Exchange, the gold standard in the industry.”

-Technology Review

Of course, now that this has been found out, watch studios try to game the system by flooding the twitter feeds with movie tweets.

Bad

As much as I dislike Saturday Night Live and find the majority of their segments overly long and most of their movie adaptations a torturous 90 version of the same bits, there have been a few exceptions. MacGruber is shaping up to be one of them.

What started off as a slightly funny bit that was a rip off of MacGuyver (which was funny in its own way), has turned into a feature length movie, with Val Kilmer as the main villain no less.

Being a fan of Richard Dean Anderson and the original MacGuyver, I watched the clips online from his appearance on SNL and all of the MacGruber stuff. I found the concept weak and mildly funny. When I heard that they were making a movie out of it, I figured that it was going to be more of the same and not worth my time. Then the second Red Band trailer came out for it…

Now that I’ve seen this, I kind of want to see it. It kind of feels like it’s going to be a bit of a rip-off of Get Smart, with the bumbling agent and the very capable sidekicks, but I had some laugh out loud moments watching the trailer. I don’t think it’s going to be a good movie, by any stretch of the imagination, but one I’ll still watch, nonetheless, for the mindless comedy.

Ugly

I found this article on Cinematical about a theatre in Dallas, Texas warning patrons that a movie was going to have subtitles. I share the same befuddlement as the author. Has the American audience become that short of attention that they need to be warned away from something that might make them read? Have we all become too used to quick edits and flashy explosions that to have to read the dialogue too, would just be too much?

The movie in question was Mother, a Korean language film by the director of The Host, Bong Joon-ho.

This reminded me of the dumbing down of the subtitles for the North American release of Let The Right One In. You can read all about that here.

I just don’t understand people that won’t give a movie a chance because it has subtitles. I would have missed out on so many great foreign films if I didn’t like to read. Too many to list here.

The Good

Betty White has been booked to host Saturday Night Live on May 8th. This is definitely good news, but it is surprising how much buzz this is getting online. It is amazing and admirable that someone with a 70 year old career can still garner this much attention and affection from a multi-generational fan-base.

The Bad

I am sure that I was happier than most (especially James Cameron) that Kathryn Bigelow and The Hurt Locker cleaned up on Oscar night, and Hollywood wastes no time in exploiting a big win. Check out this new International Poster for The Hurt Locker released today. The week isn’t even over and the cash-in begins!

The Ugly

Speaking of exploiting, Corey Feldman appeared on Larry King to re-hash his up and downs with occasional co-star and estranged friend Corey Haim following Haim’s very recent passing. Has this guy no shame? His corpse-licking appearance on Larry King following Michael Jackson’s death was a new low; who knew he could out-sleaze himself so soon! We talked briefly about Hollywood eating it’s young on Tuesday’s podcast, and it is even more sickening to see them cannibalize each other.