The Friday Night Rave

Leave your bullshit at the door...

Ok, let's talk film. Welcome once again to the Friday night rave! Let's let the muddled brain flow. Paramount Vantage was disassembled a while ago, well two weeks ago. Here is the article. Please read it. Its about what I have been talking about just about every blog. Its about the specialty divisions in Hollywood. The Paramount Vantage. The Warner Classics, the Fox Searchlights. These companies were created a little while ago to handle the Art films, the ones Hollywood doesn't want to take full responsibility for. The Junos and the There Will Be Bloods. Why? Well because they don't take gazillions to make and they make money when done well. They don't rake in the millions, but Hollywood needs them for Oscar competition.

Hollywood knows that they need to make films that can compete in the Oscars. They know they have Scorsese's, Coen Bros. and Paul Thomas Anderson to employ because they don't want to be left out of the Oscar race. How important is the Oscar race really to Hollywood execs? Not one friggin iota. A Hollywood exec cares about the Oscars NOT. They don't have a need to win an Academy Award. It used to be a prestige thing. It means nothing now. It's all about the numbers. It's all about making 300 mil in three weeks. That is all it is about. Hell, it's not even about Superheros or Romantic Comedies. If war movies or French Documentaries were making 300million right now, that's what we would see. A summer of French Docs! It's not hard to think like these people.

Imagine Hollywood is one big football league. The execs are the quarter backs. But these quarterbacks, these execs, want to throw a touchdown pass every time. That's all they want to do. This article I am referring to, say basically what I just said, or I said what the article says, either way, I have thought of this analogy before also. I think the article uses baseball actually. But the Vantage, Searchlight, and Classics, were made to do just that. They made ONE small film at a time with a very talented director. Well this buffoon at Paramount, this knucklehead, John Lesher, he takes over Paramount Vantage and refuses to stick to the business model of making one film at a time. They were throwing short passes. Not with this knucklehead, he decides to hire a bunch of talented directors and shoot for the touchdowns with each one. In essence, he made too many films, Like There Will Be Blood, A Mighty Heart, N Country For Old Men, Into The Wild, and An Inconvenient Truth. I think anyone with half a brain can weed out that list in a hurry. But this guy buries the company with this decision.

Now I do call him a Knucklehead, cause this guy will never be happy. He has no talent. All he is going to do is make stupid decisions to make quick money. In fact this bozo flew the coop to Paramount Mainstream so that he can "help" focus on Iron Man 2 and GI Joe. Cause that's where the real prestige is nowadays. I will build you one even better, I think this was Paramount's plan all along, yes Vantage was demolished to focus on low budget horror and crass comedy pieces. That's what worked for New Line and Michael Bay. But I think this was their plan the whole time. I think they wanted to kill good films completely so that one day we won't even need the Academy Awards. I think Hollywood is happy having the MTV Movie Awards to glorify Hollywood.

I suspect in ten years that the Academy Awards will cease to exists. The ratings are down anyway. Justin Timberlake is slated to host next year to get ratings up. I think they will one day cease to exist entirely. I think MTV will pick up the slack and dumb down movies for us. Not because we want it, but because it's fast and its easy. That is what the film world is about and has been about. Now, the small companies that once gave us good film are obsolete. It doesn't exist anymore. It's gone. Let's get rid of Hollywood execs and MTV. If we get rid of those two ENTITIES, Hollywood with integrity will survive and flourish.

On with the rave, Lars and the Real Girl was really good. Emily Mortimer is up and coming. Rent that. GO see the Dark Knight for God's sake! I am tired now. I am going to live my boring life. Until Monday, Let's talk film!