I could offer up plenty of reasons why Disney’s $250 million dollar Martian sci-fi desert spectacle "John Carter" will likely be listed as the number one box office flop of 2012. Domestic estimates so far since its 3/9 opening stands a little over $50 million as of this writing.
There is the film’s leading star Taylor Kitcsh in the title role as a former Civil War veteran turned muscle bound savior of the red planet, for example, that begs the question, “Who’s he and what’s he starred in?” Not everyone has watched Kitsch’s high school football series, "Friday Night Lights" (2006-2011), which ended its NBC to cable run last year, least of all me.
"John Carter" certainly had plenty of computer-generated eye candy (hence the $250 million price tag) that included creatures, six-foot four-armed double horned barbarian alien tribes and a beautiful scantily clad princess (Lynn Collins) despite the fact the warships the humans (I guess I should call them Martians) flew in battle looked like giant prehistoric mechanical insects.
The film made me wish there was actually such a creature as a “Woola”, a cute but ugly Martian rendition of a faithful pet dog with sharp teeth and a big mouth that runs just as fast as the little Yorkie I got. The thing would be the perfect home security system for my house much like the black rescue panther the married couple adopts in that Geico commercial.
I believe the number one reason why "John Carter", however, failed to connect with audiences younger than myself (and NO I don’t listen to the film critics, many of whom have given the movie mixed reviews) is because the story is based on a 100-year-old sci-fi series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I am willing to bet most of them never heard of or read those books.
The ones I have found who enjoyed "John Carter" immensely are those my age who read Burroughs’ series. There is already a fan driven petition set up called “Take me back to Barsoom! I want "John Carter" to have a sequel!” on Facebook that as of this writing has 3,942 members.
I don’t blame director Andrew Stanton much the way I don’t blame directors Zack Snyder for the box office failures of his comic book superhero epic, "Watchmen" (2009), and Steven Spielberg for last year’s animated 'The Adventures of Tintin", which was based on a comic series that is popular in Europe but not in America. In the case of "John Carter", as was with Watchmen and “Tintin” all three filmmakers wanted to be faithful to the written works.
“I tried to be as faithful as I could, because I’m the biggest fan,” director Stanton said in an article about "John Carter" in SciFiNow. “I think in the best adaptations, you should be able to watch the film and not be able to sense what’s changed. Most important of all is that it carries the spirit of how you felt reading the book. Feeling, for me, is the huge thing about adapting a book that must be protected at all costs.”
The trouble is adapting movies based on decades old books and comic book novels with cult followings are not to everyone’s liking these days. Younger audiences today are only interested in the most current books like the Harry Potter, Twilight and The Hunger Games series. If author Suzanne Collins’ "The Hunger Games" were to be remade into another big screen movie 100 years from now as John Carter was, would it bring in audiences? I doubt it no matter how faithful the filmmakers are to the material.
That’s the real disappointment behind such costly debacles as "Watchmen", "The Adventures of Tintin" and "John Carter" because although I have never read them, I am certain the printed adaptations are just as good as the Harry Potter and Twilight books, if not better.
Even more depressing is the fact audiences will only be able to identify John Carter star Taylor Kitsch after seeing this summer’s "Battleship", which is based on a Milton Bradley game and whose budget is reportedly at $200 million.
If "Battleship" manages to gross twice its price tag for distributor Universal Pictures, I’ll find that far more disturbing than the number of studio executives at Disney whose heads will roll as a result of John Carter’s less than successful box office run.
The liberals who asked me how I felt about conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh’s comments about Georgetown law school student Sandra Fluke the past week made me feel like I was Mafia Don Michael Corleone from "The Godfather Part III" (1990) where he says, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” When I say “They” I mean liberals. This is not an issue I really wanted to address.
The Limbaugh controversy is exactly what writer John Nolte said in his 3/10/12 column over at breitbart.com.
“This is a war and it’s a dumb war, but it’s here to stay thanks to the Leftists and their corrupt media allies who started it and conservatives who have finally learned to fight fire with fire,” Nolte wrote.
For the record, I DON’T agree with Limbaugh’s comments. There are plenty of ways “El Rushbo” could have used to describe Sandra Fluke and still get his point across without having to publicly degrade her. Nor do I agree with the way Limbaugh apologized to Fluke on his radio show as his advertisers started bailing on him days after his Feb. 29, 2012 broadcast. Limbaugh should have taken a lesson from radio host Don Imus who met with the Rutgers University women’s basketball team personally apologizing to them for the derogatory comments he said on his radio show back in 2007. If Limbaugh was truly sincere in his apology to Sandra Fluke, he would have called her personally. Instead, President Obama decided to.
What Rush Limbaugh did on his radio show was stoop to the same name calling level that political commentators Keith Olbermann, Ed Schultz and standup comedian Bill Maher have done so many times in the past and have either got a slap on the wrist or in the case of Maher, get away Scot free calling Sarah Palin a “c” word because as he said in the wake of Limbaugh’s comments, “Rush, I don’t have sponsors – I’m on HBO.”
There are plenty of examples to go around. There is Keith Olbermann who in 2009 called conservative commentator Michelle Malkin a “big, mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it.”
Set my time machine run Delorean to May 25, 2011, and you will hear MSNBC host Ed Schultz calling conservative commentator Laura Ingraham a “right-wing slut” on his show.
“Yeah, she’s a talk slut,” Schultz said. MSNBC suspended Schultz the next day but for only a week, like it was no big deal.
I was more than surprised when Bill Maher earlier this week defended Limbaugh tweeting, “Hate to defend #RushLimbaugh but he apologized, liberals looking bad not accepting. Also hate intimidation by sponsor pullout.”
“You want to get some tapes of some things that Bill Maher has called Sarah Palin? The C - word over and over again, “Limbaugh said in his 3/2/12 radio show. “Bill Maher and some of his comments make me look like Romper Room, a choir boy.”
As many times as liberals have asked me the past week if I think what Limbaugh said was wrong and how would I feel if a conservative commentator called my daughter or wife a slut or prostitute, the question also has to be asked how would they feel if Bill Maher called their wife or daughter, regardless if that woman is in the political spectrum or a female conservative commentator a “c” word, a piece of meat with lipstick on it, or a slut how would they react? I am willing to bet they’d be pretty furious just as they are now with Limbaugh’s Fluke comments and will not sit still until Rush is off the air permanently as though this is their only purpose in life.
In a perfect world, Bill Maher and other leftist commentators would be held to the same media scrutiny and higher decency standards that Rush Limbaugh is being attacked for. In a perfect world, President Obama’s Super PAC committee (Priorities USA) would give back Bill Maher’s $1 million contribution to offset the double standards clearly being perpetrated by the left.
This is not, however, a perfect world. This is liberal land where it’s ok to for the left to call a woman on the right a foul demeaning word or phrases but the minute a conservative commentator steps out of line and attacks a female law student, it’s time to silence the right and not just Rush Limbaugh but every conservative commentator who opposes the Obama Administration and their left wing policies and viewpoints.
The next time Rush Limbaugh insults someone that makes headline news, which these days is on a daily weekly basis, those liberals who want his head on a platter and back me into a corner demanding a yes or no answer if what I think Rush said was right or not, I am going to ask them “Where the f-----g hell were they when Ed Schultz called Laura Ingraham a right-wing slut? Where was all the outrage?”
I knew HBO’s "Game Change" was going to be a liberal left wing hit job on former Alaskan governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential running mate Sarah Palin long before she and her political action committee sounded off against the film which airs March 10 and is based on John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s book on the 2008 presidential election.
“Hollywood lies are Hollywood lies,” Palin said in a 3/3/12 interview on Fox News. “They are going to do what they can do to drum up their money and their machine and their machine happens to be very pro-leftist, pro Barack Obama machine there at HBO that created this movie. Those campaign staffers who essentially threw John McCain under the bus, I think they should feel some shame and should feel some embarrassment because the movie is based on a false narrative as you can see in the trailer.”
Scenes from the HBO trailer prove the film, which stars Julianne Moore as the vice presidential candidate, will be a Palin bashing fest.
“I’m not sure how much she (Palin) knows about foreign policy,” says McCain’s senior campaign adviser Nicolle Wallace (Sarah Paulson).
No Palin film would be complete without a reenactment of her saying in an interview “You can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska.”
“Oh my God, what have we done,” says McCain strategist Steve Schmidt (Woody Harrelson). “She’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I can’t control her anymore. She is a great actress right? Why don’t we just give her some lines?”
The lines Moore’s Palin speaks echo the line “I am woman, hear me roar” from that 1971 song by Helen Reddy.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Palin says on the phone most likely to an adviser with the McCain camp following her disastrous TV interview. “I wasn’t properly prepared. They tell me what to say. What to wear. How to talk. I am not your puppet! I am going to do what I want.”
Conservative columnist and commentator Jedediah Bila wrote in a 3/2/12 column on newsmax.com that “As for Hollywood’s attempt to re-define Palin as someone the McCain camp viewed as an unstable idiot, I invite them to give it their best shot. Because Americans aren’t stupid.”
Trouble is I am not the least bit convinced that ALL American viewers are smart enough to believe that a majority of these big and small screen adaptations of real life events are nothing more than big budget fabricated distortions of the truth.
It reminds me of what “the mad prophet of the airwaves” Howard Beale (Peter Finch) from "Network" (1976) said about the one-sided propaganda his television station peddles to viewers that could clearly apply to HBO when it comes to made-for-cable movies like "Game Change."
“We’ll tell you any shit you want to hear,” Beale says. “We deal in illusions man! None of it is true! But you people sit there, day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds. We’re all you know. You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here.”
If what I heard WBAP talk show host Mark Davis say is true that Heiliemann and Halperin’s book painted neither the Republican and Democratic parties in a favorable light a few weeks ago (since I have not read the book), then that’s the version I would have preferred HBO had made especially since I have no love for neither political party right now.
These days, I am better off believing a romantic film like this year’s "The Vow", whose poster boasts the words “Inspired by true events”, about a woman who suffers from amnesia following a car accident who can’t remember being married to her husband actually happened than I am trusting Hollywood’s adaptation of what went down behind the scenes when Sarah Palin was chosen as John McCain’s vice presidential running mate.
Movies like "Game Change", along with the most recent "The Iron Lady" (2011) that paints former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as portrayed by Oscar winner Meryl Streep, as a senile old woman who talks to her dead husband as she recalls her days in power, should boast a poster similar to the advertisement for "Michael Clayton" (2007) that shows a smeared close up portrait of George Clooney’s character.
Instead of Clooney, the studios making a biographical film about an actual person could just show a picture of Sarah Palin, for example, in the background with the words in bright red letters in the foreground saying, “The truth can be adjusted.”
