Movie 43
It’s the lowness of these times which gets to me. JD hit it with his criticism of the Turner prize and in the Eminization of art and good taste.
There’s the point of view that we don’t have to watch it if we don’t want – yes we do, it’s constantly rammed down our throats. From having to watch gays at it to people getting body parts sawn off to low-class tattooed sleaze, it’s all we ever get. And if we go to the seaside to escape it, we get some bloody monstrosity from Hirst designed to not be able to escape from.
At least if you went to Moscow with its dire [in many people's eyes] Stalinist architecture, it has a certain grandeur, a certain highness of reach.
Perhaps the thing which gets me most is the utter lack of talent and low reach of what’s on offer today.
Halle Berry can’t act, nor could either Bond girl and in the last one and yes – I have seen them “acting”, Craig is a dubious Bond of short stature, it goes on and on but above all, the actors and actresses lack panache, lack grace and style. OK, Grace Kelly slept her way to where she wanted to be but at least she could carry it off.
And if it was a choice between a stylish rogue like Raffles and a dull choice such as today’s crop, no prizes for guessing which would get the nod.
And so to Movie 43, Roger Ebert@ebertchicago:
This scorched earth Richard Roeper review of “Movie 43″ has gone wildly viral. bit.ly/14msq8x . Richard Roeper’s review in the Chicago Sun-Times had already gone viral.
“Since 1999 I’ve been carrying a blue pill in my pocket, holding onto it for the moment when I’d truly need it,” Roeper wrote. “The pill, I was told, would instantly erase the memory of any movie – but just the one movie, just the one time …
“Midway through Movie 43, I knew the day had come. As the credits rolled with the inevitable blooper scenes of actors breaking character and inexplicably laughing when nothing funny is going on, I swallowed that pill, hoping to erase instantly all mental images of what had just transpired. It didn’t work . . . Movie 43 is the Citizen Kane of awful”.
There are movies which are so bad they’re good, there are movies which are so bad they’re bad, e.g. The Hottie and the Nottie, e.g. Gigli – people utterly devoid of talent having the backing to get these things polluting our atmosphere. Movie 43 is clearly of the latter variety.
Filed under: History & Culture, Literature & performing arts
For sure there are some atrocious movies and TV shows around nowadays, there always were, of course, but the proportion of crappy to decent HAS changed.
Instead of Halle Berry, Daniel Craig and their ilk, and Movie 43, think: David Strathairn, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Daniel Day Lewis, Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Hathaway, Maggie Smith, and the films they’ve graced recently. : Lincoln, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Master, Les Miserables (could’ve been better but a long way from bad)…..and several others.