China’s Ban on Movies!
By Paul Anthony
When movies are made, often studios will review it and decide which scenes or parts needs to be taken to reach a certain rating or to please a certain age range or audience. However when a family movie is being made, there is not much to get cut or scenes to be changed. Here in the United States movies are hardly ever banned but in other countries that is a different story.
China recently announced that they would not be playing the movie Christopher Robin. Now we all know this is a Disney movie, and if you don’t know it’s basically a Winnie the Pooh movie. No harm there right? well we are wrong because China put a banned on that film and you would never believe why. Please understand this isn’t a knock against China by no means and often China saves certain films from being flops and often they save Disney films, sadly this is not the case. When China said they wouldn’t show this movie, I had to ask why and I got my answer. The party that is trying to take control of the president’s office likes to mock the president and they use a teddy bear that looks like China’s president and Winnie the pooh looks like the teddy bear.
Now I know that might sound confusing so to make it sweet it comes down to Winnie the pooh looking like the president. Now to me I think they are going overboard in this case. We are talking about a CGI character that has been around for a long time. Disney never wanted to mock their president and China knows Winnie the pooh isn’t here to mock them.
At this moment I don’t know what else China has banned and I am assuming they pick what films they allow their people to see without actually having guidelines to give them a reason to banned the film.
The movie no doubt is taking a hit from this as the film is produced on a 75 million dollar budget and only made around 64 million so far and currently sitting at number three in a slow box office month. China could easily put this film right around 120 million marker and make this film a modest success. I doubt this film will ever see China unless it is bootlegged. There is nothing Disney can do in this case about this film banned. No one could come up with the idea of this film ever get banned for this reason. They can’t and won’t change Winnie the Pooh!
Divergent series Failure
By Paul Anthony
Have we seen the last of the young adult book to film series end? Let’s go back a few years when Harry Potter the film series started back in 2001, it truly started a trend, midway through Harry Potter came The Twilight saga, which we found to be annoying but we watched them, then came one of my favorites the Hungry Games, which was epic especially part two. Which brings us to my blog topic which The Divergent series and what happen to it?
I will say from my point of view I did enjoy the first film and believed it was good start to this series, I believe of the film series before it, The Divergent series was the smallest of the bunch so it had an uphill battle. So, seeing this film I believed it would do great. The film had an 85-million-dollar budget and grossed nearly 290 million dollars. With a raising lead star in Shailene Woodley. The next film came out just a year later which was supposed to be the plan, a yearly plan which each film coming out a year later.
Insurgent made close to 300 million with a budget of 110 million, to the naked eye all you see is that the movie made more money than the last but the budget was higher, a 25 million dollar increase with a total gross only improving by 10 million. This isn’t good sign but still they decided to split the third book into two films which the idea has been hit and miss, Hollywood does this for the money, they use a budget for one film and make it into two films and basically double their profit, but fans realize the boring stuff will always be in the first film so why go see it?
The third film Allegiant was released and it had the biggest budget of 142 million and here’s the sad part, the filmed only grossed 179 million. Many blamed the failure on nothing more than the studio trying to stretch it out. The aftermath seems to have frozen this film series, the rumor has been that they want to cut the budget and make it into a TV movie which Woodley said if this is the case then she won’t return. The film was supposed to come this past March but now it’s under TBA and pretty much gone cold.
It’s sad to see a series that had such great promise just falter. Will the fourth film ever be made? I am guessing at this point if we don’t hear something soon, the studio just going to reboot it, which at this part may not be such a bad idea but of course they would need hold off a good while if they decide to take this route and at this point I do not know the film rights current state. If there is any update we will report it as soon as we find it!
The Dangers of a Stuntman
By Paul Anthony
When you watch a movie, I am sure you enjoy scenes of action, but we all know for the most part the actors and actresses don’t do scenes that will cause harm so they have stuntmen and women do the scenes for them. Sadly, this is a dangerous job and many don’t realize that but sadly what happen last week proves how dangerous this job can be.
Last week a Walking Dead Stuntman died from his injuries when he fell thirty feet onto concrete when he was rehearsing fight scene, he was pronounced brain dead at the hospital and later in the week he was taken off life support and from there the rest is history.
John Bernecker has more than ninety stunts credited to him since 2009 and some of his stunts have come from hit movies like Logan and The Fate of the Furious and upcoming The Black Panther.
This is first death since 2000 in that field, even though its first death since then, that doesn’t change how dangerous the job really is. Many have said it is a lot safer now then it was twenty years ago nonetheless the goal should be zero deaths. The previous death came in 2000 when stuntman Brady Michaels was killed when he was doing a stunt for I Dare You, he fell and hit his head on a rock. Four years before that Paul Dallas also died from a head injury when he fell 57 feet and landed on an airbag that was supposed to catch his fall and it did not. Three years before that Sonja Davis was killed in a high fall during the film Vampire in Brooklyn. These were just a few deaths in the past thirty years. There were three deaths in a 15-year span from 1975 to 1990.
It’s a tough job no matter how safe they can make it. Head Injuries seem to be the main cause of the death in these stunts gone wrong, it’s just a sad reality. Sure, this was a first in 17 years but there always risk for something like these to happen. Equipment that they depend on can and will malfunction, they may not get a lot of recognition for the stunts they do until it’s too late. I don’t see much changing after this, I can’t blame them either because no many how safe you think it is, it only takes one mistake for a death to happen.
To the Family of John Bernecker our prayers go out to you and we are sorry for your loss.
How Long Is Too Much?
By Paul Anthony
I remember as a child watching the hit film Titanic, which I loved but was amaze to see a film needing two VHS tapes for the entire film. Many years later I watch the film on blu-ray which requires two discs and I realize that this film was way too long and I had to ask myself, How long is too long?
Its been a recent trend, films are getting so much longer when you go out to see a movie, you almost need an intermission to use the restroom and get more refreshments. Storytelling is very important to any film, it’s best part of the film regardless of the genre because without the story you really can’t get behind the plot the characters or anything. But do we really need movies beyond two and a half hours?
Action films in this generation is a big culprit of stretching the length of the film to add in a few extra explosions and a cool fight scene, we buy into it because of how cool it all looks that we forget to look at the length of the film. There are action films to where they try to give us a good story with very little action and expect us to be happy with sitting passed the two and a half hour mark ( I am looking at you Batman V. Superman).
So are we alright with action films being very long as long as they give us a lot of good action to justified the length of the film? I am torn here but I am leaning towards no because at the end of the day two and a half plus hours is still too long. Let’s not forget theses action movies for the most part have no good story to it, we are basically paying twenty dollars to see stuff explode.
We are lucky that most long films seem to be mostly of the action genre but there are other genres that touch the lengthy film, dramas can drag the story out also, it’s a tactic they use so we can get behind the characters for the ending of the film.
Horror films have been kind to us with the length of their films on average they are usually around ninety minutes, yes some have touch two hours or close to it. For example look at The Conjuring which is around hundred and sixteen minutes and The Conjuring 2 which is at hundred and thirty-four, which is roughly two hours and ten minutes.
Here we are back to our question how long is too long? In my personally opinion if the story is good and we are amused and not looking at our watches and cellphones then the length is actually fine, if the story isn’t all that good and we are waiting for it to be over then the length is just too long, but for us on a postive note, you get more for your money.
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