Some people are trying to form a boycott of 20th Century Fox over the studio’s insistence that they still own rights to any motion picture based on the Watchmen graphic novel. A federal judge recently agreed with 20th Century Fox. From the Facebook Free Watchmen group:
20th Century Fox is trying to prohibit the release of Warner Brothers’ upcoming film, Watchmen. Watchmen is one of the highest regarded pieces of work in the comic and literary world. It was on Times 100 best novels of the 20th century.
Scheduled to release next year, Fox is trying claim rights even after sitting back and allowing WB to pour time, money, and talent into. Now, after an abysmal summer for Fox, they are reaching out to try and stamp out another studio’s success.
I propose a boycott of all 20th Century Fox productions in protest of their detestable actions.
I actually think it’s kind of funny the Warner Brothers would make a movie based on a property they don’t have the rights to. With all the lawyers they have at their disposal, they couldn’t figure out that 20th Century Fox still owned the rights to a Watchmen movie?
These three filings in particular provide detailed allegations as to how Warner Brothers got into this mess. In a nutshell, Fox claims that it has evidence that Warner Brothers initially relied on an inaccurate chain of title provided by Paramount. Once Warner Brothers was aware of Fox’s documented claims, it nonetheless decided to proceed in a deliberate “business calculation” that it would be more profitable to deal with a court case than clear the rights before making Watchmen.
Warner Brothers royally screwed up. They made the wrong business decision to make a movie they knew they didn’t have iron clad rights to. 20th Century Fox isn’t the villain here.
There seems to be quite a few people ripping into Frank Miller today over the fact that The Spiritdid so poorly at the box office this weekend. Not only was the movie killed by the critics, but movie goers didn’t seem at all interested in seeing a grim and gritty comic book movie over the Christmas weekend.
Some are criticizing Frank Miller for making The Spirit look like Sin City. Frank Miller not only created the Sin City comic books, he co-directed the Sin City movie with director Robert Rodriguez. In defense of Frank Miller, producer Michael Uslan hired Miller specifically so that he could give The Spirit the grim and gritty Sin City look.
Isn’t that what Miller did?
Frank Miller is getting a lot of grief for basically making a movie the way he was asked to make it. If people have a problem with the way the movie looks, they need to direct their critisism at Michael Uslan, not at Frank Miller.
Contrary to what you might learn from watching a 30 second TV commercial, The Spirit is being ripped to shreds by movie critics. Over on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie review website, the overall consensus is quite bad. Out of 44 reviews counted, only 7 are positive. When only looking at the so-called “top critics”, the ratio is even worse. Out of 17 reviews, only one is positive.
I was looking forward to watching this movie. Its directed by comic book creator Frank Miller, the man that created Sin City and 300. He co-directed the movie version of Sin City with Robert Rodriguez. This is Miller’s first attempt at directing a movie by his lonesome. Its based on characters created by comic book legend writer-artist Will Eisner.
Roger Ebert, probably the country’s leading movie critic, was especially harsh with his criticism of the movie. He wrote, “There is not a trace of human emotion in it. To call the characters cardboard is to insult a useful packing material“. My guess is that he’s been sitting on the line for some time and was just waiting for the right clunker of a movie to whip it out.
I’m still going to watch this movie. I just wont be going to the movie theater to watch it.
A federal judge in Los Angeles has announced that he intends to rule that 20th Century Fox indeed owns a copyright interest in the Warner Brothers movie, Watchmen. The movie, directed by Zack Snyder, is based on the DC Comics epic graphic novel of the same name.
Watchmen was published in 12 issues from 1986 and 1987. It was written by acclaimed comic book writer Alan Moore and drawn by artist Dave Gibbons. Most comic book fans believe that it’s the greatest graphic novel ever published.
20th Century Fox’s claim to Watchmen stems from the fact that it purchased the rights to a Watchmen movie in the late 1980’s for producer Lawrence Gordon. 20th Century Fox ultimately declined to make the movie for themselves. Gordon then later shopped the movie around with different movie studios before coming to an agreement with Warner Brothers.
Warner Brothers also owns DC Comics.
The movie is scheduled to be released sometime in March. I’m guessing that Warner Brothers will end up having to pony up a bunch of money to secure the rights from 20th Century Fox.
A new trailer for the latest installment to the Terminator franchise has been leaked on the Interweb and since it hasn’t been taken down by a gaggle of lawyers, I’m guessing that it was released with the studio’s approval. The fact that it has Japanese subtitles only makes it look better on the geek scale.
It looks fantastic, but when has a trailer ever looked bad? I might have to actually go the the theater and see this like a ham and egger instead of waiting for it to be released on home video three months later.
Summit Entertainment has fired director Catherine Hardwicke from any of the upcoming sequels in the Twilight movie franchise. Though the first movie under Hardwicke’s direction made a boat load of money ($165 million), it pretty much got skewered by the critics. If people went to the movies to see it — and a lot of people did — it was because they were fans of the Stephenie Meyer novels the move was based on, not because they like the way Catherine Hardwicke made the movie.
Supposedly Hardwicke “was ‘difficult’ and ‘irrational’ during the making of Twilight. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that she probably wasn’t the first director that was difficult or irrational while making a movie. I’m guessing those other directors made movies that the critics didn’t hate.
It make me wonder though what Summit Entertainment wants from a director. Hardwicke made Twilight for $37 million and it’s already raked in $160 million. No matter what goofy Hollywood accounting they use, Twilight made a ton of money.
Dead Snow, a Norwegian movie about Nazi zombies, makes it’s American premiere at next month’s Sundance Film Festival. I didn’t know family movies got much attention at Sundance.
I’ve got to admit that this seems like a winner of a concept. Nazis are creepy. Zombies are creepy. Why didn’t anyone think of this before?
Looks like I’ll have to come up with a different personal motto. The phrase, “The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi” just doesn’t seem to quite cut it anymore.
I don’t get this movie. It’s supposedly based on the music of ABBA. Being that the story does not revolve around a queen that dances, I don’t really understand how ABBA music is involved.
I only know one ABBA song.
From what I have been told, the movie centers around a 20-year old girl who is about to be married. She wants to be walked down the aisle by her father. The only problem — if you forget for a moment that a 20-year old child so too young to get married — is that she doesn’t know who her father is.
She was raised by a single mother. She didn’t grow up with a father.
She doesn’t know who her father is because her mother doesn’t know who exactly impregnated her 20 years ago. Evidently in 1988 she had unprotected sex with three different men on or around the moment her daughter was conceived. Classy!
I remember 1988. People were more then a little freaked out over something called AIDS. This was when most people finally stopped calling it the Gay Cancer and realized that AIDS or HIV, the virus that caused AIDS, was something everyone needed to worry about. It was something everyone, gay or straight, needed to protect themselves against.
This meant people were starting to be more responsible when it came to having sex. They were refraining from having unprotected sex with multiple partners.
Maybe the world that Mamma Mia takes place is some sort of alternate world that is free of HIV or other life threatening sexually transmitted diseases.
Then again, maybe Mamma was just a skanky crack whore.
The superhero movie Hancock staring Will Smith, Jason Bateman, and Charlize Theron made over $107 million this holiday weekend. The movie had been panned by critics.
The movie website Rotten Tomatoes have it a 37% on their “tomatometer”. That’s where they take published movie reviews and separate the positive reviews from the negative reviews. Out of the 167 reviews for Hancock, 106 of them were negative.
So why did so many people go see Hancock?
The movie studios wont stop making sucky movies if so many of the viewing public continue to go to the theater to watch them. Going to the theater to see Hancock is rewarding bad behavior. It tells the movie studios that they can make bad movies and people will go and watch. Even if the critics let them know before hand, they will still go and watch.
My name is Rick Rottman and this is my blog. It's where I write about stuff.
I was born and raised in southern California, but I now live in Hagerstown, Maryland. More >>
There seems to be quite a few people ripping into Frank Miller today over the fact that The Spirit 
A federal judge in Los Angeles 
Summit Entertainment has fired director 
