Live Action Jem and the holograms movie coming!

[Ben]

Well you can't ever go wrong with Barry (on the Titanic score you mention) and though the film is a crashing bore and totally inaccurate, it still has some kind of pull to it, mainly because of the music.

I agree too on Flash, though you're being tough on the film...it's one of the best translations out there, albeit done on a budget and way over the top. But it's big fun.

I've posted here "recently" that I had a 1990s-made, vintage-set Disney marathon when I rigged up a projector in what will be our HT room eventually, and went through a bunch of 'em, including Roger Rabbit, Dick Tracy and Rocketeer, and I was impressed at how good Tracy was after not seeing it, really, since the LaserDisc.

The Blu-ray is a very nice transfer, and I'd credit Madonna with her best performance in that film, as she's actually very good when you watch again. Elfman's score has some great motifs, but I wouldn't say it was his best...maybe among them but that would discount a number of other, stronger entries on his list.

Batman and - especially - Batman Returns are certainly up there. Returns is so beautifully multi-layered that it transcends what a superhero score needs to be be and is absolutely gorgeous. He wrote all this around the same time as Tracy and The Flash, which does have a great main theme in the same vein, very close to the orchestration of both Returns and Tracy, as it happens, and almost like the perfect blending of both in around a minute's length.

The Galactica theme, as with much on that show, was bigger and better than it needed to be or really had any right to be, and I think it was a big part of why the pilot was cut into a feature for distribution around the world as it did lift it to that theatrical level.

And as for Giacchino, well, I've stated in many of my reviews that I think he's the best new hope for movie music working today. He has an excellent classic sensibility, goes for strong melodies and certainly comes from the Williams/Goldsmith classical way if thinking as opposed to the more recent emphasis on percussion, synthesisers and big chord structures like Zimmer and his crowd, much as I like a lot of that stuff too.

You should see Super 8 if you haven't already...its a cute Amblin style flick and the score is pure Williams filtered through Giacchino. I'm sure it's the film that really got JJ the Star Wars gig, and Giacchino the backup in case Williams doesn't make it through another three films or more.

[GeorgeC]

I never said I hated cheese! Flash Gordon has its moments but ultimately the music is the best I got out of it... Still bought the 'restored' film on DVD. Never bothered with the Blu ray... Heard they messed up the Blu ray transfer. Might as well just stick with the DVD. That's been the case for at least a half-dozen films I skipped upgrading on.

As for Dick Tracy, Warren Beatty gets props from me for that film. I think it's a highly underrated film and one of the better comic strip/comic book adaptations out there. I read the reprints of the early Dick Tracy comic strips from IDW Publishing and Beatty was faithful to the feel of the comic strips. He also picked the right villains to spotlight, too. The film is 'sort of' low on the action part but there's hardly anything wrong with that film technically speaking. Good acting from everybody but I honestly felt Dustin Hoffman stole every scene he mumbled in. It struck me how much funnier his scenes were 25 years later! I dunno... maybe Pacino's Big Boy Caprice was a bit funnier with the way he murdered famous quotes -- talk about the ultimate poseur!

Great art design in that film -- nothing like it before or since. The makeup was also darn good... (How many films have poorly done make-up jobs? Watchmen, anybody?) They also cast the right guy at the time for the lead role, too! The Blu ray also sounds better than the CD soundtrack does... I've listened to the CD many, many times but it struck me how much richer the music was off the Blu ray --- even when it's playing through the speakers of an old TV set.

I end this post with a quote from Big Boy --

Big Boy Caprice:
You get behind me, we all profit; you challenge me, we all go down! There was one Napoleon, one Washington, one me!

[EricJ]

And what a nice place to end it indeed.
Getting, ahem, back to the subject of Jem, not that I don't want to discuss Giacchino/Dick Tracy some more--

First trailer up on IMDb ("From the makers of Pitch Perfect"), and, um......well, they got the makeup right.

It's trying to be 00's-10's (she's a hit on YouTube!), but seems to be more of a whiny chick-flick about a girl-bonding band, or as most of the comments put it, the Hanna Montana Movie where Hanna decided to wear pink neon facepaint.
Maybe it's just a teaser, but I don't see anything yet about supercomputers or hologram earrings that let them fight the evil plots of a nasty punk band, thus explaining their group name. I'm sure we'll get that later.

From the description, though, sounds like they're saving that for the very end of the movie, hoping for a sequel. That's what you get for hiring a director from the GI Joe movies.
(Like Ouija, it's one of the two "orphans" of Hasbro's attempt to make more non-Transformers icon movies after Battleship, and, similarly, looks like it was rushed out with another owner.)

[ShyViolet]

Dreadful. Dreadful. Dreadful.

Makes the cartoon look like Lion King.

[droosan]

Meanwhile, the new Jem comic-books from IDW have retained the 'cheesy' essence of the TV cartoon .. and have even featured some rather nice artwork, such as this jammin' series of covers for the first issue by Amy Mebberson:

[Randall]

Amy is a real talent. I loved her Muppets work for Boom (comics).

[Dan]

Universal attempting to create some kind of viral social media impact with a so-called "casting call".

http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/un ... 201548325/

[EricJ]

Universal attempting to create some kind of viral social media impact with a so-called "casting call".

http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/un ... 201548325/

In the movie, Jem becomes a star on YouTube ( ), so they apparently want fans to play YouTube fans.
Because every time Hollywood tries to make its own "viral videos", they don't even come close.

[Dacey]

Astonishingly bad box office so far. Only 36 dollars per screen on average on opening night:

http://deadline.com/2015/10/the-last-wi ... 201592008/

[Ben]

The Hollywood Reporter review puts those wonderfully low takes in context.

[EricJ]

Among those voicing their displeasure at the obvious liberties taken with the property was no less an authority than William Shatner, who tweeted, "I watched the Jem trailer. No star earrings? Where are the Misfits????"

My respect for the Shat just went up a couple points.

Every other article, like Deadline, has followed the Lone Ranger Fallacy of thinking "The audience didn't remember it, it's too old!" No--Like Ranger, the problem is, we DID remember it.

Jerrica, now known by her stage name Jem, has brought with her a small mechanical device created by her beloved dead father. Through plot machinations too tiresome to relate, it becomes an adorable robot named "Synergy" whose role in the story is mainly to make childlike noises.

(facepalm)

[gaastra]

Jem is huge bomb.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/daily/chart/

Director has got death threats from fans and has had curses and sent hate mail and blamed for this mess. (Death threats are bad people don't send them. It was his fault however. He took a script he wrote years ago and just tweeked it to make the jem movie.) By the way he turned down he-man to make this.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/j ... ing-834476

Captain kirk himself slamed jem for not being about the show.

http://www.hitfix.com/news/outrage-watc ... -so-do-you

AMC movie news said they have never seen a trailer hated so much in their life! (these are movie big shots!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ldMLoE5KGc


This whole movie was a mess!

[Dacey]

All of that being as it may, it always makes me roll my eyes to no end when studios open kids movies a week before Halloween and think they can get away with it.

Disney left at least $100 million on the floor when they chose to release High School Musical 3 on that date. It had a fantastic opening, sure, but was crushed the next weekend when kids went trick-or-treating or to parties instead of the movie theater. Riding on the phenomenon that had begun only two years prior, it could've easily made more than $200 million over the course of what ended up being a quiet Christmas season (the number one movie that holiday season was a film where the dog died!), but ended up somehow making less than Beverly Hill Chihuahua had the month before.

Bottom line, this is literally the second worst weekend to release a family film (with the worst actually being Halloween weekend). Even if Jem had been what it should've, it still would've suffered with the lousy release date.

[Dan]

Forbes put together a very intriguing article on why Jem flopping is seen as a greater tragedy in the grand scheme of things in Hollywood.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendel ... s-tragedy/

[droosan]

So, next time someone gets an urge to 're-make' a niche retro TV cartoon/toy line into a big-budget feature film --


<> make sure to include the original creative personnel in some way ..

<> make an attempt to at least resemble the intent of the original show ..

and, hey: maybe, make it an animated feature, instead of live-action..



Truly, truly, truly outrageous!!