If you love B-movies with plenty of camp, comedy and gore, then you’ve probably seen a few films created by the writer/producer/director Roger Corman, the man behind SyFy channel pictures like “Dinocroc vs. Supergator” and older classics like the original “Little Shop of Horrors.”

Up-and-coming director Alex Stapleton turned the camera onto the camp master in her film “Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel.”

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It follows Corman’s career – over half a century of cheap-as-dirt indie filmmaking – and the resulting 400-plus films that he created in that time. The film launched earlier this month, and Stapleton called BH recently for an interview about her film, Corman’s influence, and getting Jack Nicholson to cry on camera.

BH: Where does Roger Corman fit into the history of cinema?

Stapleton: I definitely think he’s part of the backbone of cinema. I think, creatively speaking as a filmmaker and director, he kind of helped – along with his compatriots – to birth the kind of blockbuster genre film experiences that we experience today that the studios are making.

I think Roger was definitely one of the pioneers in that movement. When you look at the movie “Avatar,” you look at the director and it’s James Cameron, and James Cameron [worked] under Roger Corman for years and… I think that James Cameron would probably tell you the same thing: that he learned a lot about how to put together a genre story by working for Roger.

I also think that as far as moments in cinema history, Roger has had a huge influence, specifically with the American new Hollywood movement, by finding and mentoring people like Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson, [and] Peter Bogdanovich, starting their careers but also giving them the idea – Peter Fonda, Denis Hopper and Jack Nicholson – giving them the idea to make the movie “Easy Rider,” which is a hybrid movie of Roger’s movies “The Trip” and “Wild Angels.” (more…)

Director James Cameron wants to be King of the World from a more rural perch.

The man who gave us “Aliens,” “Terminator” and “Avatar” is packing his bags and leaving the U.S. indefinitely. Destination: New Zealand.

Cameron has successfully applied to buy 1,067 hectares (2,636 acres) of farmland in New Zealand. In an application filed with the New Zealand Overseas Investment Office, Cameron says he and his family “intend to reside indefinitely in New Zealand and are acquiring the property to reside on and operate as a working farm.

Cameron’s claim to fame was transforming Arnold Schwarzenegger into a killing machine with the “Terminator” franchise. In recent years, he became the undisputed box office champ with two of the highest grossing films of all time, “Avatar” and “The Titanic.” He also routinely stands on a soap box to support environmental causes, but his personal choices hardly match his green rhetoric.

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DVD RELEASE DELAYS LEAVE RETAILERS UNFAZED

This is why Hollywood hates the free market:

Netflix appeared to shrug off the latest announcement from Warner Bros. Home Video that it will double the delay — to 56 days — between the time it releases its DVDs to retailers and the time it makes them available at wholesale prices to online renters and kiosk operators. Warner Bros. was not allowing those DVDs to be streamed anyway, and since Netflix is focusing on its streaming business and apparently attempting to phase out its DVD-by-mail business, the new delay would seem to have little impact on its overall strategy. B. Riley & Co. analyst Eric Wold told Bloomberg News that while Netflix may seem unaffected by the move, for kiosk operators like Redbox and Blockbuster Express, where new releases dominate their rentals, “that kind of delay would really hurt them.” Both kiosk operators are expected to begin buying new releases at retail discounters like Wal-Mart and Best Buy and making them available on a next-day basis.

The customers are just as willing to wait, and by the time those 56 days roll around, we’ll probably have forgotten all about these stupid movies.

‘AVATAR’ SEQUELS MAY BE FURTHER AWAY THAN YOU EXPECTED

Is that a promise?

Bleeding Cool recently caught up with AVATAR producer Jon Landau, who told them that the first of James Cameron’s sequels is “four years away”, which potentially puts AVATAR 2 in theaters around 2015 or 2016.

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Director James Cameron isn’t shy about touting his green vision for the globe – even if he refuses to debate those who don’t see the eco-world his way.

But Cameron, currently prepping to shoot two sequels to his mega-smash ‘Avatar,’ told ‘Nightline‘ he won’t be so heavy handed when incorporating his environmental beliefs into the sequels.

‘The [environmental] themes will be there and be played out in a way that people can accept. I’m not going to become more strident. I’m not gonna say, ‘we got away with this much environmental content in the first movie. Now, let’s double it.’ That would be a mistake. It has to be entertainment first and foremost.’

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You’ve certainly heard of the new film Super 8.  Not the self-serving Anthony Weiner autobiography– the new summer flick about a small town in 1979 invaded by a strange alien creature that was written and directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg.  With that pedigree in mind, I took off work early to take the little monsters to see it in the hopes that it would do what the trailers seemed to promise – capture the feeling of those uniquely American summer movies of the 70’s and 80’s like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. and The Goonies that mixed action, laughs, and special effects together in a way we see all too rarely in the Michael Bay world of today.

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Yeah, it kind of did that, I suppose.  Except I was too busy wondering why the central premise somehow had to be that American military personnel are sadistic, bloodthirsty, cold-blooded murderers.  Then I remembered that this is Hollywood.

Now, to talk about Super 8, I will have to reveal what some might call “spoilers.”  Except, they aren’t really “spoilers” because to be that the plot points I reveal would have to be unexpected and surprising.  Sadly, Super 8 adopts the same tiresome clichés that have been wrecking Hollywood films for the last 40 years.  The only surprise was the total lack of any surprise.

What do we have? Crazy, evil military officer as the baddie?  Check!  Kid with daddy issues?  Check!  Climax where the hero rescues the girl from monster’s lair?  Check!  Monster that is the real victim even though he’s freaking killing US military people and eating civilians left and right?  Check?

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One saying often said in the Film Industry is that, if you want to go it alone in creativity (versus collaboration), then “buy yourself a paint set.”  Whether we like it or not, that cheap paint set is becoming all it takes to make a movie.  Or at least almost.  I attended three events this last year about emerging technology which demonstrate that the creative threshold is continually dropping for the filmmaker.

The Directors Guild of America (DGA) hosts the DGA Digital Day to exhibit and discuss new technologies and techniques.  About five years ago, two companies presented new 3D technology.  Two years later, six companies presented their wares.   A tech surprise was the Panasonic AG-3DA1 Production System, which put a 3D camera system within reach of many small companies.  Another tech wave is the expansive use of Canon Digital Still cameras into the professional production arena because they can record full Hi-Def.  Major TV show episodes embraced the technology. The small DSLR’s can be purchased for less than $2,000 and outfitted with a variety of professional gear, including Follow Focus and matteboxes.  The Canon EOS 5D is leading the way.

Scott Billups, author of the essential “Digital Moviemaking 3.0,”  broke down complex digital concepts into accessible analogies like boxes of crayons.  Simple, but understandable.  The filmmaker must understand the limits of his technology. Great cinematographers like Greg Toland, James Wong Howe (who Billups worked with), Gordon Willis, and Vittorio Storaro worked in a photochemical process.  They were first photographers, framers, and interpreters of the dramatic moment.  No more. Today’s digital cinematographer must weigh formats, methods, and other emerging innovations for image capture of the dramatic moment into its final workflow for post-production and distribution.  The workflow discussion dovetailed into a panel discussing web series.  The creator of  “The Bannen Way” (available on Netflix) said that their strategy was to produce three-minute webisodes to be compiled into a thirty-minute series and, ultimately, a marketable DVD full-length DVD.

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Many movies about people trapped in dangerous locations focus on their plans to escape. “Daylight” focused on a group of people who were trying to escape a tunnel that collapsed. “The Towering Inferno” focused on a group who were trying to escape a fire in an office building. “Sanctum,” on the other hand, focuses on people who are trying to escape but are overtly willing to give up their lives if they become injured.  As depressing as that may sound, the reasons to give up on life are at the cornerstone of this story as multiple characters choose to die quickly rather than keep fighting to survive.

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The story revolves around a group of divers who are exploring an underground cave. Frank (Richard Roxburgh) is the acclaimed leader of the exploration who enjoys finding new worlds underwater. Josh (Rhys Wakefield) is his estranged son who doesn’t understand his father. He rebels against his father and his father’s great expecatations of him. The father and son are joined in the cave by an easily forgettable supporting cast that includes Ioan Grufffurd as a financial supporter of the trip.

Once the crew starts exploring the cave and diving into the depths of its underwater tunnels, a torrential rainstorm begins flooding the cave.  In their search for an escape route, the team must hunt for a way out as their oxygen depletes and the water continues to pour in. As hope fades, the situation becomes more dire and and the crew becomes more distressed, searching for a way out. (more…)

Every year we regular folk are blessed with wisdom from Hollywood’s elite: how to vote, worship, eat, what to drive, raise our kids, who in corporate America is making too much money, and who we should love and who we should hate. All while stars gorge themselves on private jets, third homes, and shaped tofu holiday dinners at 5-star resorts.

While we at Big Hollywood are quick to point out that celebrities can use their soapbox to do some good, but each time they open their mouth to tell us how to behave, they run the risk of losing the magic of their screen persona.  So to help remind you who spoke up on behalf of “all people” this year, here is a rundown of the 10 most asshat celebrity comments of 2010:

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10.  When Whoopi Goldberg went on O’Reilly to discuss her reason for walking off The View (i.e. plug her new book Is It Just Me?: Or is it nuts out there?”) rather than defend her position about the world having a “Muslim problem,” the two also touched on the issue of whether a Jewish kid or a Muslim kid is more likely to be bullied in the US because of his religion.  O’Reilly had the facts but like most good, Hollywood liberals, Whoopi just said, “I don’t believe it.”

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9. Mel Gibson finds himself on the list for having a long history of racist rants, drunk or not. He gets an extra asshat mention for not checking for a wire when being honest in the face of a Russian. (more…)

From the Associated Press:

The world’s highest-grossing film and one of the most awarded TV shows are also some of the greenest productions around.

“Avatar” and “30 Rock” were among the winners of the 2010 Environmental Media Association awards on Saturday night, which recognized individuals, organizations and productions that help increase public awareness of environmental issues.

The awards were presented at an eco-friendly ceremony at Warner Bros. Studios that featured organic food and compostable dinnerware. Actors Olivia Munn and Jason Ritter hosted the event, which was sponsored by one of Hollywood’s favorite green-mobiles, Toyota Prius.

Other productions recognized for spreading a green message were the documentary “Gasland” and TV shows “Bones,” “Handy Manny,” “Living With Ed” and “Lights, Camera, Take Action! Backstage With Disney’s Friends for Change.” (more…)

Oliver Stone’s uber-villain Gordon Gekko is back in the new film, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, which (surprise!) features greedy capitalists behaving badly. It might remind you of Avatar, Mission Impossible 2 or roughly a zillion other films in which capitalists destroy the environment, concoct killer viruses, harvest organs, and cover up murder in order to feed their lust of profit. Even when capitalism isn’t the primary target, the representatives of commerce are often flat-out repulsive (think Jabba the Hut).

Perhaps it’s ironic that Hollywood filmmakers practice what they preach against. Sure he palls around with socialist dictators Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, but there’s no doubt Oliver Stone hopes to rake in obscene profits with his new flick.

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Entertainment journalists judge movie success or failure on ticket sales. Avatar made billions in theaters, so it was a success. Leap Year made about $30 million so it was not. 

Journalists then compare a film’s budget to its box office intake to determine whether or not a film commercially “made it.” Leap Year cost about $19 million to make, so it still “made” $9 million. Actually, at this point, Leap Year is in the hole.

Edward Jay Epstein clarifies in “The Hollywood Economist”:

“[Box office gross] numbers are misleading when used to describe what a film or studio earns. At best, they represent gross income from theater chains’ ticket sales. These chains eventually rebate about 50 percent of the sales to a distributor, which also deducts its outlay for prints and advertising (P&A). In 2007, the most recent year for which the studios have released their budget figures, P&A averages about $40 million per title – more than was typically received from American theaters for a film that year.” 

Additionally, distributors take between 15 to 33 percent of box office sales as a distribution fee. Let’s use an easy 20 percent. Based on that, let’s look at Leap Year’s intake. $30 million suddenly becomes $15 million after the theater chains get their cut. Then let’s deduct $40 million from that and we are currently sitting at $25 million in the hole. Oh yeah, it also cost $19 million to make, so we’re sitting at $44 million in the hole. Minus another $6 million for the distributor, so we’re sitting at a cool $50 million lost. If you have seen Leap Year, you would agree that the final product wasn’t worth that financial loss.  (more…)

Oh James. No, I’m not a Bond girl pandering to the Spy of Spies. I’m just a movie fan annoyed that Cameron is obsessed with himself. Cameron, you make beautiful films. You need someone to help you write your scripts. I’ll leave it at that. 

He won’t though. Take his Vanity Fair interview when he is discussing the re-release of “Avatar.” He also said of “Piranha 3D”: 

“You’ve got to remember: I worked on ‘Piranha 2’ for a few days and got fired off of it; I don’t put it on my official filmography. So there’s no sort of fond connection for me whatsoever. In fact, I would go even farther and say that … I tend almost never to throw other films under the bus, but that is exactly an example of what we should not be doing in 3D. Because it just cheapens the medium and reminds you of the bad 3D horror films from the 70s and 80s, like ‘Friday the 13th 3D.’ When movies got to the bottom of the barrel of their creativity and at the last gasp of their financial lifespan, they did a 3D version to get the last few drops of blood out of the turnip. And that’s not what’s happening now with 3D. It is a renaissance – right now the biggest and the best films are being made in 3D. Martin Scorsese is making a film in 3D. Disney’s biggest film of the year – ‘Tron: Legacy’ – is coming out in 3D. So it’s a whole new ballgame.” 

First of all, knowing Cameron, the fact that he got fired is a big issue here, and he’s holding it against the piranha films.  (more…)

Power up your TARDIS, turn on your lightsaber, and set your phasers to stun because we are about to geek out kids.

Not content with making over $2 billion worldwide, James Cameron is re-releasing “Avatar” in theaters. Supposedly, a lot of people couldn’t see it in 3D because there were other films in theaters at that time hogging up half the screens. How dare they? Who do those people think they are?

In the same L.A. Times interview where Mr. Cameron explains his re-release rationale, he opines that he is making a franchise with “Avatar” that will compete with the works of Tolkien. He thinks the story of the Cat Smurfs will have the same staying power as “Star Wars.”

This die-hard film geek and sci-fi fan begs to differ.

Great franchises need amazing worlds, rich characters, and far reaching themes. They also need to have a first episode that strikes a deep chord in the fan community. You know, the complete opposite of “Avatar.”

Part of what makes a franchise successful is that the audience doesn’t merely want to watch the world of the film, they want to live in the world of the film. Who wouldn’t want to go to Hogwarts and learn to cast spells? Who hasn’t picked up a flashlight and spun it around, humming, like it was a lightsaber? Who wouldn’t want to serve aboard a starship commanded by James T. Kirk, traveling to the far corners of the galaxy? Well, as long as you’re not wearing a red shirt that is… (more…)

Despite the numbers that show more Americans identify themselves ideologically as conservative than anything else, Hollywood continues to either ignore or blatantly criticize conservatives and their ideals. Considering this point, it’s a wonder how a liberal minority continue to dominate Hollywood messaging through films like “Avatar” and “Green Zone,” and moreover how they continue to get away with it. With the larger fan-base that a well-done conservative film would logically have, it’s a wonder why time and again conservative ideals have fallen before big-budget, bigger box office successes without putting up any real alternative. 

Funding would be the first logical explanation – making a movie costs upwards of $100 million. But somehow films with average scripts and worse acting make it to the screen almost daily. For example: the aforementioned liberal duo. 

Now, average to awful films can be classics despite themselves – “Big Trouble in Little China” anyone? – but with all the hype over how much a film costs versus how much it rakes in at the box office, it begs the question how do bad special effects, scripts and actors make it to the big screen, and how do writers, directors and producers continually insult the largest portion of American audiences and get away with it? How does a value-system upheld by liberal elites define American cinema? And this isn’t the case in every film – there are some quality conservative films out there like “Die Hard” and “The Patriot” – but such films are the exception, rather than the rule.  (more…)

About 6 hours into the original film, remember asking yourself, “Could this be any more anti-American?”

Ask a stupid question.

From an interview with director James Cameron discussing the new scenes added to tomorrow’s Avatar special edition re-release:

A scene Cameron calls “the drums of war,” which he hopes will clarify why the humans choose to wipe out the Na’vi. He compared it to America’s decision to invade Iraq. “We had to provoke Saddam to do something stupid, and it’s like that with the humans invading Pandora,” he said. “I felt when I was writing it that the Na’vi had to counter-react and do something that is called an atrocity that gave [humans] the moral right to go in and destroy and displace them. The additional footage is pretty short, but it fulfills that purpose.”

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One of the downsides of having been the victim of a classical education is that events often trigger unconventional connections. So when I heard that film director James Cameron, a man whose well known intolerance, arrogance and profane bullying equal his cinematic brilliance, had chickened out of a highly publicized debate about human contributions to global warming he had demanded with a film director and two others lacking his immense wealth and power, I thought of  Fellipe Argenti, the wealthy, arrogant, intolerant bully in Dante Alighieri’s hell.

I warned you it was unconventional — but fitting.

Argenti resides in that portion of Dante’s perdition reserved for pimps, seducers and hypocrites. The available evidence indicates that all three terms apply to Cameron in this matter.

He is pimping as fact the notion that human beings cause global warming despite contrary scientific opinion and revelations that researchers may have concocted that view for political and funding reasons. Cameron’s opinion of those who disagree with him: “I think they’re swine.”

He is seducing others to believe in human caused global warming by the sheer intimidating force of his prominence, power and wealth:  “Anybody that is a global-warming denier at this point in time has got their head so deeply up their a–,  I’m not sure they could hear me.” (more…)

Will Avatar 2: Big Oil include embarrassingly bad dialogue and a character along the lines of a feckless and indecisive President attempting to plug the damn hole from Martha’s Vineyard? We’re betting on one of those.

IMDB:

Cameron said, “Every experience that you have in your life as a filmmaker is going to affect what you do, and those were both situations where I was directly involved.” Cameron, who called Bp officials “morons” for their handling of the oil spill, added, “Sure, absolutely I’m going to use that for my further condemnation of corporations wrecking the natural world.”

More here. (more…)

My last column offered hypotheses on why America feels that the entertainment industry is having a negative effect on the way things are going in the country these days.  I theorized that many Americans feel that the entertainment industry does not reflect their values, and consequently avoid paying for its content.  I provided support for this argument in the form of several different studies.

Matt Damon and Director Paul Greengrass on the set of the 2010 flop “Green Zone”

There is little doubt that the arts attract people with more liberal perspectives.  That their values should appear in content is therefore not surprising.  These values, including political ideology, may take many forms.  In some cases, they are simply a one-off joke about Sarah Palin.  In other cases, there are full-blown television episodes and movies that directly espouse values, morals, or political ideology often associated with the left-wing of our political spectrum.  I’ve been in countless story sessions for both TV and film.  Some writer-producers are eager to inject their ideology into the content.  Some are not.  But the ones that do are always Liberal.  Sometimes that’s just fine. You can’t make Bulworth or Bob Roberts, under-appreciated and entertaining films, without Warren and Tim and their Liberal ideals. (more…)

I finally had the opportunity to see James Cameron’s paean to nature, “Avatar.” It is definitely beautifully filmed and there is an edenic quality to the alien planet of Pandora that probably reflects the director’s image of the biblical garden. It is typical, however, of Hollywood denizens to find paradise in another realm than to look at what is already here without criticizing the negative human impact on our blue planet. 

The Cold War and the possibility of nuclear annihilation prompted many apocalyptic films in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s. As a child I watched films of giant tomatoes, giant alligators; giant frogs and rabbits and more all caused by mutations generated by nuclear accidents. Is it any wonder that the hippies and leftists protested, very effectively I might add, against the building of nuclear facilities and power plants? ‘The China Syndrome” was a movie that stuck in the minds of many in the movie industry even though nuclear accidents rarely occur here. Three Mile Island did not cause any injuries. Chernobyl’s disaster happened because the Russian reactor was built in an old military installation without the strict guidelines we use in the United States. 

The ‘60’s were fraught with cautionary tales of impending doom. One of my favorite films, La Dolce Vita, depicted the angst and melancholia of the intelligentsia over the threat of nuclear annihilation The brilliant Steiner worries so much about what the future holds for his two beautiful children; that “the end of the world could be announced with a phone call’; that he kills them and commits suicide. Honestly, nihilists have so few options, we must pity them.   (more…)

“It’s China, it’s India Anywhere the middle-class is exploding, everyone’s sucking up more power. Population’s continuing to grow, you know we’re going to have to do something about it.”

There it is folks. Straight from the mouth of James Cameron himself. When caught off-guard without his DNC talking points, he admits that the much talked about middle-class is “booming” in America, not shrinking. Also through his comparison to modern China and India, he even acknowledges that the class gap is closing because of –gasp– capitalism! Something must be done about it, and lil’ Jimmy is just the wimp for the job. Somebody call Sean Penn, just in case he needs a sidekick on this one.

Now remember, James Cameron hates capitalism (rumor has it that the creature in “Alien” was based on his own mental interpretation of free enterprise). He believes that it’s destroying the world and needs to be dealt with accordingly. Unless of course it interferes with the production, promotion or distribution of the most expensive motion picture of all time. Then it ain’t no thang, baby!

No, the “thang” that really bothers Cameron is when middle-class Americans act as selfish, evil consumers in order to better their own lives. You heard Jimmy. They’re “sucking up more power,” acting as nothing more than bottom-feeders of Mother Earth’s resources. (more…)