Morgan Freeman may want to hold his tongue the next time he thinks about calling the Tea Party ‘racist.’

Freeman, currently co-starring in ‘Dolphin Tale,’ made that accusation last month in the run up to his film’s release. And while the movie is performing well at the box office, it’s clear it could be doing even better, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The entertainment outlet just posted the results of a new study tracking how actors’ political comments affect the public’s willingness to buy their products.

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The new hit action film “Battle: Los Angeles” isn’t perfect.

OK, that’s like saving Julian Assange has trouble keeping secrets.

“Battle” is dopey to the core, with giggle-inducing dialogue, shaky cams gone wild and a host of other structural issues. But perusing a few of the critical responses to “Battle” yields something else “wrong” with the film. It doesn’t march lockstep with some critics’ ideological fault lines.

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The movie brands U.S. Marines as heroes, showing how noble and brave they are in the face of an alien onslaught. It’s not the typical theme you see in movies today, especially ones with a military component.

Consider this review in The Washington Post:

Did somebody mention Iraq? “Battle’s” depiction of block-by-block urban combat against an implacable, enigmatic foe evokes Baghdad at its bloodiest. But director Jonathan Liebesman (whose background is in horror flicks) isn’t interested in allegory, nuance or social comment. He just wants to line up platinum-plated space-squids to be blown away.

And Roger Ebert, an avowed liberal, hated the film so much he called anyone who disagreed with him an “idiot.”

Left of center Movieline seemed aghast that the film shows the Marines in a glowing light:

Christopher Bertolini’s script is notable for its recruitment pamphlet-level of dedication to the glory of the U.S. Marines. As if the way superhero handsome [Aaron ]Eckhart fills out a helmet and chinstrap doesn’t say it all, Bertolini has him huffing on about showing the enemy how Marines fight, reminding his colleagues that Marines don’t quit, and giving glittery-eyed speeches about how even when Marines make the wrong decision at least they have the courage to make a decision. (Note to George W.: I think I just found your new favorite movie.) … Shadowy Vietnam allusions crop up here and there — particularly a last, frantic airlift out of L.A. — but on the whole “Battle: Los Angeles” is the emptiest form of sci-fi action: Just one bloody (or alien gooey) thing after another.

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Anyone who has formally studied film certainly knows Robin Wood, who was a pioneer of the academic study of film as we know it.  One of his most famous essays, “Ideology, Genre, Auteur,” is one of the most important and influential essays in modern film theory.  In it, Wood provides a bridge between auteur theory (director is author of film and drives its content) and genre theory (genre characteristics drive film’s content) in a way that doesn’t try to disprove the other (which many theorists tried to do).  Wood lays out a good approach to both theories:

“One of the greatest obstacles to any fruitful genre is to treat the genres as discrete. An ideological approach might suggest why they can’t be, however hard they may appear to try: at best, they represent different strategies for dealing with the same ideological tensions.”

He provided a deep understanding for each school of thought and put them together in a way that continues to help students of the discipline over thirty years later. A good overview of his life and work can be read in this recent New York Times post. (more…)

Many of you know the story of Jerry Maguire, the agent with a conscience. Ya, I know. It’s only a movie. But sometimes movies can be great moral guideposts. Ironic that I should use one of Hollywood’s finest morality plays to illustrate how Tinseltown should operate at its most basic level.

In Jerry Maguire, the key conflict was Jerry’s realization that he was putting a pretty facade on the moral deterioration within his profession, and was in fact complicit in it. It took an injured hockey player’s young son telling him to fuck off and a bad dream for Maguire to realize the true ugliness of who and what he had become, especially when measured against the high standards of his idol and mentor, agent Dicky Fox. Those troubling events created in Maguire a perfect storm of revulsion, introspection and a commitment to reaffirm the basic principles of his profession, which he laid out in his memo “The Things We Think and Do Not Say.” In truth, he had me at hello. Tom’s a hottie! (more…)

Yes, The Dark Knight made more money in U.S. theaters than any film in history except Titanic (in nominal dollars, unadjusted for inflation), but in terms of sheer return on the investment dollar, you’d have been better off putting your cash into the teen vampire movie Twilight, the teen musical High School Musical 3: Senior Year, or Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert.

And you’d have been much, much smarter to invest in Kirk Cameron’s small, independent, Christian film Fireproof: it cost a half-million dollars to make and brought in $33.1 million, a return of more than sixty times its budget.

That’s the conclusion of an interesting article on E! Online about movie returns on investment. Of course, it’s not possible to predict precisely what films will have greatest audience appeal before they’re even made, but a few things are clear and have remained true for years:

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