HOW NOT TO PROMOTE YOUR MOVIE
Many of you are familiar with the upcoming movie Babylon A.D. Vin Diesel is in it, and it looks like The Matrix Chronicles of I, Robot Am Legend. I was mildly interested in it b/c I like Vin Diesel, but if you were on the fence on how to spend your Labor Day weekend, well, the director (Mathieu Kassovitz) of Babylon A.D. might of just made your decision a little easier:
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"I'm very unhappy with the film. I never had a chance to do one scene the way it was written or the way I wanted it to be. The script wasn't respected. Bad producers, bad partners, it was a terrible experience." (CanMag)
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Even the chronically polite Vin Diesel gets a dis in:
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Diesel too was astounded at the film's length (NOTE: Babylon A.D. is alleged to have had at least 15 minutes cut from it... some have claimed even 70!). Having just completed production of the fourth installment of The Fast and the Furious, he had not seen a cut of the film in six months. "Am I even in the movie any more, or am I on the cutting room floor?" the actor joked. Fox could not be reached for comment on this story.
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Ordinarily it would be my instinct to feel for the director of any film that's had his or her work butchered like that. However, sometimes the studios are right about the meandering crappiness of these big overblown movies. Fox probably wants to cut their losses, cut the length, and get as much opening weekend cash as they can (Sci-Fi usually banks strongly in the first week of release). My guess is that Kassovitz knows that and he's gonna do his damndest to sabotage it.
Well, Kassovitz, you might have a better argument if your previous films La Haine and Gothika didn't suck crusty liquourice sticks. I mean, the guy doesn't really have a swell reputation to stand on.
Whatevs. College Football starts this weekend...
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10 comments:
Damn!
Whatevs is right.
Until this post, I had no knowledge of this movie so that means that Fox is really deeply embedded in the goings on of either Hollywood, or Vin Diesel.
Diesel makes me angry. He showed a lot of promise with stuff like Boiler Room and Saving Private Ryan and even Pitch Black. But now he's really nothing.
I'm assuming that this film will be an Alan Smithee film after Kassovitz' comments. Not that he will mind.
Damn, Piper! Why you gotta hate on the Vin?!?!
Is it his muscles? I mean, I know you've got some guns yourself, but Vin is pretty swole.
I am embedded to Vin Diesel, and if you don't take back what you said, I may have to embed my crying eyes in the chest of Dwayne Johnson aka THE ROCK! (Another big man with a sweet soul and promise.)
I idiotically give Kassovitz a free pass by virtue of his being in Amelie.
It's hard, though - Gothika did some major sucking.
You make a good point Fletch. It is hard to be to rough on the guy b/c he is adorable in Amelie. Man... if you can connect Amelie to something, you can pacify any argument! :)
Am I the only one on this thread to stick up for La Haine? Well, all right, then...La Haine does not suck; it's one of the best films of the 90s! Can't defend Gothika though (haven't seen it, and if I had, something tells me I'd have even less reason...)
Poor Mathieu. I think he should just avoid the English language altogether now. :-\
I rlly rlly rlly need to see La Haine, and SOON.
MovieMan-
We differ on La Haine. I thought it was a noisy, deliberate, misfired shot of empty anger.
You read the exchange between Kassovitz and Nicolas Sarkozy (interior minister of France at the time), on the disc's supplements, and you see how out of touch Kassovitz is.
I admire that Kassovitz wants to stand up for the plight of the immigrant, but he resorts to simplistic, dim witted arguments that - sadly - have bled into the awful French horror of Fronteir(s) and Inside.
I think something like Made In England, though not perfect, gets at the European immigrant situation much more honestly than La Haine.
You may be right about the situation in France - I'm not well-acquainted enough with it to know. In form, however, the movie is breathtaking.
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