If you have never seen The Graduate, you can’t really call yourself a film buff. This astounding 1967 movie, directed by the late, great Mike Nichols, co-written by Buck Henry, and starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft, took the world by storm when it was first released. The bizarre love triangle – boy has affair with married woman, then falls in love with her daughter – is riveting, and under Nichols’s direction, the blend of comedy and drama are interwoven perfectly.
In failing to reach agreements with the striking guilds, Hollywood executives are essentially forced to promote movies without their A-list cast. The first signs of danger may present themselves this month – August -- with the Venice International Film Festival and Telluride Film Festival beginning at the end of this month. In the meantime, film festivals such as the Cinequest Film and Creativity Festival offer a glimpse of what this upcoming season has in store for Hollywood, both professionally and creatively.
Disney made headlines in early June when its latest Pixar outing Elemental grossed $29.6 million on its opening weekend – an all-time low for the studio. This, along with the financial failures of Strange Worlds and Lightyear, suggests Disney animations struggle to get families back in the theater following the pandemic. Disney’s rush into streaming post-pandemic may prove costly as its animated projects continue to wither.
Pam and Tommy was made anyway, of course. It received generally favorable reviews though; in the zeitgeist that is the current state of the Hollywood machine, the series has been largely forgotten already. It came and went and it rode the visibility that anything about a sex-tape was bound to receive, especially if it was about one of the most famous sex-tapes in the world to this day.
The Razzies also hammered Tom Hanks, who is one of the most celebrated actors in cinema history. Hanks not only won Worst Supporting Actor for his outing as Col. Tom Parker in “Elvis,” he received a share of the Worst Screen Combo Razzie. For the latter award, co-winners were the oddball accent he adopted as Parker and the latex facial prosthetics that made him look overweight. “These people have choices,” Wilson said.
After the unforgivable slap seen and heard around the world at last year’s Oscars ceremony, a few major questions remain: whether the Academy did enough to punish Will Smith for the attack on Chris Rock, and, given the general decline in viewership, are awards ceremonies still relevant? Of course, the greatest slap in the face to Will Smith – pardon the pun-- would have been if Chris Rock had hosted this year’s Oscars, but Rock turned down the offer.
Critics and general audiences alike often view these films as over-the-top spectacles lacking meaningful storytelling. The action-packed focus of these films obviously detracts from narrative content; however, there seems to be a false perception that spectacle means the complete absence of worthwhile content. After all, we still learn about characters and how they develop during action sequences. For example, in “The Matrix’s” iconic scene where Neo dodges bullets in slow motion, we see Neo’s transformation from someone held to the mercy of the system to someone who has the will to defy it.
Now following the success of CODA, the 2023 Sundance Film Festival became the topic of far greater anticipation. Given that Apple paid 25 million dollars for the rights to release CODA on its streaming service, film studios responded by bringing deep pockets to this year’s festival. Many of the festival’s popular entries such as Flora and Son and Fair Play sold as high as $20 million to Apple and Netflix, respectively.
No film exemplifies these values better than this year’s Everything Everywhere All At Once. Starring Michelle Yeoh, the film follows a middle-aged woman running a laundromat who discovers the existence of a multiverse filled with thousands of versions of herself. It explores Asian-American identity and serves as a parable of the immigrant experience. Critically and commercially acclaimed, the film has proven an enormous success for A24 -- becoming the studio’s first film to gross over 100 million at the box office – and landing Golden Globe Awards for Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan.
It's hard to pinpoint why we’re here, but it does seem the cachet surrounding awards shows has decreased. This is true despite the fact that shifting distribution models have, arguably, made film awards more relevant than ever to the average viewer. Historically, one of the complaints surrounding movie awards contenders was that some of the most noteworthy pictures got outsized attention before most Americans could even see them. This remains true with select pictures, but things have improved.
In response to the demand for an effective ratings system, multiple popular game creators, such as Sega and Nintendo among others, formed what would become the Entertainment Software Associationthat crafted an ES Ratings Board, which is still in place today. Videogames are not legally required to have an ESRB rating, but most console manufacturers and physical and online retailers require it for the games they offer.
If you were alive a few years ago, you might remember the time when GameStop was in the news and blowing up social media. If you don’t remember, don’t worry, because this movie will go over the whole thing in detail. You might be left wondering why anyone would bother making a film about something that is already well-documented, but if nothing else, this movie is a great indicator of how uncreative some writers have become.
