‘Star Trek’ — Biggest Movie of 2009?

Posted on October 16, 2008 at 8:15 am

Entertainment Weekly has the latest on what could be next summer’s biggest box office smash, the rebooted “Star Trek” from J.J. Abrams (creator of Alias and Lost).
After 10 often dismal movies, Star Trek had turned into a pop culture punchline. Even people who’d built their entire careers around Trek could see the writing on the wall. “Star Trek,” says Leonard Nimoy, “had run its course.” But director J.J. Abrams believes he can make the franchise cool again….
Abrams says he was also drawn to the project because he believed in–and wanted to evangelize–Trek’s unabashed idealism. “I think a movie that shows people of various races working together and surviving hundreds of years from now is not a bad message to put out right now,” says Abrams. That ethos may seem cornball to an America darkened by a decade’s worth of catastrophe, but after an election season that has seen both presidential nominees run on “hope” and “change,” Star Trek just may find itself on the leading wave of a zeitgeist shift–away from bleak, brooding blockbusters and toward the light. “In a world where a movie as incredibly produced as The Dark Knight is raking in gazillions of dollars, Star Trek stands in stark contrast,” Abrams says. “It was important to me that optimism be cool again.”
That sounds like something to please the fanboys and bring in a whole new audience. I can’t wait!

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Studios’ Second Thoughts on Critics

Posted on October 7, 2008 at 12:12 pm

According to Entertainment Weekly, Hollywood has figured out that critics are important in helping audiences find good movies that are not pre-sold through familiar characters or special effects. It cites an Advertising Age article that concludes
the studios are starting to see a correlation between the disappearance of movie critics from newspapers and the slumping ticket sales for the kind of movies that depend on critics to publicize and champion them — not just art-house movies from independent and foreign-language filmmakers, but also expensive, year-end Oscar hopefuls from the major studios.
The collateral damage may be the closing down of the studio divisions that make quieter, more ambitious films. Just as in nature, it’s a complicated ecosystem and any loss can affect the survival of all.

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Commentary

Why is TV So White? (Entertainment Weekly)

Posted on June 22, 2008 at 2:00 pm

Entertainment Weekly has a very important article that asks a very important question. Why is it that the only minority character to anchor a new series is Cleveland Brown — an animated character voiced by a white guy?
The show is a Family Guy spin-off called “The Cleveland Show.”
After a period of making a public effort to focus on diversity in their casting — kickstarted by an NAACP outcry over the white TV landscape in 1999 — the networks have clearly started to lose that focus, and not just when it comes to African-Americans. Today the current prime-time lineup, including fall’s 14 new scripted shows, is looking alarmingly pale. According to an Entertainment Weekly study of scripted-programming casts for the upcoming fall 2008 season, each of the five major broadcast networks is whiter than the Caucasian percentage (66.2 percent) of the United States population, as per the 2007 census estimate. And all of the networks are representing considerably lower than the Latino population percentage of 15.2 percent, with The CW — whose only lead Latina star, JoAnna Garcia, will be playing a white character named Megan Smith on Surviving the Filthy Rich — registering just 3.8 percent. After the quiet and unceremonious departure this winter of eight-season hit Girlfriends (the No. 15 show in all prime time among African-American audiences), The CW’s black comedy block (inherited from predecessor UPN) has shrunk to just two sitcoms: critical darling Everybody Hates Chris (No. 29 among African-Americans) and The Game (No. 7 among African-Americans), which have both been relegated to the dead zone known as Friday nights this fall.
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“Grey’s Anatomy” creator Shonda Rhimes sees progress in her diverse cast and those of other established hits — namely Lost and Heroes. But she still cites room for improvement: ”Do I want to see any more shows where someone has a sassy black friend? No, because I’m nobody’s sassy black friend. I just want to see shows in which people get to be people and that look like the world we live in. The world is changing, and television will have to follow.” True enough: It feels downright regressive to have to point out that minorities can be stars too, at a time when Will Smith continues to dominate box offices, Oprah is the most powerful woman on television, and Barack Obama is running for the ultimate leading role (you know, of the free world).
The article ends on a note of hope:
olor-blind casting is something teen-focused networks seem to have down pat: Nary a show has passed through ABC Family or The N without an interracial coupling or a naturally integrated cast. (ABC Family’s Greek even has an interracial gay couple.) Those networks’ execs say it’s a simple matter of economics, that their Gen-Y viewers accept — nay, expect and demand — such a reflection of their multi-cultural lives. ”They’re completely color-blind,” ABC Family president Paul Lee says of younger viewers. ”We’ve done a lot of things wrong as a nation, but we’ve clearly done something right here. They embrace other cultures.”

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