It’s a cultural curiousity that, despite the much-ballyhooed presence of Jewish voices in American cinema; you don’t actually see many mainstream movies mining the religious arcana of Judaism the way Catholicism or even Paganism are used by, for example, supernatural films. In fact, most non-Jewish U.S. audience probably couldn’t tell you much about the actual faith beyond kosher diets and a lack of Jesus. You can probably chalk most of this up to history – many Jewish-American families descend from immigrants who escaped persecution in Europe and elsewhere, and “blending in” to a mainstream culture by downplaying the more pronounced differences between their own culture and Christianity was likely an old survival-habit that died hard.
In any case, what this means is that even though there are traditions of dealing with supernatural forces and even exorcism that are unique to Judaism; they’re rarely used as movie-fodder like the by-now humdrum Christian variety is. “The Possession” (formerly “The Dybbuk Box”,) is a pickup by Sam Raimi’s Ghosthouse production label that aims to change this with the story of a young girl whose parents seek out a Rabbinical exorcist to rid her of a possessing demon called a Dybbuk:
Generation Y is beginning to graduate from College and head out into the big scary adult world, which in the marketing biz means it’s time to start re-selling them comforting reminders of their suddenly-evaporating youth.
I was (or, rather, considered myself to be) just a bit too old when the “Power Rangers” first happened to get big into it – though, obviously, the “tokusatsu” series that the franchise grew out of have been and remain a pretty big influence on me – in fact I remember being a perhaps-too-vocal “hater” of it when I was in Junior High and my then-kid sister was a MASSIVE never-miss-an-episode fan of it. I will say, however, that thanks to Linkara’s hugely-watchable efforts I’m more or less becoming sort of a “retroactive fan.”
In any case, I’m sure that while the image to the right is more of a “huh, cool” to me it’s a MASSIVE “about fucking time!!!” to many others. What I CAN say is that Shout! Factory and Saban Inc’s recently-announced plan for releasing the series on DVD is a master-class in how to “do” nostalgia-selling right… Here’s the score: The DVDs are coming out in Season/Volume sets (it started out as a daily series, so “Season One” is incredibly long as kid-shows go) with multi-month release gaps because… hey, they’ve gotta make money and cheaper piecemeal dole-outs let you make it big time off of impulse buys in the “OMIGOD GOTTA HAVE IT NOW!!!” mold, the “Hey, so-and-so loved this as a kid – let’s get it for `em!” mold and especially the younger fans of the current (yet incredibly STILL in some kind of continuity!*) incarnations hungry for more material (seriously, TEN HOURS of episodes for under 20 bucks is a hell of a deal as digital-babysitting goes.)
…BUT! In a welcome acknowledgement that a big part of the consumer base for this will be now-adult collectors with the ability and inclination to buy it in a bigger but more efficient way, they are also set to make a huge box set encompassing every single episode of the first Seven Seasons (for fans: that means the entirety of the “Zordon Era” and the semi-connected seventh “Lost Galaxy” season) available right off the bat through Time Life – similar to the way the “Real Ghostbusters” DVDs initially came out (no price has been set yet.)
THIS, nostalgia-propert license-holders, is how you handle this stuff.
I’m sincerely curious to see how “90s Nostalgia” plays out as a market force. My own biases are obvious in this case; (“…don’t you mean EVERY case, Bob derp de-derp derp derp!?”) but I maintain that one of the reason that “kitsch nostalgia” of the 80s (and the 50s before it) “works” so well as a re-saleable commodity is the unironic earnestness of the era(s). Yeah, there was calculating cynicism behind all that earnestness – what better way to get kids to dump their parents money into the battle between Autobot and Decepticon than to get them sincerely emotionally invested? – but it was there, and I think it’s part of why the stuff endures.
The 90s… had a different “vibe” happening – not necessarily better or worse, but different. The 90s – snuggled too-securely between the end of Cold War fears and the beginning of Terror War fears – was all about affecting a too-cool-for-school “end of history” jadedness, the “whatever” era. Pop-culture of the time reflected that, to a large degree, with lots of cartoons, comics, TV etc. making self-awareness of their own disposability part of their “act;” and I wonder if that’s had an effect on how well it’s managed to lodge in onetime fans’ psyches?
Just for one immediate example: “Power Rangers” itself probably has the most potent “nostalgia cache” of 90s-spawned kiddie properties… and if you go back and watch stuff from the first wave of it what sticks out is that it’s an incredibly “retro”-feeling show even excluding the recycled Japanese FX footage. The upbeat gee-whiz teenage superhero formula it cribs from plays out in precisely the manner of an early-60s Disney show or DC comic, and it’s wide-eyed earnest almost to the point of self-parody. Correlation? You tell me…
*Incidentally, has anyone made the argument yet that “Power Rangers” is on it’s way to being America’s equivalent to “Doctor Who;” i.e. a low-budget kids show that goes on forever as a generational, continuing “thing?” I mean, let’s be realistic – at some point someone is going to float “do a version in prime-time aimed at older fans” to Saban, and if they pull the trigger it’s almost-certainly a moneymaker…
So, two weekends ago Sony found out definitively that “The Amazing Spider-Man” is now all-but-destined to be the third-place finisher of Summer 2012’s superhero blockbusters. “The money people” are already whispering that “Dark Knight Rises” probably won’t beat “Avengers” boxoffice, and there’s no way this is opening ahead of that, so… yeah.
Hence yesterday evening’s huge multi-channel “special presentation” of a 4-minute preview of the film… about 2 1/2 minutes of which were all the scenes you’ve already seen in the trailers. The first minute and a half, however, are “new” and appear to be a major action scene that’s been awkwardly re-edited/scored into trailer-beats – unless this is actually how they’re cutting and scoring this thing, in which case… yikes…
Every problem I’ve had with every piece of advertising on this thing is still present, so let’s just cut to the discussion: 1.) If you’re Sony, is it really the best idea to tease what looks unavoidably like a less-interesting version of the big climactic action scene from the first movie as a BIG SETPIECE of your all-new-all-different reboot?
2.) Does anyone think (or maybe “has anyone observed?”) the shell game the trailers keep playing about “The Untold Story” – i.e. trying to make this look more like a sequel with a big plot twist rather than a remake to audiences who might not follow this stuff as closely – is actually working? Or that it actually matters?
I don’t typically cross-post new Game OverThinker episode stuff to this blog, but this new one that is now up for all audiences at ScrewAttack has a lot of bigger political and general-culture ramifications so I think it’s appropriate enough.
The subject in question is the new “Call of Duty” ad campaign, which trots out Iran-Contra creep turned Fox News creep Oliver North to do some reactionry fear-mongering as a game advertisement and (maybe?) make “Call of Duty’s” status as right-wing military-propaganda “official.” http://screwattack.springboardplatform.com/mediaplayer/springboard/video/scre004/0/487951/
I’m pretty happy with this episode, though naturally I’d prefer the events in question never happened and thus that I wouldn’t have had reason to make it. If this is your first exposure to “The Other Show,” feel free to catch up in the archives on ScrewAttack and see some of the older ones on YouTube.
I was back on the Post-Movie Podcast with Steve Head and John Black this week, talking about “The Avengers.” Here’s the link to the iTunes page where you can download this and other episodes; embed is below the jump:
This is the big one – second only to the killing of Bin Laden in terms of “things Obama will be remembered for.” It’s been widely assumed that he supported equality all along, but was holding back on outright support in order to not anger certain voting-blocs (churchgoing African-Americans/Latinos and Catholic-descended blue-collar Union laborers mainly) known to be reflexively-Democrat voters but socially conservative. Whether this was planned via Biden’s “trial-balloon” admission of support or whether that really was a “gaffe” that forced the President’s hand is for the pundits to decide. I am a supporter of same-sex marriage and the President overall, so this is pretty elating… but I won’t lie and say I’m not a little bit worried. I was with everyone else in assuming Obama was trying to feign the middle-ground until after the election, and I was always fine with it – politics for grownups are about results, not idealism – because I’d rather have him fake-right, win and give me four more years of progressive judicial nominations (the most important thing ANY president can do long-term) than be “true” and lose, saddling me with 4 to 8 years of backwards-looking right-wing governance. So yeah, I’m happy… but I hope he knows what he’s doing.
If nothing else, this is the clearest signal yet that the Democrats “get” what the GOP has “gotten” for a year now, that with neither party having the kind of record you can really “run” on, this is going to be a base-versus-base election – re: “swing voters” are being written off in favor of “who can fire up turnout among the already-decided base.” This is the gauntlet being thrown and the notion of “changing minds” being back-burnered – it’s Culture War time: Thinkers versus Believers, Red versus Blue, Past versus Future, Backwards versus Forwards, Regression versus Evolution, Reason versus “It’s In The Magic Book.”
I’m excited. I enjoy the relative-clarity of times like these; and it’ll be a rare pleasure to actually vote for a candidate instead of just for his likely-politicies (or “against” the other guy.) I just hope there actually are enough Good Guys to win…
As a rule, I try to let the comments section of these blogs run wild – people can post anonymously if they want, and the only things I tend to delete are abusive comments directed at other users. Unfortunately, owing to the continued bad behavior of some repeat-offenders I’m going to have to start getting more strict. I don’t like it, but there it is.
From now on, the comments sections will be moderated by me on the following criteria: No abuse of others, no soliciting, no intentional derailing and try to stay on-topic to whatever degree possible. In other words, attempting to hijack any given conversation or spamming the recurrent “gotcha” lines into every damn post is a good way to get yourself consistently removed. Several recent posts will have their comment-sections culled in this manner once this message is posted.
I don’t like it, but that’s the way it has to be. Hopefully this will not overly impact the vast majority of commenters who don’t make trouble.
Based on a true story, “Argo” is about a covert mission to rescue American’s trapped in Iran following that country’s 1970s revolution. The mission’s premise: Stage the production of a fake big-budget Hollywood scifi movie that wished to film in Iran’s “exotic” desert locales, and while there smuggle the would-be hostages out as part of the “production crew.” Ben Affleck directs and stars.
Of special note for geek audiences: The non-film used designs from comics legend Jack Kirby as it’s concept-art – Kirby will appear in the film, played by Michael Parks.
Amusingly, I’ve already been effectively called a racist once today in-part for not coming out against this movie because Affleck’s character was Latino in real life. So… yeah, now I’ve mentioned that: Affleck’s character was Latino in real life. I’m not sure what else I’m expected to say about that other than to note that I don’t like Hollywood’ insistence that white leads are needed to a open a movie
MOVIEBOB CENTRAL 