It's just been announced that on July 9th, Paramount Pictures exceeded $1-billion in domestic ticket sales for the first six-months of 2007. This is the earliest they, or any major studio has ever achieved that feat. By this weekend they'll pass $1.04 billion for the year - their highest annual Box Office income since the suffocating vortex of hype-riddled suck that was 'Titanic' gave them a banner year in 1998.
This sounds like good news, and it is. It's also meat-and-drink for those who practice file sharing. It's human nature to like getting something for free and thousands of people have shared movies that way. For years. Yet, strangely, Paramount still seems to be scraping a living??
I don't share them myself, but I don't particularly respect blame-shifting hypocrites either. Hollywood has not lost money just because of file-sharing. Hollywood has lost money because audiences are fed up with an endless exploitative menu of clones, re-treads and sequels.
Just today it's been announced that the public admiration for Kevin Bacon's 1984 terpsichorean classic, Flashdance, is to be plundered for a re-make. The quirky original [or as it will soon be known, 'the good one',] was Jerry Bruckheimer's first independent feature and produced a multi-platinum soundtrack. This pointless and utterly indefensible re-hash will star Zac Efron, and Kenny Ortega [who??] is scheduled to direct, and devise the choreography.
And if that news doesn't baste you in despair for tinsel-town's collective IQ, try this: They're also going to remake Bill and Ted. Without Bill. Or Ted. And if you have fond memories of the Sci fi-tinted, subliminal skin-flick, 'Barbarella', your luck just ran out as well: The oncoming Halle Berry do-over promises to obliterate any trace of such treasured recollections.
It's true that the rise of file sharing over the last decade has contributed to a reduction in Hollywood's overall Box Office take. But when your collective body of work for the same period contains nothing but sequels, clones, and avaricious mind-fodder that was dependent on CGI, yet apparently written by people who couldn't spell it, to then claim the fact you're not making millions is everyone else's fault is delusional to the point of a psychosis.
If you build it, they will come. If you keep building the same thing, however, they may quite rightly have other plans. And the finger of blame eventually has to stop at you.
This sounds like good news, and it is. It's also meat-and-drink for those who practice file sharing. It's human nature to like getting something for free and thousands of people have shared movies that way. For years. Yet, strangely, Paramount still seems to be scraping a living??
I don't share them myself, but I don't particularly respect blame-shifting hypocrites either. Hollywood has not lost money just because of file-sharing. Hollywood has lost money because audiences are fed up with an endless exploitative menu of clones, re-treads and sequels.
Just today it's been announced that the public admiration for Kevin Bacon's 1984 terpsichorean classic, Flashdance, is to be plundered for a re-make. The quirky original [or as it will soon be known, 'the good one',] was Jerry Bruckheimer's first independent feature and produced a multi-platinum soundtrack. This pointless and utterly indefensible re-hash will star Zac Efron, and Kenny Ortega [who??] is scheduled to direct, and devise the choreography.
And if that news doesn't baste you in despair for tinsel-town's collective IQ, try this: They're also going to remake Bill and Ted. Without Bill. Or Ted. And if you have fond memories of the Sci fi-tinted, subliminal skin-flick, 'Barbarella', your luck just ran out as well: The oncoming Halle Berry do-over promises to obliterate any trace of such treasured recollections.
It's true that the rise of file sharing over the last decade has contributed to a reduction in Hollywood's overall Box Office take. But when your collective body of work for the same period contains nothing but sequels, clones, and avaricious mind-fodder that was dependent on CGI, yet apparently written by people who couldn't spell it, to then claim the fact you're not making millions is everyone else's fault is delusional to the point of a psychosis.
If you build it, they will come. If you keep building the same thing, however, they may quite rightly have other plans. And the finger of blame eventually has to stop at you.
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