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Week of March 13, 2006 |
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You can take "The Peacemaker," "Deep Impact," and "The Tuxedo." We'll take "Gladiator," "American Beauty" and anything else that didn't suck.
Emilio's 17
Yeah, like he needed all that overpriced crap anyway...
This lawsuit's going to make 'House Party' look like 'House Party Two!'
I told you... don't call me SENIOR!!
Maybe this is all a bad dream too?
Thanks Sharon, but I think I'll wait until this one comes out on DVD (so I can freeze frame of course)
There is absolutely, positively no nepotism in Hollywood. None.
You're good, baby, I'll give you that... but me? I'm magic.
This band will go down like a lead balloon
Well, Goodbye there Children...
They can't sell the Capitol Records building! What will be left to destroy in the next crappy 'end of the world' movie?
Same old Courtney - still sponging off Kurt
Panic on the streets of Austin
You're a fat, Botox faced, wig-wearing ninny! Oh yeah? Well your band has a dirty H addict as a lead singer!
Black Sabbath, Blondie, Miles Davis, The Sex Pistols, Lynyrd Skynyrd Enter Rock Hall
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01 |
THE BREAK-UP |
$39.17
$12759/av |
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02 |
X-MEN: THE LAST STAND |
$34.02
$9159/av |
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03 |
OVER THE HEDGE |
$20.65
$5170/avg |
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04 |
THE DAVINCI CODE |
$18.61
$4953/avg |
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05 |
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III |
$4.68
$1756/avg |
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06 |
POSEIDON |
$3.49
$1283/avg |
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RV |
$3.20
$1469/avg |
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SEE NO EVIL |
$2.04
$1607/avg |
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09 |
AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH |
$1.36
$17615/avg |
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10 |
JUST MY LUCK |
$855K
$892/avg |
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E-MAIL THE AUTHOR
THE BOTTOM OF THINGS
By Michael Sampson
July 9, 2003
NOBODY DOES BAD BETTER
--“I can't believe this guy is still making movies!! Who the hell is going to see his crap?!?! Suicide is the only way out, Michael!!!”
--“I would give him a middle finger so close in front of his face he'll have to examine the context and meaning of the middle finger. Middle finger is a gesture that says "FUCK YOU"…I made the blood oath never to watch Michael Bay films after ARMAGEDDON. Michael Bay is the Anti-Christ of Hollywood.”
These were just some of the responses posted on Ain’t It Cool News when it was reported Michael Bay may be directing the apocalyptic vampire flick I AM LEGEND with Will Smith in the starring role. Nothing pisses off fanboys like the name Michael Bay. Watch this...
Hey everybody - Michael Bay is producing a remake of THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE!
--“This, Bay, I can NEVER forgive. You smarmy fuck. Fuck you and [CHAINSAW director] Marcus Nispel.”
--“Fuck Michael Bay. Fuck New Line. And fuck each and every person that defiles a masterpiece by actually going to see this rancid abomination in-the-making.”
--“KILL!!!!!!! CHRIST, KILL MICHAEL BAY BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!!!!!!! I never should have read that little news blip before noon. My day's fucked now. BAY! LISTEN HERE, BAY! KEEP YOUR GODDAMN HACK HANDS OFF OF CHAINSAW!!!!!!!!”
Yikes. A bit extreme maybe but not outside of the norm for sentiments towards director Michael Bay. Ever since Bay exploded -- quite literally -- on the scene with 1995’s BAD BOYS, his trademark style has become the overwrought cliché of brainless action movies and has given the director the occasional branding of hack. Bay’s hyperactive style was the bane of movie critics and cinephiles who chided the director for pandering to the lowest common denominator in the audience. The nicest detractors would simply argue their case saying he should focus more on story and character development than just visuals and that his brand of film jeopardizes the true art of film. The most venemous however would...well you saw that above.
Audiences haven't seemed to mind -- Bay's films have grossed well over $1 billion -- or if they have, they haven't learned their lesson. But Bay's detractors certainly have a large and vocal population, not all of whom are quasi-anonymous movie critics. Sean Penn said Bay "should be sent running home screaming with rectal cancer" and director Barry Sonnenfeld has joked about Bay's possible overcompensation for having a small dick.
Does Bay deserve such criticism? Well, no one really deserves to get rectal cancer. But then again...he did direct ARMAGEDDON.
ARMAGEDDON came careening into theaters with all the destructive force of the rogue asteroid the film stars. Despite grossing over $200 million (which seems rather slight compared to 2003 standards, doesn’t it?) the film was reviled almost universally and quickly became the poster film for excessive studio action films. To make matters worse, it jumped to the top of my own personal worst five movies of all time list.
(Of course now you want to know the rest of the list, don’t you? OK, here goes: VIBES, starring Cyndi Lauper and Jeff Goldblum; TOYS starring Robin Williams; MORTAL KOMBAT 2: ANNIHILATION; and FORREST GUMP. All equally vile in their own way.)
But strangely, as the sequel to his first film, BAD BOYS 2, is set for release, audiences are shortening their 10-foot pole and look like they might enjoy the film. People expected the worse but saw the trailers and realized, "maybe there is an art to this crap after all..."
Michael Benjamin Bay began his work rather auspiciously, graduating from Pasadena Art Center’s College for Design with a degree in film and immediately beginning work directing music videos for such heavyweights as Meatloaf (pun intended), Chicago, Tina Turner and Aerosmith. Music video work led to an abundance of commercial work for Levi’s, Nike and an award-winning stint launching the Got Milk? campaign. Remember that Aaron Burr commercial? Yup, that was Bay.
That work caught the eye of uber-producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer who hired Bay to direct BAD BOYS at the age of 31. The film turned Will Smith into an action star, gave Martin Lawrence a film career beyond his Fox sitcom and made Michael Bay one of the most sought-after action directors in Hollywood.
But while the film charmed audiences, it didn’t do much for critics. Roger Ebert said the film was, in a critique that would become all too common for Bay’s films, “ideal for those with attention-span deficit.”
One year later in 1996, Bay reteamed with Simpson and Bruckheimer for their next summer blockbuster, THE ROCK. It was on this film, the best reviewed of Bay’s career, that he fine-tuned his signature style. The constant camera movement. The spinning-around-rise-up shot. Hyperediting (or as Variety once put it, “an editing style that amounts to a two and a half-hour sensory pummeling.). Bay likes cars, speed, guns explosions, razzle-dazzle and yes, women. Or as two-time star Will Smith would say, Bay has a "very serious appreciation for the fairer sex." So it's not surprising that all these elements feature heavily in his films as much and happen with more frequency than actors actually speaking. (Another Bay trademark? Let the actors improv `cause their lines aren't what's important anyway. They're often drowned out by the special effects noise and have to be redubbed in ADR anyway.)
Now that his style was defined, Bay followed up THE ROCK, a huge hit for Disney, with the aforementioned ARMAGEDDON and later, PEARL HARBOR - both disaster movies that turned out to be disasters themselves. Neither movie performed well critically, but at least ARMAGEDDON did it’s share of business. PEARL didn’t completely tank but considering it was the most expensive film ever greenlit, it should’ve done a lot better than it did.
And that's it. Four films to his credit yet he's often referred to in the same breath as the Prince of Darkness, and I don't mean Ozzy.
Bay’s own mentor Jeanine Basinger admits, “It's the kind of filmmaking we like to say is the end of civilization.” But, she adds, “Michael isn't doing what the intellectuals would like him to do and he never will. If he did Jane Austen, those people would be walking pretty goddamn fast across the English countryside.”
Point taken.
Michael Bay hasn't exactly listened to his critics and gone off to film that intimate character study (after all, his idea of stretching himself as a director means a bigger budget and bigger stars), but he has taken a mini-break, turning to producing films like his remake of TEXAS CHAINSAW. In that time many have tried to fill the void, but few have succeeded.
Simon West and Dominic Sena have followed in Bay’s footsteps but have consistently come up short. West fell particularly flat with the Godawful CON AIR, that ruined just about any cred Nicolas Cage had (around this time Sean Penn would pipe up again, saying that Cage "used to be" an actor).
Some of the complaints regarding this summer’s CHARLIE’S ANGELS 2, widely considered to be a failure, were strikingly similar to ones laid out to a Michael Bay film. Yyou could turn the film on at any moment and not miss a thing, or that it was essentially a feature-length trailer...these were the same gripes levied on ARMAGEDDON. But now that we haven’t seen a straight-up Michael Bay action film in almost six years (PEARL HARBOR aside), are we actually looking forward to someone who can make a crappy, brainless action movie the right way? I know I am.
McG had the right idea. Girls, soundtrack, striking visuals, cars, explosions, hyperediting. But in that “homage” to Michael Bay’s directorial style, something went wrong. His impression was a bit off and the end result was just bland.
You know my mom would sometimes try to make pizza at home when my sister and I would ask for a large pepperoni with extra-cheese. Hoping to save some money, she’d bust out the pizza dough, the sauce, the cheese, even pepperoni. All key ingredients to making the same pizza that they made at the pizzeria down the block. And their pizza tasted damn good. So why did my mom’s taste like crap? It was essentially the same thing, right? Well it was close, but it was missing those intangible things that made it pizzeria pizza. In the end, it just tasted like a cheap imitation. And so does CHARLIE’S ANGELS 2. And TOMB RAIDER.
Bay, who, as noted in an ESQUIRE profile, once parked his Ferrari in a handicapped space, makes no bones about his love making straight-up action films for audiences who appreciate such things. One thing’s for sure, Michael Bay isn’t going to water things down or attempt to make a film for the critics. He’s a guy’s guy, someone who’s looking to make John Q. Public happy before he earns an ounce of artistic “respect.” I don’t how he does it so well while still doing it so poorly, but my sense it that he’s surrounding himself with the wrong writers. THE ROCK was a huge hit commercially and critically. Maybe it was because Nicolas Cage was fresh off an Oscar win and wasn’t a huge action-type star yet. Or the presence of Ed Harris and Sean Connery. But we know Michael Bay has the goods to make a great film and not just great bad films. Even his bad films are a vast improvement over the bad films we’ve seen this summer that just can’t quite live up to Bay’s trademark flair. I'm not saying Bay's a great director or that BAD BOYS 2 will even been any good (and by that I mean bad good). I just know I'm in the mood for some good bad, guilty fun.
Sorry Mom, but I don't want your pizza. I want a greasy, cheesy pizza from Frank's Pizzeria.
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