You’re On The List…Platinum Dunes

That’s right: this is an entry dedicated to an entire production company, so buckle up.

Earlier this week, the trailer for A Nightmare on Elm Street premiered. For those that don’t know, this is a remake of the Wes Craven classic starring the incredibly talented Jackie Earle Haley (who will be spared in this thrashing). Not one minute into the four minute trailer did a title card appear, reading “From Producer Michael Bay.” For those that do not know, whenever this title card is present in the trailer for a horror film, this means that Platinum Dunes is behind it. These films include The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Amityville Horror, The Hitcher and Friday the 13th. If you haven’t already noticed the pattern, these are all remakes of classic horror films from the 1970s and 1980s. To put it gently, the four films average a score of 26% on Rotten Tomatoes. To put it bluntly, they are all God-awful.

Retro Review: Predator

With the big news regarding Robert Rodriguez’s Predators coming out on Wednesday, we figured it was a good a time as any to go back and see how the original film, John McTiernan’s Predator from 1987, stood up against time and its sequels.

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If the genre of science-fiction has an enemy, its name is technology. While some of the greatest movies of the genre were filmed during the 1970s and 1980s, watching them today is almost laughable. Computers have advanced so far in the past twenty years that movies like The Lawnmower Man or The Abyss look almost cartoonish in retrospect.

Today’s films are no different. As more and more CGI is used, no matter how lifelike it looks today, a few years down the line it will look rudimentary and hacky. Someday, Transformers will look like Clash of the Titans. The only way to combat the inevitable is to be subtle and not let special effects take over the film. It is for this exact reason that John McTiernan’s Predator remains a solid action film to this day.

Michael Bay Announces Transformers 3

In a post on his official forum, director Michael Bay announced today that a story had been completed for Transformers 3 and it is going into development for a Summer 2011 release. Bay had previously said he wanted to work on smaller projects like Pain and Gain before jumping back into another Transformers sequel but something (read, studios) got him to change his tune, and shooting is likely to start on the project sometime next year.

With their back and forth in the media there has been some discussion of whether Megan Fox would return for a third film, but the director seemingly answered that as well.

Bad Boys 3 On The Way?

In what is more of a speculative move, Columbia Pictures has hired The Town screenwriter Peter Craig to work on a script for Bad Boys 3 according to The Hollywood Reporter. At this point neither Will Smith, Martin Lawrence or Michael Bay are attached, but the hope from the studio is to bring all parties back on board in addition to producer Jerry Bruckheimer.

Rant of the Week! – Week 1

(Rant of the Week runs on a whenever we damn well please basis. Please schedule accordingly)

This rant was inspired by Peter Jackson’s interview with Geoff Boucher of the Los Angeles Times. I’m just happy somebody in Hollywood has the sense to talk about crap going on around them.

“The writers and directors should be blamed just as much as the studios because really everything seems to be a remake or adapting a 1970s TV show that was never particularly good.