Sunday, April 17, 2016

..."You sucked as Batman"

Really?  Seriously?  Bernie Sanders supporters, I'm disappointed in you.  I mean, here you are, you've got the Man of the Millennium, Geroge Clooney, the poster boy of GQ and Esquire for the rest of eternity, in your crosshairs, and you're going to hold Batman & Robin against him forever and ever, amen?  What next, you want to have the transcripts of the closed door meetings that got the film greenlit in the first place?  You want TimeWarner shareholder reports from Fiscal Year 1998 in the film's aftermath?  Frankly, I'm saddened, and disappointed.  Well, I saw part of that new HBO film about Clarence Thomas, so I'm feeling a little more judgmental than usual.  Boy, did he know how to ... use a thesaurus!  Disappointed, saddened, upset, envulgarated, what have you... it's just a high-tech lynching of uppity Hollywood liberals.  Nothing changes.  Personally, I'm disappointed at Clooney for telling the world that they're trying to take back the Congress from the Koch brothers.  Don't give away the whole game plan, man!  As for Bernie supporters, well... apparently, they have high standards for the Batman franchise as well, even if they have trouble articulating their feelings in the proper venues.  But this whole running-for-president thing is new for Bernie, and he's still trying to find the proper tone, but I get the feeling that he's probably, most likely, not going to be Hillary's Secretary of State when the dust finally settles.
As for the Top 10 at the box office this week, the dust has definitely settled on this one!  America picked the new The Jungle Book as their kids' best babysitter this weekend, and how!  I think this also means we're definitely going to see Chef 2 from douchebag-turned-big time Hollywood director Jon Favreau, and it ain't going to be a direct to Netflix type of deal, either.  Still, let us glory in the vindication of our old Kip, Rudyard Kipling, who once said, "There was a young lady from Exeter, and all the young men threw their..." ...damn.  They don't have it yet.
Meanwhile, debuting at #2, it's the latest Barbershop movie, and I gotta hand it to Spike Lee's cousin, Malcolm D. - he's got the populist touch!  When's the last time Spike was in the top 10?  Egg-zactly.  Even he doesn't remember when!  I'd go back and revisit some of the old Barbershop sequels, but you know... they aren't in HD.  What's the point?
Our last debut this week is the stuff of Yahoo! headlines, Kevin Costner's latest flop called Criminal.  It was trying to pass itself off as Transcendence or something.  Incidentally, what is Christopher Nolan up to these days?  What's his next project?... well, first, Hollywood engages in more navel gazing with Quay about those piano tuners of indie film earthquakes, the Quay brothers.  His next big project, however, has something to do with World War II.  It's called Dunkirk and so far it looks like he's only using some of his rolling stock company of his Batman trilogy!  I'd be nervous if I was them.  I hate to break it to Nolan, but first of all, World War II is Spielberg's turf, and two, I think it's been mined a little too much.  How many more extremely profitable stories of WWII are there left to tell?  I mean, Clooney's WW2 thing didn't do boffo B.O. if memory serves!

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