Marketing
De-gaying movies: Why bother?
By Vadim Rizov on 11/10/2009
Filed under: Marketing
Due on December 11th, Tom Ford's "A Single Man" is one of the more hotly-tipped Oscar frontrunners. It's got just the right combination of gears in motion: a prestigious literary source (Christopher Isherwood), period production design (the early '60s), and the Weinstein brothers handling the Oscar push. But after paying a reported $2 million for the rights to Ford's directorial debut in Toronto, the Weinsteins apparently only just realized that the film was, uh, gay. For those who saw the film in Toronto or Venice, suspicions were first aroused last week when the film's first poster was unveiled, revealing Colin... MORE »
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The Wes Anderson Happy Meal.
By Vadim Rizov on 11/03/2009
Filed under: Marketing
It's expected that a blockbuster like "Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen" get nonsensical tie-ins like Strawberry-Peanut Butter M&Ms -- junk movies spawn junk food. And we don't squawk in protest at "Twilight: New Moon" band-aids, if only because it takes a certain amount of wit (or, uh, greed) to propose using a vampire's face to stop bleeding. But then there are our auteurs, our artists, whose work is challenging, unusual, not just empty entertainment. Clearly, they, of all people...do not deserve marketing and merchandising? McDonald's has a "Fantastic Mr. Fox" Happy Meal, which brought out the fiend in the Guardian's... MORE »
"Godfather" vodka, for the cinephile drunk.
By Vadim Rizov on 10/07/2009
Filed under: Marketing
The latest addition to the list of movie tie-ins you never knew you wanted is "The Godfather" Italian Organic Vodka, which American vodka consumers -- $15 million strong a year -- will have the chance to imbibe come April 2010. At last, the legions of Americans who insist "The Godfather" is the greatest movie ever made, no contest, can now drink themselves into a stupor in franchise-approved fashion, along with "Apprentice" fans who knock back Trump Vodka, "Ghostbusters" lovers who sip Dan Aykroyd's Crystal Head Vodka and -- way down at the bottom of the list -- Danny DeVito's Premium... MORE »
There & Back: Joel Schumacher.
By Vadim Rizov on 09/23/2009
Filed under: Marketing
For years, Joel Schumacher's name was one to be hissed out with great venom: despite some nostalgic goodwill from '80s kids for "St. Elmo's Fire" and "The Lost Boys," unleashing "Batman and Robin" on the world made him as ripe a target as Michael Bay. But this weekend, his latest film, "Blood Creek," wasn't just dumped; it was dumped to an unspecified number of theaters under a name whose box office results can't even be tracked. This has to be some kind of new record for fastest fall from grace. Just two years ago, Schumacher was directing Jim Carrey in... MORE »
How to outhype "Avatar."
By Vadim Rizov on 09/15/2009
Filed under: Marketing
Robert Zemeckis is still trying to make motion capture happen. His upcoming Jim Carrey-starring version of "A Christmas Carol" will be his third made using the process, despite the fact that neither 2004's "The Polar Express" nor 2007's "Beowulf" was an overwhelming triumph at the box office. There's little indication that the public cares what sets "motion capture" apart from original recipe CGI; at press time, it does not yet appear to have escaped the uncanny valley. That Zemeckis keeps getting away with this suggests that being willing to test-drive unwieldy new technology is still worth a large investment to... MORE »
"Mystery Team" and the case of the indie comedy.
By Stephen Saito on 08/27/2009
Filed under: Marketing
The case of the indie comedy has been a tough one to crack. Films like "The Foot Fist Way" and "Wet Hot American Summer" have traditionally struggled in theaters, only to go on to success on DVD and permanent rotation on cable. That's why the "Mystery Team" is coming to the rescue. Tonight, the Derrick Comedy troupe will premiere their Sundance fave about a trio of "Encyclopedia Brown"-esque kiddie crimesolvers forced to grow up fast when faced with a murder investigation, but it won't be in front of the usual crowds in New York and L.A. Instead, Derrick members Dan... MORE »
Getting closer to the world's first $0 movie.
By Vadim Rizov on 08/21/2009
Filed under: Marketing
There's a history of movies whose low budgets and origin stories are more famous than the films themselves. From his 1992 $7,000 debut "El Mariachi" onward, Robert Rodriguez has practically built a career out of this kind of thing. A decade later, Shane Carruth would make a much better movie -- "Primer" -- for the same number (unadjusted for inflation!), but people didn't talk about his budget as much. That's because all there was (and is, honestly) to Rodriguez is undisciplined fanboy enthusiasm and extreme production ingenuity; Carruth's movie would have been a knock-out no matter its cost. People are... MORE »
When Twitter gives you lemons.
By Vadim Rizov on 08/20/2009
Filed under: Marketing
While no one knows how Twitter will manage to make money for itself, how it is at losing and making it for others has been a hot topic this week. At the Baltimore Sun, Michael Sragow looks into the so-called Twitter effect of instant feedback making or breaking a movie and -- cautiously -- concludes it's mostly baseless. As Gregg Kilday -- film editor for the Hollywood Reporter -- points out in the article, "Even if you don't have Twitter, a lot of people, especially kids, have long had the ability to text each other, sometimes from within the theater...... MORE »
Selling "Skin" the old-fashioned way.
By Vadim Rizov on 08/17/2009
Filed under: Marketing
Marketing can make or break an opening weekend -- if no one's heard of your film, no one's going to see it. Sans trailer, TV ads, posters or billboards, the Sophie Okonedo apartheid drama "Skin" was dying in limited release in London. As director Anthony Fabian put it on the film's blog, "It's hard to know, apart from the editorial, how anyone could possibly know the movie's out there." The trouble actually started earlier, in production, when, as he informed the Independent, "I was told by a respectable distributor in Britain that it would not distribute a film with a... MORE »
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