The Roundtable in the News
The 2015 Razzies
It's no secret that 2014 was a good year for the film scene, and that includes the high number of real turkeys that were churned out this year.
Special recognition should go to Cameron Diaz, who starred in three duds: "The Other Woman," "Sex Tape," and the "Annie" remake. Adam Sandler distinguished himself with both "Blended" and "Men, Women and Children."
I saw two truly inept movies this year, "The Legend of Hercules," with The Rock, who deserves better, and "Into The Storm," which looked like the home movie it was trying to be.
Anyway, here are The Razzies! Enjoy!
http://www.razzies.com
— LT
Posted at 1:30 PM Links to this post
Labels: Adam Sandler, Cameron Diaz, Kirk Cameron, Nicolas Cage, The Razzies, The Rock
"Are you sure you want to give it to me?"
An Elvis memory, from 1974
By Patricia Trodson
On the day Elvis Presley died, there was an interview by a Boston reporter with an English classical music critic who wrote for a major London newspaper.
"What," the reporter asked, "Caused people to call Elvis, a rock and roll singer, 'The King?'"
"Because," the Englishman replied, "He was the king. Elvis could turn glitz into royalty."
Labels: 2001: A Space Odyssey, concert, Elvis Presley, Providence, Providence Civic Center, The King
Birthday today: Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston was born on Jan. 7, 1891, and is best known for her 1937 novel, "Their Eyes Were Watching God."
Here are the first three paragraphs of that novel:
"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of Men.
"Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.
"So the beginning of this was a woman and she had come back from burying the dead. Not the sick of friends and ailing with the pillow and the feet. She had come back from the sodden and the bloated; the sudden dead; their eyes flung wide open in judgment."
These words, this matter-of-fact reportage of the heart has echoed down the years. It is the very template of the dreams of people who have no chance.
Zora Neale Hurston died in 1960.
Labels: 20th century literature, film noir, Their eyes were watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
The Imitation Game's brilliant ad campaign
By Lars Trodson
Here you have a movie, "The Imitation Game," that takes place in Britain about 70 years ago that tells the story of a gay man trying to crack a Nazi code. That man is Alan Turing, who may be a legend but is no household name, no Robert Oppenheimer, no George S. Patton. The "code" is the infamous Enigma Code, and deciphering it is a key element in Allied victory. "The Imitation Game" stars a respected young actor, Benedict Cumberbatch, who is gaining wide-spread fame but has not proved yet to be a draw at the box office.
So how would a studio, in this case The Weinstein Company, market this film to that all-important younger ticket-buying demographic when the subject matter is so challenging?
Labels: Alan Turing, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dick Costolo, Eric E. Schmidt, Google, Marissa Mayer, Max Levchin, PayPal, The Imitation Game, The Weinstein Company, Twitter, Yahoo!
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LARS TRODSON is the award-winning editor of The Block Island Times. The Roundtable was founded in 2007.
Lars Trodson can be reached at larstrodson@gmail.com.
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