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There’s a choice quote in this Emily Browning interview over at Nylon Magazine, which was reported by Cinemablend that merits a mention. Its implications are kinda shocking. The crux is the discussion of changes that Zach Snyder had to make in order to ensure Sucker Punch (review) would win a PG-13 from the MPAA, which apparently took seven tries. I’ll let Browning lay it out:
I’ve often defended the MPAA when films are given harsher ratings for breaking clearly-outlined rules (if you have more than one ‘f-word’, you get an R,

Brandon Grey at Box Office Mojo called the weekend box office ‘listless’. Nikkie Finke at Deadline Hollywood called it ‘a soft weekend’. And Brent Lang of The Wrap called it ‘sluggish’. ‘Weak’ was the word as three mid-to-low budget films opened with both solid reviews and decent box

Brandon Grey at Box Office Mojo called the weekend box office ‘listless’. Nikkie Finke at Deadline Hollywood called it ‘a soft weekend’. And Brent Lang of The Wrap called it ‘sluggish’. ‘Weak’ was the word as three mid-to-low budget films opened with both solid reviews and decent box

Much of the babbling over this weekends The Lincoln Lawyer has been about the idea that the well-reviewed legal thriller represents some kind of artistic reawakening for Mr. Matthew McConaughey. As is the case with many old-school movie stars, the critics and the pundits have a habit of ignoring McConaughey’s more interesting films while highlighting his lesser mainstream fare and then reaching the conclusion that he is not but a paycheck hack. While McConaughey is certainly guilty of some questionable artistic choices, there does seem to be a whiff of genre-bias around this newest

No one interests us more than ourselves. It’s true, I suppose. Writers, writing on writing, then, is my genre and perhaps yours, too. On occasion we’re treated to a category killer anthology that captures the best work of the year entitled The Best American

Now that Arnold Schwarzenegger has officially announced that he is returning to acting, it is perhaps as good a time as any to look back at some of his better works of would-be art. Since even his most recent picture (the underrated Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) is nearly eight-years old, the entire filmography of Mr. Schwarzenegger can almost be considered something of a relic worthy of study. What is worth noting is how succinctly his career can be divided up into three

This is the first, and hopefully last article I’ll be writing about Mr. Bieber that doesn’t involve his present and future film projects. I have nothing against the kid, but I have no more business discussing Bieber’s worth as a musician than I do discussing LeBron James’s first year on the Miami Heat. But there is much huffing and/or puffing about released excerpts of his Rolling Stone interview, including one bit that deserves a bit of

I have written a couple times about the David E. Kelly Wonder Woman reboot that is apparently scheduled for this fall on NBC. The show will allegedly involve a somewhat ‘realistic’ take on the Amazon warrior, with Diana being a CEO by day and a vigilante at night. The pilot is allegedly going to be directed by McG, best known for the Charlie’s Angels movies but also one of the creative forces behind the popular spy-comedy Chuck (he directed the pilot for that one

I’ve talked about this here and there over the last year, but we are now officially in 2011. Two things of note: 2011 will have the most packed summer schedule in recent memory. 2011 will have an obscene number of films being shown in 3D at multiplexes near you.
The Green Hornet, Sanctum, Gnomeo and Juliet, Drive Angry, Justin Beiber: Never Say Never, Mars Needs Moms, Thor, Priest, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Kung Fu Panda 2, Green Lantern, Cars 2, Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II, Captain America, The Smurfs, Conan the Barbarian, Fright Night, Spy Kids 4, Final Destination 5, Piranha 3DD, Dolphin Tale, The Three Musketeers, Contagion, Puss in Boots, Immortals, Happy Feet 2, Arthur Christmas, Hugo Cabret, Sherlock Holmes 2, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, and The Adventures of Tin-Tin. That’s 32 titles in 2011.
I’m sure I missed a few here and there. And I’m sure a handful of those titles may end up moving to 2012 and/or deciding to forgo the 3D conversion process for one reason or another. But that’s 32 titles right there being released between January 14th and December 23rd of this year. 32 titles over a 50-week period. And just six of those titles are being released in the first four months of the year. That gives us 26 films being released in 3D over a 34 week period. So yes, if everything above pans out, that means that there will be nearly one 3D film being released every single week for the last 2/3 of the year. So in the heart of the summer movie season, we’ll have several major 3D releases opening against each other.
In between the franchise pictures showing in 3D and the various 2D pictures, will there be room at any of your local theaters for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (trailer), Cars 2 (trailer), or Thor (trailer) in 2D? The question becomes, what will you do if the films you want to see are theatrically available in 3D, and only 3D auditoriums? This isn’t just a matter of moviegoers deciding that they just don’t need converted 3D to enjoy their favorite franchise pictures. Generally speaking, big-studio 3D releases that are offered in a healthy selection of 2D auditoriums end up splitting the ticket sales about 50/50. Point being, if moviegoers have the choice, about half of them simply opt for the 2D option. Just as film-goers have largely decided that maybe they don’t want to pay the $5 surcharge and wear glasses to enjoy films that do not need to be seen in 3D to be appreciated, studios have so much 3D product coming your way that you may no longer have the choice to see these films in 2D theaters.
So the question becomes for the vast majority of moviegoers, the ones who view moviegoing as a casual hobby and/or pleasant family activity, is it worth it? Is it worth paying $15-20 per ticket? Is it worth spending $80 to take a family of four to see Kung Fu Panda 2? Are you and your college pals going to indulge in Piranha 3DD if the ticket will set each of your buddies back $20? If you’re among those who said ‘no’, what will you do if you don’t have the option to see said pictures in the cheaper 2D alternative? Will you hold your nose and pay the ticket-price? Will you intentionally seek out cheaper matine showings? Will you wait 6 weeks and hit a local second-run engagement (for those lucky enough to have that option)? Or, will you just skip the theatrical experience all together and just wait 4-6 months and rent the picture on Blu Ray?
I’ve said repeatedly for the last year that studios can and should charge whatever they want for 3D, IMAX, Smell-O-Vision, etc as long as audiences have a viable 2D viewing option at a theater near them. Deny them that at your peril. In these economic times, movie-going is becoming less and less appealing as a casual entertainment option. While rising ticket prices combined with cheaper and cheaper home-viewing options have always been a problem, what we have is a perfect storm. We have the massive ticket-price increase for 3D engagements (+$5 a pop) combined with the various dirt-cheap rental options (Redbox at $1 a day for DVD, $1.50 for Blu Ray, the various monthly Netflix and Blockbuster options). The final nail in the coffin may be the flood of 3D product which, by making the biggest blockbusters into 3D-only engagements for much of the country, will basically amount to an across-the-board ticket price hike of about $5 in just one year.
What will happen after this year? I can only speculate, and I may be dead wrong. But I imagine that quite a few casual moviegoers, the ones who don’t NEED to see the newest releases as soon as possible, will opt to put even more of the major studio product on their future Netflix queue. And films that might have otherwise survived and/or flourished in 2D will struggle as the attendance drop won’t be evened-out by the higher ticket prices. If this does occur, surely 2011 will be the final year that studios basically convert everything they can get away with into 3D for the sake of higher ticket prices (after all, studios didn’t jump into the 3D craze just to ‘break even’). And if 3D again becomes an occasional specialty item for animated films and special events (like the eventual Avatar 2), will the audiences who fled the theaters in 2011 return in 2012? And what will happen to mass theatergoing if they don’t return?
Again, we won’t know until we know. But what are your thoughts? How prevalent are 2D auditoriums for 3D pictures in your area? Are there movies that you’d see in theaters for a cheap matine, but would skip if the only option was an uber-expensive 3D ticket? Are there any movies out this year that might actually benefit from the 3D?
Scott Mendelson

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When I was a kid, I dreaded family road trips. There were way too many of us to squeeze into one gray Buick LeSabre. And unlike my own kids, who have gadgets and apps galore to stave off boredom, my main source of entertainment was my sister, who was prone to imitating weird machine sounds and singing aloud to “Islands in the Stream.” Even at Denny’s, the tourist sanctuary of the world, our family stuck out like a sore thumb in matching sun visors, which we never wore any other time of year except on those seven consecutive days.
I could go on. But the point I really wanted to make is this: Read Helen Winslow Black’s Eat Pray Drive. It’s this indie writer’s [journal? memoir? newsletter?] that will get you reminiscing — for good or bad — about your own childhood road trips, but more importantly, sympathizing with your mother. (I meant to write about this over the summer, but I’m a few months behind on Scribd Editor’s Picks!)
I’m surprised Black hasn’t been picked up by a major publisher already, not just because she’s an incredibly talented writer, which she is, but because her stories are so universally appealing and… well… human. But check it out for yourself; read an excerpt of her first indie book, Seven Blackbirds, which could certainly hold its own against any book on retailers’ shelves today. Or any of her many, many great essays on Scribd.
And if you’re still not convinced that Helen is a writer to watch, you’ll be interested to know that she has a following of 65,000 readers on Scribd, the most of any independent author. I’m sure her mother would be proud.
Eat Pray Drive

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The other day I was bouncing around the iBookstore when I came across a tab for “Books by Chuck Klosterman.” I clicked the tab and 30 or so titles popped up. These were actually single essays for 99 cents or a $1.99.
This is a bold move for a book publisher as books, like magazines and cable television, are sold as bundles.
The typical Klosterman release is a bundle of 18 or so essays, typically retailing in soft cover for 15 or 16 bucks. To get one, you’d need to get them all. But that’s no longer the case, as you can purchase them individually in digital form.
When this type of content is no longer bundled, I have trouble differentiating it from really long blog posts. In fact, Klosterman’s latest collection, Eating the Dinosaur consists of essays broken up into brief snippets, which makes the experience feel even more like reading a printed-and-bound blog as opposed to a book.
What makes this doubly bizarre is the fact it’s the exact inverse of blogs becoming books, like the Stuff White People Like or Stuff Hipsters Hate which was created by Mashable News Editor, Brenna Ehrlich. That both these practices are occurring at the same time, book to blog or blog to book, signals disruption, sure, but also a lot of confusion for consumers.
Why? Take for instance Choire and Balk of The Awl. I may have read Klosterman’s stuff in greater depth — which is the experience books create, or at least used to — but I read The Awl more frequently than anything by Klosterman.
The Awl is free, but I have to pay for a Klosterman digital experience. Why? Because he’s a better writer? Then this begs the question, is Klosterman a better writer than, say, Paul Krugman? I don’t know, but I do know I read Krugman all day, every day for free.
Publishers are not going to have an easy way figuring out the value-cost trade-off for reading “experience.” But they really should, or convergence will kill them.

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Our teenage neighbor came over recently to visit our new puppy. We’ve known her for several years, and she’s blossomed into a beautiful young lady — a big girl, to my daughter. My daughter silently walked over to her, arms outstretched, and hugged her around the waist.
Our neighbor was clearly befuddled, as my daughter is not typically a hugger. In fact I can count on one hand the number of hugs she has given me in her lifetime, and one was out of fear of falling into the toilet when she was two, so it probably doesn’t count. However, I’d been seeing the same behavior toward bigger girls all summer long, usually accompanied by a suspicious sideways glance in my direction.
“I’m beginning to think my mother’s kind of a doofus,” said the hug, “and I want to be like you.”
She is the oft-hailed six-years-old-going-on-sixteen. Certainly I’d heard of the phenomenon, but apparently assumed my parenting skills were such that I’d be exempt. All I had to do was shelter my daughter from the outside world for a decade or so; encourage her that My Little Ponies and “Dora the Explorer” and pretend Bratz and “Hannah Montana” aren’t available here. How hard could it be, right?
Of course not right.
We went to a graduation party this summer that included many teenagers. When it came time to leave, I found my daughter in the game room, surrounded by a half circle of older girls. She was gazing adoringly at them, and they were smiling down on her and chatting. If I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn she was taking a class on teenage-girl-ness.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. My daughter has always been in a hurry to grow up. When she was two and she had her first crush (on my husband’s trainer), I knew we were in trouble. At four she asked if I could get her some breasts at the store. At six she was wearing sports bras and bikinis. And always, always, she watched the older girls, wherever she could find them. Watched, and then hugged.
My girl starts first grade this month, marking her first year in all-day school. Unfortunately, because of where her birthday falls, she had three years of half-day preschool, and because of where we live, she had half-day kindergarten. Also unfortunately, she’s been ready for all-day school since she left the womb. It’s finally happening, and she couldn’t be more excited. And I couldn’t be more afraid.
There will be older girls everywhere — in the halls, in the lunchroom, on the playground — girls from whom she will learn, she thinks, all of the life lessons that mommy is so intent on denying her. She will study how they dress, how they talk, how they act around boys, how they act with each other. She will memorize the kinds of school supplies and lunch boxes they use, the shoes they wear, the backpacks they carry.
She will try to wear her hair like theirs, and imitate their nail polish and lip gloss. She will adopt their language, their style, their attitudes. She’s going to watch them on the bus, observe their interactions, listen to their conversations and try to take in their very aura. And I’m beginning to see that there’s not much I can do about it.
It’s not that I’m obsolete, I know. I’ll still be in charge of where she is at all times, what clothes she owns, who she hangs with after school, what she watches on television and the video games she plays, but I have to admit that right now, those things don’t seem as important as what the older girls are in charge of.
For all intents and purposes, older girls are in charge of my baby’s soul for the next few years, until she starts believing that her own judgments are good enough and her own style is good enough and her own looks are good enough and her own life is good enough.
And they can help her with all of that, if they will try. I’m praying that the girls my daughter meets are happy, healthy, emotionally and physically strong, independent, kind, empathic and generous. I’m praying that she will meet girls like this, girls like herself who will convince her through their own being that herself is a great person to be.
So this one’s for the girls. Please be good to mine as I send her off to first grade; be kind to her, and protect her and remember that you were once down there looking up. Be aware that she’s listening to every word you say, and watching everything you do and that you have the power to influence her self-esteem in ways that I simply can’t.
And if she comes up and wraps her arms around you, please hug her back and maybe remind her that doofus though she may be, her mommy loves her … no matter how big she gets.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com