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SREP SENET ve, TNS na RP TSITR Rn A "WEEKEND STAR" FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2001 =9 Making money's more important than making good films ® ® 0000 60 0 0 ¢ SCREENING ROOM By John Foote The year 2001 has been, in my opinion, "the worst year for film in quite some time. In fact, it might just be the worst year in recent memory for quality cinema. Audiences are paying to see junk this year, and allowing big budget, horrible films to make money. Perhaps the trend was set earlier this year when Gladiator won the Academy Award for best picture, sending out a mes- sage that films considered the best do not necessarily have to be so. As we approach the end of September, - the only films I can recall with any degree of fondness have been Blow, Bridget Jones' Diary, Shrek, Al, Planet of the Apes, and the re-release of Apocalypse Now with added footage. Out of hundreds of films released in North America this year, I can come up with just six titles of worth, and one of them is 22 years old! ~~ 1 said to my wife last: week about the state of the film industry: I was in a hospi- tal for four months and movie-wise, I did not miss a thing. How does something like Freddy Got Fingered get made? Who makes the decision that Tom Green is able to write, direct and star in a film that is essentially a series of Tom Green gross- out sketches? Did someone at Fox 2000 actually believe this thing would make money? That anyone believed it would be a good film is beside the point, the film was made to bring in money, nothing more. Granted, comedy is a unique taste to everyone, and | am told there are people -who find Green very comical, but I am not among them, His stupid humour depends on gener- ating laughs by abusing animals, babies, or discussing or acting out with bodily functions and fluids. Watching the screen- er for this piece of junk, 1 became con- vinced I was watching the worst film in the history of the movies, at the very least the single most unnecessary. Other dreadful films include the big budget war film Pearl Harbour, which made tons of money without the benefit of a screenplay or semblance of a story- line. Do audiences really go to theatres to see "stuff' get blown up? What a trailer park mentality that is! This could have been a moving explorartion about one of the darkest days in American history, but instead was a hokey action romance with good visual effects. Strong visual effects could not save The Mummy Returns, which was essen- tially more of the same as we saw in the 1999 film. Part way through watching this mess of a movie | reminded myself that | had seen this before, two years ago in The Mummy, but the sequel is just bigger and louder. Not a shred of character develop- ment, not a storyline in sight, just mum- mies chasing humans around and lots of gunfire. Am | demanding too much to ask for a story attached to a movie? Perhaps | am; look what happened to A.l, Steven Spielberg's ambitious science fiction film that brilliantly explored the capacity for cruellty. Audiences stayed away because: this film made demands on its audience. Nothing about A.l. was warm and fuzzy, though nothing was quite as spiky as Stanley Kubrick would have had the film being either. Spielberg made a film that, | think, is some kind of masterpiece and will be discovered in years to come. Today's audiences do not, as a rule, like to think. A.l. not only forced audi- ences to think, there were elements of the picture that were outright unpleasant, and not one, but two demanding conclusions to the film. Now in fairness, | do not pay to see movies, but if one is bad, | consider it a horrible waste of my time, which is far more valuable than money. I understand audiences pay up to $12 for a film, and they want to be enter- tained. Trust me, | both appreciate and understand that way of thinking. Sometimes it can be fun and challenging for a film to provoke discussion, for it to mean something different to you than it did to me, for us to understand one another's points of view on the movie. ALL did that in the same way Apocalypse Now (1979) did so years ago; audiences never forgot and grew to admire the film in years to come. Shrek was smart, funny and beautifully created on a computer. A modern-day fairy tale that had as much to say about Hollywood as fairy tales, this was the hippest animated work | have ever seen. Adults loved this movie because it was smart, the humour was not stupid, did not rely on car chases, or drooling idiots, but rather on the characters created by the animators and voice talents of Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz and John Lithgow. At this point, Shrek is the highest money-maker of the year, and many critics are calling the film, the best of the year. Tim Burton's reconceptualization of Planet of the Apes was not the dark, satir- ical drama | had hoped it would be, but provided some welcome fun at the movies. Tim Roth's nutty General was ter- rifying and richly deserving of an Oscar nomination. However, overall, the film was little more than an action piece, sadly lacking in the stinger ending that the 1968 film has become famous for. It is not that Planet of the Apes was bad film, it cer- tainly is not, just that we expected more from this visionary director. Critics in the beginning had high praise for the film, but admitted upon second viewings, there was not much there, and | heartily agree, it was fun, nothing more. I find it ironic that Francis Ford Coppola chose to re-release his new ver- sion of Apocalypse Now, entitled, Apocalypse Now Redux (2001) in a year fraught with so many bad films. Coppola was the renegade film maker who broke from the studios to finance his own films, and in doing so created a surrealistic mas- terpiece that set the standard for film making excellence. Where is this type of film making now? Where are the daring directors willing to Turn to Page 17 Williamsons Uxbridge wish, to thank the following sponsors that supported this year's Annual Williamson Cup Golf Tournament. Ron Noble Insurance Fitzpatrick Electrical Contractor Inc. Uxbridge Computer Sp PKF Hill Chartered Act The Bank of Nova Scotia James Campbell Insurance Wheels Automotive Dealer Supplies Inc. 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