I'm totally going to see Big Momma's House 2 right now.

I would kill you if it weren't for that whole "death penalty" thing.

Isn't seeing Big Momma's House 2 like getting the death penalty?

hawhawhawhaw

touché!

Toa Fraser? No. 2? When did that happen? I live in New Zealand, I'm a Film graduate... I should probably be paying way more attention.

Dude. It's all over the news here.

But the NZ Listener editorial this week helps put it all into perspective.  :P

ahh, good old tall poppy syndrome. Cut 'em down kiwis!

Well, it looks like I am the third New Zealand poster in a row.  I am not surprised. Last week I saw a guy walking around Auckland with a Monkey Island Tshirt. (fan made?)

Of course, what is really important, is how we will definitely kick the All Blacks' asses during next World Cup.
(I won't reveal my nationality to avoid (justified)  teasing ;)

Well we haven't won the damn thing since the inaugural one in when, 1986?

And I don't think that editorial is "Tall Poppy Syndrome", Welch is very supportive of the movie, just ranting at the amount of meaningless awards dished out for art. You could probably draw parallels to the gaming industry. Every game box has some sort of award or GOTY sticker from some website or magazine or other that I've never heard of.

I don't even have a TV... well I do, but all it does is block the hallway. I lost faith in TV when I was so majorly disappointed with a highly anticipated episode of The Simpsons. Also I lost patience when I began to associate great music more and more with toothpaste, or bread, or whatever. Even a distinctive native bird call makes me think of motor oil, which I think is advertising at its most insidious.

I kind of agree with the editorial, though. It irritates me that every second book in the store claims to be 'the international number one bestseller', and has a shining commendation from Time magazine. It's a bit unfair to say that every film that isn't a turkey wins an award, though. And I'm quite sure Toa Fraser doesn't have the budget to win an award on advertising alone. Denis has used the usual journalistic tactic of juxtaposing some ideas and leaving it to the reader to conclude that point B does not necessarily relate to point A.

This has nothing to do but I'm quite happy to discover Ron Gilbert has a blog (and I'm now among the million people who said that as a comment). Ron, just the way your write and your sens of humor makes me feel I'm playing your games again, I kind of recognize the vibe :)

Games need more good writers like you.

Popular and criticaly acclaimed are qualities that only a handful of games have... That's just another similarity of the video game and movie industries...

It's because movie/game makers always assume that their customers have more taste than they actually have (the average gamer/movie goer has absolutely no taste whatsoever).

But movie/game makers also often forget how astute the average customer can be... they will always notice when people try to distract their attention away from fundamental flaws in plot or narration by putting shiny things on the screen. Of all the millions of people who have seen "Big Mother's House II", I doubt anyone other than the lowest common denominator came out of the cinema with any real satisfaction.

I'm still trying to figure out why such movies as Big Momma's House and Cheaper by the Dozen are all getting sequels.

Because they become #1 at the box office.

I'm still trying to figure why the cinematic equivalent of suffering a leg amputation with a tea spoon becomes #1 at box office.

The implications of such a fact are frightening...

That reminds me of a "happy tree friends" chapter...

Because some people are morons who still think Steve Martin is funny. These are the same people who seem to think men in drag are funny. It's a real shame really, so many good movies *coughSerenitycough* don't get the recognition they deserve whilst tripe like this get's a sequel and more merchandise than they know what to do with.

Oh, that's easy.

Man in dress = BIG LAFFS!

WOW ! Something new and clever !

This reminds me of last year's Academy Awards, when Chris Rock went out to a mall to ask the masses about the films nominated that night. Not one person he was shown speaking to had seen a nominated film, and when questioned about his favourite movie that year, one man responded "Whoa, 'White Chicks' dude!"

Sometimes weird things happen and crap hits the top of the movie charts, or the singles charts, or weird fads grip the entire country.

But the great thing about popular culture is that it provides the back drop to most peoples lives.  Search within the backdrop of trashy popular culture and there is still a unique good feeling worthy of nostagia.

Pop trash can be quite inspiring.

Take maniac mansion for instance. Arguably the films that it was parodying were crap. Horror movies and those eighties kids movies involving a bunch of kids sneaking away on an adventure.  Looking back on most of them, they were pretty poor. Yet maniac mansion managed to capture the zeitgeist of that period, just with a massive moon in the sky, the sound of chirping crickets and three kids outside an old house. It captured their dreams and their motivations, no matter how silly - ie become a rock star, a writer etc etc.

Theres no reason why someone couldn't make an adventure game involving all the stupid pop trash of a particular moment in time, and mail it round. People would be able to connect to it, just because the things that it is subtley paradoying are relevant to them. Society always have pop trash, but the closer you are to the pop trash the closer you are to influencing the minds of the masses.

Note that "No. 2" won the AUDIENCE award in the World Cinema competition, which means that the people who saw it in the audience rated it highly, in large numbers by way of ballot. In essence, it won the popularity contest in that category. Maybe you can say all the audience members were acting like "critics" when they assessed the quality of the movie... but nahhhh. So really this whole thing is Popular vs. Popular (but among two totally different sets).

I dunno really, but I'd hazard a guess that most of the people who came out of "Big Momma's House 2" said "awww, that was shit." So maybe it wouldn't be actually popular.

It is because movies that win awards are not entertaining.

It's a miracle that films of that budget are made here in NZ, the govt just gives tax relieves to king-kong size projects. Then the little ones can go in a lot of troubles themselves, like River Queen (thanks to Agatha from Minority Report). I am proud though of neat little productions, like the world's fastest indian!