"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Posts Tagged ‘Summer of 2001’

Pearl Harbor

Sunday, June 12th, 2011
chapter 4
chapter 4

2001posterreleased May 25th, 2001

WARNING: contains spoilers for PEARL HARBOR and World War II

After three financially successful action movies in a row (BAD BOYS, THE ROCK, ARMAGEDDON), Michael Bay got a once-in-his-career itch to make An Important Movie. He probly had SAVING PRIVATE RYAN on the brain, and definitely TITANIC.

Ever since James Cameron’s movie broke all box office records studios had been threatening to make asses of themselves by blatantly trying to catch more lightning in that same melodramatic-love-story-during-historic-disaster bottle. Jan de Bont almost did a love-story-on-the-Hindenburg movie, for example. PEARL HARBOR wasn’t as obvious of a copycat as that because 1) it was a love story set against a war movie as much as a disaster and 2) the love song on the end credits was by Faith Hill instead of Celine Dion. Totally different.
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The Mummy Returns

Thursday, June 9th, 2011
tn_mummyreturns
chapter 3

2001posterreleased May 4th, 2001

Okay, now the summer is really starting. Crocodile Dundee, Stallone in a car, those were appetizers. This is the first bonafide Big Ass Summer Movie of ’01, with the advertising and the toys and what not. It opened huge, and eventually made more than $433 million worldwide. I don’t think I know anybody that likes it, though.

THE MUMMY RETURNS is the second one, the one where the mummy returns for a while, then leaves again. Like the first MUMMY it begins with a narrated prologue that’s better than the movie proper because it doesn’t have Brendan Fraser or a bunch of talking in it. This one tells a little bit about the legend of The Scorpion King (The Rock), a guy who led a bunch of warriors in trying to conquer the world, but they all died of heat stroke so he was bit by a scorpion or whatever, and magic. His part is less than 5 minutes, he speaks one line and it’s not in English, and his narrative purpose is to return as a shitty CGI bug monster at the end. Also to set up a prequel spin-off that’s way more entertaining than the mummy movies, in my opinion.
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Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles

Tuesday, June 7th, 2011
tn_crocdundee3
chapter 1

2001posterreleased April 20th, 2001

This is gonna surprise the shit out of you when I tell you this, but CROCODILE DUNDEE IN LOS ANGELES is what they call a fish-out-of-water comedy. The fish is Crocodile Dundee, the water is Australia, the place outside of the water is Los Angeles. Actually Dundee might be more of an amphibian, he’s somewhat familiar with L.A. and is able to show his son and his pal around and teach them some things about the urban American way of life. But also he’s from the outback or whatever so he has lots of misunderstandings that lead to clotheslining people or stabbing things like they do constantly in Australia.
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2001: A Summer Movie Odyssey

Tuesday, June 7th, 2011
tn_2001summer
Introduction

I don’t know if you guys realize this, but this summer we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the summer that happened ten years ago. Pretty crazy, huh? Seems impossible to even consider, but I did the math and it all checks out. So I knew I couldn’t just let that go by without acknowledging it.

As you know I have an ongoing fascination with the evolution of the Big Summer Popcorn Movie. I love watching this type of movie, even some of the bad ones, have my opinions about them, wonder if they’ve gotten worse over the years, how they’ve changed or how our standards for them have changed. Last summer my project for exploring that was my study of the movie that gave marine-mammal-style live aquatic birth to the Big Summer Popcorn Movie itself, JAWS. Well, actually I didn’t write about JAWS proper, just all its sequels and some of its rip-offs. (what do you want, people? I do this shit for free.)
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