May God Have Mercy on Your Summer

What the f---, moviegoing public? Where were we? Universal Pictures, which has always seemed to be an inadvertent favorite of mine based on the number of their DVDs I find myself owning, had a blockbuster summer: Drag Me to Hell, Land of the Lost, Public Enemies, Brüno and Funny People, only without the blockbuster. Only one of those movies (Public Enemies) is going to cross the $100m mark domestically, and it's depressing. I'm chastising myself too; even I only saw three of the five movies I listed (I have yet to catch Public Enemies or Brüno -- but I will).

Last summer, Universal put out crap like The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor and raked in $401.1 million dollars in worldwide grosses (before the movie probably racked up another $150m on DVD), and even earlier this year, people stuffed the studio's coffers with $342.9m for the fourth Fast and the Furious movie (although I admit, I did give it a mostly-positive review). So I'm baffled why people didn't show up for seemingly sure things like Brüno and Funny People. Sure, I guess Land of the Lost had mediocre trailers and genre fans and Raimi devotees are likely to get the most out of Drag Me to Hell, but I have a harder time understanding that no Borat fans wanted to check out Brüno and that Judd Apatow's name wasn't enough to lure audiences in to watch an Adam Sandler movie.

Regardless of the reason, the truth is depressing. The studio offered up one of the best summer lineups I can remember (usually there's at least one absolute dud, although perhaps that slot is reserved for Couples Retreat, which I bet is going to die a similar sad death at the box office), with the kind of material designed to appeal to both mainstream and specific audiences, and nobody saw it. I also expect Inglourious Basterds to underperform, which will not only screw Universal, but it will actually kill the Weinstein Company. If only the disgusting box office of Transformers: Rise of the Fallen could be chopped up and mailed to Universal, the world would be a better place. It can't, and I suppose I'll live, but the next person who complains that studios don't make any good movies is going to get smacked. Shame on you.

Just for the hell of it, here are the trailers for Universal's five summer releases and two upcoming releases. You can probably catch Land of the Lost and Drag Me to Hell at dollar theaters, while the other three are, as of this writing, ostensibly still playing at a theater near you. Awesomely, embedding is disabled on all of the trailers for the movies I could find. I guess disabling embedding is the new way of ruining YouTube. You know, studios, the solution is, get your own f---ing YouTube channel and allow only your own uploads of the trailer to exist, with embedding. That's how you win. This just makes me frustrated while I'm trying to promote your damn movies.

Drag Me to Hell | Land of the Lost | Public Enemies | Brüno | Funny People | Couples Retreat | Inglourious Basterds

Where the Hell is the Jetsons Movie?

A couple of years ago, famed director Robert Rodriguez made it known to the public that he was considering working on a couple of movies based on famous television shows. One was Land of the Lost, which was just released last week (and not directed by Rodriguez) while the other was The Jetsons, which Rodriguez was leaning more towards due to the script being further along. This, of course, proves that nothing is at it seems in Hollywood since The Jetsons was originally scheduled for a January 2009 release and has since been pushed back to 2012, and has no one attached to it except for a few malnourished writers and some producers who by now surely have a healthy respect for mind-altering substances. Land of the Lost, the movie that was further behind in production, is out and raking in money (more money than the non-existent Jetsons film, anyway, and despite how the critics may feel about that), but The Jetsons is about two hairs shy of being shelved. This leads me to a very important question:

Why?

There is no need whatsoever for this to take so long. With The Flintstones, the crew had to go to great lengths to bring Bedrock to life in such a way that made it look as if you were indeed watching the adventures of a modern Stone Age family set millions of years ago. But this is the freakin' Jetsons, for crying out loud! They're set in the not-to-distant future of 2062 and use flying cars, robots, and conveyor belts. How is this so hard to put together?! Most of the technology used in the show is either already here or not too far off, so surely the budget can't be that big of a deal. God knows Hollywood has enough cash to throw at Eddie Murphy, surely they could spare some for a movie that might be worth watching. It can't be a matter of casting, there's probably hundreds of actors out there who would be thrilled to try to be George Jetson or even just the voice of Astro, and I'm sure Hanna-Barbera would jump at the chance to make some more money, so what's the deal? Where is the progression of this film coming to a standstill? I've searched for answers but returned empty-handed and just a bit frustrated, because with Rodriguez at the helm The Jetsons could be a wholly entertaining movie with plenty of neat effects and a feel to it that's retro-futuristic, which is exactly how it should be. I want to see that movie, so where is it?

If this is Cogswell's fault, I'm going to bust a sprocket...