Cancellations! Reboots! Resurrections! Abigail Hobbs isn”t really dead. Does that mean that “Hannibal” is going to have a fourth season after all? In some dimension?
Here”s your keys to sorting it all out in your daily bullet points, everything you need to know to survive another day in entertainment.
• Hannibal Sabbatical
How did it happen? Why did it happen? What was this? How are we going to explain to our alien conquerers how we went in 30 years from not being able to say Damn on TV, to showing naked, split open human bodies arranged in a giant color wheel. THR notes of the show: “The series has been a hit with critics, who praised Fuller (Pushing Daisies, Wonderfalls) for pushing the boundaries of broadcast television with the show's graphic and visually creative deaths.” So now who is going to give our critics the visually creative deaths they yearn for? I wonder…
• Cancellation? What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
The cancellation dance these days is my favorite. The pathos of the cancellation and then the joy of resurrection at the Hulus and Yahoos. Back in my day, when you got cancelled, you stayed cancelled. But now cancellation is one more step in the great Hollywood circle of life which goes: Pitch Meeting, Development Hell, Dinner with Channing Tatum”s Assistant, Poster, Teaser Trailer, Junket, Cancellation, Netflix Resurrection, Cancellation, Death, Reboot.
The kids at Plotagon have gotten ahead of the game and designed an app where you can make your own 3D animated appeal to save “Hannibal.” Think some old letter writing campaign is going to do anything? If you want network executives to give you the time of day in 2015, you better be sending your message in animated 3D. So go make it yours now.
• The Day We Fight Back Again
The one thing they don”t teach, apparently, in film school these days is that you don”t always have to make an announcement. It”s okay if you don”t have anything much to announce, not to announce anything. Or to say, “Maybe let”s sit on that over the weekend and see how it feels next week.”
We live in the Announcement Era. A recent study (in my brain) concluded that 98 percent of all entertainment coverage is announcements. Release dates, posters, teaser trailers, super-villian”s boot size, craft services selections. Announcements these days seem to be mostly about quantity – keep the announcements flowing and hold your spot on the Reddit front page, is the operating principle.
So just fasten your space boots for this piece of excitement from the set of the “Independence Day” sequel title. Today is the day we hear the title of this new chapter. Any guesses? No, it”s not Independence Day 2, although that”s got a ring to it. Resurgence. Just say it to yourself” Resurgence. As in Independence Day: Resurgence. How”s not excited now, huh?
But wait! That”s not all. The folks on the IDR set pulled off a rare twofer, announcing the story AND revealing some pictures on the same day. Deadline had the story, “We also have the first images from the set of Independence Day Resurgence, one of the behemoth known as the Moon Tug and another of director Roland Emmerich posing with it. Also new today is the title treatment and motion title video; watch that above.”
If that's not show biz excitement, I don't know what is.
And then, save a moment to take in the aforementioned title treatment, in block letters. Resurgence! Resurgence!
• You can live in Sodapop and Ponyboy”s house from “The Outsiders” for a mere $51,000.
Yes, it”s in Tulsa, but that”s insane. What kind of crazy person would not buy that. According to this Mental Floss article, it would cost us $2.8 million to live in the Corleone”s house. So how can we pass that up? Just think about it: you could spray paint every object in the house gold and walk around all day saying, “Excuse me! How many times have I told you nothing gold can stay on this counter.” Who”s in?
• Kids and their games
The LA Times” Todd Martens reports from the just concluded E3 on his pick for the Games Worth Watching. And you won”t believe the trouble these overstimulated,soulless millennial are getting into now. #10 on Martens list, a game entitled “What Remains of Edith Finch.” Martens describes it, “This is a game about how we perish – how we live our lives and approach our final moments. The game is a collection of short stories, all of them strangely morbid but all removed from reality.” He quotes the producer, “The game is essentially about people being overwhelmed,” says Ian Dallas, Giant Sparrow creative director. “I think there's something fitting about that. There's no victory.”
Can”t imagine more fun than that! But myself I”m holding out for the game that perfectly simulates the experience of staring for hours down a garbage disposal imagining it could swallow the entire universe.
• Spiderman is a teenager.
The Spidey-stakes are over. And it”s Tom Holland, star of “The Impossible” and soon to be 19 years old.
This will be the second reboot of 14 planned reboots of the Spiderman franchise. Spiderman movies apparently work on the same principle as Apple computers – if something”s wrong, just turn it off and on again until the problem goes away. Drew McWeeney unwebs the meaning of all this.
• James Horner
Fingers still crossed, still missing. but damn, that”s a lot of Big Scores he did. I hope writing film scores is easier than writing blog posts.
• Dick Van Patten RIP
The 70″s were Dick Van Patten. To take it back a couple steps. Without Dick Van Patten as a passenger, it”s impossible to imagine “The Love Boat.” Without “The Love Boat” it”s impossible to imagine 70″s TV. Without 70″s TV, it”s impossible to imagine the entire era. So basically, without Dick Van Patten you have no Ramones, no Taxi Driver, certainly no Animal House or Blazing Saddles, you have no video games, personal music systems, no opening to China, no Rubik”s cube and no Apple Computer. Enjoying your iPhone today? Stop to remember Dick Van Patten, the man who made the America we know. It all hangs together by a thread..
• Hollywood Loses an Agent, Gains a Food Court
Back when the Young Turks took over CAA in 1995, it was a time of free-wheeling action agents, ready to cross swords and bluster and throw out ridiculous threats like captains of WW1 minesweepers. After the fall of Ovitz, the new guard was going to be all taking no prisoners, and talking like they were characters in The Godfather all the time. Flashier, louder, less principled: a Golden Era of Hollywood Acting Like Characters in Its Own Movies lay ahead. Gen X had stormed the gates and we were either going to burn the industry to the ground or turn it into a world of plunder all the time.
20 years later. One of those Young Turks, Doc O”Connor has left us. No he”s not dead, he”s going to go run some ice skating rink in New York. And his departure goes down with hardly a shrug. THR”s Stephen Galloway notes the sound of silence, “The absence of chatter within the industry – the phones barely buzzed when the news about O'Connor broke – speaks more of stability than turmoil, and contrasts with the convulsions that accompanied Ovitz”s resignation. O”Connor may have played a major part in expanding CAA”s sports business and its investment arm, but the agency is now a vast corporation, majority owned by private equity group TPG Capital and run by a solid and largely non-factional team that can swallow his loss – assuming others don”t follow.”
So that”s what the Gen X takeover of the most powerful agency meant – a giant glass building with a hole in the middle in Century City, TPG Capital, a haute Hot Dog stand in the garden…and no one even notices a power agent anymore? This is not the world Cobain dreamed for us all.
• 5 Ways to be a Less Basic Meryl Streep fan
Louis Virtel shows you the way.
• Alan Sepinwall on how Phyliss Smith became the unlikely star of “Inside, Out”
• And finally, a little summer inspiration, remembering a simpler time, when burgers were burgers and subs were subs and everyone knew what they were putting in their mouths, more or less: