EDITORIAL
A word of wisdom...
Even though a good box office doesn't always mean a movie is good, or that a good movie doesn't always make good money for that matter, it can still be a fascinating tool when looking back on trends or the careers of actors or filmmakers you love. But the only real way to test a movie's staying power is to observe whether it has remained in the general conversation of all that is cinema after a decade or two. Sure, a movie could garner $168 million and make all the actors, filmmakers, and shareholders really happy, but if an audience forgets about it the second the movie is over, let alone a few decades later, does it really matter? (Courtesy Robert Jordan Hunt)...
Have a pleasant Friday night at the movies,
Jean Constant
Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" and Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" were meant to be counter-programming for each other. They both opened in theaters on July 21, 2023, and one can practically hear the studio executives at both Universal and Warner Bros. positing that a younger audience would be dropped off to see the PG-13-rated "Barbie" while adults would sidle into the theater next door to watch "Oppenheimer." What no one seemed to predict was that there was a great deal of overlap between the two films' intended audiences, and a grassroots campaign began to see the two pictures as the ultimate double feature. The phenomenon nicknamed Barbenheimer began. Charles Band, the head honcho of the long-lived B-movie studio Full Moon Features, has put a feature film called "Barbenheimer" into pre-production. Band, as brave genre lovers know, is the mastermind behind the "Puppet Master" franchise, the "Gingerdead Man" series, the "Evil Bong" series, the "Subspecies" franchise, the "Josh Kirby ... Time Warrior" series, the "Trancers" series, "Demonic Toys," "Castle Freak," and dozens of other notable grindhouse, horror, and softcore sex movies. (The latest film from Full Moon was "Subspecies V: Blood Rise.”) Coming sometime in the holiday season of 2023, "Barbenheimer" will be a comedy film about living dolls who build an atomic bomb...