Word: hollywoodized
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...recession - if indeed we're calling it that - should scare Indiana Jones far less than a pit of snakes this summer. That's because the durability of the movie industry during economic downturns is a Hollywood axiom, like the notion that any movie with robots will open at No. 1 and all actresses over 40 live on a farm where they are well fed and exercised. Still, the widely accepted idea that movies are recession-proof will be tested in new ways in coming months, as Indy and Batman do battle with stay-at-home entertainments people have already...
...When money is tight, it's also a good time for Hollywood's bulletproof brands, like Pixar (Wall E), Will Smith (Hancock) and Ben Stiller (Tropic Thunder). "Whether it's an analgesic or a motion picture, you're putting your money into something familiar," says former studio executive David Weitzner, who teaches at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. This summer's old-is-new fare, like Indy, Steve Carell's Get Smart and the Sex and the City movie should all benefit from the recognition factor. But films with lesser-known pedigrees, like the graphic novel...
...battle lines were drawn. Since then, it's been God and Tyler Perry against the Hollywood establishment, which thinks that the films made from his plays are too square or weird to be mainstream and has not invested in them. (His movies are distributed by the indie Lionsgate.) Nor does he get much help from critics, whose reactions to his work range mostly from dismissive to baffled. His wild concoctions of brassy humor and fulsome sentiment seem to them out of fashion without being smartly retro. Perry must figure his critics have their minds made up in advance; he doesn...
That Perry's stuff deals with abrasions between working-class and middle-class blacks, between the restless young careerists and their sarcastic seniors, would seem to reduce his potential viewership even further. Devout African Americans over 30 are a hard demographic to shoot for. In 2005, Perry said, a Hollywood Pooh-Bah told him that "black folk who go to church don't go to movies." Yet from that group he's carved out a strong niche fan base, without much racial crossover. The audience for his first release was 4% white; that percentage is growing slowly but steadily with...
...think that Hollywood, like the chiselers of mountains, would side with the charismatic dreamers. But John Adams shows that Adams' unflashy tenacity--"Thanks be to God, He gave me stubbornness"--is an asset and his skepticism a form of idealism. To put it in today's terms, Adams is not the Founding Father you'd want to have a beer with. That might be Jefferson or witty, bawdy Franklin. But Adams beat Jefferson in the first contested U.S. election, in 1796, before losing to him in 1800. Who was right? Who ultimately won? Unlike the reply on Mount Rushmore, that...