Showing posts with label Love in the Time of Cholera. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Love in the Time of Cholera. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Unfortunate Movie Titles Ever, or How I Rant... Sometimes

Things like this make me feel glad I have a blog and can air my comments (when of course, the site in question does not offer said option).
Over at ReelzChannel, a one Thomas Leupp discusses the The 10 Most Unfortunate Movie Titles Ever.
Now, I don't just want to rant about the fact that judging a movie by its title is at its best disrespectful and at its worst downright moronic but what I do want to point out is that 5 out of the 10 titles listed are lifted from their literary counterparts - something that obviously slips the mind of the writer who speaks of these titles as if they had been thought out for an implicit mainstream, uninformed American audience who decides which movies to watch based on their titles as they appear on the Friday paper. Titles, the article seems to suggest need to (and should) be advertising ploys over anything else - why else would Joss Whedon choose to name his movie Serenity if not to alienate his otherwise non-Browncoat audience?
Also where in the world do statements like "Movies named after countries rarely do well at the box office. On the other hand, movies named after cities, like Chicago, Fargo, Philadelphia, Nashville, Munich and Casablanca, are guaranteed moneymakers" hold? Last time I checked Munich hadn't even made two thirds of its budget, Fargo made $24 million (true out of a budget of $7 million), Nashville barely made $10 million (is this what "guaranteed moneymakers" are?) and I dare anyone to tell me that the box office hits from Chicago, Philadelphia and Casablanca come from the fact they were named after cities and not due to star-power + cinematic pedigree + great film-making.
Case in question: Love in the Time of Cholera. Regardless of the critical reception (which in every single case in the list gets downtrodden over 'box office sums') the movie has been garnering Leupp somehow doesn't even acknowledge that the title comes from a novel from a Nobel Prize Winner and instead goes directly to WebMD to check what the symptoms for cholera are.
RANT OVER.

Friday, November 16, 2007

El Amor en Los Tiempos del Cólera, or How Shakira goes back to her roots

El Amor en los tiempos del cólera is one of those books that I look back with fondness - even though I read it in high school, vaguely remember the plot details or characters' names, I remember loving reading it. But then, I have had that same experience while reading any one of Gabriel García Márquez's works. So when I heard they were making a movie about it, I was hesitant despite the fact that the last Gabo book-turned movie I had seen (Crónica de una muerte anunciada) was actually pretty good. The problem with 'Amor' was that it'd be an English production directed by Mike Newell. And yet knowing that Gabo would never let one of his books be turned into movies without his consent (he's always said that if his magnus opus 'Cien Años de Soledad' were to be turned into a movie he'd have requested Kurosawa to direct it) I was optimistic about what Newell and his cast (which includes Javier Bardem, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, Benjamin Bratt and Liev Schrieber as well as an array of Colombian actors) would do. They gave me hopes when they shot it entirely in Colombia - Cartagena to be exact.
Then came the publicity: with the overly sentimentalized tagline (How long would you wait for love?) and a trailer that seemed targeted at Oprah's audience/reader's club I was afraid audiences not familiar with Marquez's book would be turned off by what is arguably a very demographically inflected publicity.
And yet... since it was opened to the critical scrutiny of the industry it has not fared well: Currently, Rotten Tomatoes has it at an appalling 20% and I have to wonder whether I'm still up for watching it or whether I should spare myself...
Maybe I can go watch it when it opens this weekend and enjoy the visuals, the score and the three Shakira-penned songs (which I have already bought on iTunes and love in that nostalgic, closeted-latin way) and try and block out the travesty of it all. We'll see.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

El Amor en los Tiempos del Colera, or How I Can't Wait to See This Movie

I was excited when I saw the first poster, but now the new one with its simplicity (a rose, a woman, black background) I can't wait!