The Deathbed of Corporate Media

Dark, quiet, haunting- the REAL Hellboy

I turned off Hellboy Potter Hellboy II: The Golden Army just around the point they left Diagon Alley. Now, it may be a fine film if you're into Willow or Labyrinth-type fantasy movies but has less than zero to do with the dark, moody Hellboy comics I love so dearly. 

I have to admit I wasn't encouraged by the trailer for it which is why I waited so long to watch it. Although Golden Army didn't do all that well at the box office, it did get an 88% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

But upon closer inspection I noticed that many of the reviews marked as "fresh" on RT were actually middling or even leaning negative. And this is not the first time I've noticed an inconsistency in their fresh/rotten labeling. 

More recently a few middling to negative reviews of The Spirit were marked as fresh, which leads me to believe the RT editors are fanboy types (or maybe they simply felt pity on Frank Miller, who's been taking a severe beating for his first solo film). If anyone else has noticed a subtle bias in the RT ratings let me know. I don't pay any attention to reviews anymore so it doesn't really affect me. I'll see a movie if I'm interested in the premise or it has a cool trailer, and that's usually on DVD anyway. 

But a lot of folks with short attention spans seem to think Rotten Tomatoes is some kind of oracle. If I were in the movie-making business I might be a little concerned. Because they have enough problems as it is, even with the success of recent blockbusters like Iron Man and Wall-E. Certainly the movie critics have their own problems as well. 

There's an interesting article in the Los Angeles Times about At The Movies co-host Ben Lyons (son of my least favorite Sneak Previews host ever- well, next to Michael Medved, that is) which notes that movie criticism has become largely irrelevant, and that "with readership plummeting, newspapers and magazines have had to drastically thin their ranks of critics. In recent months, the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, Newsweek, Newsday, the Village Voice and The Times, among other outlets, have let critics go." 

 None of this is a surprise- Old Media across the board is taking a beating. Newspapers as we know them may soon cease to exist, magazines may soon follow, and network television is on the ropes as well. Heather Havrilesky writes in Salon:

But the TV industry is scrambling to adjust its business model in a cruel and unforgiving new world, where viewers suddenly expect to watch any show they want, whenever they want it. Like newspapers, book publishing and the music industry, TV networks and cable channels are trying desperately to distribute their shows in new, convenient ways while still delivering the advertising that keeps their multibillion-dollar industry afloat.

Although DVRs have been around for several years now, 2008 was the year that regular broadcast programming seemed to lose its hold on the population once and for all.

But Havrilesky doesn't accept the usual excuses. The real problem with TV is the terrible writing and the suffocating boredom of the usual formulas.

The golden age of television may be over just a few short years after it began. 2008 not only marked one of the worst years of TV in the last decade, but all of the momentum and promise of the past few years seemed to vanish in a haze of crappy, unoriginal new programming, lackluster sophomore shows, flaccid sitcoms and pointless cable comedies. No offense to Alan Ball, but when an amusing but uneven first season of "True Blood" is nominated for a Golden Globe award for best TV drama, you know there's something wrong with the state of the small screen.

For better or worse, Hollywood has been a unifying force in American culture for almost a century now, Television for more than 60 years- who knows what will happen to the society at large as people begin to atomize around niche (rather than mass) entertainment. Particularly during an economic downturn. 

 Which is why it's so interesting to see how symbolically-loaded so many of the big-ticket movies are (Hancock and Indiana Jones come to mind), a trend I think will strengthen with the rise IMAX and 3-D films (IMAX certainly has an interesting semiotic track record). 

Certainly 2009 is already looking to be a semiotic bonanza. As so many of the old certainties melt away, these blockbusters are becoming the new civic religion. The new temple cult, if you like. Which is exactly why it's worth your effort to keep a very close on what's playing at the local multiplex.