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Blu-ray Review Atlas Shrugged: Part One Blu-ray Review (1 Viewer)

RobertR

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Colin Jacobson said:
It stinks because talented people avoided it due to politics?  It's bad because many of the people involved lacked skill and talent - that's it. 
So you answered your own question. You have agreed that A-list talent wanted nothing to do with this film, only "desperate unknowns".
 

Patrick Michael

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The people focusing on budget are missing the point by a significant margin. Budget is irrelevant when it comes to the ability to lure good actors (and I agree with those pointing out that A list actors are often not the best in the business). How many of you knew who Naomi Watts or Laura Harring were before Mulholland Drive? And in fact $20 is a considerable budget for a smaller feature; Juno cost just $7.5 million for example. Slumdog Millionaire cost $15 million and used unknown actors. So these excuses are just that - excuses. The idea of a Hollywood blacklist is similarly laughable. Hollywood (and film critics) have a moderately liberal political bias for a very obvious reason - most creative people and academics/intellectuals are liberal. There's no grand conspiracy. Gary Sinese still works, and for heaven's sake we all quake at the name Jerry Bruckheimer. I'm currently working on a Disney project ... under an unabashedly conservative producer! So let's can the persecution complex. Atlas Shrugged failed because it wasn't a good movie.
 

RobertR

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Patrick Michael said:
How many of you knew who Naomi Watts or Laura Harring were before Mulholland Drive?
Interesting that you left out the "completely unknown and of no repute whatsoever" director/writer.
Hollywood (and film critics) have a moderately liberal political bias for a very obvious reason - most creative people and academics/intellectuals are liberal. There's no grand conspiracy
Who said anything about a "conspiracy"? I simply said Hollywood has zero interest in making a film based on Atlas Shrugged. Your own words confirm why this is so.
 

RobertR

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TravisR said:
I think his point is that Watts and Harring were unknowns but that didn't stop them from delivering great performances.
Helped by writing/directing of no note whatsoever, yes?
 

Colin Jacobson

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Originally Posted by RobertR


I've stated my point clearly but here it is one more time: "Shrugged" is a poorly made film and none of the excuses its apologists generate can explain away its crumminess. It's not a bad film because I don't agree with its politics or because it didn't have enough money behind it or because its message is Hollywood kryptonite - it's a bad film because the folks who made it aren't good at their jobs.


And that's that..
 

RobertR

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Colin Jacobson said:
it's a bad film because the folks who made it aren't good at their jobs.
Doesn't conflict in any way with the fact that the most talented people weren't interested in making the film.
 

Patrick Michael

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RobertR said:
]Interesting that you left out the "completely unknown and of no repute whatsoever" director/writer.
Not really - you're missing the point of the example. But there are plenty of completely unknown directors who make tremendous debuts; look at Lynch again. Your claim about Hollywood having no interest in Atlas Shrugged is demonstrably false and has already been covered upthread.
 

RobertR

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Patrick Michael said:
Your claim about Hollywood having no interest in Atlas Shrugged is demonstrably false and has already been covered upthread.
Really? Then why wasn't it a major studio picture made by prominent talent?
 

Mark Cappelletty

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ATLAS SHRUGGED: PART ONE is now part of a proud series of films that will never, ever produce the sequel even the title claims is in the cards (i.e. REMO WILLIAMS - THE ADVENTURE BEGINS). Others run the gamut from ERAGON to THE GOLDEN COMPASS to one of my favorites, THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI: ACROSS THE EIGHTH DIMENSION.
 

Patrick Michael

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RobertR said:
Then why wasn't it a major studio picture made by prominent talent?
For the usual reasons affecting all famous novels without filmed adaptations. Surely they can't all be politically inspired conspiracies? The property had previously been in development at Lionsgate, NBC and TNT in various iterations. The biggest obstacle in the most recent attempt was the rights holders themselves. They chose to put the project together themselves, opting to hire a screenwriter with a terrible resume rather than buying the Lionsgate draft (which had a vastly higher pedigree for obvious reasons). The rights holders were also faced with an expiring option - they would lose the rights if they weren't in principal photography by June 15 of last year. That meant immediately launching into production using whatever money they could pull together, which in this case was an impressive $20 million. Bear in mind this is $5 million more than Danny Boyle had to make Slumdog Millionaire; bear in mind this means they could have bought a $5 million actor or a $5 million director and still had enough money left to make a top-flight film. But they chose not to, even though talent like Angelina Jolie and Charlize Theron had expressed interest in the project. The rights holders chose to hire a scriptwriter who'd only written schlock; they chose to hire a director who had never directed. They chose to hire unknown actors. And I'm sure if those choices had paid off - if they'd found a freshman champion like George Lucas or Naomi Watts - you'd be singing their praises rather than crediting the Liberal Hollywood Agenda.
 

Patrick Michael

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Mark Cappelletty said:
ATLAS SHRUGGED: PART ONE is now part of a proud series of films that will never, ever produce the sequel even the title claims is in the cards (i.e. REMO WILLIAMS - THE ADVENTURE BEGINS). Others run the gamut from ERAGON to THE GOLDEN COMPASS to one of my favorites, THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI: ACROSS THE EIGHTH DIMENSION.
The Golden Compass is the film that proves Hollywood is not the bastion of godless liberal heathens some people like to think it is.
 

mattCR

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Originally Posted by Patrick Michael


The Golden Compass is the film that proves Hollywood is not the bastion of godless liberal heathens some people like to think it is.


*snort* even as an atheist myself, you have to realize how hilarious this comment is, right?
 

Patrick Michael

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mattCR said:
*snort* even as an atheist myself, you have to realize how hilarious this comment is, right?
Of course. But it's also true; that film was neutered in a way that completely undermined the entire point of the books. See also: V for Vendetta.
 

Douglas Monce

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From what I've read, the 20 million dollar figure that has been thrown around is actually not the production cost of the film, but rather the money that has been spent on development over the last 18 years, as it went from being a feature film to a TV mini series and back again. The estimated production cost the actual film is around 6.5 million. Another interesting thing to note about this film, is that when writing started on the script, they had a month to start production, or they would lose the rights to the book. I think its likely that the film was made at this time more to keep the book rights, than to actually produce a quality product. The fact that it was shot in 5 weeks, not much more than for a TV movie, can at least partly speak to that. Doug
 

Patrick Michael

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I don't think that's true. Box Office Mojo has the production budget at $20 million, and the way the industry works a new set of books would have been created for the film (as distinct from the various film and television efforts, which would have been bankrolled by Lionsgate, NBC and TNT anyway).
 

Douglas Monce

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Patrick Michael said:
I don't think that's true. Box Office Mojo has the production budget at $20 million, and the way the industry works a new set of books would have been created for the film (as distinct from the various film and television efforts, which would have been bankrolled by Lionsgate, NBC and TNT anyway).
The producers actually claim that the production cost of the film was about 10 million. I'm not sure they are talking about any seed money that might have been put up by Lionsgate or anyone else. And they actually do put in development cost into the final budget. The $40 million cost for Star Trek: The Motion Picture included the development cost from when it was going to be Star Trek Phase 2 on television, and when it was going to be a 6 million dollar feature. The actual production cost of that film was really about $28 million. The same thing with Cleopatra. Its $40 million budget included the Rouben Mamoulian, and all the sets that were built for it in England, and ultimately not used. Doug
 

Patrick Michael

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$10 million sounds feasible. It's not standard practice to wrap development budgets into the production budget if someone else is footing the bill. If that's the case then the original Spider-Man film cost about $500 million!
 

FrancisP

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Douglas Monce said:
But thats not the way its viewed in Hollywood. There is a reason why films with a conservative point of view don't get made in hollywood. There is a reason why Jim Caviezel, in spite of having been the star of a movie that made $600 million dollars, is doing TV movies. There is a reason that Tom Clancy's novels are altered before the reach the screen so as to remove even a slight right leaning point of view. But yes actors who aren't getting hired for anything else, would and did take parts in this movie because they felt they might get seen. The problem is very few people in Hollywood who hire actors will see this film. As a conservative who worked in that system, I can tell you that it was made very clear to me that I should keep my mouth shut about it, because not only will you not get hired again, but you will quickly have no friends because no one wants to be guilty by association. Doug
Another example is the 'The Path to 9/11'. This mini-series cost a pretty penny to make and did well ratingswise. Yet this has never made it to dvd while a mediocre film called 'The Reagans' made it to dvd probably because it's a attack film on Reagan. Apparently Disney is willing to walk away from millions because of politics.
 

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