Linda Holmes thinks these romantic movie titles leave something to be desired:
The new Jennifer Aniston/Aaron Eckhart romance opening tomorrow is called … Love Happens. Which would seem to be based on … you know, the common phrase? “[Blank] Happens”? I’m not saying they’re directly attempting to link love and [blank], but it sort of feels that way, doesn’t it?
Sierra Entertainment today announced that Radical Entertainment is developing Crash Bandicoot: Mind over Mutant, a new installment of the Crash Bandicoot video game franchise scheduled for release this October on Wii, Xbox 360, PSP, DS and PS2. In Crash Bandicoot: Mind over Mutant, a rejuvenated Neo Cortex is taking over the world one brain at a time. Cortex and N. Brio devise a new kind of evil – a text-messaging, do-anything device which controls both mutant and bandicoot minds. Armed with his quick-wits and lightening agility, Crash must free his friends, the titans and save the day.
Dr. Blair A. Rudes, Associate Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, died unexpectedly on March 16, 2008, after spending the afternoon exercising. An internationally known linguist and expert in American Indian languages, Dr. Rudes came to UNC Charlotte as an Assistant Professor in 1999 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2005.
During his career at UNC Charlotte, Dr. Rudes became famous as a “Hollywood linguist.” In 2004, film director Terrence Malick hired Dr. Rudes to work as a consultant and dialect coach for the film The New World, which deals with the founding of Jamestown and the interaction between the Native people and the English settlers. Malick wanted the American Indian characters to speak in their native language, but this language had been extinct for over 200 years. Dr. Rudes drew on his expertise in the history of American Indian languages to revive the Virginia Algonquian language. He then translated the dialog spoken by the Native characters into Virginia Algonquian and coached the actors on how to pronounce their lines in this language. Dr. Rudes’ contributions to this film attracted widespread publicity including a feature story in the New York Times. Impressed with Dr. Rudes’ contributions to The New World, film director Carter Smith hired Dr. Rudes to serve as the Mayan Dialogue Coach for the film The Ruins, which will be released by Dreamworks later in 2008.
Sega Europe is polling the world (or a reasonable sample thereof) to name the new alien baddies in the next iteration of its legendary Sonic The Hedgehog franchise. My vote? The Darkmood.
Sonic is cool and all, but he’s no Crash Bandicoot.
“We expect Pure to set a new standard for off-road racing that delivers adrenaline-inducing vertical experiences with spectacular aerial tricks and intense wheel-to-wheel racing,” said Craig Relyea, senior VP of global marketing at Disney Interactive Studios. “Pure will appeal to a wide audience based on the game’s jaw-dropping aerial tricks, breakneck racing and vast environments.”
Now, Disney is embarking on a $1.1 billion, five-year effort to get California Adventure on track. The blueprints call for ripping out ho-hum rides and adding elaborate new ones, rebuilding the park’s entrance — a hodgepodge of turnstiles, a miniature Golden Gate Bridge and pastel tile murals — to shift the focus to Disney iconography.
A Phoenix-based investment team said today it wants to build a 240-acre rock ‘n’ roll theme park in Pinal County intended to rival Orlando’s Disney World complex and the Busch Gardens amusement parks across the country.
The $800 million project, which is proposed to include a luxury hotel and retail space, would be known as Decades Music Theme Park. One of the consultants for the project was a project manager of Disney’s Epcot Center.
A number of haloed Hindu gods and goddesses have debuted in the frenetic world of animation over the past five years. Their appearance marks a shift from a decades-long period in which Indian children grew up almost exclusively on American TV and movie characters, including Mickey Mouse, Tom and Jerry, and Spider-Man.
Like many couples, my wife and I have a deal; we take turns picking which movie we’re going to see next. I usually look for an action-adventure; she typically chooses a romantic comedy. As luck would have it, it was her turn over the holidays, and she dragged me along to see the new Disney film Enchanted.
I’d heard very little about it, other than the fact that it starred that McDreamy character from Grey’s Anatomy. That’s one strike against it already, I thought.
Was I wrong! It turned out that I liked everything about Enchanted, from the gently subversive, stereotype-flipping story (of course), to the clever animation (a fresh homage to the classic Disney tradition we thought was gone forever), to the witty songs (by Alan Menken of The Little Mermaid fame), to the inspired casting (including Susan Sarandon as the villainess, Amy Adams as Giselle, and, yes, Patrick Dempsey as her love interest).
What struck me immediately after the credits had rolled was what a smart branding move Disney had made. What’s been the knock on Disney’s animated films? They’re too saccharine. They’re too cookie-cutter. They’re too “The Hero’s Journey”. The Shrek series has made a killing mocking the Disney way.
Now, for the first time since Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Disney has an answer. It’s the Saturday Night Live strategy: there’s nothing more powerful than a brand having fun with its own image. Nobody can do a better imitation of you than you. A culture that can afford to laugh at itself is a very healthy culture.
Shrek’s going to have to find a new gig.
You might think Blair Rudes has one of the few fail-safe careers in Hollywood. He trains directors and actors in lost, or dying, languages. Having worked on the sets of both The New World and the forthcoming The Ruins, he’s coached actors in Virginia Algonquian and Yukatec Maya. It would seem that when you’re translating dialogue into a moribund tongue, it’s hard to go wrong. First, there’s not much competition. Second, who’s going to fault this kind of detective work?
Believe it or not, somebody will. Rudes didn’t work on Dances with Wolves, but apparently it’s well-known how the native dialogue took a glaring wrong turn in that film.
Cultural Branding