Perhaps the strangest announcement of Comic-Con was during a panel for Expendables 2, when it was confirmed that the sequel to the 1988 Arnold Schwarzenegger/Danny DeVito comedy Twins is officially happening.
Except for Arnold's tenure as the Governor of California, the entire Schwarzenegger canon is awesome. But a Twins sequel sounds like a terrible idea. There has never been a clamor for a return to the Twinsaverse, and more importantly: it's been 24 years. And in all that staggering time, the film has still not become a comedy classic. Even when Hollywood tried to recreate DeVito and Schwarzenegger's chemistry in 1994's Junior, the film flopped.
THE IMPOSTER, our favorite flick of the week
INDIE
RED LIGHTS
Both critically loved and maligned, Red Lights is Rodrigo Cortés' follow-up to his fame-catching fest-fave Buried. A star-studded story of famous and fraudulent ghost hunters, this tracks two austere paranormal investigators (Sigourney Weaver and Cilian Murphy) who get upstaged by the renowned but questionable De Niro, a ham who says he sees dead people and proves it with the tricks up his sleeve.
Distributor: Millennium Entertainment
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Robert De Niro, Cillian Murphy, Elizabeth Olsen
Director/Screenwriter: Rodrigo Cortés
Genre: Suspense
THE OBAMA EFFECT
The Dark Knight Rises is subject to some of the most fervid hype since the death and resurrection of Christ—i.e., since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II. It is almost impossible to imagine a circumstance in which the movie won't make bajillions. But we've tried. Here are five ways The Dark Knight Rises could still be a box office flop.
Dark Knight Disaster #1: To everyone's surprise, the film is a Bollywood-style musical. While Anne Hathaway can sing, Bale can't, and his Newsies-inspired dance moves are declared by the New York Times to be "as embarrassing as Napoleon Dynamite." The most YouTubed clip of the movie is Bane and Batman's dance-off in a field of daisies.
Last year, all 20 of Hollywood's highest-grossing films made more money abroad than at home. The new clout of the international box office has propelled studios to hire more foreign stars. Freida Pinto, for example, who stars in this week's Trishna, was plucked as an unknown from India to star in Slumdog Millionaire, and has been working nonstop ever since. But while plenty of Hollywood icons, including Marlene Dietrich, Ingrid Bergman, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, are overseas imports, most foreign stars find it enormously difficult to transition from novelty act to star attraction.
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Before 2005, the "reboot" was unfamiliar to the film industry. A little film called Batman Begins changed that. Director Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. took a huge risk in re-imagining the Batman franchise by wiping the entire slate clean: new cast, new director, new story, new vision. And thus, a trend began.
This week, we'll look at the franchises that have tried to follow in Nolan's successful footsteps. The definition of a "reboot" can vary depending on the context and whom you ask. Is a reboot always a prequel? Not necessarily. The re-telling of Peter Parker's origins in The Amazing Spider-Man has made sure of that latest asterisk-led description.
