Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Movie Studios Hate You

So angry right now. Ugh.

You know, it's hard out there for a film critic.

The magazines that I work for got the flying off-the-ropes elbow last night from a certain movie studio, let's just say it rhymes with 20th Thentury Thox, for "breaking the embargo;" in other words, we put up our reviews of The Omen a day before the movie's release. We were ordered to take them down until midnight, or else we'd never be invited to screen a 20th Thentury Thox film again. Or some such. I don't know the details, but it's something along those lines. Basicially, they were threatening to take their ball and go home.

The Facts:

1. Every major media outlet already had their Omen reviews up, including Newsweek, Ebert & Roeper, Time, EW, Slate, The Onion, etc.

2. Our reviews, both the one I wrote and the one written by my friend and collegue Brian Juergens, were extremely negative.

3. The aforementioned media outlets are all large and corporately owned; in other words, they're out of the studio's reach. We, Bloody-Disgusting.com and Freezedriedmovies.com, are not.

4. Ergo, in an attempt to squash the mounting tide of ill-will, negativity and general backsass that their movie is generating, they've decided to attack the vulnerable spots. Sites like ours that are run by-and-for fans, that arguably have more pull with the movie's specific audiance, are being silenced due to our opionions running crossways with Big Studio's marketing strategy.

5. The fact that they'd have let the "embargo" issue slide had we tounged The Omen's nards in our reviews is, of course, obvious and not even worth mentioning.

Keep in mind, this isn't an isolated incident. Movie studios do shit like this all the time. It's sleazy, underhanded tactics like this that keep shit movies like The Omen in the theater longer than they should be, which only perpetuates the cycle of shitty movies being released, constantly, while actually good horror movies like, oh, say Slither, get the never ending shaft.

If this doesn't make you want to picket screenings of The Omen, hopefully this will seal the deal:

http://www.defamer.com/hollywood/fox/either-fox-is-promoting-another-movie-or-the-antichrist-has-just-been-born-178566.php

That's right. They've stooped low enough that skywriting seems like a good marketing idea. Next from the 20th Thentury Thox geniuses: Writing "Go See The Omen, It's Awesome" with a Sharpie on the walls of bus station bathrooms and, of course, getting their little brothers to photoshop some totally wicked flyers they can put in all the coffeehouses and up on the dorm's bulletin board.

Bastards.

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