While it may not have been the best year for movies, it certainly was an interesting year for movie news around here at The Movie Blog. I thought it might be interesting to compile my list for the top 10 stories of the year. It’s hard to say what criteria I based this list on. It was a couple of things including the scope of the story, how much interest it generated, how much discussion came about because of it and how much it influenced other stories. It’s quite a subjective list. So here are your top 10 movie stories of 2006 around here at The Movie Blog.
THE TOP STORY OF 2006
 The Halo Movie Disaster – This story had more proverbial twists and turns than a freaking daytime soap opera and probably created more controversy around The Movie Blog this year than any other story. Ever since the film was announced, it seemed for a while that there was new news on it weekly. Lots of fan anticipation surrounded this project right from the start… and the other thing that surrounded it was an eerie sense of impending doom. First of all it was going to be a video game movie (obviously), and as all of you know, video game movies suck (I still have yet to understand how anyone can think that just because a video game is good, that mean a movie version would be good too. It’s like saying “Chess: The Movie” is sure to be amazing). Then the news Bungie, the company that knew nothing about making movies, was going to keep creative control of the film, the circus surrounding Peter Jackson coming on as a producer (if he cared half as much about Halo as he would have you and I believe he would have just directed it), the multiple changing of release dates and shooting schedules, the hiring of a “director” who had never worked a day in his life on any movie anywhere in any capacity whatsoever, changing scripts, changing writers, losing the studios, PR gaffs which all finally and mercifully ended back on Halloween day. Halo The Movie will be back sooner or later, and hopefully the folks over at Bungie would have learned a few things from this experience, hire real movie people they trust to have creative control, get a real experienced production team and get a director who has at the very least been a coffee boy on set of a real movie at least once. Oh yeah, no other story in 2006 got as many people mad at me too… gosh… I can’t imagine why.
|
| The Rest In No Particular Order |
 Mel Gibson’s Racist Outburst – This was once of the most fascinating stories to watch unfold. Not just on the level of how moronic and stupid the things Mel Gibson said in his drunken tirade, but also how our society became band wagon witch hunters. To this day I still don’t understand it. Despite it’s best efforts, several news agencies couldn’t dig up any anti-semetic behavior or actions in Gibson’s past at all. He never had any hiring irregularities. He worked with, for, employed and hung out socially with people of Jewish heritage (way more than you or I do by the way… unless you’re Jewish that is), there were never any complaints from people around him with regards to anti-anyone behaviour or language, and numerous members of the Jewish community who know Gibson came passionately to his defence. And yet, one night, this guy who has struggled with alcoholism, got pulled over and in a drunken stupor spewed out some of the most ignorant jackass bullshit to a cop he was pissed at, and we instantly forgot about everything else… the only evidence that our pop-culture wanted to look at was the drunken comments. That was enough. We labeled Gibson a “racist”. Forget everything else. Forget all the other evidence that all pointed to a drunk guy just saying something idiotic but had no basis in reality… we didn’t care about “facts”, the tabloid shows didn’t care about “evidence”, and no one seemed to care about common sense. Despite all evidence pointing to Gibson just being a regular non-racist dude, a drunken outburst was all we needed to label him the next Hitler. I lost a little bit of my faith in humanity over this story, and it still drags on today.
|
 Crash Wins Best Picture Over Brokeback – It’s been almost a year since this occurred, so a lot of us have forgot how much shock there was when Crash beat out Brokeback Mountain for best picture at the Oscars in 2006. It was almost a forgone conclusion that the Academy was going to hand the prize over to Brokeback. Thankfully, they didn’t. Instead they gave it to the better film, Crash. But oh man… it didn’t take long after the ceremony was over that accusations of “homophobia” were flying all over the place. Brokeback supporters (some of them anyway) couldn’t just accept that the better movie had won just because… well… it was a better movie. Nope, they had to start saying the only reason Brokeback lost was because of homophobia in Hollywood (which is one of the most stupid things I’ve ever heard in my life). Nope, even though the Academy gave Best Director to Ang Lee (the director of Brokeback), gave best actor to Philip Seymour Hoffman for his portrayal of a gay person and nominated Felicity Huffman for her role as a transsexual/transgener character, the Academy were “obviously” just a bunch of neo-conservative fuddy-duddys covered with homophobia. Yeah… ok.
|
 Daniel Craig Bond Controversy – I’m cheating on this one a little bit. Although Craig was given the mantel of “Bond” back in late 2005, the controversy of the decision didn’t really spring to life until early 2006. The interesting thing about the outcry was that people weren’t upset based on Craig’s acting ability. Craig is actually a classically trained thespian and quite a good one at that. No, the “Craig Not Bond” people and their supporters were threatening to boycott the new James Bond film just because they didn’t like the “look” of Daniel Craig. Yup, that’s it. Because they didn’t like the facial features of Daniel Craig, that was enough for some people to label the new Casino Royale a failure 10 months before it would be released in theaters. This story brought up a larger issue that was spoken about a lot this year… the topic of “Look over talent” was one that came up a few times. It’s very satisfying as a movie fan to see that talent trumped, and Casino Royale went on to be an amazing film that has broke all boxoffice marks of any previous Bond film. Oh yeah… and Craig ended up being the best James Bond ever (in my little opinion anyway).
|
 Legal Movie Downloading – 2006 was the year the inevitable started to happen. Studios, looking at the example of the music industry, decided to start investigating and testing the waters of pure digital movie distribution to consumers. It is the way of the future. It started with one studio, then another and now every major studio has some form of digital distribution method in place. The big break through was when it was announced that iTunes would start selling movies as well. There are still question marks surrounding the new system. Problems of price (still far too high), content (most still don’t offer any of the special features of a DVD disk), digital rights (most systems don’t allow you to burn a copy of the movie you just purchased for viewing on other devices such as your DVD player). Seems like the studios are just testing the limits to see how much they can get away with… testing to see at what point consumers say “Ok, this is good… at this point we’ll accept it en mass”. We’re still probably a good couple of years away from digital downloading becoming a SERIOUS player in the distribution game… but it is coming.
|
 Who Will Play The Joker? – I personally don’t remember seeing any casting topic generate as much speculation and interest than the whole “Who will play The Joker in the next Batman film?” insanity. It seemed like every other day for months new names were being brought forth. Passionate fans arguing (in a good way) the merits or lack thereof of their personal choices for the role of the crown prince of crime. Some of the more interesting names that came up were Guy Pearce, Robin Williams, Jude Law, Michael Keaton (I still think that would have been cool to see), Crispin Glover (a very popular choice), Jake Gyllenhaal and a few others. But in the end, it was a dark horse that no one saw coming that nabbed up the role. Heath Ledger, a hit and miss sort of actor that can knock it out of the park… or stink the joint out. The fans reaction has been pretty level headed actually. Everyone (for the most part) has adapted a “wait and see” sort of attitude with Ledger. It’ll be interesting to see how this works out.
|
 Chris Tucker Gets $25 Million For Rush Hour 3 – What actor has the largest single movie contract in history? Oscar winner Denzel Washington? Nope. Brad Pitt? Nope. Multiple Oscar winner Tom Hanks? Nope. No my dear international friends, according to the IMDB, the single largest base salary contract for any movie in history goes to… Chris Tucker for Rush Hour 3. At $25 million as a base salary for the film (not including his percentage that is also in the contract, so at this point we have no idea how big his pay day will end up being really) Tucker becomes the most valuable man in Hollywood. What a total joke. A talentless hack, who bases his whole persona on doing a bad Eddie Murphy in 48 hours imitation and gets his laughs from spewing racist jokes is getting $25 million dollars. It was on that day that I decided I would never show any sympathy to Studios when they complain about losing money. Why do you and I have to pay $12 at the ticket booth? Because they’re paying hack actors (or any actors for that matter) $25 million dollars before the camera even starts rolling. This has got to stop.
|
 Pirates 2 Destroys Boxoffice – The first Pirates of the Caribbean was a charming and fun flick that took a little while to eventually find it’s audience… but as word of mouth spread about the quality of the film, it stuck around longer than most films in the top 10 until finally finishing a respectable run. It flew off the DVD shelves when it came out on video, and we all knew Pirates 2 was going to do great business at the boxoffice when it finally came out. We even knew it was going to be huge. But MAN… I don’t think ANYONE predicted just how huge it ended up being. Keep in mind, a film that pulls in over $50 million on opening weekend is considered to be a BIG hit. Well… Pirates of the Caribbean 2 came in at $135 million on opening weekend. Shattering all previous opening weekend boxoffice records and then went on to make over $1 BILLION dollars world wide. The funny thing is that it’s not even really that great of a movie… but WOW did it have an audience.
|
 Paramount Shuts Down The Movie Blog – I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention this story, even though it wasn’t news to anyone else, but it was big to me. July 6th I woke up to find my website taken offline by my hosting company because Paramount Pictures sent them a threatening legal notice to have me taken out. The issue was surrounding The Transformers. To say I was pissed off is a massive understatement. However, as it all turns out it was just one big mistake on Paramount’s part. They apologized and everything is fine. Accidents do happen and I respect how Paramount handled the situation after it occurred (The vice-president of Paramount called me from her vacation to explain what happened… if that doesn’t say “we’re sorry” then I don’t know what does). After a week it was all done, and I was able to go back to being a happy Transformers geek again.
|
 Trend of Studios Not Screening Movies For Critics – This year, the number of films that studios held back and hid from critics before their release more than tripled over last year. The reasons are obvious. When a studio knows their movie sucks, don’t let the critics get the word out. This should be a MASSIVE red flag to people. If you don’t see any reviews for a film before it opens… DON’T GO SEE THE MOVIE. Because hell… if the studio is basically admitting their movie sucks, why spend your money on it? Sadly, the move has worked for many studios, making big money on their opening weekends before negative word could get out about it. This is a disgusting trend that I hope people start to recognize and punish the studios for by going to see something else by another studio that has enough faith in their movies to let critics at it first. |
So there you have it folks. My VERY VERY VERY subjective list of the top stories around The Movie Blog in 2006. What do you think of it? What big stories do you think I should have included on there that I failed to mention?
Share this Story
