Recept za gulaš na primeru rimejka Karpenterove Magle koji dobija veoma uvredljive kritike, zajedno sa holivudskim studijima koji stvaraju ovakve produkte po principu "lezi lebe da te jedem".
FILMSTEW RECIPE: THE FOG by FilmStew Staff 10/13/2005 at 16:39
What happens when they don't pre-screen a film for critics? You have to get very inventive.
So... Here now, as far as we can tell, is the recipe Sony followed for its latest John Carpenter ghoulash, a remake of the horror meister's 1980 flick The Fog. It blankets a theater near you starting tomorrow.
THE FOG
Difficulty: Low
Prep time: 25 years
Cook time: 100 minutes
Yield: A surprisingly strong first weekend BO
Ingredients:
- Rupert Wainright, a director who has helmed both a 1990 MC Hammer TV movie and a 2002 compilation of the rapper's music videos.
- A thespian from The WB, Tom Welling, whose fan following for a show like Smallville overlaps almost perfectly with the teen and young adult first weekend mall-adjacent boffo demo.
- Three semi-recognizable and, more importantly, affordable female co-stars: the veteran babe (Selma Blair), the Canadian babe (Sara Botsford) and the hot TV show babe (Lost's Maggie Grace).
- A prime slice of further Canadian content, actor Kenneth Welsh.
- And at least one executive producer, Todd Garner, a (now) former Revolution Studios exec, who knows how to expertly put over a franchise-formulaic piece of back-to-school fright.
Preparation
Buy John Carpenter a nice dinner, order an extra bottle of Merlot, and get him to napkin-sign off on the idea of a remake of The Fog. Get a production budget of $18 million U.S. approved, and then gently drop it into an Excel spreadsheet, to compare the relative merits of shooting in currency-friendly Vancouver, British Columbia vs. in currency-friendly Bucharest, Romania. Then, calculate the relative distance between the Vancouver set of Smallville and these two location options, and make the most logical choice.
With the understanding that horror these days can be as much of a young female moviegoer driven thing as it is male (I know, it's hard to believe), add in as generous a dollop of beefcake (Welling) as that of cheesecake (those three, afore-ingrediented mid-range babes). Then stir to a no-overages boil.
Blend in screenwriter Cooper Lane, who has previous experience with a 'The' horror/thriller flick (The Core), and get him to deliver and on-set-tweak as necessary his runaway blueprint before having to run on to his 2006 project Dreadnaught.
Smother generously - but not too generously - in CGI (that stuff is expensive!).
Go with a movie poster than reinforces the fog, not the cast.
Support with an equally fog-focused trailer.
Counterprogram to a near-Halloween 2005 release date that places it against the touchy feely likes of In Her Shoes and Elizabethtown.
Serve in 2,972 movie theatres.
P.S. Ako ste Tuck Vision, pa morate ovo govno da prodate na tržištu Srbije i Crne Gore, pomenite u svojoj verziji recepta, pardon, saopštenja da je Rade Šerbedžija (istočnoevropski, egzotični dodatak paprikašu) "dospeo na prvo mesto filmskog boks ofisa u SAD". Valjda bi to domaćem konzmentu trebalo da zvuči kao fatalna "jedna žlica Vegete".