world cup Tagged Articles at Cinematical

According to Screen Daily, Rosenbloom Entertainment and Flashpoint Entertainment have hired first-time director Mattias Visser to direct Fan-Demanium, a documentary examining the World Cup through a look at fans at the month-long event. The film will focus on ten groups of fans and document their experiences in Germany. Among those Visser and his crew are following are an Australian (Who is already home. Ha ha.) and "Uzbek uncles who cycled 4,000 miles to Germany to get autographs of their nephews' favorite football stars." Ok, now that sounds cool.

My only World Cup experience was in Japan four years ago, and the event's distance from Europe made that group of fans somewhat different from those who generally attend the Cup -- it's a lot easier, obviously, to jump in the car and drive from Italy to Germany than it is to pay for a flight to Japan and lodging there. That said, however, my experience there, and at the 2004 European Championships in Portugal led me to the irrefutable conclusion that Dutch fans rule. They're insanely supportive, but also impossibly friendly and endlessly positive -- if they've got a beer and some orange clothes, it's a good day. Point being, Visser damn well better have some Dutch in his movie.

This Fourth of July, why not celebrate the birth of the United States by taking in a movie about that good ol' American icon, Superman? Well, in case you haven't heard, according to Superman Returns, the superhero isn't specifically representative of the U.S. anymore. In fact, one line in the film, spoken by Frank Langella, is stirring a lot of discussion. The line revises the familiar phrase associated with Superman, "truth, justice and the American way," changing it to "truth, justice and all that stuff," upsetting many who see it as a disruption of the comic book character's tradition. There are those, however, who see the logic in the revision, and the film's screenwriters, Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris, have backed up this logic. "The truth is he's an alien," says Harris, "He was sent from another planet. He has landed on the planet Earth, and he is here for everybody. He's an international superhero."

The new film even features a montage showing Superman helping out around the globe. But does this really have to do with logic or does it have to do with international box office? Hollywood depends too much on the worldwide take to let a blockbuster speak only to Americans. The montage reminded me of similar montages in disaster films, which, despite taking place primarily in the States, show that the story is happening all over, thereby including international markets in the fun (Personally, if I was French, I might have had a problem with being included after seeing what happens to Paris in Armageddon). Harris addresses this, as well: "So you play the movie in a foreign country, and you say, 'What does he stand for? -- truth, justice and the American way.' I think a lot of people's opinions of what the American way means outside this country are different from what the line actually means because they are not the same anymore. And (using the line) would taint the meaning of what he is saying."

Even though Americans like to pretend that soccer doesn't matter, Hollywood freely admits that it truly is a matter of life and death - financially speaking, at least. In anticipation of this summer's World Cup (which, for those of you who don't like sports where you can't use your hands, takes place in Germany from June 9 to July 9), therefore, most of the big releases slated for this summer are being carefully scheduled to avoid June. Why? Because no men in Europe (Or, for that matter, in Africa. Or Central and South America.) goes to movies when international soccer is on TV. Seriously - these people know what's important.

As a result, movies like Mission: Impossible III, The Da Vinci Code, and X-Men: The Last Stand, which would normally be thrown into theaters to kick off studio summer seasons are bowing on unusually early May dates. Meanwhile, other studios are holding onto their releases until the last week of the Cup, which is when both Superman Returns and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest will debut. Though they're willing to compete in most territories with the semis and the final (when only four teams are left, the games don't come as fast and furious as they do during the group stages, so the conflicts are reduced), Warner Brothers and Disney are holding those releases back in France, Germany, and Spain, where fighting the power of soccer was (quite reasonably) determined to be pointless.