The Red Circle

By Ryan Brlecic

Hollywood and The Year that Wasn’t

2009 will forever be remembered as the year that finally killed Patrick McGoohan (Editor’s Note: this was probably for the best). This year also saw not one, but two Tyler Perry films (black is the new white). Jessica Biel managed to live up to her television roots and make two straight to video flicks, one of which had her showing the proverbial skin. Needless to say, 2009 is one for the record books…The Golden Raspberry Awards record books.

Not since Halle Berry’s Catwoman prowled the big screen has Hollywood been able to consistently produce an output like this. If used in interrogation sessions by the CIA, most of this years output would be labeled cruel and unusual punishment by the rules set forth by the Geneva Convention (two words, Post Grad). Enough, however, of my attempt to feign clever. I am not clever, I am right. The year of 2009 was anything but a banner year for film.

As the decade closes on us, we find ourselves in a time of change for the motion picture industry. Not since the 70′s has the model of “business as usual” changed so much. The problem, however, lies in that change. One of the most common comments from film critics in 2009 went something like this: “You just have to shut your mind off and enjoy it.” We no longer challenge Hollywood to give us a product that matches our various expectations and, like so many other facets of this American life, we settle for mediocrity.

It is easy to write this year off as a mulligan. To feed into the tiresome excuse that most of the false starts and failed attempts this year owe their births to the actor/writer strike. However that is not a reason for output like we’ve had (just Dragonball Evolution). As I scan the top ten highest grossing films of 2009, one can see some of the years worst films are actually some of the highest grossing. Hell, you have to actually work to beat the suck of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

When cinema is at it’s best it allows us an escape. That escape can mean for some Up, for others Taken, and yet still for some individuals Paul Bart: Mall Cop. My argument is not the merit of bad films and the people who love them, of which I take great pride in being counted as one of that lot (look forward to my Albert Pyun retrospective). My disdain with why 2009 was bad year for cinema is Hollywood’s attempt to effectively piss on our legs and tell us it’s CGI rain.

This past summer blockbuster season was packed full of explosions and literal hand fed exposition written by the studio’s college interns. The rest of 2009′s schedule was met with filler and/or no releases. It was like Hollywood put on the auto-pilot and took a vacation and the best part is we bought it. This is not to say that the year did not have merit, there where a handful of films that deserved their acclaim. The Ugly and The Bad however killed The Good in this re-imagining of the classic.

2009 saw the culmination of a director’s body of work into a near perfect film with Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards, but even that was still not enough to save the year from something like Terminator Salvation or X-men Origins: Wolverine. Public Enemies boasting crew credits that would make it a sure bet in Vegas, ended up folding. Star Trek and G.I. Joe gave so many a universal escape, only to have films like Night at the Museum 2 and Imagine That choke their goodwill to death. My insane pleasure in watching Sam Rami’s return to form, was mauled by The Unborn, The Uninvited, Orphan, and Saw XVII.

In preparing for this I looked back over the last few years. Initially I tried to discover if my seething animosity for going to the local cineplex in 2009 was merely caused by the way 2008 left me. Which for those wondering, was hungover in a bathtub full of ice missing a kidney at a motel near the Mexican border. Am I hard to please in my cinematic needs? Or is this a downward slope Hollywood finds itself on? If they are in the business of turning a profit from these film endeavors, what would they gain from losing money?

As actors salaries rise with the cost of doing business, Hollywood is looking for ways to squeeze every penny to their advantage (read about the proposed Netflix 30-day policy). Television has the luxury of reality TV and Music Industry seems fit to find new stars via Disney and American idol. Hollywood still has to contend with actor’s wanting pay for results earned. Is it not that hard to see taking a loss as having benefit in the fact that you could reduce actor’s salary requests? Literally use the market against them for your future gain.

Which brings me to Shutter Island a film that would have easily been an awards contender plucked from this years line-up. Paramount (the studio that pays for Michael Bay’s gold plated C4 detonators) cited having nothing left to properly promote the film or an Oscar (speaking of the telecast, it would have benefited from Kanye West’s letting Hugh Jackman know that no one will live up to Billy Crystal) campaign. Besides why release a legitimately good film after you made slightly more then a years profit on dreck like Transformers 2? I cannot fault them for good business or capitalism, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it either.

In closing, Hollywood realized that 2009 was a good a year as any to have a garage sale. So like most garage sales they worked hard to find the things they no longer wanted and waited patiently for us to come up the driveway. They sold us our old memories, via their unused, remade, re-imagined and dusty properties. They added a few lens flares, maybe a CGI dinosaur, and copied someone else’s SciFi novel to get us the best in modern cinema. Unfortunately for us when you buy at a garage sale, all sales are final. The year of 2009 was anything but a banner year for film.

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