Greta Gerwig's Barbie movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY_TiaJGjdo

From the New Yorker article:

If some movies are toyetic, many toys are in no way cinematic: there’s precious little human drama to be mined from such games as Flushin’ Frenzy or UNO. “Look, my kids and I played UNO every night during the pandemic. I love it,” Barber said. “Is there an UNO movie? I don’t know!”

When I met Marcy Kelly, a cheerful thirty-eight-year-old who has become Mattel’s de-facto screenwriter and punch-up artist, last November, she recalled the moment when Kevin McKeon asked her if she wanted to pitch a script based on the card game: “My reaction was the reaction that everybody has, which is ‘What?’ ” McKeon, she said, sent her a slide deck that “highlighted how cross-cultural the game is, and funny things about how seriously people take it, and little seeds of ideas for things to work into a movie,” including “a meme of Beyoncé holding UNO cards.” The mandate, inexplicably, was for a heist movie.

Kelly got to work. The script she emerged with wasn’t quite what Mattel had had in mind. She’d set “UNO” in Atlanta’s hip-hop scene. “The first draft that I sent in was ‘fuck’-heavy,” she recalled, sheepishly. An executive flagged every instance of the obscenity in the screenplay. “It was something like fifty pages,” she said. “And then the next draft had one. I got my one, well-placed, PG-13 ‘fuck.’ ”

Kelly stressed that, despite such censorship, Mattel had given her real creative freedom. “They’ve been open to so many kinds of unexpected ideas,” she said. She’d submitted screenplays for four titles, and ran the writers’ room for several others, including one about Bob the Builder. The work had helped her find her footing in the industry; before joining the company, she was best known for her contributions to the mobile game Mean Girls: Senior Year.

If Kelly sometimes struggled to please Mattel, the executives didn’t always seem to know what they wanted, either. Not long after we spoke, her “UNO” script was set aside, and a one-day writers’ room took another run at a concept. A heist, Mattel reasoned, might not be the way forward after all. Some bank vaults can’t be cracked.

Looks like Lil Yachty had been attached at some point.

Look, until we get to the point that Barbie and Capt. Uno are seen asking the Magic 8 Ball questions in the background of a scene from Planet Popple, I'm still less annoyed at this admittedly early point in the cycle than I was approximately three Marvel movies in

How quickly we all forget the "Battleship" movie. Movies based on games, movies based on toys, movies based on theme park rides, live action remakes of animated musicals, movie musicals based on stage musicals based on books inspired by movie musicals ... at least the Marvel movies are based on stories, not objects.

I just found out that Mattel purchased Bluebird toys in the 90s, and I've decided that I'm ok with talented auteurs being forced to waste their talents on toy commercials if it means we get that Manta Force film I've been waiting for since I was 6.

Directed by Celine Song?

"Clue: The Movie" ... was this the first film of this kind, based on a game or toy?

Apparently so, quickly followed by The Garbage Pail Kids Movie and Masters of the Universe

How many millions of dollars have been spent on the Monopoly movie that hasn't even been filmed yet? It's gone from a Ridley Scott comedy, to a Goonies knock-off with no director, to a serious Ridley Scott movie compared to Blade Runner, to a Kevin Hart movie that will probably get cancelled because of the strike.

The Monopoly plot where it last stood...

The story starts off with a montage of Chuck as a child growing up and how monopoly has always been there for him. The first time he played it with his parents, the first time he bought a property, the first time he landed on a space with a hotel on it and flipped the board, arguing over the real rules of the game v.s. “house rules” that other use, him playing too aggressively while on a first date with a girl thus ruining his chances for a second date. You know, things we have all done. The montage ends with Chuck rolling the dice on himself, after noticing that his childhood neighborhood is taking a dark turn toward the vilest of beasts, gentrification.

Chuck creates a business plan to save his neighborhood, which he is going to propose to his bosses the Alpha Brothers, he calls the plan “Gentrification with a Soul.” His bosses love it, except they hate the soul part, you see, soul affects profit margins. So, now his neighborhood is going to get gentrified worse than New York. For those of you that don’t know, used to have the nickname “Fear City” but that’s all changed now that Harlem is full of kids from LA with rich parents.

His mother, who thinks his proposal went off like a success, surprises him with a gift, a first edition monopoly board. Not wanting to break the bad news to his mother, he does not tell her what happened. Little does Chuck know this board is special, and the next day he is in for a rude awakening when he goes to buy his morning cup of coffee, all he has is Monopoly money, his pockets are overflowing with the colorful cash that looks like Canadian money. The barista happily takes the cash, which is weird, but what’s even weirder is what he sees outside. That’s right, he’s in Monopoly world.

Praying for a Stratego movie.

"Turn around, sir . . . good Lord, you're the Field Marshal!"

Give me Fireball Island or give me the fake jewel

The Stratego film would be funny if some filmmaker signed on just to use it as a chance to make a big-budget Napoleonic Wars film.

Kinda akin to Joe Johnston finally getting his big-budget WWII dieselpunk film (of sorts) by doing the first Captain America.

I don’t really want to see this, but I love gerwig enough that I probably will anyway

― k3vin k., Thursday, May 25, 2023 2:33 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

have to say the new yorker article decreased my interest level even further

him playing [Monopoly] too aggressively while on a first date with a girl thus ruining his chances for a second date

Just make a romantic comedy around this.

This whole thing reminds me of Betty Thomas's The Brady Bunch Movie, in the sense of making it smart/self-conscious playing with nostalgia for something that's burned into our brains but we're not really nostalgic for.

It's actually only that in the first few minutes of the Venice Beach sequence ... it quickly drops that fish-out-of-water angle

Fire the NYT illustrator who made this. The "en" is from Oppenheimer! It's not called "Barben"!

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/07/23/business/0723BIGNUMBER-PRINT/0723BIGNUMBER-PRINT-threeByTwoSmallAt2X.png?quality=75&auto=webp

It's actually called Barbenie

Drew Margary with a double-feature review: https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/barbie-oppenheimer-review-18254213.php

I agree it's obviously a gag, not a political statement, and not saying Vietnam was right to ban it lol, but I also don't think it's surprising at all - being neighbours with an aggressive global power tends to make you touchy about things like this, even moreso when it's a power US studios have a semi-official policy of pandering to.

Uncharted and Abominable for banned for the same reasons in Vietnam. Seem to remember one movie which had to edit out a scene with a map but can't remember which

*were banned

The most positive review I've seen on Barbie - I'm a skeptic and Brody tends to oversell his favored comedies (Trainwreck, The Spy Who Dumped Me), but using references like the classic Warner Bros. cartoons could very well make a plausible case for greatness:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/barbie-is-brilliant-beautiful-and-fun-as-hell

i loved this

going back and reading this thread made me want to slam my head into a wall

i’m going in. everyone is wearing pink.

Just saw it with a group of friends and we had a good time. It was better than I imagined a Barbie movie could be. The very last joke was probably my favorite bit.

it was a total blast, they really emptied the idea board in the best way possible.

this is very very good and completely 100% entertaining. And an all time classic final line.

there is little hope that any further mattel raiding will actually even remotely meet the bar this set, and Gerwig (and Robbie and Gosling) deserves every bit of credit.

My kids (13 & 8) are with my conservative mom and she's going to take them to see this. I'm excited to hear everyone's reaction. I need to call up and talk to the 8 year old and make sure she knows what "patriarchy" and the last word in the movie mean.

Who knew Gosling was this funny!

It‘s the role he was born to play.

im pretty sure most people knew gosling was funny?

He's been funny for a while.

nothing funnier than the time an imposter Ryan Gosling showed up undetected to a European awards show and appeared on stage as him in front of a shocked audience

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3dg-vWr3n4

the real Gosling has indeed been funny for a while

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVhlJNJopOQ

https://i.ibb.co/QkwzyDk/Screenshot-20230717-233310-Chrome.jpg

guy who has his own name twice in his handle has opinions4u

I’ll see it in a week or three once the various tumults have subsided.

I just went to see a 70mm screening of Oppenheimer. It was insanely packed & I couldn’t understand why there was such a joyous atmosphere. After finding the last seat in the auditorium I looked around and noticed almost everyone was in pink and asked the person next to me what film was showing. Of course i knew the answer before they said it. Barbie! I had got the screening times mixed up and they obviously weren't paying attention when they took my ticket. I was not in the right mood to stay and see it though do intend to. Back to the cinema in an hour for my correct screening!

was the Barbie also a 70 mm

According to my students, many people ARE doing back-to-back screenings of Barbie and Opps.

several friends of mine have done it

uh wow:

“Barbenheimer” is more than just a meme. It’s a full-fledged box office phenomenon.

Over the weekend, moviegoers turned out in force for Greta Gerwig’s neon-coated fantasy comedy “Barbie,” which smashed expectations with $155 million to land the biggest debut of the year. But they also showed up to see Christopher Nolan’s R-rated historical drama “Oppenheimer,” which collected a remarkable $80.5 million in its opening weekend.

Hundreds of thousands of ticket buyers refused to choose between the seemingly different blockbusters with twin release dates. So they opted to attend same-day viewings of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” turning the box office battle into a double feature for the ages. The craze known as “Barbenheimer” worked together to fuel the biggest collective box office weekend of the pandemic era, as well as the fourth-biggest overall weekend in history.

and:

Among its many records, “Barbie” also scored the biggest opening weekend ever for a film directed by a woman. “Captain Marvel,” which was co-directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, previously held the title with $153 million in 2019. “Wonder Woman,” from filmmaker Patty Jenkins, stood as the record-holder for a movie solely directed by a woman with $103 million in 2017.

Hopefully the robot ETs will appreciate the black humor in this endtime activity when they eventually pick through the ruins of our civilization.

I honestly just have a hard time staying at the movie theaters that long anymore. last time I did that was "Das Boot" followed by "45 Years"

I have colleagues who can and do; I'd rather grab lunch.

My daughter did (and liked) both movies.