... FOR "FRANCHISE FACE-OFFS (PART 10 - 'MEN IN BLACK' EDITION)"

Question: How many people actually realize that 1997's Men In Black is based on a comic book? No doubt you saw the commercials and you bought your ticket and laughed at all the jokes and the witty special effects, and you probably own the VHS or the DVD or the Blu-Ray, but did you ever stop to think that you were, in fact, watching a Comic Book Movie?

Maybe, maybe not. Originally published by Marvel/ Aircel Comics as a three-issue mini-series in 1990, Lowell Cunningham's The Men In Black was optioned by producers Walter F. Parkes and Laurie MacDonald in 1992. The project went through various incarnations (and a director or two) before finally settling at Columbia Pictures, under the tutelage of Barry Sonnenfeld (The Addams Family, Get Shorty) and executive producer Steven Spielberg. When it opened on July 2nd, 1997, MIB was met with all the fanfare and fervor of your typical summer blockbuster. It grossed $587 million in theaters worldwide (Columbia's highest-grossing movie up to that point), and cemented Will Smith's reputation as a bona fide box office star. 
 
Yet rarely, if ever, will you find MIB counted among the most successful Comic Book Movies ever made. Why is this? Perhaps because of the way it was marketed – as the Next Will Smith-Versus-Aliens Summer Blockbuster (after Independence Day). Or perhaps in the wake of Batman & Robin (released to critical and commercial disdain just two weeks earlier), the filmmakers thought it best to distance themselves from their genre roots as far as possible.

... FOR "WALT DISNEY'S ANIMATED FIFTY (PART 31 - 'ALADDIN' EDITION)"

My continuing foray into Disney's fifty official Animated Classics. As always, don't hesitate to share your thoughts/memories/complaints in the comments section below. Links to previous entries have also been included below.

Title: Aladdin (1992; based on the Arabian folktale "Aladdin And The Magic Lamp," from One Thousand And One Nights)

The Plot: A street urchin uses a magic lamp to win the heart of a princess.

The Songs: "Arabian Nights," "One Jump Ahead," "Friend Like Me," "A Whole New World," "Prince Ali," "Prince Ali (Reprise)" "A Whole New World (End Title)"

... FOR "WALT DISNEY'S ANIMATED FIFTY (PART 30 - 'BEAUTY AND THE BEAST' EDITION)"

My continuing foray into Disney's fifty official Animated Classics. As always, don't hesitate to share your thoughts/memories/complaints in the comments section below. Links to previous entries have also been included below.

Title: Beauty And The Beast (1991; based on La Belle et la Bête by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont)

The Plot: A young prince, turned into a hideous beast by an enchantress's spell, finds redemption through the love of a beautiful girl.

The Songs: "Belle," "Gaston," "Be Our Guest," "Something There," "Human Again" (Special Edition), "Beauty And The Beast," "The Mob Song," "Beauty And The Beast (End Title)"

... FOR "WALT DISNEY'S ANIMATED FIFTY (PART 29 - 'THE RESCUERS DOWN UNDER' EDITION)"

My continuing foray into Disney's fifty official Animated Classics. As always, don't hesitate to share your thoughts/memories/complaints in the comments section below. Links to previous entries have also been included below.

Title: The Rescuers Down Under (1990; based on characters created by Margery Sharp)

The Plot: Two mice set off to the Australian outback, to rescue a young boy who's been kidnapped by an evil poacher.

Songs: None

... FOR "FRANCHISE FACE-OFFS (PART 9 - 'PARANORMAL ACTIVITY' EDITION)"

So The Blair Witch Project made close to a gazillion dollars back in 1999, and suddenly, "found footage" copycats were everywhere. Noroi, Diary Of The Dead, [REC], Cloverfield - everyone wanted a piece of the action. The reasons for this were fairly cut and dry: they were cheap, they were easy to shoot, you could cast relatively unknown actors as your leads and no one would raise a fuss, and better yet, audiences seemed to get a kick out of them, so you had the luxury of making loads of money off of very little. Hollywood, as we've made it abundantly clear, is always looking to replicate its own successes.

Granted, Blair Witch was hardly the first "found footage" feature ever made. The Last Broadcast, about a cable-TV crew on the hunt for the mythical Jersey Devil, was released just one year previous, and might have been a direct influence on Blair Witch directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez when creating their movie. And perhaps the most notorious of these, Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust (1980), was banned in several countries for its graphic depiction of tribal rituals in the Amazon Basin (Deodato was later brought up on murder charges by the Italian government, who believed he'd made an actual "snuff film").

What The Blair Witch got absolutely right, which its predecessors only hinted at, was the way it tickled our deepest, darkest fantasies - and invaded our pop culture consciousness. First came the legendary marketing campaign, which started on the Internet and then quietly gathered word of mouth at the Sundance Film Festival and in various college towns; a Sci-Fi Channel TV special, which aired just prior to the film's release; and finally, a limited-screen engagement that became the see-it-or-be-square event of the decade. Then came the movie itself, sold as the real thing, so you felt like an active part of the film's mythology. It was a con, a hoax, and audiences ate it up, hook, line and sinker.