Showing posts with label 20th Century Fox. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 20th Century Fox. Show all posts

Thursday, January 14, 2016

Henry - A Narnia Story

Fiction relating to The Chronicles of Narnia. Written by a lifelong Narnian.



Maria looked up at the large house. She thought that it looked very interesting. Her mum hurried her in, as the tour was already inside.

Maria lagged behind at the end of the tour. There were about 15 other people, all trying to seem interested in a painting of a horse. When they went upstairs, Maria saw a sign pointing to the library. She liked books, so she went in.



It was a large room with books on shelves lining the room. She went over to a shelf and noticed a book that interested her. It was blue with no title, and rather thick. It was stuck in the shelf, so Maria pulled harder.


Maria landed on the floor with a loud noise. She looked towards the doorway. Had anyone heard? But then the bookcase started to move out from the wall. Startled, Maria jumped up. When the case stopped, Maria stepped through the gap.

Inside the doorway was a room with a four-poster bed in it. “Oh no,” thought Maria. “I've stumbled into the Professor's bedroom!” But she then saw that there was a thick layer of dust on the floor, with no footprints in it.

She turned around to leave, but on the way she saw a plaque on the bookshelf. It read:


TO FIND OUT ABOUT A WONDERFUL CREATURE CALLED HENRY, 

LOOK UNDER THE PILLOW.

Maria was curious about this creature, whatever it was. So she carefully walked over to the bed and looked under the pillow. Under it was a plain notebook with the simple title “Henry”.

In it was a story about a dog with arthritis. He had belonged to the Professor when he was a boy. He chased cats that were trying to eat birds, but he in turn did not hurt the birds. Henry was in great pain at nights because of his arthritis.

Maria started crying in the middle of reading the story because it was so sad. But at the end, she felt heartbroken.

Henry died by falling down a sewer. He was chasing a big cat who was about to kill 5 sparrows. The boy was not watching Henry because he was thinking about his mother who was extremely sick.

Maria put the book back and walked out of the room. She was able to push back the bookcase and leave the room for the next lucky visitor to Henry's memorial.

Monday, August 24, 2015

Movie Review - Fantastic Four (2015) - Jonathan On Paper

Photo Source: hdwallpaper.in
 This week I saw the new Fantastic Four movie. I was intrigued as I went it to find out what had made this movie less successful in it’s opening weekend than the first two Fantastic Four movies (2005, 2007). It made $25.7 million on the first weekend, as opposed to the first movie’s equivalent takings which were $56 million (more than double). 

Photo Source: Xmovies8.tv
This week I saw the new Fantastic Four movie. I was intrigued as I went it to find out what had made this movie less successful in it’s opening weekend than the first two Fantastic Four movies (2005, 2007). It made $25.7 million on the first weekend, as opposed to the first movie’s equivalent takings which were $56 million (more than double). 



The problem with Fantastic Four (2015) is that it never feels like a superhero movie. It has a negatively mysterious mood, which is aided by the gloomy colour tuning and depressing feel at times. The heroes’ super powers are painted as curses, not benefits. It takes a long time to get into any action and takes too much time setting up the story and the characters.

Fantastic Four has the Marvel logo at the start, but it is co-produced by 20th Century Fox, not Disney like the other Marvel cinematic universe movies. It seems like Fox was trying to buy into the current success of Disney’s Marvel series (while already owning the rights to this property). 

But this never feels like a Marvel movie. It has some humour, but it is not the wise-cracking happy sense of humour as in the Avengers and Ant Man. The action was never really fun. Fantastic Four’s main issue is that it doesn’t know when to be silly and when to be serious. It was is too serious.


Photo Source: hdwallpaper.in
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Somebody was trying to make some dough out of Fantastic Four, but they missed. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! If you want to make money out of a Marvel movie, make it like Disney does – hilarious and heart-warming with epic cartoony action.


@Steve_sipple




Tuesday, December 23, 2014

The Top Ten Christian Genre Films: My Response

In this article I will be giving my thoughts on this list of the top-grossing Christian genre films of all time:

 Box Office Mojo: "Christian Movies at the Box Office"




Let me introduce you to the most popular Christian themed movies of all time: The top four on this list are 





Lucy and Mr Tumnus in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.


These movies' place on this list are no surprise. Aside from The Passion, which was funded by Mel Gibson as I understand, the other three are multi-million-dollar-budget movies funded by Disney, Walden Media, Fox and Dune Entertainment. So with marketing budgets 10 times as large as most independent film budgets in their entirety, it is no surprise they can take in over $1.6 billion as a series, worldwide. The Narnia movies are also based on a successful book series known worldwide - and not only known in church circles, but to most people.

Next :






These three films were all released in 2014. Together they brought in $210 million for their studios - including Fox and Sony. These movies represent the maturity in the current Christian independent film industry. PureFlix, producers of God's Not Dead, has already released dozens of small budget movies for the Christian market. And this year they were somehow able to draw the crowds (and $60 million).

The marketers of Heaven is For Real initially thought the ceiling for a film like this could be $50 million, after the release of Courageous in 2011 only brought in $34 million. I am sure they are pleased that their expectation was exceeded by almost double.

Number 8 - Soul Surfer - is in the same category as these 3 mentioned above, and released by the same company as Heaven is for Real (number 5) and Courageous (number 10). This made a healthy $43 million.

The odd one out here is the Christmas-themed The Nativity Story, produced by New Line Cinema in the wake of The Passion of the Christ to cash in on this new-found Christian audience. Perhaps missing the mark in a few places (the films mood and pace are two issues), this film was most likely a loss for the studio, despite it's place in the Top 10.

The gloomy feel of The Nativity Story at time let it down.


A few notes - it's not usually all about the money for me, however in the entertainment industry, if a product doesn't sell, there will not be further opportunities for similar products to be produced. And a well told story deserves to be seen by many (hence why many Christian produced films should not be popular).

I am encouraged to see where this movement will go. Here's hoping we see lives and hearts changed by the stories that are told.