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Re: The frontpage of the internet
[quote name="Vested Id"][quote name="that we want you to see"]Marketing was trying to tap into hate or notoriety for a bump? Only Sony, and the director, can say whether the strategy was worth it or not (although I doubt either are willing to be honest in public).[/quote] They clearly were; the block-booked ads on Comedy Central use the headline from the NYTimes review "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/15/movies/ghostbusters-review-melissa-mccarthy-kristen-wiig.html?_r=0">Girls Rule. Women Are Funny. Get Over It.</a>", written by Manohla "<a href="http://variety.com/2013/film/news/lake-bell-in-a-world-nicole-holofcener-enough-said-oscar-director-1200941630/">the movie industry is failing women</a>" Dargis. Every single review mentions the negative response to the film, usually safely attributing it to "ghostbros". It was a relief to find out that even Melissa McCarthy says the boy problem was overstated. I don't mean to pretend there isn't a lot to criticize about the video. They say Sony was controlling comments on the trailer, then claim stats that show there is a relatively low number of negative comments. I am ready to embrace the idea that the original Ghostbusters crew think the new film is garbage, which would make sense based on the nature of their cameos, but the evidence is questionable. If memory serves, they didn't bother to address the IMDB reviews. They all but call it a conspiracy. And the Sarah Jessica Parker joke is just an acceptable online form of misogyny. I do not understand why people fight the fact that she was anything other than "horse lady" her entire career. She was an ingenue for a while, then I guess once she got too old to be playing Sex in Sex and the City people thought it was now justified to act like everybody always held her looks in contempt. Yes, <em>Ed Wood</em> called her horse face, she has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNcYtpbNUU0">a face you might think to describe as a horse face if you wanted to insult her</a>, it doesn't mean people always went around describing her that way, which of course they didn't. I'm having a hard time squaring my own feelings about the movie - which has godawful filmmaking as well as laffs - and my feeling about the entire apparatus that pushed hard for a widespread mainstream acceptance of the reboot on any terms, even if it means implying that resisting makes you a problem child. Stuff like the video getting kicked out of /r/movies point to that being a larger social response to the movie, which is bad. I should't listen to Redditisms like "social signaling" but the fact is that does seem like a relevant point to bring up. I don't know. I don't even really like the RLM guys most of the time but I'm happy they decided to take up a side that it feels like hasn't been argued very well. The person I agree with the most is Peter Sciretta at /Film, who said on the podcast that he was worried it was just Ghostbusters with girls, he felt that's what it ultimately was and not much else, and he doesn't understand why the hell Kate McKinnon, who seemed to me like she was really nervous, was behaving so weirdly. You can play the game of What Drug Is Holtzmann On In This Scene, for which I counted meth (grinding teeth), ecstasy (dancing, getting handsy) and cocaine (tripping over her words in a speech at the end). This is <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/eleanorbate/reasons-i-am-in-love-with-jillian-holtzmann?utm_term=.ooPrRQB6z#.qhjnJGqxR">THE HERO <strong>WE</strong> ALL NEED</a>.[/quote]