Anything? Was curious, because I have not seen his name attached to anything...was he like blacklisted after RENT or something?
"In the U.S.A.
You can have your say,
You can set you goals
And seize the day,
You've been given the freedom
To work your way
To the head of the line-
To the head of the line!"
---Stephen Sondheim
And believe me, he was blacklisted LONG before RENT.
I actually LIKE a lot of his films.
"The Spectacle has, indeed, an emotional attraction of its own, but, of all the parts, it is the least artistic, and connected least with the art of poetry. For the power of Tragedy, we may be sure, is felt even apart from representation and actors. Besides, the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet."
--Aristotle
Ripley's Believe It or Not! (2010) (in production) Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (2010) (pre-production) I Love You, Beth Cooper (2009) (post-production)
Don't know why you folks are all running Chris Columbus down. Must be because he is SUCCESSFUL. :) So he is guilty of providing entertainment for lots of people. Updated On: 12/8/08 at 06:59 AM
Oh P**s Off, the Rent movie was not that bad at all.It had some flaws and some decisions were made which were never going to satisfy Broadway Audiences and Rent Heads but CC directing was beautiful on that film.
Namo i love u but we get it already....you don't like Madonna
Successful as CC is. Lucky like that, we should all be. BTW I never saw "Rent." Not my subject matter. But I did a documentary on the homeless here. That's close. :) And some of those folks want to do a "Homeless" video with songs. They asked me to make it because I'm a videomaker setup with my own editing system, production library, etal. More serious and downer doc than a musical comedy. More like a musical tragedy. But every one of the homeless people I've met all have hope! Every one of them strives to get better. I'm talking about the ones that you see on the street who are "signing" and the ones who have part-time or occasional jobs that keep them alive.
Now back to your regularly scheduled program. Updated On: 12/8/08 at 07:20 AM
More serious and downer doc than a musical comedy.
RENT isn't supposed to be a musical comedy. Chris Columbus turned it into one.
I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for the movie, simply because it was made, but there are certain parts and choices that are just awful.
Nothing matters but knowing nothing matters. ~ Wicked
Everything in life is only for now. ~ Avenue Q
There is no future, there is no past. I live this moment as my last. ~ Rent
Oh P**s Off, the Rent movie was not that bad at all.
It wasn't a total failure, but there were some changes that were a complete departure from the show. For example, using the title song at the beginning completely set the wrong tone from the outset. And the lesbian wedding was a huge mistake.
"What can you expect from a bunch of seitan worshippers?" - Reginald Tresilian
lolol the opening was fine and set the tone very well, it made sense to start the film that, i think anyone who would have directed that film would have done the same thing
The wedding was not the greatest idea but it was not a horrible one, i understood from a directing point of view why he choose to do it, it opens up for a new location, it shows us the contrast of the 2 worlds she is about to become apart of.
Some changes made did not work but i liked the fact CC took chances with it, his directing and his attention to color was brilliant.The film gets to much of a kicking for the wrong reasons.
Namo i love u but we get it already....you don't like Madonna
My problem with Chris Columbus is that there isn't much substance to his films. They can be very entertaining, but he really does not know how to set up and shoot scenes where there isn't some sort of screw-ball comedy going on. I also think that he seriously doesn't know how to direct adult actors (I swear that Catherine O'Hara in Home Alone and Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire were pretty much self-directed). The acting and direction of the second Harry Potter film clearly illustrate Chris Columbus' weakness as a director, IMO. Sterile, soul-less, and settling for mediocrity.
"[Gore] was widely perceived as arrogant. If you know something, you're not smart. You're a smarty-pants. It's annoying. People get annoyed with your knowledge. It goes back to high school, to not doing your homework ... 'There's something I should know, I don't know why I should know it but someone knows it and I don't. So I'm going to have to make fun of him now.'"
-Sarah Vowell, The Partly-Cloudy Patriot
I think Chris Colombus' direction for Rent left a lot to be desired. The pacing was jarring as the film lurched from song to song. One my biggest gripes about his direction is the horrible transitions between the numbers. Songs just seemed to come out of nowhere and then they would end abruptly. There was almost no underscore in whole movie.
His staging of some of the songs was also odd. I think it's during "Another Day" when Mimi and Roger are singing on the fire escape then suddenly Mark, Collins, and Angel come around the street corner and join in the song. There's also the infamous cliff scene during "What You Own". Cutting half of "Goodbye Love" was a major mistake IMHO.
I have an even bigger issue with Stephen Chbosky's screenplay. There couldn't have been more than 20 minutes of spoken dialogue in the film, and much of it was taken directly from the stage show, and it still rhymed when it was spoken.
"You drank a charm to kill John Proctor's wife! You drank a charm to kill Goody Proctor!" - Betty Parris to Abigail Williams in Arthur Miller's The Crucible
I think the staging of Another Day on the film is brilliant, it makes a pretty good song feel almost epic.I will agree that the films transitions between song and spoken word was not great
Namo i love u but we get it already....you don't like Madonna
Chris Columbus is so superficial and commercial that he should be on sale at Wal-Mart.
Thinking about the many directors in Hollywood that give emotional depth and realism to their movies makes me so depressed. It could have been so much better in the hands of a director who is the least bit artistic. Chris Columbus has made some fun, entertaining movies, but they are all surface. He's serviceable at best.
The movie would also have been vastly improved with a different screenwriter. Taking sung lyrics and just turning them into dialogue every five minutes was painful.
That said, I too have a soft spot in my heart for the movie just on the basis of it being a movie of Rent. I thought Rosario Dawson was excellent. I also thought that most of the original cast fell pretty flat, especially Adam, who I otherwise love.